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“I don't – I don’t dance,” Farah says, hand immediately slipping into her right jacket pocket. Her keys are in there, and she holds them tightly.
I have my keys, I don’t have to stay anywhere I don’t want to stay. I can always go home. I have my phone, I have my wallet. I’m not stuck anywhere.
“That’s not what you said last year,” Dirk reminds her in a sing-song voice. “You danced at the festival and back at the station.”
“That was different,” she says, running her keys through her fingers. Three keys, four keys, five keys, and brass knuckles. Three keys, four keys, five keys, and brass knuckles. “I was under the influence of a spell. That’s not the same as choosing to dance. I choose to – to not dance.”
“It’s a club, though,” Todd says awkwardly. He understands. Dirk has never been self-conscious a day in his life, but Todd knows what it’s like to feel constantly judged. He’s usually the one judging himself, but he knows. “And everyone who reported seeing the, uh, the ghost, they were all on the dance floor.”
“I know that,” Farah snaps. “But I can, I can watch from the side, and provide backup for when one of you sees the ghost. If it is actually a ghost.”
“It’s a ghost,” Dirk says confidently. “I’m sure of it.”
“I don’t want to know why you’re so sure,” Todd wearily. Dirk opens his mouth and Todd holds up one hand. “No, seriously – I don’t want to know if you have ever seen a ghost before. I just don’t.”
“We have to dance,” Dirk says. “That’s the only way we’ll get to the bottom of this. Besides, we could use a night out!”
Farah looks out the window and hopes that they can’t see her eyelid twitching.
Amanda bursts into her apartment, ten minutes before they’re due to meet Dirk and Todd in the lobby, and immediately says, “no way. You’re not going out in this.”
“What? Yes – yes I am. This is a perfectly practical outfit.” She’s wearing boots with a low heel, stretch jeans, and a button down blouse with enough give at the bust that she can throw a punch without worrying about popping a button.
“Yeah. It’s practical,” Amanda says, sweeping past Farah and into her bedroom. “That’s the problem. You look like you’re ready for a fight.”
“I’m always ready for a fight,” Farah protests.
“You can’t look ready for a fight at Le'Etage.” Amanda throws open Farah’s closet, pulls open all of the drawers of her dresser, and starts rummaging through her clothes, tossing a few garments on the bed. “There’s a dress code. If you’re not classy enough, they won’t let you in.”
“That wasn’t in my research!” She’s touching my clothes, she’s touching my clothes, but I can fix it later, I can sanitize them, I can iron them. She’s touching my clothes but it’s okay. It’s Amanda and it’s okay.
“It’s a Saturday night,” Amanda explains, rifling through Farah’s underwear drawer. “Most clubs get, like, fancier on the weekends.” Finally satisfied, Amanda shoves an outfit at Farah’s chest, and throws the rejected clothes onto the chair by Farah’s bed. Farah’s fingers twitch, eager to shakes out the wrinkles and hang the clothes back up, but there simply isn’t time. She settles for shooting a dark look at Amanda, now poking through her make-up bag, and unbuttoning her blouse.
“Where is she?” Dirk frets, looking at his phone. “She’s never late, and we’re never early, so I’m concerned that something genuinely terrible has – Farah?” His voice rises in an astonished squeak, and Todd turns around to see what his boyfriend is staring at.
“Damn,” he blurts, then claps a hand over his mouth. “Sorry,” he mutters, from between his fingers.
“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up,” Farah mutters, arms crossed beneath her breasts. She’s still wearing her practical boots, but now she’s got on a black leather mini skirt with blue floral tights, an orange tank top, and a sheer blue scarf knotted around her neck. She’s got a thigh holster for her phone and wallet and the black leather strap peeks out from beneath her skirt, framing the musculature of her thigh.
“I have literally no reason to laugh,” Todd assures her, dropping his hand. “You look, uh, you look amazing. Like – wow.”
“Ew,” Amanda says, coming up behind Farah. “a) I didn’t need to hear that, and b) what the hell are you wearing?”
Farah brushes past all three of them, pulls out her phone to call a Lyft, ignores the bickering behind her. They need to get to the club and find this ghost so she can come back home and get out of these clothes and never speak of this again.
It’s for a case. It’s for a case, and I don’t have to dance. I look ridiculous but it’s for a case, and it’s okay, and I don’t have to dance. It’s okay, I don’t have to dance, and it will be okay. It will be okay.
They get past the bouncer without much trouble, though Todd has to slip her a twenty to excuse his jeans. Farah bitterly glares at his back, wishes she were still wearing her jeans, know that their group wouldn’t have gotten in with two members in casual wear. Once they’re in the door, Todd steers her directly towards the bar in the back, and makes her order herself two whiskey gingers.
“I can’t get drunk tonight,” she scolds him, paying for the drinks anyway. “We’re here to investigate, not to party.”
“You’re way too tense to blend in,” he explains. “It’s not like you’re a lightweight – you just need to chill out a little bit.” He turns back to the bar to order some insufferably bitter beer, and she drains the first glass in one long swallow, eager to get one hand free.
Oh crap, this is strong. This is a nice club, they don’t water down the drinks; am I going to get drunk? No, no I’m not. I’m not going to get drunk, Todd is right, I’m not a light weight. This is fine. This is fine.
Farah sets the empty glass back down on the bar and tips the bartender, and allows Todd to tow her to an open spot by the wall. She tugs her skirt down a smidge and tries to lean casually, but feels like her skin in buzzing. The music is loud and the beat is palpable in her lungs and stomach, and the dance floor is filled with people moving and writhing, jumping and grinning and spinning and holding.
“I guess it looks fun,” she mutters, mostly to herself, but Todd laughs kindly.
“No it doesn’t,” he says, and she’s reminded that he understands her. Kind of.
Todd hates himself. He’s working on it, and dating Dirk and working for the agency are incredibly good for him, but he made years of bad choices, and the consequences are still catching up to him. Farah doesn’t hate herself, per se, but she doesn’t always like herself very much. Years of knowing, knowing that she’s a disappointment doesn’t vanish in six months of embracing her inner freak, and there’s always a little voice in the back of her head repeating What would dad think? This isn’t appropriate behavior for a professional, and I have to try harder to be better to earn his approval.
It means that she and Todd end up second guessing themselves on a regular basis. If they can jump in the deep end of a case, instinct takes over and they don’t worry about what other people think, how they’re behaving, how they’re perceived. But if given a few minutes to stew, Todd will spiral down into hopelessness and Farah will work herself up into a tizzy. They’re sure a hell of a pair.
A flash of the familiar catches her eye, and Farah squints into the crowd until she spots Amanda and Dirk. They haven’t stopped by the bar, haven’t imbibed at all, but they’re both dancing joyfully. Sometimes holding hands and jumping around, sometimes spinning around each other, sometimes grinning at strangers and pulling them in, dancing with them. Farah looks over at Todd to see how he feels about watching his boyfriend dance with a muscly ginger man, but he’s just smiling fondly, sipping his beer.
He catching Farah looking over at him and shrugs. “He likes dancing and I like watching him do things he likes,” Todd explains awkwardly. “And I usually don’t have to dance, so that works out pretty well for us.
"That’s – that’s fine,” she says. “I mean, I don’t get it, but I get it, you know?”
“I know,” he says, and finishes his beer. “Come on, drink up. Let’s see how painless we can make this.”
This is awful. I don’t want to dance. I’m going to look like an idiot, I’m going to move my body the wrong way, and I am going to stand out in the crowd, and I’m going to give away the whole case. The ghost – it can’t be a ghost, it can’t be a ghost – will know that I’m a detective and it will stay away tonight and we’ll have to come back and do this again. I can’t do this again. I can’t. I don’t want to dance.
She throws back the rest of her whiskey ginger, places the empty low ball on a nearby high top, and lets Todd drag her into the crowd.
It’s exactly as crowded and hot and close as it looks from the outside. There are people all around her and she has no idea who is at her back, who’s near her blind spots, what their capabilities are, what their motivations are. It’s almost enough to overwhelm her, to make her chest tighten and her shoulders tense, but the fizz of alcohol hitting her system seems to be just strong enough to keep her breathing, keep her moving. She and Todd reach Dirk and Amanda, and the two of them shout in delight.
“Farah,” gushes Dirk, patting her upper arm enthusiastically. “I’m so excited you’re here! Did Todd get you soused?”
“Shut up,” hisses Amanda, but loudly enough to be heard over the music. “She wasn’t supposed to know that was the plan.”
“You guys aren’t that subtle,” Farah says dryly.
And then the current song ends and spins seamlessly into a new one, and Amanda reaches forward to yank Farah’s elbow and she’s dancing. Well, she’s moving in the awkward two-step that every middle school dance chaperone knows so well, but at least she isn’t standing out in the crowd as much as she would if she were solitary.
This is fine. I just need to keep moving so I don’t stick out, and everything will be fine. I don’t have to look good, I just need to dance. I don’t want to dance, I don’t want to be here, but this will be fine. This is fine. This is fine.
Dirk and Amanda seem to have abandoned their non-agency dance partners, and form a defensive square with Todd and Farah; it’s easier, honestly, when the three people that she can see most clearly are also the three people that she cares the most about. Amanda isn’t in town very often, and to see her looking almost carefree – it’s really refreshing. They usually only get to interact when the threat of violence is imminent. Not that the threat of violence isn’t imminent now, too, but it feels… it feels okay.
This is okay. This is okay.
The stilted two-step lasts through a few songs as the buzz in her veins rises and then settles into a comfortable warmth. Her muscles loosen and her smile becomes less of a grimace, less forced. Dirk has seized Todd and is moving all around him, treating him as a bit of a mobile prop, and Farah finds herself laughing at the tolerant expression on Todd’s face. Her shoulders drop from their defensive stance, and as the beat spins through her chest, her arms start to move along with her legs, and her torso feels more fluid in its presence. There’s an unexpected sensation of grace that runs down her spine, and Farah realizes that it feels almost like a flow of fighting stances. One pose moves into another moves into a third; her feet don’t trip, she doesn’t hit anyone else, she’s aware of everything around her. Proprioception works as well for dancing as it does for training, as it does for fighting, and she’s good at those things.
She’s good at this.
The voice that’s always muttering in her ears, worrying, tells her that she still probably looks stupid, that she isn’t blending in, that this is unsafe. But the voice that she feels streaming in from her fingers and ears and hips tell her that she’s smooth and sharp. Says that she looks deadly, in a good way. Says that this is a place she can also belong. That she does belong.
Farah dances.
Farah dances, and she looks good and she feels good and she is so, so good.
Three songs run into five songs run into seven. She’s sweating and she dances with Amanda and Dirk and Todd and by herself. She throws her head back – never unaware, never uncareful, but joyful – and dances.
Naturally, that’s when the ghost attacks, and Farah smiles radiantly and lets the beat spin through her.
Let’s go.