Summary: Having been robbed of all her jackets in the middle of winter, Rosé finds help from one of the most unlikely people. Though that doesn’t mean it’s easy for her to accept it.
Author’s Note: I legitimately forgot that I wrote this. I’d abandoned it with a few more sentences to write, but now it’s done. I hope we all enjoy the new characters who are introduced.
If only the rage within her could heat her up from the inside out. Unfortunately, temperature doesn’t regulate based on emotions so it would never work like that. So instead, she’s stuck shivering, pressed into the corner of a couch in the student lounge. Her arms tightly wrapped around her, and her hands bunched up in the long sleeves of her shirt. By now she can’t remember when she could last feel them properly.
It was probably less than five minutes after she left the house. She was never lucky enough like everyone else to have a pair of gloves to wear in the snow, but she normally has a jacket. Except for today when her parents had taken all of hers away.
“I’m sorry, Rosie” Denali apologises as she comes back from checking her car for a spare. Genuinely sounding upset as she sits close beside her. “I really thought I would have had one.”
“S’okay” Rosé’s voice stutters slightly.
“I can go home and get you one” Denali offers as she untucks Rosé’s hands from beneath her arms to blow warm air onto them.
Rosé shakes her head. “You’ve got the science test first period. You can’t miss it.”
Denali groans a little at the fair point. “And I was going to wear a sweatshirt and a different jacket but then I changed my mind.” She looks down at the thicker puffer jacket she wears instead. “If I didn’t, I could have given you one.”
“It’s fine” Rosé dismisses. “Just hug me.”
Denali doesn’t have to be told twice before she wraps herself around Rosé, holding her tightly. Rubbing her hands quickly against her arms and her breath leaving warm puffs of air on Rosé’s neck.
“Did you think it was summer today, McCorkell?”
A voice has them both looking up to see the line-backer, who somehow got the nickname of Tina, walk into the room. His and Rosé’s feud has been long standing but there’s a certain amount of respect for each other that neither of them will ever admit to.
“Yeah, I saw the snow on the ground and thought that I might go swimming later” Rosé bites back. The sass dripping from her tone has Denali giggling beside her.
“Where’s your jacket?” Tina frowns instead of continuing to spar with her.
“Fuck I know.” Rosé shrugs. “I don’t know where any of them are.”
“You can’t have lost them all.” Tina shakes his head in disbelief.
“I didn’t. My parents took them all away.”
“What – why?”
“I left one on the back of a chair in the lounge and they thought it would be justified to take away all of them because I can’t put them away properly” Rosé explains.
“You’re joking” Tina says as he moves around the couch behind them, pulling at the cuffs of his sleeves.
“Fucking wish I was. It’s the dead set of winter” Rosé says flatly. “What are you doing?” She suddenly hunches forward when she feels a weight draped across her shoulders.
“Being nice. Wear this” Tina says, wrapping his letterman jacket around her.
“I’m not going to wear your jacket” Rosé stubbornly refuses.
“Yeah, you are Rosie” Denali affirms, pulling back from her to help force her arms through the sleeves.
“So warm” the involuntary sigh replaces whatever protest Rosé was going to continue with instead. Curling in on herself as the residual body heat stored in the jacket touches her skin. Despite how her hands burrow back into the sleeves, she still turns back to Tina, “I don’t want to take it from you.”
“It’s fine. I’ve still got this” he dismisses, pulling at the collar of the hoodie he was wearing underneath. “Besides, if you shiver any harder you’re going to break your teeth.”
“It suits you” Denali pulls at the sleeve of the jacket as she walks the hallways between second and third period beside her.
Rosé scoffs loudly. “Yeah, ‘cause wearing school branded memorabilia just screams me.”
“Okay, well maybe not” Denali takes back. “But you don’t look bad in it.”
“I don’t look bad in anything” Rosé jokes, playing up an act of brushing her hair over her shoulder.
“Pfft” Denali huffs out a laugh as she shoves her. “What about that frilly dress you had to wear for one of the productions last year?”
“Okay, so maybe I can’t pull off frills.” Rosé rights herself and continues walking. “But that’s a costume so it doesn’t count.”
“You just admitted that you don’t look good in frills, so that’s enough for me” Denali says before she slows her pace as they come to a different hallway she has to turn down. “See you at lunch?”
“Yeah, see ya.” Rosé nods a goodbye before quickening her pace up again and continuing to her next class.
“Rosé, jacket off.” She doesn’t get three steps into the classroom before she’s already in trouble.
She’s never liked her maths teacher, Mr Rice, but not many people do. He is always telling everyone off for the most minute of things and saying people’s names wrong. For him specifically in Rosé’s case, it probably doesn’t help that she just generally hates maths.
“Why?” she asks lowly, not sparing him a glance as she moves to her desk at the back of the room.
“If you haven’t earned a letterman jacket, you can’t wear it” his answer is utter bullshit, and also invalid.
“I have actually. I qualified for one for theatre nearly a year ago” Rosé points out. “I just can’t afford it.”
“That’s a football jacket.” Mr Rice eyes a patch of a football stuck on one of the sleeves.
“They look the same anyway” Rosé defends. And they do. If she had her jacket for theatre she could still stick a football patch on it if she wanted to.
“Unless you want a detention, take that jacket off and stop talking back to me” Mr Rice warns. “If it’s not yours, you can’t wear it.”
“Since when?” Tina asks from his desk near the front of the room. “It’s mine and I’m letting her.”
Rosé huffs a sigh as Tina gets involved. Though they rile each other up all the time, it wouldn’t sit right with her if he got himself a detention because of her. As words argue back and forth, Rosé shrugs the jacket off, loosely folding it as she heads over Tina’s desk where she sets it down.
“Rosé?” He frowns at it before he looks back to her. His hands reaching to give it back to her.
She only shakes her head, conveying that it’s not worth it before she turns to head back to her own desk.
Her arms cross tightly over her books against her chest as she steps out of the classroom and into the much colder hallway. There’s only one more period until lunch and she’s honestly considering ditching so she can curl up in her bed and be warm again, but the thought off walking outdoors doesn’t sound all that appealing.
A sudden weight on her shoulders has her flinching forward and she spins around. “Jesus! Don’t sneak—” she curses as she finds Tina behind her with his hands up in surrender.
“I just want to give you this back” he explains, holding the letterman jacket in his hand higher.
“You keep it. I don’t want it” Rosé lies as she turns around again.
Tina huffs a sigh and drapes the jacket over her shoulders as she walks away. “Rosé” he protests, keeping his hands on her arms so she can’t throw it off. “Keep it on. If you get a detention just take the hit. It’s better than freezing your ass off and getting sick.”
“You can’t get sick from being cold” Rosé counters as she turns back to face him.
“Well, do you want to be cold?”
“No.”
“Keep it on” Tina settles, tapping his hands on her arms before moving away.
Loose bits of gravel crunch under her boots as she walks toward a pickup truck in the school parking lot. Around her students sit in cars with the aircon on, waiting for their windscreens to un-fog before the drive home. Except for those like Tina, who stand outside their vehicle talking to friends. His conversation stopping when he sees Rosé step up to him.
“Thanks” she says, handing over his jacket.
“You can wear it home. Just give it back to me whenever.” He doesn’t reach to take it back from her.
“Now is whenever” Rosé pushes it into his arms. “If my parents see me in it I don’t know what they’ll do to it, and I’d rather you see it again. But thanks for letting me borrow it.”
Tina nods in acceptance as he throws it over his shoulder. “Do you need a lift or anything?” he offers, nodding to the truck he leans on.
“Nah, I’m good. Gonna hitch a ride with Nali” Rosé says, walking backward and crossing her arms tightly against the cold.
Tina nods again, but before Rosé can’t turn around, he calls out to her, “hope you find your jackets!”
She couldn’t. She’d been as subtle as she could looking through all the cupboards in the house, and pretending to need something she might have left in the family car, only for her search to end empty handed. Apart from with the conclusion that her jackets are all in her parents’ room: the one place she won’t snoop.
“Still no luck?” Tina asks when he finds Rosé at her locker without her usual leather jacket the next day.
Rosé shakes her head. “But Nali let me borrow this.” She pulls at the sleeves of a thick hoodie.
“It doesn’t really suit you, does it?” Tina takes in the soft purple colour.
“It does the job” Rosé dismisses.
“You actually look nice in it… more approachable, I mean” Tina amends.
“Do I scare you, normally?” Rosé smirks a little.
“Sometimes” Tina admits before he shifts his footing. “Hey, come with me. I want to show you something.”
“Why?” Rosé challenges lowly but follows him all the same.
“Just come” Tina doesn’t answer, and Rosé’s confusion only grows as she is led through the hallways and into the sports department.
“Hey, I know you said that I look more approachable in this or whatever” Rosé begins firmly, “but that doesn’t mean I want to join you in the hookup spot behind the P.E sheds.”
“That’s not where we’re going.” Tina continues walking ahead of her.
Taking a left turn, Rosé recognises the hallway toward the changing rooms. “You’re taking me to the locker rooms? That’s fucking sick.” Her footsteps falter and she starts to hang back.
“I’m not taking you there. We’re going in here” Tina dismisses, moving along to an office door which he holds open for her.
Rosé frowns but steps through it. “Why here?”
“Because…” Tina draws out as he moves to the back of the room and over to a chest pressed against a wall. “I heard you say yesterday how you’ve qualified for a letterman jacket but can’t afford one.”
Rosé hums as she sits herself on the edge of a desk. This whole thing no clearer to her.
“And I was thinking, seeing that the sports department has so many extras because people outgrow them, that you should have one.”
“No.” Rosé shakes her head as Tina pulls one out from the chest. “They’re clearly kept for a reason.”
“Well yeah” Tina admits, “new players sometimes need to borrow them for interschool games… but the smaller sizes barely get worn anyway.”
Rosé only blinks at him sceptically.
“How many twig figures do you see on a football team?” Tina points out. “You’re taller than average, Rosé, but you’re not exactly broad-shouldered.”
Rosé stays silent.
“Are you really going to look a gift horse in the mouth?” Tina levels with her.
“I’ve never even seen a real horse” Rosé deadpans.
“… h-have you not?” Tina falters.
“Of course I have, you dumbass.” Rosé runs a hand down her face before gesturing to the jacket he had pulled out for her. “But I can’t take it. It’s basically stealing school property.”
“Oh, come on.” Tina rolls his eyes. “Like you’ve never stollen something from school before.”
“Only a couple of pencils, and maybe a ruler once” the pitch of Rosé’s voice raises in defence.
“Will you stop trying to fight with me for once?” Tina begs. “These have all been outgrown and donated. People take from here all the time, it’s basically a charity box.”
Rosé pulls in a deep breath that she huffs out. “Well maybe if you’d led with that!”
Tina scoffs a sound of dismissal. “Just try it on.”
Rosé smirks as she hops off the desk and fits herself into it.
Then Tina steps back, seeming to admire his single attempt at guessing the correct size which would fit her. “I know you probably wouldn’t be caught dead wearing this outside of school, but I figured that you’d at least be able to keep it here if your jackets get taken away again.”
Rosé nods, her jaw shifting as she examines her arms in the sleeves and rolls her shoulders. Then as she tugs at the hem down by her hips she pulls in a breath. “Look, I know I give you shit all the time, but I do appreciate this… really.”
“Oh gees, McCorkell, don’t go getting all emotional on me. You’re not supposed to have any” Tina dismisses awkwardly.
“You’re a teenage boy, you’re not supposed to recognise they exist” Rosé counters.
“I’m an emotionally intuitive guy” Tina defends.
Rosé pulls a face and makes a sound of disgust. “Right, you made it weird. I’m leaving” she says before turning on her heel and heading for the door.
“Yep” Tina agrees, shoving his hands in his pockets and following her out into the hallway where he suddenly scoffs a laugh.
“What?” Rosé asks lowly.
“Can you promise me something?”
“No.”
“Just promise me” Tina tries again.
“Fine” Rosé gives in.
“You won’t take the jacket off?”
“I won’t take the jacket off” Rosé repeats.
Tina smirks, just holding back from laughing again as he looks at the jackets they both wear. “I hate to break it to you, McCorkell, but right now we’re matching.”
