FIC: bathroom talk.

[surquelpied]

The home of Su-Ho and Jacques isn’t only a ‘couple’s home’ in the way it’s brought together the lives of two people, but also two cultures, and when the gang meets up after eighteen shows of The Nutcracker, end-December, it's to a lavish table of Korean barbeque with homemade dipping sauce and a big grilling tablet in the middle of the table that Su-Ho has had shipped here from home.

The first announcement made is a happy one.

“We’re getting married,” Su-Ho chirps and shows off the enormous rock that Jacques has put on her finger. The two other girls squeal in delight and praise the ring, praise Su-Ho, praise Jacques for having such excellent taste in stones and girls both. Claude thumps Jacques’ right shoulder while Jean-Baptiste take care of his left and there’s a moment when Claude thinks, this is family. This is what family should be. They’re all either coryphées or sujets with the company, they’re going places and they’ve been together since the beginning.

This is ensemble, together.

After the commotion has dulled to a pleasant buzz of talking across the table, Jean-Baptiste turns to Claude with a raised eyebrow and an insistent, okay, tell us about him. Claude smiles and shrugs and pretends not to know what the other man is talking about.

“About who?”

“Don’t play fucking coy with me, I’ve sucked your dick,” Jean-Baptiste tells him, Su-Ho almost choking on her meat and it’s true, he certainly has, but that gives him no rights to preferential treatment. Rainier has said, on multiple occasions even, for the sake of your career, Claude, let’s keep this between us, yes? “Tell us about the guy you’re seeing, you’ve been sneaking out like a fifteen-year-old all December.”

And suddenly all eyes are on him, and because they’re his family, in some ways the only family he has, Claude can’t bear the thought of them not knowing. Not knowing how happy he is and how overwhelmed and how inexperienced it’s all making him feel, maybe for the first time ever. He knows his choreography, he knows his body, but this is new territory, new ground to tread. Taking a moment to find the courage, like coming out all over again and this better not end the same way, he finally replies, “I’m dating Rainier Coupe.”

“The journalist,” Su-Ho asks, surprised, exchanging a look with first Jacques, then Amandine.

“Wasn’t he the one who got Isaac promoted to étoile,” Jean-Baptiste adds, scratching his neck. They all know, of course, that Isaac Hernandez got himself promoted, only the Opéra director and the A.D. could give him that rank, but they all witnessed how Rainier’s starstruck reviews propelled his career fast-forward, too. Claude asked Rainier about it at the beginning of their relationship, after having blown him in the bathrooms, cum on his chin: did Hernandez also go down on you?

Oh, you’ll go much further than that, Claude, Rainier had reassured him.

In hindsight, it didn’t deny much, did it?

“Isn’t he, like, fifty,” Amandine wants to know.

“He’s forty-two,” Claude corrects her, feeling increasingly bad about having divulged this information to them at all. If they can’t support him, he’d rather have kept it to himself altogether. Let it stay his own sweet secret.

More exchanges of looks, long, lingering, worried. Claude stands up and dries his sweaty palms in his jeans, frowning as he pushes his chair back and turns, about to head for the bathroom. “If you’ve got something to say about this, say it,” he implores, back turned. I know what you’re thinking, it means.

“He gives you really good reviews,” Jean-Baptiste says, deciding to deal the final blow, if nothing else, he’s had Claude’s dick in his mouth before, right, “just make sure your footwork stays on par with your oral, okay?”

Claude shows him the middle finger on his way out of the room.

~

After the last Nutcracker, Rainier invites him out to dinner, a discreet little place in the Latin Quarters that you have to be a connoisseur to know – or know a connoisseur with the kind of money to take you, alternatively. Claude’s doing his utmost not to stuff his face with salmon, because he hasn’t eaten properly for a month and ‘hangry’ has become a chronic state of being for him, watching the calm and collected way in which Rainier cuts his fish into little bites, chews, swallows.

Claude blushes, then, just slightly. And Rainier naturally notices.

“Afterwards,” he promises, “I’ll suck you off in the cab home.”

“I told my friends about you,” Claude blurts out in response, as if in Confession, apologising for his sins before he can get Absolution. He isn’t religious, though, and that isn’t really how he feels about it at all. It just comes out that way, and so that is how Rainier takes it.

“I asked you not to,” he warns, voice low, reaching for his napkin and drying his lips for sauce. Claude follows every little movement with his eyes. Like he’s watching to copy. Like he’s watching to learn. “What did they say, then?”

“They all think I’m doing you to fuel my career,” Claude admits, grimacing.

“Are you,” Rainier inquires, neutrally.

Pause.

“Of course not,” Claude tells him, feeling wounded and a little bit angry at the insinuation. “I don’t care what you write about me.”

Smiling, slow and hard around the edges, Rainier abandons his napkin, then his plate and stands up, pushing his chair back the same way Claude had done at Su-Ho’s and Jacques’ place to go to the bathroom. It’s evident, if you look, that he’s half-hard in his pants. Claude swallows.

“Maybe you will in time, Claude,” the other man says after a moment of tension and turns towards the exit, “meet me in the men’s room in two minutes.”

You’ll need to suck me off first, before the turn can be yours, it means, Claude gathers as much.

When the waiter comes to collect their plates, Claude tells him to give them ten minutes to finish up. Cheeks tinted red as he speaks the words. Only then does he leave for the toilets.