His eyes snag, catch and linger on a small person slumped on the floor, back against the wall and motionless head hanging between knees. JC bites back his scornful smile, raises his eyebrows, exchanges a knowing look and a shrug with the girl in black walking the other way. K-hole or simple dehydration, someone should know better. This early in the night. Sad.
The music's dragging him on, and he's barely noticing the crowd around him. The odd flash of neon camouflage, the sparkle tank top there, someone with a glowstick in his teeth. Muted pale light, green and red and blue, every face around him is strange and alien. Faces sheened with sweat, staring-eyed, laughing, intense, sad, hysterical, and it gets more crowded, more alive, hotter and louder and more, as he finally pushes through that last door.
The music hits him like a velvet-covered brick to the chest, forcing itself through skin and muscle down to bone, seducing him in a vicious split second of pure pleasure before it takes him over and simply moves him. The slithering synth trickles down over the staggered, deceptive bassline, and the purest, clearest voice JC's ever heard soars over it all.
In seconds, he's dancing, one of thousands.
In seconds, he doesn't remember anything but dancing.
He bares his teeth at a boy who dances too close, face grotesque and contorted in the flashbulb of the strobe. Go away, boy, tonight is for the dancing. The music wraps itself around the room, speaker to speaker to wall to speaker, until JC is spinning to catch it, breathing hot wet air and shuddering as his pulse settles to the same beat that's all around him. Every move he makes brings his body against another dancer, but he pays them no mind, and they do not notice him. Move move move, twist and let the music lift you, until your feet barely touch the ground. Dance the week away, let every last thought drip from your fingertips until there's nothing left but the movement and the sound, the incredible, unbearable, sublime sound.
One hand placed hard and shoving clears him more space in the pressing weight, and he growls at the bitch with the shaved head who shoves back a little too hard. JC can't feel his body, and doesn't know if it's the drugs or the drinks or the music, finally anaesthetizing him, making him numb to everything. He can taste the music, it's crisp and green and fresh. His eyes skip from movement to movement, spotlights dancing on faces and shoulders and bodies and hair. Someone threads a glowstick into his fingers, and he smiles.
Smooth slide of hand through air as heavy as moss as he stretches his hand up high, slipping the light through the air, watching the trails it leaves, the shining lightsigns of its passage. Down, snaking down around his own face, then the face facing him, blown pupils and sweat and smile. Jerk lift twirl, and the face is delighted, watching JC trace his own body in glowing light. Another glowstick pressed into his other hand, now he's got two, hands spread wide and little lights shining between his fingers. JC wraps the gift-giver in light trails, cocooning him in unearthly green.
The tempo picks up again, and now the glowsticks are merely punctuation to the dance, ways to mark the movements of his hands, the strange patterns they're tracing in the air. He wouldn't even have known he was thirsty except for the cold water bottle held against his nape by strange hands, then offered to him. He drinks it all, long blessed cool droughts, and pays and apologizes with a long, filthy kiss that leaves his fingers and toes sparking and the water-bringer staggering away dazed.
JC dances.
The crowd thins. There is more darkness now: someone sick in the corner, vomiting up the cheap margarita mix, someone collapsing on the shoulder of a friend and getting dragged away, two girls sitting on couches with less than nothing in their eyes. The world gets much more strange as the time gets later, but JC barely notices. The music loops and swirls around him, never stopping, only changing a little, speeding up and slowing down, stroking him to pleasure and then driving him insane. He's stupid with sensation, empty and alone and filled with pure sound and he doesn't stop until he can't lift his arms any more.
The air, when he finally staggers outside, is grey and cool, and JC blinks in shock. Light. Daylight. Morning. He almost turns and runs back inside, to beg them to let him stay inside. Inside where the music fills the womb and never lets its children die. But there's a bodyguard waiting, and a limousine, and a home. He climbs in, shaking suddently with exhaustion and letdown, barely able to lift his head. He sinks into leather, and can barely hear the car through the stunned buzz of his ears, watching buildings and trees whip by at a spead that makes him dizzy and nauseous.
Home is silent, something JC suddenly appreciates. It's clean and quiet and white, and the door swings open, and sleepy dogs greet him with barely a sound. He lets them out into the yard, and tiptoes to the kitchen. Water, gallons of water. Cold and tasteless, and JC almost throws it up when the shock of cold hits his belly. Then bed, and he can find his bed, he can, it's just up...there. Legs like lead take him there.
He sheds his clothes, too tired and wrung out to even consider a shower. There's glitter in his hair, a glowstick clipped to his too-tight pants. Glowrope around his neck. He strips it all away, naked and reborn now, and shivers his way into the bed.
Chris cracks an eyelid at him. "Candy raver boy," he slurs, then turns over and goes back to sleep. JC molds up against his back, letting darkness suck him down behind his eyes, but deep down his bones are still shaking with that beat, and his muscles strain to move him with it. In his head, the purest, clearest voice he's ever heard soars above it all.