as_damaged | ☎ voicemail [v 2.0]

[It's coming up to midnight and the grand confetti-filled closedown of the dance, but they're not there yet. The square has emptied a little at the edges and crowded in toward the middle as the music clicks on to a stream of ballads (the kind of thing none of them admit listening to but all somehow know). Chase has steadfastly kept his jacket on through the sweatier section, though his shirt has come down a couple of buttons, and he's half emptied one of the plastic glasses he brings back to her.]

You were right, about the soda. [He offers the full one.] Tap.

It's inevitable. I was probably right about the bathrooms, too.

[She's smiling at him as she takes it, not too shy now since they've been here all night. She's knotted her hair back into a loose bun, and takes a long sip of the soda as soon as it's in her hands. There's more of a breeze here but it's a warm night, and they haven't entirely kept clear of the dance floor, either.]

So. Moon landing?

No. I'd have noticed if you'd been gone half the night.

[He's easier with her too, though prone to talking to the floor or occupying himself worrying the buttonhole that matches the flower he bought her until its petals droop.]

Just like it. If it had technicolour and a soundtrack by... someone from the eighties.

[Allison doesn't fidget, just scrapes the ground with her heel from time to time. Come next week, there'll be a dried corsage tucked in the back of her desk drawer at home, beside another dried flower and an empty envelope and the elegant bracelet she never wears.

Smiling, she shakes her head a little.]

The bathrooms are never full of people who came with people, unless they're fighting.

[It's a matter-of-fact pronouncement. She's never one of the ones sitting on the counter complaining, but often the one wiping runny mascara off with toilet paper and coaching girls through their heartbreak. Her gaze sinks a little, though, accompanying a hesitant half-smile.]

I am glad we came, though.

Yeah.

[They're jostled by dancers, and the last song of the night is announced through a crackling microphone. He takes her arm, at least on the pretence of stopping anyone knocking her drink.]

And the music's not that bad.

It's not,

[She agrees, stepping a little closer as a couple who must have brought their own punch stumbles past her.]

Last song. Do you want to--?

[She drops the question off sharply, hesitant but hopeful.]

Yes.

[She barely has time to not finish her question, although it does occur to him that it should have been the other way around.]

Dance with me?

Yes.

[He's managed to work out what she's asking him to ask her once, already. Allison does have a sense of mercy.

She drains the rest of her drink, sets the cup aside, and holds out a hand.]

[There's a small flourish as he pulls her in. She may have found out, over the course of the night, that he's not entirely graceful when set to music. This kind of dancing is something he's more trained in, even if he should be embarrassed to admit it. He knows where to place his hands and there are no trodden feet.]

I'm glad you're glad- [He starts, hesitantly, and trails off.] We could go bowling or something, over summer.

[Something like a date.]

[Dancing is, she's sure, one of those areas where you can get an A for effort. She can follow a lead well enough, at any rate.]

Bowling?

[A little laugh. It wouldn't have been her first thought.]

Something. Maybe. Sure,

[she murmurs, a hint of shyness coming back to her smile. Not that she's never made dates, this is just so... storybook. So unlikely.]

[What's wrong with bowling he goes with his friends all the time.]

I can teach you.

[See? Romance. And a little clear of his throat as he falls silent, leaning his cheek into her hair.]

[Learning to bowl is obviously the foundation of every long-term relationship. Allison lets her eyes flutter shut, leaning into him much more easily now that she doesn't have to juggle eye contact and body language and where her feet go all at once. It's comfortable.]

We could try it, once,

[she concedes, her sly smile hidden somewhere in the hollow of his neck. Once suggests more than once, or at least, the possibility thereof. She's getting ahead of herself, but in the moment it's nice to indulge in the daydream of some nebulous future with a boy she still barely knows.]

Since we'll both be in town.

[Something he could almost be glad of, now, even if 'once' is just that. He's not planning futures, just a next time. Then, quiet again, because he doesn't want her to move from that spot, where her breath tickles against the collar of his shirt. It might be the best feeling he can think of.]

Mmn.

[She doesn't quite answer, just a quiet hum of agreement. Once is a start. She can live with that. This is a start, one she's enjoyed more than she expected, considering the rarity of her impulsiveness (not that she hadn't noticed him before, so perhaps it doesn't count. But she's never asked anyone to ask her out quite like this.)

It's a childish impulse, to want to freeze a moment forever. From a certain perspective it's funny; when midnight hits and they become who they are, perhaps it's close enough. Certainly it won't end in any of the ways she might guess.]

[It will end, rather, with strips of glittering tickertape getting caught in his hair, at exactly the moment that, having brushed his lips against her forehead as the call for the end of the night went up, he ducks his head a little lower and catches her eyes, a question in mind that he doesn't know how to voice.]

[Finding words never works, in any world or at any age. When she looks up to meet his gaze her eyes are wide and unguarded; she lifts her chin, slightly. It's an answer of sorts, for a question unasked.

The fingers on his shoulder brush a little closer to his throat, to curl around the back of his neck, perhaps. If she can make herself so bold. If he moves nearer. If.]

[If. The game of hesitating moves falls back to his turn and his throat catches around and attempt to swallow. there's no good looking round to see if everyone's stopped dancing, now, if they're all looking. Somehow it feels certain that they are. This is some kind of monumental thing. Like the moon landing.

He gasps, air breaking through the tightness in his throat, and closes his eyes tightly in the instant

that he darts in to kiss her.]

[Midnight always hits hard, after a curse like this; it's ice-water unfamiliarity, a rush of vertiginous disorientation. If she hadn't shut her eyes as well, maybe she'd pull away; but she doesn't, just tenses slightly in his arms as the situation takes some sort of shape in her mind. He's familiar. Grounding. Here, he always has been; and even if she feels sometimes like she hardly knows him, right now she knows this. (How could she not?) She'd know him in the dark.

This is, she knows, not quite right (though she wishes it could be, will never say as much,) but it's a safe starting place to put the pieces together. Slowly, the fingers clutching his neck unfurl, permission to pull back from her if he needs to.

They really, probably, ought to stop. She knows.]

[He feels it too. The disconnect from a sure and certain reality as new-old memories rush in to reveal the deception and make this existence a memory too. Ice-water is a fair analogy. The last time he felt this he'd been trying, failing to keep his head above the frozen sea.

This time realisation dawns with a hot flush (and it's not the first time this weekend he's felt the sensation creeping up the back of his neck, but before that it was something he'd - largely - gotten over by the age of nineteen). Her hands unclasp their hold on him and his, locked to her waist, for a moment grip tighter. Just for a second more. Just to finish this one thing and let some kid he'd never quite been get it right.

It's chaste by adult standards, but not dispassionate for it.

He really, probably, should have taken the chance to pull away. Instead he pulls back perhaps the breadth of a breath and opens his eyes.]

[Perhaps the fact that both of them ought to know better means the double trespass can be forgiven without discussion. She knows too much of where they've been, not enough of where they stand now; doesn't even quite know what principle she's standing for when she keeps her distance and her quiet. The stubborn truth is, as much as she hates the City's manipulations and machinations, as much as she resents the circumstances that toss them together and drag them apart, she doesn't mind being here. Now. Maybe he has a point after all; hypnotic suggestion can't make you do anything you really don't want to do. But, probably, it's infinitely more complicated than that.

He's already looking at her when she opens her eyes. What does one say? If neither of them objects (does he? she wonders,) do they owe apologies?]

You've got glitter in your hair.

[He lets go of one hand's grip around her and smooths it back through his hair, catching a crackling foil strip and gold dust that gleams between his finger and thumb when he brings them down and rubs them together.]

So have you.

[An apology would probably be the worst thing he could think of - so he's prepared for her to make one. At the same time, a small smile keeps to the corners of his mouth.]

If this were really my old school there'd be a nun ready to smack us for impropriety right about now.

[And he looks round long enough to see all the others in the same state of confusion and disarray, adults on the kind of outfits they might not even have dreamed of as kids.]

I think the City means for us to smack ourselves.

[Or one another; she knows it wouldn't be the first time, from hearsay if not experience. Even now the angry hum of voices and the occasional surprised yelp suggests not everyone is pleased with their younger counterparts' decisions.

She doesn't brush a hand through her hair-- just shakes her head very slightly, jarring a little shower of glimmer over her shoulders. She doesn't pull away, and it's not quite an apology. It's a matter of purposeful stubbornness.]

Wouldn't be the first time.

[And there's something in the way he keeps his focus on her that doesn't make it look like he means the city at all. God knows they can make missteps of their own devices.

He looks down - by some miracle of physics the clothes still fit even if the styling is a few years younger than what might be standard. They don't look so out of place as the kid whose mother sent him in powder blue, or all the girls wearing puffballs. They could be out for the evening like this, no one would look twice. So.]

Do you want to go for a drink?

[There's the slightest tilt of her head, the look she always gets when she's running that sort of question through the labyrinthine and ever-shifting rules that govern the answers. She isn't, though; not exactly, and the edges of her eyes crinkle a little.

She's thinking that it would have been a commonplace question, once upon a time. That it isn't, now, which means the rules (as they ought to stand, as they still do in the back of her mind,) don't apply.]

Unless you know a bowling alley that'd be open.

[The words tease a smile out onto her lips. Maybe a drink is a start. Maybe-- maybe, that's all right?]

☎ voicemail [v 2.0]

→ we are not what you think we are we are golden

→ we are not what you think we are we are golden

→ we are not what you think we are we are golden

→ we are not what you think we are we are golden

→ we are not what you think we are we are golden

→ we are not what you think we are we are golden

→ we are not what you think we are we are golden

→ we are not what you think we are we are golden

→ we are not what you think we are we are golden

→ we are not what you think we are we are golden

→ we are not what you think we are we are golden

→ we are not what you think we are we are golden

→ we are not what you think we are we are golden

→ we are not what you think we are we are golden

→ we are not what you think we are we are golden

→ we are not what you think we are we are golden

→ we are not what you think we are we are golden

→ we are not what you think we are we are golden

→ we are not what you think we are we are golden

→ we are not what you think we are we are golden

→ we are not what you think we are we are golden

→ we are not what you think we are we are golden

→ we are not what you think we are we are golden

→ we are not what you think we are we are golden

→ we are not what you think we are we are golden

→ we are not what you think we are we are golden

→ we are not what you think we are we are golden

→ we are not what you think we are we are golden

→ we are not what you think we are we are golden

→ we are not what you think we are we are golden

→ we are not what you think we are we are golden