Kehoe couldn't make it. "Couldn't" because "wouldn't" sounded a little to harsh on him. The realization had dampened his spirits a bit, as he'd planned on going out with his "friend", shooting the breeze and having a nice time. Lucas, with a genius-level intellect, understood very well that Kehoe was at work. He just didn't understand why everything thought it was such a big deal: he'd never worked an honest day in his life.

But he wouldn't sit there pushing the whipped cream around in his coffee with a spoon forever, he had company. Remembering his guest, Lucas lifted his eyes from his phone on the table to the woman sitting across from it.

Kehoe, you sly dog. She was stunning, even harried from being dragged from her lover's apartment and being a bitch in general. It was shocking really, with the man's unfriendly disposition, that he could manage to allure anyone into bed, but her? He'd have to indulge his secrets.

For now, Luke would ask for hers. "I never got your name." Some might have thought it difficult to be so soft-spoken in a bustling, noisy restaurant, but Lucas managed it without breaking a sweat.

Zora had really tried saving him five minutes--Lucas was insistent on calling Kehoe to get an answer that she already knew. She knew Kehoe wasn't going to leave work for something as trivial as breakfast, and she had made her opinion on the matter quite clear. But he was insistent, and in the end, arguing with him wasn't going to convince him much at all. So she let him make the call, and wore a somewhat triumphant look on her face when he hung up the phone.

She ordered a coffee, black, and twisted her hair into a low bun when they sat down, pulling her own phone out of her pocket and sending off a snarky text message to Kehoe. Just because she had known the answer didn't mean she didn't get to tease him for it. As her coffee arrived, she picked it up, taking a sip and letting out a small sigh. Really, if it wasn't for coffee, she wasn't sure how she would function sometimes.

And then Lucas dragged her attention away from her phone on the table, causing her to raise her eyebrow again. Fair enough, she hadn't really introduced herself--only somewhat on purpose. "Zora." She said, lifting her mug again, her expression expectant. She wasn't about to ask for his name, but it would be nice to know it.

He sputtered around his coffee. "Really? Like from Zelda?" His voice cracked. He was 21, he wasn't a gelding of a teenager anymore, but his vocal cords did get the memo. Quickly he composed himself and straightened in his chair, struggling for a more appropriate response. "I mean... how interesting."

Thank God there was an implied obligation that he return with the same information. Rather than lingering in this awkward ditch, he jumped out and ran right along. "Lucas. Hawkins." Again he was beaming.

"What do you do?" Maybe she was a prostitute. It hadn't occurred to him before, but that would make a lot of sense as to why a girl like her was around a guy like Kehoe. On the other hand, Kehoe didn't seem the sort to leave a prostitute unattended in his home.

He scrutinized her, taking into consideration every variable in trying to make her out to be a hooker.

"Yes, like from Zelda." She said, not quite rolling her eyes but it was sort of implied that she was considering it. Zora didn't have any interest in video games--she was not a video game person. However, she did have a younger brother who seemed to be surgically attached to his Nintendo DS, and a twin who thought it was hilarious that she shared a name with a race of fictional fish people. So yes, like from The Legend of Zelda, and no, it was not as funny as he thought.

Zora took another sip of her coffee, shrugging, "I work for the FBI." If she ever felt so inclined, that was a good conversation starter--people tended to have one of two reactions to an announcement like that. It was either interest, or sudden suspicion, depending on which end of the spectrum they fell into.

FBI was bad. Of course he'd met people in law enforcement before, but normally they already knew of his dream sharing habits. Usually they shared the same habits. But this was a woman he didn't know, whom was suddenly close to him by association, and whom he'd invited out to breakfast.

His thumb tapped against the table as he mulled that one over. "What kind of work? Like the gun-carrying kind or the sit-at-a-desk kind?" He feigned indifference like a pro. If she was a pencil-pusher he had nothing to fear.

If she had a gun on her right now, he might have some issues.

"Guess." She said, her eyes trained on him over the rim of her coffee mug. She had her gun and her badge in her purse, just like always. Zora didn't usually play games--she would be hard pressed to describe this as a game, really. She was setting aside her normally blunt straightforward nature in favor of making him guess.

Mostly because she wanted him to guess wrong, because she wanted a reason to dislike him. She didn't want anymore people in her life, people were difficult and hard to maintain, and he looked very young--he said he'd been to limbo, but he looked too young for that.

Part of her was jealous.

Guess? She threw him with that one. That was the sort of response he expected out of himself, but only because he strove so hard to be unexpected.

Lucas quirked a brow at his brunchmate, his own dark blue eyes searching her brown for some sort of tell. They found none. He guessed she was the gun-sort of worker, to be so hardened and guarded.

"You're being awfully catty," he feigned offense. "And I'm starting to feel a lot like a mouse."

Zora set her mug down, her gaze level. "That's not an answer." He could feign all the offense he wanted, it didn't really matter if she didn't care that he was offended or not. The worst that could happen was that he could get up and leave right now, and stick her with the bill for the coffee. She was hardly afraid of his delicate sensibilities or whatever.

If he was going to stick around in any capacity, even as Kehoe's "friend", he was going to have to learn to deal with it.

"Well that's just as much an answer that I got," he chided back, his voice raising in pitch in a show of good humor.

The waitress came back around with trays of food, and Lucas beamed. Before she had a chance to leave, he set his hand down on the young woman's arm. "Thanks."

He was all confidence and warmth, but the waitress didn't seem entirely comfortable. She just nodded and slid away quietly, leaving the young man to recollect his thoughts.

"Now we were... right! You're the gun-carrying type, right? Too serious, like Evelyn."

Too serious. She heard that a lot. She wasn't exactly sure at what point in her life she was supposed to have picked up levity, but that didn't seem to matter to anyone. She was just Too Serious, and that was that. It didn't bother her, really--what else was she supposed to be? Viktor was the ball of sunshine and energy, she had to be quiet and serious to balance him out. That was how it worked.

She nodded, her smile restrained. Damn. She didn't know who Evelyn was, and was faintly irritated to discover that she wanted to find out. Curiosity killed the cat, as it were. It meant she was going to have to learn more about him. Hopefully something abhorrent.

"Evelyn?" She said, instead of anything else, tone inviting him to elaborate without actually saying it out loud. He could make her curious, but he couldn't make her admit it.

"My twin sister," he replied amiably, voice muffled into the mug of his coffee. He had to wipe a bit of whipped cream from his nose after his drink--he couldn't stand the stuff without a mountain of sweetener.

As if she weren't being so short with him, as if he were part of a completely different conversation, Lucas continued on casually. "And what about you: family?"

The thought gave him pause. Brothers and sisters were one thing, but what if she had a family of her own? Pondering it too hard yielded some devastating results, and he had to voice his fears shortly after posing his first question.

"There... aren't any little Kehoes running around, are there?" Perish the thought. He was pretty sure that one was too much for this world.

He was curious too--Zora was never sure if that was a trait she admired or not. It was certainly better than having ones mind shut to everything. It was just that, usually, sooner or later that curiosity turned towards her and despite all her principles and good motives and Truth Telling, sometimes she didn't want to be open and honest about everything. Sometimes she just wanted to lie.

His question made her smile twist bitterly. "You really don't know him that well, do you?" Her question wasn't quite sharp, like she'd meant it--perhaps a little chiding. No, no little Kehoes, perish the thought. Not any real ones, anyways. It was weird in how the question blindsided her. She'd had plenty of time to deal with the fact that her children were figments of her imagination--but she'd also never been asked that before. Most people who knew her, didn't ask. Most people who knew Kehoe wouldn't have bothered with the question in the first place. It bothered her that her first answer was still yes, and it irritated her that she wanted to talk about them immediately. Because she couldn't.

"I have three brothers." And Phoebe and Emily, and Melody and all those people who came to mind undbidden when she thought of family. Kehoe didn't--Kehoe was something else entirely, in his own category. But that was getting into the nuances of a relationship of a man that he clearly didn't know; a little too much information over coffee.

Biting or not, her question put a furrow to his brow. He felt uncomfortable, accused of not knowing his friend, but he supposed it was true to an extent. There were certain things he didn't know about the man--either because he didn't care to, or they weren't his business to know. He didn't think that being optimistic constituted as being ignorant, people often surprised those even closest to them.

He was quick to turn his momentary insult into a bite of humor.

"Well..." Lucas shrugged uncomfortably. "You have certain 'advantages' on that point, I don't think that's fair for you to say. Kehoe and I aren't quite so intimate yet. Sexually." The clarification was added just in case she needed it.

Zora wasn't sure if she wanted to laugh or not--mostly not, her overwhelming instinct in situations like this was not to laugh. Something about not giving him the satisfaction; she didn't laugh often and he hadn't earned it.

But the idea he presented was so absurd that she allowed herself a smile. Bright, but fleeting. There one moment, and gone the next as she regained her composure with little effort. She'd had 40 years to perfect the method of looking unruffled, far more practice than she ever needed, really.

"No, I suppose not." She remarked dryly, moving back somewhat in her seat as the waitress came back, balancing two plates of food and setting them down in front of herself and Lucas. Admittedly, it had been a while since she'd had pancakes--not really something she thought to make herself, in all honesty. She'd ever splurged and added blueberries.

"I have a twin too. Viktor." She didn't look up at him as she offered the information; it wasn't like she was trying to make a connection, because she wasn't, she refused to see any parallels. She just thought it was sort of interesting that they were both twins.

A smile. He got a smile and that was more than he'd expected, really. Not quite what he had hoped for, but he knew that if anyone would ever be capable of cracking through her shell, it was Lucas Hawkins. She was his new project and he was the determined sort.

What was even more was that she was continuing with the prior topic, and it didn't seem too forced or awkward. She was engaged, and so he attempted to continue to be engaging.

"Oh? I bet you two haven't stopped bickering since you first started fighting for space in the womb," he joked, clearly speaking from experience but in a distinctly fond manner. His sister had been the only woman in his life who had meant anything to him, up until recently. A few more had complicated matters.

He shrugged helplessly, only somewhat preoccupied with pancakes, but not enough to keep his mouth closed for long. "Us brothers, such a pain, right?"

He reminded her of Viktor.

Not quite in looks, or in movements, but in general lightness of being. They were people unconcerned with the things that burdened her. They were birds, and she was grounded.

She missed Viktor. They weren’t anything alike, and that was probably why she missed him. He was still her brother, he was still family. Even if he didn’t understand her anymore, or if she had pushed him away. He’d had two daughters in the dream, a house in Jersey full of pink and unicorns and shrieking and Sunday afternoon barbeques that she’d always grumbled about until they got there.

She didn’t know how to tell him that. Maybe she’d call later—it had been a while since she’d done that, at the very least. Maybe they could talk. Probably it would end the same way as every other conversation, in awkward silence and a somewhat stilted goodbye, but perhaps trying was better than nothing.

“No, not really.” She said, dispassionately. It was true, they did argue an awful lot. It was difficult not to, he was Viktor, and it had never been her fault growing up that he was patently wrong about everything. Zora shrugged, cutting into her pancakes neatly. Not quite as good as the ones her father used to make every once in a while, but then again, nothing really was. “He lives in New York, so…”

Difficult to fight with a hundred miles between you. Not impossible, she was sure they could manage it if they tried—but difficult.

She was distressingly cool discussing her family. With his own he lit up, natural and easy to the point that he didn't even notice except in the face of the exact opposite. It was inherently strange without consideration: he could sense something was wrong there.

Lucas played it cool, though. His brows did not knit, he didn't seem overly concerned. The young man just shrugged and voiced an offhand question in response, "Don't you call?"

The idea that she didn't fight anymore with her brother seemed kind of sad. Especially since he'd gotten the impression it was because she seemed to have cut ties with him. Not the sort of chick he wanted Mr. Kehoe to go running around with.

"Sometimes." Not often enough, not like a good sister would do. She wasn't even sure where he was living now, what he was doing, if he had a girlfriend. It was just hard to deal with Viktor sometimes, he was all the things she wished she could be and that gulf had only widened since she'd come back from Limbo.

Not that she was about to tell Lucas that--wild horses probably couldn't dragged the sentence I wish I was like Viktor out of her. She'd never live it down if he found out. He probably wouldn't understand it anyways.

Zora shrugged, spearing another piece of pancake with her fork and dragging it through the maple syrup left on her plate. He was her brother, and she loved him, and that would have to be enough.

Her life was a lonely one. With Kehoe as her boyfriend and a brother she barely called, the poor girl was in desperate need for a man who was actually there. Lucas glanced down at his watch: he had time.

A mischievous smile pulled over his lips after a pause, both to think and let her work on finishing her pancakes.

"What do you say to ice skating?" She'd probably say "no". While generally clueless when it came to the motivations of others, even Lucas wasn't so dense to think that this would be easy. He didn't care.

The smile on his face made her suspicious; it was the kind of smile people had when they were planning something--Emily had that sort of smile quite often, when she thought of something that would be "good" for Zora. She wasn't quite sure she could trust Lucas enough to like whatever he was planning.

"Ice skating?" For once her tone wasn't quite dead of inflection--she sounded somewhat incredulous. Ice skating. In the middle of summer. She'd never gone ice skating in her life--in this life, rather, she had a faint recollection of Rockafeller Center at Christmas time that was definitely part of the dream, she couldn't picture this Kehoe, her Kehoe doing that, even on a good day--and to begin in August didn't exactly sound promising.

"Where in the world would you go skating this time of year?"

That wasn't quite the no she'd been going for--at least, the no she thought she should be going for.

"At the Dupont indoor rink...?" He suggested wit ha quirk of his brow before looking her over. They wouldn't accept her wearing clothes like that... Perhaps they would need to drop by her apartment first--or go shopping.

His lips curled upward at the thought.

"We'll get some gloves and a jacket on the way over. Come on, it'll be fun!" She needed a bit of fun in her life, especially if she was dating Kehoe.

Fun.

She squinted a little, taking a moment to make sure he wasn't being sarcastic. Fun was generally a word she heard used in a sarcastic tone of voice--or by Melody or Emily when they were trying to talk her into something that would ostensibly be good for her in some nebulous way. It usually also indicated something that Zora didn't want to do.

Emily would like Lucas.

Zora sighed faintly, the thought spelling the death knell for her here. Damn it.

"Where are we going to find a pair of gloves and a jacket in the middle of August?" She questioned instead--she supposed she had her own, although they were currently packed into the back of her closet for summer safekeeping. It seemed like an awful lot of effort to go through in order to do something she wasn't even sure she liked.

She was determined to be a downer about this, but Lucas refused to break. He endured the cynicism with a smile. The moment he was done eating he put down his fork so that he might talk with his hands as he'd been wanting to this entire conversation, using them for emphasis.

"We'll find some. Or you can wear mine if we can't--thank you." The waitress brought them a check and he looked down at it. The cost was of no issue to him, but the name and phone number written down on the customer copy brought a smile to his lips. Daphne would get a kick out of this.

He was fishing for his wallet when he looked back up at her, putting on his best charming smile, "What do you say?" It wasn't like he was going to take "no" for an answer.

Christ, he was persistent.

She couldn't tell if she liked him more or less for it--grudgingly she would admit that if he had given up at the first sign of difficulty, she would have been even less open to the possibility of respecting him if he had. Which, paradoxically, managed to annoy her even more.

She was of two minds with regards to the whole matter--the larger, sensible part said that no, she would not like to go ice skating, considering that she couldn't actually skate and would probably a) look ridiculous and b) break her leg.

The smaller part--possibly the wiser one, the one she usually ignored--said that she should go. It was just skating, she wasn't made of glass; Lucas was being nice, and she was being rude, and she knew it too. It would be fun; just because she was old and withering on the inside didn't mean that fun was out of the question.

Zora sighed, setting her knife and fork down on her plate, pushing it away just enough to signify that she was done. "Fine."