Once More With Feeling

Chapter 9 : Balançoire

Maybe you don't know this about me, but I'm a classic overthinker.

It goes along with the whole self-absorbed, neurotic perfectionist thing that's slowly but surely sapping me of any semblance of personality since I signed onto this ballet program a few years ago. It might be one of the best and worst things about me, how I analyze every single thing to death until something that seemed so outlandishly, crazily perfect suddenly has a million holes in it.

It's after Sasuke's gone back to his room for the night (it's really, really late and I kind of feel bad that he's got to walk all the way across campus) and I lay back down on my bed (and my sheets smell kind of like him, like tobacco and mint) and that's when this whole thing with Tsunade blows up in my face.

She wants me to quit ballet.

Me.

Me.

It sounded so good at the time. You know? Just, just give it all up, turn my back on it for good. No more stress. No more pressure. No more catty, two-faced girls waiting for me to trip up, no horrendous obsession with food, no more nasty ass teacher screaming at me how I'm not good enough. What a refreshing idea. What a beautiful idea.

But.

I worked so hard to get here. Didn't I? I worked my ass off to get where I am. I got a scholarship. I trained and conditioned and practiced and performed, I've got the best goddamn win record in the company, I'm being groomed for greatness and here I'm even thinking about putting it all behind me?

When I'm so close?

Just a few more months, I tell myself, unconsciously snuggling deeper into my covers and Sasuke's faint scent. Just a few more months of this and I'll graduate and then...

And then what?

It kills me, man. It fucking kills me that I just don't know anymore. I don't know what to think of Tsunade's offer. It sounds like a betrayal of myself and my craft and everything everybody's been working so hard at for me to have this fucking opportunity. And that I'm even considering throwing it all away for any reason, I just don't fucking know myself anymore.

Why can't every night be like tonight was? Bailing on all my responsibilities, calling off work, eating pizza and watching movies with someone I don't need to try to impress? There was something so...liberating about letting my hair down tonight, about arguing The Breakfast Club and plucking a pepperoni off a piece of pizza without worrying about how it's gonna affect my skin or my waistline in the morning.

It's a little too quiet now that Sasuke's gone back to his room. I don't much like the quiet. Everyone assumes I do since I'm on my own a lot, but I don't like the loneliness, you know? I don't like feeling like, even in a school as big as this one and a dorm as huge as the one I'm staying in with like fifty other people, that I'm just...alone.

I don't think I'd feel this way, if I took up Tsunade on her offer. I don't know how I know that, but....

I don't know. Can I really just...do this? Or should I stick it out with ballet and...

Hope it gets better?

I fall asleep with Tsunade's wrinkled calling card in my hand and a thousand other questions rolling through my brain and no. Fucking. Answers.

By sheer coincidence (I swear I'm not stalking him, if anything, he's stalking me) Sasuke and Kiba and a few other guys are playing a show at the coffeehouse Ino and I are at Saturday night. I have a rare night off (no work, and no performances on a Sunday) so I let her talk me into going out for tiramisu. I'm surprised to see him performing in public; I almost never hear him play, even when we're hanging out at the tattoo shop. He almost never brings up the fact that he even plays guitar, so I kind of learned along the way not to bring it up. So seeing it happen, him sitting casually on a stool with his busted-up guitar in his hands is a surprise, even if it shouldn't be. This is what he goes to KPAA for, right? Performing arts. Music. Guitar.