We're so close to something better left unknown

We're so close, to something better left unknown

I can feel it in my bones

(Metric, "Gimme Sympathy")

ii. (or: Dancer)

It's Dani's 16th birthday, and she and Dancer are having the absolute PERFECT night. Dancer raided the old video stores and grabbed a bunch of old, scary-as-feck movies: The Exorcist and Saw I and Alien and Alien vs. Predator. Mac made a cake, but left it with Dancer (with a wink that made Dani turn pink, and gah what is with her these days?!) and he lit candles and played her the guitar and sang happy birthday, and Dani was so fecking embarrassed that when she made fun of him for being so cheesy, she was almost mean. The Mega! Embarassed! Imagine that!

"It's not cheesy, Mega," Dancer replied, and put down the guitar and looked at her seriously for a second. "It's something I wanted to do. For a long time, actually."

Then they ate cake and told each other all sorts of crazy shit, and now it's getting late and somehow - Dani's not sure how - she's found herself leaning back in Dancer's big arms while they watch the finale to The Exorcist. Dancer's arms have gotten bigger, more toned, somehow, and Dani is trying to notice how they feel around her back, or how warm his chest is while his heart beats an unsteady, fast rhythm against her head. It feels safe, and scary, both at the same time.

The priest is falling out the window when Dancer takes the remote from her hands and turns off the movie, pitching the room they're in into blackness. And that weird speed up that Dani's heart is doing? She can pretend it's because she's worried about shades, but shades been gone a long time, and 'sides, Dani's not the type to lie.

"Dude," she pokes at Dancer, turning in his arms to look at him. His eyes are vast and there's so much in them, Dani's not sure if she fell in, she'd ever get out again. Cheesy, that, but Dani's never been much of a poet. That's Dancer's job. "Dude," she tries again, aiming for playful even if the breathy catch in her voice maybe gives her a bit away, "I was watching that!"

"Dude," Dancer says back, and then he leans in and his lips are on hers and it's probably the sweetest thing that's ever happened to Dani. Like, she's pretty sure there's some explosive soundtrack in the background, like this is some American TV show and they've finally reached the episode where the characters everyone's been waiting for to get together, get together.

And later, when clothes come off, and they get... down to business as it were, and things are all slow and Dancer is breathing heavy and staring into her eyes, if things aren't quite as ... well, epic, as Dani had been hoping for her first time? She's certainly not complaining.

Later, Dani is laying Dancer's arms, playing her fingers on his chest, and the two are quiet together. Don't need to talk to understand each other, never did.

"Wow, Mega, that was ..."

"Pathetic," a voice says from the corner, and steps out into the light, and of-fecking-course it is Ryodan. His voice is mocking, but his eyes are ... Dani's never seen him look so scary. Like there's something in there, violent and raging, and it wants OUT.

When Ryodan's men surround them, and Ryodan himself grabs a mostly naked Dani and drags her away from a now-at-gunpoint Dancer, who stares at her with sad but bemused eyes, Dani can't seem to bring herself to freeze frame. Of all the FECKING times for her superpowers to go on holiday!

Ryodan's hands are warm, too warm, on Dani. One is on her waist, the other her neck, and one strokes while the other squeezes, and Dani doesn't want to be feeling what she's feeling right now. Not after what just happened with Dancer. Not ever. Dani's no skank. She controls her body, not the other way around.

"I told you," he says softly, too softly, into her ear, and she can't help it, she fucking shivers when he does, "That you signed an exclusivity contract. And that you wouldn't like the terms if you broke it. Well, here are the terms. See,"

and at that moment, the one named Kasteo (Dani commits this to memory, so she knows who to kill first once she gets her abilities back) shoots Dancer point blank and he falls to the ground with a soft thud,

"that you don't make the same mistake again."

Then Ryodan hauls her - naked - over his shoulder, and when he rests his hand on her ass and Dani pounds her fists into his back and she is thinking of all the ways she's going to kill him when the craziest. fucking. thing. happens.

Dancer stands up. Literally. From being shot! Crumpled heap on the ground and all that! And then Dancer laughs. Just laughs. Dani's never heard him laugh like that, like there are layers of Dancers, all of them, laughing at once, different ages and ... And as he does, his skin, his being - the part that made Dancer Dancer, just sort of ... falls off. And what is left is something vast and dark and beautiful and just a little bit insane.

"I knew," Lor growls from the corner, his gun up and trained on this, this Stranger, "That Dancer was a bullshit name."

Dani - who is now back on the floor, since something else unthinkable has happened and even fucking Ryodan is fecking thrown by this latest development - looks at what, who, can only be the Unseelie King. And what the hell can she do? She laughs. She laughs and laughs, till she can't breathe, till she's crying. Because, because...

Because she said she wanted her first time to be epic.

Should have fucking specified.