Lana ignored the carnage of peel in her lap, pulling another segment – one tucked in her palm, she held the other for him to take, the same way chimps silently divided food between loved ones even if it meant they had less for themselves. Tangerines had were one of her favourites. She didn’t mind. In fact, it eased her mind, in a way – she’d always been a pinch convinced that deeming something a favourite gave it restorative powers, like she’d activated a piece of magic for him to swallow, some star that could light him up from within. “Maybe. He was kinda ugly, though – like, no offence to him, or anything, I just… have eyes, you know? I got an incel vibe. It’s why I said hi, thought it was kinda funny, like… his mouth, it was all, like,” faded as she gaped her own, expression dead. “Thought he was gonna dribble.” Lana popped the fruit in her mouth, squeaking out an exclamation as she leapt to her feet. “Oh!” It’d made a small lump inside her cheek, a hamster stowing sunflower seeds. Stooping, she grasped at the fallen tangerine, plopped in a clump on the duvet she’d left. “God, just, like… flying around the room, the potato with Frank Ocean in the background. So much. Where’s – oh!” Instantly moving to the record player, Lana stroked fingers along it like she was taming a beast before it’d let her pet it. “You should get stickers. Like, suns and stars and sunflowers. Yellow ones. I can get you some. Mine has a bunch, all over – not just those, like, everything, really. This holographic dinosaur playing electric guitar. A bunch of butterflies, the red ones. Emperors. Those are my favourites,” she rambled like he didn’t inevitably know that, a steady stream of sound gushing over everything. A smile clung to her mouth with her back turned, firefly glowing in her chest as it did whenever anyone remembered something about her, no matter how small. “Stevie Nicks is one of the coolest people on the planet, I think. She had this whole thing of, like… guys weren’t allowed to look at her unless she wanted them to. Jensen said she was frigid bitch Mormon but I think that’s kinda cool. He’s gross, anyways. Hairy chest.” Positioning the needle, Lana eyebrows subtly furrowed as she landed halfway through Second Hand News. It took a bit more fiddling to find the end, crackle sounding a few seconds before Dreams kicked in. “Bazinga!” Lana stuck her tongue out in an impression of every ungodly Sheldon fan in the early 2010′s, head tossed back with a laugh. “God, can you imagine if I said that whenever I was super happy? It’s, like, my wedding day, a tears rolling down, I choke out… Bazinga! Ugh. Suddenly I have a receding hairline and a neon green Casio with a built in calculator, just from saying it twice. Cursing myself. So sick.” Regardless, she was grinning. Unable to help but sway around the place, she was in front of his bed within a blink, hand out without giving it proper thought. “Dance with me. We can make it fancy, ballroom style – like Vampire Diaries, with the hands, if you wanna. I’ll twirl you. Come on, Teddy,” she insisted despite his lack of an opportunity to object, snatching his hand and giving a gentle tug. “It’s this song, it’s a crime not to dance to this song. It’ll be fun.”
“Oh,” The single word that her offering produced wasn’t surprised, so much as a dull, monotonous and stunned exhale. It reminded Teddy of easier times with Lana. It reminded him of getting to know the girl that charmed him endlessly and would feed him gloopy, messy spoonfuls of greek yogurt while a movie they wouldn’t pay attention played in the background. There was a night where they tried to watch The Babadook about three times in a row, but he couldn’t recite a single line, plot point, or character name from the entire movie, “Thanks -,” he finally came up with, at the same time that she was bouncing up excitedly. It was nice, seeing her excited. A large part of him thought, maybe, he’d never get to see it ever again. It didn’t exactly feel like he deserved to. A grin had pulled at the corner of his mouth as he watched her bounce around his room, in typical Lana fashion, only to be distracted when he bit noncommittally into the slice of tangerine, more so out of something to do than because he actually wanted it, “Oh,” he repeated, brows rising in genuine - then put on - surprise as he stared at the fruit segment like he’d never tried something so sweet before, “Can I have another slice? You’ve got, like, the first place winner of all tangerine’s, here,” Popping the rest of the slice into his mouth, Teddy was already reaching for where Lana had tossed the discarded fruit onto his duvet. Maybe later, it’d dawn on him that things that came from Lana had a finer quality to it - sweeter, kinder, more wholesome. Where he felt he didn’t deserve to spend time with her given what he’d done, she made something as simple as eating a slice of fruit feel like a reward, “I know,” he said automatically when Lana mentioned her favourite butterfly, remembering how happy she was to have it painted onto her cheek at a school game so long ago, Teddy couldn’t even place which sport it’d been for. But he could remember the way she’d ran up to him, adorned it with pride, “I did have some stickers, I think. Left them at home, or something. I don’t know why I didn’t put them on - I don’t know. It’d be nice, though. If you helped - or, if you wanna. My creative eye is throwing up all over the place right now, it’s really dramatic, Lana,” Teddy felt a bit distracted, listening to her continue to talk. Maybe a bit overwhelmed - it used to be that people groaned when they saw Teddy and Lana together, knowing how they could go on for hours, mouths running a mile a minute. Now, he felt like he was watching her go on from just outside of the vicinity of a door, or through a glass window, needing to lean in close to pick up every word. He nodded, though, enthusiastically, eating more of the tangerine. It felt like a comfort as he tried to keep up, “You ever seen an episode of that show? I think they pride themselves on only being funny to smart audiences but even the bits that were meant to just be, like, almost stagnantly funny made me physically cringe,” Blinking when she was in front of him in the next second, Teddy stared at her hand like he’d never been asked to dance with someone before, like he didn’t know what to do with the extended limb. He’d danced with people before - he’d danced with Lana before, more times than he could count - but it’d been so long since he’d done so, with or without her, it felt like he was attempting to follow a conversation in a language he didn’t fluently speak, “Yeah, yeah, okay,” he finally agreed, apparently taking a beat too long, hesitating enough that Lana was taking matters into her own hand and tugging him to a stand. Dropping the fruit back onto his duvet like she’d done moments before, Teddy stood in front of her for a few seconds awkwardly, unsure of where to even start, like it was an exam, stuck on the first question and fretting when he heard everyone flipping over to the next page. Eventually, he put himself together enough that he could follow Lana’s lead, beginning to sway to the well known tune with a laziness in his bones that had previously felt heavy, and now felt like they’d been wrung out, water weight dissipating as he shifted around, “Feels a bit like I’m about to start floating. Astral project all the way to space,” he mumbled, humming along to the song under his breath. Teddy felt the urge to gesture her closer, grasp at her hand so that he could twirl her, really get into the song and let go like they’d used to be able to. The thought, though, made him swallow roughly, instead holding up a hand and nodding to it with a raised brow, “Alright, let’s do it, then. Vampire Diaries style ballroom dance. I think I had it memorized when it first came out, bet I could still do it,” This time, when he gestured her closer, it didn’t feel greedy, a proper excuse to do so dangling in the air between them, “Feels a bit off for Fleetwood Mac, though. Too uppity, like someone shoved a rod up all their asses. Kinda what all their personalities were like, anyway. We’re more fun than that, too, aren’t we?”
