His Nepenthe | complete

23. For

F O R W H A T ?

*

I rolled my eyes as she grinned - proud that she managed to get me into the back room with little effort.

"Come on, Christian. Don't even think about it."

"I'm not," I raised my hands in defeat, beginning to undo the buttons of my shirt.

Brandy winked, laughing as she pulled off her sweater, walking over to the doors of what seemed to be her studio now and shutting them properly, her soft music playing through the room.

I replaced my button up with the shirt I wore whenever I would go to the gym, deciding to stay in the jeans I had worn.

I looked away from Brandy as soon as I noticed she had taken off her pants, replacing them with loose fitting cotton short shorts. The larger bruises and scratches she had were healing now, though few remained dark due to her falls in dance.

I couldn't help but to stare at her legs that I found so fucking hot.

"Dude, you can't dance in jeans. Don't you have shorts or something?" She asked, pulling her hair up into the familiar ponytail she wore whenever she did ballet.

I rolled my eyes, "I'm sure I can manage in jeans."

She raised an eyebrow playfully, clicking her tongue, "Want a bet?"

I held out my hand to her, shaking a bet that had no stakes, "You're on."

She grinned, before taking a seat on the floor, "Now, stretch. If you don't warm up you run the risk of breaking something."

Her music was playing around the room, soft songs that encouraged a deep breath of air to take its time filtering the oxygen through your lungs.

"Only if you don't stretch? Not like ballet is evil and tries to break you at every turn?"

"Shut up," she teased as I sat down across from her to listen to her instructions. No words left her lips as she leant into a full split, able to reach the ground with her legs in a straight line. Her contours of her body were only made more obvious at her flexibility.

Her bones seemed so strong though they were just as brittle as any one else's.

An inaudible 'what the fuck' left my lips at how she moved herself through just the warm up, so gracefully and elegantly, as if she was floating through the movement.

Her teachings began at what she had first learned, a demonstration of the move I knew was called a pirouette. I knew its name, sure, but I didn't know how the fuck she did it.

"Regular pirouette. It's one of the more basic moves in ballet."

She had run through the steps at least twenty times before I actually understood how to do it. Even then, I was doing it wrong. I couldn't fix a point, my body stance was wrong, and my jeans were hell.

Brandy turned my body straight towards her, my chest flush against hers. She didn't meet my eyes as she fixed my positioning. Moving my arms to put emphasis on the placement of my elbows, kicking my feet forward or back to alter their fixing.

She mirrored me for a moment, assuring herself that I was right in the new positioning she chose. Nodding in approval, she stepped back, giving me a gentle smile, "Go."

"What?"

"Do the thing I showed you to do. Turn around and meet my eyes at the exact same point."

I gazed into her eyes to fix my focus, stretching my neck as she did to prepare herself for the turn. I begun the spin, my denim covered legs deciding that I would not be able to lift my leg the way she had shown me to.

Along with many other technical difficulties I'm sure she held back in her critique.

"Fuck's sake," I groaned, finally admitting defeat to the move,

"Told you jeans wouldn't work."

I scowled, disappointed in losing a bet that had no consequence, "Very good, Brandy. Congratulations."

"Go on. Have a pout."

I rolled my eyes, making sure not to pout as much as I wanted to. I wasn't a good petty bet loser, "I'm just not that flexible."

She grinned, "Wanna see something gross?"

"I'm not sure"

She lifted her foot to her face, resting her head against the outstretched leg, cupping her own face with her foot.

"Jesus fuck that's creepy."

She let her leg down, bowing with a laugh, "I know, it's great."

She let out a content sigh as she dropped herself to the floor, staring up to the ceiling. I sat down next to her, a curious eyebrow raised.

She just smiled back, "What do you fight for? Like, when you're punching that bag, what is it you do that for?"

I shrugged, "Nothing."

Brandy nodded in understanding, "I dance because it makes me feel something more than just happy, or sad," her golden eyes met mine again, glistening, "It makes me feel alive, as well as absolutely nothing at all."

Finally, the chance had come to learn more about the enigma, "How long have you danced?"

"I started at 5, I think. I worked my way up from background junior to favourite, practically killing myself with every imperfection-" She stopped, clearing her throat to forget the line of words she had started, "It was a lot."

"When did you realise you had to stop?"

She scrunched her lips to one side of her face, eyebrows furrowed as she thought over the question. Her eyes seemed sad as she reminisced about the love she had left behind, "When I did ballet in my class two years ago, I had a partner called Fredrik, who was the only exchange student. He was Italian, and I only knew French, so I thought 'wow, way to make me seem like the asshole'," she scratched her bottom lip as she laughed softly, "I think he really helped me understand that it wasn't for me when he spoke about training, and how he had used ballet to become better in sport, but then he realised how much he lived for ballet. He felt the best when he was dancing to perform his skills," there was a trace of nostalgia in her eyes, reminiscent of what seemed to be a past life, "I just sort of... Did it. Just because it was fun, and I liked pushing myself as far as I could until I would break."

"You didn't have the heart for it in the end, did you?"

She shook her head, a sad sort of half smile on her lips, "I loved things more than ballet. I loved food, I loved my friends, I loved my family. In ballet, you can't love something more than it if you want to be the best. Or at least that's how it felt to me."

"So you quit?"

"Basically. It hurt like a breakup, but it was a toxic relationship, looking back at it. I'm glad I made it out in tact," she stared down to her feet, still always bruised, "or at least partially."

Listening to her speak so candidly felt entirely new. She was always honest, but her dance seemed like something that always hurt her both mentally as physically. It was the one thing she was irrevocably addicted to.

"My parents hate that I still dance, they're worried I'll go back to bleeding for a sport. They're right in that, but Heath thinks I still need to let myself dance because that's my outlet for almost everything. They found out a while ago that I had been using the gym to dance," she rubbed the back of her neck, cringing at the memory, "they were not impressed, to say the least."

"You're more in tact than a lot of people, you know," I mumbled, her eyes dancing over to mine.

Her tongue reached her cheek as she raised an eyebrow teasingly, "That's what I make you think."

"Well, you're damn good at pretending then."