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I feel so high school
Every time I look at you
And in the blink of a crinkling eye
I'm sinking, our fingers entwined
Cheeks pink in the twinkling lights
Tell me 'bout the first time you saw me
The brink of a wrinkle in time
Bittersweet sixteen suddenly
-Taylor Swift, So High School
No one ever thinks to warn you about the fact that one day, you’ll be attending prom alone because all of your friends are dead.
Crystal Palace is the final girl. The first black girl to make it to the end.
Some days, she’s grateful for that. Grateful for the chance to become a better person. Grateful for the chance to grow and live and become someone more than David or her parents or the people she hurt ever thought that she’d be able to.
And some days, that feels like a curse.
Crystal is the only one of her friends who eats, who drinks, who sleeps, who breathes. While she always ends up having to stop to take care of herself, to go to school, to live, they are flies caught in amber, frozen forever at the point of fracture, forever young in a way that she won’t be forever.
No, the youth that Crystal has is that which is rapidly flying away, crumbling sand slipping through shaking fingers.
And so Crystal is trying to grab on tight to these once-in-a-lifetime chances to be young. To be alive. To do the things that aren’t just frustrating, like eating and sleeping, the things that no one else in the Agency has to do, but the things that can actively be fun. The things that can actually be exciting.
The sorts of things that the others can’t.
The others had offered to come with her. Charles and Niko, as her date. Even Edwin, as her escort.
Some part of Crystal had wanted to say yes. None of them made it to their proms, after all. (Or whatever they called prom in Edwin’s day. A formal? A dance? Or maybe England doesn’t have proms at all.) None of them got the chance to dance with a partner, to make awkward small talk, to shimmy down to a song that was already woefully out of day by the time that your heels hit the dance floor.
But Crystal had said no. She was going stag, not necessarily because she wanted to, but because, well—
Prom is supposed to be the last gasp of childhood. The last chance to lock in teenage memories and make teenage mistakes and be alive beneath the lights.
And some part of Crystal wants her prom to be just that. A chance to be alive. A chance to be an ordinary girl not haunted by the demon ex-boyfriend buried in her mind, constantly rumbling and trying to spill his shadows all over her everyday life, or haunted by her friends, as much as she loves them, the echoes of all of their ache surely spilling over her one chance to make a memory.
Sure, she’d let Niko go dress shopping with her, had let her ghosts get a glimpse of her prom dress and give their input, with Edwin actually being the one to help pick out the final dark purple knee-length dress with the fishnets, but when it comes to the actual night of the prom, well—
Crystal knows that it’s a selfish thing, to want to go alone, and she’s been doing everything she can over the last year and a half not to be selfish, but she wants this moment for herself. One chance to be alive.
She can’t feel that guilty, though. The others, bless them, had understood, and are throwing their own tiny dance in the office.
When she’d left, Edwin and Charles and Niko had stepped through the mirror to have their own dance in the office, the three of them laughing together, and some part of Crystal had ached to be the only one going somewhere else. The only one alone tonight.
But when she steps into the school gym, completely alone, the bubbling sensations of life around her, able to be easily felt through her powers, there is something in her that revels in it. That enjoys the feeling of blood pulsing through veins, the hopelessly excited dreams of the future, the one last gasp of teenage friendship and romance before everyone parts at graduation.
Still, though—Crystal is alone, about to enter the spit-shined-wooden-gym-dance floor in her heeled boots, which might not have been the smartest decision for the evening—
“May I have this dance, sweetheart?” comes a familiar voice, and Crystal turns around, about ready to slap whoever the fuck thinks he can just start a conversation by calling her sweetheart—
But she stops when she sees exactly who it is.
She’d known, of course, that the Cat King was a shapeshifter, that he could shift into a cat and back, but she hadn’t realized that the same applied to his appearance as a human.
He looks like a teenager, now. Stubble on his cheeks, longer golden curls tousled in the sort of wind-swept way that every boy who’s watched Stranger Things or some netflix show about the Outer Banks have been trying to emulate for the last couple of years.
But he stands apart from the rest of the boys at school, because he’s also wearing a skirt, a suit jacket over a mesh shirt and a long, dark, sparkling skirt, and Crystal knows that something in him aches to be in his domain rather than here, but he is…solid. Alive. Perfectly and captivatingly so.
And he has flowers in his hand that he is offering her, like he’s an actual boy trying to take her on a date, and not just someone who took pity on a friend’s lonely friend.
Some part of Crystal, some long-buried part of her that broke up with Charles earlier this year, yearns to say yes. To accept an offer from someone who wants to dance with her.
But the part of her that once dated David is more hesitant to let shape-shifting creatures into her life, even for a night.
“You really shouldn’t sneak up on me like that,” Crystal says, though there is some part of her heart that is thinking: there is literally no reason that he has a flower in his hand for me, “Did Edwin tell you to show up for me?”
The Cat King shrugs, orange eyes flashing, and she wonders if he has some sort of glamour on to make the teenagers here think that those are normal eyes- though, to be honest, the amount of bullshit that teenagers in the modern age will just assume is a Tik-Tok trend they haven’t cottoned onto yet is kind of amazing.
“He might have mentioned you were going to prom alone, but he didn’t ask me at all to come. I made that decision myself.” There is something almost painfully casual in his voice as he says, “Don’t flatter yourself, though: it’s been a moment in time since I had a nice party, what can I say?”
Except, that’s not quite it, Crystal knows, because she knows herself. She knows what a lonely creature looks like when they’re trying to cover up their ache. She knows what someone sounds like when they file their nails into claws just so that they can avoid anyone getting too close.
So Crystal rolls her eyes and offers out a hand, a smirk playing at her lips. “Fine, then,” she says, because two can play at that game, “Want to dance?”
The Cat King actually smiles at that, and as the bass pounds through their veins, some mid-2000s Soulja Boy song thrumming through the speakers, they make their way onto the dance floor, in between all of the grinding and bouncing teenage bodies, all of those teenagers who have no idea what it is like to love and live and lose, what it’s like to live with death in every waking moment because all of your friends are dead, were murdered, and you’re the final girl, the only living heartbeat in the middle of all of the ghosts.
And Crystal has to give it to the Cat King: he’s more than a sufficient dance partner. He has the energy of a living god and is able to keep up with an actual teenager. No matter the genre, pop, rock, rap, grinding, swinging, twirling, line dancing—he finds a way to fit into all of them.
And it’s great, because it lets Crystal lose herself in the motions. Her body tucked up tight against the Cat King’s, she can forget the feeling of being alone in a crowded room. She can pretend like she hasn’t been haunting her own body for so long.
She twirls. She grins. She throws her head back and laughs as the Cat King, an immortal trickster deity, does the Cotton-eyed Joe and the cupid shuffle, his skirts flying.
And when they fall into metal folding chairs for Crystal to get a refreshment, grabbing a soda and some snacks from the table, the Cat King curls up languidly in the seat opposite her, somehow making it seem like a throne despite his easy posture and casual attitude.
Others might be staring at them or they might not be, but either way, Crystal doesn’t pay attention. She’s learned the hard way that she doesn’t give a shit about what others think, at the end of the day, that when she does care she does more damage to herself and others than anyone can really afford to pay for.
And she just wants to indulge in this night. In the press of bodies on either side of her, the heat of a hundred teenaged bodies on the dance floor making fools out of themselves, not caring about anything other than the fun that they’re having.
In the reminder that she is alive.
And the Cat King is helping her with that.
So when the song changes to something slow, she stands and offers a hand to the Cat King. “May I have this dance?” she asks, his flowers tucked into one of her space buns, and it feels like something formal, something chivalrous, but at the end of the day, all that it really is is two people who understand each other better than anyone else in this room or any other.
So they end up swaying together, and there’s no reason why this should be romantic when they both barely know each other, and yet—
There is something enchanting about this night. Something beautiful about the sparkle of the mirrorball over their heads, about the pink and purple and blue lights throughout the school gym, about the magic of the Cat King in this so very real place.
For so long, Crystal Palace lived up to her name. She played the part of the mirrorball, reflecting the nastiness and the beauty of the world around her before shattering into a thousand glittering shards of shrapnel that dug themselves into everyone’s skin and haunted them more than the actual dead.
(And trust her- she knows a thing or two about how much a ghost can haunt.)
But tonight, the Cat King is here. He is here, allowing them both not to be lonely, for them both to lose themselves in the crowded school gym instead of sitting lonely in abandoned warehouses or detectives’ offices full of ghosts.
And the Cat King is staring at her and some part of Crystal thinks—I would have been miserable and alone tonight without him here by my side.
---
When they spill out onto the sidewalk half an hour later, Crystal’s heels caught between her hands because like hell is she going to walk home with these digging into her feet, the students slowly trickling out behind them to limos and ubers and parents’ borrowed cars, Crystal still feels like a teenager.
For two years now, she’s felt like so much older than that. She works a job, is a detective who works with people who were born before her parents were, is constantly confronted with the fact that death is right around the corner if you just make one wrong move.
But for one night, she has gotten to chase the recklessness of youth again. She has gotten to wear herself out dancing, letting a pleasant sort of exhaustion fill her limbs and leave her tired but with a lovely burn in her muscles. She has gotten to fill the hollow that has been carved through her chest since long before she ever met a ghost, when she lived in a home that was too empty and too abandoned for anyone to fill, no matter how much she tried in all of the most reckless ways.
The Cat King conjures her a pair of flats, and she hasn’t worn anything but boots in years, but it’s the thought that counts, really. “So that I can walk you home,” the Cat King says, “Wouldn’t want someone to go barefoot.”
When Crystal’s eyes go wide with surprise, the Cat King pouts. “Excuse you,” the Cat King says, “I might not be Edwin Payne levels of chivalrous, but I’m not gonna let a date walk home by herself.”
Crystal arches an eyebrow. “I’m a lot stronger than you think.”
“Trust me, Crystal Palace, your strength is not the question,” the Cat King says, “But you deserve someone to take care of you, no matter how strong you might be.”
There is something that bubbles in Crystal’s chest as they head home, trading conversation, gossiping about the fashion travesties that they saw on the dance floor tonight, all of those teenagers wearing their parents’ suits or pastel nightmares or sparkly monstrosities, and it’s nice to whet her bitchy tongue against the grindstone of something as mundane as judging fashion tragedies.
They make it to the outside of the butchershop, which Jenny finally fixed up completely and moved back into this winter and that Crystal decided to move back into as well, to live in Washington, to start anew even if she continued to work as a detective and do good things with her life.
And this is where they’re supposed to part, Crystal knows, but it doesn’t feel quite right to end things like this. It doesn’t feel quite right to part without, well—
Crystal hasn’t dated anyone since Charles, but even he didn’t make her feel like this. Being with him was an exercise in both of them trying to feel alive, trying to feel real, in ways that never quite worked with the ghostly barrier between them.
And tonight, as the stars are in the sky, as Crystal comes home from her senior prom, the Cat King’s white flowers still curled between her fingers—
She leans up and kisses the Cat King, catching him off-guard from the way that he startles at first, but as she curls her fingers through his curls, he relaxes, leans in, bites right back.
And he’s alive. So fucking alive. His mouth tastes of lipstick and his breath smells of fish and she doesn’t give a shit about what sort of aftertaste might linger, because his lips are warm and she can feel them and it feels like a supernova through her veins, all that warmth, all that heat, all that life.
When Crystal leans back, she finds him blinking wide at her, startled, as if he hadn’t expected such a response.
And Crystal smirks, because it’s not often that you get one over on a demigod and manage to surprise him like he surprised you.
“I had a great night,” Crystal says, “Thank you for everything.”
The Cat King stares at her for a long, long moment, amber-orange eyes flickering in the streetlights, and then he smiles, this curious, enigmatic thing, more Mona Lisa than cheshire, and then he shifts into a cat and slinks away.
Crystal still has a soft smile on her lips and a flower in her fingers as she makes her way up the stairs, humming the final song that they were dancing to.
Through the mirror, she can see Charles and Edwin dancing slowly together, Niko gone somewhere else, and Edwin’s face is leaning against Charles’ shoulder.
The air is slow. The pace almost…sweet.
Crystal wouldn’t be shocked if the two of them kissed at some point tonight.
But she doesn’t feel any sort of jealousy. They are dead, and have been for so long, and it’s a good thing that they have each other, that they have found themselves the sort of place where they can find an anchor to feel some sort of alive.
But Crystal Palace?
Crystal Palace smiles, because she is alive, and being alive might mean that she’s burning bright and quick, falling to earth like a shooting star, but tonight, she feels more alive than she has in years.
I know we're not everlasting
We're a train wreck waiting to happen
One day the blood won't flow so gladly
One day we'll all get still
The people are talking, people are talking
Let 'em talk, 'cause we're dancing in this world alone
-Lorde, A World Alone