Chapter Text
He’d been studying at the Royal Danish Ballet School. That’s what they said. Equally proficient in classical and modern. A lightness that belied the strength beneath. Heartrending expression. A once-in-a-generation talent. Tempting him away to the Royal Ballet School had been a coup. That’s what they said—everyone who talked about him.
And everyone talked about him.
She couldn’t escape it: chatter in the corridors, gossip after class. She disliked him long before she knew him. She hated his perfect arches and his preternatural turnout and the way he didn’t have to try. A goddamn prodigy.
She had to try. Her extension wasn’t the result of genetically loose hips; it was hours of splits and stretching and coaxing her body into something it wasn’t designed to be. Torso too long, knees too knobby. Mediocre arches. It had been a miracle they’d accepted her to the school to begin with. She’d spent her adolescence battling her body for dominance, and she was finally winning. No one was as strong as she was. Her port de bras was poise itself, and she could stick a triple pirouette every damn time. In attitude. With her eyes closed.
And just when she was getting some serious attention from the teachers at the start of the last, pivotal year of school, he came along with his effortless perfection. She hated him.
Right up until she met him, that is.
“I’m going to try you out with Ben,” Mr. Barrie stops her in the hall to say.
Rey chokes on her water. “I’m sorry, sir?”
“Ben Solo. For the partnering class on Monday. His first day. See how you do together.” He fixes her with an appraising eye.
“Yes, sir, of course.”
“Good, then.”
She screws on the lid to her water bottle more tightly than is strictly necessary, torn between frustration and hope. Because a continental training doesn’t equip a dancer for the RAD style, and he’ll need to adjust, and he might make her look bad while he does. But he’s essentially a shoo-in to the company if he wants, and if they want to see how he does with her, that might mean... No. She tamps the thought down. It’s just because she’s tall.
The girls and boys have a separate technique class in the morning. There’s an energy in the air in the girls’ studio. They haven’t even seen him yet, but his aura seems to have descended over the building. Rey scoffs internally. He’s just a boy: a long-limbed, dark-haired, stupidly talented boy, and he better not get in her way. She’s worked too long and far too hard.
The girls’ class lets out a minute earlier than the boys’, so the girls are already assembled in the next studio for partnering. She grits her teeth. She just needs to make it through this class. She can worry about the next thing there is to worry about later. She sits in a center split and pretends not to watch as the boys troop in. She glances at the mirror to check her alignment, certainly not to see when he comes through the door. He’s the last one in. He hesitates just inside the doorway. Mr. Barrie points him in her direction.
She looks down, shifting to a front split and adjusting her hips. She doesn’t look up even when she sees his feet appear beside her.
He doesn’t say anything, just clears his throat.
Oh hell no. What, is he too good to speak to her?
She gets to her feet. It’s only slightly overwhelming how big and broad he is in the flesh. He’s probably quite pale usually, but his cheeks are currently crimson. She doesn’t entirely blame him, seeing as how the entire room is covertly watching him. But he’ll need to be comfortable with a lot more than thirty teenagers watching him if he wants to perform professionally. He opens his mouth, but she cuts in. “You’re Ben, I’m Rey. Try not to mess this up for me, okay?”
Mr. Barrie calls the class to order before he can reply, but his ears flush now too.
“Let’s begin!”
She lies curled up in bed, too wired to sleep. She really wanted to hate him. She had really, really wanted to hate him, but then his hands had memorized her center of gravity in the first thirty seconds. And he had walked her around in a promenade smooth enough for any professional stage. And spun her in the most controlled partnered pirouettes she’d ever experienced. And when Mr. Barrie had asked them to demonstrate a flying fish, she’d run and leapt with no fear and he’d dipped her low and placed her perfectly on pointe and this was what it was supposed to be like. Partnering.
He’d barely spoken ten words. Just the bare minimum, probably following her lead. But he watched her and felt her and she barely even had time to think about an adjustment before he’d already made it. Mr. Barrie had watched them. Everyone had watched them. Not just him—her too. Because if he was going to be this freaking good, she sure as hell wasn’t going to let him show her up, so her arabesques were higher and her pirouettes were tighter and she’d exploded in that grand jeté, and he’d known exactly how high she would go. He’d caught her precisely at the peak and lowered her so smoothly that she’d felt the room hold its breath. She did too.
For the first time in her life, it had felt easy. Well, not easy, but easier. She’d been working with her body, not against it. They made a good team: him and her body and her. She snuggles further down beneath her covers and grins.
He eats alone the first week, at the table in the far corner of the cafeteria. He doesn’t look up from his plate. Everyone is too nervous or embarrassed or intimidated to ask him to join them. So they sit in their configurations at their usual tables and he sits alone. After a few days the novelty wears off and he becomes a fixture. That’s how it always was, wasn’t it? Ben Solo sitting at the corner table, at least making his shoulders lower if he can’t make them less broad.
“We should ask him to sit with us,” Rey announces suddenly the following Monday.
“What? Who?” Poe asks.
“Ben.”
Poe scrunches up his nose. “Why?”
Finn laughs. “You’re jealous of him.”
“I’ve never been jealous in my life,” Poe protests, and the rest of the table scoffs.
“Maybe he likes sitting alone, though?” Rose wonders.
Rey glances over at him quickly. “No one likes sitting alone.” She gets to her feet and picks up her tray. “Come on, we’re sitting with him.”
Poe groans, but Finn elbows him in the ribs and they all pick up their trays and follow a resolute Rey in a short parade to the corner. She slaps her tray down in front of Ben, and he jumps and looks up.
“You’re sitting with us,” she informs him. He doesn’t have time to say anything before Rose, Poe, and Finn claim their seats at the table, talking and laughing.
Rey doesn’t talk much rest the of the meal, and neither does Ben. But she looks up at him and catches him smiling into his soup at something Finn said. Rey smiles too.
He partners her for the rest of the term. Nothing is said about switching them up. Students and staff alike seem to take it for granted: when there’s partnering to be done, Ben will be with Rey. When his hands are supporting her, she looks in the mirror and she sees someone good enough to be in the company. But when she watches him dance alone, she wonders if she’s fooling herself: if it’s the just the effect of his partnering that makes her seem better than she is. Anyone would look just as good with him.
She works even harder. Her muscles scream with the effort, but she pushes her body right up to edge of what it says it can’t handle. She doesn’t go beyond, because that’s a recipe for injury, but she shoves the fenceposts over, little by little, at the cost of sweat and smiling strain.
He barely sweats. It’s something she notices early on. She can be in a leotard dripping with it, and he’s wearing a pristine white tee-shirt and the only sweat on his body is a slight sheen on his forehead and hers wetting his hands.
She goes back and forth between frustration with him and with herself. Because he’s still obnoxiously perfect without trying, but he’s shy and quiet and when he smiles, it’s at her. So she doesn’t not like him.
“When I get into the company,” she pants one day after class, jabbing him in the chest, “it’s not going to be because of you. It’s going to be because I’m good.”
“I know,” he answers quietly.
“You better,” she growls.
“I do.”
They both get their contracts on a Friday afternoon, a month after her seventeenth birthday. Her appointment is after his. He waits in the hall for her outside the artistic director’s office.
She runs into his arms and wraps her arms around his neck, and he picks her up automatically. Her feet kick with glee as she buries her nose in his neck. “Why did you wait for me?” she scolds, grinning. “This would’ve been so awkward if I hadn’t gotten it.”
“I knew you would.” He hasn’t put her down, so her feet dangle. He could hold her like this all day, probably. Eye to eye.
“You can’t have known for sure.”
“I did.” He smiles quietly.
“How?”
“Because you told me.”
It’s a while longer before her feet touch the ground again.
She finds the first flower in the mirror the next morning. Just a bud. It’s a few inches below her collarbone, right over her heart. She covers her mouth and grins.
She double- and triple-checks to make sure her leotard covers it. She can hardly wait until the evening, when she can look again. She examines it closely. It’s blooming. She thinks it’s a lilac. It’s bright pink, like his cheeks when she smiles at him.
So this is what love feels like.
He double- and triple-checks in the mirror. No flowers. Just skin.
