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William Wisp could do a lot of things. Partying was not one of them.
Any moves he had made to get this event shut down had failed miserably. He put up shitty decorations; Dakota leaned into it and actually made them look good. He reminded Tide they shouldn’t invite people to a secret base; Tide reassured them that it would be okay for them to have normal civilian lives as long as he was there to chaperone. He begged a ghost to help him make it the lamest party ever; that ghost was now possessing everyone to make the spirit of the party even more powerful.
The Cool Ranch Doritos still made his stomach swirl, mixing with the La Croix he shotgunned to make him even sicker, and he had heard Party Rock Anthem more times tonight than anyone should hear in a lifetime. All William could do was watch in horror as his superhero teammates all danced hard enough to make the ground shake.
He had never actually been to a party before. Deadwood was a small, religious town that didn’t get up to too many antics, and it wasn’t like William or his friends were ever invited when they did. Everything was loud and obnoxiously bright, and the heat of the bodies packed together started to make him sweat through his hoodie. He wondered how anyone could possibly enjoy this as he pushed his way through the crowd, sights set on the quiet corner where he had stashed some mini water bottles for himself.
He slid down the wall, a sigh of relief spilling from his lips as he finally got some space. Maybe if he closed his eyes really hard, he could fall asleep and pretend this was all a nightmare. His brief stint of calm was disrupted, though, by a shaky voice coming from beside him.
“Oh, h-hey William…”
Shit. It was Cameron, Doug’s younger brother. It seemed he had the same idea as William, as he was also holed up in the corner drinking from a water bottle.
At least he was talking and acting normal, and he could tell something was off about this party and its guests. It gave William some relief to know someone here was still lucid, but it also meant that Cameron had all the memories of the superhero stuff he had wandered into downstairs, and now he was asking William about it.
Just as the teen was trying to think of a lie that could divert Cameron’s attention, Dakota’s voice rang out over the music.
“Yo, William!” he called excitedly.
“Dakota…” he replied with forced enthusiasm and a shaky smile.
“I cued a song up, and we’re gonna dance to it!” The way his friend said it wasn’t a question, it was a statement of fact. “Now.”
William bit his lip, turning back to the kid next to him that had been bombarding him with too many questions.
“You know what,” he said through gritted teeth, “that sounds like a great idea.”
Just get it over with, he thought, end the nightmare now. A shudder went down his spine as he exhaled, and then he turned back to Dakota and prepared for the worst.
Only it was worse than he could ever prepare for.
In the blink of an eye, the entire atmosphere of the room had changed. His whole school, who moments ago were dancing and milling about with no order or reason, had suddenly formed a perfect circle with an opening in front of him. The lights had dimmed, giving everything a soft red to gold shading. It even made the concrete floors of their base look like the polished mahogany of a ballroom. The music that had been blaring before was a bit softer and much more sophisticated, a lively but elegant orchestral tango.
And Dakota…
Dakota’s entire outfit had transformed from its usual flannel and jeans. Now he was in a standard, black three piece suit, except the vest he wore over the white undershirt was a raspberry red that matched his hair, and the inside lining of the jacket was a deep burgundy. The stem of a small rose had been pressed between his teeth, and when he smiled at William, the amber color of his eyes almost seemed to glow in the low light.
His breath hitched startlingly as Dakota offered out a hand. What was happening? Why were his thoughts suddenly so foggy? Was he getting possessed by the party too?
Hesitantly, he placed his hand in Dakota’s, and it was no time at all until he was swept up into the middle of the dance floor. William had never legitimately danced with someone before, but he surprised himself by being able to stay with Dakota’s pace. He assumed he must not have been possessed— he was conscious of everything around him and still wanted nothing to do with it— but there was something very entrancing about the way their movements began to slowly sync together.
William glanced back up once he had gotten more confident with the steps that Dakota was leading him in. It was a fairly simple forward-back-turn like pattern, and, though he was dragging his feet, he was still able to keep with the rhythm. Dakota smiled at him again, softer now, and this time it felt so strangely intimate. William had been nervously eyeing the crowd that surrounded him on all sides, but they quickly melted into the background, every sense in his body focused on the boy in front of him.
William took full notice now of both his hands, one resting on his friend’s shoulder and the other clasped tightly around his fingers. The redhead’s palm was warm, and so was the breath that William was just realizing he could feel against his lips at this proximity. The hand that Dakota had on his side slipped a little lower, settling comfortably into the lowest dip of his waist.
William shivered, nearly tripping over himself in shock. At this distance, he had to crane his neck downwards slightly to meet his dance partner’s eyes, who looked at him with a split second of worry before pressing their chests closer together so William wouldn’t lose his balance.
A surge of heat made its way quick to his cheeks, dusting them in a red almost as bright as the other’s hair. Fuck. So this is what that feeling was.
Oh no, oh no no no— oh god, why me, this can’t be happening—
William was very used to this feeling, a sort of fuzzy panic, a burning in his chest like warm TV static, but that never made it any less disorienting. He already had trouble remaining a functioning human being around Summer, and anytime he hung around Vyncent it turned into weirdly sensual, unintentional flirting— he couldn’t let himself catch feelings for Dakota too! It would be impossible to survive this school or this house!
Panicked and flustered, he pulled his gaze away from Dakota, only to lock eyes with someone else in the crowd.
Vyncent looked absolutely ridiculous, with a golden clock chain around his neck and a matching pair of shades. The outfit would be laughable to William if it wasn’t also fitted with a pair of skin tight black jeans and a purple silk shirt that was open much too far, leaving no room for imagination of his toned chest.
He quickly pulled his gaze back to Dakota. Nope, another crisis for another time.
The eye contact he had made with the elf felt oddly lingering, though, as if some sort of betrayal was laid between them. He watched Vyncent slink backwards into the crowd and felt a pang of guilt. Why? Hell if he knew. William’s feelings for him were confusing enough as is, not to mention the way he stuttered around the pretty girl who sat in front of him in home room and now the dizzying sensation of being so close to his other teammate’s muscular build and soft face.
The tango started to pick up speed now, and Dakota upped the ante by releasing his grip from the boy’s waist and spinning him. It was a bit clunky because of their height difference, but William followed suit, ending with Dakota dipping him down effortlessly.
William laughed, breathless and hoping he could diffuse the tension in the air with humor. He gave Dakota a cheesy, over dramatic gaze and said in a quiet voice for only him to hear, “Dakota, it seems we’re evenly matched.”
It got a chuckle from Dakota as he tipped William back into a standing position, and that reaction encouraged him to lean into the bit more. He wiggled his eyebrows in a purposefully nonsensical way, saying, “I was saving these moves for Summer.”
Dakota pulled their conjoined hands in, loosening his grip just enough to take the rose out of his teeth and hold it between their palms. His face grimaced slightly as his gaze moved past William’s head. He cleared his throat awkwardly and muttered, “About that—“
William turned, following Dakota’s line of sight to see what he was looking at. Vyncent was spinning his way onto the floor, possessing an expert level of footwork that he had never seen his friend use. What was even more worrying, though, was when he saw that something— or rather someone— was in his arms.
William didn’t even know Summer was here, as he hadn’t seen her all night. It didn’t seem like her type of scene anyway, so he didn’t actively go to seek her out. But now she was in front of him, clear as day as some spotlights flashed brightly onto the two pairs of dancers. Vyncent set her down and bowed, almost like he was presenting her to the crowd.
Her ginger hair was tied in a ponytail like usual, and her thin wire glasses sat just at the tip of her nose. It appeared as though she decided to dress up a bit for the event, sporting a washed-out, green crop top and some loose fitting athletic shorts, rather than her typical baggy t-shirt and sweatpants. She raised an eyebrow at Vyncent, who stepped forward to hold her just underneath the shoulder and lead her through the motions of the dance. Her tied locks flowed behind her like a scene in a movie as she fell into the rhythm. William watched as her look of entertained confusion melted away into one of pure focus and determination.
They danced in perfect sync, as though this had been rehearsed between them a thousand times. She stood herself up suddenly onto one toe and crossed her other leg to hover just above the ground, allowing Vyncent to stride around her and make them both spin. Her black converses seemed to magically have the same traction as a dance shoe, letting her slide across the concrete with ease. The move led into Summer lifting the leg she had no weight on into a nearly 90 degree angle. Vyncent took that cue to move his hand to her lower back and lift, twirling with surprising speed as Summer allowed herself to be held in the air.
Holy. Fucking. Shit.
Will’s first instinct was to feel an intense jealousy, face burning with both embarrassment and rage. There was someone just out there dancing with the person he liked! How could they do that to him? It was so unfair!
It was quick to fade, however, when he realized that… he didn’t actually know who to be jealous of. Was Vyncent stealing Summer, or was Summer stealing Vyncent?
He wanted to run and hide in his bedroom forever. He never wanted to stop watching this. He wanted to curl up and die. He had already died. Goddamnit, they were killing it. They were killing him. What in the actual fuck?
Why did they have to get possessed? Why did they have to look so hot while doing it? How did normal people breathe, again?
Someone spoke to him, but at that moment, his brain was too clouded to register what had been said. “What was that?” he asked in a daze.
All of the sudden, his jaw was being grabbed rather harshly by none other than Dakota Cole. The poor teen’s heart skipped a beat as he was forced to look back into his friend’s intense eyes, and the rough hand holding his chin brought their faces so close that their noses were almost touching.
“Eyes on me,” he commanded in a low voice.
William swallowed thickly. Oh. Oh, this was worse than watching Summer and Vyncent. This was so much worse.
“Listen.” The hand made its way back to his waist, and Dakota started stepping quicker, trying to match Vyncent’s pace. It was pointless, though, as the other two dancers were practically flying around the circle. “Something is definitely wrong here, okay?” He said it quietly, glancing around to see if anyone was listening.
“Yeah, you’re right.”
William had never heard more of an understatement in his life, but sure. As he thought this, his eyes couldn’t help but wander back to the others. He caught a glance just in time to see them both leaned away from each other, connected by only one grasped hand, before Summer spun her way back into Vyncent’s arms and was dipped low enough that the elf had to lunge into the pose.
William had been pretty down bad before, he was willing to admit, but this? How in the fuck was he supposed to quantify this? Watching the two biggest crushes of his life dance a romantic tango together so flawlessly, while simultaneously dancing with his newest maybe-crush? These weren’t butterflies anymore, these were whole ass birds— fucking falcons flapping around his stomach— at this point.
Dakota’s face lit into a bright smile when he saw the way he looked at the pair. “No, trust me, we’re about to switch!” William turned back to Dakota, clear confusion laid out on his face, and he explained further, “In the second half of the song we switch partners! So good luck! But also, you have to tell me how to break Vyncent from this spell.”
It took William a moment to process what had been said to him. Like, the underlying stuff that had been said to him. Had Dakota really… done all of this to help him out? Well, obviously he was trying to bring Vyncent back to his senses, but he had also picked a song that made you switch partners specifically so he could try and get him and Summer to dance together. It was kind of annoying that he did all of it without consulting William beforehand, but it was also so sweet in that way that only Dakota could be to him. It made him want to start melting on the spot.
And that only added more internal cursing, because now this attraction wasn’t purely based on looks. He could have went to bed tonight and buried himself into layers of denial, convinced it was all just the heat of the moment and that gorgeous fucking suit, but not anymore. No, these feelings were real, and they had probably been there longer than he wanted to admit.
After all that crossed his mind, he found himself anxious again, because Dakota was trying to get him to dance with Summer. With Dakota and Vyncent he at least knew them pretty well, having lived under the same roof as them for the last four months. With Summer, however, he only met her a week or two ago. They had barely even spoken, much less hung out! There was no way he was going to be able to dance with her, especially not with his head still reeling from this new revelation about Dakota.
His brain scrambled for the first excuse he could find. “I’m really sweaty— I’m really sweaty, Dakota—“ (Though it was something he did a lot, that wasn’t a lie. His undershirt was drenched at this point. Was it hot on this dance floor, or was it just the three of them? Both. It was both.)
“Nah, you’ll be fine!” Dakota replied with an encouraging smile, changing the direction of their dance abruptly to spin him once again.
William was able to do it much smoother this time, and when he leaned back into Dakota, he grabbed the shorter’s torso instead. It took Dakota by surprise, but he placed a hand on William’s shoulder and leaned backwards, trusting him to support his weight. It would have been a lie to say he didn’t struggle, but he was able to keep Dakota up just long enough for him to blow a kiss to the crowd behind him and straighten up again.
He leaned in close during their brief moment of pause, a wily grin accented by the red lighting around him. “You keep dancing like this, and she’ll be blown away.”
Dakota took the lead again, which William was grateful for, because his brain had become foggy and his ears were burning at the praise.
“I just gotta take Vyncent and make him— uh— not be hypnotized by the music,” Dakota continued.
William thought back to his earlier plan to get this party shut down. It hadn’t worked then, but maybe with Dakota working with him instead of against, he could be more successful this time.
“I know what we got to do, Kota,” William whispered. “We just gotta make this party really, really lame.”
“You think so?” he asked with a slight head tilt, only making William’s heart ache tighter.
“Yeah. And I’m really good at that.”
Before their conversation could continue, the loud voice of Vyncent Sol rang out above the music, which William now noticed was changing beat.
“¡Cambio de socio!” he called. Wait, when the hell did Vyncent learn Spanish?
Dakota’s brows furrowed and William could tell what was coming next. “Wait, Dakota, don’t—“
His partner cut him off by taking the rose between their hands and sticking it into his teeth. William’s voice died around the stem, and Dakota winked. “¡Buena suerte, mi amigo!”
He screamed as he was spun at higher speeds than humans should be able to produce and sent whirling off like a top across the floor. Then his trajectory was stopped by thin, pale arms locking against his lower back and leaning him down. He shook the dizziness away to see Summer above him, holding him in an elegant dip while he simply laid like a limp rag-doll.
“Uh… ¿Cómo se dice?” he muttered from under the rose, being the only Spanish phrase he actually knew.
Summer only smirked and raised an eyebrow at him, then lifted him back up and started leading him in another tango. It was a bit different than the steps Dakota had been doing, but it only took a bit of stumbling before he got the moves down.
Her palms were sweatier than he anticipated, which helped a little with the self-consciousness he was feeling. He had never been this close to her before, so only now could he see the barely noticeable freckles that were scattered across her face, as well as the dark moles that dotted her arms and legs. There was even one on her left eye lid.
She had a strong smell of vanilla on her, too. Maybe it was from perfume, or more likely a candle she burned in her room often. Everything about her was mystifying, and he had to take extra precautions to keep looking in her eyes so that he wouldn’t deviate to staring at her thin, rosy lips.
He didn’t actually know her well enough to know what color her eyes were supposed to be, but he knew they were wrong at the moment. There seemed to be a light just behind them that faintly flashed different colors. First red, then orange, then continuing down the rainbow like one of those RGB LEDs.
His stupor was broken by a yelp, and he lifted his head above Summer’s to see Vyncent lifting a bewildered Dakota above his head. The redhead stuck his arms out in front of him for balance, making his entire, muscular core flex under Vyncent’s thin fingers. William somehow started to sweat even more. He was utterly petrified— but also enthralled— by everything that had been happening in the last… how long had he been dancing? Time had been moving so slowly for him; it felt like days by now.
When Vyncent set him back down, William could tell he was moments away from losing Dakota to the music. His amber eyes flashed with something supernatural as he leaned up to whisper something in Vyncent’s ear. Even though he couldn’t hear it, William could just somehow tell that it was in Spanish.
“Esto es una pesadilla…” he sighed to himself, trying to break from his new dance partner’s grasp to save Dakota from the spirit of the party (and also himself the embarrassment of being in this situation). He stopped, though, as he felt a hand brush its way up his rib cage.
Whatever was possessing Summer noticed him trying to leave, and it combatted this by having her place her free hand on his chest. And fuck, it worked, because now he was frozen in his tracks. They had both stopped dancing now, fearful and flustered eyes staring deeply into absent and flirtatious ones. She smiled at him again and carefully moved her hand up further to rest just above his quickly beating heart.
He couldn’t do anything besides stand there dumbly, looking down at Summer as she moved ever so closer to him. He wanted to open his mouth and say something, but the red rose still sat between his teeth. He honestly doubted he could get any words to come out, anyway, so it was probably for the best. The heat on his face burned impossibly brighter; he had to assume he was entirely red by now.
This isn’t actually her, you know that, get a hold of yourself, he tried to remind himself. But the loss of her free will didn’t make her lose any of her very pleasant features, like her perfectly kempt curls and her gentle doe eyes. The hand holding his in their once tango form released itself, and instead floated up to her own head. She swiftly removed the tie from her hair and shook it loose, leaving the red curls to now bounce down past her shoulders.
And as if it couldn’t get any worse, she surged herself forward, quick enough to make William gasp as his startled mind fooled him for a moment and thought she was going in for a kiss. Instead, her chin landed just on the side of his face, their cheeks brushing together as William short circuited. Her teeth grabbed onto the part of the stem that wasn’t in William’s, and she was able to pull it out with ease from his agape mouth.
She released him fully, taking a step back to spin and pose before offering her hand again, but when she turned, William wasn’t there.
In a full body fight-or-flight response, William had become intangible and sunk through the floor. He landed in the basement on his feet before stumbling into a seated position.
He couldn’t breathe.
He was dead, he had to be, because everything within the last twenty minutes had been actual Hell (or maybe Heaven?). No, no, there was no way that all just happened.
He buried his face into his knees, hiding the embarrassing amount of flush even though no one was around to see.
“I have a question, for God:” he lamented, “why?”
Why did they all have to be so pretty? What the fuck was wrong with him?! Catching feelings for not one— not two— but three people?!
But then he thought back through the events he just experienced, and quickly decided that it was not his fault. It couldn’t be! Could you truly put the blame on him for being a flustered mess of a human when all of that had just happened right in front of him? No, the universe just loved to watch him suffer, that had to be why it put so many hot people into one school.
Vyncent’s small giggles when they watched movies on the couch, Summer’s puzzled smiles when people called her name in the halls, Dakota’s tight expressions when he was focusing on something— they were all hand-crafted to make sure they were the most attractive and beautiful things on this planet. What was a boy to do now? Perish? Probably.
But not yet, because as he tried to slow his heart rate to a manageable pace, the sounds of the party above him only grew louder. He didn’t have the time to wallow, because he was now the only thing standing in the way of this never-ending blowout. He stood himself up and slicked back his hair, taking a few deep breaths and preparing to face the world (and the three most gorgeous people in it) again.
William Wisp could do a lot of things. Handling a crush was not one of them, but ruining a party was.