𝐓𝐄𝐍𝐒𝐈𝐎𝐍 [𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘯 𝘹 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘳]

006

eren's gaze sent a chill through you, his ambivalence feeling like a slap in the face after last night, but you couldn't blame him seeing as you were the one who snuck out. 

you met his eyes begrudgingly only to see an empty canvas wiped of emotion as if he was looking right through you. you were frozen in place until his attention lazily shifted to the small crowd surrounding him. if it hadn't been for his lingering stare you'd think he didn't even recognize you. soft murmurings filled the room as you took the moment of distraction to dust yourself off and look for your shameful partner. 

you see reiner standing to the side bristling like a bratty toddler who'd been chastised and approach him.

"don't fucking drop me again," you whisper menacingly out of the range of your fellow ballerinas. this was the second time he'd dropped you, you were lucky he hadn't caused any career-ending injuries. you make a mental reminder to approach your instructor after class about a partner switch. 

you start stretching and glance back to see eren surrounded by some of your fellow company members, some asking him questions while others glare from afar. he looks like he'd rather be anywhere else. 

looking back you were surprised at the lack of positive reaction at his arrival. you recognized his full name from when you were in your earlier days of dancing, it was a scandal that had swept the ballet world but you'd been just a little too young to understand the gritty details.

you recall brief glimpses of news ticker headlines, the emboldened words DRUGS, VIOLENCE, SEX, had graced many flashy magazine covers that your mom had tried and failed to block from view. from what you remember, he'd been busted at a club with drugs of the harder variety a few times. that, coupled with his already less than respectable social life outside of ballet had made for a dangerous combination. 

one of the most vicious aspects of being a dancer was the gossip. you'd seen dancers be destroyed by the dramatized and cruel words of others. just last year in your company's nutcracker rendition the sugarplum fairy was danced by the understudy because word had spread about her "loose morals" after someone found a video of her online. the video had been backlit in a dingy club but over the booming synth you could faintly hear a familiar feminine snicker behind the camera. 

your instructor had refused to say who'd brought the video to his attention, but you could guess based on the sheer delight of the understudy's face as she danced the part. dancers were ruthless in their desire to succeed and would stop at nothing. this type of sabotage was common but nobody talked about it openly.

back then you'd been ignorant to the sexual aspect but even now talk of eren yeager's sexual conquests is passed between social circles. male ballerinas had it easier in that sex scandals are almost always overlooked, or even praised, such as in eren's case. he became an object of desire and intrigue to the somewhat closed off ballet social world. 

eventually the gossip spread to bigger media and his every move became the business of a much larger audience. as more people captured and shared his every move, his drug use and sexual deviancy became a matter of public opinion that culminated in a violent encounter that, if you remember correctly, landed someone in a coma. 

beyond that you'd mostly ignored ballet gossip in favor of focusing on yourself and your success. you figured the best way to avoid becoming involved in scandal was to avoid any involvement completely. so much for that. 

you hadn't recognized his face last night because of how much older he looked. his hair had grown long and his facial features were sharper and more masculine with age. it had been probably ten years since you last remember seeing him in the news.