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Night falls quiet on the open road.
Thorne rests his head against the pillow he’s wedged between the door and his seat, listens to the wind rushing gently into the open window of the truck, cracked just so to let in cool air. A song plays low on the radio. Beside him, behind the wheel, Cress hums along. Every so often she’ll tap her fingers against the steering wheel and sing a few words. It’s a quiet lullaby that eases Thorne into sleep.
He dreams. Something about a spaceship and living in a palace on the moon. Cress is there, except she’s got this hair , thick and plaited like a rope down her back, and then she’s swimming in a lake, and the water drips like silver against her skin, and she smiles up at him and his heart pounds, and Cress gasps and something screeches and--
His seatbelt yanks the air from his chest.
Thorne is suddenly and painfully awake, looking around frantically for a deer or a car or a person or whatever the hell it was that might’ve caused Cress to slam on the breaks so suddenly in the dead of night. There is nothing but the road and dusty plains around them, and the moon, casting shadows on vague shapes that might be desert trees in the distance. Thorne swallows. “What? Cress, what?”
“Look! Look!”
Thorne looks. Murderous hitchhikers? Zombies? Aliens? “ What? ”
“It’s a meteor shower!” She smacks at his sore chest, points up at the wide sky through the windshield. “Look, Thorne!”
Sighing, Thorne reaches over and takes the wheel, turns it, nudges at her knee until she’s paying him at least a third of her attention. “Foot on the gas, sunshine. At least get us off the road. God, what time is it?”
“Two? Three?” Cress says, a little gas-happy, pulling the truck quickly off the road. She slams the gear into park, unbuckles her belt, and throws the door open faster than Thorne cares to notice.
Three in the morning, and Cress is stopping them in the middle of nowhere to watch a meteor shower. He’s not surprised--he’s always known her to be a strange thing, the small girl who sat behind him in calculus class and muttered to herself when the teacher was wrong, who was dangerously easy to talk to during their tutoring sessions, who charmed him with her disarming smile and her honesty and the way she believed in him with her whole heart. Their whole path to becoming friends was unexpected, and he still doesn’t feel like he deserves her, but she offered to accompany him on this stupid cross-country summer drive and he’s--
“Thorne, come look!”
Three in the morning. He’s tired , is what he is.
Grumbling, Thorne unbuckles and follows her out and around to the back of the truck. Cress is leaning against the bumper, but moves readily as he tugs her into his arms. His hoodie hangs off of her like a dress, and the cool night brings goosebumps to his arms, but Cress is warm as summer and wraps her arms around his waist, tucks herself into him, turns her face up toward the sky.
“Isn’t it amazing?” she asks, watching the stars.
For a while, they gaze at the glowing streaks across the inky sky. Cress burrows closer, slips her hands underneath the hem of his t-shirt and presses her fingers against his back. She fits perfectly underneath his chin, close enough that he can easily press a kiss to her hair. She smells like sunflowers. And he doesn’t like to think about it too much, how easily they fit despite all of their mess, and he knows that he doesn’t deserve her, but she’s here, moonlight shining on her eyes, and he’s--
He’s kind of in love with her.
“Next time you wanna watch the stars,” he says, steadying his voice and pushing down that particularly terrifying thought, “How about you maybe not try to fling us both through the windshield, huh?”
She shrugs. He thinks that’s all he’s going to get out of her, but he can hear the smile in her voice when she squeezes him close and says, “Worth it.”