“It’s more tragic if you think she does have a soul.” Travis, bless him, was smarter than he acted. “It’s like
Blade Runner
or something.”
“Very good, Travis.” Rafael didn’t sound surprised, so Chico tried not to goggle.
“But the inventor isn’t cruel,” Amy argued in a quiet, timid voice. “He wouldn’t build something just so it could suffer.”
“This is exactly what I’ve been trying to tell you.” Rafael was so pleased, Chico could practically see the glow around him. “You need to think about this as more than a dancing doll. Is she a thing? A shallow reflection of the king’s glory? Is she monstrous? Or could the inventor not help himself, and refused to make another empty doll? The story doesn’t tell us. But whatever she is, she isn’t nothing. She has choice if you want her to. She’s what saves the dancer in the end.”
“Not the inventor, though. Nobody saves him.” Travis was full of insight today. It had to be the presence of his crush.
“In this version anyway,” Rafael agreed. “And one more thing for you to think about before I see you tomorrow. In any other story, the inventor would have fallen in love with the doll. In another story, the usual story, loving the creation would be shown as romantic. In this story, it’s not. It’s a perversion of the love the king could have felt for the real dancer, and it’s clearly meant to be contrasted with the selfless love of the inventor, who tries to free the dancer without expecting to win her for himself.”
Chico sighed to himself, then focused quickly on his work when the three of them turned to him. As if that signaled the end of their work for the night, Amy and Travis went to gather their stuff and change their shoes. They slipped out the door leading to the rest of the school with nods and winks at Chico, and they closed the door behind them.
Dancers were not all that shy, Chico was learning. Not when their teacher had a bite mark at his jaw, and Chico had a hickey on his throat.
He coughed when they were alone. Partly to get Rafael’s attention and partly because his mouth went dry when Rafael bent over to stretch. Dear God, he was flexible. If Chico were the type to top, he’d be all over that. He still would, actually.
“So,” he began in a raspy voice. “You need to tell me the real story.” Their talk could wait. He wanted to know this first.
“Real story?” Rafael straightened and frowned, then seemed to understand Chico was referring to the ballet. “Ah. You mean the short story it’s based on? I thought you would have looked it up by now.”
“I’ve been busy,” Chico pointed out, flustered when Rafael came over to him and sat at his side on the bench. He peered down at the embroidery under Chico’s hands, his chin on Chico’s shoulder. He often stared over Chico’s shoulder at his work, usually without actually touching Chico and never after they’d jacked each other off.
Chico angled his chin up and felt a butterfly of a kiss on the side of his neck. He shivered. “The story.” And then they were supposed to talk. He had to remember that.
Rafael slid his arms around Chico’s waist and settled against his side without offering any more distracting kisses. “There’s a theory it was a lost fairy tale by Wilde, but no way. Not a proto-steampunk story with a crippled protagonist. But the reason people think that is also the biggest difference between the story and the ballet—the dancer is male in the original story.”
Chico made a surprised, confused, delighted sound, and Rafael curled his arms tighter around him as he went on. “The king is much creepier in the original. The inventor is sort of quietly defiant and crafty, and it’s fairly obvious in that version that the dancer and inventor are falling in love with each other. For the clockwork dancer, it goes about the same. Oh, and it has a happier ending. I should mention that.”
“I want the happy ending.” Chico decided without even hearing it first.
“It’s slightly more complicated and involves revealing that the inventor has broken the clock in the tower so it can’t ring twelve. Then he and the dancer escape while the king is presumably off fucking a robot.”
Chico snorted with immature amusement. “Okay. I see why that was cut from the ballet. But… how do you know the dancer loves the inventor back in the original version?” In the pieces from the ballet he’d seen, there were scenes between the dancer and the inventor, but she was never near him. Rafael had told his students that most versions have her doing this to protect the inventor from the king’s jealous wrath.
He got another light, pleased kiss from Rafael before Rafael explained. “The story is written like a fairy tale, so it basically says it. The inventor was kind and thoughtful, and he cared for the dancer and studied him enough to make a doll that moved and looked exactly like him. But he could always tell the difference between the dancer and the finest of his creations. His eyes were on the real dancer. And the dancer noticed because his eyes were on the inventor. The dancer even warns him, in the story, that the inventor needs to hide what he is feeling, or the king will know.”
“Aw, he cares.” Chico wished he was being glib, but his voice was thick with emotion as he imagined it. “That’s a good story. Because the inventor doesn’t care if the king knows, as long as he frees the dancer. Wait, that’s horrible. He knew he was going to die.” Chico blinked his wet eyes several times.
“Several male ballet troupes have performed it,” Rafael whispered into his ear. “You should see a performance.”
Chico disgraced himself with a sniffle. “I’ll weep everywhere.” He turned toward Rafael with tears in his eyelashes. “It’s so epic and unattainable. The love of someone like that for someone so beautiful.”
Rafael leaned away to study Chico, surprise and uncertainty and then pleasure in his expression. He came back in to curve his body around him. After a moment he stroked Chico’s side, offering comfort. “The dancer is certainly beautiful. But the inventor doesn’t love him for his face. He loves him because he sees past that. And the dancer loves him for the same reason. For someone in the dancer’s position, letting anyone truly know him is dangerous. He’s hidden away those unwanted parts of himself to survive. But he grows to trust the inventor as more than someone who makes clever things. The inventor is someone who has also disguised himself. He’s a smart man literally held back by his time and place. Their pas de deux as they learn each other is breathtaking.”
“Pas de deux,” Chico repeated and gave a small, somewhat watery laugh. “Another dance thing. I thought I knew what that meant, but now I think I’ll have to learn all these terms.”
“If you took more of my classes, you’d know them.” Rafael was cuddling close, and instead of being bothered, Chico was leaning back to let him.
Nonetheless, he stiffened at the teasing remark, which was as close to talking about their future as they’d come yet.
“I can’t afford it,” he finally answered.
Rafael hummed and took one of Chico’s hands from the needlework he’d forgotten about. He cradled it in his hand and slowly extended their arms. “They start out at different sides of the stage. The dancer, naturally, dancing as the king has ordered, the inventor keeping his distance. Then, slowly, it becomes something else.” He turned his hand without letting Chico’s fall, and curled his arm in so that both of their hands were against Chico’s heart. “Her dancing slows to allow him to catch up with her. She darts away when he gets close and cautiously follows after him when he’s too far away from her. Finally, she reaches for him, a full body extension, lightly balanced on one toe, so afraid and careful that a strong breath might knock her over. Instead, he takes her hand. The last thing he’s going to do is let her fall.” Rafael extended their arms again, and this time Chico thought that if he were a dancer, he’d get up to accept the invitation to dance.
“She begins to show him how to dance, for the doll, I’m sure, if anyone asked. But it’s a fairy tale, so no one does. And she leads. It’s very unusual. He lifts her and demonstrates the strength of the male dancer’s body, but it’s entirely a dance about her offering herself, pieces at a time, and him following after her, protecting her.”
“It’s intimate,” Chico murmured, his chest tight.
“Yes, it is.” Rafael all but purred into his ear. “But we toned it down as much as we could stand to, for the sake of the parents in the audience and the age and abilities of our dancers.”
“I’m the girl again, I see,” Chico pointed out breathlessly. He paused and gave a small shake of his head. “No, I’m not even in this story. You’re the dancer, of the two of us.”
“Am I?” Rafael wondered, breath so hot Chico shivered.
The bang of the french doors shocked Chico into flinching. He dropped his arm, and after a second, Rafael did the same.
Jase fought with the stubborn french doors for a bit longer as he closed them, then stopped dead when he saw the two of them. He had a prop in one hand—the giant key the king uses to wind up the clockwork dancer.
He let it fall to his side as if completely thrown by the sight of Rafael curled around Chico. Then he continued forward, holding the key out for inspection.
“Private lessons now?” he asked in a joking tone. Chico frowned and stared down at his embroidery. He’d let himself forget about Jase. He’d assumed things he shouldn’t have, instead of talking things out like he knew he should.
He thought—hoped, from what Rafael had said before—that Rafael might be willing to try with him. The waltzing and the sex had tricked him into thinking Chico could try too, that he truly was the kind of brave person who took dancing lessons and moved away from his friends and family to start a new life.
He studied his embroidery thread in all the different shades of pink he’d chosen for the clockwork dancer. No one was even going to see any of this detail from the audience. Chico had been wasting his time on things that didn’t matter.
Rafael pulled away when Chico tensed, and continued to watch Chico as he got to his feet. He accepted the prop from Jase, and they spent a few moments discussing something about the sets or the high school auditorium where the performance would take place. The next rehearsals would all be there to allow the dancers to practice on the actual stage.
After the ballet, Chico would have no reason to hang out with Rafael unless he asked for one. That left Chico only a few days to decide what he ought to do.
“How about it, Chico?” Rafael interrupted Chico’s panicky thoughts, and Chico jerked his head up. He glanced between Rafael and Jase in total confusion.
“You’re going to be there on the big night, right?” Jase still had that smile on his face, as if he thought everything was funny, or maybe that everything about Chico was funny.
“Someone has to be there to deal with accidental rips and tears,” Rafael pointed out, frowning slightly. Maybe he could tell that Chico hadn’t realized he was invited backstage the night of the performance. “Someone other than my mother,” Rafael added, after a beat. “The costumer is always there… unless you’d prefer to sit with the audience?”
Hesitation like that from Rafael made Chico pause too. “No, I can… be backstage, if you’d like me to be.”
A cinnamon-coffee smile warmed him to his toes.
Then he glanced at Jase, who was observing all of this, and returned to poking at his embroidery. Jase had no problem asking Rafael out. If Chico wanted this, he should do the same and stop worrying about how he might mess it up. The night of the performance might be a good time to try. Rafael might be in a good mood, might feel exuberant and generous and say yes to anything.
Chico already knew he wanted to sleep with Rafael. He could feel his skin grow hot if he let himself contemplate it. He ached for it, however it would be. Different from John, and that was fine, good, great, because it would be Rafael.
He also knew that he wanted more than that. He liked sitting with Rafael, and hanging out with him made him smile more and feel better than he had in years.
But his heart beat faster and his hands started to shake when he imagined asking for that.
Stupid Chico
, he scolded himself. Rafael had said he would wait. Chico only had to tell him what he wanted.
“What are you sewing?” Jase kept trying to bring Chico into the conversation.
Chico frowned without raising his head. “Embroidering.” He corrected Jase, hoping that would be enough. Judging from the expectant silence, it wasn’t. He swallowed to wet his throat. “This is for the clockwork dancer. She is, well, she will be dressed as a reflection of the king. She’s there to please him, and nothing pleases him more than himself. Or—” He reconsidered his quiet words. “—how he views himself anyway, as this great figure. So she has the puffs at her shoulders, smaller than a leg-of-mutton sleeve and more like what you see on a Degas dancer, but hers are there to resemble his epaulets. Then, across her… décolletage, she will have embroidery to both highlight her figure and to match the medals all over his chest.
“She’s there to make him look good, not to be her own person, and I want it to show,” he finished. “It’s why he chooses her over the real dancer. She can’t think and feel for herself.”
Only after the words had spilled out of him did he think about what he was saying, and how he was saying it.
“Like I am any sort of expert on ballet,” he added as an afterthought, glancing up at both of them, but stopping with his gaze on Rafael. “I don’t know what I’m talking about. No one is even going to notice these details. I’m being an idiot. I’ll stop.”
“No, no.” Rafael turned toward him with an interested look. “Go on.”
Chico had seen that expression on Rafael’s face before. He darted a look to Jase, then dropped his gaze. “It’s just an idea. Or I could have left her in the garish costume someone originally chose for her.”
“Don’t blame me for that one,” Rafael protested. “I like to think I have better taste than that.”
For some time after that, no one spoke. Chico, for one, couldn’t think of what to say with Jase there. Rafael muttered under his breath, and Chico looked up at him.
“It’s way after closing time. I’ve got to go make sure the place is empty and lock up the front. I’ll be right back.” He offered Chico a quick grin. “We can talk then, okay?”