Funny Little Love

Pointe Suspendit

6

"You really seem to love Parisian coffee, huh?", Shawn scoffed at Alex.

Shawn and Alex were standing on the godly, gracious Pont Alexandre III bridge on river Seine with the Champs-Élysées on one side and the Invalides buildings and the Eiffel Tower on the other. They were sipping coffee in a paper cup both of them stamped with the logos of the famous Les Deux Magots.

"Just the coffee? I fucking love everything here. I love France. I have French as my second language. France is where my parents met. That makes France responsible for my birth." Alex replied.

"Donc tu aime clairemont plus la France que moi." (Translation: So you clearly like France more than me.) Shawn teased.

"Comment pourrais-je ? Tu es mon petit ourson musclé, il n'y a personne que j'aime plus que toi." (Translation: How could I ever? You're my little muscular teddy bear, there's no one I like more than you.) Alex replied before giving hugging Shawn and giving him a little smooch on his right cheek.

"C'est pas vrai. Tu l'aimes plus que moi. Tu le sais ça." (Translation: That's not right. You like me more than him. You know that.), Cain's voice boomed from behind.

Alex spun backward to see Cain standing with coffee in a similar cup like those held by Shawn and Alex.

"Je t'aime pas Cain. Tu es mon ami. Reste comme ça." (Translation: I don't like you that, Cain. You're my friend. Just stay that way.) Alex said.

Shawn growled at Cain.

With no warning, Cain grabbed Alex's right hand while Shawn grabbed the left.

Before the two brutes could play a tug of war with Alex which would sure rip him apart, the alarm bell rang.

Alex woke up immediately and sat himself upright on the bed and felt his heart pounding while feeling relieved at the same time that he was saved from the terrible dream.

"What the fuck was that? My subconscious staging a fight between the two hottest guys in my school in my dream country?", Alex thought.

There was the final rehearsal for the LA Regional Auditorium performance scheduled for today and it was the rule set by the Glorieuse Committee which was financing and organizing the dance competition, that the dancers were to perform a duet with partners paired the day before the competition to ensure pure skill and versatile professional trust for the reward was huge. The reward was the main reason Alex was taking part. The winners would receive the prestigious award of dancing in the esteemed Palais Garnier, a historical, luxurious and super-famous theater.

Alex was pretty much the best guy in the region so his chances of winning were much higher than others, but the other deciding factor would be his partner and their chemistry together.

Alex was putting on his pointe shoes when the dance coach came in with Cain by his side.

"This young man just joined the ballet troupe. I understand that you boys are wonderful friends and I expect you not to treat each other like arseholes. Get acquainted with each other and introduce him to the rest. I know this is just the day before the competition but not all of you are going to the dance anyway. Only two of you are. Cain told me he was a great dancer, so I decided to give him a chance.", the coach said.

"Coach, are you acting British?", Alex asked.

"No. Of course not.", the Coach replied.

"Yes, you totally are. You're talking in a peculiarly strong British accent and you're using British phrases. What's with the arsehole thing?", Alex laughed.

"Ok, I am. I love how they sound. They sound so posh right?" Coach said while looking at Cain with a childish grin.

"Yeah, they do." Cain laughed.

"No more chit-chat. Back to work." the Coach in his usual professional tone.

Alex was now in the biggest dilemma he had ever faced. A part of him was excited he would now dance with one of the school's hottest boys while another part of him was afraid if dancing with Cain would somehow negatively affect his relationship with Shawn now that he was being all sweet to Alex.

"People, this is one of your new troupe mates, all the way from Britain. Welcome Cain." Alex announced to the rest.

"Can he even dance?" Maria, one member of the troupe asked.

"Well, I don't know about that. I have got dance certificates and awards from the Royal Society of Ballet.," Cain said.

The rest of the troupe went silent. This clarified that nobody could bully Cain for being a new addition to the group.

"Let's dance now", the Coach announced and hit play on his laptop which resulted in a blast of classical music from the speakers.

One by one everyone came and performed their solos to the music. Till now, the best one was Alex's so Alex was one of the obvious participants in tomorrow's contest.

The only one's solo left now was that of Cain.

The opening of the music boomed again and Cain leapt forward in a spectacular Ballon (a ballet move in which the dancer appears to spring up in the air carelessly and land effortlessly like a balloon). He followed with a Chassé and then an Allegro. He was the most gracious dancer the room had ever seen, well, except Alex.

"It is decided. YOU WILL BE ALEX'S PARTNER. NO ONE ELSE. YOU." Coach blared.

The dilemma inside Alex's head intensified.

Alex thought he was supposed to meet Shawn in the cafeteria after the rehearsal but he remembered, Shawn was gone with his family for a day to see his grandfather who was ill.

He went straight home and went for an early nap.

He woke up to find that it was 8 in the morning. Two hours to the dance. The biggest and the most exciting dance contest in his life.

He quickly got ready and rushed to the school to be picked up by the coach. Cain was there with his usual handsome body.

They got into the coach's car and the coach drove them to the LA Regional Auditorium.

The music had already started playing. Alex and Cain's duet was thr fifth in the series or the second last.

By the time Alex and Cain's turn came, the hall had seen many dances most of which seemed kind of desperately amateur because many of them played Beethoven to sway the judges which was unbearably clichéd.

As soon as Alex and Cain's accustomed music played, both leaped forward in a Ballon like a pair of majestic male gods and kept in swaying the audience and the judges with their movements.

By the time they ended, the entire audience stood up in applause and clapped for over 5 minutes.

What really concerned them was the last duet also received a similar applause and were in some ways much more majestic than Alex and Cain. Their moves were more concise, their bodies were beautiful. The thing that they lacked and what Alex and Cain didn't was pure chemistry and emotion.

Will Alex and Cain get to dance in the Palais Garnier? Will the judges care more for moves and body or chemistry and raw emotion?

------------------

Author's Note: The ending with the question was a bit weird but I included it anyway.

Thank You to @hualiancat for helping me with the French translations. My own translations were not good in quality, so being a native French person, they helped me out.

I used a lot of professional ballet terms like pose names and stuff and I myself had to Google them to know a lot about them and to help me understand how they look.

Ballet is so beautiful. It is graceful and powerful at the same time.

Vote if you liked this part and please comment, I like reading them.