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They weren’t supposed to leave in the first place.
Prom rules are simple but ironclad: you leave, you don’t get back in. Hunk gets it, of course. He already saw Rollo getting led away from the door by one of the cops on duty, a cloud of weed drifting after, and Lotor had nearly thrown a fit when he was stopped at the door. It makes sense.
But the gym had been suffocating, sweat already soaking through his shirt and vest, and they weren’t doing anything wrong, really. Shay had led him up a staircase in the band room he’d never realized was there, and one door later, they were on the roof.
When the wind first buffeted him, he’d been swamped with a wave of vertigo bad enough he nearly grabbed hold of Shay for some solid ground. She’d laughed, that rumbling sound that came from deep in her belly, and wrapped her arms around him.
“Don’t worry,” she’d said, close to his ear, “I’m here.”
It had passed, and they’d settled hip to hip on the roof. Though the bass of the music still thudded through the building, it was distant enough that it faded to background noise. Out here, beneath the sweeping sky, the soundtrack was composed by the night breezes through the sad little grove of trees planted by the school and the far-off thrum of the highway, hidden by the hills.
Overhead, the sky was an impossible blue, too rich an indigo to be black and yet too dark to be anything else. Star-speckled, it stretched from horizon to horizon with only the earth itself to cut short its panorama.
“What do you think it’s like up there?” Shay had asked.
“Quiet,” he’d said, because it wasn’t the first thought that came to mind but the easiest to say aloud.
He’d grown up on space travel, on a race to the ever more distant edge of the universe. He’d grown up with the photos, the videos, the promises of the Garrison. Each of them brushed around the great paradox of the whole experience: to be one of the select few, the great, chosen from your people to go where others could not – and to get there and realize that you were nothing more than dust, a flicker in an incomprehensible eternity?
Shay had smiled and leaned into his shoulder, and the night had fallen gentle around them.
And then they had to get back in.
It goes fine at first. No one’s locked the door while they were out, and the band room is still dark and empty. Shay gets the giggles partway down the stairs, the catching kind that soon have Hunk stifling his own laughter with the back of his hand. There isn’t anything that causes it, really, except that it’s late and this is against the rules and their cheeks are still nipped by the night air. They get to the ground, still laughing into their hands.
The door swings open.
Light spills in white and bright from the hallway, Iverson’s staunch frame a silhouette cutting through it. Hunk pulls Shay down into the corner between the choir risers and Mr. Baujal’s office.
“Who’s in there?”
They have to press together to fit in the shadows, and Shay tucks her head down against his shoulder to stifle her laughter. Hunk bites his lips together, wrapping his arms around her waist to keep them close. Iverson steps into the room, and Hunk’s heart ramps up, thudding in his ears.
“Students are required to remain in the gymnasium and cafeteria,” Iverson adds.
When silence greets him, he gives another slow survey of the room before turning on his heel and marching out. They stay pressed together for a few moments longer, just to be safe, before Shay pulls back a little. She glances over her shoulder before turning back to Hunk with a grin playing at the corners of her mouth.
It’s nearly pitch black in here, but there’s just enough glow from under the door to catch the outline of her cheek and bob and spark gold in her eyes. She draws her bottom lip in under her teeth, and Hunk’s gaze drops to follow that motion. When she leans in, he follows, and they meet in the middle.
It’s soft, chaste, and Shay pulls away with a smile.
“Come on,” she says, “let’s go dance.”
He follows at the slightest tug, cheeks warm with something he can’t blame on the chilly night air.