lovers.

[waywardious]

The first time Claude was intimate with another man, they were hardly even men yet and there wasn’t anything mutual about it in the narrowest definition of the word. He was fifteen, Antonin wasn’t much older and as they sat across from each other on Claude’s bottom bunk, touching themselves, there wasn’t really any shame or anxiety to detect between them, nothing to take away from the pure thrill. Everybody did it, after all. Everybody knew that everybody else did it, too. They were young still, they’d grow out of it.

Everybody knew.

A couple of months later, after Antonin had first sucked him off, Claude remembers lying alone on his bunk, the other boy having climbed back up onto his own top one – considering if this perhaps made matters more complicated. He wasn’t sure he’d ever heard any of the other boys talk about anything like this, about the feel of another boy’s lips wrapped around your cock, his tongue…

“Are you asleep?” he’d asked Antonin.

“No,” Antonin answered. “My… It won’t lie down. Nothing I do works, I’ve tried at least four times now.”

The silence filled the entire room, drummed against the window glass, though it might just have been rain. Claude hadn’t even noticed it had started raining. “Do you want me to…?”

“Do you want to?”

“I think…” He thinks. “Yes, I’d like to.”

By the time Antonin had to leave school in the wake of his second and his last serious injury two years later, they’d covered quite a lot of ground together. Sucking each other off after lights-out, fast and sloppy tugging with spit-slick fingers in between classes and rehearsals, running through the vast labyrinth of the Opera where there were enough dark corners to go around, even some experimental probing further back, though neither of them had really dared to walk the line. What if it hurt? What if they hurt themselves and couldn’t dance? What if, by hurting themselves, someone would find out? Too many risks and the road ahead was challenging enough as it was, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it just.

As tradition prescribed, everyone turned up to see Antonin off when his father came to collect him. Ten years’ worth of personal belongings and a heavy load of broken dreams. Claude was last in line and they just looked at each other for a long time, wordlessly. Antonin’s family was resident up north, by the German borders. Just outside Strasbourg. A long, long way from the liberal living Paris offered. Eventually, under the surveillance of both dormitories, Antonin shook his hand, kissed both his cheeks and left in a carriage pulled by a pair of dainty brown horses worth more than Claude would make in a year once he graduated.

They never saw each other again, but Claude heard later that Antonin had married a German baroness and gone into politics. Well, he’d thought, a cane is a good, authoritative prop.

The months in between Antonin’s untimely leave and Claude’s official graduation performance, eleven months of intense training, to be exact – made for an awkward transition. Seeing that Claude would be moving out once he turned eighteen, they assigned the top bunk in his room to a newly enrolled student, a boy who wasn’t a day older than nine. Not that Claude spent a lot of time there anymore anyway. After he met Ludovic, he rarely even spent the nights.

Ludovic was an accidental encounter. Some of the guys in Claude’s dormitory had been whispering amongst themselves about the establishments you could find in Marais and after a month of mental staggering that all but drove him insane, Claude had squared his shoulders and sought out the first, the best café he could locate without too much effort, a small venue by the Seine. It was full of men. Older men. Much, much older than him.

Ludovic had been there. He had spotted Claude in the doorway. “Don’t I know you,” he’d called out, one eyebrow raised.

Claude would have left, lungs fighting for the few mouthfuls of air he’d gulped down in pure terror, if Ludovic hadn’t waved him over.

Because Ludovic did know him. As one of the senior violinists in the orchestra, he’d seen Claude often enough, scurrying to and from stage rehearsals. They talked all afternoon, the older man pouring him glass after glass of decent quality wine until they left, three whole bottles remaining behind on the counter, two of them empty, the last drowned to the dregs.

They left together, Ludovic and him. Ended up in a narrow alleyway nearby, Claude on his knees and Ludovic’s cock rammed so far down his throat that he sounded notably hoarse all through the next day.

After his graduation performance (a much praised portrayal of Hilarion in Giselle), Claude moved out of the Opera’s dormitories. Into a cheap and discreet basement at the outskirts of the fourth arrondissement. “Buy some cooking oil,” Ludovic told him once he’d seen the place. It was hardly more than a scouting glance. Claude frowned. Cooking wasn’t exactly one of his talents and he planned on eating out as long as his income remained steady and could support him.

Yet, he bought the oil. A large keg of it, too – for emphasis. It looked lonely and somewhat ridiculous as the only item on display on the thick wooden counter that made it out for kitchen.

In the end, though, once Claude learned what exactly it was for, the cooking oil, it found its place on the floor next to his bed, because Ludovic wasn’t a gentle lover by any means and when he buggered him, it was better not to take the force of his thrusts with his knees against the hard stone floor.

He liked the sensation of it well enough, although it would become Ludovic to show some consideration sometimes; he simply had to deliberate the consequences carefully every single time. After a particularly harsh advance on his arse that had left him unbelievably sore the following day where he was due for a dress rehearsal of a promising pas de trois, Claude learned to schedule. No buggering during performance runs. He needed his body fully functional, thank you very much.

“What if I’m gentler about it?”

“I’m not going to rely on your self-restraint, Ludovic.”

“For God’s sake, Claude, don’t be so --”

“If I’m good and take it all the way down my throat, will you stop pestering me?”

“Come here, then. Be good.”

Whereas Antonin and he had never named their relation, Ludovic became Claude’s lover without leaving him much of a choice. The other man was possessive and rather aggressive by nature – something that rendered him a talented violinist, though perhaps a more troublesome partner. Claude never went back to the café where they’d met, didn’t come to frequent Marais until later and least of all, while he lived in the same arrondissement. Instead, Ludovic began introducing him to friends of his. Musicians and writers, artists; men of his own generation and certainly men of his own temperament. Often, he would host dinner parties at his town house and have Claude come over, almost like a valuable part of the interior. They’d play music together, him and his friends – recite poetry or discuss politics. Claude would be encouraged to dance, in the same manner you’d encourage an unmarried woman to play the piano. Which is to say, less to display her skills and more to show off her worth, without even a hint of sentimentality.

Over the next four years, he became a fixed part of their group. He became intimately familiar with most of them and Ludovic claimed his arse back every time. Forcefully.

Then, one day the other man rather unceremoniously announced that he’d been offered a position as first violinist with the Philharmonic Orchestra in London and would be moving away. The group dissolved into nothing as soon as he was gone. There was no goodbye, none of them sought Claude out and he certainly didn’t miss them beyond the accessibility of physical relief they’d presented.

In the meantime, the Opera was readying itself for a big collaboration with the Imperial Ballet of Saint Petersburg and Claude just focused on keeping his body in shape.

His pleasures, he found where he could. Money can get you a long way, when all other options have been exhausted and money, at least, he had in plenty. Money that was his to spend.

At that point, the problem was… all the rest.

In between Christmas and New Year, the Russian delegation arrived like kings and queens of their trade – and as Jules introduced the dancers to a highly crammed rehearsal room, Claude caught Pavel Tsereteli’s gaze, his features blurred at the edges by Marise’s brown curls.

He’d had lovers, Claude realised. Frowning slightly, but without looking away. He’d had lovers, but lover is an empty word without a certain adherence to its concept of origin. While Jules spoke of the two Petipa ballets they’d be staging, Pavel and he simply watched each other. Pavel wasn’t much taller than Claude, but built with less density, his centre of gravity probably much higher... He had striking legs. Up, up up – and deep, intense eyes. Strangely, when he realised that he was getting hard from the eye contact alone, he didn’t feel any significant embarrassment. Rather, he just stepped back far enough that Marise wouldn’t notice from her position in front of him, feeling his lips curve in a smile without any of the loaded offence that had always dominated his interaction with Ludovic.

Pavel returned the gesture and Claude would have been able to define mutual by recounting that brief moment --

He would recount it again and again and again, he wouldn’t stop until it was irrevocably gone. A faded whisper. A transparent, tulle-thin memory.

Disintegrating, but his.