[BALLROOM] A donation and the dance, said the bouncer. That was the ticket inside, where there was most certainly an open bar, which is really the thing Boothill is after. The problem is though: a wandering cowboy doesn't have much need for money, and so this one's come to the Empyrean with hardly a credit to his name. But what he does have is wit and audacity.
Beyond the guests waiting in line for entry comes the first few opening notes of a lively jig, and in go two couples hand-in-hand. Everyone stops what they're doing to watch, because they've hardly made it past the velvet robes before they've begun to spin and twirl, so Boothill sees this to be as good an opportunity as any.
All of a sudden, he turns and grabs the wrist of the young woman standing behind him - she's well-dressed, far too elegant and pompous for him, but that doesn't matter to him now - and shoulders his way past the bouncer with a sharky grin.
"Keep the change!" he calls, and flicks something golden through the air to land in the bucket by the man's foot. What had been everything from passive amusement to entranced awe over the first two couples now turns to unanimous shock on every face at the front of the line.
"C'mon, missy, pick up those feet!" Twirling her around to face him, he tap dances his way backwards to get as far away from the awestruck doorman as he can. He flashes his unwitting partner a smile that's less devious than the first, his eyes subtly pleading "trust me" as he takes her through a series of energetic twirls and twists, dips and swings, until even the guests in the ballroom that had been gaping at them a second ago trickle in to join the fun.
"It ain't a dance if ya can't feel it in yer bones first! I'll make this whole thing up to ya when the number's done," he reels her back in and gives a wink, "so just humor me a while longer, will ya?"
WHO COMES TO A BALL DRESSED LIKE THAT? ✧ is what she spends a good deal of her time in line wondering. besides the inconvenience of having to wait in line at all. if this were fontaine——or indeed, anywhere in teyvat, she would presume——she'd have no trouble walking right in ; the doormen would've recognized her long ago, distinctive as she was, and would have hurried to clear her entry with no delays.
she supposes this is what it is, to be free. where no one knows you, and no one cares.
"ha—??" she's not permitted to stay in that line of thought for long, something hard gripping her arm and pulling enough that she has no choice but to stumble after or else be dragged along the floor. "wh——help!!" her other arm flails backwards, but those standing behind are stunned in shock, and then a curtain of other spinning dancers closes on the doorway, blocking her from view. a few of the dancing heads turn, startled and alarmed, but she's quickly——shockingly quickly, she would later reflect——pulled upright into a rapid cadence of twirls equally insistent as the strange man's hand had been, when she finally realized that hard thing had been his hand towing her at all. in her panic, the looks he throws her seems more deranged than pleading.
"wait, i——what are you——this is too fast!" but she does her best to keep up because, again, the pace threatens to flatten her if she doesn't, and there's few things more horrifying than the idea of her, the furina, splayed on a ballroom dance floor like a clumsy newborn fawn with no idea of how to place her feet. perhaps even more horrifying than whatever was happening.
it doesn't help that the man dances like nothing she's experienced, if this was dancing at all. less artful and more whirlwind ; she feels as though she's been thrust into a cancan line, the likes of which had never been her forte to begin with. "make wh. . . what up to me, exactly?" snatches of breath form words when she can manage it, flushed and wide-eyed when he pulls her back in milliseconds from losing her balance. "what are you trying to do?" and why did it have to be her?
"hey, you there." a well-meaning gentleman has come up to pull at the stranger's arm with a stern look. "miss, is he bothering you?"
whatever she's about to say in response is silenced by what boothill does next.
