“That’s very honourable of you. I wouldn’t want my career stealing away from me on the sidewalk.” She laughs at the thought, her shoulder moving to nudge into his arm.
Orla’s attention is laser-focused on the road as they walk, examining the art as they pass by it. It’s not that she wants to upstage anybody, but her fingers were itching to get that competitive streak out of her system. From the moment she’d seen the stand on the list of stalls, she’d know that was the one she wanted to visit.
Art was how she spoke. It was where she played with her thoughts, her feelings, her visions. Got them all out on paper, got them adorned upon the skin of others.
( She’d argue that no feeling was quite like somebody picking you to litter their body with permanent inkings. Well, she’d quickly learned that one thing certainly beat that, but she’d get to that shortly. )
Her attention draws back to him as she feels his fingers crawling down her back, a smirk slipping onto her face as she felt his hand smack into the leather pants she’d put on for the day. This feeling was better than inking. “Hey, you.” She remarks, her hand reaching for her an extra stick of white chalk as bemusement takes over her face at Bowies swiftly growing collection of chalk. “You gonna’ use all those, or are we sharing?"
It isn’t long until she’s stood beside him, watching as he draws, her head cocking to the side as she attempts to work out just what he’s drawing before deciding that's a fruitless attempt. Walking around the back of him, she allows her dangling fingers to comb over the back of his shoulders before making a not-so-dignified descent to the floor.
( Leather pants, slowly becoming her least favourite item of clothing. )
She’s in her element as she draws, her attention only flicking to her ‘artistic’ other half every so often. The truth was, this was how she got her thoughts out. She outlines a vase in white, a couple of flags sticking out of the top, a bi-coloured flag taking centre stage.
Then she moves on to the rest, another four. Each colour filled in with various other flags depicting the pride community. Her gaze only shifting to glance sideways with each complete one before she moves to pick up the white again. The bi-flag is left untouched, but the other four are scrawled in with words. Carefully, but smudgeable, in case of outright rejection.
She glances up, shifting slightly as she moves onto the next one.
"I-N.” - Next flag. 'W-I-T-H.’ Next flag. ’M-E.’
Artwork complete, she scuffles backwards slightly, moving to examine whatever Bowassio besides her had come up with. “How’s it going over here?” She questions somewhat hastily, taking appreciation in his efforts. Though there was a sort of nervous energy to her that she wasn’t completely used to. Already prepped with an 'it doesn’t have to be today, but I want you to know I want us to, someday.’.
The look of concentration on his face is like no other, the closest comparable inducer of it was when he was beating Javier’s high score at RPO. If he has any untapped artistic ability, he was going to tap into it there and then and possibly produce something that could make him consider switching careers. Blue chalk is swapped for yellow and then white. Green was debated, but he decided on realism over something abstract.
He can see Orla in his peripheral, no doubt putting in as much focus as him on her chalk, but where they differed was she made it look effortless -- as she did most things. Yet he had seen first hand how hard working she was, in her business, in her personal life, in the relationships she fostered fiercely.
( Her unwavering nature could often be misconstrued as being hard work, but everything about being in love with Orla Rhodes was effortless to Bowie Shore. )
One well executed stretch of his leg and deliberate scuff of his converse on pavement and he’s pretty he could sabotage her piece to then claim victory by default. It’s a flaw that it crosses his mind but he didn’t, wouldn’t. In his teens and twenties he might have but he’s been the saboteur of so many things between them that even something as low scale as this isn’t something he allows for anymore.
“Nailed it, honestly. Got a right flare for this shit. Nearly sun and dusted.”
Another drag of yellow on the ground and his is complete as she calls to him and it was as dazzling as he intended. He doesn’t know much about art, but he does know he had interrupted her midway through sketching a piece based on Van Gogh’s Night Sky, and he thinks his own work is a sister piece to that. He dusts his hands off against his shorts, reaching for her as he shifts from where he was kneeling at his patch to where he can get a better look at hers.
His hand rests on her hip casually while his other palm is to pavement, supporting him as he leans slightly with a tilt of his head to really appreciate what she’s gone for. The flags catch his eye first, they make him smile and when he realises there’s words letters into them he takes another second to read them before he realises what they were saying.
The realisation strikes a chord of fear in him at first as most potentially change inducing things did -- a side effect of morphing from a child who worried when things shifted to a man who felt anxious when they did -- but like every life altering moment that he experienced with her next to him, it dissipates as quickly as it appears.
They had been through so much together and apart, more bad than good, but this was all good. Would be only good. There’s a grin on his face that is concealed from her momentarily as he blindly reaches to his side for any piece of stray rolling chalk, plucking the very green he didn’t get around to using, and now its finally being utilised as he chalks out a response just below hers so as to not mess up the piece.
F-U-C-K and Y-E-A-H with a :) for good measure.
( Double underlined, just in case his enthusiasm wasn’t being translated through words. )
He’s upright then, as tall as he can be while on his knees, the energy radiating him akin to the unrepentant excitement he was always struck with at Christmas except she wasn’t a one day high.
She was year round, she wanted day in, day out with him and given that all his worst nights were the ones without her he can’t help but feel that they were in the rearview as all that was in his eye line at present was her.
“I’m probably gonna get chalk on you, my bad but also I don’t care.”
Chalk residue is the only reason for his warning, because he’s long embraced that he doesn’t need excuses or circumstance to kiss her anymore. He just can, and there and then he does it like he wants to do it every damn day for the rest of his days.
“No fucking shit I’ll move in with you,” He verbally reaffirms as they part, keeping her close, everything about him was drenched in a kind of happiness he’s only ever experienced with her. “I’ve only been trying to on the downlow for like, three months. I’m kind of mega in love with you, in case you somehow missed that.”
From sneaking into each others bedrooms as teens, surprise college dorm weekend staycations, hotel rooms, places that have been his, places that have been hers, he’s existed in an exhaustive list of places with her but none had ever been theirs.
