“Everybody has all kinds of erythang to say until they’re in your shoes trying to do what you do-”she sung out as she hopped along happily.

“What,” he huffed, “On God’s Once green earth,” he wheezed, “are you even talking about?”

“Breathe! Breathe, baby! Told you your heart wasn’t ready for these climes~” she trilled.

“I’m Going to” he hissed,”kill you-”

She bopped around him like a five year old on back to back birthday cakes in the same day.

“Not if this doesn’t kill you first~” she sang. “Come on! Put your back in to it! Swing it! Swing it ~ Schlong~ Sckong~” 

Bewildered from the base of his spine up, he watched her knees swing out from her in the opposite direction of her hands as he did his disgruntled best to keep up with the one he’d had the audacity to call lazy for falling behind doing pushups on his day. He’d expected all kinds of things a lot closer to cop-out than this sweltering terror-dome he now found himself being rhythmically punished in the the midst of. 

“Dance! Dance! Dance, dance~” she sang along with the song like she was moving at a snail’s pace instead of the mach ten she was slicing through the air around him at. He hinged over at the hips, wiggling his shoulders sadly as his only mustered offer of continued motion as he caught his breath.

“Those hands hit those knees and I fucking win it all~” she purred along the side of his face as she began to erotically slide in and out of the butterfly beside him.

His forehead darkened as he shimmied his shoulders defiantly” You’re NOT fucking winning~” he growled, slowly easing his spine up from half mast to full as she two-stepped around him, double-finger banging up into the clouds.

“Doo-doo~dododo~!” she sang out in time with the remix,rat-ah-tat-tatting as she went.

He tried to slow her down with surly looks, to no avail.

She’d already won and she knew it.

He had succumbed to the dance. And they both knew he was too stubborn to stop.

Fifteen minutes later, he cried out.”Fuck! How are you not-”

“Baby, this is pattern recognition, hewn into the sinews in the heat of battle,” she giggled.

The song let me think about it by fedde le Grand cut in and out of you better think by Lyn Collins as she broke into what he could only describe as syncopated rib isolations from the fiery pits of hell.

He grimaced, sore on the brink of defeat, his left leg the only limb still fully in it, doing its best to twitch out a subpar, all but defeated stinky leg.”How…the fuck… am I so winded?” he muttered aloud, angry.”You couldn’t even do all the sit-ups and you’re like a fuckin’ spinning top! How the fuck?! I move all the time! what the ever loving-“

She stopped in time to the pregnant pause Lyn Collins came to in the song and snake-sauntered over until she had invaded every inch of his personal space.

“Because…you’re thinking with the wrong,” she purred as she leaned in and tapped his forehead with her own, “head” she giggled as she casually allowed the top of her thigh to graze his forbidden zone.

“Don’t fight against me. You caint win. Just…dance~It’s not a competition- “

He blinked, shocked as what she was truly intimating dawned on him.

She was shaking her ass effortlessly because she knew it was the closest to snogging the daylights out of him as she could technically get without a whole bunch of fucking nonsense she had no bandwidth for at the moment.

She turned and two-stepped away shaking her ass as arousal washed over him and shoved his wizened competitive streak that had been riding him like a hopped-up monkey from behind the wheel. 

The horns at the top of Rumpshaker filled the place. “You-you-” he stammered, stupefied as his eyes danced from her shoulders to her throbbing glutes, then back up to her eyes as she turned around in time to the music. “you wanna~’

She stuck out her tongue and undulated it at him before her shoulders and hips dissolved to the beat.”Why the fuck did yall used to have to learn how to dance in the first place back in the day?” she laughed.

His second wind hit like a mack truck.

He took charge of the situation and stepped all the way into her personal space like he remembered what they used to go out and dance for when getting there was a literal fucking gauntlet.

All the competitive tension in him dissipated as his ojas reared up and flooded into every crease of him. She skipped out of dodge and danced her arm across his shoulder line seductively . He grabbed it, spun her around and pulled her up again him and then , grinning, body-rocked her down against his core.

‘There Heee is~,” she grinned against his neck and then deftly slid out of dodge like the spirit of Bugs Bunny had fallen upon her.

“Get back here~ where you think you goin?” he growled as his fingers looped around her wrist at the last minute and allowed her hand to slide through to the tips of her fingers all the same before clamping around them like a vice.

“Get over here~” he yelled and yanked her back in and against him, basking in the ridiculous blush-grin that had splayed across her face at him delving into her own docket of ridiculousness to overtake her.

“Ya…ya can’t Mortal Kombat me on tha dancefloor~” she chuckled softly against the side of his face.

“Is it cheating in this sick, sadistic game of yours? Because I don’t remember that at all in yer weird assed engagement rules-” he laughed.

“You want me to tell you if you’re winning or not?” she asked him bashfully.

“Nah…” he muttered as he wiped the sweat from his brow. “Either way, I-”

‘Shake it like a white girl’ blasted through the sound system and she cracked up before willfully going spastic all over him in time to the beat as he found his rootdown to the bass line of it and deep dove down to the center of her madness.

---

One of the newbies  motioned towards the door shaking in its doorjamb  and muttered at the dude assigned to big brother him through it all so he wouldn’t get in the way. “What… the fuck… is going ON in there?”

Didi grinned like the crazy man he technically was and was allowed to be in these parts. “Ahh… it’s time to make tha doughnuts~” he laughed.

“…the fuq?”

“His Kindacrazy is back in town. She’s…” he searched for the words, “that box of Randys that was there the other morning? That was due to her.” 

“She brings doughnuts into-” Newbie muttered.

“She doesn’t even eat tha doughnuts when she comes through, tho I doubt she’d ever refrain from a doughnut she desired. Or anything else. She’s kinda too low-key hedonistic for that.” Crazy man murmured. “Writer.”

“Ah~ so she-” Newbie wriggled his eyebrows at Didi suggestively.

“HER? Oh no, she would never!” crazy man laughed. “But…remember the other day when he was… like…smiling…in that creepy way that had his admins  and everyone else all … umm-?”

“Spooked? Yeah?”

“ She’d growled at him through something or other that she’d missed him and was heading back home-”

“Where’s home for her?” the newbie asked.

“Far as anybody can really figure out? Him.” crazy man murmured. 

“& Yeah, she’s fn crazy, but…I’ve known him longer than damned near anybody else in my life these days. Never seen any one or thing make him laugh like her that didn’t involve somebody else badly breaking a bone or somethin-”

“Yeesh. Dark!’ the newbie whistled.

“Yeah… but the shit she writes is even more twisted than he is, and she looks at his twisted ass like he’s damned near lil baby jesus, like a lil dark, demonic, oohahh Damien…cherub, so… we’re all just happy his crazy ass is happy. Believe me, he’s brought around worse-”

“Aww!” the newbie chuckled. “Because of love?”

Crazy man snorted. “Fuck love! Have you ever HAD an fn Randy’s doughnut, man? They’re so good they’re despotic-”

“She …makes him… remember that even elite athletes need a thank you doughnut every once in a while  for showing up for his madness, too. From him.” crazy man chuckled. “…and, from the sound of it, a clutch of doughnuts will be out there with tha coffee again in tha morning,” he grinned as he popped on his beat up newsboy cap. A peal of borderline insane laughter shot up over the throb of the music in the secondary practice room as the two dojo dudes wandered out of the complex  into the dark. A few paces into it the streetlights buzzed on outside.

---

He was so far gone he hadn’t even noticed her stop mid-arc.

“Ya like mah playlist~”she yelled, blush-grinning proudly. He spun around, saw her hanging motionless halfway up in the air and grinned triumphantly.

“That means I win-” he roared.

“No it does Not,” she fussed.

“You aren’t moving!” he fussed back.

“Do you have any idea how high I gotta be oscillating TO be suspended in the fn air like this with other folks around?” she yelped. “THIS is dancing for real!”

“Yeah, I do have some fn idea of-” he effortlessly sprung up in the air beside her…and stayed there. Her eyes bugged out.

“Sonafabitch! I KNEW IT!!” she screamed and swung on him. He spun around her, placing his hand over her mouth and pulled her into a hug until she calmed down for them both to float back to the springy floors. Her eyes flashed as a second “I fn KNEW it~!” got muffled against his calloused hand.

“shhhh~ SH~” he chuckled against her ear.

“You let me go, I’m gonna fn Kill you~” got garbled against his palm.

“Tough talk on the heels of finding out in real time ya can’t, for one~” he grinned darkly and nuzzled into her hair. “Ah! Sonafa-!!!” she bit down into his hand defiantly.” AND Secondly-” he growled “ I caint Buhlieve ya fuckin BIT me!, but… Deal~” he whispered bashfully.

“Deal? What deal, What fn-” She fussed as he spooled her out then pulled her back in against him like a human yoyo. “Let go-you-”

“Nope! Ya just said ya’d kill me if I-” he laughed. All the brimstone evaporated out of her eyes when what he meant registered and she licked the side of his face like a giant, territorial wolf-

---

James woke with a start to his patient dog licking him the face in the twilight.

“Aww! For fuck’s sake!Chew!- Aw maan!” 

Lightly offended, the dog’s tail knocked the alarm clock that had been blaring for five minutes sans any response from his human to the edge of the bedside table.

His cat hopped up on the nightstand, looked him in the eye, and-

‘Don’t! I’m up! I’m fn up! Sorry yall-fuck~!” he laughed. The cat smiled, knocked it off the table anyway and sauntered off, meowing. For having had to get involved. 

“Ok, I kinda deserved that-” he chuckled, gathered himself together and stretched as if every inch of his body was stiffer than he’d ever allow any of it to truly get.

The cat meowed impatiently from the bottom of the stairs. 

“Coming! Coming, sheesh!” he fussed.

By the time he’d doled out the cat food the particulars of the lucid dream were already fragmenting, but they were sticky. By the time he’d walked the dogs, showered, tossed on his gear and stomped out his house into the truck they were all but gone.

---

The radio went on and his thoughts ambled wherever it went as he ran the errands he could on the way to work.

He cut across the avenue that took him out above where all the traffic in the area knotted up for two hours straight no matter what, feening for the hook and crook into the straight-shot that he’d let make or break the first part of his day for what felt like forever. 

He pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration as everything ground to a halt due to a fender bender seeming two lights up, rolled his eyes and looked out the window. A giant donut was bolted to the front of the building right after the turn he could take to wait it all out. Randy’s.

The lucid dream dropped back down onto him with a thud. He looked up at the sky and laughed, cut across traffic and pulled into the lot.

---

By the time he got to work both the gates were open and wide-eyed young ginger and the burly yet manicured elder ginger were both in house, eyeing him oddly.”What?” he muttered.

“Hey! What are those?!” Wide eyed Red crowed. “Doughnuts? YOU? You brought-” he looked back at Burly Surly Red as the man’s too perfectly arched eyebrows to not be on purpose bounced up into the shadows cast by his hat. 

“Oh, for fucks sake!” Burly-surly groaned, throwing his hands up in the air as he walked off.

Wide-eyed Red was still tender enough in the heart to respond to the surprise of donuts like the kid keyed to the xanadu the man had built out for others to knock the stuffing out of each other in that he was. He happily grabbed the flats of doughnuts and began arranging them next to the coffee before he yelled “Yo! He brought freakin DOUGHNUTS!!!” into the maze behind him.

The stampede to the front zone was instant and chaotic as the man ducked into his office and eased into his bouncy chair in front of his burner laptop.

“Hey!” he called out. BS dutifully popped his head into the office, saw which seat he’d taken first and groaned. 

“You have sooo much other shit on-”he began to fuss.

“Yeah… I know, but~”he grinned sheepishly.

BS groaned again like he hated what everyone involved knew he loved to do and made his way over to the console. “You have so much- this is really early for-”

“Key it in, man!” 

“Fine!”BS yelled and tapped the first letter of the latest password the man’d had BS change to ween him off of it to let the man take his toke.

“Is there… a maple bacon bar in either of those boxes-”

“Nope,” he said. “There’s three~” he grinned.

“Don’t you fuckin animals scarf down my fn Maple bacon bars or I’m going in After’em!” he yelled over his shoulder, quickly typed in the rest of the password and ran out the room.

“Fnridiculous!?” he laughed out loud.

“With a + sign, not an exclamation mark-” he barked happily around the maple bacon bar rammed in his mouth. He pointed the second one in his freckled fist at the other monitor. “There’s a litany of mess waiting for you on that one…For the record-” he fussed.

“ yer sons are getting your ass …to Get yer sons doughnuts because of me again in my lucids.” the first short missive read.

“I’ll be home in three fn days-” read the next one.

He grinned to himself like a twisted lil baby jesus.

Burly-Surly felt his joy from the other room and groaned like a struck bear to melodramatically showcase his purely performative displeasure to all within earshot in the dojo. 

He forgot his drama queen queefing just as fast due to the remaining maple bacon bar seductively calling out to him to touch just the tip of it from the far side of his desk. He gruffly wrapped his fist around it, rammed it happily into his mouth and hunkered down into all on the docket of his day.

© AngelBrynner 2025.