Mark & Sarah, Monday night

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Mark and Sarah go belly dancing. And they don't even kill anyone in the process.


The dance hall wasn't so much of a hall as it was a thirty foot-long room with wooden floors and giant windows making up an entire wall. The clinging and jangling of small bells filled the room, almost drowning out the CD of Arabian music. The instructors, a recently immigrated Lebanese couple, were pacing around the room, muttering to each other in Arabic, their tone apparently none too happy.

"Okay, so it's right foot forward, thrust your right hip five times, then step back and reverse to left," Mark said, more for his own benefit than for anyone else's. He liked to consider himself a talented dancer (he knew the entire routine to Vogue by heart), but this? This was another league altogether. "How come my ass isn't shaking like the prof's? Shake, damn you, shake!"

"Because you -just started-?" Sarah clasped her hands behind her head, getting them out of the way so she could concentrate on running through the series of steps again. "But I could be wrong. Maybe your ass just doesn't shake like that."

"Why you say such hurtful things?" He took a step forward and repeated the move, all the while grimacing. "I look so white trying to do this. What the hell."

Sarah pushed her hip forward, then rocked back and forth to loosen up. "And you don't look white when we go clubbing? I was under the impression we just didn't actually give a fuck."

Mark waved a hand dismissively. "We're fucking hot at the club, don't you dare think otherwise. But look at that." He nodded at one of the other students, a young woman of apparently Latino descent who was slowly getting into the right motion. "That's what I'm gunning for."

Sarah glanced over, hands back to resting on her hips. "Please. What does she have that we don't?"

"Latino heat?" Mark smirked and nudged Sarah playfully with his elbow. "We can be better. We're mutant superpeople. If we can fend off apocalyptic demon wolves, then we can belly dance."

"And if we mess this up, we don't die a painful death. So ultimately, we win." Sarah ran through the steps again, and maybe--just maybe, there was a hint of 'getting it'. She grinned back at Mark. "Come on white boy. Let's show 'em how the Snow Valley brats do it."

The secret, Mark soon realized, was simply one of pacing. Jutting out his hips made him look like he was having an epileptic fit. But slow down a bit and let his body flow, and he looked almost maybe comfortable. Still pretty dopey, but not so white. At the very least, the instructors weren't looking at him with such disdain anymore. "Ha! Take that, Shakira," he declared triumphantly.

"She's got nothing on you." She tried throwing in the next set of steps, and doubled over with a laugh. This might have been a little harder than it looked. "Well, except for maybe a recording contract."

"And a nice rack," he added, "But thanks to modern medical technology, that's not much of a hurdle. Like for 'her.'" He jerked his thumb in the direction of another student.

"We could set up a jar in the office. 'Loose change to buy Mark a rack better than Shakira's'." Sarah shrugged, then continued, "By the end of next week we could have enough to go out and get completely wasted instead."

Mark followed, mimicking Sarah just one step behind her. "You are such a genius. And then I can put on a halter top and no one will care if I dance well or not. We'll be rich, I tells ya."

"And that's all that matters, yeah?" Sarah kicked her right hip forward again, and grinned back at Mark. "But being able to take out somebody's eyes with my hips would be nice too."

Mark raised both hands above his head and slowly lowered one, twisting his wrist in a pantomime of the intricate motions the instructors were demonstrating. "You can totally do that already," he teased.

"But this is different, Mark." Sarah followed along, and dropped her voice to a low dramatic whine. "I want to have style."

"So you wanna be the next Mata Hari? I think of all the women in the office, you have the best chance. Angie doesn't ooze that dangerous sensuality, Amanda would blush too much if you put her in one of those outfits, and Sofia would have suggestions of where to shove things for even broaching the subject with her. That just leaves Betsy, but she has crazy yummy telepath boy to keep her busy."

"I have no idea what you're talking about, so I'll just smile and nod." Successfully adding the last few steps to the routine they were supposed to be learning, Sarah added a little twirl. "And, you know, totally kick your ass."

Well damn. She'd picked up much faster than he had. Mark applauded at Sarah. "You definitely win the hot award for the night. Let's go to that bakery by the brownstone. My treat. It'll go straight to our hips but that could only make us dance better, right?"

Laughing, she grabbed her jacket from the floor by the wall, shrugging it on over sweaty skin. "Loser buys doughnuts. Now that's incentive."