Maybe Neal is tired enough to be more susceptible. Maybe he's too wrung out to be as careful as he should be, particularly given... everything. Maybe he's drawn to the music, the vague sense of release it seems to carry.
Regardless of how it happens, he's close enough when Jeff starts to sing that some part of him is hooked and reeled in like an idiot fish. He even recognizes Jeff, under his ridiculous Rocky Horror witch get-up, and has a moment to connect the music to the growing euphoria swamping his thoughts before the spell embeds itself under his skin, mental alarms switching off as he lets himself go. And it's a relief, it's such a relief to feel purely, ecstatically good.
It's the kind of rush he's only ever associated with a risky score, something big going so close to wrong that the adrenaline negates the knowledge that a bullet or a long drop could be the final act. It's like that, but somehow more. He grabs the nearest person, a man close to his own age with a wedding ring, and kisses him fiercely, one hand tangling in the man's hair, the other going around his waist. He's barely coherent, the physical looping back to feed the emotional, brain fogging in a very different way than the sleep that's plagued the town for a month or more. The stranger kisses him back, and it just makes Neal feel more desperate, drawn into the growing crowd until he bumps right up against Jeff without realizing it. He's entirely lost, his own shirt half-unbuttoned, tangled up in kisses with a man whose face he hasn't seen enough of to recognize.
III. WHEN HE NOTHING SHINES - C - u tired of me yet (Cw for altered states/BACCHANALIA)
Regardless of how it happens, he's close enough when Jeff starts to sing that some part of him is hooked and reeled in like an idiot fish. He even recognizes Jeff, under his ridiculous Rocky Horror witch get-up, and has a moment to connect the music to the growing euphoria swamping his thoughts before the spell embeds itself under his skin, mental alarms switching off as he lets himself go. And it's a relief, it's such a relief to feel purely, ecstatically good.
It's the kind of rush he's only ever associated with a risky score, something big going so close to wrong that the adrenaline negates the knowledge that a bullet or a long drop could be the final act. It's like that, but somehow more. He grabs the nearest person, a man close to his own age with a wedding ring, and kisses him fiercely, one hand tangling in the man's hair, the other going around his waist. He's barely coherent, the physical looping back to feed the emotional, brain fogging in a very different way than the sleep that's plagued the town for a month or more. The stranger kisses him back, and it just makes Neal feel more desperate, drawn into the growing crowd until he bumps right up against Jeff without realizing it. He's entirely lost, his own shirt half-unbuttoned, tangled up in kisses with a man whose face he hasn't seen enough of to recognize.