Ch. 1: Tiger in Tights

Six Years Later

   "Good morning, Tiger."
   Ty, as he preferred to be called by his benefactor, looked up from his usual morning stretches and smiled. Golden brown haired Caspar with the average height and build that made it easy for him to blend in, and who Ty merely thought of as 'My Benefactor', stood in the doorway to his home gym, where he performed all his morning stretches and Pilates exercises, as well as his strength building training. There were barres against the mirrored wall, as well as freestanding barres he could pull to the middle of the room. All of it designed by Caspar's "experts", and paid for by Caspar himself. He would deny Ty nothing that would help improve his career, because Caspar wanted nothing more but to make Ty a star, and be known as the one who'd made him so.
   "Are you working on the Bluebird closing section today?" Caspar asked.
   Ty nodded. "I think we're working on it all, trying to run through the whole thing." He didn't actually think that, he knew it. There was a bit less than a week until they had to go onstage for an audience, and they hadn't yet performed the entire thing all together. The time crunch was on, and the stress was showing in the directors and dancers. But that was always what the last week or two was like.
   Ty had been cast as the Bluebird, with a pas de deux with Princess Florine, played by Ayumi, a first soloist, like him. As it was only his second year in the Royal Ballet company, and he'd already been promoted to first soloist, he knew he was pleasing Caspar with his progress. His benefactor was convinced Ty would make principle by his third year, which would have been a huge accomplishment indeed. Ty was less optimistic, figuring he'd stay as a first soloist for a couple of years, at least. And that was perfectly fine with him.
   Finishing his exercises, he headed downstairs for breakfast, which Caspar insisted had to be a healthy, light meal. He had read that drinking lemon water in the morning upon waking woke up hunger, and since Ty could be difficult about not wanting to eat before class, he'd started making him drink lemon water first thing every morning. And of course that water had to be pure filtered, and the lemon had to be fresh squeezed. And of course breakfast had to be high in carbohydrates and protein. This morning, it was yogurt and fresh fruit, with nuts and seeds sprinkled over the top.
   Settling at the table, Ty dug into his breakfast, knowing it was best to simply do what Caspar wanted. Anyroad (anyway, he reminded himself; Caspar hated when he used "that low class slang"), he'd trained himself now to expect food in the morning, and sort of enjoyed it. He drank his milk, glancing at the clock. Class started at ten thirty, with the first rehearsal at twelve. They would rehearse until six; once they started performing, rehearsals would only go until five thirty. But then he would have the performances, which would start at seven thirty, and end at at about ten thirty at night.
   Ballet ruled his life.
   After breakfast, Ty gathered his ballet equipment, put on his shoes and coat, and headed out into the cool of the London February morning. Caspar always drove him to and from the Royal Opera House (or ROH, as most of the dancers knew it), where class and rehearsals took place. Ty knew the building intimately, as he'd spent the majority of his time there for the past year. It felt more like his home than Caspar's house did. Despite having lived in Caspar's house since graduating from the Bolshoi Ballet Academy, the ballet school he'd studied and lived at, he still had yet to think of it as his home. It was just Caspar's house, and he happened to live there. In fact, though Caspar had overseen his education since he'd been just a kid, Ty barely knew him, and often felt uncomfortable when alone with him. He was too enmeshed in Ty's memories of frightening authority figures and feeling like a helpless little kid. Mad though it was, Ty felt much more comfortable with Capsar's servant-types, who he'd known for only a year, than with the man who'd been so closely involved in his transformation into a ballet dancer for, what, six years? Caspar had been father, teacher, guardian, and punisher to Ty, had given Ty everything from food, encouragement, and rewards, to threats, discipline, and abuse, had followed Ty's progress through the school with a mixture of elation, pride and anxiety, which translated often into shouts and intimidation, had pushed Ty to his very limits, both mentally and physically, and had compensated him with the highest praise and most expensive gifts. He had taken care of and protected Ty, and expected Ty to be grateful and devoted to him. Instead, Ty both feared and disdained him. Because, though Caspar had chosen to call him by his nickname, and had spent an equal amount of time petting and grooming him as he had abusing him, when you came down to it, Caspar was not his father, not his guardian, not his benefactor, but his owner. And Ty simply could not, would not, love him.
   "Work hard, Tiger," Caspar said as he pulled up to the ROH drop off area. He smiled,  and reached out to clap Ty on the shoulder. "Future principle."
   Ty smiled. As he was expected to. "I'll see you after six." He was always purposely vague about when rehearsals ended, saying it was supposed to be over at six, but would often go longer than expected. This wasn't necessarily true, but he liked to have a few moments to himself in the changing room and corridors before being yet again with Caspar. It was often a fight to get alone time.
   Opening the door, he hopped out and headed round to the stage door of the building. Thoughts of running away never entered his head anymore; he knew how lucky he was in his situation compared to a lot of the others who'd been spirited away from homes and family. And anyro-way, he quite liked his fellow dancers, as well as the Mistress presiding over the warm up class, Mistress Valeriya Krupin, a tough yet graceful, gallant old lady with a knack for remembering every one of the dancers' names, as well as the faults they needed to work on and where their strengths laid. Pushing open the glass stage door, and pulling open the second stage door, he headed past the prettier section of the building that the public was admitted to, and down the small, unadorned corridor that most ballet admirers never saw. The behind the scenes was often scuffed, shabby, and unimpressive, but to Ty it felt like an old, dependable friend, a place and thing that never changed, the way a child imagined their parents remained always the same, comfortingly predictable. Walking to the changing rooms, he ran his fingers along the blue painted walls, saying hello.
   The changing rooms had a keypad, to allow only the dancers and staff in, and he punched in the number quickly, heading through to the two sectioned room, the first of which was where costumes were hung, and where the lighted mirrors and stools for makeup and hair fixing were. The mirror created a wall, behind which was the changing area, lined with lockers and wooden benches. Several men greeted him as he dropped his bag to the floor and sat down on the nearest bench, pulling off his shoes. The other men, all older than him, chatted with each other, but Ty kept quiet, a habit learned long ago and still difficult to break, despite being quite familiar with nearly everyone in the company.
   Once he was dressed and had stowed the things he didn't need in a locker, he shouldered his bag and joined a few of the men as they left the changing rooms, listening to them talk as they halted before the lifts. The studio where their class was held was on the second floor.
   "Hey, Ty," several of the other dancers greeted him as he entered the big mirrored room that served for their warm up class.
   "Hey," he said, smiling as he dropped his bag to the edge of the floor and glanced round at the company. Neat rows of free standing barres were lined up and down the middle of the room, and plenty of dancers were already at them, stretching, dressed in an array of tights, leggings, pants, shorts, and leg warmers, most in loose t-shirts or tight tank tops or zip-ups. Leaving his bag by the wall, Ty walked over to where one of his best friends, Marni, was stretching.
   "Hello," he said, sitting down across from her. She was bending in half over her straight legs, bronze hair in a tight bun, and looked up at him from the level of her knees with her brown doe eyes, her slightly upturned nose and naturally quirked mouth giving her a mischievous Peter Pan expression.
   "Hello, Bluebird." That was her idea of a clever joke, since she usually called him Tiger. Apart from Caspar, only his close friends called him that, most people simply using Ty. However, Marni had been calling him Bluebird every morning since he'd been cast in Sleeping Beauty.
   As he set about his own stretches, he admired her petite, pretty frame. He couldn't deny that his initial interest in her had been as something more than a friend, but she'd made it clear from the start that she didn't go for younger men. In fact, she'd confided to him last year, she'd remained a virgin until she was nearly twenty, then had lost it to a much older man. And she had yet, so she claimed, to have met a young man who could satisfy her the way older men could. So, they were only friends.
   "What are you doing after rehearsals?" he asked. He liked to hear all about what the others did in their free time, since he was never allowed to do anything but go back to Caspar's and rest.
   "Probably go out to eat with some of the artists," she said, sitting up and watching him stretch. "You should come. Or will your benefactor not let you?" She rolled her eyes. He'd told her his nickname for Caspar, though not how he'd ended up with him. Free-spirited and independent as she was, she simply couldn't understand why he let Caspar order him about and control him so minutely. Ty always claimed it was because his benefactor paid for everything he needed for ballet, and supported him when his contracted salary wasn't enough, but it never really made sense to Marni, who worked a second dancing job on the side (exotic dancing). She couldn't understand why he didn't do something similar, rather than be beholden to someone else so completely.
   "Probably not," he answered her question. "That's okay, I'm always tired afterwards."
   Tugging at a bit of his hair, Marni smirked. "Liar. You're always covering for him. You know you'd love to come out with us."
   He shrugged. "Maybe I just don't like you as much as you think." He laughed when she punched him in the arm with her little fist. "No, really, I don't mind not going out. He just wants to make sure I get all the rest I need. He's just looking out for me."
   "He's just jealous whenever you're spending time with anyone but him," she shot back. "I think he fancies you."
   Ty made a face. "Please, I just ate. Don't make me vomit."
   As she laughed, Valeriya called them to attention. "Alright everyone, find a place, find a place."
   For the first twenty-five minutes of class, they worked with the barres, doing demi-plies, grande plies, forward and back and side bends, pointes, eleves, releves, passes, ronds de jambe, and so on. Then the barres were moved to the sides of the room, out of the way, and they began the exercises, working in two groups, since the class was so big, without the barres. As he always did, Ty zoned in on the dancing and forgot everything and everyone else. There was only his own body and the bodies around him, working in synchronization, so their bodies seemed almost an extension of his, and his of theirs. And master over it all was Valeriya, her voice leading them in the movements, the piano player accompanying them on the ride. In groups of three and four, they began their jumps and spins diagonally across the room, Valeriya making corrections here and there. Whenever Ty started across the room, he could feel her sharp eyes watching him, rather like the teachers at the Academy had watched him, like the directors watched him. He knew he had splendid technique (not flawless, but captivating all the same), and an impressive attention to detail. They called him a perfectionist, but he knew the truth. They said it was because he'd been trained in Russia, and he knew that was part of it, but he also knew that his need to be perfect stemmed from a time before the Bolshoi. A time he couldn't think about without a rush of fear and pain. But no one knew that, and he didn't want them to know. Let them believe that he was merely talented and had an eye for technique, and that that was all it had taken for him to be the dancer that he was.
   The class lasted for an hour and a quarter, ending at eleven forty-five, and then they had fifteen minutes to get ready for rehearsals, which meant going upstairs to check his schedule. He and Marni went together, climbing the stairs to the office space where the schedules were hung up.
   "Rehearsal for the Bluebird at twelve, rehearsal for Prince Charmant," he was an understudy, "at one-thirty, then the full company at three," he rattled off. "Busy day."
   Marni chuckled. "I bet rehearsals go later than six. There's no way we'll get through the entire thing in three hours. There'll be too many stops." Marni, an artist, which made her part of the corps de ballet, played the Diamond Fairy, one of the Prince Desire's friends (a duchess), as well as understudying for Coulante, one of the bigger fairy roles.
   "I hope it doesn't," Ty muttered. If it did, he'd lose out on his alone time.
   Marni flicked him a mocking look. "What, you don't want to spend even more time with Aleah?"
   Without meaning to, his head turned to where she was standing by the window, talking to the man who played Prince Desire, Vladimir. Aleah and Vladimir were two of the highest principal dancers. Aleah, in particular, was a crowd favorite, a real ballerina. Audiences came merely to see her dance, and she was considered one of the top ballerinas in the UK. Not to mention she was physically beautiful, with flowing dark hair and clear hazel almond-shaped eyes and lovely golden-peach skin. Every straight male dancer couldn't keep his eyes off her. Certainly Ty was no exception. Unfortunately, Marni knew that, and teased him endlessly about it. In the back of his mind, he rather thought she was hoping he'd end up sleeping with Aleah, and get his eyes off herself. She didn't seem to realize that even if he did sleep with Aleah, he'd still find Marni attractive. One girl's beauty didn't take away from anothers. And, anyroad (anyway, damn it!), it wasn't as if many in the company were particularly possessive over each other. He knew for a fact that most of the straight men had banged Aleah, and a few of the girls, as well. Even some teachers had shared a night or two with her. That was the case with most of the dancers, the higher up in the hierarchy, the more intense it seemed to get.
   Tearing his eyes away from the slender, graceful beauty, he glared at the smirking Marni. "You're hilarious."
   "You're in love with her. Want me to ask her if she likes you? It'll be just like primary school."
   "Haha." He turned away from her. "I have to get to my rehearsal."
   Following on his heels, Marni laughed. "You can run, but you can't hide, Tiger. Your orange is showing."
   He made a face at her. "Don't you have somewhere to be?"
   Giggling, she pinched him in the side, making him jump, then started off away from him. "Maybe I'll see you later for a meal, yeah?"
   Waving, he nodded. "Sure. See you."
   He went to Fontayne Studio for his Bluebird rehearsals with Ayumi, who was originally from Japan. She'd been with the Royal Ballet for five years, had trained in the Royal Ballet school for seven years, and was older than him, but looked his age. She joked that Japanese women didn't look like they were in their twenties until they were in their forties, and therefore Ty was practically older than her. Of course, she, like everyone else except Caspar, believed he was actually the age on his i.d., which said twenty. No one apart from Caspar knew he was actually three years younger, and therefore not even legally old enough to drink. That may have been why he was, as most of the company had told him, so slim and boyish looking.
   The director supervising this section was a teacher, Harvey Wright, who was in his late thirties, with a somewhat chipmunk appearance and voice. Ty couldn't really place what in his expression seemed so chipmunk-like, but every time he worked with Harvey, images of Chip and Dale ran through his head (the cartoon, not the dancers). Not that that made Harvey any less demanding and formidable. He was a great teacher, chipmunk voice and all.
   Ty had a feeling Harvey liked him, because the man pushed him so hard, and wasn't shy about critiquing him. He knew that the teacher was hardest on the dancers he thought had the most potential, and it was generally considered a good thing if he pointed out your mistakes more than someone else's. And Harvey was always pointing out Ty's mistakes, which, for all his focus on precision, were many. It was well known that English ballet concentrated on perfect technique, and Russian ballet focused on expression and inhabiting a character; that was part of why Russian dancers were some of the best, the most bold and breathtaking, but it seemed to drive his English teachers mad that he wasn't technically infallible. He tried to be, a fear of failing having been drummed into him for years, but correctness simply hadn't been the Bolshoi Academy's idea of a great dancer; at least, not in the upper classes, and especially not in the Master classes. It probably had been in the beginning classes, where you formed the base of your dancing. However, he couldn't be entirely sure, as he'd been sped through the lower classes in order to push him to the harder skills faster, and therefore have him graduating ahead of schedule. That was why Caspar had paid several private ballet tutors to train him in the six months before he'd been enrolled at the Bolshoi. Tutors, he remembered, who'd not been gentle with him, and had often had him dance through his tears, whipping him with a flexible rattan cane in the legs whenever he'd begged to stop. But Ty didn't like thinking of those months.
   Currently, Harvey was going through the Bluebird/Princess Florine pas de deux, while he and Ayumi followed along. Of course, they knew all the steps, but for about the thousandth time, Ty hadn't got his back leg straight enough on the arabesques he and Ayumi did in unison. Ayumi, as always, did them beautifully, but his leg, apparently, wasn't aligned with hers, and Harvey was frustrated.
   "Just do an arabesque for me," he ordered, and Ayumi moved back, letting Ty stand alone. He moved into an arabesque, and Harvey came to fix his leg. "D'you see how much better that is?" he asked, pointing at Ty's reflection in the mirror.
   "Yes," he answered dutifully, and he had to privately admit it did look much more graceful. As always, however, a sick feeling rose in his stomach at his mistake, a learned terror making him want to flinch with every one of Harvey's touches to his leg and hip.
   "Just do those arabesques on your own, and then we'll have the pair of you do it again. I just want to make sure you actually know it this time, rather than you pretending like you do. Go on."
   The piano player started again, and Ty, trying to stifle his constricting anxiety, went through the arabesque bit on his own, furtively watching himself in the mirror. It was with a flood of relief that he saw his back leg obeying his silent commands to do as it was expected. Even so, when he finished, he looked to Harvey with a mixture of apprehension and uneasiness, and a tiny amount of hope. Gratefully, he saw his teacher smiling.
   "Much better. Now do it with Ayumi."
   They performed it together once, then three more times, to prove 'they' (he) knew it. To Harvey, if you couldn't perform something three times in a row without mistakes, then you didn't really know it. After that section, they began again and did the whole thing through, stopping for corrections at the end, then going through it again.
   By the end of the hour and twenty minute rehearsal, he was sweating and breathing hard, Ayumi looking the same. Walking out together, she grinned at him.
   "You got Harvey's attention."
   He smiled, smoothly hiding how it had panicked him. "I do, don't I? It's hard to remember that that's a good thing."
   Laughing, she nudged him. "See you at three."
   They separated and Ty headed up to check his schedule again, making sure he knew what studio to go to. As he looked he ate from the snacks Caspar's cook always put in his bag: Today, he had carrots and hummus mixed with marmite. Scanning the lists, he dipped a carrot and bit into it.
   "Can I have a bite?" a voice right behind him asked.
   Not looking, Ty dipped the same carrot he'd bitten and held it over his shoulder. Twenty-six year old Jared took a bite from Ty's fingers, his lips grazing the younger man's fingertips.
   "You always have the best snacks."
   Smiling at the schedules, Ty said, "That's why you like me. God knows it's not my personality you stick around for."
   Laughing, Jared rested his chin on his friend's shoulder, hands on his waist. "It's not only the food, I assure you." He reached round for another carrot, scooping up a load of the hummus/marmite spread and putting the whole thing in his mouth. Ty could hear him chewing as he got a carrot for himself.
   "Do you have rehearsal soon?" Jared asked.
   Checking the clock, Ty nodded. "Less than ten minutes. That's why I'm eating on the go."
   "Ten minutes is a long time," Jared murmured coaxingly, but Ty nudged him away.
   "I'm saving my energy for dancing."
   "Don't you know? A lark with me gives you more vitality, not less." Jared rubbed his mouth against Ty's earlobe.
   Shaking him off, Ty snorted. "Is that your new sales pitch? I'm not buying it."
   "Lucky for you, my services are complimentary. Come on, I'll be quick." He tugged at Ty's wrist, and Ty laughed.
   "Persistent, aren't you?" Pulling his wrist free, he got more hummus onto a carrot and turned to feed it to Jared, who accepted with only slight disappointment.
   "You know what they say about all work and no play," he tried again.
   Ty laughed a bit. "You know what they say about ballet dancers." He shrugged. "Isn't ballet a bit of both, anyr-way?" He paused, then gave a sigh. "I'll tell you what, if there's time before the full company rehearsal, I'll meet you by the closet." The closet was their code word, not a closet in actuality. It was the word all the dancers used for the Linbury Studio Theatre, which was below ground level, and was used for private functions, community and educational events, exhibitions, and the like. During the day, it was almost guaranteed to be empty, and therefore was a good place for privacy.
   Jared brightened. "Sounds like a date."
   Shrugging, Ty said, "I'm not promising it'll happen. Only if we have time before the full rehearsal." He put up a finger. "But I'm warning you, I'll be even sweatier than I am now."
   Jared laughed, nicking another carrot. "A bit of sweat never hurt anybody. We'll be making sweat ourselves." Scraping up a load of hummus, he popped the whole carrot into his mouth, looking pleased. "I'll see you before three." With a last grin, he turned and swept from the room.
   Rolling his eyes, Ty closed his Tupperware of food, stuck it in his bag, and ran off to his designated studio.