Chapter Text
He thinks the first time you meet is across a crowded floor, some “rom-com love at first sight, bullshit.” he says.
He says he didn’t think that kind of thing really happened, not to real people. Certainly not to people like him, jaded and cynical.
He is right.
The first time you meet is carefully, perfectly engineered and orchestrated by you. You cannot risk messing up the first meeting with the boy (man, you suppose, now. Although it seems his maturity could certainly be debated) literally from your dreams. Sure, you are an awful, anxious wreck with an alcohol dependency barely keeping it together in the face of alien invasion, but you are smart. You like to think you know how people work.
And you like to play games.
This will be a game. No emotional attachments, you tell yourself in the cab on the way to a mixer held by some Warner Brothers executive (They are courting your film rights). You know he will be there, you have seen it briefly, with your limited powers of foresight. He will be wearing a red tuxedo jacket and pajama pants covered in comic sans expletives. Despite yourself, part of you feels as though this stranger is already your friend. You shoo the thought away, and pick a shedded strand of blonde hair from your gauzy lilac dress.
Out of the cab, you tug at the hem of your dress, an inch or so shorter than you are normally comfortable with, and a pencil skirt at that, and so it keeps riding up your thighs. The lavender colour is pretty, though, and a nice break from your usual black. You fumble with money for the driver and sigh.
It’s a game, you think. He is already dead. You have already seen him die in your head a thousand times in a thousand different ways. You have seen his corpse as a child, an adult, a strange, angel-like creature. The Terrors say he is important, you agree. You are not sure if both parties are implying in the same way.
The party is already crowded by the time you get there, you make a beeline for the bar. You know he isn’t particularly fond of drinking, but at some point or another, he will need some sustenance, surely. The music is louder than you imagined.
Your eyes dart to anyone wearing red, the colour leaping out at you as though all others had been desaturated. You turn down three offers to dance and two drinks from men with polished, fake smiles, just the sort of smile you plan to don when you meet him.
Half an hour passes. You begin to wonder if you’re wrong, but you think you’re also probably a tad overdramatic. You have a harder time staying up later than other people because of the whole HorrorTerrors thing. The night hours are painful.
And then, there is the moment.
The moment where you spot him across a crowded room.
You catch your breath. It is not that he is handsome or that you have fallen suddenly and deeply for this strange, dead boy turned film director (You can barely see him, really. And you are much too careful with your feelings to allow such frivolity). It is a moment of bliss because someone from your horrible visions is real. You are in the same room as him, and he is breathing, alive. Presumably, happy. The gangly bespectacled boy is a full-grown man, flailing awkwardly on the dance floor.
Unfortunately, you figure that will not last for much longer.
You keep track of him, idly watching middle aged executives creep on young actresses. This whole film world is alien to you. You briefly thank yourself that women dominate publishing. They are easier to communicate with by far. With men, you can never quite be sure of their expectations, or even if they afford you basic respect.
You are unsure exactly when your eyes meet for the first time. He always wears these aviators. You’d say it was a trademark, a gimmick of some sort, but he wore them as a child too, 24/7.
You are sure when he stops to look at you. This is when you turn your back on the dance floor. Wait, and hopes he comes to you. So that he thinks this is organic. So that he does not know you are, at that moment, beginning to falter on the edge of reality.
It’s fifteen minutes later when he finally comes over. You stare into your empty glass, not sure if you ought to acknowledge him.
“Hey! Bartender! Appletini!.” You can hardly hear him above the music- his intonation is odd, as though he’s between accents. You smirk to yourself for a moment, then feel intensely awkward, on the precipice of interaction with this person you might’ve already died with. You cannot help but glance at him again.
“Do I know you?” His brow raises above the frame of his glasses.
“Perhaps.”