Swan Lake - Larry Stylinson Ballet AU

Act VI - Plié

Mother sat beneath the photograph, now, lounging on the sofa with a lit cigarette between her bony fingers. Her acrylic nails were pink, Louis liked the colour, but he didn't like how they felt when she'd caress his cheek or claw his arms with them. He put the scrubbing brush in the bucket of murky water, shook it out, and began to rub vigorously at the floorboards again. His back ached, his stomach growled, and his hands and knees had marks from being on the floor for so long.

"Louis, darling?"

Louis jumped at the sudden sound and bolted up to stand by the broken fireplace, "Yes, mother?"

Mother looked at him through the dark and stuffy room. A fly landed on her shoulder and she moved so fast to squish it with her palm that Louis winced back in fear. She flicked it onto the floor that her son had spent hours cleaning, "Bring me another cigarette, would you?"

Louis bowed his head, "Yes, mother."

"Wait. Darling." Mother said when Louis began to walk away, "Come here." She put a hand out invitingly and Louis took it. Shivers ran up his arm and down his spine. She looked at the marks on his hands, then those on his knees. "You are hurt." she said, brushing her finger over them carefully. "Which monster hurt my son? Was it that teacher of yours? The one with the scary voice? Who hurt you, Louis?"

Louis tried to pull out of her grasp, gently, without letting her know that he was attempting to do so, "No, Mother. It is just imprint of the floorboards. I have the marks, see?" he said, pointing to the parallel lines that the floorboards had marked on his right knee.

Louis' mother looked at them, took her son's hands, and tears stood in her eyes when she looked at him. "You should be more careful." she said. "You're letting yourself get hurt."

She slapped him across the face.

"Don't get hurt! Do you not love yourself? I love you, Louis!" she said, standing up and hugging him. She was crying, holding the cigarette away from her son so that it wouldn't burn him, and then she slapped him again in the same place as before-across his left cheek. "Love yourself, you foolish boy. You're beautiful, too beautiful to get hurt. Love yourself."

She kissed Louis' bleeding cheek, and Louis was too terrified to even scream.

He just stood there, as tense as a statue in her suffocating grip, counting down the days until she'd beat him to death.

*

"-and I think that he wanted to give me more of them but he didn't because, well, if he had, then there wouldn't have been any left for next time, which is good because-do you understand what I'm talking about? You look out of it." Louis said, finally raising his head to see Harry sitting across from him in the dance studio, a sloppy smile on his face to show that he really was out of it.

"You're a real chatterbox once that you're comfortable." Harry said, "I have no idea what you're talking about, but continue. I'll listen."

Louis looked down at his ballet shoes and tucked in one of the ribbons. He sighed but he was a happy sigh-a peaceful one, "No, never-mind. I'll tell you another time." He put his legs out if front of him and did 'good toes, naughty toes' with himself until Lilly-Ann-who'd been sitting across the room, by the mirrors-said, "You know what would be nice? I wish that we could do the Ballet show at Christmas.. Swan Lake. We had trained so much for it, it's a shame that it has been cancelled."

"A shame?" Harry glowered at her, and she looked down, embarrassed, "Rosaline died, and you call it a 'shame' that the show has been cancelled?"

"I'm sorry." Lilly-Ann said to him, feeling truly awful for her words, "I didn't mean for it come come out like that, but it would be nice to dance again. She would have wanted us to, I'm sure."