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Most of their outings nowadays happen like this. Someone sneaks out of their house to spend the evening at the others’. Either on a night where Tommy needs to stay somewhere else overnight for a conference, or where Del’s aunt, Amy, takes an evening out to do whatever it is she does out on her own, which happen to be conveniently common occurrences. Then later, hours later, there will come a lull in the night in which one of them, usually Del, off-handed and more often than not joking, will suggest something. 5 to 30 minutes of deliberation later, they’ll be headed off on Wayne’s new second-hand dirt bike Cole got him for his birthday. Cold and a little tired, but together. Together counts for a lot nowadays.
Tonight, Del snuck out of her aunt’s house at a little earlier than 9. Wayne had the house to himself until 12; Tommy was out chaperoning the school dance. He had invited Wayne and Del to attend, but it was a courtesy more than anything. Despite their last appearance at the Alabaster District High School gymnasium, the pair were less than enthused at the idea of attending another school dance together, to put it mildly. At least it seemed that way.
Around 10, Del is more than settled in with Wayne in his room. In a cliche truer to Del than she cares to acknowledge, they lie in a tangled mass of limbs, kissing. Hands wandering daintily around bare shoulders and clothed midriffs as they’ve done many times before.
They don’t actually do anything… past the line during these short visits, physically speaking. They rarely do anything during the longer ones. But no matter how chaste they may be, even with no one watching, they still, apparently, can’t be trusted with pure and proper privacy by the adults in their lives. It’s why they still bother with the sneaking around, even though it means they don’t see each other as often, it means they don’t have to put up with any adults yelling at them to keep the doors open. It’s just them, and they get to spend their time doing whatever they want. Which, most often, means doing absolutely nothing. Together.
For a moment, Wayne pulls away from her mouth to press kisses to her jaw. Del doesn't know what compels her to ask, but she’s used to blurting things out to Wayne like this, so she doesn’t think too hard before speaking up.
“Do you want to go to the dance?”
Wayne pauses and blinks, shifting to look at her dazedly. “What?”
“It could be fun.” Del averts her eyes. “Like, ironically. We don’t have to.”
“Do you want to?” Wayne looks at her in a way far too serious for Del to know what to do with.
She falls back to the bed with a sigh. “Nah. Probably too late anyway.”
She doesn’t know why she suggested it. The last one they were at wasn’t especially entertaining even before Wayne got beaten half to death on the pavement outside of it. Maybe it’s a nostalgia thing.
“Do you ever miss it?” Del asks, her mouth once again working quicker than her brain. “Any of it?”
Wayne frowns, coming up beside her, resting on his forearms. “What do you mean?”
Del meets his gaze for just a second, too heavy to hold. “The road. Running. People we met, places we saw. That shit.”
Wayne seems to consider this for a beat. “You miss Trish and Jenny?”
Del huffs, looking at the ceiling. “Well, yeah, but that’s not why I asked.”
A moment passes in silence, and another follows. Del wonders if they should’ve just stuck to making out.
“Not really.” Wayne speaks up, finally.
“What?”
“I don’t miss it. Not really,” he explains. “I mean there was some stuff that was kinda cool. But mostly I just remember being tired. And hungry. And getting beat up.”
“I bet,” Del laughs. “What, you don’t miss playing house in North Carolina? No one made an impact for you? Not even the hooker?”
“Shut up.” He snickers, shifting on his arms. “I don’t know. It’s just hard to remember the good stuff sometimes. Well, not all of it, but… you know?” He looks back at Del with that last part, and she has to look away, fighting the urge to roll her eyes or— god forbid– smile.
It makes sense, she supposes, that Wayne would have a harder time remembering their road trip to Florida in a positive light. He ended up in juvenile prison for over six months after it. He's still serving community service in no small part because of the property damage he caused during it.
“Yeah. I guess. I don't know. It's a dumb idea, but…” Del trails off, trying to conjure a half functional explanation. “I don't know,” she repeats when she doesn't find one.
Wayne looks at his hands for a second in consideration. Then he's up, startling Del and shifting to his feet.
“Let's go.”
“What? Why?” Del draws her brows in confusion, standing alongside Wayne on instinct.
“Could be fun.” Wayne shrugs, smiling a little as he echoes her: “like, ironically.”
—
Hagler High school's junior prom was not something Del had ever seriously envisioned herself attending. Not even when her mom was alive and she'd start her school days off by sharing her biology notes with Natalie and thinking about going to one of Luke's hockey games, and all around existing relatively normally. That's not to say it never crossed her mind. It was just never a subject of great interest for her.
She thought if she did go, it’d probably be with Natalie, or one of the nice guys from the coding club that would sometimes stop to ask about her day in the halls at school. Or maybe with Luke. And she’d wear the nicest dress she could get for $40 or less from a charity shop, probably with her converse. She’d pretend not to notice the punch was spiked and dance once before leaving an hour early, because she’d always imagined she’d have better things to do than stay at a school dance.
And she does, probably. But as she stumbles off of Wayne’s bike in the school parking lot, shivering from the cold of the night, she finds herself thinking that dancing might not be as unappealing as it was when she was fourteen. She’s wearing the same hoodie she left her house in, but changed out of her sweatpants into a pair of jeans she’d apparently forgotten at Wayne’s the last time she slept over. It wasn’t formal in any definition of the word, but she’d never planned on dressing to impress.
They have to sneak around to the door to the locker rooms to avoid Del’s creepy social studies teacher checking tickets at the entrance. The doors into and out of the locker rooms are locked, but apparently six months in juvie comes with a crash course in lockpicking. So a good five minutes later, underdressed and squinting under the bright lights, they stumble into the gymnasium.
No one pays them any mind, really. They walk around the dedicated dancefloor to the drinks table and it feels like they’re just spectating. Like they’re ghosts or something. Del takes Wayne’s hand as she leads him through the crowd. It’s kind of nice, for once, to just blend into the background. Like they’re any other teenage couple, just here to have fun and let loose and be normal.
Del catches Wayne picking at a scab above his eyebrow for what must be the third time today and swats his hand down. They’ve ended up on the other side of the hall near the front, standing off to the side watching kids they’ve known for years but never talked to prance around like they don’t care what anyone else thinks for once. They look happy. It’s nice. It’s kind of nice being a ghost for once as well.
Orlando comes over at some point with his date, a girl Del’s seen around but can’t quite name. She used to wear some kind of back brace, so she’s not as familiar now. Del thinks she’s still pretty, though. Nice smile. She’s keeping a step behind Orlando when he comes over. Del can’t really blame her.
“Wayne! Thought you said you weren’t coming?”
Wayne shrugs. Del gives him a second to prove wrong, but she’s pretty sure he’s not planning to elaborate.
“Changed our minds.” She answers for him.
Orlando nods.
“Yeah, well, good to see you didn’t break the bank on a suit.”
He pokes Wayne through his hoodie, who knocks him in the shoulder in response.
“Yeah, yeah.”
Wayne’s not one for chatter, but Orlando’s used to more than making up for it. He introduces his date, Amaya, and Del asks her a couple questions about her classes but they don’t break far beneath the surface.
A few minutes go by and the song changes to some love ballad Del probably hasn’t heard since she was twelve. Amaya lights up and turns to Orlando.
“I love this song!”
And with that, Orlando takes her by the hand, says something to her Del can’t make out over the music, and the two dissolve into the crowd, now partially fizzled down to mainly the couples. Wayne clears his throat, and when Del looks over he’s got a hand extended her way.
She smiles despite herself, because even with how cliche the whole set-up is she didn’t actually see it coming. She composes herself, opening her mouth to say something. He quickly wipes his hand on his hoodie. She closes it, and just takes the offer, tugging him just a few steps closer to the center of the room.
“Okay, but I’m not moshing with you to this one. Come on.”
She places her other hand on his back, and as soon as he registers what she means and puts his hand on her waist she completely regrets saying anything. Did she just insist on slow dancing? Is that who she is now?
He spares a glance to their hands and rubs his thumb against the back of her palm, still joined, then looks back to her, close enough to talk easily without competing with the speakers.
“Like this?”
Del blinks. Then nods. She moves his other hand to her waist and loops her arms around his neck. Yeah, sure, this can be who she is now.
For a second she can’t hear all the cringeworthy declarations of love in the chorus of the song, nor can she feel the uncomfortable growing emotional tension between their classmates dancing around them. She rests her head against his chest for a second because if she closes her eyes she can’t feel anyone watching them right now either.
She stays like that until Wayne leans down, “You good?”
He soothes a hand up her side, meant to be comforting but it just catches her breath in her throat.
“You wanna get out of here?” He says, when she doesn’t reply.
She shakes her head, finally looking up. She’s stopped really moving, he stops with her. She places her hand on his jaw and her eyes catch on the colour the lights bring to the shadow it casts on his face. His eyes don’t move from hers, and it makes her legs feel a little weird when she finally meets his gaze.
It’s cliche, it’s stupid, she kisses him to get that half-concerned look off of his face and when she pulls back they’re both grinning. He pecks her on the lips in return, and she’s grateful for the coloured lighting covering the flush of her cheeks. Del runs a hand through his hair, then shoots him a smile.
“Yeah. Let’s get out of here.”
—
The next day sees Wayne at the kitchen table, eating the same cereal he does every day, at about the same time he does every day. Principal Cole — or, Tommy, as his brain is reluctantly adjusting to calling him, comes in with something in his step Wayne doesn’t want any part of.
“Hey, bud.”
Wayne hates this nickname. It’s the same one he uses for Lucky. Who is currently balled up under the table, looking up at Wayne in a silent plea to drop something nice down for her.
“You have fun at the dance last night?”
Tommy has this look on his face, eyebrows raised, lips quirked up because he thinks he’s caught Wayne in a lie that he hasn’t given him the chance to tell. It’s kind of pathetic, largely because he wasn’t planning on lying about it in the first place. He shrugs, looking back to his cereal.
“It was okay. We weren’t there for long.”
That at least knocks him out of his cocky demeanor. Not that he seemed particularly committed to it in the first place.
“Yeah, I heard. Betty Windsor came out front to tell a bunch of people you guys were macking on the dancefloor - kinda tacky, by the way, if I do say so myself. Went in to chase you up about those tickets you didn’t pay for but you’d booked it by then.”
Wayne leans down to give Lucky a scratch behind the ears, but she's too busy sniffing his hand for food to catch it. It probably says something that Cole of all people is calling him tacky. He doesn’t find anything to regret about it.
Tommy shifts along Wayne’s side of the table to open a curtain, then turns to look at him, hand on hip like he’s waiting for Wayne to say something.
“You took her home afterwards, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Her home, not my home.”
“Yeah,”
“You dropped her straight home, then came straight back?”
“... Yeah.”
The ten minutes he spent pressed against the wall under her bedroom window saying goodbye probably don't make a difference. Tommy nods. Nothing about him seems accusatory. More like he feels obligated to follow up, like there’s a potential liability here somewhere.
“Okay.” Tommy says.
“Okay.” Wayne says back.
Tommy nods again, then pats Wayne on the back before turning to make his way to the coffee machine.
“Your allowance for the next two weeks is going towards those tickets.”
“... Okay.”
And later, when Tommy's had his coffee and Wayne's getting up to put his dishes in the sink, Tommy clears his throat and says:
"I'm glad she's getting you out of the house. You know, for something other than..." He trails off, gesturing vaguely, Wayne assumes in reference to his ankle monitor and the related community service hours he's been working. He's had the monitor for maybe five months, and he's not finding it any less noticeable.
Wayne doesn't really know what to say to that.
"I'm glad too."
And that's the end of it.