Archive of Our Own ^beta

Samera Jordan was not, historically, a mind reader. 

She didn’t need telepathy to recognize things said out of politeness alone. When Leo James told her he was sure she’d see him around Sadler’s Wells again after a somewhat flimsy excuse to escape, she assumed that’s all it was. 

So, when she glanced up from her computer to see him right in front of her desk with an uncertain look on his face, the small percentage of her not focused on her heart attack made room for mild surprise. 

She jumped in her chair with a short gasp. “Oh, hi, wow!”

“Sorry,” he winced. “Didn’t mean to startle you.” 

“No, it’s okay, I just…” Hand pressed to her chest, she continued around a breathless smile, “Wow, right? I didn’t hear you come up!” 

“Yeah, I, um— I walk pretty light. Sorry.”

“No, no, it’s okay.” Samera was used to craning her neck to talk to people at her desk, but good Christ. “Leo, right? From a few weeks ago?”

He blinked at her, then fell back into another sheepish smile. “Um, I actually— I go by a different name, now. Sorry, I know it’s probably confusing.” 

Every time he spoke so far, he’d managed to fit in an apology, which was honestly kind of impressive. She returned the smile and did her best to ignore how something about his own seemed just the slightest bit off. “You’re fine! What should I call you, then?”

“Danny Stoker. I was actually here hoping to sign up for one of the adult dance classes…?”

“Oh, perfect!” Samera could’ve sworn she recognized the name, but it didn’t much matter at this exact moment. “Do you already have some experience? We have beginner’s, intermediate, and advanced classes, but if you go with one and it’s not the right level, just let me know and we can move you!”

An expression Samera couldn’t parse crossed Danny’s face. It almost looked like he was trying not to laugh.

“Uh, intermediate.”

“Sure! For that, we have one class Thursday evening, and then one Saturday morning. Do either of those work?”

Danny shifted his weight. Samera had worked the desk long enough to know that he was going through the process most people did, where they couldn’t immediately think of a conflict with either option, so instead pretended to deliberate as if there was any reason for their choice beyond a thrown dart and crossed fingers. 

“Thursday evening does, I think.” 

“Perfect. As far as payment goes, I have a few forms here…” The paperwork was dull, yes, but Samera couldn’t deny some satisfaction when it came to keeping everything tidy and well-documented. Her half-finished history degree demanded as much. 

Once she had Danny set up with his collection of papers and a clipboard, Samera took a moment to think. Where had she heard that name? They’d never met, she was sure of that much. She tried to imagine the voices of her friends saying it to see if that sparked a memory. No dice. 

Lip between her teeth in thought, she studied him with as much nonchalance as she could muster. Stupid tall — near six and a half feet, if she had to guess — and long-limbed; short, dark hair. South Asian, maybe southeast? Handsome enough, but not familiar. 

Curiosity graduated to irritation with her own memory. She knew she recognized his name, she was certain of it now, but beyond that she had nothing. She took out and redid her twin braids a few times as minutes passed, no reason beyond simple enjoyment of the motion, but even that self-soothing made no dent in her annoyance. 

“Okay, I think I got everything.” 

Samera blinked out of her thoughts to see Danny in front of her, as noiseless as when he arrived. This time, she managed to keep herself from jumping. 

“Thanks! Let me just…” Looking over the pages to ensure all of it was as it should be didn’t take long. The only snag came in the billing information — not a genuine issue, no, just a surprise: the account was under a Tim. Same surname. A joint account, maybe? It wasn’t as if it mattered as far as logistics went. 

The additional name did nothing to jog Samera’s memory, of course. This was hell. This was hell and she was in it. 

Part of her was tempted to bite the bullet and ask, but how could she even phrase that? Hey, so I think I recognize your name, kind of, but I don’t think we’ve ever met. Any idea where a museum-curator-in-training who doesn’t go out much might have seen it? Absolutely not.

“Everything looks good!” It wasn’t his fault she couldn’t figure him out, so she made sure to retain her smile. “Your teacher is Reese Alexander, and there’s four other students in that session right now.”

Danny’s head tilted. “I was wondering about the class sizes. Just four?”

“The kid and junior sessions are always big, but the adult ones tend to be smaller,” Samera explained. “But it means you end up getting to know your classmates really well. New people might come in later, too! The next person who signs up will probably go to your class as long as their schedule allows it — we try to keep them at even numbers.”

Another unreadable expression, one that Samera couldn’t even begin to guess the meaning of. “Can’t wait. Six PM, right?”

“Got it in one. See you then, and it was nice to meet you!” She paused. “Well, meet you again.”

“You too. See you Thursday!”

With a last slightly-too-wide smile, Danny left. 

Danny Stoker. Danny. Stoker. 

Samera slumped at her chair with a groan, forehead thudding against the large, looping script scrawled all over Danny’s paperwork. This was going to kill her. 

Fresh irritation accented the next two days every time she remembered what she forgot. At that point, she was certain she’d take anything if it meant an answer. 

That certainty ceased to hold when a possibility popped in her head while she was in the middle of taking a shower — one she very much hoped was wrong. Yes, it was driving her crazy, but she’d prefer a frustratingly elusive memory that she’d forget before long over this hunch. 

Once she was cozied up in bed with a well-earned hot toddy in hand, Samera texted her brother’s fiance.

Samera watched the typing bubble flicker in and out a half-dozen times. Not encouraging. By the time she took a sip of her drink and cleared her glasses of the steam, Hadi had replied.

Samera stared at her phone for a long minute. She didn’t know much about Hadi’s job, no, but she knew it was one she would never have the stomach for. All those people who were never found; all those times they had to look at the number of days since a disappearance and recognize that they were more likely to find a body than a person… She could never. 

But, as with any job, there were success stories — success stories including her strange new student.

It was probably for the best that Hadi didn’t have much in the way of details — Samera knew, logically, it was none of her business, but that didn’t kill her curiosity. Four years was a long time, and whatever happened to him, it sounded like he walked right out of it. No cinematic police rescue; no successfully followed trail.

A handful of missing years, plus the fake name he gave her? There was a story there. Did he tell her that was his name because it was some kind of secret alias? Was it code for something? Had he been living under a false identity for so long, he gave her the fake name without even thinking about it?

Maybe he was a spy, and went undercover on some mission that the world at large would never know existed. Or, or maybe he got in some sort of accident somewhere really remote and had to find his own way home, like the thick of Siberian wilderness or peaks of the Himalayas. Maybe he went on a solo journey to find himself, like sailing around the world alone, or backpacking through dense rainforests in South America, or exploring the bustling cities along coastlines in Africa. 

Or maybe, maybe he was just a new student at Sadler’s Wells, and Samera should cool it on the dramatics. 

She should. She would. If Danny had been through something hard in those years, Samera wasn’t going to scrutinize him as he sought a bit of normalcy. 

…Her money was on secret agent.

If anyone knew better than to judge someone’s scars, it was Sloane Cross. 

His car accident a few years ago introduced both a windshield to his face and him to his eventual wife. Dinah was worth a line down his cheekbone to his mouth and more, but he grew well acquainted with how weird people got about scarring. If it wasn’t blatant stares, it was invasive questions. If it wasn’t invasive questions, it was foisted treatments left, right, and center. 

Sloane would never forget the time one recommended their plastic surgeon. Their complete shock when he didn’t fall all over himself in thanks irritated him to this day. 

Still, shaking a guy’s hand and feeling raised lines striped from the base of his palm to the tips of his fingers was a bit unusual. He stopped himself from immediately studying Danny’s hands when he pulled back.

Levi came up to shake next, eager to make friends as always, and was far less subtle about his surprise. Sloane nudged him before he could ask any of the questions written all over his face. After hearing Sloane’s own stories, he knew better than that in the hypothetical, but the filter between his brain and his mouth was nonexistent on the best of days.

Dinah, g-dsend that she was, stepped in to introduce herself during that exchange, so Sloane could hope Danny hadn’t noticed. There was no missing the brief flash of relief in Danny’s eyes when he’d noticed Sloane’s own obvious scar. He needed the chance to feel secure in that solidarity. 

Elfie merely said her name alongside a short wave, because she took her role as the surly seventeen-year-old with plenty of dedication. Danny returned it; no sign of offense. Just as Sloane had felt, parallel lines criss-crossed his palms and fingers.

He’d waved with his left hand, shaken with his right. Same scars, then. Maybe he liked gardening, and tended to pull weeds without wearing gloves. 

“Maybe,” Dinah said when he shared the theory on their drive home from class that night. “But they looked too clean for that.”

Hard to argue with a paramedic, there. “True. It’s not really our business, anyway. We’ll just have to keep Levi from blurting out something.”

Dinah nodded, her sigh tinged with fondness, as she shook her long locs out from a ponytail. “He doesn’t with you, so he should be able to acclimate before too long. Also, can we stop at Tesco? I need something with peanut butter.”

“Your pregnancy cravings didn’t magically cure my peanut allergy, love.”

“Well, they should.”

The next couple weeks made clear that the scars on Danny’s hands and through one side of his mouth were far from unique. His ever-present long-sleeved shirts and zip-up hoodies covered plenty, but he wore tall socks with shorts just as much as he did joggers, and the former meant Sloane caught occasional glimpses of lines on the inside of each knee.

So, he had some kind of surgery. The vague stories he told about when he was a teenager made lifelong athleticism clear, and plenty of sports could cause injuries that’d need it. 

When Danny adjusted his socks one day and inadvertently showed that the one on his right leg went well past his knee towards his ankle, Sloane took it as him actually needing that assumed surgery on his shin or calf. The same in reverse, when sitting made his shorts raise enough to show the opposite leg’s scar went farther up his thigh. 

These, Sloane didn’t share. He wished he had never seen them himself, if only for Danny’s privacy — something it was quite clear by this point that Danny valued. 

Sloane also didn’t want to know how off-base his surgery theory was, and Dinah wouldn’t shy from telling him. If they weren’t from surgery, that meant… He didn’t know what it meant, but he didn’t like it. 

Scars on hands could come from almost anything. Sloane himself still had a mark on his palm from when his older sister stabbed him with a pencil for trying to steal her diary a good twenty years ago, plus one across his thumb from a cooking accident, and a slash across the back of the other from the same car accident that left the scar on his face. Sure, Danny’s were oddly clean and uniform, but that could mean anything.

As far as lines that Sloane was having a harder time convincing himself didn’t trace the entirety of each leg went?

Not his business. Really, really not his business. 

He’d much rather focus on the things that made Danny light up with excitement, the way he did when conversation before class started one evening turned to tattoos. 

“I don’t know,” Sloane said. “Dinah has one, but she said it hurt, and—”

“And you’re made of marshmallow fluff,” Elfie finished with a sharp elbow to his side. His immediate wince only proved her point.

Danny laughed. At this point, trying to ignore the faint nudge of something off about it was routine. 

“They really don’t hurt that much. I mean, they do hurt a little, but it’s pretty easy to tune out.”

“Do you have any?” Levi asked. 

“Yeah, I’ve got one!” To Sloane’s surprise, Danny shrugged off his hoodie on one side and slipped out his right arm. Four black bands wrapped around his bicep, each more cracked through than the one before, and more blackwork covered his shoulder. 

“Holy shit.” Levi’s eyes went wide. “That big, and it didn’t hurt?”

“Not much, no,” Danny replied easily.

Levi stood on Danny’s right side. Elfie had already left them to talk to Reese. Dinah was busy changing. Only Sloane, from his place at Danny’s left, caught a glimpse of the scar sleeves always hid.

One line, drawn from his wrist up his forearm. It looked deep. 

Sloane tore his eyes away to study at the tattoo Danny was clearly so proud of. Even if he didn’t already know better than to ask, the new addition would have made that choice with no trouble. He had no explanations for any of them, only assumptions. This one could be a surgery just as much as the rest. If Sloane was wrong about that, he would only want to know if Danny shared as much. 

“Don’t you worry, though?” Dinah paused in folding the shirt she held. “It’s not like I want some list of all his secrets, but he’s clearly been through some things. If we don’t know anything, we might not be able to help him if he needs it.”

It was easy to guess what was on her mind. Not long after they’d started dating, she put together a playlist of songs she thought he’d like. Her guesses were spot on until, by unfortunate coincidence, the exact song that played when he got in his accident started up. She was left helpless to do anything but pull over and wait as he had one hell of a panic attack without any idea what had even upset him, and even then she at least knew enough to stop driving.

Sloane set a freshly-folded pair of trousers on the stack at his side. “Yeah, but… If you hadn’t been one of the paramedics, I don’t know when I would have told you about the wreck.” 

Dinah had saved his life, and had been largely uninterested in his hazy, “Are you an angel?” when he saw her. Finding out the question was one hundred percent serious did little for the fact that his first words to her were the corniest pick-up line in existence.

“You can’t rush things like that,” he finished.

Dinah began to match socks from the small pile next to her. The snakebite piercing on the right side of her lip shifted as she thought in a way that always made Sloane want to kiss her, which he knew she was well aware of. “I know. And I hope we don’t ever have to know about any of that. I just… worry.” 

Sloane leaned over to press his lips to her temple. “Worry about the socks actually matching, love.” 

“What?” She blinked down at the pair she’d just folded together — one, a navy blue dress sock; the other, a bright yellow ankle sock patterned with orange slices. 

Rather than adjust anything, she sent them sailing across their half-finished laundry to smack him square in the nose. He should have expected as much. 

Enough time passed that odd scars ceased to register. Elfie’s hair was hot pink. Reese wore round glasses. Danny had lines traced up his limbs. What did it matter?

Their fade into the background meant that, when Reese handed out the Sadler’s Wells t-shirts they ordered for everyone, Sloane made no connection between them and Danny excusing himself to change in the bathroom. He didn’t hesitate in the slightest when sent to ask if he wanted to put in an order for a matching hoodie while Samera was still collecting them. 

When Sloane stepped inside, his first thought was gratitude that the hinges kept silent. Danny’s back was to the door. He still had no idea Sloane was there. 

He had no idea, and he never would. Sloane slipped out as quietly as he came in. 

Like all the rest, there was no telling what left Danny with pale bands striped over his entire back. Sloane didn’t catch how many. Enough to fill the space all the way from the small of his back to the top of his shoulder blades, though. That alone made something flip in Sloane’s gut. 

No one needed to know. Not that he saw these scars in Danny’s case, nor that they existed at all in the others’. His life, his business. 

Still, Sloane resolved to quietly ensure Danny knew he would add no more to his collection here. Sloane needed no stories to know he’d earned that much. 

It wasn’t a conspiracy theory if it was true, and Levi Ryu knew this much for a fact: his new classmate moonlighted as one of the g-ddamn X-men.

Well, he couldn’t prove any superhero affiliation. Superpowers, though? Those, he could prove.

Kind of. 

Someone with fewer brain cells might have lumped Danny’s thing with names as some bull about aliases, but that was one of the few things about him that had plenty of perfectly normal explanations. Levi had fielded questions about his own long enough that he was half-tempted to print the whole story on a business card to hand out any time someone thought they were the first one on G-d’s green Earth to recognize the disparity. 

12 point. Arial, not Times New Roman, because this wasn’t the fucking Stone Age. My father is Korean and my mother is Jewish and they gave me a Jewish name at birth and when I transitioned I wanted to still have a Jewish first name so my parents and I picked Levi together and it was a lovely bonding experience and if you ask what my birthname was I will make you eat this card. Green cardstock, just for fun.

All that meant Levi knew better than to make a thing of it when Danny asked to go by Leo one day. He looked uncomfortable enough asking that Levi spent the rest of class trying to figure out how to phrase a joke about making him his own explanatory business cards.

Uncooperative brain, of course. Just his luck. Leo went back to Danny the next week, which meant Levi had that much more time to find the words. 

Meaning he would forget until the next time Danny nameswapped. ADHD was a hell of a drug. 

The whole names thing wasn’t related, obviously. What did that have to do with superpowers? 

“You know how dumb this sounds, right?”

Levi put a hand to his heart in mock offense as he and Elfie walked together to the tube station. Full schedule today — their LGBT group was meeting at some ice cream shop he’d never heard of, then it was off to dance, then a stop to pick up some hair bleach. Elfie might’ve been able to get away with longer roots since her hair was naturally a soft brown, but the shift between Levi’s natural black and chosen bright blue was way too much. “I’m trying to find the truth, and you’re just—”

“Saying the truth.” Elfie snapped her gum like she was a mean girl in a mid-2000’s teen drama. “And the truth is that you’re an idiot.”

“Does your cruelty ever cease?”

“Talking like that means the answer is no.”

Levi only laughed. Best little sister he never had. 

Names were unrelated. Mirrors, on the other hand? There was something up with mirrors whenever Danny got near. 

Nothing too crazy, of course. It wasn’t like Levi blinked and suddenly Danny was reflected in every single one or something. He was positive Danny’s reflection faced a different way from the man himself during class last week, though. Not for longer than a second, maybe not even that, but it did. He’d swear on it. And, when Sloane asked what was up after Levi looked between Danny and the mirror a couple times, Danny was the only one who didn’t seem completely confused. Levi had no idea what that bit of his expression not dedicated to confusion meant, but it existed.

Elfie was delighted to share what she thought this meant for Levi’s sanity. At length. He’d take a bullet for her and all, but ouch. Zero mercy. 

Mirror tricks weren’t the flashiest of superpowers, all things considered, but this was a Thursday night dance class. No criminals to beat up here.

Most nights, anyway. 

Elfie’s father didn’t technically fall under the umbrella of criminal, but no doubt he deserved to get his teeth knocked in more than a good chunk of the folks who did. If Levi had ever thrown a punch in his life, he’d be glad to give it a shot himself. 

Scratch that. He’d do it even without the experience. He could deal with however making a fist wrong would fuck up his hand after. 

When Levi checked his phone during class one evening, that urge hit in a rush before he even read the text. There was a reason Samera was one of the only numbers that bypassed his do not disturb setting.

The others only needed to hear, “Elfie’s dad—” before they fell into motion. Elfie sat next to the door with legs curled to her chest, and Dinah planted herself between it and her. Across the room, Sloane leaned against the mirror where her reflection would show when looking through the door’s small window. 

No confused-and-something-else look from Danny this time. Experienced in this sort of problem, or just good at reading the room. Maybe both. It didn’t matter.

“Is he not allowed here?”

Elfie answered before Levi could. “He gets custody one month in the summer and Christmas Eve. Only one left of both before I turn eighteen.” She flipped off the door. 

After a moment to steel themself, Reese said, “I’ll go get him out of here.” Tension locked their shoulders into knots, not that Levi could blame them. Getting shouted at by a big white guy as a small-statured Latine person was never great for the nerves. 

“Hold on.” Danny paused as if deliberating something, then sat on the ground across from Elfie. “He’s not ever supposed to be here, right?”

Her brows furrowed. “Yeah.”

“Got it. I, um. If I talk to him, I can promise he won’t come back.” Levi couldn’t see his face, but the absolute certainty in his voice said plenty on its own. “I’m pretty persuasive. If you don’t want me to, I won’t, but I swear if I do, he won’t ever step foot in this building again.”

Elfie, Levi could read like a book. Nerves. A dozen different genres of upset. Consideration. For some reason, she believed Danny.

It wasn’t like Levi could judge, not when he felt the same. No telling why.

Out of the corner of his eye, Levi saw Reese peer through the window, tense as ever, but he couldn’t look away from the pair on the floor. Elfie’s face was pinched, but after a long moment of scrutinizing Danny, she held up one hand with a pinky extended. 

Danny let out a short laugh, then hooked it with his own. “Be right back.”

Not a single one of them argued. Not a single one protested. At that moment, the possibility that Danny might be wrong didn’t even cross Levi’s mind. 

Elfie didn’t budge from her spot. Dinah and Sloane remained where they were, just in case. Reese watched through the window, and if Levi went on his tiptoes a bit, he could just about see over their head.

Mr. Parrish was a big guy, a bit taller than Sloane and more densely built, but to no surprise, Danny had him beat height-wise. He was lean, yeah, but Levi wouldn’t hesitate to put money on him over Parrish in a fight. 

Not that there was a fight. Danny stayed relaxed as they spoke, and when Parrish tried to get in his face, he didn’t budge. Parrish made no move to storm on past like he usually did with Reese. Something about that made sense — of course he wouldn’t ignore Danny. That wasn’t how things worked. 

Reese leaned back from the door to check on Elfie, then the other two. Only Levi saw Parrish slip from belligerent to pants-shittingly terrified. Danny had lowered his head the barest degree, but beyond that was unchanged. Still relaxed, one hand in his pocket. Casual. He could be chatting about nothing more than the g-ddamn weather, and Parrish looked like Danny was about to tie him to a chair and make him listen to the Archers at full volume until his brain melted. 

By the time Reese faced the hall again, Parrish was damn near running for the lobby. Danny waved at his retreating back. 

…What the whole fuck?

Levi and Reese stepped away from the door as Reese delivered the good, very confusing news. 

“He’s gone.”

Dinah sighed with relief, and Sloane crossed the room to extend a hand and help Elfie off the floor. Before Levi could join the conversation, his phone buzzed again.

Reese might not have seen how damn scared Parrish was, but they watched him bolt from the place just as much as Levi. When Danny came back in the room, they spared a second to gape, then said, “That was… efficient.”

“Told you.” Danny shrugged. “He’s not gonna be back.”

That, Levi wouldn’t argue. “What did you say to him?”

Every single one of Danny’s smiles was weird, but the edge to this one kicked it up from weird to unsettling. “Just that he wasn’t welcome here, and it was in his best interest to stay gone.”

Levi didn’t think he was lying or glossing over anything. Obviously he said more than those specific words, but Levi got the feeling that it really did boil down to that alone.

Somehow, that was almost scarier. Danny didn’t have to threaten — all he needed was implication and a freaky smile. 

Scarier, yeah, but also cool as hell. No way Danny had gone this long without figuring out just how freaky those smiles could be. If he leaned in on that while trying to scare off Parrish, upped the ante even more? Jesus. Levi could appreciate skill. 

Elfie glared at Danny for a moment, then broke and gave him a rushed hug. Fucking precious.

It wasn’t until next week that Levi had a chance to ask Danny about any of it. He waited in the lobby while Elfie was in the bathroom, and Danny paused at the desk to talk briefly with Samera before making his own way to the door. 

“Wait, Danny.”

Danny looked back at Levi, brows up in question. 

“…So, uh.” No point in dodging. “You have superpowers or some shit, right?”

Blink. “I what?”

“You— I swear to g-d your reflection is weird sometimes—”

“Are you saying I’m a vampire, or…?” Danny’s eyes glinted with suppressed laughter.

“No, I just—!” Levi waved emphatically. “You were speaking some weird language with Samera, and—”

“Speaking Bosnian isn’t a superpower,” Danny returned with a grin. “To my knowledge, anyway.”

Another wave. “Okay, well— there was that whole thing with Elfie’s dad!”

“Where I told him to leave, and he did?”

“Yes! Yes, exactly! Reese always has to argue with him for, like, ten minutes, threaten to call security and everything, but you spent thirty seconds with the guy and suddenly he’s running off shit-scared.”

Danny shrugged. “I told you I’m persuasive.”

“Okay, there’s persuasive, and then there’s—” Yet another wave. Levi was inventing his own sign language, one where every single sign meant its own form of bafflement. “There’s that!”

“I’m a man of many talents.” Levi openly stared as Danny took a few backwards steps, grin unfaltered. “See you next week, Levi.”

He was mere feet from the door when Levi called out to him again. “Hey, wait.”

 “Hm?”

Levi fiddled with one of his bracelets. “It was really cool of you to help out with her dad, so, uh. Thanks.”

“Yeah, of course.” A short pause, then, “It’s funny, actually — she reminds me a lot of my brother at that age. I just… I want to give her the same kind of help I hope he got back then, y’know?”

His voice picked up a note of teasing. “And if that help uses some superpowers, well. Who’s to say?”

Levi was left to gape at the door for a solid ten seconds as it swung shut before Elfie joined him.

Elfie looked him over, then rolled her eyes with a groan. “Oh, g-d, did Danny show off his tattoo again? Because I am not listening to you go on about—”

“Okay, first off, no.” There was no heat in Levi’s face. None. Not at all. “But also, holy shit.”

“What?” 

“Danny Stoker is an enigma.”

“You sound like a prat.”

“And he has superpowers.”

“You sound like a prat and a lunatic.”

Prat, maybe. Lunatic, no. Levi was right, he knew he was. He also knew by now that Danny wasn’t about to share what particular vat of toxic waste he got all up in to make that happen. Levi could learn to live with his curiosity. 

Great power, great responsibility, et cetera. From where Levi sat, it seemed clear that Danny got what the greatest responsibility of all was: fucking around with the people who deserved it. 

That, and cool dancing. 

And having very good tattoos on very nice arms.

For all his clear extroversion, Dinah Cross was certain she had never in her life met someone as unwilling to talk about himself as Danny.

She couldn’t count on both hands the number of stories strung together with the vaguest of details; or how many times he’d start one, blink, then hastily draw it to a close. More than anything else, it reminded her of the sort of clumsy recovery that came with telling her mother about something when she was a teenager only to remember a rule or two she’d broken halfway through. 

The other people who waited for him at the end of class some days were “just coworkers.” The roster of places all over the world he’d seen was so long and varied because he “always liked to travel.” His incredible sense of balance and absolute body control came from “a lot of practice.”

 Dinah’s mother rarely called her out on her poor attempts at obfuscation. She could do Danny the same kindness.

The greatest number of stories and the fewest actual explanations both went to anything about his brother, Tim. Danny often mentioned things he would have to show Tim when he “got back,” but never once said where he might be returning from.

“Does he travel a lot, like you?” No surprise that Levi was the first to ask.

Danny shook his head. “Nah, he’s just away for a bit.” Calling his smile odd would be incredibly redundant.

The non-answer didn’t dissuade Levi. “Where to?”

“It’s funny, but, um… I don’t actually know where he’s at right now.” Still smiling. Still odd. “Kinda hard to keep in touch.”

Dinah’s brows knit. “Is he on some kind of trip between different places?”

“Something like that.” 

Levi took it at face value. Dinah just hoped that, whatever Tim was off doing, he was safe. True, she didn’t know much, but it was obvious that Danny needed him to come home. She’d be devastated if anything happened to either of her siblings.

Based on the meager collection of facts Dinah managed to sift out from allusion and implication, Tim seemed like the sort she’d get along well with. The ease and frequency with which Danny asked the others to record new sets so Tim could eventually see spoke volumes on how much Danny shared his hobbies with his brother — no doubt Tim took his role as the oldest as seriously as Dinah did her own.

With all that, Dinah didn’t mind that she didn’t know Tim yet. She had always been fond of meeting a person first through the eyes of someone who loved them.

“Watch it with that sort of talk,” Sloane remarked when she shared the thought. He didn’t look up from where he was carefully painting her nails orange, so Dinah could only see the braids topping his undercut. “Or people might find out you’re as big a sap as me.”

“Well, we can’t have that.”  Her humor faded. “I hope Tim gets back soon, wherever he is. It’s obvious Danny misses him.”

Sloane nodded as he blew on the drying polish. “He seems pretty sure it won’t be long.”

No argument there. Even though Danny was by and large a confident guy, every so often he would falter. He was human. It happened. When it came to Tim, though, Danny never once showed anything but complete faith that he would return.

The only nerves Dinah ever saw in relation to Tim came after class one evening. Her daily planner was missing from her bag, so she left Sloane waiting in the car to double check their practice room.

Locked, of course. Dammit.

Dinah was already resigning herself to life without it until next week when the door opened to reveal a familiar, frazzled face. 

“Danny?”

“Dinah?”

They stared at each other for a moment before she broke the brief tension. “Wasn’t the door locked?”

“Oh, I, um.” Danny looked back into the room over his shoulder. Impatient. “It was still open when I came back in, but it must have shut behind me.” 

Leaving it open didn’t sound like Reese, but human error could hit anyone. “Right. I just needed to check if I left my planner here…?”

Danny straightened up. “Oh, I was actually just about to text you—” He cut himself off as he crossed away from the door to the bench running along one side of the room. His bag sat on it, its contents spilled out and scattered around without care. A familiar blue cover sat neatly at its side. 

“I found it under the bench,” Danny explained as he scooped her planner up and held it her way. 

Accepting it with a nod in thanks, she scanned the mess at their feet. “Were you also looking for something?”

“That’s why I came back, yeah.” The hard line of worry notched between his brows threw her, if only in how unusual it was.

“Do you need any help?”

“You really don’t have to—”

“I know I don’t.” Dinah tucked the planner in her bag, then met his eyes. “I wouldn’t offer if I didn’t want to help.” 

He relented. “My brother’s ring. He— I’m holding onto it while he’s gone.”

“You wear a ring?” She hadn’t noticed. 

“On a chain.” If calling his smiles odd was redundant, calling his laughs the same was even moreso. This one in particular had a bit of melancholy to it Dinah couldn’t place. Memories. “It’s too big for me, so I keep it there so I don’t lose it, but— I mean, that’s why I do, but it’s not foolproof. Clearly.”

Intended as a bit of self-deprecating humor, no doubt, but too much anxiety clung on below the words for that to carry. “I just— I have to find it, y’know? It’s not mine, it’s his, and I’m not gonna just— just misplace it like an idiot. He left it for me, so I don’t—”

“Danny, Danny.” Cut in before his rushed, stumbling explanation could really go off to the races. “We’ll find it, okay? Tim doesn’t even have to know.”

His hands dropped from where they were pressed to his forehead, and he forced a slow breath. “Right. Right, okay.” 

With two sets of eyes and only one share of panic, it took a mere couple minutes for Dinah to catch a glint of gold past where mats laid in a stack against the wall, left for kids’ tumbling classes and the like. 

As she leaned down to snag it by the chain, her eyes caught on a crack in the mirror. Huh.

“Got it!” She surfaced from behind the mats to hold out her prize. “It must have slipped and gotten accidentally kicked over here.”

Pure relief broke out over Danny’s face as he fastened it back around his neck, then closed his fingers tight around the ring, eyes shut. “G-d, thank you, Dinah.”

“Yeah, absolutely.” She pulled back the locs that had fallen in her face as she bent over and twined them around the knot low on the back of her head. “It’s good it ended up there — I’ll have to let Samera know that the mirror has a crack.”

For a split second, Dinah could have sworn Danny looked guilty, but it passed before she could be sure. “Nothing major, I hope.”

“Nah. Just something to keep an eye on.” The chime of her phone reminded her that she only came in to find a book, and that Sloane was nothing if not always a bit worried about her. Convincing him that it was perfectly safe for her to continue dance classes through most of her pregnancy took every bit of her medical training and no shortage of experience with his nerves, and she was still first trimester. 

“I gotta run,” she told Danny as he returned to the mess of his things on the bench. “But I’ll see you next week, yeah?”

Sincerity almost outweighed strangeness in his returned smile. “See you then. And seriously, thank you. I was losing my mind a little.”

“Hey, you found my planner — I’d say we’re even.”

In all, an innocuous encounter past the added look into Danny’s relationship with his absent brother; certainly not one that crossed her mind to share when visiting her father’s grave the following Sunday.

“I keep telling him the name Simon is dull as bricks—”

“It’s solid!” 

“—and that you couldn’t pay me to name my kid that, but he’s insistent, so it’s still on the list.” Dinah closed the planner in her lap. “We’ve got plenty of time, which means you know we’ll add a thousand more names. If you’ve got a favorite, feel free to ominously write it on our bathroom mirror.”

The headstone said nothing, of course, but she liked to think her father heard anyway.

Sloane helped her to her feet as they said their goodbyes with a promise to return next month. Their routine still carried some grief, but the regularity softened it. Even if he was gone, Warren Campbell could stay involved in his grandchild’s life. 

Dinah let herself feel that grief as they walked towards the cemetery entrance, all soft and quiet and calm, until the name Daniel fucking Stoker smacked her between the eyes like a thrown rock.

When she froze in her tracks, Sloane turned with clear concern.

“Everything alr—”

She pointed before he could finish. One name could be a coincidence, maybe, but there was no missing the second headstone at its side. 

   DANIEL STOKER                 TIMOTHY STOKER

1987 - 2013                       1984 - 2017

Danny Stoker died four years ago. Tim Stoker, mere months ago. 

Silence for a long moment.

Dinah faced Sloane. “We didn’t see this.”

“Wh—”

“Listen to me. We did not see this.”

She had no idea what force pushed her to be so insistent, but some part of her was certain this was not something they were meant to know. Maybe it was her father’s spirit, with his own otherworldly insight nudging her along. She would trust her gut. 

Sloane, bless him, nodded. No argument. 

Danny kept silent on much of his life, including his apparent death. Dinah would hold onto her worry for him, of course. She had no reason to drop that. All that mattered was that he was an odd but friendly guy who missed his brother; who got along with the whole group, even on Elfie’s prickliest days; and who had quite obviously been through the wringer.

So, if he was just a little bit undead, that was none of her business.

Elfie O’Brian didn’t want to like New Guy, not when he was new and weird and a foot taller than her, but successfully getting her father to fuck off outweighed the rest. 

Didn’t mean she had to like it. 

5’5 wasn’t even that short. 

“Stop moving.”

Danny stilled where he sat across from her on the ground. “Sorry. I’m a fidgety guy.”

“You’re about to be a fidgety guy with hot pink eyeshadow on his eyeball if you don’t cut it out.”

A cautious shrug. “I’ve had worse.” 

“Cool. Stop fucking moving.”

At the bench, Levi laughed, so Elfie stuck her tongue out at him. Dinah joined in, but Elfie wasn’t gonna give her the same treatment. Dinah could laugh at whatever she damn well pleased. 

Elfie had just finished contouring Danny’s cheekbones — not that he needed it — when Reese arrived at last. 

“Sorry,” they panted. Must have run from the car. “I’m watching my nephew for a bit, and I totally lost track of time.” 

“You’re fine. We’ve all been late before.” Sloane pulled his braids into a short ponytail. “Everything alright?”

“Yeah, he’s just kind of a handful. Really energetic.”

The conversation gave Elfie a chance to blend Danny’s eyeshadow a bit more with one finger. Brushes were all well and good, but she did her own makeup with her fingertips and a beauty blender most days. 

Had she not recently gotten acrylic nails for the first time, she would have been solid. As it was, she must have accidentally jabbed Danny a little too hard with one, and he drew back with a start. 

“Shit, sorry.” She glared at her nails. They were nice, and she liked the soft turquoise color, but so far they drove her nuts more often than not. “I feel like I have talons.”

Danny laughed, stopping an inch short of rubbing his eye. Good; she hadn’t set his eyeshadow yet. “When I said I’ve had worse, it wasn’t a challenge.”

“Shut up.”

Got her father to piss off. Let her do his makeup when Reese ran late. Two points in the making Elfie like you column. 

Jerk. 

The old ladies who worked at Button Up Crafts (which, dumbest name in the world, but whatever) immediately assumed she had a crush on him. She had yet to tell them that guys weren’t really her thing, but saying he was, like, ten years older than her nipped that right in the bud. They all might’ve been old and cishet, but they weren’t weird. 

Marie and Angela did still spend the rest of her shift asking when she’d bring his bag in for some additions like she had everyone else’s. Not weird, definitely insufferable.

…A fucking foot taller than her. 

It meant they could do cool lifts together, though. As far as partners went, she was most comfortable with Levi for obvious reasons. Sloane was stronger than him, plus a little more stable. 

Danny didn’t look like he’d be as strong as Sloane, but he had a steadiness to him the other two didn’t when they danced. She didn’t think the other guys would drop her, no, but there was always the slight bit of what if. Danny never had that.

She barely even knew him. Sure, they’d been in the same dance class for a couple months and change, and he rolled with the whole thing about her father without asking stupid questions or getting annoying about it, and he painted his nails cool colors and let her do his makeup, but still. 

Whatever. None of that meant she would stop making fun of Levi for getting stupid around him. 

Nothing to make fun of the day Levi couldn’t be at class — some kind of uni project he needed to work on, she didn’t know. Following the particulars of a speech pathology degree wasn’t high on her list of fun ways to kill time. 

He said he would come to walk her home, at least. It wasn’t that she didn’t know how to get home from there on her own. She did. She also hated being on the tube alone. It was stupid, she knew it was. Didn’t make it disappear, no matter how much she wished it would. 

That wish hit her like a truck when she checked her phone as class was wrapping up.

Elfie didn’t stifle her sigh as she shoved her phone back in her bag. She’d just… sit in the lobby for a while. She’d be fine. Bored, but fine.

“What’s up?” 

Another sigh before she answered Dinah’s question. “Levi’s gonna be late.”

Dinah looked back to Sloane. “Could we—”

“Your mum’s in town for dinner, love, and you know how she gets about plans changing.” 

The look on Dinah’s face said her apology before she even opened her mouth. “We’d absolutely wait with you, but— Reese, can you?”

“I need to let my dogs out, but if Levi doesn’t mind picking you up from my place—”

“Guys, you don’t have to—”

Sloane shook his head. “Samera’s already gone, and you being by yourself is—”

“Are you sure we can’t—”

A sharp snap cut off their attempts at a slapdash plan. Danny dropped his hand quickly, like he hadn’t even meant to snap at all. Weird.

“I can stick around ‘til Levi gets here. No mums in town, no dogs to let out.”

Reese glanced over to Elfie. “Does that sound good to you?”

“Better than you having to haul me to the other side of town, I guess.” She shrugged. “Sure, whatever.”

Once they knew she wouldn’t be by herself (even though she was seventeen and would have been fine), it didn’t take the others long to clear out. 

At least the chairs in the lobby were comfortable.

Elfie scratched at her jaw. She could pull out her DS and play some more Professor Layton, but doing that meant straight up ignoring Danny, which would be kind of bitchy. Normally she wouldn’t care, but— whatever. Whatever.

Legs stretched out in front of the chair, she tapped her toes together. “Levi said he’d be here in, like, a half-hour.”

“Gotcha.”

“You don’t have to wait around. I’m fine.”

Danny laughed. “Uh, pretty sure Dinah would somehow know if I left you alone and string me up by the thumbs. Not how I wanna spend my Thursday.”

G-d, he was weird. Elfie told him so, but he just laughed again.

“Y’know, I get that a lot.”

More quiet. Ugh. No way they were doing this for thirty fucking minutes.

“I could do your makeup again.”

Danny shrugged. “Not like we’re doing anything else.”

Without anywhere to set her palettes, they moved to sit on the floor. Elfie glanced critically between his face and the spread at her side. She used bright pinks last time, so maybe blues. Maybe both. Neutrals were always an option, but Elfie had no interest in being boring as hell, especially when last time he said himself that she could, go nuts, I don’t care.

Another glare at his face. “What fucking color are your eyes?”

He gave her an off look. “Uh, black?”

“They catch light in weird ways.”

“I told you I get that a lot.”

Elfie scowled at him. “Shut up. I’m doing blue and pink.”

“May as well throw in some purple, get the whole flag palette.”

Wait. Flag?

When she looked up at him, he winked. 

Huh. Cool.

“Bicon hours it is.” She wasn’t smiling. Piss off.

There was a shade of purple somewhere in her bag that looked awful with her skin tone, which was kind of weird considering she was literally the color of paper, but would suit him well. One of those little single-color trial palette things. Somewhere, unless it fell in the depths of hell, which was looking more and more likely since she was elbow-fucking-deep in her bag without any sign of it.

Danny was clearly trying not to laugh. “You look like you’re about to dive in up to your waist like a cartoon character.” 

With the hand not on the world’s most annoying scavenger hunt, she flipped him off. That, he did laugh at. 

She lifted her head to scowl at him again, but as soon as she did she felt one of her g-ddamn talons slip into a half-open palette and catch on whatever was inside. 

“Shit.” Of course, her nail and fingertip were covered in ruined bits of the exact shade of purple she was looking for. Fuck.

“Everything alright?”

She didn’t look over as she hunted around in her bag once more, now with a better idea of where the damn thing was and far less hope that it’d be usable. “My nails broke one of my eyeshadow pans.” Rouge palette found, she opened it with cautious hope and found half of the powder still in place. Not ideal, better than nothing. 

“Hey, you’re golden. Plenty left.”

Elfie sighed as she swirled some onto a brush. “Yeah, I guess. The show must go on.”

Danny made a noise she couldn’t place, something besides affirmation. She didn’t pin it as anything but a random hum and reached forward with brush in hand, but a moment later something collided with her wrist and sent the thing flying.

“Hey, what the hell?!” 

Danny had smacked her hand away. Elfie turned to glare at him, confused and irritated, but the expression on his face stopped her dead. 

He wasn’t looking at her at all. He wasn’t looking at anything. 

“Danny, what—”

As soon as she said his name, he shoved himself back until he collided with another chair. One of those weird smiles drew his face into rigid lines, and he still didn’t look up. 

Elfie could feel anxiety building in her chest. He was freaked out about something, fucking obviously, but what? She was alone. No idea how to help. No idea what the hell she was supposed to do, or what happened, or if she should call someone, or if she did something wrong, or—

No. No, not going down that rabbit hole. She could almost hear her mother’s voice, tired as ever but with a warm hand against Elfie’s face as she said, “You know more than you think, Elfrieda. Trust yourself.” 

She knew more than she thought. What did she know?

He didn’t want to be called Danny a few weeks ago. Told them to use Leo. She had a backup, there. 

The last time she did his makeup, he mentioned he’d had worse than eyeshadow in his eyes. If her coming at him with a brush had tied to some memory? Bad news.

There was no way for her to know if that was what set him off in the first place, but it didn’t matter. Something did. Elfie wasn’t stupid — she saw his scars and the bags under his eyes some days as much as the rest. Whatever the story was there, she didn’t want to know. Keeping the origin to himself didn’t mean he could magic away whatever bits stuck. 

As she forced herself to stop and think, Danny— or, no, Leo curled up tight. Still not looking at her. 

“Leo, I don’t— What’s wrong?” Stupid question, but she didn’t know how else to phrase it. No reply. 

In a few quick motions she shoved all the makeup back into her bag in case the brushes were somehow involved. Didn’t seem to change anything, but that might mean it wouldn’t get any worse. 

What the hell was Elfie supposed to do now? 

She knew more than she thought. She knew her friend Ramona used to have shutdowns like this, and that talking or touch just overwhelmed her more. Company was all Ramona needed. No guarantee that would work for Leo, but it was something concrete. If Levi got here and things were still like this, maybe he’d have a few ideas. Hopefully. 

Elfie sat next to Leo — no touch, but close enough he could tap her if he needed to — then pulled out her DS. Professor Layton wouldn’t hold all her attention with the pit of raw anxiety in her stomach, but it was better than nothing.

He didn’t seem a foot taller than her like this. He just seemed small. 

G-d, he’d waited with her because he wanted to keep her company, and then she went and triggered him or something. Great work, Elfie. Super job with the whole friends thing. 

She tried to keep quiet as she played to avoid some kind of overstimulation like she did with Ramona, but Christ, she was bad at mazes. No hints left, either. Limited number of moves. She was screwed. 

“Fuck.” Muffled by her clenched teeth, but worry made her glance over at Leo anyway.

To her surprise, he was watching the screen intently. Elfie dropped her arms and held it more to the side so he could see better. 

“I’m garbage at these. It’s not gonna be too interesting for a minute.” 

Leo acted like he didn’t even realize she spoke, but one of his hands worked free from where it had twisted in his shirt. 

Dead end. 

Back, try to find a new route, and… 

Dead fucking end. 

She cursed again when she ran out of moves and was sent back to square one. Before she could get past the starting point, Elfie felt fingers tugging at her shirt sleeve. When she looked up, Leo lifted his hand to point left without making eye contact.

…Oh, what the hell. He couldn’t be any worse than her.

She took the left branch, then checked with Leo again. Down. He still didn’t raise his head, though when she turned back to follow his direction, she felt eyes on her face for a split second. 

Together, they got through the whole damn thing without her once ending up in a dead end. Hell yes. 

As soon as she moved on, he retreated back into his own head, no longer watching anything but empty space in front of him. 

Elfie always skipped mazes whenever she could help it, which meant that she had plenty of unsolved ones stored away. As soon as she was able to, she navigated to the Puzzle Shack option where all the ones she never solved before progressing were kept. 

Mostly mazes. Fuck mazes. 

She opened one and made a few embarrassing, completely genuine failures (Fuck. Mazes.) Before long she felt that same tug on her sleeve, then let Leo guide her on through. His knack for them was kind of ridiculous — far be it from her to complain. He pulled back a little after finishing again, but once she opened and immediately messed up another, Leo seemed to get that mazes were the order of the evening.  

Elfie didn’t realize how long had passed until one of the front doors opened to show a harried Levi. 

“Sorry, I—”

Elfie swiped her hand through the air to interrupt and mouthed, Go. When Levi looked like he was going to reply, she hit him with the hardest glare she could muster and another swipe.

With that, Levi got the picture, and he backed slowly out with brows high on his face. 

Another tug. Impatient. 

“Alright, alright, jeez.” 

Back to business.

After Leo had soundly proved he was better at puzzles than Elfie (so, like literally anyone), he shifted where he sat. Elfie tried not to make a thing of it, but couldn’t help some surprise when he pulled out his phone. Moments later, her own buzzed.

Elfie snorted and elbowed Leo lightly, which he returned without delay.

She elbowed him again, not lightly. Again, returned. 

Leo pushed himself up first, then extended a hand to help her to her feet. The scars on his palm barely registered. 

When they stepped outside, Levi straightened from where he was leaning against the wall. “Everything okay?”

“Obviously.” Elfie turned back to Leo. “Give me your bag.”

Confusion. His eyes flicked to look a little past her, where she assumed Levi was nodding that it was safe to go along or whatever, then tugged his things out and held it her way.

“You can have it back next week.” Mumbled. He gave her a thumbs up. 

“Thanks for waiting, by the way,” Levi added. Another thumbs up. It was Levi’s turn to look confused, but Elfie elbowed him hard to keep his mouth shut. She could explain on the tube. 

“See you, Leo.”

No missing Leo’s surprise and bit of gratification at her name swap. Elfie dragged Levi off with her before he could ask any dumb questions about it. 

Marie and Angela were as big of pains as she had expected when she brought Danny’s bag into work with her. They were all surprised when she took to embroidery as fast as she did, with all that bull about teenagers these days and immediate gratification and some shit about selfie culture that made her tune right the hell out.

Levi got a little swirl of tropical fish — absolute messes that she hated looking at after so many months of practice and improvement. Sloane’s bag had a jaguar, with matching flat affect but his same bright eyes, and Dinah got a crane, all lithe and elegant like her. Reese, a big old tabby cat with matching round glasses. 

Maybe adding a lion to Danny’s bag was a little on the nose, even if she striped its mane with blue, purple, and pink. The grin she got when she shoved it at him the following week with a muttered, “Here,” made it hard to care.

He was one of the menagerie now.

…A whole fucking foot.

Reese Alexander meant this in the kindest way possible: Danny’s knowledge base was weird.

A fact, not an insult. When it came to adult classes, it wasn’t even that unusual. Plenty showed up with scattered, dusty muscle memory from childhood instruction, or a step chart they could rattle off like digits of pi — useless in their day-to-day, but damn if they wouldn’t still remember on their deathbed. 

Danny, though? Weird. Singularly weird. 

Didn’t matter what kind of lifts Reese tossed his way, he nailed them without breaking a sweat. He worked best with Elfie there, but no one posed a challenge for him; not even Sloane (done for a laugh, true, but Reese was sorely tempted to choreograph something that took full advantage). The more something blurred the line between dance and stunt, the faster he snapped it up.

Traditional styles, that was where he got spotty. Some things he knew in practice but didn’t know the terms for. Most ballroom had somehow passed him by. For a while, Reese wondered if he was self-taught, like he started with parkour and decided to take it further, but the way he talked about learning what he did spoke too much to some kind of instruction.

Wherever he got his bag of tricks, it meant he rarely had to be shown how to do something twice. He picked up techniques as easily as a kid did words. Innate. Reese had no reason to think much on it until the day came that he needed them to repeat something. 

He never asked them to. Reese didn’t even realize anything was up until they noticed an error and called for him and Elfie to pause. Elfie had the same mild irritation she always did when stopped in the middle of a set. Danny showed no more than that nervous smile of his, but Reese knew a front when they saw one. 

It only took another run-through before he got it, but he was antsy for the rest of class. Kept glancing at them out of the corner of his eye. It kind of put them on edge, but they tried to keep that under wraps. Whatever he was waiting for, they didn’t think that would help.

Not enough to make any conjectures from, and Reese wasn’t interested in baseless assumptions, but it was a fair guess that his old teachers must have been a bit strict.

Reese added it to their mental list of notes about their students: Danny — hard on himself. Really hard on himself. Dinah used to be the same way. They would just have to work with him on that. Carefully.

It went beyond his dancing. No surprise he was so good at popping and locking — that was just how he moved. Way less obvious outside of dance, sure, but something about him was robotic. Smooth, with perfectly still halts between each motion. If Reese didn’t spend so much time watching him at classes, they might have never picked up on it. Still there.

Even with knowledge gaps, Danny belonged in an advanced class. Reese only made the mistake of suggesting he transfer once.

“You came in with some background.” Reese pulled out their gloves and hat from their bag. “So an intermediate class doesn’t challenge you.”

“I— I guess not. I don’t mind, though.” Danny shrugged. “There’s plenty I’m not as familiar with.”

“That’s just adult classes for you. You get the hang of things as fast as anyone who got broader instruction.” They wound their scarf around their neck. “Where did you learn?”

“Oh, all over. It wasn’t very formal, I just picked it up. I’m a fast learner.”

One of his vague things, then. Reese wouldn’t push. “Well, either way — moving to the advanced class is worth considering.”

They couldn’t read the look on his face. “…Yeah, if you want me to.”

“It’s not something I do or don’t want you to do,” they replied with brows drawn. “It’s your call.” 

“Um.” Danny scrutinized them. “I’ll probably… stick around in this one? If that’s okay. Since I already know everyone here.”

It was like they asked him some kind of trick question, even though Reese meant it with complete sincerity. He spent the entire next class giving them those same side-eyes he did after making a mistake in a set. Clear anticipation, though Reese wasn’t sure of what. Did he think they would just move him to the other session anyway?

They didn’t make choices for other people, Danny included. If he wanted to stay in the Thursday night class, he was well within his right to. Having an odd number in class still wasn’t ideal, though, so Reese was plenty thankful when another finally joined them. 

Cecelia was friendly enough, from Reese’s first impression. She was a little on the small side, with short honey-colored hair and big green eyes. Enthusiastic sort. Very eager to meet her classmates, too, which was always nice to see. 

When Reese led Cecelia to their room, most reacted the same way they did at Danny’s introduction: a surly Elfie, excited Levi, welcoming Sloane, and pleasant Dinah. Same as ever. 

Danny, though. As soon as he looked up, he froze in place for a split second, caught halfway through one of those smooth shifts of his. It was so brief Reese wondered for a moment if their eyes were playing tricks on them — wouldn’t be the first time, not when it came to him. 

Maybe he was just bad with new people. Could be why he wasn’t keen on changing classes. Reese would have to remember to give this class more of a heads up before bringing in anyone new next time. 

Still, they were glad for the addition. The ability to pair students up made things that much easier, and six total meant they could split into groups of two or of three. Solid number, good variety.

As Reese expected, there wasn’t any need for discussion over who paired with who. Elfie only joined the class at all because of Levi. Dinah and Sloane were married. That left Danny and Cecelia to pair up far more often than not.

Cecelia seemed content with that. She was a cheery person; the type who went out of her way to try and get to know people. Anyone else, anywhere else, anywhen or anywhy, the others wouldn’t have minded, Reese was certain. Lord knew that Levi at the very least had no grounds to be bothered by questions. 

The majority of hers went to Danny, though, and his classmates would have none of it. Every time she asked any that so much as skirted Danny’s past or personal life, at least one of the others looked unhappy. Usually more. It wasn’t uncommon for someone to cut right in and redirect the conversation, though success never held.

Cecelia made no secret of how unsatisfying she found his less-than-direct answers. Danny continued to walk a strange line, regardless: always cagey, always vague, but never once asking her to step back. He wasn’t ever very forceful when asserting his boundaries with Reese or the rest of the class, but with Cecelia he didn’t even try. 

Her curiosity was harmless enough for now. Reese would just have to keep an eye on things. The rest of the class had acclimated to knowing basically nothing about Danny, after all — it might only be a matter of time. The local enigma required an adjustment period. 

Reese couldn’t quite get that split-second freeze out of their head, though.

They didn’t want to pry, not ever, but this might be important. It wasn’t like they needed to know all the fine details.

“Hey, Danny?”

End of class, everyone else filing out. Cecelia made sure to thank Reese before leaving, then rushed off to chat with Dinah. Social butterfly all over. She meant well, even if she was… a lot. 

Apprehensive, Danny said, “What’s up?”

“Oh, nothing bad, don’t worry.” Reassurance did nothing for Danny’s obvious tension. “I just wanted to check in about Cecelia?”

The tension doubled around his eyes. “What about her?”

“I just…” Reese paused as they tried to decide how to phrase their thoughts. “I’ve noticed that you seem kind of uncomfortable around her, and I wanted to make sure she didn’t— I don’t know, ask something too far.”

Danny was already shaking his head before they finished. “No, nothing like that. She— It’s not her fault.”

“What isn’t?”

“She looks a little like someone I used to know.” Discomfort killed the ease he attempted when he shrugged. “It’s not exact, so I’ll get over it.”

“Do you want me to rotate pairs more, or—”

“No, no. You don’t have to. The way it shakes out now makes the most sense. You don’t have to cause any issues like that just because she kind of looks like another person.”

Damn. Maybe they shouldn’t have run that by him. If they did it without bringing it up, he wouldn’t feel singled out, but now he would know it was for him the second they changed anything. Reese got the feeling he wouldn’t appreciate it very much. 

“…If you’re sure you’re okay with it.” They resisted picking at their nails. “But if anything does come up, just let me know, yeah? I would rather know than not.”

Danny nodded with the immediacy of someone who had no intention of following that request. “Of course.” 

At the end of the day, they couldn’t make him. They wouldn’t even if they could. 

All Reese could do was watch and wait. There was no way for them to go back and replace whatever sort of training Danny had before with something better. No, their only option — or, the only one they were interested in taking — was to keep at the ready. 

Danny was one of their students. That was all Reese needed to know. If nothing else, they would be an instructor he could trust. 

Cecelia Rook didn’t get Danny.

At this point, she just wanted to understand if he even liked her or not. Everyone showed emotion differently, sure, but there were cornerstones. Commonalities. Danny was no different, but she could never be sure if she was reading him right.

Super frustrating. She was good at reading people. 

Still, when all else failed there was the tried and true. People always liked to talk about themselves. Showing interest and using a person’s name in conversation a fair amount were the best ways she knew to jump start connections. 

Normally. 

Every time Cecelia asked Danny a question that wasn’t in the vein of, “Do you want to run that again?” he danced around until she got so tangled up in conversation that it took an hour for her to realize he never answered at all. 

Saying his name a lot didn’t do anything for her, either, not when he used multiple without clear rhyme or reason. She thought, if anyone might have some insight, the receptionist would be first up. 

“Bye, guys!”

Samera smiled. “See you next week, Leo.” 

Cecelia waved her own goodbye, then turned back to the desk. “It’s so weird to ask after being in the same class for a few weeks, but… Isn’t his name Danny?”

“Well, yeah, but…” Samera worried her lip. “It’s Leo, too, sometimes.”

“So he just feels like a Danny some days and a Leo others? Sorry, I must be missing something, but that doesn’t really make sense to me.” With some light humor, she added, “I’m not going to ask you all to call me Susan sometimes, just for fun.”

Glasses only made Samera’s hazel eyes look that much more guarded. “If you needed us to, we would. You don’t need us to, or if you do, you haven’t said.”

Not wanted. Needed. Strange. 

Stranger still was how certain Cecelia grew that she had seen Danny’s face before. She asked, but Danny just made some quip about how he had one of those faces before quickly changing the subject. 

The thing was, he didn’t. Past how his eyes were a smidge too big, or that his smile was a touch too wide, or that he was so tall it startled her sometimes, he was handsome. Or, no — pretty would be more accurate. Good bone structure, long lashes, clear skin. Even that odd scar on his lip was charming. 

It bothered her for what felt like ages, up until a picture of her and a friend from when they went to the gym together a few years ago resurfaced. Lo and behold, whose pretty face was on the advertisement behind them?

For someone who used to do modeling work, he was so self-conscious. Cecelia found it hard to believe he was out of shape now as compared to then, not when he never seemed so much as winded during class. The long-sleeved shirts he wore were well fitted, too. He had no reason to hide. 

Shy, then. It was kind of cute. 

“Look what I found!” she sang as she came into class the next week. 

Dinah cocked her head. “What?”

“Mr. Stoker here has been keeping some secrets!” As she pulled the photo up on her phone, Cecelia caught a few of the others glancing at him out of the corner of her eye. Just as curious as her, no doubt. “Why didn’t you tell us you used to be a model?” 

A flash of… relief, maybe? He was as impossible to pin down as ever. Lucky for Danny, Cecelia liked puzzles. 

The others all came over to look, Elfie elbowing Levi the whole time. Dinah nudged Danny with one shoulder, a smile on her face. 

“You look good.”

Danny’s head ducked a bit. So bashful. “Ha, thanks. It’s been a while, so…” 

“Why’s that?” Levi asked.

“Other stuff came up,” replied Danny, as if it was actually an answer. “It’s not really for me anymore.” 

A perfect opening. “Why not?” Standing next to him, Cecelia patted his chest with the back of her hand — as firm as she predicted. “You’re in great shape! I know you’re a little shy, but you don’t have any reason to be with us. Seriously, you’ve got to be overheating with all the long sleeves and joggers.” 

Cecelia looked around at the others, expectant. They must want him to feel comfortable here too, right? She couldn’t coax him out of his shell alone. 

“What other gigs did you get in all that?” 

Levi spoke like Cecelia hadn’t said a thing, and Danny answered with the same disregard. He gave her an apologetic smile (or, she was pretty sure it was apologetic) as he did, though, so Cecelia didn’t make a scene of her hurt feelings. She would just talk to Danny about it again later — the others might not care to work on that shy streak of his, but Cecelia had always taken to helping people. 

It was Sloane who stopped her as conversation began to wind down and make way for class. 

“Cecelia?”

“Hm?”

He paused. Unlike Danny, whose expressions were present but hard to define, Sloane kept rather blank — it drove her crazy. “Just… Keep in mind that there’s a lot of reasons someone might not want to show a ton of skin.” 

Cryptic. “What do you mean?” She forced a small laugh. “Does he have an embarrassing tattoo or something?”

“No.” He kept to the usual slow, clear cadence, but there was a hint of iron beneath. “But the why doesn’t matter. Don’t push.” 

…Super cryptic. Sloane said there were no bad tattoos, and he was plenty fit. Where was the issue? Sure, he had the weird scars on his fingers and palms, but Cecelia wasn’t going to suggest hand modeling. She was an optimist, not an idealist. 

But she would relent, a little. For now. That level of comfort took time to build. Cecelia couldn’t fix anyone’s personal problems overnight. 

So, when a quick set made Danny’s shirt ride up, Cecelia took it upon herself to help. Nothing major, simply leaning over to take the hem in hand and tug it back down again. If that was what he preferred, no reason she couldn’t adjust her approach, right? 

He went still as soon as her fingers brushed his skin. Smoothing the fabric with the same hand, she chirped, “There we are!”

An odd noise splintered the air. When she turned towards its source, it was to see a large crack traced up one mirror, half-hidden by mats — one that hadn’t existed all of three seconds ago. 

Wide-eyed, Cecelia stumbled through some attempt at a question. “Wh— How did—”

“Some kind of shift in air pressure, maybe! Cold fronts, you know how it is.” Cecelia jolted as Levi shoved his way in between her and Danny and tossed an arm around her shoulders. “Or is it warm fronts? Hell if I know. Maybe someone in another practice room hit a note too high for people to hear, but that shattered all the windows. Won’t know ‘til class ends, right?”

“I don’t think—”

“I mean, unless they ended up shattering all the mirrors in whatever room they’re in, and we just got some aftershock. Can we judge opera notes on the Richter scale, or what? I don’t know what the protocol is.” 

Cecelia glanced past where he was chattering away to try and meet Danny’s eyes, maybe commiserate a little on just how strange Levi was acting, but Danny didn’t return it. Instead, he gave a couple small nods as Dinah asked something Cecelia couldn’t make out through Levi’s stream-of-consciousness. 

“I guess it doesn’t matter! No big deal either way. Sometimes stuff just happens, y’know?”

“But—”

“You worry too much, ‘Celia! Come on, I promise it’s fine.” Levi’s upbeat smile didn’t falter, but he made very steady eye contact when he finished with, “Don’t worry about the mirrors, okay?”

“I— Okay, but—”

“Brilliant, great! Y’know, we should practice together more. Elfie can only take so much of me, because she has terrible taste.” 

Cecelia’s head spun with the barrage. It was nowhere near as graceful as how Danny dodged around things — this was pure brute force to an end she couldn’t figure out. Why wasn’t she allowed to be confused about a spontaneously cracking mirror? And why did Levi want to partner up so suddenly? None of it made sense. 

When she joined this class, Danny had seemed like the only mystery worth solving. She was certain that remained the case, but the rest of the group was doing all they could to match him in inscrutability. 

Even the sensible Dinah acted off every so often. All Cecelia did was ask to see the ring Danny wore on a chain, and Dinah watched like Cecelia was handling the crown jewels. 

It wasn’t an especially nice ring, from what Cecelia could tell. Not cheap, but old and well-worn. Gold. A man’s, judging by the size and width of the band, but it looked too large for Danny.

May as well check, then. She took his hand and tugged it up to compare it side by side with the ring, a playful look of concentration on her face.

“Penny for your thoughts?” 

Cecelia smiled at Danny through her show of focus. “So, are you planning to grow into this, or…?” 

When Danny smiled back, she took it as a win. “It’s not mine. I’m just holding onto it for now.”

“Whose is it?”

“My brother’s.” 

She waited, but he didn’t elaborate. “What’s he up to, that he couldn’t bring it with him?” The chain spun on her finger as she fiddled thoughtlessly with it. 

“Just off traveling,” Danny answered, mild. “But he’ll be back before long.”

“Traveling where? Somewhere rings are against the law or something?” she pressed. A ridiculous concept, but exaggerating like that was often enough to draw out an explanation.

“No, but he asked me to hold onto it while he’s gone.”

Cecelia twirled the ring around by its chain again. “Where’s he off to, then?”

“Not anywhere in particular, just… around. He’ll come back here when he’s done.”

Another twirl, and the chain slipped free off Cecelia’s fingers and went sailing to the side. Before it hit the ground, a dark hand darted out and snatched the ring from midair. 

Dinah passed her prize to Danny. As he refastened it, almost dropping it again in his haste, Dinah said to Cecelia, “Be careful.” Not hard, no, but firm. Cecelia almost felt like a kid caught toying around with her mother’s jewelry. 

Something defensive curled in her throat. “I think it would have survived hitting the ground.”

“I know.” Dinah didn’t acknowledge Danny as he stepped away to join Sloane, eyes still pinning Cecelia in place. “But being careful with something doesn’t just hinge on whether it’ll break. The meaning of them deserves respect too.” 

And what was that supposed to mean? Was Dinah saying she thought Cecelia didn’t respect Danny? Or, respect his things, or whatever? Dinah didn’t know her. She didn’t know anything about her. 

Feeling so distinctly othered here was strange. For a while, Cecelia chalked it up to her being the newest arrival, but it felt like her classmates were making a point to shut her down every time she tried to reach out.

She’d put in so much work here, though. Too much to give up now. She was certain she was this close to breaking through Danny’s walls, and she was never one to quit projects halfway through. 

As if the world itself wished to challenge her determination, it all came to a head the following week. 

Danny and Elfie ran through a set with some particularly impressive lifts that Cecelia couldn’t help gasping and clapping at — there was some serious talent here. As soon as they finished, she rushed up with excited hugs for them both. Elfie didn’t return it, to no surprise. Teenagers, right? Even as Danny laughed at Cecelia’s enthusiasm when she gave him his, he was far more receptive than Elfie.

Cecelia opted to pull back a bit rather than let go of him entirely. “That was amazing! You must have done something professionally, right? There’s no way you haven’t performed in real shows before.” 

“I— Not recently, no.” He shrugged, still smiling. “Wasn’t really for me.” 

“I don’t buy that for a second.” Mock challenge filled her voice as she poked him in the sternum with one finger. 

Another shrug. “It’s the truth. I did for a while, but it got to a point I wasn’t able to anymore.” 

Wasn’t able to? “Why not?” 

“…Plans changed, mostly.”

“C’mon, guys,” Levi butted in. “Let’s keep it moving.”

He went ignored. This was a breakthrough; Cecelia could feel it. “Plans?” 

Danny only nodded as he pulled back. With the way Cecelia’s hands had settled on his arms, the motion meant his own hands caught by the wrist in her fingers. Palms up. 

Showing, not telling. He must not have the words, or found them too hard to say. She understood.

“Is that when you got these scars?” she asked sympathetically. “What happened?” 

His hands twisted in hers. So shy. “Um. Nothing.” 

“They look plenty healed now, though. I bet if you tried, you could go professional again!” She offered an encouraging smile. “You know the saying, the show must—”

“Oh, my G-d!” 

Before Cecelia managed to process a thing, Elfie forced herself between the two of them, breaking their hold on each other. Startled, Cecelia could only stare as Elfie thrust a sharp nail in her face with sharper words. 

“Have you ever, ever minded your own fucking business? Just once, for one day? Could you please pull your head out of your self-centered ass for two seconds and take a g-ddamn hint?! Ever?” Elfie’s eyes were fiery as she advanced a step, hackles raised. “I don’t care what trashy romance novels you read whenever you’re not busy being a cunt — sometimes a person isn’t some fucking puzzle, they’re a person, and—” 

“Hey, hey!” Reese cut in, voice hard. “Stop. Back off.” 

Elfie whirled on them. “You know how shitty this is—”

“We’re not doing it like this.”

Cecelia glanced up at Danny. Certainly he was confused too, right? They were just talking, and Elfie barged in with some chip on her shoulder. 

Danny stared back, but it wasn’t the face of someone as lost as her. He looked apprehensive. Nervous. 

Scared, a bit. Of Cecelia. 

Dinah had a hand on Danny’s arm — resting on, not wrapped around in any way. Sloane stood on his other side, one shoulder in front of him. Shielding. Levi kept to Elfie’s flank with no sign of his usual humor. Elfie was damn near snarling at Cecelia, and even though Reese had cut in, they were angled towards her rather than Elfie.

Something twisted in Cecelia’s stomach. She didn’t know what. 

“Elfie, we’ll talk in a second. Danny, you too. Cecelia, can you come with me, please?”

She didn’t argue, only followed Reese to the door. In the mirror, Cecelia watched as Elfie turned immediately on her heel to face Danny. She asked something Cecelia didn’t catch, and when Danny nodded, gave him a very brief hug. 

Reese pressed their lips together as they stilled in the hall, then asked, “Can you tell me what happened?” 

“You were there.” Confusion on confusion.

“I want to know what happened from your perspective.”

“I—” She let out a short sigh, fingers toying with her necklace. “I was talking to Danny, trying to encourage him. He’s really talented, so I said he could take it professionally if he wanted.”

Face unreadable, Reese nodded. “And then you grabbed him?”

“I hugged him,” Cecelia corrected. “And he hugged me back, I— I don’t think that’s a crime!”

“You were holding his wrists.” 

“He was showing me the scars on his hands after I asked why he stopped performing wherever he used to.” She tugged some of the curls that had fallen in her eyes back into the bobby pins scattered through her hair. “You know how cagey he is. I was finally getting him to open up some, and Elfie freaked out at me for it!”

Offense at Elfie’s clear overreaction soothed the twisting in Cecelia’s stomach. Even the most private, standoffish people needed someone they could trust with their real selves. Was Cecelia so bad for wanting to be that for Danny?

Reese took a beat to consider that. “So you’ve been trying to get him to let down his walls.”

“Exactly!” Cecelia said with relief. She should have known Reese would understand. They were sensible. “He deserves someone he feels like he can be himself with, you know? Everyone needs that!”

“Sure.” Their flat tone took Cecelia a little off guard, but barely anyone in this group made sense when it came to that sort of thing. If it wasn’t tone, it was facial expressions, or body language, or a thousand other things that didn’t suit what she expected 

“Sloane and Dinah have each other, of course, and Levi and Elfie are… whatever they are, and I’m sure you wouldn’t want to have that sort of relationship with a student, even if we’re about the same age. I’ve been trying to be that for him, but every time I do, the others get so weird!”

“What do you mean?”

Cecelia almost pointed out that they must have seen it themself again, but she assumed they wanted to hear this part in her own words, too. A first person perspective was always more accurate and nuanced than an outsider’s. 

“Like— well, Samera’s not a student, but she still was pretty patronizing when I asked about the whole Danny/Leo thing. Sloane basically cornered me after I told Danny he didn’t need to be shy with us, and when I tried to respect the stuff he said about how Danny doesn’t like to show skin, Levi just— just manhandled me!”

“Manhandled?” Still flat. Cecelia tried to keep that from adding to her frustration. 

“He shoved me to the side for no reason. Dinah’s been alright, for the most part, but the other day she accused me of not respecting Danny out of nowhere.” Cecelia gestured to the door a few meters away. “And now, this whole fiasco with Elfie!” 

“Got it.” Reese went quiet again as they mulled it over. 

Relief filled Cecelia. Finally, all this could be dealt with and put behind them. She didn’t know what Reese had in mind — maybe a talk about respect with the rest of the class? Whatever solution they chose, it was sorely needed.

“Cecelia.” Something lay under the flatness now, still too muted to parse. “Did you ever ask Danny what he wanted?”

She blinked. “What?”

“Did you talk to him about any of this?” 

“I— I just told you I’ve been trying, but no one will let—”

“You’ve been trying to talk to him in an attempt to help,” Reese interrupted. “Did you ever ask him if he wanted that help in the first place?”

Fresh affront barbed her reply. “If I asked, he’d just brush me off! People as closed off as him almost never accept that when it’s offered.”

“So you knew he would say no. You knew he wouldn’t want that, and you did it anyway.” Flatness could no longer hide the blunt challenge in their voice. 

“…That’s a really misleading way to put it, Reese. I’m not some— some steamroller shoving people’s boundaries around. I’m trying to help him!”

They didn’t relent. “I know you’re trying to help. You’re also absolutely shoving his boundaries.”

“You have no right to—” Cecelia started, but again they didn’t let her finish. 

“I don’t want to argue with you.” Their eye contact never wavered. “There’s a reason the others reacted like they did. I’m asking you to think about it. All of it.”

Silence. They expected her to do so here, now.

She could argue. She could shout. She could leave. 

That same old twist lost patience with being ignored, and rooted her where she stood. 

She thought.

She thought about identity. Names. She thought about scars, and what they cost. She thought about absences. About cracks. About force, about protection.

She thought about tension around dark, dark eyes, and how what she assumed was a permanent feature of his only showed when she was near.

“You and I have no idea if he even needs someone to get past his walls. How do we know he doesn't have that already?” 

Cecelia said nothing. 

“To be frank,” Reese went on. “If that’s the case, I don’t think knowing that would have changed anything. You wanted to help him. You also wanted to solve him.”

Twisting choked her. Only now could she confront what it truly was: shame.

“I…” Almost too soft to hear. She shook her head with a small, helpless smile. “I really messed up, huh?”

There was no cushion to Reese’s, “Yeah.” 

Silence hung in the air. Cecelia’s eyes pricked with guilt. 

“…I should apologize.”

“You should.” The frankness was almost comforting, in a strange way. “But wait until he’s ready for that.”

“Mm.” No complaints about waiting — it gave her that much more time to figure out where to begin.

“I’m going to move you to the Saturday adult class.” Their tone brooked no argument, and though it stung, Cecelia knew better than to try. “If that schedule doesn’t work, you’d keep up with an advanced class well enough. We can talk to Samera about it later.” 

They let out a small sigh. “Everyone in each class has to trust each other, or none of it would work. That isn’t going to happen here.”

“Because they don’t trust me.”

“So, you’ll move to the other class.” Reese pulled off their glasses to clean the lenses with their shirt. “I don’t know any more about Danny than you, but I do know this is a clean slate for him. The Saturday class can be yours.” 

A clean slate. The phrase always felt a little melancholy to Cecelia. 

First person perspective was always more accurate and nuanced than an outsider’s, right? The others’ trust shone bright between them, and Cecelia would only ever see it from the outside. It wasn’t hers to join.

Danny’s clean slate had grown into a network of joint hands and wordless support. Cecelia could only hope that, one day, she might put her own to half as much good.