Chapter Text
“Yup,” Ash pops the ‘P,’ leaning his elbows on the desk as he talks into the landline of the dance studio’s office. “I heard you–callbacks tomorrow afternoon, three o’clock on the dot.”
There’s a grunt or maybe a grinding of teeth on the other end of the line–hard to tell through the connection–but Ash smiles regardless. He was worried that a twenty second phone call wouldn’t be enough time to get under Dino’s skin. “Two o’clock, sweetheart.”
“Oh really?” Ash laughs, twirling the hair by his ear. “Pardon, you know me; blonde bimbo.”
“Do you need me to have Marvin come pick you up again?” Dino’s voice has an edge to it; not in the mood for games. “Make sure you’re on time?”
Ash huffs, clicking his fingernails against the receiver. He’s bitten them down to the nub. “No, Papa.”
“Good boy. I’ll see you at dinner tomorrow night.” And the line goes dead.
Sometimes, Ash doesn’t know why he bothers pushing back on Dino. It’s like he’s a glutton for punishment or something.
When Ash first “moved out,” he and Dino had dinner dates twice a week, and Ash stayed at the mansion on the weekends. Then Ash was a good boy, and by the time he turned seventeen (seven months ago) dinner was only on Saturday nights.
This will be the second impromptu summons Ash has had this month.
A couple of years ago, Ash would have known exactly what to do to get Dino off his back… but lately, Dino doesn’t seem to want Ash lying on his back anymore.
He ruffles a hand through his hair, looking at his distorted reflection in the office window. Is he less pretty now, creeping towards eighteen, then he was at twelve? Is he too old ? Or—
Blanca opens the office door without knocking. Fair enough, it’s not like it’s Ash’s private room, but it’s not Blanca’s either. They’re just renting this dance studio till Swan Lake opens. “All finished up?”
Ash still has the receiver in hand, tuning out the dial tone. He puts the phone back in place on the desk. “Got a callback for Prince Charming.”
“Why don’t you have a cellphone? I thought Monsieur Golzine bought you one months ago.”
“It mysteriously got hacked into pieces by a hammer,” Ash says, brushing by Blanca and out the office, “a real tragedy.”
Like fuck Ash was going to let Dino be able to reach him anytime, anyplace. He might as well walk around with a collar and a little bell.
Blanca stops Ash, one thick hand lightly on his forearm. For half a second, Ash tenses. In fight or flight, Ash calculates, like he’s fourteen and Marvin’s between him and the door, he’s eight and the gun’s still in his pants pocket—
“I hope you remembered your manners at least, little cat.” Blanca’s so large, his breath goes right over Ash’s head, ruffling up his hair. “Starring in a national tour is a great opportunity for your future. Think of all the connections you might make.”
Ash can still almost taste the producer in his mouth.
“Gee whiz,” he says, flat, ducking out of the office.
In the short hallway, Arthur’s got a pager in hand and is rushing to presumably use the phone and call back Dino himself. He bumps past Ash, knocking their shoulders again.
And that takes Ash back out to the alley, and the fucking way Arthur started picking on Eiji for shits and giggles.
“Callback’s at two,” Ash says. He wouldn’t have said anything, normally, but he didn’t get to knock Arthur’s teeth in earlier. It’s the least he can do. “Providing you got one, right?”
Arthur turns on his heel, eyes like bullets, but Ash is already off again.
Pissing off Dino and Arthur… what’s your fucking problem, Lynx?
It wasn’t that this wasn’t like Ash, but usually, he had to have some kind of reason. He didn’t start shit for the sake of it.
He goes to scratch at his hair and pauses, looking again at his palm.
Eiji’s phone number has started to smudge.
Ash commits the ten digits to memory before they become illegible.
~ ~ ~
Back in the studio, Yut-Lung’s on the phone. Ash only knows a little conversational cantonese, osmosis from hanging around Shorter, but mostly phrases like “hi” and “bye” and “pass the duck sauce.”
Within the little bit of time they’d been working on Swan Lake , Ash’s language horizons have broadened courtesy of the baby Lee prodigy.
Yut-Lung’s on the phone with his “big brother.” The Lees are bigshots, bigger than Dino in the grand scheme of things, but in other entertainment fields, like sports teams and pop stars, not so much the classical arts or dance.
In the world of ballet, Yut-Lung might be their only skin in the game.
“Got a callback, Yue?” Shorter asks, stretching in the corner, winding down for the day now that practice is done.
Eiji’s boss left half an hour ago, but Eiji is still here, squatted on the ground, trying to take a photo of Shorter stretching. “Shorter,” he complains, “stop smiling into the camera.”
Shorter flashes the peace sign at the lens.
“No,” Yut-Lung answers, snapping his obnoxious cell phone shut. He brings his leg up on the bar as he cools down, aloof. “I booked the part.”
That draws Ash’s attention. Even Eiji looks up from his lens, maybe picking up on Ash and Shorter’s confusion.
“You’re Prince Charming?” Shorter whistles. “Congrats–”
“I didn’t audition for Prince Charming,” Yut-Lung sticks up his nose, swapping legs. He bends over like he’s made of rubber. “I auditioned for the Bluebird. And booked it.”
Ash settles back against the bar. That adds up; it’s a bit of a more androgynous role, and Yut-Lung’s still kind of young, like Ash was when he played Ariel in The Tempest .
“Ah, gotcha. Still a principal role!” Shorter holds his hand up for a high-five.
Except he and Yut-Lung are about five feet apart in the studio. And Yut-Lung’s staring at the high five like it's a cow pie.
“Tough crowd,” Shorter shakes out his hand, chuckling to himself.
Eiji snaps a photo.
Ash jolts a little from the flash and–
And so does Yue.
Yue’s dark, almost black eyes flick up, meeting his.
Ash feels like he’s looking in the mirror. And he looks like shit.
“Heading home, Shorter?” Ash asks, picking up his bag, letting it flop against his shoulder.
“To Chang Dai.” Shorter slings his own bag up on his shoulder and snaps on his shades. “Promised Nadia I’d help with the dinner rush. Wanna drop by?”
Ash’s mouth twists, feeling bad as ever for forgetting that Shorter, unlike him, Yue, Arthur, and most other dancers in their league, is… well… flat fucking broke.
Shorter deserves to be able to focus just on his dancing, not worry about booking gigs to help pay the bills, or having to work up to fifty hours a week sometimes while still having a full calendar of dance practices.
If Shorter had had half the opportunities Ash did, he could probably dance circles around him.
“Sorry,” Ash says, not just because if he came and Shorter was working, he’d want to help, and Shorter would tell Ash to sit down, and it’d be the same old awkward song and dance between Shorter’s pride and Ash’s guilt.
If he went, Nadia would look him up and down and start trying to feed him. And he’s still got a few pounds to shed off his hips.
He catches his reflection in the mirror. He’s not too tall, he’s not too thin. Staring hard enough at his leggings, he can see some pudge on his legs, arms.
“Well, you’re free to come by any time,” Shorter says, around the time Ash realizes he never gave an actual excuse.
There isn’t one he can give. Shorter knows Ash either has nothing to do or plans made for him.
Ash huffs his cheeks. “Sure.”
There’s another camera flash. Yut-Lung, messing with his hair and the tangles of his bun, goes from cursing under his breath to shouting, “Take one more photo .”
Yut-Lung aims one finger at the camera lens like the barrel of a gun. Eiji startles, and pulls the camera to his chest, pointing it towards the floor.
Given the jolt in Eiji’s shoulder when the camera flashes again, Eiji’s finger slipped.
As Yut-Lung goes tomato red, Shorter howls in laughter.
Ash flings his bag over his shoulder, swallowing down a wince as Yut-Lung packs in a huff, staring down Eiji like he’s a bug.
Compared to Yut-Lung, with his money and connections and power, maybe Eiji is a bug.
Eiji bows out his apologies while Shorter follows on Yut-Lung’s heel, cracking dry jokes about their resident diva. But when Eiji looks up and meets Ash’s eye, there isn’t a hint of intimidation.
Eiji wears an awkward smile, shrugging his shoulders, as if to say, “What can you do?”
Ash taps his shoulder on his gym bag. What indeed.
~ ~ ~
“Ash-u!”
Ash stops, digging the toe of his converse into the cracked alley pavement. He turns, bag bouncing on his shoulder. Behind him, waving his hand high in the sky while lugging a camera bag half his body weight, Eiji ran at him. “Ash-u!” he repeated.
“Bless you,” Ash calls back. The joke–a little mean–goes over Eiji’s head. He catches up to Ash with a big smile plastered from one ear to the next. “What’s up?”
Eiji glances up a second, catching his breath. Then the idiom seems to click. “Oh! Shorter told me to see restaurant, but I forgot to ask where is. You show me, please?”
Ash wrinkles his nose, squinting back in the direction of the studio. “Can’t you catch up to Shorter? He should be heading there right away.”
“He had errand to run,” Eiji says, hefting his camera bag and rocking back on his heels, excited and breezy. Like Ash accepting is a foregone conclusion.
Fucking Shorter. He wouldn’t have invited Eiji to a place, forget to give him directions, and then leave on an “errand.”
Ash rubs a hand through his hair, wishing he actually did have somewhere to be, just to stick it to Shorter. Or maybe to Eiji’s happy puppy eyes. “Stick close; I know a shortcut.”
“Mmmhmm!” Eiji hums.
Ash scoffs. “No need to jump for joy.”
“You’re the one who jumps,” Eiji says, stepping alongside Ash as they walk around the corner beyond a chain link fence. “Like a bird! Thought you were going to leap right over Shorter’s head.”
“No one can jump over something that big.”
Eiji laughs–giggles?–balancing the weight of the camera bag some more. Ash is half-tempted to offer to lend a hand. “I could.”
“Oh yeah? Where you hiding your feathers?”
“No feathers. I used to vault. Pole vault.” Eiji lifts a hand to mime the motion.
Ash bends his eyebrows, remembering Eiji talking a little about being an athlete. “Oh yeah? How high of a vault?”
Eiji scrunches his nose, glancing up at the alley walls on either side of them. “Higher than the brick, I think.”
Ash whistles. “And you called me the jumper.”
“Well…” Eiji bit his lip, breaking some of the dry skin there. Ash would have pegged Eiji as the kind of kid who never forgot his chapstick, so he finds himself focused on the soft skin, worried that he’s about to see a drop of blood. “I no jump now.”
Ah. He meant “could have .”
Eiji hunches hsi shoulders a little, smaller, like he’s waiting for Ash to ask more.
Ash isn’t nosy, though. Keeping to yourself is how you keep people from sticking their nose in your business.
They walk without talking, for maybe a minute, and its… peaceful. The gray New York alleys seem a little more colorful, as Eiji quietly relaxes, lifting his head higher, watching Ash as they go.
“So,” Eiji says. Ash wishes he actually had timed it, just to see how long Eiji could physically go without speaking. “Is Shorter food good? I only eaten Chinese food a few times.”
“Shorter’s not much of a cook, so thankfully–”
Ash pauses, grinding the heel of his converse in a small patch of broken pavement.
It was quiet around them, half a block out from the street with the cars and people, past apartments and towards rundown buildings, half-gutted and abandoned halfway through renovations.
But New York should never be this quiet.
“Thankfully what?”
Ash steps forward, putting his arm out behind him to block Eiji in towards the alley wall. His eyes flick about their surroundings, taking in graffiti, chipped brick, and the turns in the alley, a hundred feet ahead on the left and a hundred feet behind on the right.
He listens, ears tense like a hawk. In the silence, he hears a pebble drop, someone’s foot shifting gravel around the bend.
Ash flares his nostril. “Lost, Arthur?”
Another beat. Eiji’s very still behind him, his breath almost against his neck.
From ahead of them, Arthur strolls out from hiding, hands in his pocket, smirking as he brushes up his hair to even douchier heights. “Didn’t expect to see the domesticated Lynx this far on the rough side of town. There’s no silver spoons out here, rich boy.”
Wookie stands at Arthur’s elbow, head tilted on its axis. Wookie’s not in ballet, but he is represented by Dino’s agency, and one of Arthur’s best bootlickers.
Footsteps crunch the gravel behind them. Eiji tightens a fist in the back of Ash’s jacket, but Ash doesn’t turn around. By their footsteps, he can count two of them.
Four against one was far from fair, but Arthur doesn’t have that word in his lexicon.
Four against two , Ash realizes, Eiji tugging on his jacket like a nervous kid.
Ash kicks at a rusted trash can, watching it skid into the brick wall. “There’s plenty of room for trash, isn’t there, Arthur?”
Arthur smirks, but he’s gritting his teeth. His crew start whistling, egging Arthur on, eager for the smackdown. “Somedays, when I see you strutting around with that fucking smirk, I think ‘he’s just begging for someone to beat the shit out of him.’”
“Are you gonna punish me, Daddy?” Ash bats his lashes.
The guys jeer, Arthur hesitates for half-a-second, letting slip a grimace of actual disgust for Ash’s faggotry.
Eiji tightens his grip on Ash’s sleeve, and Ash’s stomach drops with both shame and fear.
Arthur keeps walking closer, and Ash pivots, blocking Eiji behind him, wedging the kid between his body and the wall.
“The photographer’s got nothing to do with this,” Ash says. “Let him through, hmm?”
Arthur sneers. “What’s the matter, Princess? Don’t want your boyfriend to see you cry?”
“You want an audience that bad?” It’s a weak excuse; Eiji’s already seen enough to snitch. And with his little sweater and wide, innocent eyes, Eiji may as well have “snitch” written on his forehead.
If Ash doesn’t get them out of here, it’s not just his ass on the line.
Arthur’s close enough to touch. He reaches out his right hand, grabbing Ash by the scruff of his shirt. “It’s so easy for you, always center stage. Not all of us have the privilege to sleep our way to the top.”
Ash bites down his back teeth, wishing Eiji wasn’t standing just behind him.
“For some of us, we have to actually put in some work.” Arthur’s teeth are showing, stark white, pristine as a pair of unbroken shoes. “And work involves getting your hands dir–”
Ash swings his dance bag just at the moment Arthur loosens his fist just a fraction.
He takes Arthur off-guard, getting him straight in the stomach, winding him. Arthur’s guys immediately charge in, snarling, but Ash is already swinging, dragging Eiji behind him.
“Ash-u–” Eiji gasps.
“ Don’t let go ,” Ash orders, his focus on Wookie, aiming a kick high into the guy’s stomach.
Another asshole winded, Ash doesn’t wait to hear Wookie fall into the gravel before he takes off with Eiji at a run.
Arthur picked a bad spot to jump him; Ash knows this strip of alley like the back of his hand, bobbing and weaving Eiji down twists and turns, wordless as he concentrates on controlling his breathing.
“Ash-u!” Eiji pants behind him, sounding winded, but Ash can’t let up his pace, and he can’t loosen his grip on Eiji’s arm.
God, he hopes he doesn’t dislocate Eiji’s shoulder, yanking him around like this.
Sounds like the kind of rescue job Ash could do. Was it a rescue, though, when you walk an innocent bystander into the line of fire? This poor fucking kid.
He glances over his shoulder, just a little, to check on Eiji. The Japanese kid is panting for breath, red in the face, eyes wider than saucers. He began to dig in his heels, and screams, “Ash-u, the fence!”
Ash looks where he was going just in time. He comes to a skidding halt, looking up at a wooden fence blocking their way. Was that new? How long since you last came to Chang-Dai?
No, the fence is familiar; it’s just always open. Someone’s closed it and locked it. Arthur? The alley owner?
Doesn’t matter. Ash tugs and fiddles on the metal clasp. It’s just a simple latch, but the lock is on the other side, and out of reach, given that the fence was taller than either of them with no place to climb up.
“Fuck,” Ash says, slamming his body into the fence, smacking his palm flat. “ Fuck. ”
Running his hands through his hair, Ash scrambles to think what to do. He can almost hear Blanca’s voice in his head, but he’s at a deadend with Eiji and no way to save himself, let alone this random ass kid.
“Eiji–” Ash stops, eyes bent, as he sees Eiji crouched on the ground. “What are you doing?”
Eiji has found some old piping laid out on the ground. He’s hefting a piece up, feeling its flex, holding it up to check its height.
It clicks together. Pole vaulter . “Don’t you even think about it.”
“It’s not been too very long,” Eiji says, toneless. He’s thinking this over.
Methodically, Eiji starts digging a divot into the dirt; a launching point.
“This isn’t a sporting meet!” Ash shouts. You know there are no fucking mats on the other side–”
Eiji slams his pole down harder and spins back to Ash. “Yes I know there no fucking mats on other side!” he spat.
Ash wonders if Eiji even knew what “fuck” meant. He might just be parroting back for the sake of facing him head on.
He’s surprised to realize that Eiji is not scared. He looks pissed at Ash, but, maybe just for talking back. “I’m not just gonna stand around and wait for Arthur.”
Shouting behind them; familiar, unwanted voices. Ash turns to the noise, just in time to miss Eiji back up.
Ash watches Eiji hefting the pipe, heart in his throat. He wants to tell Eiji not to, or to at least wait, but something about Eiji standing there, wind in his hair, soft face now hard with determination… it takes the breath from him.
Eiji starts running, legs up to his waist, hands on the pipe tight, and then he sinks the metal down into the ground, winding up his body–
And then, just like a swan, Eiji flies.
He arcs through the air, arms outstretched, and Ash is caught in the downwind, feeling like he’s going to be knocked to his knees by the sheer majesty.
For a moment, Eiji is suspended overhead, and Ash’s world narrows to his flight.
Then, the thud. No spectacular crash, but some muffling, a small, “Oof!” from Eiji, like he tripped on his shoelaces.
A harsh scream. “Ash!”
Ash spins around on his heels, seeing Arthur’s ugly mug as the dick brigade come charging around the corner.
He hears the fence’s lock snap open. Ash has barely glanced back again when Eiji has the fence open, has grabbed Ash by the shirt, and yanked him through.