Ficlet: Entrechat Cinquante: kiss
Feb. 3rd, 2009 09:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
splixTitle: Entrechat Cinquante
Pairing: VigBean
Rating: G to NC-17
Author: Alex
Warning: AU
Written for the![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
seans_50 challenge.
Beta: the most excellent![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kimberlite.
Disclaimer: Utterly untrue.
Prompt: Kiss.
*
With two days to go before Swan Lake premiered, the tech and dress rehearsals were an unholy mess. MBT was using canned music because the musicians’ local was negotiating for a new contract with retroactive pay, and threatening to strike unless Brill signed. The stagehands spent most of the first tech rehearsal drinking beer and playing cards in the pit, moving and setting up equipment grudgingly and only when the foreman shouted. Marc, the substitute Von Rothbart, had sprained his knee. The programs, which would have finalized Siegfried’s casting, were held up at the printer’s, awaiting Brill’s decision. Half the swan maidens’ costumes had gone mysteriously missing, and all the dressers were accusing each other for the loss and threatening to quit. The dancers picked up on the tension and misery and danced badly, driving the usually serene Jens to shout at them in anger and encroaching despair.
Sean watched it all without comment. He felt as if he’d been enclosed inside a glass bubble – everything was distorted, muted, set apart from reality. He warmed up, rehearsed, submitted to costume fittings, ate, slept. He managed to chat with his fellow dancers, but their concern for him skimmed off the bubble’s surface and disappeared. He told himself that he no longer cared who Brill cast as Siegfried, but avoided Viggo as if he had a communicable disease. The brief moments of warmth they’d shared dissolved into fierce absorption as they both tried to please a director who never attended more than five rehearsals. Even Constance had stopped her usual grandstanding and regarded both new principals with an apprehensive eye and uncharacteristic quiet.
“Swan maidens onstage, please!” Jens shouted, clapping his hands. His voice was raw. “One last run-through of the finale. Viggo, you first, if you please.” He drummed his fingers on a prop rock as the swan maidens, half in costume, half in practice clothes, filed onstage. “Jesus God, people, I haven’t got all fucking day! Move!”
A voice boomed over the PA from the rear of the theater. “Kill three, up six, change the gel on twenty-two. Somewhere there’s a dimmer fading, goddammit.”
Warmed up and dressed in sweatshirt, gym shorts, and plastic leg warmers over his tights and leotard – his costume was undergoing some last-minute renovation – Sean nodded coolly to Viggo who, in his own Siegfried costume, swiveled his toes in the rosin box, nodded back, and stepped out of the wings.
Whispers rustled through the house, and even the stage manager stopped yelling at the lighting designer to glance at the stage. Viggo looked fantastic. He had a trick of making people stop to stare at him. It wasn’t a quality Sean was sure he had except when he was flinging himself across a stage.
Sean peered around the wing leg, searching past the half-dimmed footlights for a glimpse of Christopher Brill. He was nowhere to be seen. The only people sitting in the seats were a smattering of rich balletomanes mad enough to pay five thousand dollars a year for the privilege of watching rehearsals. Kit had dreamed up the notion, and Brill made no secret of the fact that he thought it was cheap and vulgar. But it was an extra eighty to ninety thousand a year, and no one, not even Brill, was going to turn down that much money.
“Where’s Alphonse?” Jens asked Linda.
Linda shook her head. “I haven’t seen him since we broke for lunch.”
“Very well, we must begin without him. Viggo, Linda, let’s have you over here. From the entre’acte, please.”
The corps took their places, and the music filtered from the speakers. Slowly, the girls moved into formation, snakelike, then clustering together, then spreading across the stage with tiny nibbling steps and arms floating up and gliding down with the softness of feathers borne on a breeze. Twenty-eight girls had unified into the majestic wingspan of a great swan. Sean saw Jens’ face relax into lines of contentment, and he smiled. It was possible, even in this chaos, for something to go right.
“Coming!” A body hurtled past Sean, pushing him off-balance. Sean swung around, irritated, and saw Alphonse in his gorgeous bronze costume, but without its huge feathered cloak. A blast of gin-scented breath assaulted Sean’s nostrils as Alphonse grabbed Sean’s arm and apologized. “Sorry. Sorry, darling,” he slurred.
“Alphonse –“ Sean grasped Alphonse’s arms and hauled his swaying body upright. “Jesus, Alphonse, steady on!” He winced at Alphonse’s face; it was slack, grotesque in its poorly applied makeup. “What’s wrong?” Stupid question; he’s three sheets to the wind and tilting, that’s what’s wrong.
“Nothing. Not a little teeny thing.”
“Then why are you drunk, you stupid arse?” Sean hissed, suddenly aware that the music had stopped and that Jens was stalking toward them. “Fuck’s sake, you’re ice cold. You haven’t even warmed up –"
“That’ll do, Sean,” Jens said. “Alphonse. Alphonse, look at me, please. Goddammit, you're bloody soused. Again.”
Alphonse rounded on Jens, clutching Sean’s arm. “Lighten up, why don’t you, asshole?” He took a swing at Jens and missed.
Jens didn’t step back, nor so much as blink. “Christopher told you what would happen the next time you missed a rehearsal to get high.”
“I’m not high,” Alphonse replied with tipsy dignity. “I’m just a little drunk.”
Jens reached out and touched his fingertips to Alphonse’s sweating forehead. “You’re cold. And your pupils are completely dilated. You can’t dance like that.”
“Give me an hour. I’ll be fine.”
“No.” The voice came from the house. Christopher Brill was coming up the right center aisle. He trotted up the ramp and came face to face with Alphonse. “Jens is right. I told you to stay sober.”
Alphonse tilted his head to one side. “Give me a fucking break, Chris.” He tried to smile; foundation and powder crumbled. Brill shook his head slowly, implacably, and crossed his arms, and in that moment Sean intercepted a look between them, an intimacy beyond dancer and director. “Chris?”
“Get out.” Brill’s voice was quiet and even. “I’m so tired of this. Get out and don’t come back.”
Alphonse shook Sean’s hand off his arm and managed to hold himself upright and still. Tears coursed down his cheeks. “Chris, please....”
Sean looked at his feet, feeling all his muscles tensing. He wanted to sink into the floor and disappear.
“Fine.” Alphonse’s voice trembled. “Fine. Fuck you.” He wheeled and marched away, shoving viciously at Tom and Danny, who tried to console him. “Fuck off!”
“Jens, get Marc.” Brill sighed and rubbed at his eyes. He moved toward the center of the stage.
“Christopher,” Jens faltered, “Marc’s sprained his knee.”
Brill turned white and didn’t speak for a moment. “Why didn’t you tell me that earlier?”
“You were in the meeting with the union rep –“
“Maybe if you’d come to rehearsal now and again,” Sean spat, then snapped his mouth shut. Fucking hell. Good one, Sean.
The entire theater went dead quiet. The corps girls, Linda, and Viggo looked wide-eyed from Sean to Brill. Slowly, Brill walked toward Sean. “Maybe you can teach me to be in five places at once. Or perhaps run the company, while you're at it. Can you do that?”
Sean swallowed and straightened his back instinctively. He had just screwed himself, no doubt about it. The balletomanes in the audience would chew on this for years: one principal fired for boozing and drugging, another screwing himself to the wall. Never mind getting Siegfried now – he’d probably be on the bloody dole by next week. He towered over Brill, but the director was still utterly intimidating. Well, in for a penny, in for a pound. “I think you –“
“Mr. Brill.”
Brill turned to Viggo, who had glided toward them silently.
“I can do Von Rothbart.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I danced it in Copenhagen. I know the choreography. I could do it with my eyes closed. Well, maybe not closed, but you know –“ Viggo shrugged. “Unless you have someone else lined up.” His eyes met Sean’s for a split second.
Stillness hung over the entire theater, massive, leaden, and endless. Brill clasped his hands together and closed his eyes. Then he looked from Sean to Viggo, his gaze opaque and unreadable. At last he nodded. “Very well. Find Priscilla and tell her to have the costume refitted. Go on, hurry. We’ll have to do an entire run-through today, now.”
Viggo gave Sean another glance, then he darted into the wings.
Brill turned back to Sean. “Was there something else you wanted to say to me?”
Sean calculated for an instant, then took a chance. “Not now, I suppose.”
To Sean’s surprise, Brill’s mouth twisted in wry amusement. “Very prudent of you. Kit!” he shouted. “Call the printers. Give them the set cast list and tell them to go ahead.” He started off into the wings without another word.
“Mr. Brill!”
Brill pivoted on his heel. “Yes, Sean?”
“What if Alphonse hadn’t been –“ He almost said fucked up. “What if he hadn’t been drunk?”
The ghost of a smile drifted across Brill’s face. “Speculation enlivens one’s idle moments, Sean.” He turned and disappeared into the gloom.
Murmuring ebbed and flowed through the house. Jens moved back onstage, clapping his hands. “Places for Scene One, everybody! Come on, we’ve got no time to lose!”
As Sean shed his leg warmers and sweatshirt, he heard movement in the pit. Curious, he peered out. Musicians filtered in, one by one. A light clicked on, then another, then another. Gradually, the theater resounded with the gloriously discordant, anticipatory noise of warming up: twanging, plucking strings, sliding scales and arpeggios. The conductor tapped his baton on the podium, and silence fell.
The bubble around Sean slowly dissolved as harp and woodwinds filled the air, joined by the full orchestra singing with all its huge heart. It was beautiful enough to make him believe in miracles.
There was a touch on his arm. Viggo, still in his Siegfried costume. “Sean.”
Sean couldn’t speak for a moment for the lump in his throat. “Viggo –“
“He wouldn’t have picked me, you know.”
“Why do you say that?”
Viggo laughed a little. “It’s so obvious. I just made it easier for him.” His smile tilted. “I have my pride, too.”
“You’re daft. You were brilliant out there.”
“Well, who knows. Maybe we’ll compete again one day.” Viggo darted forward and planted a quick, soft kiss on Sean’s cheek. “Merde, Sean.”
Before Sean could answer, Viggo was gone.
*
The very beautiful and familiar theme to Swan Lake can be found here
picture bygovi20
My table is here
Pairing: VigBean
Rating: G to NC-17
Author: Alex
Warning: AU
Written for the
seans_50 challenge.Beta: the most excellent
kimberlite.Disclaimer: Utterly untrue.
Prompt: Kiss.
*
With two days to go before Swan Lake premiered, the tech and dress rehearsals were an unholy mess. MBT was using canned music because the musicians’ local was negotiating for a new contract with retroactive pay, and threatening to strike unless Brill signed. The stagehands spent most of the first tech rehearsal drinking beer and playing cards in the pit, moving and setting up equipment grudgingly and only when the foreman shouted. Marc, the substitute Von Rothbart, had sprained his knee. The programs, which would have finalized Siegfried’s casting, were held up at the printer’s, awaiting Brill’s decision. Half the swan maidens’ costumes had gone mysteriously missing, and all the dressers were accusing each other for the loss and threatening to quit. The dancers picked up on the tension and misery and danced badly, driving the usually serene Jens to shout at them in anger and encroaching despair.
Sean watched it all without comment. He felt as if he’d been enclosed inside a glass bubble – everything was distorted, muted, set apart from reality. He warmed up, rehearsed, submitted to costume fittings, ate, slept. He managed to chat with his fellow dancers, but their concern for him skimmed off the bubble’s surface and disappeared. He told himself that he no longer cared who Brill cast as Siegfried, but avoided Viggo as if he had a communicable disease. The brief moments of warmth they’d shared dissolved into fierce absorption as they both tried to please a director who never attended more than five rehearsals. Even Constance had stopped her usual grandstanding and regarded both new principals with an apprehensive eye and uncharacteristic quiet.
“Swan maidens onstage, please!” Jens shouted, clapping his hands. His voice was raw. “One last run-through of the finale. Viggo, you first, if you please.” He drummed his fingers on a prop rock as the swan maidens, half in costume, half in practice clothes, filed onstage. “Jesus God, people, I haven’t got all fucking day! Move!”
A voice boomed over the PA from the rear of the theater. “Kill three, up six, change the gel on twenty-two. Somewhere there’s a dimmer fading, goddammit.”
Warmed up and dressed in sweatshirt, gym shorts, and plastic leg warmers over his tights and leotard – his costume was undergoing some last-minute renovation – Sean nodded coolly to Viggo who, in his own Siegfried costume, swiveled his toes in the rosin box, nodded back, and stepped out of the wings.
Whispers rustled through the house, and even the stage manager stopped yelling at the lighting designer to glance at the stage. Viggo looked fantastic. He had a trick of making people stop to stare at him. It wasn’t a quality Sean was sure he had except when he was flinging himself across a stage.
Sean peered around the wing leg, searching past the half-dimmed footlights for a glimpse of Christopher Brill. He was nowhere to be seen. The only people sitting in the seats were a smattering of rich balletomanes mad enough to pay five thousand dollars a year for the privilege of watching rehearsals. Kit had dreamed up the notion, and Brill made no secret of the fact that he thought it was cheap and vulgar. But it was an extra eighty to ninety thousand a year, and no one, not even Brill, was going to turn down that much money.
“Where’s Alphonse?” Jens asked Linda.
Linda shook her head. “I haven’t seen him since we broke for lunch.”
“Very well, we must begin without him. Viggo, Linda, let’s have you over here. From the entre’acte, please.”
The corps took their places, and the music filtered from the speakers. Slowly, the girls moved into formation, snakelike, then clustering together, then spreading across the stage with tiny nibbling steps and arms floating up and gliding down with the softness of feathers borne on a breeze. Twenty-eight girls had unified into the majestic wingspan of a great swan. Sean saw Jens’ face relax into lines of contentment, and he smiled. It was possible, even in this chaos, for something to go right.
“Coming!” A body hurtled past Sean, pushing him off-balance. Sean swung around, irritated, and saw Alphonse in his gorgeous bronze costume, but without its huge feathered cloak. A blast of gin-scented breath assaulted Sean’s nostrils as Alphonse grabbed Sean’s arm and apologized. “Sorry. Sorry, darling,” he slurred.
“Alphonse –“ Sean grasped Alphonse’s arms and hauled his swaying body upright. “Jesus, Alphonse, steady on!” He winced at Alphonse’s face; it was slack, grotesque in its poorly applied makeup. “What’s wrong?” Stupid question; he’s three sheets to the wind and tilting, that’s what’s wrong.
“Nothing. Not a little teeny thing.”
“Then why are you drunk, you stupid arse?” Sean hissed, suddenly aware that the music had stopped and that Jens was stalking toward them. “Fuck’s sake, you’re ice cold. You haven’t even warmed up –"
“That’ll do, Sean,” Jens said. “Alphonse. Alphonse, look at me, please. Goddammit, you're bloody soused. Again.”
Alphonse rounded on Jens, clutching Sean’s arm. “Lighten up, why don’t you, asshole?” He took a swing at Jens and missed.
Jens didn’t step back, nor so much as blink. “Christopher told you what would happen the next time you missed a rehearsal to get high.”
“I’m not high,” Alphonse replied with tipsy dignity. “I’m just a little drunk.”
Jens reached out and touched his fingertips to Alphonse’s sweating forehead. “You’re cold. And your pupils are completely dilated. You can’t dance like that.”
“Give me an hour. I’ll be fine.”
“No.” The voice came from the house. Christopher Brill was coming up the right center aisle. He trotted up the ramp and came face to face with Alphonse. “Jens is right. I told you to stay sober.”
Alphonse tilted his head to one side. “Give me a fucking break, Chris.” He tried to smile; foundation and powder crumbled. Brill shook his head slowly, implacably, and crossed his arms, and in that moment Sean intercepted a look between them, an intimacy beyond dancer and director. “Chris?”
“Get out.” Brill’s voice was quiet and even. “I’m so tired of this. Get out and don’t come back.”
Alphonse shook Sean’s hand off his arm and managed to hold himself upright and still. Tears coursed down his cheeks. “Chris, please....”
Sean looked at his feet, feeling all his muscles tensing. He wanted to sink into the floor and disappear.
“Fine.” Alphonse’s voice trembled. “Fine. Fuck you.” He wheeled and marched away, shoving viciously at Tom and Danny, who tried to console him. “Fuck off!”
“Jens, get Marc.” Brill sighed and rubbed at his eyes. He moved toward the center of the stage.
“Christopher,” Jens faltered, “Marc’s sprained his knee.”
Brill turned white and didn’t speak for a moment. “Why didn’t you tell me that earlier?”
“You were in the meeting with the union rep –“
“Maybe if you’d come to rehearsal now and again,” Sean spat, then snapped his mouth shut. Fucking hell. Good one, Sean.
The entire theater went dead quiet. The corps girls, Linda, and Viggo looked wide-eyed from Sean to Brill. Slowly, Brill walked toward Sean. “Maybe you can teach me to be in five places at once. Or perhaps run the company, while you're at it. Can you do that?”
Sean swallowed and straightened his back instinctively. He had just screwed himself, no doubt about it. The balletomanes in the audience would chew on this for years: one principal fired for boozing and drugging, another screwing himself to the wall. Never mind getting Siegfried now – he’d probably be on the bloody dole by next week. He towered over Brill, but the director was still utterly intimidating. Well, in for a penny, in for a pound. “I think you –“
“Mr. Brill.”
Brill turned to Viggo, who had glided toward them silently.
“I can do Von Rothbart.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I danced it in Copenhagen. I know the choreography. I could do it with my eyes closed. Well, maybe not closed, but you know –“ Viggo shrugged. “Unless you have someone else lined up.” His eyes met Sean’s for a split second.
Stillness hung over the entire theater, massive, leaden, and endless. Brill clasped his hands together and closed his eyes. Then he looked from Sean to Viggo, his gaze opaque and unreadable. At last he nodded. “Very well. Find Priscilla and tell her to have the costume refitted. Go on, hurry. We’ll have to do an entire run-through today, now.”
Viggo gave Sean another glance, then he darted into the wings.
Brill turned back to Sean. “Was there something else you wanted to say to me?”
Sean calculated for an instant, then took a chance. “Not now, I suppose.”
To Sean’s surprise, Brill’s mouth twisted in wry amusement. “Very prudent of you. Kit!” he shouted. “Call the printers. Give them the set cast list and tell them to go ahead.” He started off into the wings without another word.
“Mr. Brill!”
Brill pivoted on his heel. “Yes, Sean?”
“What if Alphonse hadn’t been –“ He almost said fucked up. “What if he hadn’t been drunk?”
The ghost of a smile drifted across Brill’s face. “Speculation enlivens one’s idle moments, Sean.” He turned and disappeared into the gloom.
Murmuring ebbed and flowed through the house. Jens moved back onstage, clapping his hands. “Places for Scene One, everybody! Come on, we’ve got no time to lose!”
As Sean shed his leg warmers and sweatshirt, he heard movement in the pit. Curious, he peered out. Musicians filtered in, one by one. A light clicked on, then another, then another. Gradually, the theater resounded with the gloriously discordant, anticipatory noise of warming up: twanging, plucking strings, sliding scales and arpeggios. The conductor tapped his baton on the podium, and silence fell.
The bubble around Sean slowly dissolved as harp and woodwinds filled the air, joined by the full orchestra singing with all its huge heart. It was beautiful enough to make him believe in miracles.
There was a touch on his arm. Viggo, still in his Siegfried costume. “Sean.”
Sean couldn’t speak for a moment for the lump in his throat. “Viggo –“
“He wouldn’t have picked me, you know.”
“Why do you say that?”
Viggo laughed a little. “It’s so obvious. I just made it easier for him.” His smile tilted. “I have my pride, too.”
“You’re daft. You were brilliant out there.”
“Well, who knows. Maybe we’ll compete again one day.” Viggo darted forward and planted a quick, soft kiss on Sean’s cheek. “Merde, Sean.”
Before Sean could answer, Viggo was gone.
*
The very beautiful and familiar theme to Swan Lake can be found here
picture by
govi20My table is here
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-02-04 11:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-04 05:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-04 11:30 am (UTC)[Had a quick look at Von Rothbart on You Tube, oh yes can see Viggo who has that air of slight dark, danegr about him dancing that role. Have had the pleaure of watching some incredible dancing from very different dancers although personally was enthralled by Marcelo Gomes.]
no subject
Date: 2009-02-04 06:03 pm (UTC)I'll never tell! ;D I'm glad you enjoyed [that might not be the right word!] the backstage tension, and the kiss. :)
I think Viggo would make a delicious Von Rothbart. I found an absolutely gorgeous Swan Lake piece on You Tube that I will post in the next section. It's not how I picture Viggo looking, but the dancing and staging is amazing.
Marcelo Gomes is beautiful! His Von Rothbart is seductive and so powerful. :)
Thank you so much for commenting!
no subject
Date: 2009-02-04 08:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-04 09:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-04 08:51 pm (UTC)I do hope so!!! Competition between these two beautiful boys is certainly exciting !
Another amazing chapter, honey! Wonderfully written!
no subject
Date: 2009-02-04 09:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-05 06:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-05 03:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-06 06:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-06 03:56 pm (UTC)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ER-FFbmoIaY
I'm glad you liked the wee kiss, also. A little moment of sweetness.
Thank you for the gorgeous feedback! :D
no subject
Date: 2009-08-28 02:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-28 04:39 am (UTC)Thank you again! You're really steaming along! :)