[Fighter level 10!]
Fighter level ten, and …?
Ryan stared at the empty bed next to his, waiting. A minute, two, probably more as time slipped by his sleep-addled mind.
Nothing.
If he closed his eyes, he would lose half an hour in an eyeblink. It had been months since he last let that happen.
He took a deep breath which turned into a yawn, stretched, and winced. His body felt like a statue coming to life, stone breaking and cracking, and he would have worried about side-effects from the potion yesterday if he hadn’t felt this way every morning of this week.
He groaned.
I need to stretch more.
“Fuck me,” Conrad said in a sleepy voice as he came back into the room, “did I wake up before Ryan Payne? What, are you sleeping in? Is Thursday the new Sunday? Oh right, you woke up at seven in the morning on Sunday.”
He yanked clothes out of his closet and stuffed them in a bag, another duffel prepped next to his bed.
Not a morning person, Ryan knew. Conrad could be worse than Kyle depending on how much sleep he got, but unlike Kyle, his grumpiness faded within the hour.
“That was me sleeping in.”
“And today?”
“I leveled up.”
Conrad looked at him and blinked. “Congrats. Which level are you now?”
“Ten. I didn’t get a Skill.” Nine out of ten people got a Skill when they reached level ten in a Class, seemingly regardless of every other factor. He hadn’t.
Somehow, he found it hard to care.
“That’s rough. Did you do something dumb, or do you think it’s a repetition level up or something?”
“Nah.” He rubbed his eye as he remembered. “I wrestled monsters with [Stoneskin] from a potion up. It was fun.”
Besides, which Skill would he have even wanted—?
He groaned. Yeah, no, stupid thought.
He wanted every Skill. He could think of a dozen alone he would love to have at the moment, but to choose one? This was fine. He’d leveled without having to commit, cutting through his perpetual self-doubts.
“—I’ve tried out a [Wool Coat] [Protection] stack,” Conrad was saying. “That was fun, but not an everyday thing, you know?”
“Yeah, yesterday was an exception.”
“Sucks to be you. See you Monday, then?”
“Monday?”
Conrad paused at the door. “I’m staying with some friends over the weekend. We have booze, a grill, and an empty house. I’d invite you but I don’t want to, and I know you’re busy. Lucky you, you get to wake up at the crack of dawn and not annoy your roommates.”
“Huh. Have fun, stay safe.”
“You, too.”
The mortality rate among climbers was through the roof. It couldn’t hurt to remind one another.
Ryan sat in his bed for a minute before habit kicked him. He got up and dressed, his body complaining every step of the way.
An extra lap around the Tower should shut it up, and maybe he could ask Micah for something light to help out with that?
He thought they were going to search for a pacifist forest or something today. Sounds fun.
Ryan tossed his bags on his bed, slammed the door, and winced. It hadn’t been on purpose.
He limped over to their full-sized mirror, conjured a single mote of light, and checked his right eyebrow again. Three thin scratches tore through it and the end was missing, burnt off.
Even after a shower, he still smelled like smoke. He swore his hair had burnt but he couldn’t find any damage when he ran his hand through it.
Damn it.
It wasn’t like he was some prissy who cared about his looks, but he did put in effort and this was annoying. Why couldn’t he get a real battle scar instead of burning his eyebrow off like an idiot learning his first fire spell?
He knew why. He was back to wearing the raincoat, and Micah had fixed his shield.
Apparently, not even those and his fire resistance could protect him when he decided to bear-hug a burning treant as it thrashed in his arms. It meant he was stuck collecting tiny wounds.
Idiot, he thought at the idiot in the mirror. He immediately changed his mind, letting his head roll back into a neck crack as he turned away.
What else was I supposed to do?
It had been sprinting toward Micah, Anne had been right there. He knew Micah would have beaten himself up if he’d forced Anne to shield him like a damsel in distress.
That’s not my responsibility anymore, he reminded himself. Besides, Micah might not have frozen up. He might have fought the burning treant.
Either way, he had to have a serious conversation with him about antagonizing magic beings. Two days of searching and they’d found the grove. It had been peaceful, which was a miracle on its own—it had even soothed their wounds. And then Micah had started poking around.
It’d gone from peaceful to raving mad in a heartbeat, and went up in flames once Lisa joined the conversation.
Then he’d almost set his hair on fire … Lisa had blackmailed it … Anne, Myra, and Micah had rushed to plunder as many things as they could while they had the chance …
They’d laughed when they made it out.
He had laughed.
Navid and Sion hadn’t been able to come because of other appointments, but they all climbed together the same as they would hang out, if schedules permitted and they felt like it.
Today, Myra had joined them. Tomorrow, they would join some of Micah’s colleagues to go ant hunting for healing potions.
It had been worth it. Myra and he had gotten to see a peaceful treant up close while it cast a soothing spell on the air around them.
Micah had gotten to strip the grove for parts. Last Ryan had seen, he’d been fussing over their haul while wearing those ridiculous pink glasses, which Ryan secretly wished he could try on—Micah wasn’t allowed to bring them into the Tower so he’d brought the grove to them.
Even if they didn’t earn as much money, even if they’d collected a few more wounds, today had been a good day.
A good day.
He waddled over to his bed, leaned in to push his bag off, and crawled onto it one leg at a time.
He rolled onto his back, let his arm fall out, groped around for his drawer, and sorted through the thin paperbacks, magazines, newspaper, and the stack of letters inside.
He sat up to carefully pull the spellbook out, wrapped in a cover and a cloth.
What to read?
He’d already spent their lunch break meditating on the treant, next to his bird tree. He worried he would fudge the details if he went back now.
He had to wait until next week to continue reading the newspaper story, but he’d skimmed the last chapter and thought he might reread it … Maybe another night. It was sort of a watered-down story that could appeal to anyone.
The paperbacks … A lot of them were exaggerated—Saga always complained, but Ryan didn’t mind. He did read them for the excitement.
Still, it was hard not to roll his eyes at some parts and … they weren’t that much more interesting than his life right now.
The ones with more romance in them …?
Pass.
His parents had sent him letters. Not many, but every few weeks, he must pop into their minds long enough for them to sit down and write one.
They wrote about neighborhood parties, the lake and parks, how fast Hannah was growing, his mom’s new job. He liked to read them and memorize the details as if that could somehow let him be a part of their life.
No matter how often he did though, it was never enough to push past that bittersweet ache to joy. He couldn’t wait to see them.
The spellbook it is.
He pushed mana into his fingertips, condensed it into points, and splayed his hand, flicking orbs of light out like spores that hovered around his bed. All the side work that went into it was almost second nature to him by now, but they still dripped as they slowly fell apart.
The ink glowed red, changing through the same few configurations as he flipped the pages, and then the light matched the dancing lights.
He flipped a page and his eyes glazed over, wandering down the lines. The ink lit up, the pictures moved as they tried to recapture his attention.
Ryan flipped another page, stared at a paragraph without reading it, and put the book aside.
A summer wonderland grew on the page, fireflies in a grassy backyard—
He closed the book.
He pulled his blanket up, his pillow down, and waved a hand to dismiss the spell as he curled around the papers.
Maybe I should just go to sleep. The thought came after, when everything was dark. He had to get up early anyway.
In an eyeblink, he woke up and stared at empty beds all around him. His body yelled about sore muscles, and bruises, and exhaustion.
He nearly rolled over the books as he forced himself up. Two laps around the Tower should make it … make it all shut up.
Ant hunting. They needed them for healing potions. That was a good thing.
Ryan tossed his bags on his bed and closed the door. His tongue dug at a bit of hard goop stuck to his teeth.
He gave up and ate the rest of the ant leg. The yellow shell crunched between his teeth and nearly glued them together, but he felt like he’d taken a half minute nap after he managed to swallow.
Navid was right, they were good snacks, but he wasn’t sure he liked the consistency.
He dropped on his bed, opened the drawer, and pulled the stack of papers out. He supposed this was his routine now.
Every morning, waking up feeling like shit. He would jog, work out, wash up a little, and get ready. He spent a day in the Tower with his friends, kept them safe, remembered his lessons, looked for loot, watched Micah try to flirt with Anne—not that he wasn’t happy for them.
Lisa would stare off into the distance or distract herself with scouting duty, and he wasn’t sure if he should ask. He wouldn’t want her to ask about his family. He didn’t ask about hers.
He fought, ate, sold his loot, treated his wounds, maintained his armor, showered, ate some more, and came back to an empty room on his own.
Today had been different, a half-day like Micah’s birthday in reverse. All the others had a dance lesson this afternoon so they’d to come back early.
Their music had echoed throughout the halls. He’d filled his empty hours working out in the school gym with a few people he barely knew.
It didn’t really matter.
He stared at the pages and wondered if he had commitment issues, he stared at his parents’ letters and ached, hoping for the day he could hop on a boat to see them again, he wondered why he didn’t enjoy reading anymore.
He wanted to go to sleep.
His days were great. He was going on adventures, fighting monsters with his friends, earning money, leveling. In a few weeks, he would see his family, then join everyone at scout camp. He would consolidate into [Ranger] and stop having to worry about Skills and levels at all.
He was even slowly getting hurt in spite of the raincoat! When he did get hurt, when he was exhausted, he had far less reason to complain than anybody else with his endurance and vitality Skills.
Ryan had no good reason not to be happy.
Ryan wasn’t happy.
Right now? He was bored, which meant he was being a lazy fuck.
He looked at the door. Maybe just a short break, then he could go back to trying to be a good son?
A little more time with his friends, or maybe he could check his mail again to see if his parents had sent any … new … letters …
No.
He wasn’t about to set himself up for disappointment.
But he could go find Lisa and … what? He didn’t want to bother her about the spells he was learning. They didn’t share many hobbies. It would be weird to start out of the blue.
He wouldn’t know what else to talk about. If she wanted to hang out, she would say so.
Micah … probably in the workshop. He avoided the place for fear of running into Conner. Seeing him hurt worse. He knew Connor was like him—he was sort of blatant about it—but he still wanted nothing to do with him. For some reason, Ryan wasn’t good enough.
Jason was missing in action ever since summer break had begun, the same as Kyle, and Ryan tried not to dwell on that.
He could … go to Marcus’ school and see if he and his friends were up to anything, talk about their air drop plans?
But his school was in a whole different district, one Ryan wasn’t familiar with. If they weren’t around or were busy, he would look lame.
He could go visit Lang and Finn.
This late? He wouldn’t even know where to look now that Lang had a summer job his aunt had helped him get, not to mention his girlfriend.
Finn? Ryan knew his schedule. They could get a beer, they were old enough. He didn’t have a girlfriend for once so he was probably free. They could catch up, get some food, maybe drop by Lisa’s or the gym and all hang out together …
Or not, and it would just be the two of them … Finn and him … alone …
For the first time, Ryan had his dorm room all to himself.
The moment the fantasy came together, he shot up, folded his legs, and shut his eyes.
He’s your friend you disgusting piece of—
Meditation was second nature to him by now. In a few short breaths, he fled the storm of thoughts down a river into himself and stepped out, placing one foot onto a silver path amidst an endless void and colorful stars.
The stillness there offered him a chance to catch his breath and find the peace he needed.
Ryan pointedly ignored his real self floating in the center and shut his eyes. After a long moment of concentration, he opened them again and wore clothes: a long-sleeved shirt, running shorts, no socks.
He gazed at the stars and wandered over to his Skills with slow, meandering steps.
He would paint and repaint meaningless details over and over again, practice spells, or stare at nothing until the thoughts went away, both the fantasies and the angry ones that followed. Like he always did.
Maybe he could try to be a little productive? To make up for it all.
He glanced at the smudgy treant he’d begun to create, and knew he couldn’t make any progress without seeing one again.
A lot of his Teacup Salamanders were outdated? The new Tower Salamanders differed in small ways like the texture of their scales, or the shape of their claws or teeth, to having entirely new forms like the ones Lisa designed.
Actually, maybe he could add those to his collection?
A muted glimmer of excitement lit up in his chest at the thought, and he stepped off the argent path.
The void rippled beneath him with each step, until he stepped onto warm red scales and crossed a vibrant mural of a Salamander’s eye.
Familiar ground.
A smudge of blue paint hung in the air from his encounter with a blue Salamander.
A large red one lay around like a lazy crocodile, doing little to nothing. He couldn’t get it to breathe fire right.
He walked to the revolving stretch of earth where the little beasts continuously ran at him and tried to remember the six-legged figure that had darted across the grass.
It had been fast. Its cry had sounded similar to a trumpet. He tried to remember every little detail but knew, he would have to come back for touch-ups after he saw it again.
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
That was fine. He would see Lisa tomorrow.
He began with a base model and adjusted, molding its colors unbound by the laws of reality …
Hours of work went by and he opened his eyes to look at the clock. Ten minutes had passed.
No!
For once, he’d hoped to open his eyes and find he’d lost hours of time, that he would wake up in the middle of the night and have to sleep, no matter how little he got because of it.
Fuck it.
He wrangled his shoes on and left. He would check on Micah. If he saw Conner, he would act as if the guy didn’t exist. If Micah was busy, he would check on Lisa and just … be near her, if she let him.
A few steps down the hall, a haunting echo of vibrant music echoed around him. He frowned. Dance lessons should have been over already. Was the band practicing?
Micah wasn’t in the workshop. One of the people who had joined them today was, Delilah, with two others gathered around a burner and a glass contraption in the dusk like witches waiting for the night.
He rapped his knuckles on the doorframe. “Do any of you know where Micah is?”
“He’s not with you?” Her lips were painted a faded black. Odd. Not bad, but odd.
“Stupid question,” her friend nudged her.
“Huh? Argh! Right. Uhm, he might be in his room? Because of his heart glasses? He can’t use them around us.”
Ryan groaned and tapped his forehead against the frame. “Right. I remember. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome?”
Micah wasn’t in his room. He knocked. Waited. Pounded on the door in case someone was asleep, or ignoring him. Nobody opened up and he couldn’t hear a thing.
That music still played …
On a hunch, Ryan followed it back across the walkway into the shaded guild building with a furrow in his brows.
String instruments echoed off the walls, and parts of it rose like quick steps. A hint of a string drum trembled and ever so often, cymbals crashed together.
It was faint and grew louder as he delved further into the halls but still had a scratchy, haunting quality to it.
The music slowed. A flute took the lead. Or an oboe? He didn’t know his instruments. It was shadowed by a piano note every other moment, and what sounded like a cello.
Music was already wondrous—creating something from nothing—but he thought of Darren and bands where dozens of people came together to create something more.
The oboe stopped and the music swelled into an energetic swirl like a festival crowd.
Ryan floundered. His imagination fell short. He’d never seen a ballroom dance, so he imagined tavern dancers.
As he turned a corner and looked through an open door, one of those dancers shrunk to the form of Micah, moving in a dimly lit room by himself.
His hands held an imaginary partner. He wore gym clothes and the fancy shoes he’d ordered and walked a large circle with practiced steps. Back and forth, side to side, always turning.
He squatted out of the blue and pushed up, arms out like he was holding someone, then chuckled to himself.
He frowned. Scowled. In a flash, he ran across the room, sometimes pressing down on the larger sole of his mismatched shoe. Getting used to the fit?
He ran back, took a breath, and straightened his back again, arms out, as he began to turn again.
Ryan stood in the doorway. Micah spun, his eyes brushed past him, and he jumped.
“RYAN!”
I should have left, part of him realized, before he noticed me.
“You scared me. Uhm, what are you— I mean— I was just practicing?” He gave an awkward smile.
“I saw.”
“How did you— Ohh, the music!”
“Are you allowed to be in here?”
“I’m not sure? Our instructor always leaves the record player here and the door was unlocked so I thought, ‘Hey, I can use the practice.’”
“Aren’t you good? At dancing, I mean.”
“Not yet? Maybe? I’m getting better! Most of the others have more experience than me. I’m still getting used to my uhm … my shoe. Practice helps. And I want to make sure the party will be perfect.” He trailed off. “It’s lame, I know. I’m sorry you had to see it.”
“No. It’s not. It’s very … you.”
Micah stared awkwardly. The music fiddled out and left a scratchy breeze in the air.
Ryan looked at the machine, suddenly worried it was broken.
“Oh, it hit the end of the track. I have to uhm, reset the needle,” Micah said and turned as if he’d remembered something. “Hey, have you ever seen a record player before?”
“Not really, but it’s fine.” Ryan pointed a thumb back. “I’ll give you some privacy—”
He called, “Wasn’t there something you wanted?”
“No. Uh, I thought I would drop by and check on you. I have our boat tickets … which I didn’t bring. I’ll leave. You won’t need them for another week or so.”
“Wait!”
Ryan stopped.
Slowly, uncertain, Micah asked, “I can teach you …?”
“What?”
“I mean, not if you don’t want to. I realized having company might make this seem a little less sad”—he gestured around himself—”but also, you don’t know how to dance, do you? I can teach you.”
If there had been anyone else in the room at all, Ryan would have said no. If Micah had been any other person, he would have thought he was pranking him.
He looked so earnest, though. He always looked earnest when he spoke up. It was one of his best qualities.
Ryan said, “I don’t know.”
Suddenly, Micah was all excitement and smiles. “C’mon! It’ll be fun. I can show you the basics at least, or what we’re learning— Oh, and how the record player works!”
Ryan glanced back at the dark hallway. Someone could turn the corner at any time.
Micah was caught up in his own momentum again, probably not listening, but if he spoke up to say no, he would. He wouldn’t be happy but he would.
Ryan didn’t speak up.
His shoes carried him across the old laminate to the table, because he was curious about the record player, and he was curious about their lessons.
“Look, these discs have these like, tiny grooves in them—well, it’s one long groove in a spiral,” Micah was saying. “Wait, no, I have to start at the beginning. Uhm, you know how when we sing, we make the air shake a little? Vibrations?”
“Sure?”
“Like, some people can break wine glasses by singing, by making them vibrate too much?”
“Uh, suure?”
“Actually, when you sing, you can make all sorts of stuff vibrate, and if you make a needle vibrate and attach it to a slowly spinning disc like this, you can cut grooves into the disc—no touching.”
Ryan pulled his hand away. “You touched it.”
“It’s delicate, I mean.”
“Mhm.”
“So if you set another needle to the grooves later and spin it, the needle vibrates the way it did when it heard the singing, and that somehow produces the same sounds …? And uhm, you attach a horn to the needle to make those louder?”
“You have no idea, do you?”
“I do! He only explained it once. But it’s super cool, isn’t it? Look.” He set the needle to the edge and turned a crank on the side. The disc began to pick up speed and that hollow wind turned to music.
It was uncomfortably loud standing this close to the horn, but it sounded amazing.
“Like magic.” He wondered if Connor could have explained it better, or if he could build something like this.
Somehow, the thought complicated the wonder. Where were the people who normally went into this? Dozens of people reduced to a chunk of wood and metal.
“Yep! You can do the same thing with magic, too. Making recordings, amplifying your voice, and stuff.”
“No shit, magic can do anything.” He thought of the spellbook he’d left on his bed and felt guilty.
“Well yeah, if you put it that way … C’mon,” Micah said and stepped back, “we can’t miss our cue.”
“Cue?”
“In a moment, when the music changes, we walk onto the dance floor with our partners and stand in a large circle. You face her and bow, like this.” He demonstrated. It was shallow, but his posture was good. “And the girl curtsies, and then you hold each other and begin like this.”
Ryan copied him standing off to the side. He leaned forward and back to see what he was doing.
“One hand to her side, not too far down, not too far up. If there’s a height difference, you have to be careful not to risk, uhm, you know.”
“Yeah, go on.” Ryan felt a little stupid with his arm in the air.
“Your other hand holds hers gently. And you keep enough space to fit her parents’ glares between you.”
The comment caught him off-guard, and Ryan help but crack a smile, “What?”
“Nothing.” Micah dropped his pose and looked at him. “Let me see— Lift your elbow a little higher and uhm … huh. Moving on.”
Ryan corrected himself and glanced around for mistakes. “Is this right?”
“Yep! Moving on.” Micah moved his feet then, walking those box-like steps in a small circle.
Whenever they would carry him too far away, he broke off and started over. Ryan copied those as well and glanced at the open door.
“These are the default steps. One, two, three, one, two, three—you do a slight turn. Now, this is for our dance at the Registry. We have a lot of space and we’re learning a basic choreography so there are other things that might not be standard. If you’re somewhere with less space to move, like on a crowded ballroom floor or in a tavern, you adjust your steps as so …”
He changed them to be slower, smaller, dancing in a wandering circle.
“If you have a slow song where you want to dance on the spot, or there’s barely any room to move in a crowd, you can step back and forth, back and forth, like this—”
“How about we stick to one for now?” Ryan didn’t want to learn about something that wasn’t for him.
Slow dancing? Dancing in a crowd? Yeah, right. He’d get his teeth kicked in if he was so lucky.
He had the thought and almost left right then and there. Somehow, he would rather be fighting a burning treant right now than be here, doing this.
“Sorry, sorry! I’m getting ahead of myself. So uhm, the basic steps are still these. Got it?”
Ryan thought so. He checked his feet and walked it a few times. It was pretty simple.
“You aren’t really supposed to look at your feet. Chin up, shoulders back, your back straight, eyes forward. Imagine you’re looking in her eyes. Everything else is ‘amateurish’.”
“Hm. Well. I’m practicing this for the first time so …” He looked at his feet.
Micah watched him, and Ryan felt like an idiot holding his hands out to a partner who didn’t exist. He stopped.
“No, keep going! You were doing great! Like this?” Micah started again, so Ryan let himself follow.
“Uhm, your steps are too large. I think. Look at mine?”
“I have longer legs than you,” he grumbled.
“Doesn’t matter. Your partner might not, or the other dancers might not. You might step on her toes or bump into another pair.”
He hadn’t considered that.
“For our choreography, we have to be equidistant from each other so it looks nice, but it won’t be as important when you’re alone with someone else.”
It took a little longer to fix this issue than his posture, but it was similar to walking a sword form. He got the hang of it pretty quickly.
“Try keeping your chin up?”
He did.
“Figures,” Micah said with a fake, angry squint, “of course, you would be a natural at this.”
“I’m barely doing anything!”
“Yeah, right—”
“No, really. Is this all there is to it? This is easy. Why do you need so many lessons to learn it?”
“No. It’s not easy! And your steps are still too big. You’re trampling all over her feet, you goat!”
“Goat?” Ryan chuckled.
“I have an idea. Come on.” Micah led him onto the dance floor. The light dimmed further from the walls and the music lost its volume, but the result was a space that was a little more … wonderland.
Ryan looked up and wondered what it would look like to cast [Dancing Lights] above them now.
He looked down and saw Micah holding a hand out to him. “Take my hand.”
“No.” His response was automatic. “Why?”
“Because there are more moves—”
“So show me, and I’ll copy you side-by-side.”
“Yeah, but they’re part of a larger routine—”
“No.”
His voice still sounded hopeful. “It works better if you have a partner?”
“So what? What if someone …?” He stepped back and glanced at the door, but didn’t finish the question.
Micah followed his eyes. “I’ve been doing this for a while, Ryan, and you’re the first person to walk in on me. I think only because you were looking for me …?”
“Yeah, but—”
He took his arm. His hand brushed down to his wrist and pulled him back. “C’mon Ryan, give it a try. Please?”
Ryan let himself be pulled. “Micah, I’m not sure I want to do this.”
“You’re not going to get expelled for dancing, Ryan.”
Expelled?
“Take my hand.” He guided him. “Your other hand goes on, uhm, my waist. Wow, this is confusing from the other side. I feel like I’m trying to reach something on a high shelf.”
His one hand settled on his shoulder and the other cupped his. His grip was surprisingly firm, despite how gently Ryan held him, as if he was afraid he would somehow break.
He should have known. Micah fought monsters. He fell from cliffs. He blocked golem strikes and stood defiant. He wasn’t fragile. Ryan was.
He thought about letting go but for some reason, held on tighter instead and looked in his eyes, his resilient smile, as the music played in the background.
A single muted butterfly took flight in his stomach and had nowhere to go.
“Okay, here comes our cue aaand … step back— Wait, no! Forward, forward! You’re leading. I forgot. Go, go, go!”
He rushed to reverse his leg and Ryan followed, awkwardly trying to find the rhythm while Micah hurried to catch up with the tune.
“One, two, three,” he counted in a rapid pace, “one, two, three, and turn. Ah, too far, too far. See the markings on the floor? We have to walk in a large circle.”
“Do we start over?”
“No. I should have said it before—two, three, one, two, three, and turn.” He chuckled. “You don’t have to overcorrect, Ryan.”
Ryan had tried to hit a marking but there were so many in the same area. He wasn’t sure which ones meant what.
Despite what he had taught him, Micah looked around to check every detail as they slowly … danced.
He was holding his hand, had one hand on the side of his ribs. They were dancing. Slowly, shakily, with the most steps, but they were dancing. If he hadn’t been holding him, Ryan would have been shaking. Instead, he bunched up the fabric of his shirt.
Micah didn’t seem to notice.
“Have you done this before?” He tried to keep his voice steady. It was surprisingly easy after he got past the first frog in his throat.
“What, taught someone? No. Well, I try to teach Lisa because she doesn’t listen but uhm …” He trailed off as he focused on his steps for a moment. “Ms. Denner does that now. She’s trying to whip those lagging behind back into shape.”
Ryan found that odd to imagine. Their principal wasn’t really strict.
Still …
“No, I meant this. Dancing. With another guy?” He couldn’t sound too interested, but he had to ask.
“Huh? Oh, no. I mean, we wanted to—”
“You did?”
“Yeah, because whenever one or more girls are absent, the guys without partners are benched and that’s boring, soo we asked. Our instructor said no. He’s super strict and said it wasn’t ‘proper’.”
He lifted one hand to make air-quotes with a roll of his eyes, then immediately held onto Ryan again and rushed to fall back into their rhythm. They stumbled.
“Oh.”
Of course, the teachers would come down on that.
Of course, Micah wouldn’t give it a second thought. ‘Expelled’. He thought Ryan was afraid because they might be breaking school rules, and he was on thin ice after the exam.
He didn’t know if that was amazing or tragic.
He didn’t even give it a second thought.
Micah glanced back at the record player and smiled. “Okay, so in a moment, instead of turning there will be this move where you turn to the side and hold your arm out— Oh, and we stop moving when we do it.”
“What?”
“You stand still and turn, holding your one arm at an angle. Your other hand holds the tip of my fingers, and your partner spins away.”
Ryan thought he knew what he meant. They stopped and—
“Whee.” He twirled away along his arm and held onto his fingertips. “That’s fun. Why don’t we get to do that?”
“I thought this was part of your choreography?”
“No, I mean us guys. We only get to lead and support. The girls get to do all the fun stuff.”
“And now?”
“You give a slight tug to make it look like you’re pulling me back and—whee.” He twirled the other way and they found each other again. They moved on. Just like that.
Ryan followed his lead, even though he was the one who was supposed to be doing it, and their steps became more confident. His grip relaxed.
With nearly any other guy, he would have felt far more uncomfortable right now. He would have had to quit for fear of embarrassing himself, or would have had to stand around with his hands in his pockets and a guilty conscious.
He didn’t have that issue with Micah. Even before. He would have had butterflies, but he’d almost never had those kinds of thoughts. He wasn’t sure why.
Maybe because he’d thought he had a chance at something real? And apparently, not even the ugly part of him which came up with those sorts of fantasies had wanted to ruin it.
Or maybe part of him had known it was a lie, even then. Either way, he struggled to think of him in that way even if he wanted to.
Micah was special. He was practically family, he was with Anne, and Ryan wouldn’t get between that, he was one of his few friends and … he’d hurt him, whether he knew it or not … whether Ryan thought about it or not. Which he hadn’t, until now.
Once, he had thought of him differently, but it took something like this, dancing with him in a dimly lit room by themselves, to hammer it in:
Ryan didn’t love him anymore.
Micah smiled. “Okay now, you do this move where you hold her waist as she pushes off and you sort of … place her to the side?”
“That thing you did with the squat?”
His eyes widened, and Ryan almost stepped on his shoe as Micah stumbled. They found an awkward slow rhythm again, out of tune with the music.
“That was just me being stupid. I was like, imagining a move, but a little different, and uhm, you have to practice it with your dance partner anyway—?”
“Spit it out?”
“You lift your partner up over your head?”
“Oh. That sounds … difficult?” Ryan could probably lift someone over his head. He was stronger than Micah.
He nodded. “It’s super difficult! And you have to practice because you have to trust each other, and know how to balance each other. You have to be strong and she has to keep her posture up, which requires more strength in some ways, and uhm …”
He caught his breath and checked their steps.
Ryan took the opportunity. “With ‘she,’ you mean Anne?”
“ … Yes.”
He slowed and waited until Micah looked at him again before he asked, “Are you going to ask her out?”
“Yes. I mean, I want to—”
“So you will. When?”
“At the party? I was thinking, if I do it beforehand, it might be weird, but on the day of, we’ll be wearing suits and dresses, and everything will be perfect and uhm— I’ll also have had more time to impress her by then, in the Tower? And like, get to know her better.”
“I think she’s already pretty impressed by you, Micah.”
“You do?”
They turned and Ryan looked away. “Of course. You’ve been hanging out all week. She never said no when you asked if she wanted to go climbing, except for when she had something else planned. She trusts you in combat. She hears you out when you have a plan.”
After another few steps, Ryan glanced down when they turned again. He caught a bit of a smile on Micah’s face.
He wanted to go on, compliment him, reassure. The words didn’t come. Ryan looked at his legs and focused on the steps.
One, two, three, one, two, three.
“Thank you,” Micah said.
“Thank you for teaching me.”
“It’s not a problem. You could have signed up for the lessons, you know? Even if you didn’t want to attend the party.”
Ryan shrugged. He knew Micah was right. He could have signed up and danced with Lisa. It would have been fun.
“Want to start over?” Micah asked. “Do it from the top? We can stay for however long we want, but I think the dean and some guards will go through here in a few hours so uhm …”
A few hours …
Ryan awkwardly scratched his arm. “Yeah, uh, how about we practice, you show me in which order all the different moves go, and we try it from it the top?”
“Sure!”
They did that, and Micah ran back to reset the needle.
Ryan watched the dark hallway and listened. He heard nothing that might interrupt them. He wasn’t sure if he was glad or not.
There was a twitch in his leg, a fear in his chest. Something telling him to run before it was too late. To stop thinking. Nothing good ever happened when Ryan got lost in his own thoughts.
He didn’t.
At least now, he knew roughly what to imagine when he pictured the four of them at the Registry’s ball while he stayed in Cairn.
At least now, he could imagine what it look be like when Micah asked Anne out, and she said yes, and they had fun in high society while he was with a family that wouldn’t want him anymore.
Ryan could see the future stretch out ahead of him, and all he wanted to do was curl up in bed.
“Hey, Ryan! Can we do a proper walk-in?”
When the music started, Micah took his arm and marched them onto the dance floor, leading and half-dragging him in his excitement. They faced each other and Ryan bowed. Micah bowed back with a chuckle.
“It’s weird, not seeing you curtsy.”
“That’s weird, but not dancing with a guy?”
“No?”
Of course not. Ryan took his hand, and the urge to run left. The music picked up and they moved.
“—one, two, three,” Micah counted under his breath, “one, two, three, spin!”
Ryan twisted and thrust his arm out. Micah spun away from him. He gave a tiny tug and instead of spinning back, the guy marched back with a smile.
“Oh, we didn’t practice the hop.”
“I just set you to the side?”
“Well, you support your dance partner. She gives a little push to make it look elegant but … we don’t have to look elegant. We’re just having fun.”
Was he?
“Okay, so one, two, three, and—”
As the music swelled into a swirling crowd, Ryan held his waist as Micah pushed off. He held him up and lifted him in a tall arch to the side.
Micah laughed with a light in his eyes. As soon as his shoes touched down, he hit the ground running. He took both of Ryan’s arms and dragged him into a loose spin that ignored all the rules he had just been taught. His own free style.
Ryan went with it, caught up in his momentum as he always was. In that moment, he absolutely, truly hated him.
Your name was Flower Boy.
But the music went on, and the moment passed, and he smiled as one of his best friends taught him how to dance. He realized, this would probably be the first and last time he got to do it with another guy.
And he realized, he should have left before Micah saw him. He never would have known what he was missing.