Neon Eyes

📅 Early 2019

〚ᴄᴡ ғᴏʀ ғʟᴇᴇᴛɪɴɢ ᴍᴇɴᴛɪᴏɴ ᴏғ sᴛʀɪᴘᴘɪɴɢ / ᴀʟʟᴜsɪᴏɴ ᴛᴏ ᴇxᴘʟᴏɪᴛᴀᴛɪᴏɴ & ᴅʀᴜɢ ᴜsᴇ〛

New York City was a city too grand to not spend time walking it, or at least Chey said so a lot, and it was hard to disagree with him. He still stared with wonder at things as minute as street signs or yellow cabs; would point out stop lights reflected on rain-wet streets with the same excitement as Anarchy remembered in his own voice, coming into the city for the first time all those years ago. Chey somehow managed to seem both tourist and lifetime resident; too familiar with the streets and too proud of the city to not belong, but endlessly enamoured by “her”—because NYC was always a “her” when Chey was speaking—and never taking anything—from Broadway’s proximity to the graffitied newsstands to the neon-lit bodegas—for granted.

They were walking home together in lieu of riding the bus for that reason, soaking in the city and each other’s company, chatting and laughing. The sky overhead gradiented from blue to pink like Coney Island cotton candy; one of those imperfect sunsets where daylight fought tooth and nail against the slow creep of evening and the sky stayed bright and blue until it couldn’t anymore, dimming without ever washing gold.
The streets were crowded as ever and Anarchy knew he and Chey were taking up a vaguely rude amount of sidewalk space by walking as an item and refusing to part unless absolutely unavoidable, but they were both grinning and he couldn’t manage to feel bad about it. Chey kept turning around and walking backwards whenever they had to go single-file and had backed into more than one person, accumulating two profanities that he met with a bomb-diffusing grin and apology, and one instance where the person he backed into apologized to him and he’d said “Oh, you’re not the one who needs to say that!” so emphatically that the woman paused, then corrected herself with “No, you’re right. You’re sorry,” and strode off.
He and Anarchy were still laughing over that one, play-reenacting it, with Chey walking backwards again; the blue and pink in his hair brought out by the light of the sky and making his face seem brighter, when a voice across the street rose above the normal din of New York:
“O-M-G! Casper!”

 Even pronounced just ‘off’ it was still enough for Anarchy to take notice, and Chey definitely did—but he’d barely started to turn and look when two figures came running to him from the opposite sidewalk, crosswalks be damned, the woman outpacing her male companion despite wearing stilettos. The pair of them ran up to Chey on either side, both grinning.
“How you doing, Ghostboy?!” the man asked, clapping Chey on the back, while the Stilettoed-Sprinter began chattering animatedly to him, her half-shave of silvery, opalescent hair too silky to stay behind her ear no matter how many times she tucked it back, and repeatedly falling over one eye. Chey looked stunned but delighted and he grasped at the woman’s upper arm as if affirming her tangibility. Anarchy had no clue who she might be.

“You must be parta his crew now, huh?!” The man suddenly said, turning to Anarchy with a grin; “How’s that? You good for him?”
“Wh—Yeah, are you?” Anarchy responded, perhaps more sharply than warranted, but the stranger was only slightly shorter than him and equally athletic, for all appearances, and a martial posture sprang into Anarchy’s upper body of its own accord. The stranger just laughed and thunked him in the chest like they were buddies.

“I like that answer!” he said, a bizarre showman-like quality to his voice, which seemed to come out louder than it needed to be, like his broad chest was a volume switch always set just over optimal; “Sylvie, did you hear that? I asked him if—”
“Yes, I heard, baby,” the woman in stilettos—“Sylvie”— said, grinning. She’d draped herself over Chey and was hanging off him by one arm. He couldn’t have looked happier about it.
“No, you two, Sylvie, Jett—” he said, so excited that he ended up stumbling on his words, a rarity for him; “This is him, this is—I told you guys I thought—thought the love of my life was dead, but—I found him. This is Anarchy. My boyfriend.”
Anarchy flushed at the words ‘love of my life’ but couldn’t do anything about it before Jett turned around and thunked him again, congratulatorily;
“Ah, who’s the ghost boy now, then, huh?! Welcome back, Danny Phantom!” 

Too bemused to attempt a response, Anarchy looked at Chey for assistance, raising an eyebrow. Chey laughed somewhat apologetically at his expression and disentangled himself from Sylvie to lean against Anarchy instead, who looped an arm around his shoulders and mouthed, ‘Ghost?’ 
“Sorry, ‘Key,” Chey said; “This is Sylvie, and Jett. We all knew each other back...when I was stripping still. I went by ‘Casper,’ then. Casper the Friendly Ghost.” There was something a little shallower about the smile he offered with the explanation, something—for the lack of a better word—vaguely haunted.
“Never took us up on the suggestion of ‘Umbreon,’ didja. Not even ‘Haunter,’” Jett said, clicking his tongue in mock disappointment. He offered Anarchy another grin and Anarchy braced to be thunked again, but thankfully Jett instead seized Sylvie by the waist and gestured between her and himself. “Sylveon and Jolteon, at least on stage,” he said. 
Sylvie nodded with a smile but lifted her head a bit, straightening her posture. 
“Less of that now, though, isn’t there?” she said, looking to Chey; “We’re on the up and up, who would have thought it! No need to be doing so much dirty work: We just opened our own nightclub, what, 9 months ago?” She turned to Jett for confirmation.
“‘Neonize!’” he affirmed, loudly and proudly. Chey lit up.
“No way!” he said; “You two—you’re out of having to strip? What’s...what's your club like?” Sudden reticence reached his voice, however slight; Anarchy pulled Chey slightly closer.

“Fun music, swingers nights, bright lights and no shady corners!” Sylvie answered delightedly; tucking her hair back and not seeming to notice that it fell into her face again immediately. “Really done with those. But you, Cassie, you’re glowing! Couldn’t find a shady corner in a dark closet with you around, now, what’s new with you? Just living it up with your man? Your dancing all for him these days?” She winked at Anarchy.
He stared back at her and tried to make an acceptable facial expression, despite having no idea what one in response to that comment would look like. 
Chey had relaxed with the ‘no shady corners’ comment and let out a bit of a laugh; one which sounded real and reassuring to Anarchy’s ear. 
“I dance for myself now, Sylvie, he just gets to see it,” Chey said. “So does anyone else on the dance floor, though. I don’t strip anymore. Doing some synthwork and keys for his band—”
“The band,” Anarchy interrupted quickly, wrong-footed by the verbal distance; “Or our band. You’re in it. With me. And everyone else.”
Chey cast a smile up at him, then corrected; “...Yeah, that’s what I meant: For our band. Edge of Infinity.” 

They lit up at the news of his progress and successes the same way he did at theirs, and for a while the conversation churned at hurricane-speed, whipping up pieces of their pasts which were immediately blown away and replaced by the present: Triumphs over hardships abounded; Anarchy got intermittently included in the conversation and received another chest-thunk for being just over seven years clean (“Yo, nice!” Jett said) and for having reconnected with his mom (“That’s aces!” Jett said.) Sylvie remarked multiple times how worried they’d been when Chey had quit out of the blue back in the day, how good it was to hear that he wasn’t self-medicating; how much fuller his smile was than she thought she’d ever seen it, which was a feat.
“Ya know, not in a weird way, but if you’re ever wanting to dip back into dancing for a crowd and making a bit of bank off it, we’d deffo grab you for a gig or two,” Sylvie offered; “We miss your moves, Cassie!”
Chey’s uneasy hesitation didn’t go undetected, and Sylvie quickly clarified:
“It’d be fun, fast, and go-go, babe; nothin’ spicy on show if you don’t wanna! We’d hire someone in a burqa so long as she got the crowd pumped up; it's about the energy!”

Chey brightened again, readily, seeming both relieved and delighted at the prospect to dance for the love and the energy but still get paid; to have it be his spirit on display rather than his body. 
“I’ll consider it,” he said, his eyes crinkling at the corners. 
“You better! Got a gaping hole in my life where your talent used to be. You said you do synth stuff, too, though? You know how to use an audio controller? Like, a DJ controller? ‘Cause if we can’t get you to dance maybe we can get our claws in you as a back-up DJ,” Sylvie said; “Gimme your number anyway, we’re staying in touch this time!”

Chey acknowledged knowing enough about audio mixing that DJing gigs didn’t seem like a stretch, and even with the conversation winding down, a sense of optimism filled the air. As they were saying their goodbyes, Anarchy finally saw his opportunity: He thunked Jett in the chest with a louder-than-average “Good meeting you, man,” that made Chey stifle a giggle and left Jett visibly delighted.

After they’d all parted ways, numbers exchanged—and sternums lightly bruised, for a couple of them— Anarchy looked down at Chey and offered him an amused, inquisitive smile.
“So...Casper the friendly ghost?” he prompted. Chey remained rather quiet, though, tucking his tongue to his cheek, and Anarchy let it go.
“...They kinda reminded me of first meeting you,” he said instead. “0 concept of personal space and enough enthusiasm for four people. Birds of a feather, huh? They seem cool.”
Chey smiled. “They are. I needed them back in the day...wasn’t much of a bird,” he said. “Wasn’t much of myself...maybe that’s why I ended up with them. They were still me even when I wasn’t. I tried—performed it well enough; all smiles...A lot of ‘em were hollow, though.” He looked back up at Anarchy. “...Thought you were dead, then.”
“I wasn’t.”
“I know. But I thought you were. So I was, too.”
“...Kaspar the friendly ghost.”
“Kaspar the friendly ghost.” 
Anarchy frowned and took the moment they had together in the apartment building’s elevator to pull Chey against his chest.
“...Couldn’t kick the friendliness, though, huh?” he said softly. “Still you.”
Chey huffed a fraction of a chuckle. “Spent a couple years without it and couldn’t stand myself.”
“You could’ve done worse things about not being able to stand yourself than choose to be kind again,” Anarchy said. “...Than choose to be you again.” 

He moved his hands to cup Chey’s face, knowing the elevator could stop at any floor and slide open its doors and that the moment wasn’t truly private, but it no longer seemed all that important.
“…Can you believe how lucky we are that after everything we went through... We found each other twice, and we were ourselves both times?”