WHO: Annie Odair (AU) and Kylo Ren WHAT: having a dance at the winter ball! WHEN: December 10th (backdated) WHERE: Tumbleweed Hotel, Grand Ballroom WARNINGS: it's pretty tame, really.
In theory Kylo Ren could be social.
Eliot had told him it would be a good thing to do. If people interacted with him, then perhaps people would be generally more comfortable around him. It was a great theory, but then there was the other theory.
The other theory involved Kylo Ren interacting with people and them just being more uncomfortable, because he wasn't social, and he didn't like social, and then they were ready to chase him out of Tumbleweed. Still, he'd promised that he would ask other people for a dance, and it hadn't taken him very long to realize on the edge of Eliot introducing him to the woman, Annie, that he intended for him to ask her. Eliot didn't have to say it; Kylo knew. He could tell by the way Eliot was smiling at him, and the hopefulness was there in the underlying emotions.
So, in theory Kylo Ren could be social.
He swallowed and looked down at her. "I think El will let me sneak away for a moment, if you would dance with me?" He asked, a small smile on the corner of his lips.
--
Annie smiled brightly up at him. She was in her element - she loved pretty dresses and dancing, when she was allowed to do it with people who cared about her, like her family and friends. She had not loved it when she had been a victor in the Capitol and everyone there had only cared about whether she looked pretty and whether she had gone mad. But here, nobody was thinking about that. She had danced with her husband and her children and her friends, she’d had plenty of sweets and drinks, and she was enjoying herself immensely.
She was enjoying herself so much that right up until the moment Kylo asked her to dance, she had forgotten that Eliot had asked her about this. He needn’t have, really, but Annie appreciated it all the same. It said something really lovely about Eliot that he looked out for the people he cared about like this, and she was glad to have befriended him.
“Of course,” she said. “I’d love to.” Laughing, she added, “I’m going to dance all night until I fall over and Finnick will have to carry me home.”
--
Her enthusiasm was somewhat contagious and Kylo allowed his smile to deepen, becoming a little more prominent across his features as it did. He wasn't certain who Fennick was - no doubt Eliot would have - but he could gather from context that Fennick was a lover, perhaps, or a husband even. The sense of him about her seemed something along those lines and it would make sense so he offered a hand and placed another on her waist.
"I doubt Eliot will have that problem with me," he offered dryly, a hint of self-depreciation under the words. But then he wasn't certain what to say next, reminding himself that the most frustrating part of dancing with people wasn't the dancing, but rather the knowing what one should say while one was dancing. This was why he didn't mind dancing with someone like Eliot, who he either would have something to talk about with, or would talk the entire time, or would not mind if they were silent. The ability to simply be silent with Eliot was distinctly a point in his favor, as was the fact that Eliot could fill the silence easily enough if it were required. But he didn't know anything about Annie. He supposed she didn't know anything about him either, so maybe he was over-thinking this.
"You enjoy parties then," he started. "And dancing. Eliot does too."
--
Annie might have laughed, except that she could hear the self-deprecation in his tone, and she didn’t want to laugh at him. She simply smiled instead. “You say that now,” she teased gently. “You haven’t really started dancing with me yet.”
She moved comfortably in his hold and followed his steps. The good thing, she supposed, about her duties as a victor in the Capitol, was that she’d grown used to dancing even with people that she wasn’t entirely comfortable with, and could move instinctively even when her mind was somewhere else. She was fully present now, and Kylo was much more pleasant company than any Capitolite. But she could feel that he was a little uncomfortable or awkward, whether it was with her or the party itself, and it made this easier that she could focus on him without having to worry about how she moved.
“I do,” she agreed. “This kind of party, at least - for fun, with my friends and family. I’ve also been to parties I didn’t like as much.” She looked up at him. “Are you having a good time so far?”
--
Of course there could have been a trick in that question as if he were having a horrible time it would have hardly been polite to say so, but if he were being honest, he was glad to be here. And he nodded. “Yeah I am. I like attending these with Eliot. I’m not…” he paused. “I don’t typically do parties much, but I think I’m learning to like them. A bit.”
He swirled her comfortably between two people, letting himself be aware of where people weren’t and were around him in the Force. “What types of parties don’t you like?”
—
“They’re a lot more fun when you’re with fun people,” Annie said. She chewed on her lip, and her eyes wandered for a moment as she debated how to answer. “I don’t like the kind of parties where you don’t really know anyone, and they’re judging how you look.”
That was an oversimplification of what Capitol parties were like for tributes and victors, but she didn’t really want to go into all the details. Not at a time when they were meant to be having fun. “This kind of party is a lot better.”
--
Kylo didn't know if he could say much about that, because he didn't really think people judged how he looked here - at least not that he knew of - but he did know that people judged him, so that he could understand somewhat. Hen odded, rather intently gazing at her for a moment as they moved through the people.
"I wouldn't like this party if it were for Eliot, and -" he hesitated, but finding Eliot and Quentin on the sidelines made him feel as if he could say 'his friends'. They were, really, even if they'd started out being Eliot's friends first. "Friends here. And feeling as if you're being judged is no fun for anyone." That he knew for certain. "I can't imagine anyone would find fault with how you look though."
--
Annie flushed pink, but she looked pleased as well as embarrassed. “Thanks, I -- I wasn’t fishing for a compliment, but thank you. I just meant that the people at the Capitol parties at home were very…” She paused. “Shallow.”
That was a very generous term for everything that Capitolites were, really, but she didn’t feel like thinking too hard on it. Not when they were having fun. “Parties should be about having fun with people you like. And also about dressing up, for fun.” She smiled at him. “You look very nice, too.”
--
"Ah," Kylo said, somewhat understanding. It wasn't that he was particularly familiar with what she was talking about, certainly he knew nothing of the Capitol, but he did know something of the type. He had, after all, grown up around much of the Republic elite and the senators and people who fell over themselves looking for power to do whatever they could without censure. "I've met a few people like that in my type. Politicians, and their hanger-ons, can be that way in my experience."
He led her easily through a cluster of people, and he smiled. "I think that is precisely why I never enjoyed parties before. They were never really about being around people that I liked or having fun." He glanced down at his suit - it had felt like a bold pick when he'd selected it, but like the sort of thing that Eliot might really like, and in all honesty, Kylo was enjoying wearing it - it felt… distinct in a good way. He glanced back up and smiled. "My Grandmother helped me. She has good fashion sense, I think."
--
“Yes,” Annie said, relieved that he had some idea of what she meant. Now she didn’t have to explain any further. “Like politicians.”
Not all of the Capitolites were politicians - probably the majority of them weren’t - but they were nevertheless people who worked soft jobs for better money than anyone in the districts - except for a victor - could ever hope to see.
She wondered vaguely what politicians of his world were like, but she suspected he might not want to talk about that any more than she wanted to talk about the Capitol. She was happy to change the subject to clothes.
“I think she does, too,” she said, admiring his deep red suit. “I’ve always liked colorful clothes. Black and white gets so boring.”
--
Kylo wasn't certain he had the heart to tell her that he mostly wore black. He would have likely been in all black tonight except that he knew from Eliot having taken him shopping to figure out something to wear for Han and Leia's wedding, that Eliot liked him in color. And while Kylo wasn't about to start in on the pastels like Annie was wearing, he could handle red. Deep burgundy reminded him of the colors he'd been surrounded by in the First Order, and even if he was beginning to question some of the things he'd done for the First Order - the colors still felt comfortable. And dark enough that he didn't feel out of place.
"I wear a lot of black, but I've been adding more red in," he said, a compromise from saying he wore all black all of the time. "And what I usually wear at home would stand out terribly here. It's been a process to figure out what works, but I've had assistance. Is um, this world much like your home world?"
--
“There’s nothing wrong with black,” Annie said, laughing at herself. She sounded almost as shallow as the Capitolites she’d been describing. “I like to be brightly colored, or I get bored. I know not everyone does. You should wear whatever you feel comfortable in.”
Nevertheless, she really did like the red in his suit. Unconsciously, she brushed her fingertips lightly over the material of the jacket where her hand rested on his shoulder.
The change in subject surprised her, but she considered the question. “It’s… similar,” she said. “It’s close, at least, to what the history books say Panem used to be like. This continent, I mean - North America. We’ve compared the maps, and this isn’t too far from where my district was. But we were by the ocean. I miss the beach.”
She looked up at him. “What about you? Is it very different where you’re from?”
--
"A bit," he nodded. "First off, we can travel between planets. Were you here when we were on the spaceship? The large cruise one? I don't know if you were, but I arrived when we were at Coruscant, which is one of many planets in our galaxy. Although not the one I grew up on, or am most familiar with. The whole being stuck on one planet thing has taken some getting used to."
He deftly avoided someone nearly running into them and wondered if his statement was really truthful. He hadn't gotten used to being stuck on one planet, and he offered a sheepish smile up back at her then. "Truthfully, I haven't gotten used to it. I miss my ship, if not much of the rest of home. I have found good things here, so I can't complain."
Conversation was flowing a bit more easily now, and Kylo had forgotten that it was something he was having to try to do. He realized that mostly he didn't know much of anything about the worlds represented here. He knew about his own, of course, and he knew about Eliot's, and a bit about Petunia's, and all of the others who were from a world like hers, because Eliot had read him some of Harry Potter, the books, when they were both teenagers, but those three were hardly the only worlds here. There were others, maybe more numerous than he'd really stopped to think about. "Aren't their beaches not too far from here though? Force knows it's been hot enough to enjoy them still. Or is this one of those things where I'm considering distance in my standards and not the standards of this place?"
--
“I didn’t - no, I did go on the spaceship,” Annie said. Her memory on it was a little fuzzy; she knew there had been some things she liked about it, but whenever she thought about it too long, her mind brought her back to the black hole, and she could still feel the fear she’d felt then. She’d been terrified of dying, which would have been more than enough to send her into a tailspin, but even that had been superseded by her fears about her children dying, and Finnick, and her friends.
Her eyes had slid away from Kylo’s and glazed over, and she had to consciously drag herself back to the conversation. It helped that he had continued to talk, although when she started following his words again, she became aware that she had missed some of what he’d said. She didn’t quite know how to ask him to repeat himself, or if she even should, because it might bring her back into the flashback. She also didn’t quite know how to respond, because she didn’t know everything he’d said.
She was grateful when he changed the subject. “I’ve heard there are beaches,” she answered, nodding. “I don’t know exactly how far away they are. Finnick and I aren’t used to the methods of travel in this world, and… we have two young kids, so we just haven’t… done it. The beach used to be… just a short path from our house.”
--
For a moment it almost felt as if Annie's mind had wandered and Kylo wondered if he should have picked up on that more succinctly than he did. But at the same time, he didn't want to dig into things that weren't his to know about. It wasn't squeamishness that kept him from doing it, he would if it were necessary, but it wasn't really necessary here. Annie had no information that he needed, no one was in danger, and he was trying to be more of the person that he thought Eliot believed he could be.
So he just nodded. He wasn't used to kids himself. They were small humans that might be as mysterious as an entirely different species so far as Kylo was concerned, but he knew enough to know that they made things more challenging to do. So if the beach had been something they could walk to before, but not now it made sense they hadn't gone.
"That is a difference," he offered diplomatically. "I forget that travel here is not as simple as in my world. Well, I suppose it's not so bad for more localized travel, but it's much less easy to travel across a planet, or of course off-world." He paused, and then offered a smile that was almost shy. "I suppose that makes two of us not used to the methods of travel in this world."
--
Annie was grateful that he did not seem upset or insulted that her mind had wandered. Some people seemed to take it personally, or to write her off as rude at best, crazy at worst. She had no control over it, really, no matter how good of an impression she’d wanted to make on Eliot’s boyfriend.
“Yes,” she said, smiling up at him. “I suppose we have that in common.”
The song ended, then, and she came to a stop but did not pull away immediately. “Thank you for the dance, Kylo. I really enjoyed it.”
--
"I suppose we do," he said, wondering at the strangeness of having something in common with someone who seemed honestly so different from him. Then again, they all had in common being away from their home worlds and for some, that was more different than for others.
"Right," he stepped back, offering a brief nod. It hadn't gone so terribly, really, which seemed like a success. Maybe he could count Annie as someone who would at least not think the worst of him. Well, maybe not, but still he didn't regret having danced with her and that seemed like a good place to start. "Thank you as well," he added in a rush, realizing that he shouldn't just let her go without that.
"I hope you can make it to the beach," he added on a whim. "Someday, anyway, um, good night."