Special Episode: The Billboard
This episode is part of a larger story, Soft Touch. If you haven’t yet, you can go back and read it from the beginning right here.
A long time ago, when her family still lived in a tiny apartment in a huge, tightly-packed city, Alix used to have this dream.
The dream took place at her aunt’s house. Her family used to visit the house over the summer. Every summer. Alix’s parents have always been people of firmly-fixed habits. She adores them, but they have the frustrating habit of sticking religiously to the same thing, over and over again. Like clockwork, the family left for the ranch house on the first day of every summer break, and stayed until the first signs of fall.
It was a big, quiet country house, with a lot of space inside and a ton of space on the outside. Gigantic, airy, windows looking out on endless blonde fields, which stretched out in every direction until the hills met the horizon in a blaze of golden sunlight.
Her aunt worked with horses, and kept them on the property. Alix eventually began to go along with her to the stables in the morning, carrying her sleepy baby brother in her arms.
The horses would get stronger and livelier the longer they stayed with Alix’s aunt. Sometimes the healthiest ones went for unexpected gallops across the blonde grass, stretching their legs on the breadth of the big fields. Sometimes that would draw the others out to join them.
Alix, being so small at the time, felt like the earth itself was shuddering beneath her with the force and strength and power of their pounding hooves. It set off some kind of awe in her little heart. She always wanted to get closer, but she had to keep her brother a safe distance back, so she couldn’t.
In her dream, she would walk through her aunt’s house at night, alone. Listening for something with her breath held.
And it would come. Alix had many dreams where she was waiting around for something or someone who never showed up, but this wasn’t one of them.
A low, deep, far-off rumble, like a coming thunderstorm, would start to gather far off in the distance. As it got closer, Alix could feel the floorboards vibrate beneath her feet. Her breath stopped at the feeling, her heart crashing around in her chest.
The rumbling would get louder and louder, building and gathering to a sweeping roar. Alix would stand frozen and exhilarated as the glass shook in the windows, until the whole house was trembling in a hurricane of sound. She knew it wasn’t the horses. This had to be something bigger.
She would close her eyes and tip her head back, listening. Then she’d suddenly set off in full flight for the door, reaching out to throw it open. She knew whatever was causing the earthquake would be there soon, descending upon the house.
It was scary and wild and breath-stealing, but Alix wanted to meet it. Needed to meet it. She needed to run outside with her arms wide open, because how else could she make it clear that she wanted to go, too? She wanted to join the run, the ride, wherever it was going.
She didn’t know where that would be, or even what would be waiting for her beyond the door. She only knew that if it affected her so powerfully, it must be something huge and brilliant. Something that would change everything, awaken something of real significance. And she wanted so badly to be a part of it, more than anything, she wanted -
“What are you thinking about?” Ripley murmurs softly, glancing up at her.
Alix - who had been watching him paint with rapt eyes - gives herself a shake and drags her gaze away, the blush in her cheeks growing darker.
“Nothing,” she says quickly, with the slightest hint of breathlessness revealing itself in her voice.
The low rumblings that signify the beginning of the storm are murmuring softly in her ears. She tries to keep her eyes on the stars overhead, but they go right back to Ripley’s hands, to watch him at work with his paintbrush.
You want to go do some fieldwork with me? is how he’d asked her.
For City Hall? Sure, of course! Let me just check my planner and see when I’m free.
No, he’d said, breaking into a small, tentative smile, searching her eyes with his. I mean my kind of fieldwork.
He sits back on his ankles in the grass, gazing down at what he’s just finished and thoughtfully twining the paintbrush around his fingers.
It’s a big sheet of art paper, now covered with thick slabs of paint in flaming scarlet, molten orange, and a touch of iridescent blue. Spread lightly, delicately over everything else, there’s a soft layer of buttery gold.
Ripley looks at it for another moment, then bends down and crumples it up into a little ball.
“What-?” Alix barely suppresses a sharp gasp, staring at him with perfectly round eyes. “Ripley, why-?”
“Needs to dry for a minute,” he murmurs softly, his breath puffing on the cold air with his words. He stuffs the crumpled-up ball of paper in his pocket, then picks up his backpack and shoulders it. “Did you bring the stuff I told you to bring?”
“No! I thought you were joking!”
Ripley breathes out an affectionate laugh, tilting his chin up slightly as he looks down at her. He slips his backpack off of his shoulder and pulls something out of it.
“Thought we might run into that problem,” he whispers, pressing a bundle of soft fabric into her hands.
Alix unfolds the hoodie and the bandana, then lifts her startled eyes to Ripley. “Are you serious?”
“We don’t want to be seen,” comes his whispered answer. “No face, no case, as Noah would say.”
“Is that something Noah would say?” Alix giggles softly, startled all over again. “You’ve got some interesting friends.”
Ripley flashes her a sweet, shadowy grin that makes her infatuated heart ache.
“Humor me?” he asks quietly, pleadingly. He gives his head a slight nod at the dark road, then at his hoodie in her hands. “C’mon, just to be safe. I can’t account for traffic cameras, and I’m not letting you get in trouble. Can’t have that on my conscience. Can’t.”
Still in disbelief, Alix wordlessly pulls on the Vans hoodie and zips it up. It’s too big on her, which is how she prefers her hoodies. There’s a little green paint stain on the sleeve, right where it touches her fingertip. She covertly drags her thumb over it, feeling the sudden roughness of the texture against fabric otherwise worn soft.
Ripley gently draws the hood up over Alix’s hair. A wave of that familiar, sweet smell reaches her nose again. The art building, in all its messy magnificence. Paint, wood, and paper, along with wind and sunlight. It emanates from his clothes, his closeness, his curls.
“Stay low,” he whispers, pulling his own bandana up over his nose.
He sets off without another word, swiftly and silently stealing across the empty highway. Alix’s feet move to follow him involuntarily, without any direction from her.
Aside from sneaking out, they haven’t done anything they’re not allowed to do. Regardless, Alix’s heart is thundering wildly in her ears as she rushes after Ripley.
But the highway is dark and abandoned at this hour. There’s no one around to take any notice of Alix and Ripley as they race to the forest on the opposite side and melt into the trees.
It’s a clear night, but the last few days of stormy skies have left a bit of cloud cover. The grass they steal through is sweet with the fragrance of rain, the air sharp with cold. The forest is full of the hush that comes after the rain.
Alix gives a start, her eyes widening in dismay as they fall on the billboard. It’s lit up at night, and it appears from the beautiful landscape of the forest like a slap to the face.
“Ugh,” Alix sputters, jolting to a stop, her disgust showing in her voice. “You know, in other countries, you’re not allowed to take out a billboard to tell people they’re all going to hell. For good reason, I might add.”
Ripley cracks a grin at her, shaking something in his hand. “Glad you feel the same way about this thing as I do.”
Alix’s mouth falls open. The thing in Ripley’s hand is a canister of spray paint. She stares at him in incredulous, thunderstruck silence as he starts sneaking closer to the billboard, then rushes after him.
“Ripley!” she hisses, glancing anxiously over her shoulder. “Seriously, we - we’re doing this?”
He pauses and looks down at her, one soft green curl tumbling forward over his eyebrow. The bandana covering his face from the nose down sends Alix’s eyes right up to meet his, which are even more vividly green than usual in the glow of the starlight.
“Did you really not know that I was serious?” he whispers, suddenly alarmed.
Alix stops, for the first time considering this question.
No… she knew.
Ripley meant exactly what he said when he asked her to come. As flustered as Alix tends to be around him, she can tell things like that. She’s not sure what it is about Ripley, but she can instinctively understand as much from his voice as from the actual words he says. He was never joking about this.
But Alix kind of had to think of it that way, in order to get her nerve-wracked self out of the door. She knew deep down that she’d never have let herself, but she wanted to go so badly that she unintentionally tricked herself into it. And now here she is.
“Hey, listen,” Ripley murmurs, pulling his bandana down as he turns to face her fully. “If you don’t want to do this, it’s all good. I get it, honestly. No worries. We can go do something else, and I’ll just-”
Alix blurts out the truth before she can think about it. “No, I want to!”
Ripley had been looking concerned, but he brightens instantly, warm relief written all over his face.
Alix blushes, drops her head to hide it, and gestures at the billboard. “Lead the way.”
Ripley doesn’t move for a moment. Alix glances up at him, and he hastily looks away, swiping a hand over his face. He stuffs the spray paint canister into the water bottle holder of his backpack and draws his bandana back up over his nose. Alix knots hers into place and shifts her backpack on her shoulders, then follows him, her pulse pushing its own limits.
There’s a ladder leading up the metal structure that supports the raised billboard. Ripley takes hold of the rungs and pulls himself up onto it.
“Be careful,” he calls down softly to Alix, his voice muffled by the bandana. “It’s still wet from the rain. Kind of slippery.”
Alix fixes him with an indignant, wounded frown as she takes hold of the ladder and pulls herself up after him.
“Okay, thank you so much, but I think I can manage-”
She gasps as her boot starts to slip on one of the rain-wet rungs. She automatically flings her arms forward and wraps them tightly around the ladder, hugging it for support. Catching herself just in time.
“Oh, shit!” Ripley gasps, holding onto the ladder one-handed, reaching out for her. “You okay?”
Alix’s cheeks are on fire with a scorching, mortified blush. “Yep! Totally fine!”
Ripley hesitates, glancing up at the rest of the climb. “Maybe you should-”
“No!” Alix interrupts fiercely, determinedly pulling herself up another rung. “I’ve got this! Keep going, I’m all good!”
Ripley draws back, an affectionate smile taking over the alarmed expression in his eyes. He bites back a laugh, turning back to the ladder.
“We should get you some cleats,” he says.
“What, you mean just to walk around in?”
“Mhm.”
“Ugh, fuck off!”
Ripley dissolves into quiet laughter, and Alix can’t help but join in, briefly letting her focus slip from the ladder. Her boot begins to slide dangerously backwards again, but before she can even gasp in a breath, Ripley has a fistful of her backpack, stabilizing her.
“Okay, how do I help?” he asks, looking with calculating eyes at the short distance left to the top. “If I take my backpack off, could you-?”
“No, don’t take off your backpack - I don’t need help!” Alix groans, increasingly out of breath. “You want to help? Just take what you need and go up there!”
“Fine, I will.”
Alix blinks hard and fast as Ripley reaches down and gets an arm around her, then pulls her right up to him. Stunned and bewildered, she instinctively locks her arms around him. The warmth of his body melts into her as he keeps her clasped tight against his side, carrying her the rest of the way up with him.
“Are you serious?” Alix laughs breathlessly, when she’s somewhat recovered from the shock. “What the fuck, Ripley!”
As he always does when she’s trying to be mad at him, Ripley breaks into an adoring grin, like he’s watching a baby chick try to look intimidating. Alix snaps to her feet on the metal platform, trying to scowl at him as he pulls himself up to join her.
But Ripley starts laughing, and his laughter is so good-natured and disarming, so naturally warm and infectious. Soon enough Alix lets out a sputtering, indignant laugh of her own. She can see that devious grin right through the bandana, in the way it rounds out his cheekbones and sparkles in his eyes.
Alix is melting from it, going to pieces inside.
That brief moment of body-to-body contact set her head spinning. And when did Ripley get strong enough to pull her up a ladder? He was always attractively built, in Alix’s eyes, but he must be concealing some new muscle beneath his clothes.
His eyes are so rich and bright with his inner light these days, too. Like a mossy sea bed through a sunlit, crystalline ocean.
He’s so painfully goddamn cute, and that only makes the situation more appallingly embarrassing.
“Aw, Ripley - I told you that I’m working on it!” Alix tips her head back, beyond frustrated at herself, her cheeks blazing. “I can do things like that, okay? I’m not gonna let my gravitational issues slow me down and make me miss out on stuff! I’m gonna get better!”
He slowly shrugs his shoulders, growing serious.
“Alright, I’m with you,” he murmurs, his paint-stained fingers fidgeting with the strap of his backpack. “But where’s it say in the rules that you’ve gotta do it alone?”
His green eyes linger on hers for only for the fastest, most fleeting few seconds before they dart away. But they make Alix’s heart ache in that way she’s slowly and surely becoming addicted to.
She rushes to drag her eyes away from him, and only then does it dawn on her that she’s standing framed against an illuminated billboard, perched on the large metal shelf forming the bottom. She gasps softly and seizes Ripley’s wrist when she catches a glimpse of the view.
Spilling out before them is a boundless spread of shimmering green forest. From this height Alix can just catch sight of Greenrock off in the distance, a cluster of golden, glowing lights. Above it, the night sky spreads huge and wide, glittering with stars, shaded in darker by the hulking shapes of the enormous mountains in the distance. Just above the forest floor are softer, miniature mountains of flowing white fog.
Alix gazes out at the soft, twinkling lights of the town beneath the radiant blaze of the stars, drinking it all in.
“Wow,” Ripley says softly, looking with her.
Wait - looking with her, or at her? She thinks she senses his gaze on her profile.
She turns to see if she’s imagining it, right as he drops to a crouch and slips the hoodie off of his shoulders. He spreads it out over the lights on the right-hand side of the billboard, sending it into darkness.
Alix takes off her own hoodie and covers up the remaining lights, so that the entire billboard loses its illuminated glow. Now no one should be able to see them if a car comes by. Ripley is in black jeans and a black Thrasher sweatshirt, with a dark snapback pulled low over his green curls. Alix wore dark clothes, too, like Ripley suggested.
Oh, god. I so knew this wasn’t a joke.
Still, she watches Ripley with wide eyes as he lays out his materials, then straightens up with the spray paint canister back in his hand. He gives it a shake, making a sharp metallic click-click-click that sounds as loud as gunfire to Alix.
“No one should be in listening range,” Ripley reassures her, as if he read the thought in her expression. “We can talk normally now, too. Just get down fast and hold still if a car goes by, yeah?”
Alix fights down a dazed laugh.
This is the first time she and Ripley are hanging out alone together outside of City Hall. She’s thought about this moment a lot. She’s spent hours laying awake at night wondering what they would end up doing together, where they would go, what they would talk about.
This was never even vaguely on the list of possibilities in her mind. But that’s part of what Alix likes so much in Ripley. He’s overflowing with surprises.
Besides, this is all answering some deep itch, one Alix didn’t know needed to be scratched so badly.
It’s just - Alix never breaks the rules. She didn’t do senior skip day and accept the four demerits with everyone else. She never goes to secret parties that might get busted by parents. She doesn’t even drink with her friends before school dances, because she was usually part of planning them, or she’s working them.
Either way, she’s on the job, and she has to be alert. Unexpected problems pop up all the time. Her date for last year’s winter dance ditched her in frustration after she disappeared for twenty minutes to sort out some issues with the caterer.
Fine by her. That was no heartbreak, considering his constant angry grumbling and how she had to dodge an unwelcome kiss from him twice in the span of one night. What actually upset Alix was the realization that if someone had said the winter dance was fun, her answer would have been - yeah, I imagine it was.
Lately a deeply-felt sadness has lodged in Alix’s heart. A sadness that snuck up on her, because it was slowly, gradually accumulated. A sharp, intense feeling of dissatisfaction.
Sometimes she just can’t help but wonder if she’s missing out. If maybe she’s missed out on a lot. She spent high school working hard behind the scenes, and too afraid to step out of line even once to have her own fun. She’s been trying so hard to be good, to create opportunities for special memories for everyone, but - where are her own cherished, most favorite memories, the ones that left burning imprints on her heart? Are there any, from before Ripley showed up?
Lately she’s been thinking about how Ripley must see something worthwhile in breaking the rules every now and then. Not just in breaking them, in smashing them.
Now, here, with her pulse racing and her heart hammering and an inexplicable grin making her cheeks ache beneath the bandana, she gets it. Oh, she gets it.
“What about the old billboard?” She gazes up at the horrible old advertisement in disgust. “It’s peeling.”
“That’s okay.” Ripley trails his fingers over the aged, peeling paper, then looks satisfied when only a few pieces tumble loose. “I want this to look like the cover of an old paperback, so that’ll be good for the texture. You got your bandana up, right?”
Alix gives him a thumbs up, then presses her fingers over her mouth when he immediately gets to work with the canister. Just like that, a thick black streak of spray paint is spreading over the huge words of the old ad, blotting them out.
Holy shit. No going back, now. Alix can’t believe how Ripley just did that, without a hint of hesitation. Her heart is suddenly full of admiration, her eyes wide with it.
“It’ll go faster if you help,” he says softly.
And he holds out the canister, offering it to her.
Alix stares at him in surprise. She can see the challenge plainly in his green eyes, and in the slight, curious arch of his eyebrow.
She glances nervously up at the billboard. Her eyes land on the awful words, and a slow, indignant scowl spreads across her face.
“What are you putting up instead?” she asks, without breaking her gaze away.
“Guerilla advertisement for a small business further up the highway. A bookshop run by a local guy from Greenrock. Little old man and his dog. He doesn’t know we’re doing it, it’s - gonna be a surprise.”
Ripley hesitates, then slips something from his backpack and shows it to Alix, biting back a laugh.
“This is the old sign,” he explains.
Alix lets out a sputter of sharp laughter and flings her hands over her mouth to smother it. The sign is a literal piece of cardboard with the word BOOKS written on it in Sharpie.
“And it’s a favor for Jamie, so-”
“Oh, just gimme the thing,” Alix groans, holding out her hand for the can of spray paint.
Ripley’s long, fine eyelashes flutter in surprise. He breaks into a slow grin, then puts the canister in her hand.
“What do I do?” Alix asks, determinedly avoiding his gaze.
Ripley gives her a brief explanation of how to use the spray paint. Alix listens carefully, except to the part Ripley said while he had his hand spread on top of hers to demonstrate how to use the nozzle.
“Just do the whole thing black, and I’ll take over from there.” He takes his hand back quickly, then kneads his thumb into his palm. “Don’t fall off the side, either.”
“Oh, believe me, I’m very aware of the possibility of falling. It’s actually super uncool that you didn’t think to bring me a parachute. Or a bungee line.”
Alix startles a little when Ripley laughs. She’s still not used to him laughing at her jokes, even though he’s been doing it since the very beginning. Since before they even knew each other.
Her breathless heart stumbles over itself. She loves that warm, playful laugh.
“Are you about to insist on helping me with this, too?” she asks, making a wounded face at him.
He smiles, pulling the bandana back up over his nose.
“Nah,” he murmurs, taking a second can of spray paint from his backpack for himself. “You don’t need my help. You’ve got this.”
Alix stares at him, then turns back to the billboard, trying to hide her smile. It’s harder with her hair wrapped up in a high bun, but she did that on purpose, so that the pink streak would be showing all night.
The low hiss of spray paint fills the air as she and Ripley get to work.
“Ripley,” Alix says quietly, her heart fluttering wildly around in her chest, her ears straining for any hint of an approaching car. “You were the one who did the protest art piece about the trees they cut down by the school, weren’t you?”
Now he’s the one who looks surprised. “Thought you already knew that. You figured it out, didn’t you? I know you did.”
Alix was ninety-nine percent sure, but the confirmation makes her stop for a second, closing her eyes in disbelief. Fighting down the question she’s desperate to ask. Did you do that because I told you that little grove was special to me?
She can’t ask him that. She’s already so helplessly knotted up inside, wracked with butterflies.
She’s been overwhelmed with nervous anticipation for tonight ever since Ripley asked her. The friendship they’ve formed since Ripley showed up as himself has been the best thing about this whole year for Alix, and it’s grown deeper and deeper with each passing week.
They hang out together whenever there’s an opportunity at work. Sometimes he brings her coffee in the morning, and she seizes that as an excuse to have a cup with him before they split off to their different departments. Alix always volunteers to be the one to run messages between the press department and the City Manager’s office so she can catch little moments with him. Sometimes when she tells Ripley she’s having a bad day, she comes back to her desk to find funny, silly little pieces of scribbled art waiting for her.
Friendship is one thing, though. Alix is really, really hoping that Ripley meant for tonight to be the first step of something else.
This is the one thing she can’t tell from his voice, his eyes, his astoundingly expressive eyebrows. He must be working hard to keep his feelings to himself, because Alix has no idea what they are.
Her own unadmitted feelings, though, are almost painfully clear to her.
So it’s only fair that she took a long time picking out her outfit and doing her hair, or that she’s been unbearably nervous and is still that nervous right now. Actually, even more nervous, because now she’s actively committing a crime with him.
Way too nervous to ask Ripley if what she said to him about her favorite grove of trees had anything to do with -
“Just thought you knew about the tree thing,” Ripley adds, breaking her from her thoughts. “Since you inspired it.”
Alix twists sharply to stare at him, her eyes going very wide. “I - you - what?”
Ripley shrugs his shoulders, still at work with the spray paint. His expression is impossible to read, between the bandana and the hat and the green curls tumbling into his face.
“You gave me the idea.”
Alix is frozen, stunned. It’s slowly, finally dawning on her that Ripley’s art has already been talked about in the newspapers. She, herself, has unknowingly issued a press release from City Hall concerning his massive piece of guerilla art. And that art piece was - inspired by her.
“Oh,” she says numbly, reeling. She automatically reaches up to start spray painting again, her head spinning. “Yeah, I thought maybe - I just couldn’t be sure. It seemed so far-fetched that you - because of me - I don’t know.”
She’s running her mind over the turmoil the whole thing caused at City Hall. The petition that got circulated, the resulting hold-ups that delayed the tree-cutting work, the press response that had to be speedily put together, the chaos after the tree-coding system was wrecked.
“You made a lot of people mad with that one, Ripley,” she giggles, suddenly scandalized.
He snickers softly, indicating with a slight toss of his head that it’s fine.
“That’s gonna happen with my art, I think. No matter what. Case in point, we’re currently painting over someone’s billboard-”
Ripley breaks off and drops low as the golden beams of two headlights fall into view on the road, cutting through the darkness. Alix drops low, too, pressing her back against the billboard. She and Ripley huddle up together in the shadows, holding very still.
The car goes past without slowing down and disappears around a curve in the road. Ripley waits a few seconds, then straightens up. He flashes Alix a grin beneath the bandana, and gets right back to painting.
Alix joins him, inwardly laughing with disbelief.
She can’t deny that she’s getting a kick out of this. There have been a lot, a lot of nights from high school that weren’t particularly worth remembering. This, without a doubt, will not be one of them.
She’s going to remember this night forever.
~~~~
Soon enough the billboard is a matte black rectangle, nothing showing through its new layer of paint.
“It already looks so much better,” Alix tells Ripley, who smiles warmly at her in the shadows, his bandana pulled down around his neck.
He shifts his hat over his curls, then drops to sit down on the metal platform they’ve been standing on. He puts his legs over the side, reaching for his backpack.
“We should give it a minute to dry before I tape up my stencils,” he explains, as Alix sits down next to him and carefully puts her legs over the side. “Are you hungry?”
Alix lets out a sputtering laugh when Ripley hands her one of the premade food packages from City Hall that they usually get when they have lunch together. They’ve joked about how these are surprisingly good for government-issued food, with a yummy sandwich, a piece of fruit, a cookie, and one surprise thing that alternates out.
“What is it today?” Ripley feels around in his package of food and comes out with a crinkled bag. “Jalapeño puffs? Nice.”
“I didn’t expect you to bring a snack to the scene of the crime,” Alix laughs, opening up her bag of puffs. “How did you even get these, outside of work hours?”
Ripley gives her a small, shy smile, shrugging his shoulders. “This is the kind of crime where we’re all good to stop for a snack. We’re perfectly safe.”
“Are we?” Alix asks, taking a bite of her sandwich.
“Yeah, totally. Probably. I think. Just try not to chew loudly.”
“Oh my god,” Alix groan-laughs, covering her mouth with the back of her hand. “You’re lucky you’re so - just shut up, already.”
Ripley’s tentative smile widens. He rubs his wrist, then quickly turns his face aside. He digs around in his bag again and offers Alix a small bottle of sweet iced tea. She accepts it and takes a sip, careful not to lean against the billboard and get herself covered in black paint.
She and Ripley gaze out at the distant golden lights in silence as they eat, the sound of the rustling leaves in their ears. The breeze stirs Alix’s hair. A strand has fallen free from the pristine bun she had it in, which tells her it must be all kinds of messed up. Her makeup must also be messy, from the bandana.
For some reason, though, messy feels okay right now. She’s strangely comfy and peaceful, with the softness of the lights in her eyes and Ripley sitting beside her. She folds her elbows on the slender metal railing, swinging her dangling feet a little.
Alix is constantly doing social stuff, but she feels the most at peace when she’s alone. Ripley, though - he’s the exception to the rule. Alix can hang with him for ages without giving a single thought to wanting to part ways and be on her own. She has the same sense of total comfort around him that she has when she’s all by herself, only with an added sense of blissful coziness in the knowledge of his sweet presence close by. The addition of his teasing laughter, his opinion on things whenever she asks for it, his eyes with their quiet, glowing warmth. No one else has ever made Alix feel so totally, completely at home.
When he’s not busy making her more nervous than she’s ever been before in her life, that is.
That’s the only thing outside of the serenity, right now. The rush of electricity sparkling through Alix at having Ripley sit so close that she can almost feel the warmth of his body.
For the millionth time, she wonders if he remembers that one night junior year, when they talked before.
The first time he walked into class as himself, as Ripley - Alix had frozen in her seat when she looked up and saw him. Everyone was staring at him, and Alix couldn’t help but do the same. The sight of him standing there in the doorway, with all his striking, subterranean beauty finally brought to the surface - she was too shocked to think.
And then she was secretly, indescribably elated, almost euphoric. Like someone she’d missed with all her heart, someone she’d thought was never coming back, had unexpectedly shown up out of nowhere. It felt impossibly good to see him. It was all she could do not to beam at him as he silently went to his seat, avoiding everyone’s eyes.
And it was so good to hear his voice again, his real voice. The voice that had belonged to her prince. Alix wanted to wrap her arms around that voice. It sent the huge waterfalls of butterflies through her, the ones that he alone gives her.
She was trembling inside, purely from hope. She hoped that he might come and talk to her. That he would remember.
Things do not go that way. If anything, he seemed more determined than ever to never meet her eyes, to never end up alone with her, to never speak to her.
Their one night the year before had only been special to her, had only held any real meaning for her, not him. That was the only explanation she could think of. She was crestfallen, heartbroken, but she knew it wasn’t his fault that she let her imagination run away with her. She kept it to herself, left him alone, and tried her hardest not to let her mind go to him.
Until Ripley finally gave her a reason to hope that he hadn’t forgotten, at least not completely.
Alix was sitting alone at the table set back from the cafeteria, near the trees. Stickering up her planner for the week, two glitter pens stuck through her bun, her lip caught between her teeth in concentration.
She thought she’d sensed someone slowly, haltingly coming across the stretch of grass, approaching her table. She went still, keeping her eyes on the sticker she’d been about to put down. When she looked up a minute later, no one was there, but Ripley was nervously trying to edge his way back into the crowd of students outside of the cafeteria.
It was only then that it dawned on Alix that Ripley had nothing left to hide behind, anymore.
She was actually grateful that she stupidly broke that coffeemaker at City Hall. It meant that she had an excuse to talk to Ripley, when he unexpectedly took the fall for it. And she needed to be the one to take the first step. She was the one who had to pull him the rest of the way up the ladder, that time.
City Hall has become their place, since then. But they’re not there right now. For the first time since junior year, it’s just the two of them, together, in a secluded and intimate place. No one is coming to interrupt them. Alix is very aware of that, and twice as nervous for it.
Maybe Ripley is nervous, too, because an uncertain silence falls.
“What’s all that in your backpack?” he asks suddenly, leaning around her to peer into it. “Looks like a giant stack of paper. Don’t tell me you were gonna try to knock some homework out in the middle of our vandalism outing?”
“No,” Alix protests, swatting his arm, half-laughing. “It’s for City Hall, not school, first of all, and second of all, I forgot it was in there. My bag is always this heavy. I bring at least one thing to work on everywhere I go. Never know when you’ll get a free minute to…”
Alix blushes and trails off when she realizes what she’s saying, but a small, warm smile turns up the corners of Ripley’s mouth.
“What are you working on?” he asks, his green eyes flitting back to the stack of papers.
Alix waves a hand at him, wishing she could walk back what she’s already said. “It’s boring. You won’t care.”
“You think it’s boring, but it’s the thing you chose to carry around everywhere with you?”
“No, sorry, I’m not being clear - I don’t think it’s boring, but you will.”
Ripley’s blonde eyebrows furrow beneath the brim of his snapback. He lifts one hand to fidget with the stud in his ear, gazing down at Alix with a frown pulling at his mouth.
“I mean… I don’t think that’s right,” he answers. “If you find it interesting, I probably will. I’d check out anything, if you’re into whatever it is. Can’t see any way it would ever be a waste of time, even if it’s a mountain of paper.”
Alix lets out a laugh, then pauses and puts her head to the side when it becomes clear from his expression that he’s serious. “What makes you say that?”
Ripley shrugs his shoulders slowly, twisting the black stud between his fingertips over and over again.
“I don’t know.” His low voice is so slow and quiet, tentative. “You’ve just got this… special way of seeing the worth in things. If you see something in it, there must be something worth paying attention to.”
Alix stares at him, staggered. That’s not a compliment anyone has ever given her before. It sinks in differently. It goes deep. Like an unexpected taste of something impossibly sweet. Melting through her body like sugary, molten syrup, making her toes curl up in her boots.
Alix gazes into Ripley’s gentle green eyes for a lingering moment, then silently turns away to drag her backpack closer. She extracts the clamped-together folder Ripley had spotted, and he lets out a low whistle when he sees how thick and heavy it is.
“I’ve been assigned a little project,” Alix informs him. “As you can see, I’ve let it get away with me a tiny bit.”
Ripley’s eyebrows fly up, and his voice quivers with barely-repressed laughter. “You’ve got some Gabby spirit in you, you know that? A lot, actually.”
Goddamnit. Alix desperately needs Ripley to stop sucker-punching her with these compliments. She still hadn’t even really caught her breath from the last one, and now he follows up with that.
She takes a second to steady herself, then gestures to the giant folder. “Still sure you want to hear about it?”
Ripley snags it out of her hands before she can stuff it back into her bag. “Yes I am, especially now that I know you’ve put this much work into it.”
Alix bites her lip, then gives her shoulders a shrug of surrender. Ripley unclips her pen from the front so he can flip through the pages as Alix explains.
“I’m making a mini-booklet for the owners of local restaurants and grocery stores. It’s about the benefits of sourcing their food supplies from local Ketterbridge-area farmers. There are a lot of reasons, which I’m trying to outline and summarize in there.” Alix tries to nervously tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, but not enough has escaped from the bun for her to do that. “Then I figured I should probably include information about the farms they could get their supplies from, put it all in one place and make it as easy as possible. Then I realized I need to make sure it’s okay with the farmers before I do that, and also double-check that they’ve got a history of good quality before City Hall endorses them. So that’s been a lot of work. Most of those pages are research.”
She stops to catch her breath. She steals a sidelong glance at Ripley and finds him looking at her, not the stack of papers.
Was he even listening? Or was he-?
“Seems like you’re doing a lot more than they asked you for,” he observes. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but - aren’t the solo projects they give us interns mostly throwaway projects that nobody else wants to do?”
Alix spreads her fingers helplessly. “Nothing is really a throwaway project, for me.”
Ripley lets his gaze linger on her for a moment, then hastily drops it back to the papers when she goes to meet his eyes. His green curls hide his expression from her again, but his lips are quirked up in a soft, small smile.
“Honestly, the more I look into it, the more important it seems,” Alix adds, faintly embarrassed. “It’s not good for us to be getting our food from gigantic corporate farms thousands of miles away.”
Ripley looks up at her in surprise. “Do we do that?”
“Well, it’s the standard. Some states import ninety percent of their food that way. Small farms just can’t compete with the prices, but it’s not all about price.” Alix reaches to the open folder on Ripley’s knees and turns to a specific page. “Local food distribution chains are more resilient in the event of a natural disaster that could disrupt shipping lines. They’re also way better for the environment than the giant corporate farms. They rotate crops and don’t drain out the soil, use fewer pesticides…. And each small, independent farm we have keeps us closer to food sovereignty - community control over our own food supply, instead of corporate control. Is any of this interesting?”
Ripley is reading as he listens to her. “Endless fields of non-native, non-regenerative, soil-depleting crops grown for industrial export…”
“That’s what the small farms eventually become if they can’t compete in the food market.”
Ripley falls silent for a moment, gazing down at Alix’s nearly-finished booklet and the giant stack of research stuffed in the folder behind it.
“Besides, it just tastes better,” Alix adds, after a few seconds of anxiously waiting for him to say something. “The food from the small farms.”
Ripley breathes out a quiet, teasing laugh, looking up at her. “That’s what this is really about, huh? I should’ve known. You just want better snacks at City Hall.”
Alix lets out a burst of surprised giggles. “No, it’s not that!”
“Yeah, sure.” Ripley gives her a warm, lingering smile. “Whatever you say.”
He starts assembling the papers back into a neat stack, then pauses, staring down at the front sheet of the booklet.
He picks up Alix’s pen and uncaps it, then nods down at the front sheet. “Can I?”
The cover just has text on it, with a blank space in the middle. The name of the booklet at the top, and at the bottom, Issued by Ketterbridge City Hall, in what Alix hoped was a nice font.
She nods at Ripley, even though she’s not sure what he means, then watches with curious eyes as he puts the tip of the pen to the paper and starts sketching something.
“I’m guessing you’re about to ask when I started caring about agricultural practices?” she asks, blushing a little. “It’s not exactly that, it’s-”
“Are you kidding? This sounds exactly like something you’d be into. This is part of why I thought you’d want to come tonight. Since you’d be into that, too.”
Alix’s startled eyes dart up from Ripley’s sketching hand to his face. She stares blankly at him, bewildered, not sure if he’s joking.
“I - what?” she sputters, when it becomes clear that he isn’t. “This? This sounds like something I’d be into? What we’re doing to the billboard?”
Considering how many rules - no, laws they’re breaking, that doesn’t make any sense to Alix.
“Yeah.” Ripley tilts his head to the side, carefully shading something in with the pen. “You care about making things better for the people here. About trying to make us into more of a - community. I knew that about you before you even started working at City Hall. That’s what you’ve been doing at school, too, right?”
Alix blinks hard at Ripley, then lets her gaze dart up to the blacked-out billboard. The hateful, mean words aren’t readable anymore beneath the layer of paint she and Ripley used to cover them up.
She drops her eyes to him, but before she can say a word he gently presses the booklet back into her hands.
Alix stares down at the little drawing he did on the front page, beneath the title. It’s a cute, simple sketch of Alix’s half-eaten sandwich, which is sitting beside her on its wrapper. Behind it Ripley added the bottle of tea, and the pear she hasn’t started eating yet.
In neat, handwritten letters at the bottom, beneath Issued by Ketterbridge City Hall, he added - Created by Alix Choy.
Alix’s fingers tighten around the booklet. She stares at the beautiful little sketch, then looks up at Ripley.
He’s getting to his feet, dusting off his hands. Alix watches in silence as he unrolls a huge paper stencil from his backpack and begins taping it up to the billboard.
“Do you - do you need help?” Alix manages, after a moment.
“Nah, I got this part. You just keep an eye out for cops.”
Alix lets out a helpless laugh, tucks her booklet back into her bag, and folds her elbows on the railing. She watches Ripley carefully putting up his stencils, his green eyes narrowed with focus. Assembling the ad he put together for that little bookshop.
We care about the same things, she realizes suddenly, watching the quick, subtle movements of his hands. Only you want to give people more freedom. More individuality. More fight. That’s how you try to make things better.
Ripley begins spray painting again, this time moving more slowly, more deliberately.
“I’m actually sad to think I won’t have time to do stuff like this anymore,” Alix admits, nodding at the booklet in her bag. “When I eventually try to get my press or PR job after college.”
Ripley glances over at her from where he’s half-hidden in the shadows. His green eyes, in this low light, are dark and subtle, glittering like magic.
“Is that what you want, then?” he asks quietly.
“You know I’m in the press department at City Hall.”
“I didn’t know if you chose that or got assigned that.”
“I chose it. I like getting the word out about important things, things that matter.”
“Oh.” Ripley pauses, looking up at her with affectionate curiosity in his eyes. “So that’s what you would be doing in a press job after college?”
“I - hope so?”
Assuming she can get one of those elusive jobs at an organization she actually wants to support, that is. They’re notoriously difficult to land, and apparently most people have to work for organizations they hate for a while before they’re established enough to do what they want.
“Still, I’m sad that I have to give up what I’m doing at City Hall,” Alix adds. “I’ve really liked working there. I used to live in such a huge city, and it was hard to see any tangible effect of anything I tried to do to make things better… but here I can see it all really clearly. I can walk down the street and see something we’ve touched at City Hall.”
Ripley is watching her with big, dreamy eyes when she glances at him. Their brilliance is heightened by the low glow of the stars, or - something, anyways… something internal? They look illuminated from within. And there’s a tiny, helpless smile on his face. He’s always so shy, but right now he’s looking at her with something undisguised in his expression.
He quickly looks away and pulls his bandana back up before she can figure out what it is.
“Are you - thinking about leaving for college?” she asks him tentatively, after another minute of silence. “Art school, or…?”
“No, not me. I’d miss it here too much.” He finishes filling in the stencil, then draws back to take a careful look at it. “And I’m like you, I guess. Prefer to be able to see what I’m doing.”
Alix runs her mind over all the paintings and drawings of Ripley’s that she’s seen. He doesn’t show them to her, so she has to sneak into the art building during free period to look them over on her own.
The most recent one might be her favorite so far. It’s a portrait of a boy, or maybe a young man. He’s sitting up alone on a soft, sunlit bed. Painted from the back. Holding up a tiny clear vial between his thumb and his index finger, gazing up at it. The sunlight pours through the vial before it pours onto him, filtering beautifully through it. Sparkling softly against his shoulders and the side of his turned-away face.
Alix could almost see him breathing, the piece was so full of tender, delicate beauty. It took Alix’s breath away.
“I hope a lot of people see what you’re doing,” she blurts out, without thinking. “People need to see - if we’re talking about press, Ripley, you better make sure you get yourself a really good manager when the time comes.”
Ripley’s eyebrows furrow in confusion. “When what time co-?”
“For your street art, especially. You’re going to face serious opposition, professional opposition. Which isn’t a bad thing, it’s just - you need someone tough and thorough in your corner. Someone who honestly believes in what you’re doing, and who won’t try to get you to sell out. And make sure it’s someone you trust, especially if you’re sneaking around doing illegal things at night. You don’t want a manager who would use that to get you to cooperate. I would honestly lose my mind if you ever got forced to sell your work to some corporation so they could use it for ads, or whatever. Lose. My. Mind.”
Ripley exhales a soft laugh. He watches Alix for a moment, then reaches for another can of spray paint without breaking his gaze away from her.
“You’ve got long-distance eyes, don’t you?” he murmurs softly, gazing deep into them.
Alix blushes hard, drawing her head back. “I - what? What does that mean?”
“Just that you’re always thinking so far ahead. Who even says my art is gonna get off the ground? Isn’t there like - a ninety-nine point nine percent chance it won’t ever go anywhere?”
Alix blinks at him, startled, then arches a doubtful eyebrow. “Where’d you get that number?”
Ripley gives his shoulders a slow, uncertain shrug, then taps his own temple. His face is full of real surprise and confusion, like he didn’t expect her to argue with him on this.
Oh, you idiot, Alix thinks, staring at him in helpless adoration. Do you honestly have no idea how talented you are, what a gift you have, the power your art has to move people? How can you not realize you’re gonna be walking with the kings one day? You dumb, stupid boy - why are boys so stupid? Truly -
“You will need a manager one day,” she says in exasperation, pinching the bridge of her nose between her thumb and her fingers. “Just choose wisely. Better yet, come to me and let me choose for you.”
“Deal. But I’ll bet you that day doesn’t come.”
“Oh, Ripley,” Alix sighs, resting her cheek against her folded arms. “If only you could see what I see. I wish you could.”
Ripley stops painting, but doesn’t raise his head, and doesn’t look at her.
“I…” he begins softly, then trails off for a long moment. “Yeah, I wish I could, too.”
Something in his voice makes Alix lift her head. A sudden, inexplicable, irresistible need to be closer to him overwhelms her, and she gets to her feet. Being very careful not to snag her boots on the railing, she comes over to Ripley, watching every step she takes.
“Don’t fall, don’t fall, don’t fall,” she whispers to herself, and gratefully seizes Ripley’s hand when he offers it to her.
“Guess the problem wasn’t the fuzzy socks, huh?” Ripley says, his words riding a warm, teasing laugh.
“No,” Alix giggles helplessly, releasing his fingers as she straightens up beside him. “I should have known, since I still have this problem when I’m barefoot-”
She breaks off abruptly.
Holy shit.
Ripley just as good as told her that he does remember that one night from junior year. That’s the first time he’s ever given her any straightforward indication of that, besides the green streak in his curls. And she couldn’t be sure if that was for her, could she? That was why she had tried to answer him so subtly, in case she was wrong…
She runs her finger over the pink streak in her hair, struggling desperately to recover.
“What’s the problem, if it’s not the socks?” she manages. “Do you have any ideas?”
Ripley keeps his eyes on his work as he starts taping up another stencil, but Alix can tell from his expression that he does have an idea.
“Hey.” She nudges his ribs with her elbow. “Tell me, I want to know.”
Ripley bites the inside of his cheek, half-hiding behind his curls. He picks up a paintbrush and starts adding details to what’s beginning to look like a melting candle.
“I don’t think you’ve got gravitational issues, or self-sabotaging socks, or anything like that,” comes his soft, low voice. “My theory is that you’re always thinking so hard, sometimes you forget to just - be in your body. ‘Cause you’re all up in your head.”
Alix draws back, her eyelashes fluttering as she blinks very fast in surprise.
Ripley raises his eyes to her face, then adds earnestly, “Hey, but - don’t feel like you need to change that. At least not all the time.”
“I’m - actually not sure that I could change that,” Alix answers slowly, thinking about it as she speaks. “Definitely not all the time.”
“Oh yeah?” Ripley says brightly, with obvious relief. “Good. It’s cute, the way you’re always tumbling around everywhere.”
“What-? Is it?” Alix lets out a startled laugh, her pulse stuttering. “I thought it’s probably annoying, to an artist working on delicate stuff.”
“Yeah, it’s so annoying,” Ripley laughs, infected by Alix’s giggles. “Guys just hate having tons of opportunities to help out a beautiful girl in distress.”
Alix freezes, staring up at Ripley, her heart crashing against her ribs. He just called her beautiful, right to her face.
“You’re just - saying everything you’re thinking tonight, huh?” she stammers, her cheeks burning.
“Actually, it’s just about the opposite, I’m trying my fuckin’ hardest to keep it to mys-”
Ripley cuts himself off, his shoulders abruptly tensing up, like he just realized what he’s saying. He goes perfectly still, staring at the billboard in blank silence, then gruffly clears his throat.
“It’s not my fault if something like that gets through, alright?” he murmurs, slightly shamefaced, his cheeks coloring up with a self-conscious blush. He’s looking anywhere but at Alix. “You’re - something else.”
Alix stares at him silently.
Her feet have never felt so firmly rooted to the ground, which makes sense. She’s not all up in her head, right now. She’s completely, entirely in her body.
She knows that, because her entire body is so very, very awake. So acutely aware of Ripley, and of the overwhelming, vivid heat rising up within her body at his closeness to her.
The sensation stirs her heart and moves through her in a slow, intoxicating, melting wave. More intense than anything imaginable to her before. The night air blowing against her body is electric, lighting up every one of her senses.
Raw, wild flames catch in her heart as she looks at Ripley. The longer she looks at him, the longer she wants to go on looking. The single green curl kissing his eyebrow makes her blood run hot with intense, charged tenderness, pure adoration.
She wants to take off his snapback, run her hands through that soft, thick mess of green curls. She wants to pull the bandana down from his mouth and - more. Imaginary desires rise up without warning in her mind, rife with passion and intensity, making her cheeks blaze with an out-of-control blush.
He’s gazing back at her, she realizes abruptly. At some point he met her gaze, and now they’re staring right into each other’s eyes. Ripley’s brush is paused in mid-movement, pressed hard against the billboard. His jaw is tensed up, all stiff. He’s gazing at her through wide eyes, his blown-out pupils lined with the softest rings of green. The brush twitches very slightly in his fingers.
There’s barely-constrained heat in his eyes, and the deep glow of a blazing blush in his cheeks.
Alix and Ripley both grasp what they’re doing suddenly, at the same time. Alix immediately gets her eyes back on the billboard, and Ripley clears his throat, then hurriedly smooths out the splotch of paint he just accidentally put up.
Alix watches him as he takes out that flaming, colorful piece of paper he filled with thick slabs of paint before he crumpled it up.
He uncrumples it, then gets a handful of it by the back, the unpainted side. He presses the painted side carefully to the billboard, leaving a textured, rough pattern of flaming color. Then he takes a golden-yellow can of spray paint from his bag and uses it to cover the stencil, adding a coat on top of the textured paint he just put down.
When he peels back the stencil to take a quick look, the painted candle has a beautiful, flowing flame. Overall golden, but rich and textured beneath with fiery colors. It looks like he really breathed life into the flames.
“First part done,” Ripley says softly, carefully taping the stencil back with a satisfied expression in his eyes.
Alix stares at him in disbelief, then looks back at the billboard as Ripley puts a little paint on his fingers to add tiny, intricate details to what she thought was already perfect.
“I still can’t believe you’re here with me, doing this,” Ripley blurts out suddenly. “I mean, you’re so-”
“Lame?” Alix asks, preemptively dejected.
“-mature, and so good all the time.” Ripley flashes her a shy, half-laughing, searching smile. “The fuck are you doing out here breaking every rule in the book, watching me fingerpaint on the walls?”
“Having fun,” Alix giggles, having caught his contagious laughter. “I’m having fun, okay?”
Ripley blinks hard, then slowly breaks into a glowing, radiant smile. He bites his lip, looking like he wants to say something.
Instead he draws his AirPods out of the pocket of his black jeans and offers one to Alix. She accepts it, and he takes the other, puts on some music.
Alix takes deep breaths of the cold night air, steps back, and watches him work his magic.
~~~~
“What do you think?” Ripley whispers, leaning his head down to hers. “Do you like it?”
They’re standing together on the grass, in the rosy light of dawn. The treetops are a shimmering, rich green. Above them, the sunrise sky is the most delicate, soft shade of pink. The peachy light kisses the evergreens, melting onto them.
In the middle of it all is the finished billboard, done up in all the colors now staining Ripley’s hands and speckled on his hoodie.
On the highway to their left, a car slows down for a moment as the owner leans towards their windshield to stare up at the billboard before rolling on.
Alix wishes with all her heart that she could take Ripley’s hand.
“Yeah, I like it,” she whispers back, her wide eyes still caught on the massive, beautiful piece of his handiwork.
Just like in her dream, Alix can hear the low rumbling, the trembling beginnings of something powerful enough to make the earth shake.
She can feel it within herself.
And every time she looks into those sweet, warm green eyes, it gets a little louder.
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