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Dani breathed in.
This was not okay.
With every tap and clatter and laugh and tick, Dani could feel herself getting more and more deranged. She’d known attending this party would be a mistake, but she’d rationalized it to herself. Surely it couldn’t be that bad: yeah, it was a lot of people in one place, but she’d handled things like it and far worse before. It wasn’t that big of a deal. Just one stupid party. Besides, she was basically required to go. Show of good faith, or whatever, for the saviors of the planescape to attend stupid parties like this.
Dani never regretted saving the multiverse but there had been dozens of times she’d loathed the attention that came with it. Sure, the free meals and docking were pretty nice, they deserved a bit of compensation. But the random people on the street, the guilds and kingdoms campaigning for their favor in an effort to make themselves look good she could certainly do without.
Dani sighed and squeezed her eyes shut, trying to mitigate the headache she felt coming on. Why the fuck did places like these keep their light so bright all the goddamn time?
Kyana glanced at her, worry shining behind her eyes. Her hand slipped into Dani’s beneath the table. “You alright? You look pale.”
“I’m fine,” Dani assured her, ignoring the way her skin buzzed. She gave Kyana’s hand a small squeeze. “Don’t worry about me, keep doing your thing.”
Kyana’s eyes flicked uncertainly to Dani’s nearly untouched plate, then back at her face, but she eventually nodded. “Okay,” she breathed. “Just promise you’ll step out for some air if you need.”
Dani nodded. Maybe she could use some air. The number of people in the room chattering, breathing, scraping their chairs on the ground was making her insane. It was taking a considerable amount of willpower keeping her unoccupied hand from tearing into the plush of the chair or her own skin to relive some stress. She shoved it under her leg as she realized it had begun tapping her fork against her plate disruptively. She bounced her foot on the ground instead.
Someone brushed Dani’s shoulder on their way past her chair, and she felt her hair flare dangerously as she bit down on the demanding impulse to shoot them in the foot. She stood up abruptly, letting go of Kyana’s hand and starting towards the door to the garden. She needed some fucking air.
She was biting her nails to stubs before she was even outside. Why hadn’t she thought to wear gloves? Oh right , the only pair of gloves she owned were her work gloves. Not fucking appropriate for this occasion. She stormed away from where the people inside would be able to see her and just face planted into the grass, unbothered by her nice suit. She had never been more grateful for her foresight in lining it with a less irritating material than the original. While the cut wasn’t especially pleasant, at least her skin wasn’t begging to be torn off because of uncomfortable fabric or tags.
Dani’s headache had eased a little now that she was away from the harsh lights, but the electricity under her skin still filled her with nervous frenzied energy. She pulled up two handfuls of grass and dug her fingers into the leaves and dirt. They lit on fire as she almost unconsciously produced flame in her hands, letting the ash fall to the ground when it went out.
Dani sighed, feeling a little better. A little less like tearing her hair out. Another dry leaf went up in flames at her touch. If Roy was here, he’d probably snark about how unhealthy burning things as a coping mechanism was. Well, fuck him, at least now she didn’t feel so close to bursting into manic tears.
She still wanted to a little.
“Dani?”
Dani didn’t get up from the ground at VR-LA’s voice, but decided to sit up when the sound of his footsteps reached her side.
“You alright?” he asked.
Dani huffed a little, sparks on her breath. “I’m fine. Just feeling—- euugggh…” she shook her hands for emphasis.
VR-LA hummed and sat down next to her. “We’re not very good at parties, are we?”
Dani snorted, remembering how at the last event they had gone to, VR-LA had somehow managed to spill a drink on both the host and their guest of honor.
“We can leave early if you need,” he offered.
Dani sighed. “No, Kyana was so excited to see her monk friends again, and Vhas is making ‘important connections’ for his gith union quest or whatever. I don’t want to tear them away from that for no reason.”
“It’s not no reason,” VR-LA countered, then added. “And I meant just you and me.”
“Oh.” Dani blinked, then pressed her lips together uncertainly. “…I don’t want to ditch them either.”
VR-LA didn’t answer, letting her decide.
Dani’s fingers shook slightly in the grass, and she didn’t have the willpower to stop herself from bringing her hand up and beginning to chew on her nails again.
…She really didn’t want to go back in there. Her head still ached from the lights, and even the sound of the wind and crickets grated on her fried nerves. If she had to deal with party guests, she was sure she would have a freakout and actually start burning things.
Dani sighed.
“I’ll have to figure out some way to make it up to them,” she decided. She fully sat up and brushed some of the ash off her clothes, looking to VR-LA.
The mechanite stood and offered a hand to help her up as well. “I’m sure they aren’t going to mind, Dani. You wouldn’t if the roles were reversed.”
“Yeah, well, I mind that I’m ditching them,” Dani said. She sighed again as she and VR-LA walked out of the venue’s garden and towards town to find a quiet place to chill until Kyana and Vhas were done. It sucked the docks were so far away. All Dani wanted to do right now was collapse in the engine room and bury her face in her cat.
VR-LA muttered something under his breath and paused a moment before speaking. “I Sent to Kyana. She said not to worry and that she’d probably be ready to leave as well in an hour or so, but would check in with Vhas.”
Dani nodded. Her scalp prickled and she reached up, undoing her hair from the attempt at a bun she had thrown it into at the beginning of the night. Now it was just pulling on her hair and irritating her. It felt much better letting it flare out in whatever direction it chose. She intentionally tried to keep herself from biting her nails again, but she couldn’t figure out what to do with her hands. She tried sticking them in her pockets but that lasted all of ten seconds before the jitters crawling up her arms became too much and she needed to move them again. What she really wanted was something to fix. Her fingers itched for gears and wires to disassemble and click back together.
In an effort to escape the angry jitters grating her brain, the sensory distress every little noise put her in, the guilt gnawing at her stomach, and the slew of intrusive thoughts beginning to crowd her mind, Dani just spent most of the walk on autopilot. She was tired, her brain felt like it had been turned to rubber, and it took far too much effort to stay focused and present. She didn’t really pay attention to where VR-LA was leading them until they came to what looked like a small library. There weren’t many people inside, so it was easy to find a secluded, quiet place to sit down and zone out.
Dani let her shoulders slump forward into the abysmal posture brought on by years of work huddled over a desk and was now what felt most natural to her. The fringes of hair usually pushed behind her goggles fell in front of her eyes, helping to further dim the lights in the room behind her closed eyelids.
A tap on her shoulder broke her reverie, making her jump. “—Dani? You with me?”
Dani blinked hard and looked up. “Huh? Oh, uh, yeah. What’s up?”
“I asked how you were feeling,” VR-LA apparently repeated.
“I’m fine,” she sighed, leaning her head on her hands. Her fingers dug into her hair, pulling slightly on the strands, turning to destruction once again as they itched for something to occupy them. If she made herself bleed, at least it would be covered by her hair.
Metal hands touched hers, and Dani cursed herself for flinching again.
“Don’t do that.” VR-LA pulled her fingers from her hair. He kept both of her hands in one of his, using the other to guide her head to his shoulder. As her ear pressed against his plating, the rhythmic ticking of his internal gears clicked at an expectedly soothing pace, and the steady familiarity of it helped to calm some of the electricity under her skin.
Dani absently began to trace the inlayed gold scars across his hands and arm as they sat there, a bit of relief coming to her fingers as they finally had something to mess with. She closed her eyes again, actually beginning to relax.
It was quiet. Not so oppressively silent her mind scrambled to fill it with whirring, chattering thoughts, but the existing sounds soft enough to not rub gritty sandpaper over her skin.
Dani breathed out.
This was okay.