#para: inbextween

[evebrennan]

Fae Disco

TIMING: circa the Meteorpocalypse LOCATION: Mina/Bex/Morgan/Dierdre’s place PARTIES: @drowningisinevitable & @evebrennan with a guest rescue by @inbextween SUMMARY: Mina and Caoimhe discover the rocks are a very big, very bright problem. CONTAINS: Disco

Caoimhe checked the address twice, hastily scribbled on a piece of scrap paper as it was. Her feet shuffled on the pavement and she allowed herself a moment to think why. Why follow directions from a perfect stranger, to touch a rock that could potentially give her a rash of unknown nature, for science. She wasn’t a science professor, she was a music professor! She avoided STEM like the plague; there was merit to the scientific method, but she never cared much to think about it overly much. And the scientific method would implore her to conduct experiments safely.

So in the interest of safety, she checked the address twice to make sure she was approaching the right door.

She knocked five times sharply against the door before curling her fingers into her palm and swallowing hard past something. Whatever that excited oh no feeling was that had been building in her chest since the skies had shifted. Her mind always seemed to circle back to that stupid meteorite. “It’s Caoimhe, I’m here. For...Science.”

Mina had been waiting by the door for longer than she’d cared to admit. She took turns pacing and sitting, though her leg bounced rapidly as she sat. So she mostly paced. She had invited a stranger to Morgan and Deirdre’s home without even thinking about it. She would have even put their address up online if she hadn’t been more careful. She was just frustrated. That’s what she kept telling herself; she was overwhelmingly frustrated with the glowing. Sparkling. Glittering. Whatever it was called. An annoyance was what it was, and she couldn’t be the only person suffering through it. She had to know. Which meant that she was testing it out on internet strangers. For science.

At least this stranger seemed nice.

Wearing gloves and long sleeves, Mina jumped up at the knocking on the door. “Hi! Hi, one moment, please.” She pulled one of the fragments of rock out of her pocket and just stared at it for a moment, at the way it glimmered, at how it created its own light that refracted itself off of Mina’s skin. It really was lovely. So pretty. It was hard for Mina to tear her eyes away. “For science, right.” Mina looked out the window by the door and saw the woman standing there. Then she felt it. Not just a woman, a Fae. She was another Fae. “Just-- Just a moment.” Another Fae. She wasn’t expecting another Fae. Why was it always another Fae? She opened the door a crack, gloved hand clutching the rock. “Alright… You can touch the rock.”

Caoimhe wasn’t sure she could handle one moment. Mina’s voice traveled through the closed door, confirmation that she was at the right place, and it was everything Caoimhe could do not to just open it and walk in. It was a concern in and of itself. There were things she’d needed over the years. Many of them were strung up in a line behind her, following with glazed, imploring eyes. This was something entirely unexpected. This was the kind of thing she’d write home about. This was the kind of thing that had her screaming help in the back of her mind before drowning it out with a firm it’s fine, it’s just a rock. “No, no it’s fine, just take your time, I’ll just be out here–”

Then said rock was held out the front door, suspended in one, gloved hand, by another Fae no less. The information registered for only a moment before Caoimhe was reaching out. Nothing else mattered. Forty years worth of ‘nothing is normal’ told her to proceed with caution, but something else had her wrapping her fingers around it.

Forty more years and she’d maintain it was worth it. Something settled, as though she had room to think about something, anything else, even if only for a moment. Unfortunately, that something, anything else just so happened to be the way her fingers itched at warm and started to glow. Like Edward fucking Cullen, shirtless in the woods. It crawled up her arm and she let go; though, letting go meant she had two problems. She wasn’t holding the rock, and she was glowing.

“Shit. Shit, wait, this isn’t a rash. This isn’t a rash!” She tugged her at her sleeves and spent more than a moment flailing before folding her arms across her chest and tucking her hands away the best she could. Her eyes squeezed shut and she pulled in a breath, releasing it slowly. “Uh...problem. One, I feel as though some information was omitted here, we should talk about that. Two...can I come in? I’m a beacon.”

Mina could only watch as the woman took the rock from her hand, could only observe the look in her eyes that reminded Mina so much of how she probably looked when she’d seen the rock for the first time. She’d been drawn to it, so stupidly drawn to it, like it was one of the most interesting things that she’d ever seen. She couldn’t help but touch it. She couldn’t help but keep touching it, even though she knew what it did because it was stupid and frustrating, and she hated it.

“I said it was a rash of sorts,” Mina said, opening the door wider and reaching down to snatch up the rock as it fell. “Right, right, get in. We have neighbors.” Mina had pretty much confined herself to the house and the backyard unless it was early morning or late evening. Then she went out on her runs. Less chance to run into nosy people who took one look at a glowing girl and start wondering just what the hell she actually was. Mina ushered Caoimhe inside, putting the rock down and taking the gloves off of her own glittering hands before she ran one of them through her hair. 

Mina looked at the other woman, then down at herself, then burst out laughing. “Sorry. Sorry. This is really quite serious, but I’ve been a bit stressed lately, and you have no idea how relieving it is that this isn’t just a me problem. It’s a-- Well, I think it’s a Fae problem.” Which would make sense. Because why wouldn’t it? Obviously, if a rock that attracts Fae crashes from space into one of the most iron infested parts of town, then it would clearly reward any Fae that managed to touch it by turning them into walking discoballs. Of course it would. “I… did omit some information, yes. But you understand why, right? This-- this isn’t something that can be discussed over the internet with strangers.”

For one (not very) blessed moment, Caoimhe wasn’t concerned about the meteorite. All she could see was the glow crawling up her arms as she darted through the door, rolling up her sleeves and biting back either a laugh or another admonition, she couldn’t pick. The laugh won out, something a little manic around the edges, but genuine nonetheless. It could be so much worse. There had to be something wrong with the rock she’d suddenly found herself obsessed with; there was at least some relief in the simple fact it wasn’t deadly.

She curled her fingers into her palms and looked up at Mina, “Misery loves company, right?” She huffed a sigh and looked around for the first time since she’d rushed in. “It’s just...now you’re kind of stuck with it.”

At least until Caoimhe could figure out a way home. Or until they’d miraculously discovered a cure. It didn’t seem as though the latter was likely, considering Mina had invited her over in the first place. Her eyes found the rock Mina had set down, and she made a point to take a step back. It wasn’t nearly as easy as she would’ve liked it to be. “That’s a problem.” She didn’t want it to be a problem. “That’s a big fae problem. Have you been able to stop thinking about it? Because I can’t–”

She’d glow for the rock. It wouldn’t be so bad, really. Her life had been a series of bouncing from one town to the next, anyway. There were no roots to protect; although a coffee shop and a music room and a staff meeting came to mind. Correction, it wasn’t as though she wasn’t well-accustomed to tearing up roots when needed. She could have the rock, glow, and uproot herself. “Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, being a walking disco ball. There’s already the glamour and the f–” She bit her tongue, “Okay, it would be awful.”

“I can’t lie,” Mina joked, “it beats glowing in the dark alone.” And it was nice, for a moment, to know that she wasn’t the only one affected by this stupid, stupid, so very pretty but stupid rock. “Come on, we can-- I mean, we can at least get comfortable while we, ah, are miserable together. My--” she tried to think of the right word to describe the group of women that she lived with-- “my family’s not really around right now, and I apologize if I’m not the best host, what with making you touch the rock and everything.”

She picked up the rock again (why not? She was already glowing so much) and led them to the living room, spacious and homey and so very Morgan and Deirdre. And it was somehow home to Mina, and she couldn’t help but be comfortable. She sat down on the couch, put the rock on the coffee table, and did her best not to just stare at it. “It’s quite a problem, yes. I, well, I don’t always think about it, but, sometimes, it seems like I stop glowing a little, and then I’m not even thinking, and then I’m glowing again because I touched the damn thing.” She looked at it hatefully, but the look didn’t last long before it faded away to fascination. It was so pretty. It was such a pretty rock.

“I mean, it’d be a little noticeable,” Mina said hesitantly. Then, curiously, she added, “Do you think that a glamor could cover something like this up? I’ve never really used a glamor.” She didn’t even really know how. It wasn’t a glamor, her human skin, but just… skin. It was as much a part of her as the scales, though one did feel more natural than the other. “It don’t think it’d be enjoyable to try and maintain it all the time, though, no. I--” she felt fidgety, too many hours staying still. ”Would you like some tea?”

“Suppose that’s true.” Caoimhe tried to picture the space filled with people. It looked comfortably lived in, like someone had taken it and made an honest home out of it. Furniture in places that made sense, small personal touches here and there. It was such a stark departure from Caoimhe’s own apartment, with totes still filled with what few personal items she kept, no pictures or decorations. There was a couch she’d bought cheap at a second hand store that smelled a little like an attic, and a small coffee table already littered with papers. She could imagine being alone in Mina’s house wouldn’t be fun, but she thought perhaps she wouldn’t mind it as much. “It’s a nice place, though.”

She sat on the other side of the coffee table, legs folded underneath and making no effort not to stare at the rock. Mina’s musings faded for a moment and Caoimhe considered her options. She really was being a gracious host, despite the circumstances, and Caoimhe hardly wanted to take advantage. But the rock was so close, she could just grab it and–

And glow, apparently. She huffed a sigh and forced her eyes up to Mina. “I don’t think not thinking about it is going to be an easy solution, but...I’ve never really known solutions to be easy.” Maybe out of sight, out of mind was going to be their best option. They needed someone to take it, and hide it, and possibly distract them from doing everything they could to find it again. “And glamor, it’s–”

Caoimhe looked down at her hands, spreading them out on the table top. She thought about how enjoyable maintaining a different appearance at all times decidedly wasn’t, and it only had so much to do with the energy it expended. It was an energy she didn’t have at that moment, an uncomfortable reminder of all the things she was putting off in favor of enjoying a new town for just a little longer. “It might be possible, but I’m not...exactly at my best for trying to step it up right now.” She shrugged, briefly wondered at a fae who didn’t have to use a glamor. “It’s not that bad, you know. Kind of annoying, kind of unnatural, but you get use to it.”

“Oh, well, I didn’t-- I didn’t pick out the decor,” Mina said, ducking her head a bit. That was all Deirdre and Morgan, there mix of dark tones and florals and, honestly, a type of wealth that Mina had never experienced before. Money was for weapons, not plush, comfortable furniture. Money was for travel, not homes. Homes weren’t permanent; they weren’t even real. They were just a concept. At least, that’s what Mina had always thought. Things were different now, though. “It is a rather nice place though, yes.”

Mina kept glancing between Caoimhe and the rock, back and forth multiple times, even if she knew that the rock wasn’t going anywhere, even if she knew that there were more pieces of it elsewhere in the house. It was just so pretty, sometimes, that she couldn’t help but look at it. It was so fascinating. Less so when it made her skin glow, but still. The moments leading up to touching it were filled with an almost obsessive desire to reach out and hold it. Once it was in her hands, it was still fascinating, but it wasn’t consuming her every thought. Probably because most of her thoughts became, ‘Oh, fuck, I’m glowing.’

“It’s certainly not a quick fix. It takes a long time for the glowing to even minutely start fading. And it doesn’t just stop when you’re not in light.” Mina sighed, looking away from the rock to the other woman then to her hands. “I’m a bloody nightlight,” she muttered. She looked at Caoimhe’s hands spread out on the coffee table and hesitantly mimicked the gesture, listening raptly as the other Fae described glamour. Briefly, she allowed scales to form on her hands, each one shimmering just as her skin had for only a moment before she let them fade away. “I’ve never had to glamour before,” she added quietly. “Do you have to constantly be thinking about it? To keep it up?”

“We’re a night light.” Caoimhe offered with a smile, like it was something to celebrate. At least they had the rock.

She watched the skin of Mina’s hands shift for just a moment; the glow almost seemed more natural that way. Caoimhe had spent a good deal of time telling Bex about how malleable the term ‘normal’ could be, but in the end everyone conformed to some semblance of it. Caoimhe was sitting across from Mina as the same person she’d present to the man who took her coffee orders.

“I think about it, but…” Caoimhe tried to remember a time when she hadn’t had to think about it. For a moment, she wasn’t thinking about the rock at all. She was thinking about Ireland, with her mother. There were late nights and bonfires and her mother’s latest catch playing fiddle to the tap of too many feet, barely audible over laughter. There was a hand tugging at the collar of her shirt from behind as she peered over a windowsill, cautious because someone might see. Caoimhe had her apartment, but so much of her life had been spent hiding the parts of her that might kill someone, she’d stopped thinking beyond what it took to maintain it.

“Have you ever seen My Fair Lady? Or seen those stereotypical ‘transformation’ movies, or had your parents tell you not to slouch? You naturally want to slouch, but after getting corrected enough times, you stop slouching. You still think about it, but it becomes subconscious.” Caoimhe always had to think about it, on some level. “It’s not bad, but...it must be nice, not having to worry about it so much.”

It wasn’t necessarily that Mina thought Caoimhe’s words were funny, but the relief of them made her laugh. “Yes, yes, we are a nightlight.” And maybe it wasn’t very Fae of her, but there was something about the shared traumatic experience of glowing because of a bloody rock that bonded people together, in her opinion, far more than species. 

She nodded slowly, piecing together what the other Fae was saying, thinking on her words. “I like My Fair Lady, yes,” she said, recalling the musical from a performance when she was about twelve or so. And that made sense, sort of self-consciously thinking about these things. The thought of them being there but not quite, just below the surface instead. She wrung her hands together, rubbing at her knuckles as if that’d make them stop glowing. It didn’t, of course. Nothing did.

“I-- I don’t know if I’d say that I don’t worry about it much. I mean, I’ve spent a lot of time not having the best control, and it gets rather patchy, sometimes, if I’m stressed or tired or if I haven’t been in the water a lot,” Mina explained, trying her best. It wasn’t like a glamour, like some all or nothing type thing. “But I-- I think it might be easier than trying to maintain an entire glamour. I don’t know if I could do that.” She’d give anything to be able to now, though, one powerful enough to cover up her glowing skin. Wouldn’t that make things easier? She thought so. She hoped so. It wasn’t like it mattered, though. “So it gets easier?”

“It sounds like they both have their own set of challenges.” There were limitations to what Caoimhe could do, and how long she could maintain it. There was no easy way around hiding who you were from the rest of the world, even if that hard was purely internal. “It takes practice, right? A given amount of focus. I have to– it’s harder to maintain, if I haven’t eaten. Did you know there are three-hundred calories in one McDonald’s cheeseburger?”

The two facts were entirely unrelated, but she couldn’t exactly determine how many days John Doe Who Loved the Piano would last. Even if she could, she wouldn’t. It was easier to dance around the facts, bury them in different, related but ultimately meaningless facts. There were less questions she had to find creative ways to talk around, that way.

“Either way, we’re using some measure of energy to hide what we are.” She rubbed at the back of her hands, looking first to Mina’s hands, then the seemingly harmless rock. She wasn’t sure hiding was exactly a conversation line she wanted to follow. There were much better, easier things to think about. Like meteorites. “Okay, hear me out. Gloves and hoods and we can share rock custody.” Even as she said it, she rejected the idea. “No, we can’t share custody. Do you have more meteorites, or just the one?”

Mina hummed in agreement. “I think you’re right. I have to be– It’s better when I’m calm. Easier to look less… scaly when I feel more comfortable with myself.” And she didn’t mention to Caoimhe just how long it took her to feel comfortable. She didn’t think she needed to. Mina rarely looked comfortable in her own skin, even when she wasn’t glowing.

Trying not to look too perplexed, Mina bemused, “I’ve never had a McDonald’s cheeseburger.” She didn’t know why she’d need to know that. Did Caoimhe eat cheeseburgers? Could she eat cheeseburgers? Not many Fae ate red meat; not many Fae could eat red meat. “I didn’t know it had that many calories.”

“This… isn’t the only piece, no,” she said, looking between the rock and Caoimhe and biting her lip, wondering what she should do. They wouldn’t be able to share custody, no. That would lead to more of Mina touching the rock, and she needed to stop touching the rock so that she could stop touching so she needed to stop touching the rock. “I can– I think… Hm.” She didn’t want to give up the rock. She had more, though. It didn’t matter. She had more. “You can have this one.”

Caoimhe wondered at how long it had been since she’d been surrounded by people like her, and she landed on Ireland. The thought twisted somewhere in her chest, had her twisting her fingers together. Mina spoke of comfort, of the control that seemed to come along with it, and Caoimhe thought perhaps it was much harder than any glamour ever would be.

“I’ve never had one, either, I–” Caoimhe worked her way around how to explain a habit. There was more than just glamour, or Mina feeling comfortable enough with herself to find a shape that fit. Caoimhe could remember nights spent in common rooms on campus, surrounded by humans with shared experiences to which she could never quite relate. She’d learned early how to ask questions on top of questions until the conclusion was a lie. But Mina was fae, and Caoimhe didn’t have to mince her words. She didn’t have to ask questions, she could simply answer them. “Do you ever ask a question tangentially related to something someone else has asked you, so you don’t lie, but you don’t necessarily tell the truth, either? I don’t eat cheeseburgers, but it’s better if people believe I do.”

Despite her predisposition to honesty, it felt like the most truthful she’d been in a long time. She rubbed a palm over her eyes and laughed lightly and “Kinda means I know too many random cheeseburger facts, who am I?”

She blew out a breath and looked down to the rock, palm dropping into her lap. It had turned into far more trouble than it was worth (it was worth a lot, it was worth it, it was–). But then, for the first time in a long time she’d been able to truly enjoy the company of another fae, so perhaps it wasn’t a trouble at all. But her skin glowed in the dim light, matching Mina’s across from her, and trouble took too many different shapes. “That’s incredibly kind of you.” It had to be hard, Caoimhe could imagine. “Neither of us should have it, though. Maybe we should hide them. No, have someone else hide them.”

“Oh. Yes, I do that. Yes,” Mina said. Because that’s what made sense, right? What else was there to do? When lying made you feel sick and telling the truth all the time wasn’t practical, what else was there to do? Silence was damning, so it was best to just talk about what she could if lying would cause her to be too sick. “It’s– I mean, sometimes it works. It works with people that I’m not close to. But I think everyone I know is starting to catch on.” It was annoying, really, that people were able to figure her out so easily. It was nice, too, though, Mina thought. To be known. To be understood. Even if it meant that she couldn’t get away with things.

Mina managed a smile. “If it makes you feel any better, sometimes I start talking about conditional probability or Yiruma, and people usually don’t want to talk about those things, so they stop listening. Not quite the same as cheeseburgers, though.”

“We should– Yes. We should hide them. We should get someone else to– I know someone we can give them to,” Mina said, thinking about Bex. She’d gotten the rocks for Mina, after all, and Mina was sure she wouldn’t mind making sure they were safe and hidden and okay. Mina trusted her to do that. Bex knew how self-conscious Mina was about the glowing, even if Mina liked the rock itself. “My– the person that got me the rocks, I’d trust her to hide them, keep them safe?”

Caoimhe bit off her ‘that doesn’t happen, if you don’t get too close.’ There was nothing inherently wrong with getting close to anyone. There was nothing wrong with having a home and family pictures and people who brought you rocks simply because they cared. Caoimhe had spent her fair share of time picturing it, and it’s not as though her life had been completely devoid of it. There were the people who knocked on her single room in the dorms, her family back in Ireland. She imagined there was still a room for her, still strung in pale pinks with pictures of friends she didn’t know anymore stuck to cork boards.

Instead she nodded and offered a grin over anything entirely honest. “That’s when you skip town, start over. They can’t figure you out, if you don’t stick around long enough.” It was a joke. Mostly.

“Okay, okay so we have your person hide it.” It suddenly seemed so final. It didn’t matter that they’d be safe, only that they’d be out of sight, and Caoimhe wasn’t entirely sure she’d be able to manage it. Then she caught another, shimmering glance of her hands out of the corner of her eye, and realized she didn’t have much of a choice. She couldn’t very well stand in front of her class glowing. “Just–” She reached out, poked it one more time for good measure. “I’d talk my way around ‘I hate this,’ but I hate this.”

“It takes a lot to skip town and start over,” Mina said quietly. “I’m used to moving, but I like it here. It’s nice here, sometimes.” And maybe that wasn’t quite true. It was so very easy to move, to start over, to find another existence. But she didn’t want to. God, she didn’t want to. Mina just wanted to exist somewhere for once, and if that meant that people got to know her, somehow care for her, then that was okay. 

“We get my person to hide it, and then we’ll stop glowing,” Mina confirmed, before deflating a little. “Eventually.” Because it wasn’t an immediate fix. It took the glowing hours to start fading and days to fade completely, and, by that point, the rocks had always compelled Mina to reach out and touch them again. It was so frustrating, and there was no one to be upset with more than herself. “No, no, I hate it. It’s stupid. I hate it.” But they couldn’t spend the rest of their lives glowing, and, as pretty as the rocks were, they weren’t worth that. Right? No. They weren’t worth that. 

Mina pulled out her phone and texted Bex. Hey, are you home? I’m in the living room with someone. Could you come and hide the rocks?

Bex was, in fact, home. Her phone buzzed next to her and she looked down from her textbook and homework, seeing Mina’s name pop up on the screen. Eagerly, knowing Mina was in the house and wondering why she’d texted her instead of simply coming upstairs to her room to get her, Bex slid the phone on and looked at the message. The rocks? With someone? It took her a moment to realize what Mina meant, what was going on. She remembered seeing her talking to someone online. Who had it been? Hadn’t Bex also been talking to them? Oh! It was Professor Brennan! Excitedly, Bex threw her phone back down on the bed and raced down the stairs two at a time, before trotting into the living room-- and to two rather forlorn looking women who were both glowing. 

Bex did her best not to snort and hide the smile that was trying to pop up on her face. “Sorry, am I interrupting? Are you two, like, cosplaying the Cullens?” She’d been teasing Mina about it all week and she couldn't help it. Maybe it wasn’t the mood, but whatever she’d walked into, she didn’t want to make it worse. So, jokes. “Alright,” she held out her hands, “gimme the rocks.”

“No.” Caoimhe wasn’t sure if she was responding to the Cullens, the fact that it was Bex who walked into the living room, or that she was there to take the rocks. Some combination of all three, she suspected. “I mean–”

She looked back to the rock sitting between her and Mina. The things she should be concerned about, like Bex putting the pieces of the glowing fae puzzle together, didn’t matter as much in the face of losing it. Some part of her had thought there would at least be another hour with it. A last goodbye, a moment of peace before the oncoming tragedy. Her fingers twitched as she fought the urge to snatch it and run, glowing consequences be damned, but she tucked them under the table, instead.

“I mean yes.” Yes, take the rock. No, I will not give you the rock. Caoimhe would not be the one to elaborate.

The look that Mina gave Bex was belied just how unamused she was with the teasing, even if her lips twitched a little. This wasn’t funny; she was kind of miserable, and now she’d added Caoimhe into that misery as well. It loved company, Mina had heard somewhere. It was only right that she brought someone else in to share it with.

Mina also stared at the rock, unsure what to do. She didn’t want to pick it up again. She maybe wanted to pick it up too much. Just a little too much. If she touched it now, she knew it would take her awhile to want to give it back. She had a feeling that Caoimhe felt the same. “I think that you should just come take it,” she muttered, looking at Bex and then the rock and pleading at the other girl to just make sure that it was gone, please. Preferably somewhere that she couldn’t find it so that she wouldn’t keep glowing.

She looked back at Caoimhe and sighed. “Ah, sorry. For, you know, not telling you about the glowing.”

Bex looked between the two and saw the strained look on both their faces. She remembered how possessive Mina had become that first day, over the rock, insisting Bex needed to take it away from her because she was glowing, but refusing to hand it over until Bex had wrestled it from her hands and hid it under the mattress. Sighing, she shook her head. “Fine, I’ll take it,” she agreed, heading over to the table and looking between the two, wondering if they might lunge for it or try and stop her, before she picked it up and stuffed it in her coat pocket. “There, all gone! No more rock. It’s like it never existed, so now you can just forget about it and eventually the glowing will go away.” 

She looked at Professor Brennan, and then to Mina, and wondered what information they knew that she didn’t, but she pretended to be worried, rather than just curious. She didn’t altogether think glowing was that bad of a side effect-- but then again, she wasn’t the one glowing. “Mina stopped glowing after about a week after the first time,” she reassured the professor with a small smile, “it only lasted so long because someone--” she cast a glance back at Mina-- “kept finding it and holding it more.” 

She motioned for the door. “But, uh, I’ll let you guys settle that last part. It was nice to see you, Professor, even, uh-- if you are a disco ball right now.” 

“A disco ball?! I...well, yeah, okay, that’s fair.” Caoimhe deflated. She was a disco ball. She was a disco ball who was stuck as a disco ball for the foreseeable future. Her only consolation was the rock disappearing into Bex’s coat pocket; although, it hardly felt like a consolation. Rather, it felt like she’d just given up a limb. She rubbed a thumb against the palm of her hand to ensure everything was in the right place. “I’m a disco ball.”

She looked from Bex’s pocket to Mina. If there was one positive, she knew she wasn’t entirely alone. The thought struck. It was so much more than just a rock and an unfortunate disco condition. It was glamour and fitting in and finding someone who understood what it felt like to try. Caoimhe didn’t like to think of people like connections (connections turned into strings turned into skeletons she couldn’t get away from), but she liked to think there were people who came close.

“It’s okay. This...this isn’t awful. Meeting you, I mean. Not the glowing. The glowing is awful, but it sounds like we’ll get better.” After a time. In the meantime, “You’re kinda stuck with me for a bit, though.” She grinned, “If we spin slowly in your living room and play the Bee Gees we could make a disco party of it.”