Twenty Nine
Twenty Nine
Felix
H e stayed at mine until New Year’s Eve when Ava was due home. I’d spent the entire day cleaning because I was certain she’d be able to smell the sex, and maybe even Nico, the moment she walked through the door.
She hadn’t. Though we’d had a lot of it. I’d never thought there was such a thing as too much sex, but since Christmas, Nico and I had been exploring the very real possibility that there was. I was sore in ways I was only sore after a show run, as though I’d been performing every single night at maximum output. I was exhausted, and though each time one of our kisses started to lead somewhere, and though I was sure I couldn’t, not again, we did.
The more we fucked, the more we wanted to fuck. Something alchemical happened when we were close, something that our muscles and bones seemed to already know the way to, but which left our minds trailing to catch up. I wanted him all the fucking time. I thirsted for him in the true sense of the word.
I’d wanted and desired before, but not this intensely, not as though I was lost in a desert and he the sole water source. I wanted to ask him if he felt it, too, but I didn’t bloody dare; it was too embarrassing how much I wanted him. So I taunted and flirted and coaxed him into sex (it didn’t take much) because it was the only way I felt certain that his want and desire matched my own. After sex, he was cool and a little distant, as though he was holding himself back, and so I did too.
On New Year’s Eve, Ava and I had gone to meet Charlie, Jacob, and Sun for drinks at The Savoy. It was sort of a tradition. Except this time, halfway through the night, I’d lied and told Ava I was going to Christian’s and gone to Nico’s instead. When I’d arrived unannounced (he’d been reading on NYE while drinking a diet coke—nerd) he’d beamed, pulled me inside, and fucked me right there in the hallway.
I’d stayed the entire weekend, and we’d spent most of it in bed. When we weren’t fucking, we were talking about the upcoming six months and how we were going to pull this off. Nico does not seem to be worrying about this as much as I am, and I think it’s due to the fact that he spent five years faking a relationship and thinks this is somehow adjacent to that: faking not having a relationship.
I don’t think I’ll have any issues pretending I still hate him. On some level, I still do, though at the moment this is about how much he makes me want him, and I have experience in keeping my bed-mates secret. I’ve spent three years in Christian’s bed without a single person finding out. But I’ve never had to work this closely with a guy I’m in an intensely sexual relationship with. A guy who I’m unable to be in a room with for more than five minutes before demanding he fold me over something and ram his dick inside me.
It will be an exercise in restraint, that’s for sure.
Rehearsal for Iliad begins, officially, on the 3rd of January. It’s a round table; a four-hour discussion about roles, costumes, sets, and music. We’re introduced to Julien, who will be directing, with Benedict as Choreographer, along with Fen and her small army of stormtroopers.
Julien is a tall, soft-spoken Frenchman with a greying beard and piercing blue eyes. He’s only directed a couple of ballets, having cut his teeth in plays and stage musicals, but as soon as he starts speaking, there’s not a doubt in my mind that he’s the right person to bring Ben’s dream to life. There’s a presentation given in the room where Nico caught me on my knees with Christian’s dick in my mouth, and as I enter, he gives me a small, pointed smile and looks over towards the scene of the crime. It’s one of the only times he looks at me throughout the entire day. I’m the one who can’t stop looking at him; at the way he writes things down in a small, black hardbound notebook, at the way he gently and respectfully asks Ben and Julien for clarification on things I hadn’t even thought of, at the way he listens intently whenever any of the dancers speak. Told you: nerd.
We have, according to the early working sheets, three dances together in pas de deux . Less than I would have thought given the essence of the show, and it’s a relief, though it still means a lot of rehearsal just the two of us. The intimacy coordinator arrives next week and will work with us for six weeks, mainly focussing on the second act ‘sex scene’.
I’ve one more dance than Nico has, which two months ago I would have happily lorded over him, but now I know it’s not the sort of thing he particularly cares about, so I don’t. He has a completely different relationship with ballet than I do. Than anyone I know does, actually. It’s oddly… unfeeling. Formal. Like a 9-5 office job he clocks in at. He seems to care very little about it, he doesn’t like talking about it, and though he is focussed and dedicated, he gives the impression that he doesn’t particularly like it.
What he hates most of all is any reference to his talent as a dancer. I’ve only recently noticed this: he clams up, turns his head, tries to change the focus. He’s a ballet dancer who doesn’t want to talk about ballet or his exceptional talent at it, and it’s weird.
In the workshop though, he looks engaged, professional, and completely dedicated. It’s hot. Then I groan at myself because it’s getting fucking ridiculous how all the things I used to hate about him are now turn-ons. There has to be something about him that gives me the ick.
At lunch he goes and sits by himself like he usually does, until Jesse and Niall slide into the booth with him. I’ve started thinking about them as his ‘bros’. Nico always sounds more American around Jesse.
Beside me, Charlie is slurping Pho while across the table Ava types away on her phone. She’d met a guy back home; some fiddler from a band she’d seen in a pub in Temple Bar. Now that was enough to give a man the ick. A fiddler. His name was Ciaran. And Ciaran had done everyone a favour and slept with her, and she’d come back to London a new woman, her dalliance with Nico all but forgotten. I was hoping this meant one less issue in what I’m calling ‘Normalising Nico’. I am still lying to her though, and she won’t forgive that easily. I also haven’t told her about Christian and I effectively ending things over Christmas, and I’ve no plans to because it’s a handy cover story for what I’m actually doing. Or rather, who I’m doing.
I’m supposed to meet Christian for dinner in the next week or so; he wants us to act as friends. He also has a bag of stuff I’d left at his place that he wants to hand over. I think this whole friends thing is his way of showing me that he’s still here for me and that our relationship was not dependent on us having sex. That our relationship was—is—more than that. This reminder is more for him than me, I think. Though I think he’s also nosy and wants to find out about Nico. Which will be nice, honestly. I have no one I can talk to about Nico currently, about what’s happening inside my head and my chest when I think about him.
I look around at Ava and Charlie and imagine them finding out and how I might explain it and my entire body breaks out into a full sweat.
“Who do you think is the top?” Ava says, thoughtfully.
“Huh?”
“Raphael Scott is fucking a K-pop idol.” She flips her phone to show me. “It came out over Christmas. Seems obvious that he’d be the top, right? But there’s something in him that screams bottom.”
Nico had actually mentioned this to me one morning in the kitchen. I hadn’t been paying much attention, though maybe I should have been. A straight rockstar had just come out, or been outed. Why hadn’t I asked him what he thought about that? Twit.
“Wait, I thought he was married to what’s-her-face? That French actress,” I say, looking at the screen. K-pop is not in my wheelhouse, and though the guy in the photo is exceptionally pretty, he’s not my type. Raphael Scott though, very much is. The tattoos, the all-American smile, the sweating, screaming stage presence. Might even have had a wank over him in the past, straight men being a particular weakness of mine. Not-so-straight men, too, apparently.
“They were engaged,” Charlie pipes in. “But there was a video of them in a bar, him and Lee Jaehyun, and they were basically fucking each other’s faces. Internet is going mental over it.”
“No wonder,” says Ava. “Straight boy rockstar leaves Camille La Garde for a guy? Wild times.”
I lift my water, and say as I scan the photo again, “A very pretty, feminine-looking guy.”
“Still a guy,” she says. “I mean, Rapha Scott was notoriously straight.”
I laugh at this. “What does that even mean?”
“You know, he’s been around a lot of women. Emma Vane, Rae Price, Erin Hudson, and that model, the one who was caught doing drugs with Prince Alexander. Fuck, what’s her name again?”
“Talulah Harper,” Charlie supplies without looking up.
“Yes, her! Oh, and the girl from his band. He’s like… fuckin’ hyper-straight.”
Hyper-straight . I look over at Nico, who’s laughing at something Jesse has just said. Some people think Nico’s hyper-straight. I happen to be one of only two people on Earth, aside from his therapist, who knows that to be a lie. “Yeah, well evidently not; rumours aren’t fact. I don’t sleep with everyone I’m rumoured to be sleeping with.”
Charlie and Ava both level a look at me.
“Okay, I’m not the best example, but the media are cretins. Half the stuff they print is bollocks, and I bet he was sleeping with none of them.” I shrug. “Maybe all he needed was the right hole for his peg.”
“Don’t we all,” Ava sighs, continuing to scroll.
“Or the right stick for his fiddle,” Charlie says, looking at me. The two of us bite back our laughter.
“You two can fuck all the way off,” she says and gives us her middle finger.
On the second day, we are in the studio. Nico arrives wearing black tights—something I’m sure was deliberate—and a loose grey T-shirt, with a dark sweatband around his head. We warm up as we always do: barre rises, rolls, stretches into tendus and battements .
Ben takes us through his vision for the scene; it’s from the second act, an ensemble; Achilles leading his army to Troy after being persuaded to by his mother. This particular scene doesn’t have Nico in it, but he watches from the side of the room in that very rapt way he always watches me dance. This time though, it feels different. It feels like he’s watching me dance for the first time, and it’s as distracting as I feared it would be.
These are all movements I could do in my sleep, motions that are ingrained in my body and muscle memory but I’m overthinking them today. There’s pressure today in a way I’ve never felt before, and I don’t like it.
The following day is much the same, and the next. Me making stupid amateur mistakes, my form slipping in ways it hasn’t since I was seventeen, ways I thought it couldn’t anymore. It’s Nico’s fault. His eyes, his study, his fucking tight-clad cock. I’m losing it. Meanwhile, his combinations have been flawless, he’d flown across the studio like he was treading fucking air, Benedict and Fen grinning like proud parents. When it’s my count, I step forward, arms opening to second. The mirrors reflect back a dozen moving figures, all of them me, all of them striving for that elusive perfection.
“Extend, Felix,” Fen calls, her heels clicking across the floor. “Reach with your arms, not just your hands! Feel the line.” Feel the fucking line. I’ve not been told to feel the line in years. My cheeks burn.
I adjust mid-motion, pushing the energy from my shoulder blades through my fingertips. The correction feels right, though it adds a fresh strain to my biceps. The ache is good—it means I’m working. Or, it normally does.
My legs quiver as I lift into arabesque , holding my balance on the supporting leg. I wobble and curse but catch myself in time. At my reflection, I force a serene expression onto my face. Grace under pressure , I remind myself. No one can see the struggle . But that’s a lie.
Fen can see it, Ava can see it, Ben can see it.
Nico sees it.
“Don’t sink into your hips,” Fen says, placing a firm hand on my waist. She hasn’t had to stabilise me in three years, and even more humiliation pours over me. I see the look on Nico’s face over my shoulder: pity-laced concern.
At the end of rehearsal, I storm out and down the corridor to the vending machine for a protein bar, which I eat angrily in four rough bites. There’s a little hidden nook behind it, between the machine and the wall, and I sit there on the floor, my back pressed against the cold glass of the window, and try to cool down. I need to get my shit together. I’m slipping. Distracted by dick and soft feelings for someone who hasn’t put a foot wrong yet.
There’s a horrible crawling sensation at the base of my neck: had he… planned this ? To divert my attention? To make me sloppy and lazy. Did he have that in him? He’d lied to his entire company for five years. He’d looked his colleagues—friends—in the face and made them believe he and Sofia were some kind of dancing power couple. He’d lied to her too. He lied. That’s what he did. He could quite easily be lying now.
I shove a hand into my hair and pull. This is ridiculous. This isn’t who Nico is. Maybe he was, for reasons I am in no place to judge him for, but he isn’t here to distract and fuck me up, I’m sure of it. This is stress and exhaustion talking.
“Hiding from Fen?”
I open my eyes to see Nico standing there, one arm resting up by his head on top of the vending machine, a soft look on his face.
“Needed to cool down and eat something.” I’m going back in. I’ll stay here until I can do a single balancoire without fucking it up.
“You were good today.”
I give him a look. He’s still a fucking liar then. “Are you having a laugh?”
“No. They’re hard combinations, harder than mine. A lot of contemporary movements in there that aren’t easy. You’re doing great, Felix.”
I get to my feet and glare at him. “Stop talking, Savini.”
His face flickers with what looks like hurt. “I thought we were past the whole Savini thing?”
“No. We’re not.” When I go to push past him, he grabs my arm to stop me.
He lowers his voice. “Can I see you later?”
“I’m busy.” It’s not a lie, but even if it weren’t, I’m not sure I could stand to have Nico and his perfect fucking form anywhere near me tonight. I tug my arm out of his hold and put some much-needed distance between us.