Alright first of all let me just say thanks to the few of you who've stuck with me this far. It's been very interesting on this site to say the least. This fic was somewhat inspired by all the goings on these past few days but mostly a look at some of Dacey's scenes so far, but maybe a little skewed to fit how I personally want the episodes to go. Anywho, I would swear up and down that this really and truly is a Dacey fic but how many of you would even believe me at this point? Enjoy! :)
The first time Lacey and Danny kissed it was strictly scientific; behind the shed in his backyard, a serious game of hide and seek suddenly forgotten.
"Circle, circle, dot, dot..." Tiny lips whispered.
She gave him his cootie shot first. It was one of the most carefully administered Lacey had ever performed, the tip of her small finger pressing, not too hard and not too soft, into his forearm. By the time she finished and held her delicate arm out to him, his palms were sweaty.
"Make sure you do it right okay?" a 7 year old Lacey demanded.
"Shhh she'll hear us." Danny shushed her. Off in the distant corner of the backyard, Jo pressed her forehead to a maple tree and counted backwards from 100.
He whispered the words and drew the circles under a bright July sun.
"Ready?" she stared at him with brown, fawn eyes.
He just nodded, an odd combination of disgust, excitement, and cherry CapriSun churning in his belly. Jo's squeaky voice carried across hundreds of blades of grass, counting still, "3...2...1!"
Freshly vaccinated, Danny and Lacey bravely pressed their lips together. It was a split second kiss of miniscule puckering. No butterflies took flight in their bellies, fireworks didn't explode behind their eyelids. They were only 7.
"Did it work?" he asked, searching his arms for signs of infection.
Lacey flipped her hands face up and face down. They trembled slightly but, according to playground law, that wasn't one of the symptoms.
"I think so...?" she quirked an eyebrow adorably.
But it did work, in a different way, even though they hadn't felt their tiny hearts flutter or their nerve endings crackle in a chorus of electricity. Once their lips touched, the universe shuddered and set their destiny in motion; a big boulder of unavoidable, undeniable attraction hurtling towards them very slowly.
"You guys!" the only Masterson child came around the shed's weathered corner shaking a blindingly blonde head, "The game's not gonna be fun if you keep hiding together!"
The second time they kissed, it really wasn't a kiss at all. They stood there in the main hallway of Green Grove High after the drunk driving PSA train wreck.
"What do you want from me Danny?" she snapped. The conversation had gone from civil to confrontational so quickly his head spun. Disoriented and desperate, he responded with a half finished, wholly vulnerable confession.
"I just wish..."
"What!?"
"I just want..."
Their eyes met in a paralyzing moment of realization. Danny had started to like Lacey's dimples way back when they were both 6. Lacey hadn't noticed how cute Danny' smile was until they turned 10. Did a silly childhood crush manage to persist after all this time? Matching brown eyes locked in a resounding yes. Yes, their destiny was unfolding as the unyielding forces had planned. Yes, they were both thrilled and terrified at the prospect of some flimsy prepubescent affection not only surviving the wasted years, but thriving? Growing? Then it was more than just an optical connection by the lockers. Danny and Lacey stood, immobilized, by a laser sharp fixation that drew their souls closer, but not their bodies. It was a passionate kiss of the mind that neither had the will or strength to break.
That is, until Lacey felt her eyelids flutter and reality came barreling in. Wrenching her gaze away was much more difficult than it should have been. Rushing down the empty hallway, she couldn't help but anxiously run her fingers through her hair and wonder how she was going to bury something so profound.
The third time they kissed, Lacey was wearing a pretty dress and she was just so tired of denying herself the satisfaction. She tried to make their encounter all about Regina's mysterious envelope. She feigned frustration, anger, she even tried walking away.
"You know what, screw you."
But the touch of his hand had brought memories racing back: friendship bracelets, backyard cootie shots.
The fourth time they kissed it was because the third had happened only 2 seconds ago and Danny was already hopelessly addicted.
The fifth time they kissed it was to initiate something legitimate but secret.
"And no one can know, okay?"
Kisses 6 through 1 million were Romeo and Juliet, candlelit picnics, 5 more minutes and roaming hands, tender and comforting, lust and nudity.
Kiss 1 million and 1 was tragic because Danny wanted it desperately but Lacey truly, deep down from the floor of heart, did not. More than the lies, more than the necklace, it was the blatant betrayal that sliced her open, that left her exposed at the highest degree of discomfort. The sunshine and color seemed to fade from the world in that moment. Jo disappeared. Sky, tree, and ground vanished. There was only Danny, her, and the suffocating betrayal. She'd let him in at the risk of her friendships, her reputation. She'd given him free reign over her body, her intimacies, her lips, her thoughts. Lacey had surrendered herself to a façade, an intentional deception.
"I can't believe I let you-" a lump formed in her throat without any warning. Danny looked into her eyes so deeply he relished the idea of drowning there. The dark tunnels of his pupils, the brown rims of his irises, they both begged her to forgive him, to kiss him like she used to.
Lacey stared at him coldly, "...we're done."
A veritable tornado of events after that and the world was grayer than it had ever been. Colder too. He was gone. On the run from law, truth, or fiction. She was hardly sure anymore.
Kiss 1 million and 2 was so epic that Rico had to excuse himself.
Danny saw her before she saw him. The swing of her hair, the swish of her skirt as she scooted into the shed behind Rico. Her profile, striking and modelesque, seemed to angle toward him in slow motion.
"Lace." he whispered under his breath. She didn't hear it. The words left his lips just before she laid eyes on him and her heart immediately pounded like a bass drum.
"Danny, oh my God, you're okay!"
He watched her pace quicken towards him. She smiled and there it was. The light and the warmth his perishing spirit needed had been hidden in her smile the whole time. She threw her arms around him, loving how his dark hair, dark clothes, and dark eyes all culminated in a very warm being.
"I needed to-"
Lacey cut him off with a finger over his lips. She gently grabbed his arm and pushed up the sleeve of his army green jacket. Danny held his breath. Somewhere on the opposite side of the room, Rico's awkward curiosity wouldn't let him leave just yet.
And then her fingertip was drawing across Danny's forearm.
"Circle, circle, dot, dot..." she whispered, staring intently at his skin. It was, by far, the most professional grade cootie shot she'd ever given. And when it was done, her eyes peeked up mischievously into his.
"I needed to-"
He tried again but Lacey cut him off again, this time with that kiss.
"...see you." he finished the sentence in his head. See her? His eyelids dropped with no hesitation. He had needed way more than that hadn't he? His arms tightened around her waist. He had needed to see her, to touch her. He had to stare into those brown eyes and apologize until his lips fell off.
"Uh okay yeah." Rico cleared his throat from somewhere far beneath where they floated, "Only 17 hours, 35 minutes, and 48 sec- you know what I'm just gonna go."
The door closed as they opened up to one another; lungs expanded in life giving breaths, hearts re-opened, lips parted. Lacey sighed as the most vibrant colors she'd seen in days danced behind her eyelids. Kissing him restored the pigment to her life. Danny was her rainbow and Lacey was his sunshine.
He trailed kisses along her neck, stopping just to suck gently at that special spot he had memorized. She sighed again, eyes closed, reveling in the polychromatic dynamic beneath her lashes.
It wasn't the first, second, or even third time that Danny elicited a slow heated throb between her thighs to match the deliberate pulsing of her heart, and it certainly wouldn't be the last.