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“Are you sure about this?” Rose sounds like she’s chainsmoked an entire packet of cigarettes, but Willie’s fairly sure it’s just a side effect of letting Bobby drag her on a run in the sharp cold.
Willie nods, counting the cans of spray paint before zipping up the bag. “You promise we’re not gonna get told off for this?”
“I promise.” Rose cradles his jaw carefully, thumb brushing over his cheekbone. “You know I wouldn’t do anything to get you in trouble, don’t you?”
Willie swallows and nods as much as he can with Rose’s hands on his jaw. “Yeah, I know. Promise.”
Rose grins and leans up on tiptoes to kiss his forehead. “Then what are we waiting for?”
He snorts and shoves her shoulder lightly. “You, dumbass. You needed your bike to be perfect .”
“Well, duh.” Rose hands him a helmet and motions for him to grab the bag of spray paint. “I’m not gonna let my best guy get on a bike that isn’t ship shape and seaworthy, am I?”
Willie rolls his eyes, jamming the helmet on and ignoring the awkward way it tugs at his hair. He’s also ignoring the burning in his cheeks, glad for the helmet covering it. This thing with Ray and Rose and Bobby is new, and the casual way Rose refers to him like they’ve always belonged to each other makes him dizzy. “If you’ve managed to make your bike seaworthy you’re a better engineer than I thought.”
“Oh, just shut up and get on, none of that lip from you.” She climbs on, waiting patiently for Willie to awkwardly clamber onto the motor bike behind them and wrap his arms around their waist tightly before they kick the stand up and rev the engine.
Willie’s not a huge fan of the bike.
That’s a lie.
Willie is a massive fan of the bike, but mainly when Ray is leaning against it, waiting to pick Willie up after school in his stupid leather jacket that stretches around his stupid shoulders, and when Rose is straddling the thing, the ridiculous muscles of her thighs making her biking leathers strain.
What he’s not a massive fan of is clinging to Rose for dear life as they weave in and out of traffic, the bike tilting far too much for comfort.
Still, feeling as much as hearing Rose’s delighted laugh as they narrowly whizz through a traffic light before it goes red makes it somewhere close to worth it. As terrifying as it is, he’s got to admit that the way the world sort of blurs together is incredible, and even just knowing how much Rose loves her bike makes it difficult to hate it.
Plus, it’s hard to regret the decision to join her on this particular venture watching her flip her hair once she’s taken her helmet off, such a stereotypical rom com moment that Willie can practically hear seductive rock music as she shakes her curls out
“Baby?” Rose snaps her fingers in front of Willie’s face, as though the relatively new pet name could possibly make this situation any better. “You home?”
Willie sticks his tongue out once his braincells have finally kicked into gear. “Mh?”
“You kind of zoned out there for a moment,” she tells him, patting his cheek. “Paints?”
Willie takes them out, ignoring their first comment as he swings the bag of paint off his shoulder. “What are we painting?”
Rose shrugs. “What do you feel like? Flowers, animals, words, what’re you feelin’?”
Willie hums, rocking up onto tiptoes and then back down as he thinks. Rose sort of has a defined style, but then again this isn’t really a Rose piece. The fact that it’s a legal job makes sure of that. “Maybe, like… words with little birds and flowers? A Snow White type vibe, y’know?”
“Cute,” Rose says, but it doesn’t sound patronising, like it always seems to when the girls in Willie’s class say it. “What words are you thinking?”
Willie makes a faint sound of protest. “Don’t make me choose all of it. This is a collaborative effort. What do you want it to say?”
Rose snorts and hugs him from behind, clasping their hands over his stomach. She’s got to lean up on tiptoes to hook her chin over his shoulder. “How about… who’s butterin’ like a spoodlebug?”
Willie blinks, turning enough for her to see his raised eyebrows. “What?”
Rose shrugs. “I watched Snow White with Bobster last night - you know how he gets - and now it’s his new favourite vocal stim. Doc says it.”
“Cute,” Willie says, and hopes it sounds as fond as it had when Rose said it. He can just imagine Bobby puttering around the kitchen, grabbing everything Ray asks him for because collecting ingredients is really the only thing he can be trusted to do in the kitchen, mumbling the quote to himself over and over. “Sounds good.”
Rose grins and leans up to kiss his cheek before unhooking herself so they can get started.
It’s different to the usual style of art Willie does, freer and messier and somehow more liberating. Rose starts with a base outline and then tells him to go wild, and he does, adding little animals and flowers wherever he feels he can fit them, at first trying his best to make them perfect and accurate, but then he’s less bothered, and he starts giving them little glowing auras or patterns unheard of in the animal kingdom.
By the time they’re done his clothes are covered with flecks of paint, and so is Rose, but the wall looks gorgeous.
Willie takes a photo to show Bobby and Ray, then grins at Rose. “We did good.”
“Damn right we did,” she says, grabbing his t-shirt to yank him in closer. “You’re so fucking talented, I can’t believe you waste all your time on economics and history.”
“That’s what my school offers,” he reminds them, for the billionth time. It’s fond though, he doesn’t mind. He wishes he could be like Rose, and spend all his time painting and drawing and creating, but he’s known for a long time that that’s not what his future holds. “And I’m good at history, too.”
“You hate history,” she reminds him, but before he can argue she’s tugging him back again until she’s pressed against the unpainted wall on the other side of the alley and he’s been pulled down, silenced with their mouth against his.
It’s nothing like kissing Bobby in the privacy of his bedroom, tentative and terrified. Rose knows what she’s doing - god does she know what she’s doing - and she’s forceful, not waiting to give Willie even a second to try and take control.
It’s nice, though, to feel like even here, even covered in spray paint and pressed against an alley wall, she’s got him, he doesn’t have to try and shoulder any responsibility here. No matter how much more his dad loads onto his shoulders, no matter how many more jobs the student council needs him to do, here, with Rose, he doesn’t have to think about anything, he just has to let her do what she wants.
He pulls back eventually to breathe, even though it feels a hell of a lot less vital than kissing her. “You- um. Are you- did you-”
“Shut up,” she says, fondly, gently, cradling his face like he’s the most precious thing she’s ever had the privilege of holding. “Can I kiss you again?”
The voice in his head that always sounds like Caleb tells him to say no, tells him to finally pull himself out of the whirlpool Ray and Rose have sucked him into, of cutting class and spray painting in alleys and kissing girls who have boyfriends. But then he imagines getting to kiss Rose’s boyfriend too - his boyfriend - and spray painting something on the side of Caleb’s house as obnoxious and crude as the tag Rose had put on Bobby’s garage door, and skipping gym to kiss Bobby under the bleachers, and he can’t think of a single reason to say no. Knowing his dad, Caleb would probably try to sell the piece as modern art, but the momentary displeasure, the quickly resealed crack in the facade would make it worth it anyway.
“Yeah, you can kiss me again, Rosie,” he mumbles, and the voice in his head that always sounds like Caleb starts spewing vitriol, but it’s drowned out by the roaring need to have Rose touch and mark him everywhere , until he can’t look at his reflection without seeing proof that he’s loved. “ Please, kiss me again.”