I almost run the final few yards to the studio. Ed and Cameron are already warming up; we’ve got more fight rehearsals to get through and I’m down for it. Right now I could use a sword in my hand.
My hamstring has quit bitching – for now – but it will probably start up again later: a couple of times Levonian calls me out for over-extension. It hurts, but I’m into it. Sometimes I think ballet is the perfect art form for masochists. You hear of painters and writers going off the rails and drinking themselves to death or going full on Naked Lunch with every form of pharmaceutical known to man, but not so much with us dancers. We just punish our demons with physical pain and eating disorders, and it’s never been more obvious to me why. Here at the barre I’m a series of muscles, tendons and bones, an anatomy drawing being bent into curious poses that a human being was never meant to strike. I’m a moving sculpture, a living work of art, and that’s just fine. Sculptures aren’t obliged to feel a thing.
“You okay?” says Ed, as we prepare to get into it once again.
“Me? Yeah – why wouldn’t I be?”
“I don’t know. You look a little weird. Distant.”
“I’m fine,” I say, thinking on my feet. “Just…getting into the headspace. I’m about to die, remember.”
“Sure,” he says, picking up his sword. “But you don’t know that.”
Right. Tybalt has no idea he’s doomed when he goes into this fight. He has no idea he’s just a cog in the machine of this drama; all he wants to do is get out there and kick some more Montague ass.
La Levonian sees all. She doesn’t miss the slump in my shoulders as we take our starting positions. “Tybalt,” she says. “You’re the Prince of Cats, the most feared swordsman in Verona. You’ve just taken a life and you have the taste of blood still in your mouth. Look like a tiger, not a cowed tabby.”
I straighten up and catch Ed’s eyes across the room. He’s standing with Mercutio’s sword at his feet, and he’s already deep in the role. Romeo is a lover, not a fighter, but those are often the most dangerous types, when they’re roused to fight, as I’m about to find out.
He comes at me so hard and fast that I have no difficulty conveying Tybalt’s barely veiled surprise at his power and aggression. Then I get my head in the game and come back, because at this point I realize there’s a very good chance I’m about to fucking die. One, two, three, four. Smack, smack, smack – I’m on the defensive now and Ed is no longer in the room with me; there’s only Romeo, and he wants me dead.
I’m not going out like this. I’ve had enough of those sinking feelings to last me for today, and a lifetime, now that you come to mention. I couldn’t save me and Tom, but I’m fighting for my life here, and I’m going to give it until my last snarling breath.
“Good. Better – much better. Show me your teeth, tiger.”
I only vaguely register Levonian’s voice over the pounding of the piano and the crack of the blades. I’m on the defensive once more and this is it, this is where I die. I’m on the spot where it happens and Romeo comes roaring towards me. The blade goes just past my hip and I buckle so fast that a hurt, helpless sound explodes from my mouth, squeezed out from the sudden contraction of my abs. He draws back his sword and staggers back, stunned at what he’s just done, but not nearly as stunned as me. I’m run through, skewered, a human fucking shish kebab.
I fall once, rolling and reeling with pain I hardly have to imagine at this point. And that’s when it catches up with me – all of it, taillights and paranoia and the reality of just how badly I’m hurt right now. I scramble to my feet, but I’m like a puppet whose strings have been cut. All my fearsome grace is gone, because the pain in my gut takes me out at the knees every time I try to stand. I go down once more and my next attempt to stand is even more pathetic than the first. I’m fucked, I’m finished, but I’m crawling across the stage for that sword the same stupid way I kept asking questions when I should have kept my mouth shut. Digging myself deeper, hastening my painful death.
There are tears streaming down my face as I reach for the sword. My fingers stop short of it, and I die.
I can tell we’ve nailed it by the quiet that follows as soon as the piano stops. Normally Levonian would start talking right away, telling us where we were going wrong, but not today. I should be relieved, maybe even happy, but I’m broken. Romeo comes over and nudges me with his foot.
“Shit, man,” he says. “You okay?”
Slowly I push myself up on my hands, but I sink once more, like the fight choreography has taken root in my bones. A weird, dying whale noise come out of my mouth and suddenly I’m sobbing like someone told me the world was going to end tomorrow. People are whispering, worrying, asking if I’m okay, but they hang back, like they’re standing cautiously on the lip of the bomb crater I’ve made in the middle of the room.
“Are you hurt?” asks Levonian. Figures that’s the first thing she’d ask. Tears and wailing are not uncommon in a ballet rehearsal, although most of the time the pain is physical.
I shake my head and get up, walking to show her I’m not injured. Everyone is staring at me, including Liane, who hasn’t even taken her foot off the barre. “Gimme a moment,” I say, and head for my chair and water bottle. Ed follows me and Levonian claps, calling for the market dancers; even in the event of my dramatic death, the show must go on.
“Dude, what’s wrong?” says Ed. “You killed it.”
Gulping water, I fight to get a grip of myself. “No, you did.”
“Yeah, technically, but you know what I mean. What’s wrong?”
It’s a simple enough question, but I can’t remember the last time anyone asked it of me, and so many things have happened since then. So many dumb, wrongheaded, reckless and wonderful things. “So much,” I say.
“Like what?”
“I did something,” I say, trying and failing to make a mental list of things that have gone wrong lately. They all pale into nothing compared with the big thing that’s currently broken in my life. “Something really, really, really fucking stupid.”
“What? Crack? Meth? Murder?” says Ed, and nudges my knee with his, trying to draw me out. “Shit, you didn’t buy a timeshare, did you?”
I laugh and snort and sob at the same time. My emotions seem to be spurting out in all directions; I feel like a juicebox when you accidentally step on it. “No,” I say, and it hurts, but it has to be said. “I think I’m in love.”
“Fu-uck,” he says, and I could kiss him for taking this so seriously. Trust Romeo to know that love is a very big deal. “Who?”
“You don’t know him.” It just slips out.
Ed’s eyes go wide for a second and then he adopts the polite, tolerant expression you’re supposed to wear when your roommate accidentally comes out to you.
“Yes,” I say. “It’s a man. I’m seeing…was seeing, a man. And yeah, I was just as surprised as you are.”
“No, it’s cool,” he says. “I was just worried you were gonna say…” He trails off, like he realizes he’s said too much, but his eyes give him away. They’re drawn like magnets over to the barre, where Liane is still going through her ronds de jambe.
“Huh. Shows how observant I’ve been lately.” It figures, now that I think of it. “Marcus Aurelius, right? Tired of being the brainless pretty boy.”
He sighs. “Yep. Well, you know…she’s…”
“…a lot smarter than you, I know. I’m not saying that to be an asshole, by the way. It’s just that she’s–”
“–a lot smarter than most people. Believe me, I know.”
I look over at her again and remember her telling me how she felt about dancing that scene in the tomb, where she’s little more than a slab of dead flesh being thrown around by her lover. She wasn’t kidding about how disturbing it was, dancing your own death like that.
“So what happened?” asks Ed, just as the piano stops once again. Levonian is looking over at us. “You broke up?”
“Yeah. Today. I
guess I’m a little raw.”
“Shit, I’m sorry. That sucks.”
Consolation makes it real somehow. I think I’m done, but the tears spill out again, just as Levonian comes over. She shoos Ed and takes his seat.
“Are you in pain?” she says.
“No.”
“You’re sure you’re not injured?”
“No. It was just…kind of intense is all.”
She nods and I see something in her large, stone-black eyes that I think I’ve seen maybe twice in the entire time since she took me on as a student. Of all the days when I finally manage to impress the old lady, it’s the day where I spent most of it wishing that I didn’t have to deal with the next one.
“I know,” she says. “I saw it.”
“You did?”
Madame Levonian nods again. “You stopped treating him like a lady. You fought him like a man. Like a man who was trying to kill you.”
“Kinda felt like he was, to be honest.”
“More,” she says, holding up a bony finger. “Much more, you gave me the horror of it.”
I wipe my eyes on the back of my sleeve. “The horror of what?”
“Of a young man,” she says. “Realizing for the first time – and too late – that he is neither immortal nor invincible. That he can be hurt. Or killed.”
I sniff and watch the dancers going through their stretches. We’re all so thin, human piano wires set to vibrate at whatever pitch required to best convey emotion. To be sensitive in this world is not a disadvantage; it’s a gift, even if it feels like a curse right now. “I guess everyone gets there eventually,” I say.
“You got there today,” says Levonian. “Remember it, for the next time you need to use the emotion. Perhaps next production you will be dancing Romeo.”
*
“I like girls,” I say, as I lean back in my chair. “I always liked girls. And they always liked me. So I never even thought this was a thing I might ever do, let alone want to.”
I sneak a glance at the door, just to make sure it’s bolted. It’s one thing for your roommate to know you left bicurious behind several blow jobs ago, but quite another for him to know about your dirty side hustle. Especially since you’re not even good at it.
Nobody likes a sad whore. It reminds them that this is a business transaction, a job performed by someone who would rather be doing something else. And I admit, it used to be kind of thrilling. I used to think I was lucky, getting paid to masturbate, but lately I’m not sure I’m being paid enough for this shit.
The wound is way too fresh for this. Has it even been twelve hours since we broke up? And already I’m naked in front of strangers, trying to think enough happy thoughts to get it up and keep it up on a webcam.
I spread my legs and try to think about girls, about those first breathless horny encounters in the backs of cars or feminine bedrooms, homework books crushed beneath our asses and always one eye on the door, in case of parents. You’re pure lust in those moments. You don’t even really know what to do, but you’re on fire to do it all the same. I can’t remember another time when I was so hard until…
(his shirt pulled tight between my hands, the taste of his mouth in mine for the first time)
A sob almost escapes my lips, but I quickly turn it into a moan. I shouldn’t be doing this; it hurts so fucking bad. Every time I try to close my eyes and fantasies he comes back to me in handfuls of skin, hard flesh and the soft, ragged sound of his breathing.
“Don’t be shy, baby. Show me your ass.” A stranger’s voice, but it puts me back in the game. I lift my thigh and reach for the lube. Strictly business. Just my average Friday night – sticking things up my ass for money.
Only when my finger finds the target all I can feel is his tongue, and all I can think about is how I nearly passed out from the shock of feeling him there. So wrong, so dirty, and so good. Oh God, I’m hard, but I’m sure I’m about to cry again any second, thinking about his fingers stretching me gently, about the words that fell out of my mouth as he went deeper…
(I’m yours I’m yours I’m yours)
“You want this, don’t you?” I say, trying to drown out my inner voice with the patter of my show. “You want to watch me stretch out my tight little virgin asshole for you.”
I grab the buttplug – flared base, this time – and keep my eyes closed. I know I should be looking at the screen, making sure this looks good on camera, but I hurt. Even a goddamn buttplug has his fingerprints on it somehow. Even as I push and open up around it, all I can think of is how we never got that far. But God, I would have let him. I would have let him fuck me.
My dick droops. I scramble for a suitably sexy thought, but my mind’s eye is full of his face, of his clear, perfectly gray eyes and the faded freckles across his cheekbones that only show up when he’s flushed and we’re done, gasping and clinging to one another between the sheets. What would he look like when he’s inside me? Amazed, grateful, like the look on his face the first time I swallowed? Or maybe that smoldering, wicked, confident expression he gets when he’s slithering down between my thighs with every intention of making me scream. I want him so much.
Oh God, this hurts.
“Look at me, honey. And move your leg; I can’t see it going in.”
That’s it. I’m done. I open my eyes and the tears pour out. It’s not pretty – my leg is at such an angle that I look like a cat trying to lick its butt, and my mouth is an ugly square hole, wide with the noise of my sudden, helpless bawling. I’m a lifeless piece of meat and I hate everyone who’s sick enough to want to look at me right now. I reach out and shut off the laptop in a panic.
I can’t do this any more.
I take out the buttplug and throw on some clothes. If I have to stare at these four walls another second longer I’ll go batshit. Things cannot stand as they are; they just can’t, and that’s all there is to it.
Outside the air is cool and I breathe it in greedily, like I could somehow suck clarity from its spring crispness. I’m not even properly warmed up and I know I’ll regret this, but every atom in my body is screaming RUN right now. I try to start off slow but I’m barely out of the parking lot when I get the animal urge to go faster, faster, tear through the night to his house.
I run until my muscles burn and gray swims at the edges of my vision, but as I round the corner into his street I see his bedroom light is still on, and that’s as good as a finish line. I race towards it and pretty much collapse on his doorstep, leaning heavily on the finger I’ve mashed onto the doorbell. My heart feels like it’s about to leap out of my chest for about fifteen different reasons right now.
There’s no answer.
I ring again. I know he can’t be satisfied with this for an ending. None of those books he teaches us would ever end with someone saying ‘we should just stop’. There has to be resolution of some kind.
He’s in there. I can see him moving behind the stained glass. A shuffle of locks and then there he is, looking tired and ruffled and somehow younger for it. He opens his mouth but doesn’t speak, like the thought whatever he was about to say just sparked out as fast as it came. His lips are dark and as I breathe deep I smell wine. His hair is mussed and his eyes look red, like he’s been crying on and off all day, too.
Good.
“Still want to stop?” I ask.
9
Tom
“Still want to stop?” he says, and it’s the stupidest question I’ve ever heard in my life. He’s breathing hard like he ran all the way here, his lips already open, inviting. His hair is tousled and his black lashes are matted with sweat, the wet black spikes of them making his eyes look like stars in the dark.
I reach out, my hand on the back of his neck. When our lips meet he makes a low, feral sound deep in his throat, like he’s some wild thing I set free but came running back to me.
The motion sensor light above the door is on us, but I can’t stop kissing him. If anyone really is watching us then they’re get
ting their money’s worth; Milos already has his hands inside my shirt as we stumble through the front door. It slams, shaking all the way through the house and to the marrow of my bones.
He’s hard and hot and wet beneath my hands, his soft, growling mouth tearing at mine, sucking on my tongue as he plunges both hands into my pajama pants and grabs me. Oh, he’s not so inexperienced now; he knows how to handle me. I love the confident tilt of his chin as he takes hold, stroking root to tip. When he kisses me again I can feel his smile against my lips.
I come up for air. He’s hard against my hip, his fierce, lovely eyes so bright I can hardly stand it. “You’re fucking beautiful,” I say, because I have to say something and I don’t know if I should say that. Not if this isn’t a dream. “If you could see...”
I have his head in my hands, my thumbs on the soft skin at the corners of his eyes, pulling them into the shape of the slits they become whenever he laughs. But he’s not laughing now. His red stubble-rubbed lips gasp against mine, each breath in time with the stroke of his hand and his hips. His pants are round his ankles now; I can feel him against my thigh, humping gently. I feel a dot of moisture on my skin, like a tiny wet kiss. When I take hold of him the tip is already leaking, fluid spreading under the ball of my thumb. I start to kneel but he shakes his head.
“Bed,” he says, and there’s a private joke in his eyes that jerks me clean out of my boozy delirium. This is real. He toes off his pants and walks through my bedroom door, showing me the pink patch on his buttock where the skin grew back.
At first I suspect he’s being polite, not pointing out the two-thirds empty bottle of Shiraz on the bedside table, but then I stumble and fall back onto the bed and he asks straight out.
“How much have you had to drink?”
“Not enough to write this off as a mistake,” I say, speaking carefully to hide the slur in my voice. “Come here, you.”
He straddles my legs, sinking down over my thighs. He licks slowly at first, his arse high in the air so if I look over his shoulder I can see it reflected in the wardrobe mirror. He fills his mouth with a greedy, sexy, slurping noise and in the reflection I see his hand slide down as he touches himself. I hold myself still, struggling not to buck into his mouth and gag him, but it’s so hard, and I’m so hard, and oh Jesus, what does he have in mind now?
These Violent Delights Page 11
