DANCE YOUR HEART OUT

"Well."

She walks over to where the small table has been folded up against the wall to serve as a chalkboard for lists, having to stand on a waiting barstool to reach the handle. It makes her grunt with effort a few times but eventually, it unhooks from the wall and the board swings down to serve as support, creating a narrow table just big enough for two people.

"Fengari means 'moon' in ancient Aterkin. It's kind of like Latin in that it's a dead language, but it's not from that same part of the world."

As she's explaining things, she sets the two stools across from each other then comes back to the kitchen, grabbing their plates and getting to work setting the table, keeping herself moving so they can actually eat soon. He's come all this way, she feels bad it wasn't ready when he arrived.

"My parents gave it to me because it's some sort of family tradition. Believe it or not, purple hair is natural for my family but it only happens every few generations for some reason. So, everyone born with purple hair gets an old Aterkin name. I think Fengari is pretty, but my parents didn't care for it. Just called me Luna since it means the same thing. Then, as I was growing up, friends would have a hard time remembering how to say my name so I just gave up and started going by Luna."

She gives one last look at the table, following it with a nod of approval as she takes her seat, motioning for him to sit across from her. Every movement he makes is stiff and awkward. It's actually incredibly endearing and she finds herself leaning forward on the table, smiling at him as she watches him join her. She knows so little about him yet she is entranced by him, drawn in to learn more. Maybe she's just a sucker for dark hair and tattoos but it's working on her.

"I guess I figured to do what was easier for everyone else. I'm used to people calling me Luna so, if you like that more, you can stick to that. You don't need to change anything for me."

“Huh.”

He watches her as she speaks, keeps busy while she does, makes it sound like some great imposition to even ask him to call her by her true name. It must be a road she’s gone down before with an unfavorable outcome, with the way she gestures to the food as if its not a big deal.

“I️ like Fengari. You’re right, it is pretty. Very unique.”

‘Like you’, he starts to add, but he shoves the heel of the loaf of bread in his mouth before he can. He didn’t pep talk himself up the stairs about keeping this low key at all costs for no reason. He wants there to be a second time and third time and even tenth time, but he has to behave well in order to not turn her off to him the first time they ever even spend time together in an official capacity.

“Funny story. So a few generations back, my family’s last name was kind of the same way. People had a hard time pronouncing it, spelling it was even worse, and my grandma- well, my great grandma- got so fed up that she just up and changed it. But you can tell she still doesn’t feel like our last name now belongs to her. Names can be pretty important.”

He washes out his now dry mouth with a long gulp of water, self conscious at how loud his swallowing sounds, how she probably notices it and is disgusted by it. He also goes to wipe his mouth across the back of his sleeve, but stops himself midway. Not soon enough to keep his gaze off his arm.

“I️. I️ dont do a lot of, nice sit down dinners with fancy friends.”

He says it with a hint of a laugh in his voice, but chides himself at the wording. He hopes she’ll understand what he means, that it’s more of a compliment than it sounds.

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"Oh yeah, I'm your fanciest friend with my tiny studio apartment and my theater budget."

The thought of that alone makes her laugh, twirling a bite of pasta on her fork and starting the dinner off. Actually, he really started it when he shoved that whole piece of bread in his mouth. He must be starving but not want to say anything.

To try to encourage him to eat more without embarrassing him, she takes a bigger bite than she can reasonably fit in her mouth all in one go, several ends of pasta hanging past her lips. It makes her cheeks heat up as she sucks them into her mouth quickly, trying to ignore the drop of sauce one of them flicks up onto her nose. There's no ignoring it completely, she can feel the oil, so she sheepishly grabs a napkin and dabs it off, looking down at her plate. To her credit, she laughs quietly once she gets the bite down, working to keep the mood light despite the fact she feels like the biggest idiot.

"Y-You know."

She starts to gather another bite, but smaller this time.

"The way you say Fengari... It's nice. It sounds nice and warm. Kind of makes me wish I could go by that instead of Luna."

What did she just say? Yes, she was just thinking about how the notes of his voice saying her actual name with the inflections he gives it sounds like honey, makes her heart race a little, but she didn't have to go saying that out loud. Now isn't the time to act like a creep, a little hopeless romantic.

Her eyes flick up at him nervously, trying to think of a way to keep the conversation rolling.

"I mean. Luna. It's. It's pretty and all but that's what you name a pet, not a person. I... I guess that thinking about it that way, it makes sense why my parents prefer to call me it over Fengari. My actual name."

The way she seems to choke down a bite just to make him feel better makes him press his lips into a tight smile, something he holds back from letting go fully. He jumps into the meal with her though, struggling with twirling the pasta fully onto his fork and getting it to stay there all the way to his mouth. He has to hold his hand up under the fork as it makes its way to his mouth, but he finds himself laughing, and her along with him.

“Mm, this is good. Definitely worth working a little for.”

He accidentally winks at her, and after the fact he clears his throat a little, hopes it come across as friendly and playful instead of strangely creepy playful.

“But really, I️ don’t know what’s so hard about Fengari. Reasonable number of syllables, it flows nice. I️ can’t imagine what your friends’ excuse would have been.”

Now he could have understood if she, like him, had a name where his kindergarten teacher had written a note home to his father on the first day counseling Dolan to send his son to a speech therapist for a lisp he didn’t have. But Fengari, that’s a beautiful name, nothing lispy or confusing about it.

“I️ think you’re one of like seven people on the west coast who actually knows how to prepare shrimp. I’m really impressed.”

He pops one into his mouth, fingers instead of fork, too distracted by the flavor and how it melts in his mouth to be embarrassed by his lack of polite convention. He does catch Nameless glaring at him after the fact though, as if the dog is the manners police. So Shand dabs his mouth with his napkin to try and atone.

“So you, uh. You know my dad and my brother pretty well, then? I️ can’t really imagine how you could have known my dad all this time and still like him.”

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"I don't know, it is kind of a weird name, I guess. But I've always liked it."

She watches him carefully, quirking an eyebrow up when his gaze rests off to the side for a moment, unintentionally prompting her to follow it. On the couch, Nameless continues to stare at Shand, something more judgmental this time. Of course. This is why she can't have friends over. Heaving out a loud sigh, she plucks a shrimp off of her plate and flings it towards the dog. Without any heads up or prompting, Nameless seems to just know, jumping off the couch to catch the food in the air before it can land on anything. Per usual, he seems satisfied with himself, trotting away to jump up on her bed instead.

"But, yeah, I taught Lunath some piano, mostly beginner lessons, he picked it up pretty fast. Once he got to intermediate levels of playing, he basically taught himself. I wanted to teach him, but every time I came over for our next session, he would have memorized two songs ahead of schedule. I felt like I was just a waste of your dad's money at that point."

Fengari shrugs her shoulders slightly, looking back at Shand across from her with a fond smile, thinking back on her first year or two here in Portland. It was rough, but she managed to find people that helped her start feeling at home. After a few bites, she can see him watching her still, waiting for some sort of "but" to what she had said about his brother, or even a tag on to start talking about how awful his father is. It makes her shake her head at him as she finishes chewing so she can answer.

"No, your dad is great. He's always been great, at least to me. Like I told you, I moved here from the east coast. Actually. Did I tell you? Anyways, I'm actually from New York. I didn't know a soul when I moved here for a job offer with the local theater. Once I met your father, he kind of took me under his wing and showed me around, all the best places to go, the places to never get a mile near."

She starts laughing as bits of memories start coming back of more specific, interesting situations involving Dolan Fox.

"Did you know my landlord here thinks your dad is legitimately my biological father? It's because my landlord kept trying to really screw me over a few times and Dolan felt the need to get involved. Sometimes, he still has to, but it's not as bad. It's just funny because now whenever I see my landlord, he gets this faint look of dread and asks me how 'that dad of mine' is doing. Makes me laugh almost every time."

“My dad is great.”

He repeats it to himself, and then again one more time, incredulously. A slight smirk slides onto his face as he shakes his head.

“Well. If there’s anything my dad is good at, it’s putting the fear of God into people that he thinks need it.... well, not the fear of God specifically, just more like... an intense generalized fear.”

Shand shoves his full fork back into his mouth to cut off his own ramblings, still shaking his head, but now at how good the scampi is. Truth be told, he can’t really remember the last time he’d had a home cooked meal, even one cooked at someone else’s home.

His dad had never been much of a cook, just knew enough to skate by on the more basic items and really owed a lot of his children’s childhood nourishment to Chef Boyardee. And when he’d gotten older, Shand had never really been able to figure out cooking. It mostly involved reading recipes or guessing, and the guessing had never turned out very well for him. And now that Lunath and Dolan both spend so much time away from the apartment, it’s mostly fend for yourself.

He makes himself slow down so he doesn’t seem so pathetic, like a small child at a workhouse who hasn’t eaten for a week. But his puffed out cheeks do little to help him override that general impression. Once he’s done chewing and he’s satisfied that it would be polite to talk again, he nods toward Fengari.

“So your theatre group. I️ didn’t realize you’d moved all this way for it. How do you like it?”


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"Eh. How to put it..."

Fengari starts to push at the food on her plate some, but not because she's depressed or too upset to eat. No, she's more lost trying to think about how to word all the answers that spring into mind related to his question.

"It's great, I'm doing what I love. I mean, back home I was just a theater attendant, cleaning up after shows. There are a lot of wannabe actors and actresses in New York hoping to make it to Broadway and I was just another number in that hopeful crowd. My parents were about ready to try to figure out a way to marry me off so I wasn't this useless blemish on their record. But. I got a call from a Portland company that liked my audition reel. Moved as fast as I could and have been here ever since."

She can't help but sigh a little, stabbing her fork into a poor unsuspecting shrimp, taking a bite of it rather than just eating the whole thing in one go. It had seemed like a dream job back then and, in some ways, it still is.

In some ways.

"There's always a catch, though. The director, as I told you back in Lance's cafe, is really strict and doesn't really allow for a full performance. There's such little stage direction in everything he gets his hands on. And, on top of that, no matter what I try out for, how I think I do in the tryout, I always, always get some ensemble cast character. I've never been a role with a proper name. I know it's pretty impatient and selfish of me to think I should have had one by now, people have to work their way up the ranks and this is better than cleaning up ticket stubs and playbills, but then why in the world did they hire me? That's why I'm giving everything I've got to landing Elphaba at auditions for Wicked. She's a main character in a massively popular musical. Sure, Wicked is a little overdone now for most people, but imagine what a start that would be for me?"

That thought leads into another unpleasant one, one that makes her lean back in her chair, holding the rest of the skewered shrimp up by her lips, allowing her to slowly nibble on it during pauses. Her eyes slowly, carefully, shift up to Shand's face, watching him, trying to see how to proceed from here. Maybe it's best just to keep things vague for now. She's already rambled enough, probably bored him to death, besides, who's to say her personal life is even all that interesting to start with?

And no one likes to hear ex-boyfriend stories.

"I guess part of the problem is there's someone in the company who isn't the biggest fan of me as a person so I get shafted when it comes to roles. Sucks, but it happens, I suppose."

Forcing a small smile, she sits back up, setting her now empty fork down so she can work at her own piece of bread. At the rate Shand is eating, they'll be done in no time. She'll need thinking of something else for them to do afterwards.