the shadows take him
Rowen spun and danced in the darkness, surrounded by bodies that throbbed against him. He reached out and caught one, wrapping his hands around their waist even as his hips pulsed with the music. The body ground back against his crotch and he thrust forward, sinking his face into a shock of bleached hair. He smelled sweat and alcohol, cigarette smoke and a faint musk. He did not know if his dancing partner were male or female, but he/she was soft and warm against him and his hand traveling up his/her stomach felt the pounding of a beating heart—and that was all he needed or wanted from this slim little boy or girl.
His hand smoothed up over a thin chest before meeting the curve of a breast—a woman, then, one that moved lithely in his arms and pushed against his body in all the right spots. His right hand still rested on the skin over a jutting hip bone just over the low waist of his partner’s jeans. He rubbed his palm in small circles, intoxicated with the touch and feel of the foreign flesh.
Rowen moved his lips along the bowed neck of the slender girl before him and danced. He was not thinking of anything but how good it felt, right there in that moment, to be whirling in the middle of a pulsating crowd—surrounded by life and blood and sweat and screams. His body was coated in glitter and the sheen of his perspiration melted together with the glinting light of sparkles until he shone like a fairy as he spun in the throbbing lights of the dance floor.
He slid his hands off of his partner and ran a thanking palm over the swell of the stranger’s leather-encased ass. The throng immediately swallowed him as he stepped away and he made his way towards the bar. Once there he threw a wad of yen onto the counter and shouted his order at a slick-haired youth that did not look old enough to be tending bar—though she appeared older than he. She did not ask for ID and he offered none. He nodded thanks as she slid the gin and tonic his way but she had already turned towards another customer.
Eighteen and jaded/ faded away, he sang along to the music, though some over-mixed Shazna song was playing. He made up his own lyrics even as his eyes dragged over the bodies and faces of the androgynous young revelers spilling off of the sunken dance floor. They moved against each other in a frenzy of faux-sex, high on their own youth and beauty.
Too young to move past it/ and too old to play.
His head nodded automatically to the repetitive rhythm of the thumping drum track and he moved a little from side to side in between small sips of his drink. He scowled at the taste and the burn of it on the back of his throat and wondered if anyone was fucking on the dance floor in front of him. It could be done, he knew it, and he leered at the furtive expressions on the faces of some of the clubkids. A flash of flesh here, and there the twisted features of a screaming boy/girl—anything could be going on below the waist—anything concealed in the frantic motion of a dancer’s hips.
A smirk creased his lips of its own accord and he had to laugh as he literally tossed the last gulp of gin and tonic into his mouth. He slammed the glass down onto the nearest flat surface and poured himself between bodies to get back onto the dance floor. Hands nabbed him and touched his chest, the small of his back, his cheeks. A body held him from behind, another backed up against his front—he let the two move his body between theirs and their motions became the beat to which his body pulsed.
The darkness thickened around them as the lights fell and all that he could see were faint outlines of curved flesh—a shoulder, a breast, a cheek or stomach—ringed in purple from the faint glow of neon signs over the bar. He closed his eyes, tossed his head back to rest against the face of the boy/girl behind him and surrendered himself to the shadowed throbbing of the crowd.
Rowen felt the darkness crawl over his skin and his heart pounded painfully in his chest. He gasped for breath but he did not slow or move away. Adrenaline burned through his veins, his entire body shook—the thrill of the shadows around him held him captive as much with the electric shock of ecstasy as with the paralysis of dread.
Blue eyes opened to the blackened expanse of the club as it grew before his eyes—filling with treacherous, shadow-soaked corners and grinning white evil. There was danger in the darkness, in the strange hand on his inner thigh, in the shadows that flickered and danced with more hunger than the drug- and sex-addled youths that spread like a virus with violent fury as they devoured every breath of space in the club.
When the shadows slid into his brain—trickling into his ears and mouth and nose—he was galvanized and he attacked the open, seeking mouth of the thing that danced against his back. Tongue and lips clashed and pushed shadows around the wide, wet cavity formed by their brief fusion. The boy/girl pressed to his front clawed desperately at his hips and he leaned forward to explore the next offering—meeting sweeter-tasting lips with terror-fed craving.
It was the fear that excited him, the danger that got him hard, the menacing shadows that drowned everything that fought with tooth and claw and last gasp to hold onto the light.
After the Dynasty, the dark was just a little more frightening than it ever had been before.
Rowen had met demons and spat in the face of evil; he knew what kinds of things lurked in the shadows and shied from the sunlight. He knew what lived under the bed and slept in the closet; he had fought the bogeyman and come back alive…but afraid.
He had been an audacious child, boldly reaching into the dark holes and marching first into unexplored caves and forests where the other kids held back and cowered. How brave he had felt, how grown-up he thought he was—always too proud to be afraid of the dark.
Now Rowen knew how stupid he had been, not to fear the creatures that moved unseen in the night. There were things out there that the armor Strata could not protect him from, and until a year ago, he had never even known. Ignorant or obtuse; they were pathetic excuses for a man that should have known better.
Seiji had certainly known, and Cye—perhaps Ryo, too; though almost surely not Kento. Definitely Seiji and Cye, though; they had known that there were things out there that could hurt you and leave you dead even though your heart continued to beat. They had known that there were many kinds of deaths and there were monsters that fed on your courage and sapped your nerve dry like the supernatural parasites they were. They had known already, but Rowen had had to learn the lesson the hard way—at the hand of the Dynasty. The Demon Master Talpa and his Warlords and the armored minions that came at them in infinite numbers had finally taught Rowen how to fear.
He had learned his lesson well.
Synthesized drums beat through the smoky club air and Rowen let his two partners fondle and caress him with blissful passivity. The strobe lights came back on and burned the shadows away in short, palsied bursts. The crowd moved in herky jerky stops and starts as they all lifted hands towards the ceiling and screamed—the music built towards a culmination, gathering speed and hinting at imminent release without delivering.
Rowen screamed too, his voice buried in the others.
***