Limerence (Famous Young Things #2)

Seven

Seven

Felix

T he thing about talent is, it’s hot. Being in the presence of someone exceptionally talented at something is a massive turn-on. For me at least.

Unfortunately, Nicoló Savini happens to be the most talented dancer, aside from me, on the fucking planet, so the last two weeks have been a bit of a struggle, if I’m being honest. I’ve never been completely unaffected watching him perform. And I’ve watched him a lot over the years. I’ve only gotten better at pretending to be unaffected.

We’ve met at almost eighty competitions, including every European Grand Prix, since we were fourteen. Five summer workshops. Countless auditions. When I was fourteen, I tried to get onto a 12-week dance programme with Sergio Cina—considered then to be the greatest living dance coach on the planet. Nico was the reason I never got that spot. I know this because he told me himself.

Cina had been coaching Nico for four years at that point, and Nico had been the under-16 world champion for three out of those four. The year he didn’t win was because he’d been injured and didn’t compete.

I won that year, but I wasn’t happy about it.

I wasn’t happy that I hadn’t beaten Nicoló to it.

When I was sixteen, I auditioned for a spot at Romasco where Nico was a soloist. Yes, I probably would have hated every fucking second of it there, but it was the best ballet company in the world at that point, and I only wanted to dance at the best.

But I didn’t get it.

You’ll be noticing a pattern by now. For every step of my career, that Italian prick has been like a dark cloud hanging over me, raining all over every fucking parade I’ve gone to. My bloody shadow. Except, because he was older, the narrative sold it as though I was his. As fucking if.

After I’d been knocked back from Romasco, I’d gone to the second-best company instead. St. Petersburg. Where I’d been miserable and spoken only ballet terms until Benedict had brought me home to dance at his new and improved London Ballet Company. He’d raised LBC from the ashes—it had been great once, and he was determined to make it so again—scouring the world for raw talent and promise, so now it sits amongst the top three companies in the world.

I still wonder how I survived the Siberian winter. Three of them. I’d gone to get away from my father because even though he barely gave me the time of day, I could still feel his presence everywhere in this city. Could turn on the TV to see him talking passionately about some political matter that affected only the most privileged in society. I’d thought what I wanted and needed was to be somewhere my father’s name wouldn’t mean anything, where I’d rarely, if ever, even hear it mentioned.

What I’d realised, though, is that it’s far more of a fuck you, daddy, for me to be the out, gay dancer right here under his nose than five thousand miles away in Russia. He sits as an honorary member on the board of LBC, and that’s only because of Miranda’s love of ballet.

Anyway, I digress. Those are just a handful of reasons why I hate Nicoló Savini and why being in his close company is fucking with my head a little. Because watching him, seeing what sort of person he is, seeing how good he is and how hard he works, is cultivating within me a sort of begrudging respect for the man that I could honestly live without.

I’ve seen him a lot over the years, and of course I have a level of professional respect for him as I do with all dancers. But it’s always been at somewhat of a remove. He’s a lot easier to ignore when he’s in another country and little more than a name that follows me around. Having him here—watching him rehearse in very short practice shorts, in arse-sculpting tights, stretching, showering, and shoving his barely-clad cock in my face is, unfortunately for me, very fucking different from watching him perform on a stage or through a device, dressed in boring stage wear.

I’m a gay man; it is my default sexual setting if you want to get biological about it.

And I find men attractive. And Nicoló, as loathe as I am to admit it, is attractive. If you excuse the stupid look he gets on his face sometimes when he’s concentrating, his slightly-too-large nose, and the sound of his voice, then he is, objectively, attractive.

I’m thinking about this when I arrive at the address Noah had emailed me last night along with the warning: Ben says not to insult Savini in front of the journalist. You’re representing the company today. The photoshoot for Vogue . I should be over the moon about this. If I wasn’t a dancer, I could probably have been a model. Looking good on camera is something I know about. But once again, I’m being asked to share the spotlight with you-know-who, so I can see it far enough.

On one level, today should be far easier than having to watch Savini at practice. He’ll be wearing clothes for a start. He’ll be out of dance mode and in personality mode, and since I hate his personality, this should be more manageable and less dangerous for my wandering grey matter.

It’s a studio in Shoreditch; a warehouse-style space filled with lots of exposed brick and spills of natural light from a couple of huge, panelled windows. There are a handful of people milling about already: a girl setting up an entire lighting rig, another steaming a whole rack of clothes, someone talking animatedly on the phone, and another currently applying make-up to one casually dressed Nicoló Savini. Whatever he’s saying to her has her covering her mouth and laughing into her hand, charmed.

My first thought is that I’m late.

My second is that he’s just early, because, of course he is. He’d do anything to make me look bad.

The girl on the phone spots me and waves, then rushes over. She’s holding a pink Stanley cup the size of her head.

“Felix! Hello, I’m Annabeth from Vogue editorial. Soooo nice to meet you.” She shoves a beautifully manicured hand out.

I take it and shake it gently. “Hi, sorry, am I late? My email said eleven.”

“Nooooo. You’re not late, not at all. Come in.” She guides me over to where Savini is having some concealer applied to his under eyes and directs me to the seat next to him. “Brea is just finishing up with Nico right now, and then you’re up.”

“Oh, well, that’ll take a while,” I say, throwing a look at him. “Maybe I should go and come back?”

He eyes me in the mirror and smiles, amusedly.

“You guys want a coffee?” I offer. “There’s a Starbucks downstairs.”

“No thanks,” says Annabeth. “But Zach can nip down and get one for you. Zach!”

I give my order to Annabeth’s assistant—lean as a bean with a cute smile and a cuter arse—and sit down to watch Brea attempt to make Savini’s nose small enough to capture on camera.

I’m being a little cruel here; his nose is actually in proportion to his huge mouth.

“You guys do a lot of photoshoots?” Brea asks. “Or is this a bit of a break from the hard work?”

“He takes a lot of pictures of himself, so this is like any other day for him,” Nico says, levelling a look of challenge at me.

I give him a narrow-eyed glare.

Before I can bite back, Annabeth returns and begins taking us through the schedule. Photos first; three different outfit changes. One is ballet wear, the other is evening wear, and the last is casual wear. Noah had apparently sent over our sizes.

The interview will be a short thing at the end. Two hours of our time max, she promises.

I drink my iced coffee courtesy of Zach while Nico goes off to get changed into the evening wear. I try not to preen too hard when Brea says my skin looks fantastic and that I only really need a touch of highlighter. I’m actually annoyed Savini isn’t within earshot. Then I’m handed a dark green Tom Ford suit, white shirt, black shoes, and gold cufflinks, and told to go change. I’m surprised at how well the colour suits me. The depth of the green makes my eyes pop, and the fit of the jacket is eerily perfect. I’m marvelling at how good I look in the mirror and wondering why I don’t own a Tom Ford suit already, when Nico strolls out.

The one they’ve given him is deep blue. The shirt is on the same palette but lighter, and he has it opened past his pecs, almost to his navel. His perfectly sculpted, hairless chest peeks past the fabric.

I loathe the way my entire body reacts; the sight of him so affecting that it makes my mouth water. No man should look that good in a suit. None. But especially not him. Have I ever seen him in a suit? Surely I have. Maybe just not a Tom Ford one.

Nico drags his eyes down my whole body and back up, his expression completely neutral. Absolutely no reaction from him whatsoever to the sight of me in mine.

I open my mouth to say something, to insult him in some way to knock him off his high horse, but my brain is still malfunctioning at the sight of him. I have absolutely nothing. It’s embarrassing. I’m ashamed of myself.

“Ready, guys? Great,” Zach says as he springs into the changing area. It breaks whatever spell I’m under because I can look away from Savini and breathe again. I nod and follow Annabeth’s assistant out of the space, though not before throwing a look over my shoulder at Savini.

“Christ, even Tom Ford looks shit when it’s on you,” I say before striding out of the changing room.

It goes from bad to worse. They have us pretend to play cards with each other, like two guys at some gentlemen’s club my dad is probably a member of. Then they have us holding tumblers of whisky, the smell of which makes me want to gag. Finally, we have to lean on the brick wall and look moodily at the camera. He stands so close to me that I can smell whatever hellish cologne he’s wearing. Oranges and something woodsy. I’ve no clue what this whole scene has to do with dance, but I trust that Vogue knows what they’re doing.

“Great. God, you guys look incredible. Felix, that is absolutely your colour. Can you just unbutton the jacket? Perfect,” Annabeth is saying. “Nicoló, that suit was literally made for you. It’s divine against your colouring.”

For his part, he looks uncomfortable with the praise, which is weird. Professional dancers, the ones I know anyway, thrive on this sort of thing. Compliments are sustenance and we eat them up. Weirdo.

“Felix, can you just look over your shoulder at Nico, like you don’t trust him? Like he’s someone you definitely don’t want to show your back to.”

“Shouldn’t be a problem,” I say before glowering at Nico over my shoulder.

“Nico, you wanna look at Felix like you’ve issued a warning to him. Moody. Threatening. Yes.”

When our eyes meet, he winks at me. Fucking winks. Then immediately transforms his face into a sexy scowl.

“And we’re done. Amazing, guys. That’s a wrap on formal.”

I practically bolt to the changing curtain. Desperate for him to get out of that suit and into something that doesn’t fuck with my brain chemistry.

Casual and ballet are uneventful and far easier to cope with, though they put him in a brace-style all-in-one thing which should look ridiculous but doesn’t. I shouldn’t be surprised by it at this point.

After an hour, we’re done and back in our own clothes, and being directed toward a little seating area in the corner of the studio. He sits at one end of the couch while I fold myself into the other, determined to ignore him entirely.

“This must be a walk in the part for you,” he says. I blink, then raise an eyebrow speculatively. He goes on, “Posing, having people tell you how good you look, being stared at.”

“A walk in the park ,” I say. “It’s a walk in the park not a walk in the part .” I have to fight against some weird urge to find that cute. He looks faintly embarrassed. Which, to my absolute horror, is also sort of cute. “Yeah, I suppose. I like being told how good I look. Who doesn’t?”

“A little vain, no?”

“What’s not to be vain about?” I indicate myself. “I’m talented, a delight to be around, and extremely fucking hot.”

He snorts. Not amused, but as though I’ve just confirmed some mildly repulsive opinion he already had about me.

“You should try it sometime, Savini. I mean, you’re not entirely hideous. I’m sure if we put our heads together, we could find something about you to like.”

He snaps his attention back to me and I make a show of raking my gaze over him, lingering on the space between his spread legs. No, I’ve no fucking clue what I’m doing either. Except that flirting is usually how I deal with uncomfortable situations, and Savini makes me more uncomfortable than most people. For reasons I’m not going to be speaking aloud at this time.

Some weird half-panicked look comes over his face before it clouds, darkly. Which maybe isn’t that surprising given his uber-straight sensibilities. Would definitely help if I could hate him for being a rampant homophobe. I hold his stare until he turns it away again. I’m about to say something when Annabeth comes over, all apologies and big smiles. She’s holding a notepad and pen, though sets her iPhone on the low table between us and hits record.

“Sorry, sorry,” she says, flustered. “Let’s just jump right into it, shall we? I thought we could start with how you both got into ballet. What drew you to it initially?” She looks between us. I glance at Nico, then frown. He’s staring straight ahead, stiff and tense-looking. After a moment of awkward silence, I decide to go first.

“For me, it was watching The Nutcracker when I was five. My mum took me, and I was just completely mesmerized. I begged her to let me take classes after that. She did some ballet herself as a child, so it was easy to convince her.” It had been less easy to convince my father, though my mother could wrap him around her finger as far as I’ve been able to recall.

Annabeth nods, jotting something down. “And you, Nicoló?”

He shifts slightly, clearly uncomfortable. “My sister danced. I would watch her practice at home and try to copy her. Eventually, I was executing the movements better than she was, and my mother put me in classes too.”

“Aw, how cute! Does your sister still dance?”

“Ah, no. She gave it up after the age of eight. She became much more interested in pop singers. She’s a nurse now.”

“But your love for it persisted?”

“I feel strange when I’m not dancing, it’s like my body’s natural state is to be moving. Always.” He says this very strangely, unemotive and flat. As though talking about something he finds uninteresting.

I’m still staring at him when Annabeth asks me her next question, “Felix, you attended the Bluclair School, and then the LB Academy before going to Russia. Did it feel like a homecoming when you returned to the LB Company?”

“Uh, yeah, in a way. I never settled in St. Petersburg. The cultural differences were too much; the fact I’m gay being the biggest. Not that I ever felt in danger, but neither was I able to live as myself, fully. I learned a lot there from the teachers and other dancers, who are some of the best in the world, but I was happy to be home.”

“The ballet world has a lot of stereotypes; would you say that you both demonstrate opposite sides of that spectrum to some degree?”

I frown at this.

She goes on, “You, Felix, a very out queer dancer. And you, Nico, have a bit of a reputation in the dance world for romancing ballerinas.”

I watch Nico’s reaction to this. He’s as unemotive at this accusation as he’s been since this began.

“I was in a relationship for a number of years, with a very talented ballerina, who I have the utmost respect for. There are a lot of things written about me, which have no real basis in fact,” he says like he’s on the stand. “It doesn’t affect what I do on stage, so I feel very little need to discuss it.” It’s a cool response and puts Annabeth in her place. She nods, chastened.

“So then, let’s talk about your rivalry. Which is, in the dance world at least, quite legendary. Would you liken it to a sporting rivalry? Federer and Djokovic, or Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali?”

I laugh at this, and Nico turns his head, meets my eye, and laughs too.

“I was just imagining us fighting in a boxing ring,” I say, still laughing.

“I was imagining us playing tennis.”

“I’m actually pretty good at tennis,” I tell him.

“That does not surprise me. I throw a pretty solid punch.”

“Yeah, that doesn’t surprise me either. Very… Italian of you.”

His eyes cloud over. “What does that mean?”

I shrug. “You know, very macho. Very hetero. Very Italian.”

“Sorry, are we back on stereotypes again?” he says. “I’m a ballet dancer, surely the fundamentals of that sort of throw off the whole idea of that stereotype?” He turns his body to me and folds his arms, expectant. His eyes are glinting with heat but it’s playful and I fucking hate how attractive it is.

“We keep each other on our toes, figuratively and literally,” I say, turning back to Annabeth. “Nico is an incredible dancer, one of the best ever, and I’ve always had that to focus on, to chase, if you like. I doubt I’d be as good as I was if not for him. It’s what most of those sportspeople you mentioned would tell you; to beat the best you have to be the best.”

“Nico? Is that a sentiment you agree with?”

I turn to see Nico watching me with his mouth slightly open. Then he blinks like he’s coming out of a trance.

“One hundred percent. Felix is one of the most naturally gifted dancers who’s ever stood on a stage, the only one I’ve ever seen perform—the others are all before my time—so yeah, it’s difficult to keep up with him. I’m grateful that I get to dance in the same generation as him. Now, I get to work with him. It’s a great honour and privilege.”

And it’s my turn to stare at him, too stunned to utter a fucking word.