Original Content

Anyway, over four thousand people came.

The situational errors hardly mattered at that point. Staff had their hands full with desperately finding a way to adhere to fire codes and not commit federal crimes with unauthorized large gatherings. There was a non-insignificant chance that their oversight would catch the eye of Homeland Security, and all the orange peacebindings in the world, denoting that weapons were “just part of a costume and were completely harmless”, wouldn't keep the situation from devolving into Waco 2: Post-9/11 Boogaloo. This danger had reared its head the previous year due to an ill-conceived advertising campaign. A nerdy television show had engaged in a guerrilla marketing stunt in which illuminated signs of their most popular characters would be posted all over the city. The characters, of course, were not recognized, but exposed wires leading to strange circuit boards and masses of batteries caused a panic. However, in a few years, an actual terrorist attack would hit the city, and the convention hall, and all entrances to the connected hotels and malls, would be covered by security staff with metal detectors, wands, and pat-downs the TSA would be proud of, looking for improvised explosive devices.

But we're getting side-tracked.

AniMass rapidly adapted to its current configuration, taking over the second biggest convention center in the Greater Boston area, alongside one of the largest hotels in South Boston. Two further hotels were so occupied by anime nerds as to be demi-official, and several more became majority-nerd population within a five minute walk of the convention center. Japanese restaurants for a mile around, and Chinese and Korean restaurants within a half-mile, became completely overrun for the duration of the convention. The landscape of Chinatown, the only source of financially-accessible East Asian snacks in Boston, was shaped in part by the periodic pulse of humanity created by AniMass. In 2007, during the fifth running of the convention, a group of Naruto cosplayers, overstaying their welcome at a third-floor restaurant in Chinatown, even outlasting most of the staff, stopped a fire that would have otherwise consumed the House of $3.99, the most value-centric, if not the tastiest, or even most edible, restaurant in Boston. Their chicken, as Alan experienced in a particularly budget-stretched year, was eminently, undeniably, “food”, and after a few years of it, he'd grown to like it.

But even the Hynes Convention Hall was not enough to contain the convention. Nothing was, really, nor could ever be, as like a jello, the convention would expand to match its container and then jiggle a little about it, but an attempt was made. A good fifth of the convention took place not in the advertised convention hall, but in fact, in the Sheraton Hotel. Unofficially, the convention's parties and more intriguing invite-only gatherings covered all sorts of areas within the hotel, including a swimsuit-cosplay-only gathering on the seventeenth floor pool and exercise facility, which Alan still wasn't sure actually existed. He'd just run into several bathing-suit-clad individuals in elevators over the years, one of which was brushing his teeth while explaining that he had to get back to the swimming pool, but was too drunk to remember what floor it was on.

Again, we're getting sidetracked.

The three bottom floors of the hotel were consumed by the convention. The first wasn't subject to any official events, but as the entrance and the floor on which the hotel's official restaurant and bar were situated, it was swamped by nerds to an occupationally-hazardous degree for the duration of the weekend. About ninety percent of the occupants were nerds, and the remaining ten were perpetually confused by everything that was happening around them.

Up on the third floor, several small conference rooms hosted the kind of convention panels that would have been at home in a small convention of the mid-90s- intimate discussions of the greatest works of certain directors, retrospectives on works of great artistic merit, and sharing of the hottest, most obscure trash that anime nerds could get their hands on. Nearby was the oldest room of the anime convention, and if you regarded it as a space that persisted across conventions and anime clubs, the oldest room of the Anime Fandom – The Manga Library. Here, the staff of the convention shared their favorite comics, and people read them. Now, when the anime convention had become such a major social gathering, it was a neglected, quiet place, but back in the day? Well, it had been the entire point in 1989. Now, in 2008, similar scenes played out in small fandoms across the world – in Alan's experience, for example, a January meetup in Worcester of the New England Keyboard Enthusiasts, wherein a bunch of computer nerds shared their favorite keyboards – a hobby with depths and breadths of knowledge that'd put a World War Two tank enthusiast or replica train hobbyist to shame – but here, the mere sharing of what one had was desperately out of date. And across from it, tying the most outdated to the most current, was a skybridge from the hotel to the convention hall, leading directly from the small lobby outside of the panels and library to the Secondary Main Hall, where the latest and hottest Anime Music Videos and live comedy skits were being played all weekend.

The second floor, however, was where the things that mattered the most to Alan took place. For one, yesterday, was the sign-in to the convention itself. The line had run from the second floor of the hotel, out into the mall, doubling back on itself and into a side room where people were actually processed, but he was incredibly thankful that that was what he'd gone through, rather than the line for people who hadn't reserved their spot months in advance. That line… Well, it'd gotten longer over the past few hours, and now it snaked down, doubling over two or three times, from the third floor of the convention hall all the way down to the first. Secondly, there was the 24 Hour Game room, the secret gem of the convention. In a ballroom adjacent to two separate balconies, hundreds of arcade machines and video game consoles lined the walls and formed aisles, where all sorts of exotic, rare games could be played… and importantly, they could be played any time. If it was 3AM, and all of your friends had gone to bed, but you were feeling insecure and stressed and just couldn't sleep? Well, a game of Pop 'n' Music would keep you company for however many hours it took you to get tired.

Across the way, however, was Alan's destination, and frankly, it terrified him.

At the center of the second floor of the Sheraton was a massive ballroom, more than prepared to host the marriage of a Kennedy or some minor royal, and just barely equipped to handle a bunch of dorks in wedding dress costume variations attempting to pirouette. Alan had stepped into it a couple times before – in 2005 and 2007, on Saturday night, it had been used for a big comedy show, but on Fridays? That was the time for romance, for legitimate feelings, and that was something Alan would prefer to avoid. Happy couples scared him.

But, he had an obligation. A commitment to be here, at three PM, to accompany some strange, aggressively friendly girl he ran into at the opening ceremonies. His friends were at an industry panel for Funimation, checking out latest anime hits to be brought officially to America, finding out what voice actors were performing their favorite characters, but he was here… Staring at a line of couples, looking longingly into each others' eyes, winding their way past brass posts and velvet ropes into the ballroom. He didn't dare take a step towards it, not on his own…

“Hey there, dweeb,” Sawyer said.

Alan jumped, and Sawyer laughed. “You're pretty twitchy, aren't you?” she said, giving him a walk-by elbowing in the ribs, which he also jumped at. Unlike in the darkness of the Opening Ceremonies, or the distance of the Ninja 101 panel, he could really take her in. She was only a few inches shorter than him, relatively tall for a girl, though he supposed his standards were warped by anime. Her hair was short-cropped, only just reaching past the bottom of her ears, but it puffed out energetically and chaotically, like a broom, or a brush, or… Now that he thought about it, he wasn't entirely sure it wasn't a wig.

She was wearing a just-barely-above the knee skirt, thigh-high stockings, combat boots, and a purple t-shirt over a purple and light-purple long-sleeve striped shirt, along with a messenger bag slung over a shoulder and across her chest. It was certainly a look… And then, when recognition clicked in Alan's head, he felt like an idiot. Sawyer. Sawyer the Cleaner. From that one action anime. She's in a casual cosplay. Still, it was a really cute look…

When that hit his brain, along with a minor bout of arousal, he nearly threw up. That feeling had been firmly associated with last night. Or the nightmares of last night, he hoped. The only difference was if his weekend was ruined, or all future weekends were ruined.

Sawyer looked back at him. Skunk-eye mascara and eyeliner, along with what he initially thought was a choker. Instead, it was a damn good theatrical approximation of scars and stitches running all the way around her neck. It alarmed him how much that excited him, and then he doubled over in psychosomatic pain.

“You uh… You okay, Alan?” she asked.

He threw a hand in the air. “Yeah, totally, just give me a moment.”

“I appreciate that you might have issues, but spots in this are limited, and you gotta keep walking. This con is slammed.” He wasn't sure how to parse her voice – at once admonishing and accommodating. He puzzled over it just long enough to feel the warmth of her hand, tugging him along by the wrist. He stumbled forward, but kept putting one foot in front of the other, defeating gravity with each step. Fuck, the only thing worse than thinking about last night was thinking about disappointing someone. His thoughts were racing, but that was the same concept as a mantra, a chant, a source of security and control, right? Just repeat something over and over again, try it – You're fucked, you're fucked, you're fucked.

Nope.

Alan resolved firmly to think as little as possible, but that had little effect. It wasn't even effective as a mantra – Plenty of other thoughts, relating to everything he'd ever done wrong, every way he'd ever failed to meet expectations, the happy, surprised look on his mother's face when he'd gotten straight As back in fifth grade once – filled his head. To be honest, they were always there, just too quiet to hear, but it wasn't like he ever stopped thinking this shit. He hated it, and -

Oh.

He was in the ballroom. He'd never seen it with all the lights up. Alan was used to it being filled wall to wall with chairs, ringed in speakers, and fronted by a bald guy or two making sardonic comments into a microphone up on stage while flanked by multiple huge projection screens showing hilariously terrible anime. That always had seemed like what the room was for, but now, it felt so silly that he'd ever felt that way. Chandeliers hung blazing from the ceiling, and an array of people – smiling couples, nervous individuals, pseudo-confident blowhards and truly confident ladykillers – or mankillers, he supposed – stood in ten-foot squares demarcated by blue painter's tape. One of the projector screens pointed at the stage from above, providing a top-down view of whatever would be happening.

When she let go of his wrist, Alan came to the slow, dawning realization that they were in one of those taped-off squares together, deep into the room, against the far wall. He could see a water cooler up against the wall – con staff always made sure there were tons of those around for people were were feeling unwell, he was one of those people, he'd just slip off-

Sawyer grabbed him by the shirt, and the seams of the collar pulled tight against his throat. It stopped him in his tracks, though part of him that he really didn't want to interrogate wanted to throw his weight against it, just to see what would happen. He flickered between common sense, concern, and abandonment, and let himself lean just a little. She held firm.

“You're not leaving. You came here, you're not going to leave me…” She trailed off, and giggled at the opportunity. “Hanging.” She tugged a bit harder, and between the nausea and an existential sort of horniness, Alan stood upright and held fast.

Sawyer giggled at him. Alan had to lock his knees to stay upright, and thought of how countless internet comments made oblique comments about never, ever doing that – Though he never learned exactly what “locking his knees” meant, or why all these military types laughed endlessly at people who didn't know not to do it – It made him wish he'd kept closer contact with the high school friend of his who'd escaped from Best Buy Loss Prevention into the Navy. But if it meant keeping the lower half of his body firm in whatever way it took for every other part of him to go limp in panic, he was doing it.

He snatched enough awareness out of his panicked haze to see Sawyer smiling at him. “Dude, I don't know how you're managing it, but you are doing everything wrong. It's kind of impressive.” Suddenly and forcefully, her left hand grabbed him by the right shoulder, the edge of her right hand slammed against his spine, and one of her ankles wrapped around one of his, knocking him off-balance and pulling his leg forward.

And suddenly, he was comfortable.

He couldn't define, let alone describe, the difference in his stance. “How did you do that?” Alan asked, bewildered.

She laughed, and then sighed. “How do people not know how to do that?” He felt her stare before he saw it, and moved to meet it with his own eyes.

“Uh, thanks,” he said.

“Most people aren't smart enough to thank me,” Sawyer said. “Maybe you're alright.”

Harsh feedback came from the array of speakers.

“Ears and eyes up, Alan,” she said.

Up on stage, two figures spun out from behind stage curtains. A woman and a man, her long dress and his tailcoat trailed out behind them, tracing elegant arcs in the air. The man's tailcoat was bright red, and he wore a top hat, which elicited a half-cringe out of Alan, unsure if he got the reference or not. The woman was wearing a slightly-truncated wedding dress that Alan recognized as being right out of Sailor Moon – the manga version moreso than the anime, he thought with confidence – which was comforting. If he was going to be taught formal dance by anyone, he supposed that a Sailor Moon fan would probably know what to do. They spun till they clasped hands, facing the audience at the same time, and bowed dramatically. Several people clapped.

“Welcome to Ballroom Dance 101, AniMass!” they said in unison, before chuckling. They turned, attempting to whisper to each other, but it came through the lavalier microphones anyway. “Hey, I thought you were supposed to say that first?” They gasped. “Jinx!” They said, pointing at each other. “Flip you for the lead?” the guy said.

“Sure, but -” she gestured to the dress, in the vague direction that pockets would be placed in.

“Got you covered,” he said, producing a half-dollar from a suit pocket. He winked at her, put it on the back of his hand, and flipped it. It spun through the air, and he caught it in a white-gloved hand. He kept it closed.

“C'mooooon,” she whined.

He waited just long enough for her to stamp one high-heeled shoe into the stage, with a pout on her face. Dramatically, he flipped his wrist up, revealing the coin to her. “Damnit,” she cursed under her breath, and took a quick circuit around the stage before returning to one of the two standing microphones.

“Hi there, dance enthusiasts!” she said, beaming. “And dance newbies! And dance-people-who-are-just-kinda-here-under-duress,” she said in a clear joke, but Alan felt seen. That earned a chuckle from the crowd. “Today, you're going to learn how to dance! You may or may not be headed to the dance later tonight-” Sawyer squeezed Alan's hand, and his blood ran cold – “But either way, I'm going to teach you how to dance! Formally!” The presenter winked theatrically. “Once you know what to do, you'll be the coolest person at every dumb wedding you get forced into!” That set off some alarm bells in Alan, and the rest of the crowd. The presenter saw this, and blushed. “I mean forced to attend! Like, as family! Anyway~” she said, trailing off. She motioned towards her on-stage partner, who shrugged awkwardly. She groaned, and ran off-stage, returning with several card-stock numbers that she distributed across the stage. There were one through four in red, and one through four in blue, arranged in a way that Alan couldn't quite parse.

“Dance is the meeting of beats and feets. You've got eight beats, four steps, and two feets, and that's all it takes to do a simple waltz.” She grabbed her partner's hands, and she did a simple box step – stepping from one corner, to another, to another, to a sweep, and back again, and he followed her smoothly. “Now, the lead takes the red numbers, the follow takes the blue, and if you don't get it, copy us!”

Somehow, Alan had expected something more from this. More knowledge, more expertise, like he'd be able to simulate everything in his mind before he made a single step.

There wasn't nearly enough time, and Sawyer grabbed his other hand, taking her first step. He'd been in too much of a panic to follow competently, and within half a beat, she'd picked up on it. With a slight shift of weight and hands, she slipped his weight over, and he stumbled into the correct step.

Alan yelped.

The next step went the same way, and the third, and the fourth. They made it through an entire box without Alan failing, but also without Alan willfully making a single step. He was fully prepared to stumble through the next measure, but Sawyer stopped.

“Come on, dude. Work with me,” she said, and she gave him one more measure to get with the program. Next, when she moved her left foot to position 1A, he moved his right to 1B, and moved his left in queue. She grinned at him. “Keep up, dork.”

And he did.

It was challenging, considering that he had all the rhythm of a drum section run by Furbies running out of batteries, but he managed it. Every step she took was a challenge, but he'd played Dance Dance Revolution. The measure between success and failure was in milliseconds, not tenths for him, and that was enough for most people. He already knew she wasn't “most people”, but here she was. There was music playing – probably some Debussy piece, you know, the standard waltz stuff – but Alan couldn't hear a thing over his heartbeat.

Step after step, he matched her.

No matter how he tried, she always held the lead.

Even when he caught up to her, she just skipped one cycle again, leaving him stumbling again into her arms. The idea of being coordinated enough to do that as a conscious choice was absurd to him. By the time he was moving fast enough to keep some slack in his arms between them, he was laughing uncontrollably.

“I knew you were a loser,” Sawyer said between steps, “But this is impressive.” She paused, while the presenters explained a more complex step, and she and Alan puzzled it out with their feet over a minute and a half. “I mean, are you seriously this starved for affection?”

Alan winced, barely keeping his limbs in lock-step. “Yeah,” he said, wounded.

Sawyer bit her lip. A solid 95% of the time, lip-biting was a sexual move, but this felt regretful to Alan, and he was fucked out of his mind enough to trust it right now. “Sorry. “

They moved in silence for a few rotations, in part due to awkwardness, in part due to mastering the complexity of the step. “That was a little far,” she said.

“I'm used to it,” he replied.

“That really doesn't help.”

He sighed. Any other time, he'd feel incredibly validated by this exchange, but today? “You shouldn't feel bad for me. I don't deserve it.” He winced as he said it. It was the kind of thing that a self-aggrandizing sort of low self-esteem individual would say, begging for attention. He knew people like that – hell, Clive was one of them, and it was part of why he, if pressed for an opinion, would have to say that he couldn't stand Clive. Alan knew how the exchange was supposed to go. An awkward denial, and then the conversation would trail off, never to be continued again. He'd stepped into a trap of his own making.

“Do you?” Sawyer asked.

This wasn't part of the script.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Should I trust you-” she started, and he interrupted with a “No,”, before she continued to an “on that?”

He took a deep breath. At this point, his movements were subconscious. “Yeah.”

And somehow, through the long moments of silence and the even longer periods of conversation, they'd successfully made it through the class.

“Alan?”

Alan nodded at her, not knowing what he was confirming. “Yeah?”

“You're coming with me to the formal ball.”

“Yeah,” he said.

She looked at him, slowly running her eyes from his feet to his head. “That Evangelion cosplay is jank. It's not gonna pass.”

Alan looked at her blankly. He knew it was true, but he couldn't say “Yeah, my formal-ish costume sucks because I might have murdered someone in it”, let alone try to compensate for it.

Sawyer looked deep into his eyes, and some kind of recognition dawned on her. “Go to room 431 in the Sheraton. Knock on the door, and say Sawyer sent you. They'll set you up for the ball, okay?”

He felt incredibly tired. This would have been the best couple hours of his life. Manic pixie dream girl shit, you know? But that “would have” hung heavy.

“Okay,” he said.

She could see it in his eyes, and slapped her hands to his cheeks. “Look at me.”

His eyes drooped to the floor.

“Look at me, Alan.”

The words dragged his eyes up, and he stared into her eyes. Brown. He didn't know why he expected otherwise – most people had brown eyes, and just because she felt like the main character of some anime, it didn't mean that she'd be purple or red or gold or something equally improbable.

But there was an intensity to them that puzzled him.

“Go to Room 431, okay?”

He nodded. “Yeah.”

She didn't let go. “Say it again.”

“Yeah,” he said, but the sound just seemed to make her frustrated.

“That's not…” she turned away, still holding him, her cheek so frighteningly close to his lips. Something was processing through her mind at lightning speed, trying to untangle things Alan couldn't begin to guess at.

“Say my name,” she said, turning back to him.

And for once, he carried the implication through. “I'll go to Room 431, Sawyer.”

Sawyer smiled. “Thank you.”

In those words, Alan felt more validated than… well, ever. He wished that moment could go on forever.

It didn't. “I'll see you in a few hours, okay? Seven o'clock, right here. If you don't recognize me, I'll recognize you, got it?”

Against his smarter, more skeptical instincts, Alan nodded. “Yeah, Sawyer.”

She didn't trust such a simple response. “Promise?”

“Promise,” he said.

She grinned, showing shark-like teeth that could have been Alan's imagination or some very well-thought out cosplay. Either way, he liked it.

“Then give me your phone.”

“What?” Alan said.

“You heard me,” Sawyer said, and Alan couldn't exactly say no, so he pulled his phone out of his pocket and passed it to her.

“Oooh, fancy,” she said, playing with the twin-hinge mechanism, flipping the phone open and closed both vertically and horizontally. “It opens sideways for texting, right?”

Alan nodded.

“Good.” She flicked it open sideways again, and her fingers danced over the keys, faster than Alan could parse. She looked it over, seemed satisfied with whatever she had done, and then pulled her own phone out of a front pocket.

A RAZR, Alan noted, as she flipped it open with a thumb. Expensive.

She hit a button on his phone, and hers vibrated a second later. She tossed his back to him, and he fumbled it between his hands twice before catching it.

“I put me in your contacts, and sent me a message. We'll stay in touch, okay?”

Alan nodded, and then thought about it. “Uh, as what?”

She laughed, and pointed at her badge, like – no, as, Alan corrected himself – he was an idiot. “Sawyer, what else?”

Alan nodded dumbly.

“See you then, dweeb,” she said with a wave of her hand, and slipped off into one of the countless hallways of the convention, leaving him alone.

Fuck, he thought.