"Wanna try that again? Once more with feeling?"

"Yeah, sure."

Blink.

"Shit like this is why Keith should serve alcohol," Alli grumbles. "Breathe, dude. Do you need to, I dunno, sit or something?"

"Hm?" he asks, rather absently, and then his attention returns to the situation at hand. "No, I'm fine, sorry about that. So. I'm not human. Cool. And you're a witch." He pauses, seems to consider, and asks, "... Wait, did you say anyone can learn to be a witch?"

"...as far as I know? Most of the witches I've read about are human, but humans also wrote the books, so who knows." Her eyes narrow at him. "Are you sure you're not, I dunno, in shock or some shit like that? Seriously, I was freaking out and calling my sister for a solid week."

Granted, it might have gone faster if Jess had picked up the phone sooner, but that's none of his business.

"No, I'm... I'm okay," Theo says, seeming to mean it. "So. Could I try, uh, witchcraft some time then? I mean, I have no idea how to go about it. As is probably obvious. But if it can do lights from your hand, it seems convenient."

"I will never say no to a magic buddy. Never. Just- don't tell anyone, okay? This is the sort of shit that lands you in the shrink's office reassuring them you're not delusional."

"That sounds... like a plan. I would rather not have anyone think I'm mental."

Alli grimaces. "Me neither. Glad we're both on board." Then, suddenly, she grins. "Magic train, get on board, whoo!" She glances back towards the door of the Bronze. "We're running out of excuse time, though. Helen definitely thinks we're making out, and the longer we're out here the more stupid-ass questions I have to deal with tomorrow. Dance now, magic later?"

He laughs. "Yeah, that's probably a good idea. It wouldn't do to get them too suspicious."

If that's all, they can head back in.

It's definitely time to head back in.

Helen sees Theo and Alli come back in, takes in Theo's bemused expression and starts giggling near-uncontrollably. Alli rolls her eyes at her and glowers a bit, which does nothing to stop Helen giggling but does at least make her try to quiet it down.

The rest of the evening is split between pool and dancing. Jim makes a single attempt to bring back darts before being resoundingly shouted down by his earlier victims- so, all of them- and eventually bails on them to play with some of his lacrosse buddies instead. Alli sticks her tongue out at him as he leaves, ignores his laughing "what are you, a toddler?" and goes back to dancing.

Dancing is great. The band figured out early on that tonight is a high energy, angry-about-school-starting sort of crowd and they only bother with a couple slow songs, which is exactly Alli's speed. Coordination isn't really her thing (she's fine, but nothing special; she tries and fails not to be jealous of Theo and his supernatural grace, because cheating) but her outfit is kickass and she doesn't have to do much to know she looks awesome, which is really what she's dancing for anyway.

Eventually Helen has to head home to make curfew, and Alli ducks out with her to bum a ride home. Not having to walk home in her favorite Hooker Shoes is totally worth having to spend the ride beaming innocently at Helen and repeating, "No, really, totally nothing happened." Helen vows to get the story out of her eventually; Alli just laughs. If only she knew.

Sunday she spends trying and failing to brew a glamour potion that will do her makeup (it keeps giving her neon orange eye shadow, which is useless for anyone not secretly yearning to become a traffic cone) but come Monday she's back at school, non-magical makeup and all.

Theo's grace is cheating, but he doesn't seem self-conscious about it. He looks pretty good and seems to enjoy himself, managing to tone down the 'bemused' part of his expression pretty quickly and seeming to enjoy the rest of the night.

If anyone makes a comment suggesting what Alli and Theo got up to, he won't explicitly deny it unless it's extremely suggestive, but he'll also try not to fuel any rumours.

He's back at school on Monday too, as non-magical as he can get with his supernatural grace. If Alli seems like she wants to talk to him before school, he'll go over to talk to her, but otherwise he'll wave and probably wait until a shared lesson to talk to her.

Alli, excited by the idea of a magic buddy, is in fact planning to catch Theo before class, but she oversleeps her alarm and winds up rushing in at the last minute. She settles for waving at him when they get to English.

Oh, that's cool, they can sit together again.

He takes a desk next to her and gets his things out of his bag. "Hey! Did you have a fun Sunday?"

"Enh? Favorite hobby, awesome, failing at it all day, less awesome." She glowers at nothing in particular. "I will make it obey me." She cocks her head at him. "What about you?"

"Oh, right. I didn't do much interesting – it was basically just a bit of homework, some reading, listening to music, and the internet." He smirks. "Some of us don't know much about interesting hobbies, and so we have to resort to mundane methods to entertain ourselves."

Alli lights up. "Join next time, then? I need a hobby buddy so badly you have no idea. My nearest one is Los Angeles."

"Sure!" he agrees excitedly. "That sounds fun."

He tilts his head and asks, "Who do you know in Los Angeles that's a hobby buddy?"

"My sister," Alli says, her face shuttering briefly before the expression disappears. "Come over some afternoon? I'll talk you through the baby stuff. What days are you free? Do you have shit in the afternoons at all?" She smirks slightly as she adds, "Please, please tell me Jim didn't talk you into lacrosse."

He makes a face at her expression, but responds, "Uh, nah, I don't have anything yet, so I should be free... basically whenever. And I think lacrosse is in the spring?"

Someday Alli might rant about her sister to someone she's known less than a week. Yeah, and someday she might declare herself Queen of Saturn.

"Yeah, well, I think we covered how I give no shits about lacrosse. Tomorrow after school? You'll need today to pick up some stuff." She scribbles out a list and hands it over. Her handwriting is bad, but not unintelligible. The list contains nothing hard or expensive, but it's all over the map - from things he could probably find in his kitchen, like thyme and a wooden spoon, to "fist sized mostly round rock" and "twig from live oak tree". She hands it over. "Be excited, Nails. More homework."

Maybe someday Theo will declare himself King of Jupiter, too. Hey, it could happen.

"Woo!" he says, taking the list and glancing over it. "Okay, that's pretty... varied." He puts the list into his bag, makes a note to do it, and then starts paying attention to the teacher because apparently the lesson is starting.

Yay. English.

No yay. No yay for English. It's school. (But Theo knows she's a witch now! So this time he can receive angry note-rants about witch misrepresentation, at least until she gets an exasperated look from the teacher.)

The next day after school, she hangs out on the front steps, skimming through some reading while she waits for Theo.

Yay! Angry notes! This is all very yay!

Theo fetches stuff that evening, having to make a quick trip to the store for some of the spices, and meets her at the steps the next day.

"Hey!" he greets her. "I managed to get everything."

"Gold star. C'mon, this way. I keep my kettle at home, 'cause- duh. I promise I'm not an axe murderer or anything."

Home's not far. (Nothing in Sunnydale's far, not really.) Alli covers the basic safety rules on the way. She considers skipping things she thinks should be obvious, like "do not drink the potion unless I tell you to drink the potion", but then she remembers that he didn't notice he wasn't human, and opts for the full and entire safety briefing. Sure, she cuts some corners sometimes, but she damn well knows the corners are there.