Blake Thorne ; Sirius Black (ex_toujours322) wrote in musingslogs, @ 2011-02-24 22:36:00 |
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Entry tags: | ballerina, highwayman |
Who: Blake and Poe
What: Poe gets a scholarship, is excited, and Blake tries and fails not to want to corrupt the innocent.
Where: The Ballet company performance
When: Recently
Warnings: Swearing, unsurprisingly
The audience was filled with influential members of Seattle society, and backstage the dancers were all nervous. It was an important night; the only opportunity for the new hopeful students to the school to earn sponsorship before Spring classes began. For all of them, their future at the Ballet hinged on someone in the audience thinking they were impressive enough to invest in. And while they were all impressive - the audition process was national and strenuous - it didn’t mean they’d all find sponsors. Out of the thirty dancers performing in that evening’s presentation, only fifteen would earn slots, and it was entirely dependant on sponsorship that would pay for lessons and housing.
The presentation was Le Corsaire, with the leads and chorus switching up throughout the ballet. It wasn’t Poe’s favorite work, and he wished for something more modern as a showcase, but it wasn’t a terrible ballet either. A girl next to him tittered, and he rolled his eyes as he stretched, practicing for his arabesque as the music began to rise from the orchestra. Ballerinas always drew the eye, and he didn’t think the tittering girl had nothing to worry about. He wasn’t first to dance, and he wasn’t last, and that made him nervous. People never noticed things in the middle in his opinion, desensitized to beauty by the time they came around and not yet feeling the swell of the finale. He would have to compensate by being better than everyone else, and then by being unforgettable at the meet-and-greet that was scheduled to take place in the grand ballroom after.
Blake had an interest in ballet that was private, personal, and went undiscussed when he did choose to attend. If anyone asked him why he went, he'd say that opera gave him a headache and taking a liking to one of the higher arts had been a stipulation of his inheritance. As were many of the things Blake stated about his motives, which, from the surface, looked brashly clear and simple, it was a lie. But no one expected or could understand why a rake who liked drinking and smoking and dive bars with loose girls could sit through something like a ballet, so he gave them an easy out by not really explaining himself and making it all a joke, a game.
Truthfully, Blake liked performance any way it came to him. There were only a couple operas he liked, and they tended to be full of high drama, tragedy, murder, and sex, but he did like them. He'd see a good play if it was in town. Ballet stood apart, however. He'd never understood it, though he'd been forced to attend a few when he was young by nannies and tutors who thought he should have loftier interests than chasing tail, but it had never stuck. Opera at least was visceral with emotion and spectacle. Ballet was like a silent movie without even the subtitles to help it.
Eric liked ballet. He loved it, actually, but he'd always been too poor to go to more than one every couple years, and it hadn't been something he could talk even with his friends about, incomprehensibly gay and intellectual as the interest was. When he met Blake, he'd confessed this at some point, and they ended up going to every ballet staged in town, because Blake loved him and denied him nothing despite the constant bickering. Somewhere in that time, he'd found something in ballet that was worthwhile. The drama wasn't as obvious as it was in a play or an opera, but it was there in the lines of the dancer's bodies, and the precision of motion was fascinating to watch like a written language outside his own was beautiful to look at, though it didn't express anything to him in the way of words. When Eric had died he'd stopped going for a couple years, and then started again on a whim. Because it was something he would have liked. Because he actually enjoyed it. Because it wasn't like he was doing anything better with his money, or his time. He got something out of it, even if he shrugged and deferred and let people make their own jokes about how gay he was. He, as usual, didn't really give a shit.
The curtain rose, and the stage filled with boys and girls in cream and gold, and Poe couldn’t see past the orchestra or the small lights that dotted the beginning of the first row. He couldn’t see, but he knew his future was out there dressed in smart black and silk. He watched the first pair of dancers, his own position at the back sedate, not wanting to draw attention when it wasn’t his turn to shine. He watched the second set of dancers, too, and he categorized missteps, cautioning himself not to do the same when his turn arrived.
Poe was dancing with the girl who had been tittering (another reason he thought she had no reason for worry), and he was, admittedly, glad of it. She was small and long and lean, and she made it look like magic instead of work. He would make her look good, and she would make him look good in turn. He would never have admitted that a ballerina could make him look bad, but that was the truth of being a boy in ballet - you had to try harder to compete with the swans.
The Pas de Deux began with Poe alone on the stage, and he relished the time alone in the spotlight, limbs long and his arabesque slow and perfect. It was just the music then, after that, the girl in his arms nothing but an extension of his body and of the song, and they both made it look easy. When they finished it was quiet; that sort of stock stillness that came with something unexpected, and he held her fingers while she dipped and bowed her head, and then he led her back to the chorus. It had been a good dance; he knew it in his bones.
Blake noted when someone was particularly good the same way anyone did when they watched a performance. Some shined, some didn't. The boy and girl shined, though admittedly it was the boy who really caught his eye. He was young, and very good, with the sort of smooth skill he was used to seeing from older dancers. He applauded with the rest of the crowd at the end of the dance as they moved back, and Blake noted him. This performance was meant to pull in patrons for the company, after all, to keep the young dancers fed and in school. He'd see what he was like at the gathering after the show before making a definitive decision, but he had a good feeling about it.
The rest of the ballet went on with only a few falls and a few missteps, none of which were Poe’s, and once the curtain fell the dancers all ran backstage to freshen up and change into fresh costumes that mirrored the ones they’d worn on stage. Poe thought it was a little stupid, but he understood the desire to maintain the magic of the dance, and so he slipped on the loose white dance pants and gold ribbons across his chest and he joined the others as they eagerly awaited to enter the room beyond.
The room was large, a ballroom in every sense of the word, and the floor glinted and the chandeliers gave everything a feeling of being in a fairytale. The dancers entered via the main staircase, a process of white-gold innocence, and they dispersed at the bottom of the steps, each looking for someone to impress. Poe, for his part, wandered longer than most, weaving through the crowd and looking for an undefinable something.
Blake spotted the dancer wandering through the crowd almost immediately, and he stepped out of the throng to get his attention. "So what do you think of the girl?" he asked him, without preamble. "The one you danced with. Is she any good?"
Blake was wearing a black suit, tailored but still a little loose and rumpled at the edges, tie never quite straight and nothing on his person that shouted ostentatiously about his wealth, no elaborate cufflinks, no wrought gold tie pin, no rings, no obvious label for the suit itself except that it was well made. There was still bruising around his nose from having it broken, though that was fading, but it was clear he'd been in a fight recently even though the swelling had gone down entirely. He didn't look much like someone who belonged in a place like this unless you'd seen him in a tabloid somewhere, at which point you would likely assume he'd shown up purely to pick up a dancer or three.
Poe had lived a very sheltered life at the Boston Ballet’s Charity Orphanage, and he had no idea who Blake was or what Blake was prone to. He wasn’t blind, though, and he knew the man was coming toward him as soon as he stepped out of the crowd. He knew it in that vain, self-assured way of the young, and he gave Blake what could only be considered a coquettishly conspiratorial look. “She titters,” he said, noticing the rumpled clothes and automatically assuming them with a rake in a novel. “I don’t like tittering very much. Do you?” he asked, looking up at the other man, teeth worrying his lower lip, eyes mischievous.
Blake smirked. "Depends on who's doing the tittering and when," he said, noting the way Poe's teeth caught on his lip. He had a delicate face, in the way that one might expect from a boy in ballet, though he'd seen enough examples to know they all weren't that way. "Sounds like you're not her biggest fan. You'd never know it watching you dance together. You were good." He fixed his hands in his pockets. "So, you're looking for a scholarship. Sell me on yourself." It was a statement both meant to cut to the chase and provoke. He'd already decided he would pay for this boy whose name he didn't know when he called the girl out for tittering, but he wanted to see how fast he moved on his feet off the dance floor.
Poe knew a challenge when he saw one, and he didn’t react impulsively or hotheadedly; no. He circled the man in the rumpled tux, giving no warning that he intended to do so, and he clasped his hands behind his back as he made a thoughtful sound. Despite the anxiousness he felt, he was pure grace and a lifetime of poise to keep him from begging or pleading. “Do you want me to dance for you?” he asked from over Blake’s shoulder. “Or do you want me to, you know, talk?” Inside, his stomach was all butterflies and he wanted to yell triumphantly, but he didn’t.
“I’ve seen you dance. Try talking.” He was smiling by the time Poe was done circling him, impressed that he hadn’t immediately fallen down on bended knee and started proselytizing about himself. “Tell me where you’re from, and why you’re here, and why you want to be with the company.”
Poe stopped when he had come around in front of him again, and the look on his face was one of thought and attention. He had a speech prepared, of course he did, but in that moment it didn’t feel like he he should use the perfectly crafted words and the mature thoughts. “Dancing is like breathing,” he said. “You know, like waking up in the morning and taking that first breath after you open your eyes. The one that says you’re alive.” He grinned, bounced on his heels a little and looked for pockets that weren’t there to shove his hands into in a teenager’s slouch before he forgot himself. “Or like when you see something really great and you just can’t believe how awesome it is.” Another smile, this one cheekier. “Oh, and I’m from Boston,” which was almost unnecessary, given how thick his accent was.
Blake's smile widened a touch while he was talking, and he laughed a little when he was done. Poe's enthusiasm and pleasure was catching and intense, and he found himself unexpectedly taken by it. You couldn't fake that kind of love. There was no manufacturing it. Watching him try to find his pockets and catch himself and smile like that made Blake feel just his age, instead of older as he usually did. He reached into his pocket for his cigarettes, and shrugged a shoulder. "Okay. I'll let you have your scholarship, just as long as you keep bouncing around like that. What's your name?"
“Is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream?” Poe asked, not expecting recognition but looking proud of himself all the same. He reached for the box of cigarettes when Blake freed them from his pocket, and he tapped one out and held it to his lips and waited for the light. Not only did he not smoke, but he was pretty sure smoking was forbidden anywhere on the Ballet premises. But he thought it was an impressive move, and his eyes glittered with the liberty taken. He was a good judge of people, was Poe (or so he thought), and he suspected the man would be impressed with the action.
The phrase sounded a familiar tone and then clicked a moment later. "What, Edgar or Allen or Poe?" Yes, he had read a book at some point. He lit the cigarette for him before lighting his own, and watched with interest to see if he actually knew what to do with it. Impressed? Maybe not. Amused? Definitely. "I thought dancers weren't supposed to do things like smoke," he said, even as he took a drag himself. "Don't you need those lungs for dancing with?"
Poe, who had intended to hand the cigarette over when lit, took this as an opportunity to think on his feet and stay on his toes - impressively. He wasn’t stupid enough to attempt a drag; he didn’t think a fit of coughing would be very impressive. He was pretty sure that would just make him look young, which really wasn’t what he was going for. So he took the lit cigarette between his fingers, and he watched the tip burn, amber embers without ashing that approached his fingertip. “If you cut off the oxygen it doesn’t burn,” he said, his expression changing into something young and triumphant as he figured out what he was going to say. “Not dancing is like cutting off the oxygen,” he finished, letting the cigarette fall to the ground a moment later and stubbing it out it with one graceful ballet shoe (soon to be ruined by the action, of course).
"You're just full of twists," Blake said, laughing, trying and failing not to find that kind of an earnest need to impress weirdly likable. "You don't have to prove yourself any further you know, I believe you." He carelessly ashed the cigarette. "You didn't tell me which of the names was yours."
“Which looks like me?” Poe asked, a teasing grin and then a girl, the one he had danced with, was sidling up beside him and dropping into an infuriatingly perfect curtsy. Poe’s composure slipped for just a moment as she dipped so low, so impressive, and he almost glared at her. Okay, no, he actually did glare at her. It only lasted a second, the glaring, and he was looking back at Blake with an expression of curiosity. He needed to see how the man reacted to the girl to see what his own move on the chessboard was.
"Allen or Poe. Edgar's too dusty." Blake noted the glare. Interesting. Might as well see what happened if he engaged with the girl, considering he'd already agreed to sponsor him. "Evening. We were just talking about you."
The girl smiled a perfectly practiced ballerina smile, and she stepped close enough to Blake to possibly rumple his clothes even more than they already were. “We can go talk in private,” she offered, young but determined to get what she wanted out of the evening.
Poe, who really wanted to grab her and strangle her, merely watched the scene with his best impression of entertained interest. No tantrum, no desperate attempt to one-up her with offers easily given. Maybe, too, he was a little curious what the man would do. He wasn’t perfectly positive that the man wouldn’t take the scholarship from him and give it to the other girl, but something told him not to act on a whim, even if the man did keep tinting red every few seconds.
Blake smiled at her. It wasn't unkind, actually, but when he went on it was matter of fact. "Sweetheart, I appreciate the offer, but I've already picked someone. Now I will tell you," he said, turning and nodding through the crowd to a man in his late thirties, who was laughing with a few other attendees, "That I haven't seen anybody walk up to him yet, that he runs a shipping company, and that he likes blondes. Curtsy like you did just now, bat your eyelashes, and you'll be good to go. If not, you can call me and bitch me out about it. My name's Blake Thorne," he said, glancing up at Poe, the introduction meant for him as well. "You, though, I do need to talk to. Want to step outside?"
The look Poe gave the girl was smug in a way that only belonged to the very young, and he turned without replying and began weaving through the crowd. He didn’t follow a straight path, weaving here and there around black clad shoulders and white tutus, careful not to move so fast that the older man couldn’t keep up, but not making it entirely easy on him, either. It was a chase, plain and simple, elusive white and pale skin and then the cool darkness of the city beyond as Poe pushed open a door and moved out of immediate sight.
Blake followed after, in no hurry to chase him but tracking him through the crowd with his eyes. He slipped past dancers and rich men and women, not bothering to see if anyone was watching him follow Poe out before going out through the door he'd seen him leave from.
Poe had stepped out of the shadow of the Ballet and crossed the street to the park beyond. It was cold out, but not biting. Still, he wore no shirt, and the gold silken bands draped across his chest did little to keep out the cold. But he figured he looked good sitting on the picnic table, long dancer’s legs crossed and very visible in the dark with all the pallor. He watched, waited, and he attempted to calm the butterflies of maybe-almost success that fluttered like crazy in his stomach. He could almost see himself on the stage already, see the headlines with his name in font that was too bold to be real.
Blake crossed the street with long, quick strides, slowing as he entered the park. He did look good sitting in the cold at the picnic table with no shirt on, and Blake found himself trying to remember exactly how old most of the kids in the company were. He couldn't tell by looking at him. 19, maybe? 20 at the outside.
Blake sat down next to him at the table. His cigarette was half burned away, and he thumbed the end to ash it into the grass. "You're not a big fan of competition," he said, drawing from the cigarette, the end flaring bright in the dark between his lips and then fading again as he exhaled smoke.
“I can outdance her,” Poe replied, which was a good an answer to the statement as any, he thought. His attention was on the cigarette, on the smell of the smoke (which he’d always liked), and he leaned forward enough to breathe it in, cheek close to Blake’s for a second.
Blake's gaze flicked down, then up again. "You don't have to tell me that," he said, voice a touch low. This close he could study delicate cheekbones and light eyes gone deep in the semi-dark of the empty park. "I know it." He caught the flicker of a memory in the low light and the smell of smoke. He took another drag, smoke drifting out his nose. "Have you ever thought of doing anything that wasn't dancing?" It wasn't phrased as a challenge, just a question. "Or has it always been the end all be all?" There was no mistaking Poe's passion, even if it seemed far away and unfamiliar and difficult for him to relate to.
The lowered voice thrilled Poe, sent a shiver through him that was all hormones and things untasted, and he watched the smoke with something like want that he wouldn’t recognize in his own eyes. The question, however, broke him from the siren song, and his ample lips widened into a cocky boy’s smile. He climbed off the picnic table, and he made his way to the basketball court that was only a few feet away, well within sight without Blake moving. Once there, he very carefully lifted onto pointe, which if Blake knew anything about ballet he would know was not a standard thing for a male dancer, and he followed it up with six perfect pirouettes, which indicated more of the same. It was, he felt, a good answer, and his cheeks flushed when he executed properly.
Blake got up, and tossed the spent cigarette down, walking after him, toward the basketball court. There was appreciation in the unhinged set of his mouth, hanging a little open while Poe spun like a top under the lights that kept the court lit in the midst of the darkened park. "If they let you dance like that," he asked, approaching the edge of the court, "Would you?"
“Let me?” Poe asked, and there was a quiet sort of defiance there, a certainty, something young yet that hadn’t been denied anything. In that question and expression it was painfully clear that life hadn’t beaten him down yet. “Why me?” he asked, still lit by the light as Blake stood in shadow.
Blake flashed him a smile. He would be very surprised to hear that Poe had ever been kept from what he wanted. He couldn't shake the feeling that he had something to him that wasn't spoiled just yet. Poe looked like something out of joint with reality in his gold bows, standing in the middle of an abandoned basketball court at night. "I liked you best," he said, which could be taken any number of ways. "And you were the best."
Poe stood there a moment longer, basking in the lights of the courts and the approbation, and then he walked toward Blake with the grace that came of long years of lessons and training. “Why do you watch?” he asked when he got close, meaning the ballet. “You look like you just rolled out of bed,” he added, all dirty innocence and a boy’s entertainment at saying something that could possibly construed as lascivious.
"Look like?" Blake asked, and his smirk strongly suggested that he very well might have. "I watch because I like to. If I'm going to sponsor you, you'll find out pretty quickly that I've got a kind of a reputation. I do things because I like to do them, and I don't really care who takes pictures or who sees me at them. That goes for ballet, same as the things that make more interesting headlines."
“If?” Poe asked, a touch of uncertainty seeping into the word before he managed to catch it. “I thought you had already decided,” he reminded Blake, and then he gave him a genuinely curious look, something young and not fabricated in the slightest. “What kind of reputation?”
"Figure of speech," Blake reassured, smiling. "I have decided. Don't panic." He tipped his head down a touch, bemused. "A pretty fucking bad one. Don't believe everything you read, but some of it's actually true."
If anything that made Poe more interested, visibly so, and he moved closer, almost crowding. “Like what?” he asked.
“Oh...Christ,” Blake said, and laughed. His clothes smelled like him and smoke, nothing else, no cologne.“Where do you even start with that one? Gambling, drinking, smoking, fucking people the tabloids think I shouldn’t whenever and where ever I want. People don’t like it when you enjoy yourself. Makes them upset they’re not doing the same.”
For Poe, who had led a completely shielded life, Blake’s language alone was something new. The claims were even more titillating, and he seemed to forget his grace for a moment as he tipped his head up and asked, very curiously. “You really have sex with anyone you want? Like, whenever you want?”
Blake laughed, and it was edged with something that, for once, he did try to hold back. Poe was too innocent, too naive, too bright-eyed and chaste, and it didn’t come across as an act. Putting someone like that in front of him was a dangerous thing. “Whenever and whoever. Whatever flavor I’m interested in right then.” He took him briefly by the chin with long fingers, studying his face, keeping it tipped up into the light like that for a moment before letting go. “Do they not like that sort of thing at the company?”
The concept of flavors, Poe thought, was worth pursuing more information on. And he would have said as much, but then there were fingers on his jaw and, no, that wasn’t a normal, daily thing. He refused to blush, and so he did blush, but luckily he didn’t realize it. “They don’t like that sort of thing in charity orphanages in Boston,” he said, interest making him honest. “It doesn’t mean I don’t like that sort of thing,” he clarified, and he thought he sounded calm and smooth, when in fact he sounded a little too eager.
Blake's expression changed a little, softening a touch at the mention of the orphanage before sharpening again. "This scholarship I'm paying for, where does it pay for you to live?" It might have seemed like a non-sequitir. It wasn't, not by a long shot.
“They figure that out,” Poe said, because they did, and he had no idea how, really. They didn’t really tell the scholarship hopefuls very much coming in, because they might not make it to the end of the process. “But it’d be nice to have my own apartment,” he said, because that would be really grown up, and he was just now realizing how nice privacy might be - which might have been completely the fault of the rumpled man in front of him and all the taboo things he was mentioning.
"Then tell them I want you to, and I'll pay for you to stay where ever you want," Blake said, with the decisive air of someone who didn't let himself be turned down and who had the money to back it up. "And if they tell you no, I'll give you the money myself." That was that, as far as he was concerned. He was making a true, honest effort not to let his mind wander overmuch about what having a boy like Poe in an apartment on his own might mean.
Poe looked a little proud of himself (something he couldn’t hide, even if he tried). “Because you think I’m that good?” he asked, and there was a hint of something in his eyes that was very knowing, even if he didn’t understand it, which was also abundant. It was short lived, however, because he was imaging parties where people didn’t wear a lot of clothing and where alcohol was served in champagne flutes.
"Yes," Blake said, smile coming unbidden, and, all ulterior motives aside, it was true. "I thought you were the best, or we wouldn't be standing here." He nodded his head back toward the gathering. "You have to be freezing. Come on."
Poe didn’t argue. It was cold, but he was so high on his own accomplishments and the things he was thinking he would be able to do in his own apartment that he really didn’t even care very much. But, still, he didn’t argue. He turned toward the Ballet, moving ahead of Blake and containing himself to only one or two skips in his step before pushing open the door and going back inside.
Once inside, one of the Ballet directors was waiting for Blake - a piranha ready to seal the deal, and Poe threw Blake a look over his shoulder before disappearing into the crowd. He would dance! And he would be so good that his father would be proud of him and acknowledge him! Poe was sure of it.