FIC: most nights.

[surquelpied]

Just like in Paris, at Benjamin’s company they have rituals, some similar, some very different from what he’s used to and it’s a steep learning curve, absorbing them all by osmosis, the first year he’s there.

The cast of the night meet on the middle of the stage before a performance, standing shoulder by shoulder to let themselves be reminded that they rely on everyone, from newest corps member to most senior principal, to carry the whole thing home. Before coming to Luxembourg, Claude had heard of similar rituals in other companies, but they never did it at the Opéra. It was too big a house, too many people involved, the corps alone could be fifty members huge on any given night. Standing shoulder to shoulder with them would take up the whole stage before they even got started on dancing.

It might have been good for morale, though. In hindsight.

But he likes it here, and so he takes his time each performance, to wrap his arms around Heidi’s and Guillaume’s shoulders on either side, Benjamin two people over, and chant, ensemble, ensemble, ensemble. They grab each other’s hands, then, touch and go.

Another ritual they observe at BG Ballet, and this one Claude does know from Paris, is the one where they ask each other, before curtain-up: do you have someone in the audience tonight? In Paris, a lot of the dancers were locals and often had family and friends attending, where BG Ballet is more international with their artists coming from places as far away as South Korea and Australia. Claude, in comparison, is close to home.

Still, most nights he replies: no, not tonight.

It’s his own damn fault, of course. Just as the whole company is, to some degree, familiar with his background story, if nothing else they’ve probably read or heard about Rainier’s reviews, most of them wrap him in a cocoon of pity that is both a comfort and endlessly hateful. They ask with care and with consideration, but they also ask, knowing already what the answer will most likely be. They don’t stop, though, and Claude is relieved at that. At that small opening for change.

For the longest time, however, that is all the change he gets. Heidi asks, tonight? Guillaume asks, and tonight? Even Benjamin sometimes asks, so Claude, who’s out there for you tonight? And Claude, on a good day, will say, my sister, she’s here until Sunday.

On most days, though, it’s the same. No one. There’s no one.

It’s not true. Benjamin is a good lobbyist, Claude has gained a big following of sponsors and patrons in no time and they come, they send flowers and cards and chocolates that he never eats.

He knows their names, has signed his own to polite publicity catalogues with stage photos and rehearsal insights that the theatre ships off to them individually afterwards. That’s about it. They’re no one important. They know his lines and the heights of his jumps. They don’t know how he’s cursed and cried over a particular part.

Outside his ballet family, no one knows, really. His apartment is empty as a rule, not as an exception. His bed, same.

When Catherine or Céline come visiting, most often together, his nephew and niece in tow, he’s ensemble again, together, and he revels in those prolonged weekends, sometimes a whole week on end. His sisters, initially horrified at him giving up his dream of becoming an étoile at the POB, have taken to Luxembourg City quickly, they feel rich and extravagant among all the suit-clad businessmen and housewives in Louis Vuitton and Prada, just within that little pocket of time. He doesn’t begrudge them that, although his principles quietly object.

It’s not just Paris he misses, after all. There are days when his longing reaches all the way back to Marseille and the beginning. Before everything. Back with the tango and the waltzes and playing football in the apartment building backyards.

Still, Catherine and Céline always leave again and the next performance night, they’re back to Heidi hanging on his shoulder, asking, a little more worried: tonight, Claude?

No one tonight either.

Asking Vincent is a spur of the moment idea and he only halfway, always halfway, expects the other man to set aside time for it, but he says yes, he does, and the way it hits Claude surprises even himself. That Wednesday, he goes through the motions with more care, sparing his foot at barre and during training, to be ready for the evening performance. It’s mid-run, the corps is getting more and more excited for the upcoming mixed bill that they’re rehearsing currently, and Claude is learning the lead in Balanchine’s Theme and Variations hard and fast, but his mind is on Armand. It’s on The Lady. So much so that his coaches have to bring him back into the steps a couple of times with a sternness that he’s learned to associate with the Balanchine Trust. Serious people, those.

Good thing they usually know him to be serious, too. Today he’s just distracted.

And the night comes, his foot is as good as it’ll get, he’s in costume and they’ve formed their circle in the middle of the stage before the doors to the front halls are opened for the guests, his Marguerite for the night, Larissa Colbert, standing next to him, petite as a cookie.

“Someone in the audience tonight, Claude,” she asks as they all shake off and step back amidst Marguerite’s auctioned goods. His smile probably betrays the answer before he’s even opened his mouth, and she smiles back, wide and warm.

“Yeah,” he tells her, “I’ve got a friend in attendance.”

On stage, later, after twenty minutes of hushed chatter, their Nanina walks in, stage left and the audience goes eerily silent, like they aren’t really there, but they are – and Vincent is there, too. Larissa grabs both Claude’s hands and shakes them, nodding at him happily. Then, they get into position and into character, and thereon out it’s steps and lifts and expression.

He doesn’t forget, but he’s not fully himself now, so Vincent feels like he belongs to someone else during those three hours of work, like he belongs to some opening for change.

Waiting, on the other side.