Want To Hold Your Hand (AJ) [M]

[Travis Morgan]

Travis walked with AJ toward the auditorium. He hadn't been to a dance since his power manifested, and it occurred to him suddenly that he was about to walk into a room stuffed full of teenagers. He was trying not to look anxious for AJ's sake, but he knew she could tell anyway.

They'd spent a lot of time with each other since they decided they were going together (not together together, just regular together). At some point they'd settled on Jack and Sally for costumes, which meant Travis got to have a lot of fun making AJ a patchwork dress. AJ's costume was all hand sewn. Dresses were pretty simple to make, especially if you cheated and put ties in the back instead of fitting it. He wasn't actually a seamstress or anything, he was just good at putting things together. Regardless, her costume was handcrafted with love. From scratch.

His own costume was mostly altered. Men's wear was hard. Jackets had sleeves, which were a pain in the ass, and pants.. well, let's just say Travis wasn't exactly skilled enough to make a suit. So instead of that he found something at a thrift store that fit well enough and altered it.

They made a pretty good Jack and Sally. The face paint took a little longer than expected, so they were a bit on the fashionably late side of things. Not that Travis cared that much. What he really cared about was walking next to him. He wondered, as they approached the dance, if he should hold her hand. He wanted to, at any rate.

Again with the second guessing everything! Why was it so hard to figure out how to be normal? They were friends! Friends could hold hands, right? I guess, but that's not why you want to..

[Amanda Joy "AJ" Lane]

AJ couldn't believe she was doing this. her first dance since that one with Oliver over a year ago. Everything had gone terribly wrong and her life had gone from typical high school student to girl with pheromone manipulation. It was a big change and she wondered how she was walking into the auditorium with Travis now, dressed in an elaborate costume which Travis had hand sewn himself. It felt like she was wearing a piece of art.

She'd watched him work and tried to help him as well and in the end, she had to admit that they looked pretty good. It'd been ages since she'd seen 'A Nightmare Before Christmas' but she felt like she'd made a good Sally. And he definitely made a good Jack.

Her eyes shifted over towards him as they walked inside, looking for signs of nervousness, because she felt it as well. She never thought she'd go to a dance again after what happened with Oliver when her power manifested. And here she was. Had she gone too far? Was she ready for this?

"I know I've said this over and over again, but I love my costume. Your patchwork is amazing, Trav," she finally said, breaking the silence that had settled over them. The place was decorated in orange and black and many students were around in costumes. AJ took a deep breath and pulled down on her dress nervously, looking to Travis again. She kept telling herself that this wasn't a date and now that they were actually here, she was having trouble thinking just that.

[Travis Morgan]

The corners of Travis’ mouth tightened when they entered the dance. He could feel everyone. It was like stepping outside on a hot day. Suddenly there was this pressure all around, like the air was heavy. Fortunately, people were mostly having fun, so it wasn’t like walking into a classroom full of stress. Once he got past the initial impact, it would feel more like a sugar rush. At first, though, it was vaguely painful. Someone passed by close to them, and Travis suppressed a flinch, containing it to a mere twitch around his eyes.

He smiled, though, when AJ spoke. Her complements made him blush, not that anyone could see it right now under all of the white paint. And it made him unspeakably happy that she called him “Trav”, instead of “Tray”. Michael called him Tray. He almost never called him Travis, it was always Tray (or Tray-Tray if he was feeling extra cute). Travis was more than happy to embrace the new nickname.

“Thank you,” he said, looking down and nibbling the inside of his lip— totally giving away the fact that he was blushing. “You look great in it.” It wasn’t hard to make nice things for pretty people, and AJ was a good muse.

The vibe of the room was starting to sink in a bit. He was less jarred by passing people now, and he found his foot tapping to the music. The stuff they played at school Dances was rarely the type he’d choose to listen to, but he generally found it hard not to bob his head or tap his feet whenever there was music playing. Didn’t matter much if he liked it or not. Tentatively, Travis took a step further into the room, then paused to hold out his hand toward AJ. “Wanna dance?” he asked.

[Amanda Joy "AJ" Lane]

"You're welcome," AJ told him. She knew she was gushing too much about the costume and Travis' artistic job on it, but she'd been so fascinated by his talent for it. It was fun to watch him take a bunch of fabrics and turn it into a costume. "And thanks." A small smile tugged at her lips, forming there for a moment. Yes, she was very much nervous, but part of her was glad she'd come here. It was a step. She was taking a step towards being a new person.

As they stood in the middle of the dance, masses of people all around them, AJ tried to take it all in to help herself calm down. It helped to concentrate on Travis, on the outlines of his face and the make-up they'd applied to it. Before he'd come over to help with her make-up, she'd sat in her room doing the breathing exercises Jay had taught her.

She didn't know what to do with herself and was clasping her hands together anxiously when Travis suddenly took a step forward. He gaze shifted to him again.

Wanna dance?

She nodded slowly. "Okay." And then she took his hand.

[Travis Morgan]

Travis inhaled when AJ took his hand. She was so nervous, it made his heart pound. He took a breath. This.. this was very much like a date. Even though they were trying to pretend that it wasn’t, it really felt like one. They were here as friends, but they were here alone.

He’d felt like there was something missing from the atmosphere, and he just figured out what it was. Every dance he’d ever gone to before always involved Michael’s small herd of friends. Travis didn’t know any of them very well, but their presence was what made it possible for he and Michael to attend dances together without outing Michael. There was a lot of mingling that went on, and when everyone was dancing on everyone else, you sort of blended in.

There was nothing to blend into with AJ. They didn’t come with a group of friends. There was no buffer between them. It was just.. them, surrounded by a bunch of horny teens that neither of them knew. Oh, that was another thing. Dancing was inherently sexual, wasn’t it? This generation, especially, seemed to enjoy grinding— which could only be called dancing because they were doing it on the beat.

Travis pulled AJ a little closer, and leaned down to speak in her ear instead of half-shouting over the music. “Don’t be nervous,” he said, partly for his own benefit as he’d managed to wind up his own nerves. “If it helps any, I don’t think anyone would recognize us right now.” The lights on the dance floor were dim, after all, and both of their faces were painted. The thought helped Travis, anyway. He was far less self-conscious behind a mask, so to speak. “You can pretend you’re somebody else.”

Then he pulled back again, and took AJ’s other hand too. He raised them slightly, and started comically bouncing back and forth to the music (similar to the way one might make their cat dance, by holding it’s paws). Silliness, he found, was also good for chasing away nerves. He didn’t mind being silly if it made AJ feel better.

[Amanda Joy "AJ" Lane]

Travis' hand in her own was familiar, but the environment around them was not. Teenagers were dancing all around them in a way that AJ couldn't even see herself moving. Sure she was graceful in some ways. She had the fluidity and grace of a swimmer, so it shouldn't be too hard to dance, but she didn't know how what a lot of the students was deemed appropriate.

She turned her attention away from the masses of teenagers to concentrate on Travis' face, painted like her own. "You're right," she agreed. "I can be somebody else." The idea of being somebody else had been highly ideal to her lately, because she'd wanted to be anybody but herself. Halloween was the one acceptable way to do it, and so she might as well take advantage of it, right? She didn't have to be AJ, the shell of a broken girl trying to put herself back together again. She could be confident and dance with Travis.

When he grabbed her other hand and started dancing, she shook her head at him, a laugh escaping her lips. "I'm not sure that's how Jack Skellington would dance," she commented.

[Travis Morgan]

Travis smiled wide when AJ laughed. That's what hew as going for! Mission accomplished! Regardless, if he wanted to take his own advice, he'd have to act like Jack.

"How about this?" Travis took a step closer, put his hand on AJ's waist, and lifted her hand in a clasic waltz frame. He didn't actually know how to waltz, but he watched Dancing With the Stars all the time with his mom. He felt like Jack would be the waltzing type, and of course he didn't just pull AJ into a waltz frame. He did it with that overdramatic, theatrical flair. Shoulders squared. Chin up. Hand firm against AJ's waist.

Suddenly he looked like a confident person, which might be a little odd. He was pretty tall when he actually stood up straight. He looked down at AJ without lowering his chin, and raised an eyebrow. "Better?" There wasn't much room for waltzing on the crowded floor, but there was enough room for Travis to raise AJ's hand above her head and spin her around. Which he did, somewhat less gracefully than someone who really knew how to dance. But he caught her again, holding her against his body and getting distracted for a moment by her eyes and her energy (touching her was electric right now, she made the whole room full of people fade into the background).

The phone in his pocket vibrated suddenly, and he blinked. "Ignore that," he said, realizing that his pocket was pressed against AJ as well and she could probably feel his phone going off. It buzzed a second time, and his expression tightened ever so slightly. Then the music changed to something a little more rock, and Travis' smile brightened again. He knew what to do with a rock beat. It was a lot of jumping and stomping, generally-- both of which seemed like something Jack Skellington would do.

[Amanda Joy "AJ" Lane]

AJ laughed when he stepped towards her purposefully and whisked her into waltzing. She nodded at him with a small smile. It was easy to forget her chaotic surroundings when she was with Travis and dressed as Sally. It all sort of melted away, faded into the background. She never got this close to people, for fear of what would happen and she was glad she couldn't manipulate her own pheromones, because suddenly it felt like someone had turned up the heat. It was a feeling she hadn't felt...not since Oliver, not since that night at the dance. And she'd manipulated how he'd felt, which was obviously similar.

She took a deep breath before Travis spun her around, pulling her close again and she locked on his eyes. It felt strange--was she reading his pheromones? She felt like she was because she could see them all around them, yet she still didn't know what they meant. She hadn't had that much training with Jay, but just seeing them was enough to make her feel in panic and in control at the same time somehow.

She felt his phone vibrate and then again. He seemed to blow it off. "Are you sure you don't want to get it? It might be important if it keeps buzzing," she told him. The feeling was still in the background. Why did his pheromones seem identical to her own?

[Travis Morgan]

Travis gave a short sigh, and stepped back from AJ a little to pull his phone from his pocket. The corners of his mouth tightened again, and his brow lowered slightly as he opened the messages.

Michael:
"u kno i stillove u rite"
Michael:
"im sry im shit"

The phone buzzed again while Travis stared at his phone. He still had a hand on AJ's waist, and his fingers dug in a little. Michael was drunk. He could tell by the ridiculous shortening of already short words, and the lack of capitalization and punctuation. Michael didn't use chatspeak.

Michael:
"do u stil luv me"
Travis:
"You're drunk. Stop texting me."

Travis closed his eyes briefly after he replied, and turned his phone toward AJ so she could see what was going on. She kept saying she wanted him to share more. He didn't have to keep it all to himself. The phone buzzed again.

Michael:
"yer bangin dat chick aready aint u"

[Amanda Joy "AJ" Lane]

AJ felt Travis' hands dig into her waist a little as he looked at his phone. She hadn't known who it would be, but the incessant buzzing of his phone made it seem important to she'd told him to look at it, but as he turned the phone towards her so she could see the messages, she wished she'd just let him ignore it.

Her first thought was that the grammar was horrible. So horrible her inner literature lover wanted to cringe, but her second thought was to comfort Travis. "I'd just ignore the messages. He's trying to get a rise out of you. Plus he's drunk," she pointed out just before his phone buzzed again and displayed another message.

Yer bangin dat chick already aint u

She looked up at him, awkwardly. The text made her feel uncomfortable for two reasons: what it suggested and the fact that Michael knew about her. I mean, he was talking about her, right? She felt her cheeks flush and she hoped Travis couldn't tell.

[Travis Morgan]

Travis couldn't tell that she was blushing. The lights were too dim, and she was covered in makeup anyway. But when he turned his phone to look at that last message, his eyes nearly popped out of his head. "Oh my god! What the fuck!?" His reaction was possibly hightened by the vibrant energy of the people around them. Not two seconds ago AJ told him to ignore it, but the growing haze of hormone-driven, over-dramatic, reactionary-teenage-angst was making it difficult to remember why he shouldn't engage in Michael's petty bitch-fest.

Travis:
"No, I'm not. Would you feel less guilty if I was?"

Travis pocketed his phone with a kind of nonspecific determination. His jaw was set and his eyes narrow. There was a part of him that wanted very much to give into the anger. To let that fire in the pit of his stomach take over. How good would it feel to just cut loose and be angry for a moment. To really just.. express.

"Sorry about that," he said instead, looking back at AJ. He didn't want to spoil the night for her. This was supposed to be fun. Just because his ex was being an ass-- god, his ex. That was still weird. He still couldn't get over it. Michael was his ex now, and he was behaving like a fucking child. It seemed so unreal. Was this really the person he'd been dating all this time? Was this really the person he was in love with?

The phone buzzed again from his pocket, but Travis ignored it. It did occur to him that he could just turn the phone off, but then he thought about turning it back on again later and getting all of Michael's drunken texts at once. Just the idea of that made his stomach clench with dread, so the phone was staying on. Even though every time it buzzed, he wanted to sock Michael in the eye.

Then, as though nothing had happened, Travis took AJ's hand and eased into the music. First with some easy bobbing to the beat, then with some more enthusiastic shoulder/hip action. And unless AJ insisted that they talk about what just happened (or something), Travis would eventually have them dancing like they weren't the most awkward, self-conscious people ever.

[Amanda Joy "AJ" Lane]

"No, it's okay," AJ urged him. She wasn't the expert on relationships, but she was pretty sure that how Michael was acting was incredibly immature and rude considering that he'd broken up with Travis and not the other way around. Even if Travis had broken things off with him, it wasn't fair for Michael to treat him that way. Travis was allowed to be upset and even angry. "Honestly, I'm just glad you're expressing yourself." People like she and Travis needed to learn to do that, keeping everything inside rarely worked out for anybody.

But just like nothing had interrupted their time, he began dancing again with her and she was shocked at how fluid he could move, how it almost seemed easy for him. Was it because of the mask he wore? She tried to ease into the music with him, but a question was forming in her mind. It wouldn't go away. "So you...told Michael about me?"

[Travis Morgan]

Aaaaand AJ wanted to talk.

Of course he told Michael about her. She was the first person he met the day he arrived here, and at that time Michael wasn’t being an ass. So of course. AJ was that nice quiet girl who didn’t scare him. AJ was the first person he dared to call “friend”. The way Travis went on about how lovely she was probably gave Michael the (correct) idea that he wanted to be more than just her friend… and now he was being a dick about it.

If Travis bothered to think for even half a second, he might conclude that this was the reason Michael decided to break it off in the first place— which of course, didn’t even begin to excuse his behavior.

“Well, yeah,” Travis said, taking the dancing back a notch or two. “You’re the one I met first, and.. he was worried that I wouldn’t make friends on my own so..”

He couldn’t quite tell how AJ felt about this. There was so much feedback from everyone else in the room, and from his own emotional state. His knee-jerk reaction was to feel like she was somehow offended. Like he’d talked about her to someone she didn’t know, and it wigged her out. But he couldn’t be sure. Were those just his own personal worries, or was he getting that from her?

[Amanda Joy "AJ" Lane]

"Oh, yeah..." AJ mumbled. She wasn't mad that he'd told Michael about her...it just made her uncomfortable, what Michael had texted Travis. Did Michael end things with Travis because of her? The thought instantly popped into her head and she tried to push it away. "Sorry...you probably don't want to talk about this right now, do you?" She was probably crossing a line, but it still bothered her that she could possibly be responsible for the downfall of their relationship. Although a part of her had been a little relieved when they broke up...mostly because it felt okay to like him then.

She wanted to just melt into him and being here at the dance with him and being so close to him made it hard not to. But somewhere inside of her, she was afraid history would repeat itself and that she would accidentally release pheromones that would manipulate him. She just had to stay calm. Think of Jay and what he'd said about her power, what he'd taught her.

[Travis Morgan]

“Not really,” Travis said with a somewhat pained expression. “But it’s not like I told him anything personal. Just, like.. that you’re really sweet, and I care about you and stuff.” Travis gave an awkward shrug. So, he didn’t want to talk about it but he felt his nagging urge to explain himself. He felt like he had to fix it now. Like it was a big deal. The whole thing seemed much more intense than it really was.

“Are you okay? Because I can’t tell right now.” The where volume of input from the kids around them was, perhaps, making him a little high strung. If freaked him out that he couldn’t tell what AJ was feeling. How was he supposed to know what to say if he didn’t know how she felt!? His phone buzzed again, and his eye twitched noticeably. A spark of anger flared in the pit of his stomach, competing uncomfortably with his need to make sure AJ was comfortable. There was a growing desire to smash his phone, but he wasn’t angry enough to forget that his parents would totally flip out.

He squashed down the fire and took a breath. “Just,” Travis pulled AJ close, wrapping his arms around her, “forget what he said, okay? He’s just… being a dick.”