"Thank you. You look nice, too."

"I'm supposed to give you this, I think it's a bracelet?"

"Yeah, goes on my left wrist. I think." She will accept a matchy flower thingy.

Cool then he is pretty sure he has done the things he's supposed to do and not messed them up!

And they can go to this dance.

They can! She can drive them. 

The dance is in the school gym. They have moderately fancy lighting and music that's loud enough to make it hard to talk unless you go to the other side of the room by the snack table. Also there is dancing, although there are not very many people dancing just yet.

Maybe when he is a grownup and can kidnap people he will tell them 'my court is having a dance, and you are invited!' and by then his father will have cracked fast electronics and he can be playing Baby by Justin Beiber and it will be delightfully incongruous.

In the meantime he will...attempt to dance, he guesses.

Honestly she had kind of forgotten that music was a thing and is now slightly worried that they're both going to double over in pain whenever Justin Beiber tells a lie, which seems like probably a lot of doubling over in pain.

Dancing is sure a thing one can do at dances. One can also be a coward and hang out by the snack table until there are more people dancing and you won't stand out as much. She thinks she is maybe going to do that second thing for a bit. 

Well he can't dance alone. Also it's not very advisable to listen to more than one song by the same artist so he might have to dart out in a bit.

That's fine, lots of people seem to be doing the snack table thing so it's probably not messing up at going to a dance.

The snacks are okay. After a couple more songs there are some more people dancing and she is willing to maybe possibly attempt this. Might as well. Kind of a major part of the experience, in theory.

He kind of wishes he had any idea what Karen wanted to get out of this but yeah okay they can dance? Until another Beiber song comes on.

Karen, too, wishes she had any idea what she wanted to get out of this. Probably just, like, it'd be kind of sad to go to high school and never have had the experience of going to a school dance, right? So she should be trying to have this experience. Whatever that experience consists of. Probably.

If another song by the same artist comes on he can maybe hang out in the hallway or something for a bit and she can get him when it's over. This is a little weird but is honestly not very inconvenient as fairy accommodations go.

Sounds like a plan.

The majority of the songs are fast, but some of them are slow. When there is a slow dance you are supposed to find someone to dance with and put your arms around them and just kind of hold them and sway.

They could probably hypothetically do this or something.

"Karen?"

"Yeah?"

"What do you want?"

"I can't have this conversation when there's music."

Then maybe they can go somewhere where there's not music. The hallway where he's been hiding from Beiber.

Yeah, fine, valid, they can head into the hallway.

She is not actually going to start this conversation up again herself.

"I don't know what you want. You seem - scared and - it's confusing and I want to give you whatever it is you want here but I don't have the slightest idea what that is."

"I don't know? I like - if you're a high school student then you're supposed to go to dances, and it's supposed to be a good experience, or something, and it's, like, okay if they're a little bit scary because part of the point of them is giving you social license to do things that some people want to do but are too scared to try most of the time, like wear fancy dresses and dance with people, and - 

"I guess I want to find out whatever it is that people go to dances for? But I don't really know what it is."

" - okay."

He can hold her. And sway, in case the swaying is the important part. 

"I think that maybe this thing is actually just about touching other people."

"That... seems possible."

Which makes the question whether she is actually happy about touching Connor. She is definitely something about touching Connor. She is not sure whether the something is "happy". It does not appear to have a lot in common with most experiences of happiness. It's like, terrifying, maybe? The thing where her heart is going really fast seems like a terror thing and the thing where she's blushing really hard seems like an embarrassment thing, except that people also describe these reactions sometimes when they're doing things they like, especially things that have to do with touching other people, so maybe this is actually a good feeling that is just easy to confuse with being terrified and embarrassed? This seems like kind of a weird way for emotions to be set up. Maybe this is actually just bad. Except if it were just bad then the correct course of action would be to stop touching Connor and never do this again and when she thinks about that she kind of wants to savor being held in case she is never allowed to do it ever again.

This...seems to pay down debt, although veeery slowly, so he figures he's not doing it wrong probably. 

Karen is very confusing.

Holding her is nice.

Karen is also confused by Karen. 

Being held is... a lot of things, some of which she recognizes and some of which she doesn't, but possibly one of the things is nice. It would be more clearly nice if her brain would stop screaming, but she thinks there's some nice here somewhere, probably.

She is kind of disappointed when the song ends. She is also blushing really, really hard.