Steve may, in fact, jinxed it for Alan. He'd made it to the Formal Ball in time, of course, but they were a solid seven songs into well-timed waltzes, and Alan, despite being in an absolutely immaculate tailcoat'd cosplay, was still a lonely wallflower. The lights were low, though, so he felt unobtrusive – like he could hide in plain sight. It was the same feeling he'd felt so many years ago in high school, in a rich girl's basement, at a party full of fellow nerds where somehow, even surrounded by his own kind, he'd felt like a weirdo, an outsider, and felt better against the wall than near anyone else.
The music – the waltzes that gave everyone their pace, their marching orders, were clever remixes of classic anime tunes. Slow, heartfelt jam versions of popular series themes, and versions of the romance themes therein played – Alan had recognized the specific themes of at least three specific character pairs so far, and could see, with bemusement, how certain people in the dancing crowd got nervous at the right themes. He knew what it was like for things to get suddenly, desperately, “too real”, and he envied them, albeit with the distance of self-superiority. If he was entirely honest with himself, it was pretty cute. People could meet each other, or find the kind of connection that they'd otherwise relegate to the realm of pure fiction here – or, he thought, in this fandom.
“Enjoying the dance?”
The voice was not the one Alan expected to be teasing him. Instead, it was masculine, tired, but friendly, and Alan turned right and towards him. The man was a few inches taller than Alan, and a few years older.
“I-” Alan started, but ran out of words.
The man shifted slightly, pulling out a flask from a back pocket, and offered it to Alan.
Alan took it, and took a deep swig, before handing it back. “Not really.”
“I can tell,” he said. The man's gaze turned towards the crowd, and he smiled. “Most of them are having a good time, at least. Statistically, utilitarianism-wise, we're doing good.”
Alan snorted. He was clearly dealing with a pretentious fuck, but he couldn't deny the idea. “Yeah. It's good to see the newbies having fun.”
Alan had meant it derisively, but the man just smiled genuinely. “It really is. We've done so much to make things easier for them, you know?” He took a swig of his flask, then passed it back to Alan. “How old are you, now?”
“Twenty-three,” Alan responded.
“Fuck,” the man said, grabbing the flask back. “Why do you seem old?”
“I feel old,” Alan replied.
“I hear you,” the man said, letting the song play out before speaking again. A minute of unquestioned silence established more trust than a half-hour of words. “Why, though?”
Alan thought about this. “They're honest. The more you see, the less you want to be vulnerable. I bet they'd feel totally fine admitting that their favorite anime was Puni Puni Poemi.”
The man snickered. “You're not wrong there. But that's not why I feel old.”
“Yeah?” Alan asked. “What's your deal?”
“I have to protect them,” he said, “and it kind of makes me feel like a father.”
Alan smiled, reached high, and put his arm around the man's shoulders. “Anime club president, eh?”
“In a way,” the man said.
“I know how you feel,” Alan said. “It's not just wanting to protect them, though.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah,” Alan continued. “They're different. It's not a matter of taste, but we all have different things leading us into this fandom. It's not their fault, but even if I lead them along, they're not going to want, or respect, the same things I do.”
The man nodded. “You just have to ride the wave. Don't force anything with people, just read and respond. It's a dialogue.”
“Damn right,” Alan said. His voice twisted a little, revealing just how close he was to crying.
“Did you get stood up?” The man asked.
Alan slumped. “Dunno. Probably.”
The man grabbed Alan by the shoulders. “Come on. However you feel, you'd be better off sitting down.” And within a few seconds, they were at a table with intricate place-settings, and napkins folded in the shape of cranes.
“I have to admit, I'm pretty proud of this,” the man said.
“What?”
“Just stay here,” the man said. “I'm sure your date will be along.” Then, he dipped out of Alan's field of view, and no matter where he looked, Alan couldn't find him again.
The alcohol was hitting harder than Alan had expected. As he planted himself face-first into a serving plate that was intended to take a biscuit, he considered that maybe, the man had been rolling with Bacardi 151, or maybe Everclear, or some other demonically-high-alcohol-content concoction. When he closed his eyes completely, the world swam, and so, he kept a wide-open stare at the patterns on the tablecloth.
He wasn't sure how long he'd been staring when he heard someone say “Hey, Alan.”
The “hey” was stretched, as was the “Alan”, and both of them captured his attention, but not as much as what he saw when he sat upright. Sawyer, standing just off to the side of the table, was wearing an ankle-length gothic lolita dress, full of layers and frills, with complex patterns arranged in ways that dazzled the eyes. Alan's heart wrenched at how cute it was. Even if it wasn't for him, he counted himself lucky just to see it. Even her sleeves poofed out at the wrists, making elegance out of every motion she made. “Sawyer?” he said.
She snickered, and put her hand on his wrist. “Who else would it be? And, if you're feeling up to it-” she said, teasingly, “may I have this dance?”
Alan stammered out some syllables that were close enough to a “yes”, and Sawyer pulled him upright, manipulating his weight and momentum until he was stumbling, uncontrollably, towards the dance floor. A well-placed hand on his hip stopped him, and, bewildered, he looked up, into Sawyer's eyes. Her short hair, somehow, only made her look more feminine, in a flapper sort of way, and while her gothic lolita dress fluffed out aggressively, he could imagine her in some slip of a dress, striking out boldly-
She struck out boldly, pulling him into the first step of a waltz. Alan passively recognized it as being from a Final Fantasy game, while simultaneously being guided through the steps by Sawyer.
“You know, for someone who isn't even paying attention,” she said, “You're not awful.”
“Hey,” Alan protested, “I've got a lot on my mind.”
On the next step, she pulled him close to her, his breath running against her neck.
“Like what?” Sawyer asked.
Alan shivered. “Uh,” he said.
They spun out away from each other, unreeling their arms, and Alan's feet, remembering what was drilled into him hours ago, made the right moves. Out, in, meet, out, in-
He made it safely through the next rotation of steps.
“Go on,” Sawyer said, smiling at him. Alan desperately clawed for words, any words, anything that could keep him from being honest, as he watched her grow increasingly amused at his inability to speak. They passed through another rotation of steps before drawing close again.
“Last night was rough,” Alan said. Immediately, he wished he'd said something about the convention schedule, about his friends, about anything other than what he'd just said.
“How?” Sawyer asked. Her reply was too quick for him to come up with a convincing lie.
“I hit it off with a girl at a party last night,” he said, and trailed off. Another rotation passed, and as Sawyer drew close for a half-second partway through, she whispered “You player,” at him. If that liquor wasn't hitting as hard as it was, he'd be a puddle on the ground.
“We went back to her place, and then…” Alan realized what he was saying, and tried to veer away at the last moment. “It didn't go well,” he said, not technically lying.
After that, they danced in silence for the rest of the song. With every step, Alan couldn't stop worrying that he'd gone too far, but at the same time, Sawyer was still going, still dancing, so he couldn't have fucked things up too badly, right?
As the song wound down, she put her hands on both of his shoulders. “Let's sit out the next one, okay?” Her face was tilted down, eyes looking up through thick lashes. He loved that look. Why did she have to do that?
Sawyer walked them over to the bar, and ordered two rather stiff drinks - really just whiskey on the rocks with a bit of bitters squirted over them, and clinked her glass to Alan's. She then proceeded to chug down the entire glass, and Alan, not wanting to disappoint, did the same with his. "I have a feeling we're going to get real, so you know what, we might need another one of those," she said, with a pleased sigh. So, she ordered another round, and they both shotgunned them down.
"So, you embarrassed yourself," she said. "Nothing to be ashamed of, we all have off nights. Wasn't it some hockey player who said that you miss 100% of the shots you don't take?"
"It's not that," Alan said. His head was swimming, trying to find a diplomatic, safe way of expressing what he was feeling, or maybe just of escaping the subject, and he could feel the sudden influx of alcohol hitting his blood. "It wasn't like... rejection," he said. "Or like, finishing early, y'know?" His ears burned at the prospect of talking sex with Sawyer. "It was more like..." The whiskey hit, and Alan stumbled. Sawyer lunged, just barely catching him. "I should have never been there in the first place," he mumbled into her shoulder.
"Alan?" she said.
"Yeah?" He really didn't want to move from there, and she was handling his weight easily.
"What's your room number?"
Alan's whole body stiffened. There was no way things were going in this direction. He was embarrassing himself, how in the hell was she just throwing herself at him, and really, should he even be thinking about this kind of stuff, considering-
"Alan?" she said. He could hear the twinge of a smile in her voice.
He tried to talk, but only succeeded in stammering.
"I'm asking because this is hitting you a lot harder than me, and you might need someone to walk you back to your room. Not because I'm going to come in there with you."
Ah, Alan thought. That was both a relief and a disappointment. "1803," he said.
"Thank you. Now, let's sit you down, okay?"
They sat down at the same table Alan had been at earlier, and Alan took a long drink from a glass of ice-water that had been abandoned there. When he set the glass down, Sawyer put her hand on his, and took it to the table, where she slipped it around to hold his hand. Alan didn't know what to make of this, and looked at Sawyer. She looked… sad. For him.
“I know this sounds crazy, but I've had a similar experience,” she said. “I…” she sighed, and looked at his hand. “Don't move that.”
She let go, and ran both hands through her hair, before crossing her arms to grab each one by the bicep. After this little ritual, she let herself relax again, grabbing Alan's hand.
“Sorry. I don't usually talk about this.”
“It's okay,” Alan said, not really knowing if it was or not, but he wanted her to be comfortable.
“Thanks,” she said, looking up at him. “I was young. Well, younger. I was fifteen, and stupid.”
“I think we all were at fifteen,” Alan said.
She laughed. “Yeah. But I got caught out for being dumb. It was at a convention just like this… Down in Connecticut.”
“You were attending conventions at fifteen?”
Sawyer nodded. “I went there with my friends. We just had one-day passes – It wasn't like we had the money to rent a hotel room.” Her eyes darted away. “What was your first convention?”
“Otakon, down in Baltimore, 2003. My anime club pooled our money together to buy tickets and a hotel room, and then we took Amtrak down. We had no idea what we were doing, but it was fun.” He smiled at the memory. “I've been hooked ever since.”
“Cute,” she said. “Anyway… our gameplan was to see celebrities, right? We didn't care about the industry panels, and of course we were going to see the AMV contest and cosplay contest, but in-between, it was all about seeing voice actor panels and going to signings.”
She bit her lip.
“We were all into this one mecha show at the time. You know, religious imagery, psychological themes of depression and loneliness,”
“E-” Alan interrupted, and then was counter-interrupted.
“Shush,” she said. “Plausible deniability, okay?”
He didn't quite know why she wanted that, but Alan nodded.
“There was this one voice actor. He had a lovely voice, deep, gravelly, a bit menacing, and I really wanted to see what the person behind it was like. His character was an awful person, but in a compelling sort of way… The kind of person who does horrific things for what, to him, appear to be good reasons. I kind of loved that character…”
She trailed off, looking at the interaction of her hand and Alan's.
“Yeah?” Alan prompted.
Sawyer took a deep breath. “When I gave him a DVD to sign, I couldn't help myself. I gushed about his work, about how he really made the character real for me. He was… really, genuinely, complimented by that, I think. He offered to take me on a bit of a backstage tour of the convention.”
“Oh,” Alan said, with more than a little concern in his voice.
“Yeah,” Sawyer said. “My friends cheered me on, and it was fun at first. I forgot all about the schedule we'd planned out – I mean, what did that matter when I got to hang out with the man who was responsible for making art?”
“Understandable,” Alan said. He could tell the story was going to go somewhere bad, but he couldn't help but feel jealous in the moment. He had a long short-list of voice actors, directors, and artists who he'd love to shadow for a day, just to see how their minds worked.
“He…” Sawyer sighed. “How do I explain it? You're going to say something stupid, I know, but fuck it. He started getting handsy. Putting his hand around my shoulders, leaning closer than you'd expect to say things, whispering snide comments in my ear conspiratorially, acting like we were part of some private club all to ourselves. I know what you're going to say. That I could have said no at any point.”
Alan held his tongue. He probably wouldn't have said that. Probably.
“That's not how it works. It worms its way in. Each step is too gradual for you to put up a real fuss, but before you know it, you're agreeing to things that you really, really don't want. You try to show every sign that it's not okay, you say you want to leave, but they phrase making you stay in the most polite of ways – like they're doing you a favor by letting you spend more time with them.”
Alan couldn't say he understood, but he felt an immense sense of dread.
“And,” she began.
He stared at her hand pinning his to the table.
He took his other hand, and put it over hers. “It's okay. Take your time.”
Sawyer winced. “You really don't have to-”
“At this point, I should,” he said.
Sawyer snorted. “Fair,” she said, and Alan felt like he'd missed something important.
She took another deep breath, let it out slowly, and continued. “He took me to his hotel room.”
“Shit,” Alan muttered under his breath.
“Yeah…” Sawyer said. “He didn't even… He didn't even say it was something sexual. He said he wanted to show me something special, something he had to keep behind a non-disclosure agreement.”
Alan, against his better judgment, laughed. He was pretty sure that Sawyer would punch him in the face for that. But instead, she laughed along with him. “I know, right? What a line. But I assumed that he meant some new industry project that was still under wraps.” She chuckled. “Fuck, I did it again. Under wraps. Fuck me, right?”
Alan smiled, but not without a slight sense of panic. He wasn't sure if it was something he was feeling, or just empathizing with Sawyer's story, but he could feel that fight-or-flight reflex slowly creeping in.
“Hah,” he said, in his best approximation of a laugh.
“Yeah, I try to laugh about it too.” She smirked. “My laughs are fake, too.”
“Hey, can you squeeze my hand for a sec? I hate this part,” she said. It took a moment for Alan to process what she'd said, and despite it sounding absolutely insane to his ears, he took both of her hands in his, and squeezed them tight.
“Thanks,” she said. “Anyway, while I had my back turned, looking at some cool merch he'd laid out on the table next to the TV, he walked over to the door and locked it. Not just the bolt, but the latch, too. Like a lot of things he'd done, I tried to pretend that I didn't see it. Maybe, just maybe, it didn't really happen. Maybe I was seeing things, y'know?”
Alan nodded.
“I turned back to the merch. Maybe he really just wanted me to pick out some cool stuff and get it signed. I kept thinking that, over and over again. But there was a mirror on the wall, right next to the TV, and I kept watching it out of the corner of my eye. He laid down on the bed behind me, and pulled his dick out of his pants. I just remember it being so… floppy. Like he'd just started playing with some toy. But I felt his eyes go lower, lingering on my ass, and I saw it harden. I wanted to run. I thought, surely, I could just unlock the door from the inside, slip out. He might try to hurt me, but if I moved quick enough, he couldn't stop me, he couldn't…”
Sawyer's head slumped.
“Hey,” Alan said. “Hey… It's…” He frowned. “I was going to say “It's okay,”, but it isn't. Nothing is. But you can keep talking if you want, and you can stop if you want. We can just sit here if you want, I don't mind.”
Alan couldn't tell if the noise she made was a sob or a chuckle. “Thanks.”
“I couldn't work the lock. I don't know if it was the bolt, or a latch, or something, but I pulled against it, and he was behind me. He told me not to be afraid. I could feel it pressing against me. He was… warm.”
“Christ,” Alan said.
“Yeah.”
Alan waited for her to continue, but she didn't. “What… what did you do?” he asked.
“I… took care of the situation.”
“You didn't – No way, you didn't just give in, please tell me you didn't let him win,” Alan pleaded.
Sawyer flinched. “No, I didn't. Not quite like that. I…”
She looked at Alan. “Do you want me to be honest?”
Alan didn't want to tell her no. Not now. “Sure.”
She gave him a pained smile. “I grabbed a knitting needle off the dresser drawer, and I stabbed him in the chest, Alan. Over and over again, until the bastard stopped moving. I couldn't leave, even if I could figure out how he'd locked me in there, I was covered in his blood. So I hid in the closet and waited for someone to come.”
Alan nodded. “Huh, that's reasonable.”
Then, with a sudden realization, his blood ran cold. “Sawyer?”
“Yes?” she said. He wasn't holding her hands anymore, and he couldn't tell when that'd happened. She was sitting right next to him, and he hadn't seen her move…
“How is that similar?”
The words hung in the air for a beat.
Sawyer started laughing.
“I know what you did, Alan.”
It felt like every muscle in his body froze up – not like ice, but like broken industrial machinery, scraping and twisting against each other in ways that were fundamentally incapable of accomplishing anything.
“… What?” Alan said. He had wanted to say “How?”, but that'd require giving in completely to his delusion that he'd dropped a dead girl out of a 25th story window into a dumpster the previous night, after killing her with his bare hands.
Her hand was on his thigh, grip tightening. “Come on, Alan, don't make me say it. It'll be easier for you that way.”
Alan swallowed, desperately trying to get some moisture into his suddenly dry throat. “Uh, what will be easier, exactly?”
Sawyer's smile grew wide. The light of a candle burning on the table gleamed on her teeth, and danced in her eyes. “That's the spirit, Alan.” She stood up, and held the hand that had just been on his thigh out to him. “Come along with me.”
He shook as he pushed himself away from the table. Adrenaline was shooting through his system. Alan faltered as he stood, and Sawyer lunged, catching him by the arm. “Easy does it,” she said, pulling him away. He did his best to put one foot in front of the other, and followed her. It was so difficult to do anything else, he thought, as he stumbled out of the dance and into the hallway. To be entirely fair to Alan, the thoughts he needed to think were beyond his ability to articulate, even to himself. Were Sawyer to be some kind of imminent threat, it would mean that Alan killed that girl, which was unthinkable, but it was also growing increasingly unthinkable that Sawyer wasn't, in some way, utterly terrifying. In stead of thinking these things, Alan's mind was static, up until he was standing at a pair of doors down an access corridor maybe a hundred feet away from the entrance to the dance hall. The doors were funny to look at – The kind of swinging, un-lockable double doors with rubber buffers and plastic windows that you'd see leading to the back rooms of any number of restaurants or supermarkets, and Alan could swear he'd seen them on a ferry one time, though thinking about it, he wasn't sure he'd ever been on a ferry, and -
“Alan?” Sawyer tugged at his wrist, pulling him towards those doors.
He squinted at those plastic windows. On the other side was a room with tile floors, stainless steel counters, drains and sinks and cutlery.
Alan stopped. He might not be able to think, but something deep within him knew that he should not, under any circumstances, be on the other side of that door.
Sawyer tugged again, and sighed when Alan failed to budge. “I thought we'd agreed to make this easy, Alan. We were communicating so well.” She glanced to the side, looking down the hallway. “We're all alone, Alan. If you can't make this easy, at least make this fun.”
She moved faster than Alan could parse. Her elbow slammed into his chest, knocking him into the wall, and she lunged for his throat with both hands. Alan shrunk back, shoving his chin into his chest as hard as he could, looking in the moment like an extremely undignified turtle, and Sawyer's fingers didn't find a solid grip. He wrenched himself away, leaving some of his skin behind under her short-trimmed nails, and he bolted. He needed to get in sight of as many people as possible, she wouldn't – not in front of an audience – right?
Alan made it into the convention center, cane tucked under his arm, cape flowing out behind him He must have looked like a phantom thief, which would have been cool at any other time. After fading into the crowds, Alan pulled out his phone, and did the smartest thing he could think of.
He texted Henry.