He Did Ballet |Virgato|

Chapter 8: You missed out

Joel's not sure how he makes it home. All he knows is that he gets in the door, gets into his bedroom, ignoring Erick's questions and collapses on the floor. He doesn't quite get to his bed before he can't move anymore, and months of tension, and maybe years of repressed feelings start pouring out of him in shaking gasps. He realizes with a start that he's crying. For the first time since he left home.

He curls his body in on itself, becoming as small as possible as he tries to get his sobs under control. It's stupid, technically he barely knew Chris and they weren't even together, but he can't seem to tell his body that, to stop reacting like the most important thing he's ever had in his life has just chosen to walk right out of it.

In his fuzzy peripherals, he thinks he hears Erick talking to him from the other side of his door but he can't seem to coordinate any of himself to respond. Erick lets himself in, nearly smacking Joel with the door as he's curled up in front of it.

"Oh, Joel," Erick says quietly, quickly sitting down next to Joel, leaning against the closed door and pulling Joel between his legs. Joel continues to cry silently into Erick's sweatshirt, enveloped by his limbs.

"What happened?" Erick asks, running his hand soothingly through Joel's hair.

Joel tries to respond, but when he opens his mouth all he can do is let out another ugly sob and so he closes it again to try to repress it.

"Did you catch him?" Erick asks, realizing he's not going to get a verbal response out of Joel. Joel nods.

"Did you tell him everything? Tell him that you wanted him to stay, that you wanted to be with him?" Joel nods again, pressing his teary face further into Erick.

"And he still left?" Joel's breath hitches and another sob escapes his mouth.

"Fuck, Joel," Erick whispers, pulling Joel in tighter. Joel just carries on crying, unable to stem the flow of tears from his eyes dampening Erick's sweatshirt. He crawls into bed a couple of hours later having cried himself out in Erick's arms, Erick pulling himself in next to him and letting Joel continue to sniffle into the darkness of his room and wonders how long it will take for him not to feel like this anymore.

_

It takes a long time. Joel feels he should probably act less like someone died, but he can't help it, despite his best efforts he'd fallen head over heels for Chris and only realized it when it was too late.

It's about a month after the incident, which he's now referring to it by in his head, when he gets called into Mr. O'Hare's office again. Joel shuffles in miserably, almost confident that he's about to demote him back to First Soloist based on his performance over the past three weeks, probably the poorest by a Principal ever seen by the Royal Ballet. It's not like he doesn't want to be good. It's that he doesn't know how to anymore. Doesn't know how to make his limbs do what he wants them to.

"Hello again Joel, please sit down," Mr. O'Hare says gently, with a kind smile at Joel. It doesn't make Joel feel any better, that's the smile that someone would give someone before he fires them.

"How are you doing?" He asks kindly.

Joel clears his throat a little, not used to speaking much these days. "Um, fine, thanks."

Mr. O'Hare looks at him and raises his eyebrows a little.

"I think we all know that's not true, Joel," he says, not unkindly. "Do you want to tell me what's going on?"

Joel shakes his head. He sort of feels like he's being berated by a kind uncle, but he's not about to tell the Director of the Royal Ballet that he's basically slipped into a depression because he asked someone to be his boyfriend and they said no.