Bellona's heart was raging. A frenzied bundle of tissue and flesh, it pummeled the inside of her chest, demanding it be set free from its confinement lest it break through her sternum on its own accord. Thus, puncturing her skin, the only thing that seemed to hold her together anymore since her emotional brawn had checked out. Leaving her gasping for a breath that would never come.

God. She was about to throw up, wasn't she?

And all because of a stupid boy.

Though, not quite so stupid as the way he made her feel. Sam was profusely intelligent. Bellona could tell that much by the studious flecks that embedded themselves in his irises, by the way he always seemed to be absorbing the input his environment provided. A sponge in an ocean of law students. But the way her throat swelled when their eyes met? The way her heart leapt into her throat, beating against her tongue until it was swollen and all she could do was stutter? The moments in which that happened were not among her brightest.

Stupid. That was the only word for it. Sam Winchester made her stupid.

The very thought of it painted a smile on her lips. She pressed them together, trying and failing to repress the grin that refused to dissolve.

The universe had a way of giving back, it seemed. Though the flowers of her life had shriveled beneath the heat of the devil's sun, though her pores no longer budded with glee and mirth, her footsteps were providing compost to the soil in front of her. To the path she was destined to follow. And it was a soil more rich than she'd seen in a while, one that would nurture the germination of whatever was blossoming between her and Sam. Where the universe had riddled her soul with anxieties and unwelcome diagnoses, it had given her Sam. An appeasement for the death that lingered.

Because compared to her, Sam was life. He was a boy fabricated with strands of sunlight, warming the cold, desolate bodies that wandered into his reach. Warmth. That's who he was.

And he was walking towards her.

His boots mimicked the rivalry between sandpaper and wood as he ambled across the parking lot, the soles scraping against the pavement. He'd inserted his hands in the pockets of his blue jeans, had tilted his head down, and the way he was sheepishly peeking up at her from beneath his eyelids made her chest wreathe. The coy glance of his baby blue eyes - the ones she could've sworn had been tainted with an emerald hue just that morning - had coiled around her insides. Squirming, twisting around her inner chest until it was a spiral around her larynx. Until her breath had been stolen by a six-foot garrote.

The same six feet that was standing beside her now, clothed in flannel and denim and settled beneath the archway of the library's entrance. There was nothing unordinary about the cloth on his back. Nothing extravagantly formal, nothing so exquisite that a stranger would wonder if he was a member of the upper class. Even so, positioned in the shadows of his presence, she couldn't help but feel overwhelmingly underdressed.

And Summer had put so much effort into choosing the pieces of Bellona's outfit for her. Even Summer's handiwork - her careful placing of a particularly scanty dress with a pair of strappy sandals - held no fighting chance compared to Sam's layers of jackets and long-sleeved shirts.

'Bell, trust me,' Summer had assured her during the fitting, her fingers tugging at the ends of Bellona's dress. 'You are going to look like an angel in this dress.'

And, upon seeing the elated look in Sam's eyes, like he was high on ecstasy, she wondered if she did. Just for a moment, she considered the notion that maybe the open back on her dress had been the right choice. That the white satin had complimented the inky waves of her hair, just as Summer promised it would.

"You look..." Sam paused to run a hand through his hair, only finishing his sentence when he sighed, saying, "Wow. I, uh...I'm starting to think I'm a little underdressed."

Laughter flitted from between Bellona's lips like a pair of butterfly wings, an action that was echoed by Sam. "No. No, not at all. You look amazing, really."

Bellona's cheeks flushed. Sam let out an amused huff, peering at Bell from beneath his tilted head, and allowed the remnants of a grin to dance on his lips.

They stood like that for a while. Bellona's cheeks growing redder by the second, Sam's smile broadening, both waiting for the other to make a move. To say something. To do anything that would prove their maturity, that would boast the fact that they weren't in high school anymore. But neither did.

Perhaps it was because, while they were in each other's presence, at least, they were in high school. They were teenagers once more, hoping for sideways glances and longing for their fingers to brush innocently across one another. It was the sort of affinity that was dusted with naivety, vacant of all thoughts of angst and sorrow.

But it was precisely what Bellona needed.

And so, when he held out his arm, bicep and forearm bent in a welcoming curvature, she accepted his invitation. She wrapped her arm around his and let him lead her to his car.

It was a slender thing, with gentle curves on both its front and back bumpers. And, though its figure was tainted with scratches and dents along the cobalt exterior, Bellona dressed the car up in her head. She rounded it even more than it already was, gifted it with gilded rims and brilliant, glistening gems for hubcaps, and assigned it a coach and a pair of horses. In her mind, it was a carriage fit for fairytales, because this was hers.

If only for a night, this would be her fairytale.

"Before I get in," Sam began apprehensively. "You don't want to drive, do you? I mean, I was going to, but I know some people get really freaked if someone else is driving, and I just-"

Bellona giggled. "Unless you want the fender to be absolutely obliterated, then no, I don't think it's a good idea for me to drive."

A blithe laugh leaped from Sam's mouth to intertwine itself in Bellona's. "Okay. I'll drive then."

Sam tugged on the handle of the passenger's door, swung it open, and held it there for Bellona to get in. A bashful smile crept onto Bellona's face as she ducked into the car. Sam shut the door as gently as he could, and Bellona tried to suppress a chuckle as he jogged around the car to reach the drivers' seat in a timely manner. When he slid into his seat and revved the engine, he said, "You mentioned it would be a double date. Is it with your blonde friend?"

Bellona nodded. "She came up with the idea, actually. Planned it and everything. Originally, it was supposed to just be me and Summer and her boyfriend, but I didn't really want to be a third wheel, so..."

"Ah." Sam offered a nod of his own and shifted the gear into drive. "So I'm your last minute escape from being a third wheel?"

"No! No, no, no, that's not at all what I meant! God, I must seem like a total jerk, I-"

Bellona's rambling was interrupted by a fit of laughter emanating from the boy beside her. "It's alright, Bellona, calm down. I was joking."

"Oh."

Bellona's fingers coiled themselves around one another, her gaze lingering on Sam. He was smiling - a faint smile that only grew when he glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. And he had dimples. Even as the last rays of sun scurried to hide beneath the earth, depriving his car's cab of all luminescence, they were visible.

"You can call me Bell," Bellona asserted as Sam pulled out of the parking lot and onto the driveway beyond. He drove like he knew what he was doing, Bellona couldn't help but notice. Like he'd been driving his whole life.

"Bell?" Sam repeated. Parroted. Repeated after her, yearning for confirmation that what he'd said was correct.

"Yep. No one really calls me Bellona, except for my mom." Bellona snuck a glance at Sam to see if his eyes were on the road. They were. So, for a moment, she allowed her glance to linger.

"Well, then, Bell," Sam mused, turning to look at Bellona once he'd arrived at a stop sign. "Do you mind telling me where we're going?"

◈◈◈

It was a relief when they finally stepped out of the car. The silence that seemed to waft through the air vents alongside the air-conditioning had been overwhelming. With nothing to occupy Bellona's ears but Matchbox Twenty's groaning guitar solos on the radio, and Sam's occasional 'Are you sure it's not too cold in here?', the threads of her voice box had quickly woven themselves into a knot.

It felt like she had a music box buried inside her sternum. Most of the time, if she twisted its knobs just right, it played a gentle melody and released ballerinas to twirl on her tongue, performing their dance routine every time she spoke. But with Sam...he must have encapsuled disruptive undertones beneath his honeyed skin, because he broke her music box. Like interfering magnetic pulses, he unfurled his fingers until he could grasp the cords of her throat, twisting and twisting, destroying until the cords were perverted beyond recognition. Until Bellona could no longer coax her music box into bestowing her with speech.

"Are we in the right place?" Sam uttered from Bellona's side, his hand outstretched.

The fingers on Bellona's hands feathered onto Sam's palm, and her cheeks flushed at the contact. His fingers curled around hers, dwarfing her hand, and he offered a demure smile as he helped her slip out of her seat. The kind of smile that liked to tease. That tugged on the ends of your own lips, in hopes that your congeniality might encroach upon the barriers of his, unraveling its strings until it had no choice but to boast its full, unrestrained smile for all to relish in.

Their contact broke. Sam's hand fell away once Bellona had a steady grip on her balance, and her eyes drifted to the building before them.

It was irreverence manifested, laid out right before her eyes.

Bellona could easily imagine that, somewhere between the peeling paint of the exterior walls and the decades-old brick that lied beneath, the building was the birthplace of scandals. It was a cesspit for the elite and dregs alike, but for a price. This was the place where men traded their souls for comfort. Where women traded their innocence for paper wealth. This was where people went to dance in their iniquities, traipsing through the blindness of night and hindering their childhood all the while.

And it was where Bellona was going to have her first date with the boy of her dreams.

"I..."

Bellona's lips were too numb with disbelief, throat too dry with speechlessness to form a sentence. Sam must have realized this, because he simply shrugged and said, "We can go inside and hang out for a little, see if they're in there. If they're not, we can leave and go somewhere else. Or stay, if that's your kind of thing."

Bellona shook her head fervently. It most definitely was not her kind of thing. Not that it was an awful place to be - for some, it was a source of the income they needed, and she would not deprive them of that - but she'd simply never imagined herself in a nightclub. Especially not the kind with flashing neon lights and deafening music seeping from beneath the doorways.

Night was beginning to fall. Clouds were being replaced with twinkling lights, what were deemed the "normal" citizens of society were being replaced with creatures of the night.

So Bellona took a step forward. Two steps. Three, and then Sam was following, and she found the courage to walk all the way to the line at the front door.

There was a newly painted sign by the entrance that read 'no cover charge'. Bellona frowned, her slanted eyebrows curving in to meet one another.

"It means there's no entrance fee," Sam explained, leaning in to whisper in Bellona's ear as his breathy huffs shifted the unruly strands of her hair. She'd tried to maintain it for once. Summer had even offered to pull the top half into a braid, and Bellona had concurred. Nevertheless, not three hours later, bits of her hair were beginning to spring out of their caging and curl in a halo around her face.

The line shifted, and Bellona moved forward to fill in the gap between her and the person in front of her. With one hand resting on her pearl-white handbag, she asked, "Don't I have to show ID?"

A coy smile began to peer around the edges of Sam's face. "Yeah, when you get to the door. There's a man in a suit up there, you show it to him."

"Ah."

"Have you never been to a nightclub before?" Sam prodded, only it sounded more like a tease than a genuine question. Like he was entertained by her blatant naivety. Whether he was pleased or disturbed by it, Bellona had yet to ascertain.

Her hair tickled the bare skin on her back when she shook her head. "Never. And you have?"

"Well," he began, running a hand up and down his arm, sporting a sheepish laugh. "My brother is really into these kinds of places, and I usually get dragged into going with him."

A wave of understanding settled over Bellona, filtering through her scalp and drifting through the recesses of her mind. She'd wondered why Sam had seemed so accustomed to this place. Why he, the boy she'd admired for being so studious and timid, fit easily into the mold of the people that dwelled there. And, judging by the words he just uttered, it was because he'd often attended similar clubs and bars in the past. Granted, it had been against his own inclination, but still - that piece of information gifted Bell with a glimpse into the side of Sam that he didn't wear plainly, a darker side, maybe.

Definitely a darker side, judging by the swirling aura of sorrow that coated his eyes. It had been lightly sprinkled there, blowing away with the wind as the seconds passed by, but its growing absence could not wipe away the fact that Bellona had seen it. The desolation, the regret maybe, that gently flitted across the surface at the mention of his siblings, but likely pressed needles into his chest beneath.

The line continued to move forward, until the pair were standing before the bouncer at the door. The glass array that had been embedded in the door was tinted, so Bellona could scarcely see through the purple haze, but even as she handed her ID to the man in black, she regretted its departure from her palm. She was about to enter the home of one of her worst nightmares: social interaction.

The bouncer voiced a shallow grunt, passed the plastic licenses back to Sam and Bell, and pulled open the pair of glass-hewn doors to permit their entrance.

Bellona instantly regretted walking through those doors. Once she did, she was immediately submerged in a kaleidoscope of bright colors. It was like she was stumbling through a maze straight from Alice in Wonderland - mobs of people in multicolor hair and costumes were movin on top of each other in the center of the room, *loud* pulses shook her eardrums, specks of translucent gold and vibrant neon blinded her, and unspeakable occurrences painted the corners of her peripheral. Sam's steady hand on the small of her back was her only anchor in the strange world.

And, of course, the sight of familiar blonde hair poking through the mesh of *unfamiliar* mass.

There Summer was, blond braids afloat, dancing alongside people she hardly knew to a song she'd never heard. She was in the middle of the dance floor. A pair of speakers stood a few feet away from her, lights of every color swirling from the spotlights planted on the ceiling above.

"There's Summer!" Bellona had to shout to be heard above the electronic beats of music. Sam frowned, leaned in closer to Bellona's mouth, and she shouted again, this time pointing at her friend.

Sam nodded his understanding. "Do you want me to go get her?"

Bellona peered at the mass of strangers she'd surrounded herself with. At the constant rubbing against one another, at the sloshes of alcohol as they freely jumped across the floor. She did not want to go in there. But she also didn't want to wait alone while Sam did.

"Come with me!" Bellona yelled.

Sam wrapped his arm around Bellona's shoulders, and though she knew it was to protect her rather than romantically embrace her, she couldn't help but notice the sudden heat in her face. Luckily, by the time they reached Summer and her boyfriend, it had faded to a dull rose.

Summer was wrapped in a tight, wine-colored dress. It was made of two pieces and exposed her bare midriff. It was apparent that her boyfriend, Derrick, had tried to dress up for the occasion. He wore a button-up shirt and tie, but somewhere along the events of the night, the shirt had come untucked from his pants and his tie had spun around to dangle across the back of his torso.

Summer spun around, heels twirling against the tile beneath her, and fell against Sam when her feet entangled themselves in one another's grip.

"Sam!" she exclaimed, her eyes much wider and lively than they typically were. She pushed against his chest to regain her flighty balance, fingers lingering on the collar of his grey denim jacket. "You...are crazy good-looking."

The blonde's words had come out in a slur, and Bellona grimaced. "Summer! How are you drunk already?"

Sam chuckled, carefully pulling her hands away from his shirt. "It's okay," he assured before turning his attention to Summer. "And thank you."

"Summer, we need to get you home," Bellona sighed.

She'd moved closer to her friend, plucking the shot glass out of her hands. It was moist - residue on the outer surface soiled her fingertips, instantly tainting the lines in her skin with the odious perfume all alcohol bore. She placed her empty hand inside Summer's and wrapped her fingers around it, insistently tugging her towards the exit.

"What?" Summer whined, her lips downturned in a childlike pout. "But you just got here."

"I know."

"Aren't you going to stay? You've been drooling over Sam for months, and when you finally get the nerve to ask him out, you bail?"

Bellona froze. Her feet skidded to a stop, and the rubber soles of her sandals screeched against the tile floor. The half-empty drink in her hand sloshed out of the glass and onto her knuckles. Mortification decorated her stark white skin white streaks of crimson, and she tucked her head, too appalled to even peek at Sam to see if he'd overheard Summer. Instead, she simply shouted above the crowd and hoped he heard you, saying, "Sam, can you get Derrick? I'll meet you outside."

She didn't blame Summer for what she said while intoxicated. But it didn't stop her blood from churning beneath her integument, rushing through her heart and pumping through it until it was a roaring lion. A statesman of old history lessons, more like. One that was desperate to yank on the strings of her sentiment until her first instinct was to scowl at her friend rather than embrace her. Or, to embrace her, but with a knife glinting in the moonlight behind her back.

After all, the moonlight was the only thing that held her hidden statesman at bay. The brisk air that the moon held on a leash, the flurries of breeze that cowered in the moon's crater until the sun had gone and it was safe to come out and play.

So it was easier than she'd thought it would be to get Summer and Derrick into the backseat of Sam's car. Derrick had been the one to drive the duo to the nightclub, and he was just as intoxicated as Summer, so Sam and Bellona had both insisted that he be driven home and return for the car later.

Nonetheless, Bellona's frigid humiliation returned when, halfway to the school's dorms, Summer piped up and said, "Hey, uh, Winchester? Why haven't you given Bell your number yet? You do like her, don't you?"

Bellona had to refrain from cursing. She'd thought Summer was asleep. At least, even in her drunken state, her true intentions were to look out for her friend's desires. She hoped.

But Sam only laughed. Graciously laughed. Graciously because, if he'd reacted any other way, Bellona was afraid she would've fainted.

The shaggy-haired boy bit his lip and focused on the rearview mirror nearest him. A flustered cough escaped his lips and, teeth gritted, he glanced at Bellona and smiled. It was a fleeting smile. Suppressed on both ends, here and then gone - swept away by the wind that was riddled with thoughts of rejection and awkwardness.

"I, uh..." Sam shook his head and turned once more to the road ahead of him, squinting for a moment, and then forcing a cough once more. "I do like her."

"Well, then, give her your number already," Summer slurred. If Bellona hadn't been so tense, she would have laughed at Summer's state - slumped shoulders, smudged lipstick, and feet waving in the air as she slid further into the seat - and taken a picture. Unfortunately, she was tense.

Sam peeked at Bellona out of the corner of his eye. When he spoke, his voice was soft, reminiscing of waves against the beach. Reaching and receding, prodding but not truly delving, too afraid to step too far and face reprimand. "Do you want it?"

Bellona wanted to say something cute. Something exceptionally appealing, something witty like Summer would say. But Sam's waves had reached too far, had shot like a jet down her throat and nose, and all she could say was, "Yes."