going nowhere.

[waywardious]

Across town, with a nice view of the Lac Inférieur, Pavel had been installed in a formerly aristocratic town residence only a few corner-turns away from the Russian embassy. It was a large house in three storeys, one he shared with Elizaveta Fomina, the prima ballerina who arrived with him to coach the Opera’s danseuses in Russian technique – while he occupied the ground floor, she savoured her privacy on the first. She had proven a discreet houseguest, a mostly transparent presence. Or they might simply have been too preoccupied with each other to notice, Pavel and him. At first, they took measures, Claude only visiting late at night and furtively leaving before dawn, but eventually it became obvious… That he had been there. And that she knew. She never mentioned it, never spoke about it to them or (they hoped, relied on) to anyone else, but her looks were undoubtedly knowing.

After the blizzards under whose heavy yoke of snow France had been buried all throughout March, spring had proceeded to show itself merciful. Now, balancing on the edge of summer – May heaving its last, warm breaths – they were spending one of their few and far between days off in bed (Pavel’s, seeing as Claude’s wasn’t big enough to accommodate the both of them). Lying on his side, Pavel pressed up against his naked back and disturbing the hair at his nape with every exhalation, Claude found himself studying the wide expanses of wall in front of him with a relaxed contentment that he really very rarely felt.

The wallpaper was a busy mess, especially up close. An aged brownish background with an oriental-inspired floral motif spreading out in a maze of faded red and pink. He followed one branch lazily with his gaze and, at its end – crossing over another green line that eventually merged into an additional flourish of cherry blossoms, found himself going nowhere. With a slight sigh, he shifted, back against Pavel’s front, into the loose hold of his arms. They were still sticky from sweat and semen, barely bound to each other, but a huge bedroom like this came with a fully furnished bathroom, of course. As well.

Luxuries.

“Don’t go,” Pavel said, then. Suddenly. Out of the blue – or out of the wallpaper’s murky brown, if you will. During the course of his stay, his French had acquired fluidity to a point where only the harsher syllables of his Russian nativity would betray him. He spoke a lovely French when he came, certainly – like this, though, his French had become lovable. Claude turned his head slightly, feeling the other man’s lips follow the motion, nestling into the slope of his neck.

“I wasn’t getting up,” he replied. A chuckle audible, like a gentle emphasis of the full stop.

Silence descended. They were breathing in perfect sync. In and out; air buggering. Lately, Claude had nurtured an altogether insane idea, but with Pavel defining the horizon of his world, he had gradually embraced the notion that perhaps (just perhaps), he was not the crazy one. Perhaps their surroundings had been corrupted along the way, like a set malfunction at the theatre. Disturbances you simply had to dance through, because you could do nothing else while on stage.

And he’d love to dance. It was the very foundation of it all.

This idea he had, of dancing a pas de deux with Pavel, choreographing something for just the two of them. Ridiculous as the thought might be in practice, because danseurs partnered ballerinas. The pas de deux was something reserved exclusively for women to dance with men and for men to dance with women. Claude couldn’t recall, off the top of his head, any instance in ballet history where a pas de deux had been between two men. If they weren’t partnered up with a danseuse, men would dance variations, always solo.

Always solo.

Then again, in society – men were expected to marry women, too. Yet, look at them here, Pavel and him. Look at them now. Slowly, he reached down with one hand to entwine his fingers with Pavel’s, where they lay, sprawled out over the broad curve of Claude’s hipbone.

“I’ve had to part with too many men already, Claude,” Pavel told him, fingers curling into a fist around Claude’s that obeyed, instinctively. Curling, likewise. They could bang holes in this ugly, brown wall with such hands, couldn’t they just? “I don’t want to say goodbye to you as well.”

Together, they listened to the seconds ticking by, wordlessly. Claude couldn’t think of a single thing to say that would correspond with the treasure Pavel had just entrusted him with. Not in any satisfactory manner, anyway. Strangely enough, a part of him felt like crying. Frowning, he remained very, very still.

“Claude?”

“Someday,” Claude heard himself speak, his voice sounding distant, slightly rough around the edges, “we’ll be able to dance with each other, Pavel. We’re going to dance on that cursed stage and people will see that it’s art.”

It was Pavel’s turn to chuckle, then; a light sound, the chirp of a sparrow. “Have you any idea what kind of infantry you’ll need to sacrifice in order to win that battle?”

“No,” he admitted. Arranged himself so he was buried well and good into the slope of taut stomach and heated pelvis. Somewhere far within the cavity of his chest, Claude felt the soothing regularity of Pavel’s heartbeat. “But I always figured the infantry was drafted with an underlying understanding of their dispensability.”

“Isn’t that rather cold?”

“If life wasn’t a freezing void, my love,” Claude answered, finally rolling onto his other side, coming face to face with the other man who greeted him with a friendly nose-bump and a soft kiss to his brow, “we wouldn’t have much of a reason to keep each other warm, would we?”

Pavel laughed. Pulled him head-first into the layers of shade residing in the distance between their bodies. Claude didn’t object, but neither did he ever utter those important words that he should have spoken when he had the chance. That he wanted to say all along and say with pride, too.

I won’t tell you goodbye, Pavel. You won’t ever hear me telling you goodbye.

If only Claude had known how very true that vow would have been, he would have spoken. He would have said it all; he would have promised never to leave and when, inevitably, he’d make a liar of himself, he would have said goodbye, because in the end – their farewell would be all they had and see… See how they weren’t even allowed that much.

No, they weren’t allowed to be partners, but neither were they allowed to part with any dignity intact.