Balance

Chapter 4

He was dancing in silence.  The other dancers, instructors and instrumentalists were all still gathered in the main studio; however, a lack of accompaniment did not faze Louis.  He ran through a quick warm up before launching into his favourite dance sequence: a complicated routine complete with intricate footwork and difficult turns along with other technical elements.

Louis loved the sound of his shoes scuffing along the hardwood floors.  He was thrilled by the protest of his limbs as he lifted his leg up into as near to a one-eighty degree angle as the human muscles allowed, the rest of his body remaining perfectly still.  Launching into a perfectly executed leap, Louis strode across the floor, pausing once he reached the corner of the room.

His hands seemed to have a life of their own as they moved delicately through the open air to form a brief pose overhead.  While they moved lightly, they also showed a great deal of strength in the sheer tension a ballet dancer was required to put into each movement.

Louis leaned back artfully, half closing his eyes as he focused on the burn in his muscles and the light sheen of sweat beginning to form under his fringe of hair.  He pulled up out of his dip as his foot swept back across the floor.  

Taking a few dainty steps back toward the middle of the room, Louis began his spin sequence.  Whirling with control and precision, Louis crossed back across the floor in a diagonal line.  His speed picked up as Louis unloaded the brunt of his emotions into his dancing.

The trashed theater, the strange boy, that damned stare all swirled together in the young dancer's mind, egging him onward.  He ceased his traveling to execute a number of spins in rapid succession.  His azure gaze locked on the mirror across from him and only did his head turn with his body when maintaining that gaze was impossible without snapping his neck.

One, two, three; Louis turned on the ball of his foot gracefully, his free leg flaring out to propel the spin with its momentum.  Time seemed to slow down, a deafening silence settling in the room.  All Louis could hear was his slightly labored breathing, his heart hammering in his chest and the muffled sound of his ballet shoes pressing against the floorboards.

Even when the muscles of his legs began to burn with the tension of the spin and his head throbbed dully in protest, Louis kept on.  It felt nice, the pain.  It was familiar and something he could focus on when life seemed especially chaotic as it did in the present moment.

With each shift back to a flat foot before arching back up into the necessary position for the turn, Louis' body complained more.  He wasn't used to this rigorous a routine, particularly not of a self imposed sort.  He could feel the sweat working its way down his back, slicking all his limbs.

Dangerously, Louis allowed his eyes to close so he could focus solely on the signs his muscles were shooting through his nerves.  They were strained, he could tell.  Slowing down, Louis ceased his wild spins and struck a pose.  He was definitely out of breath but it felt so good, so cleansing.

He didn't, couldn't, stop.  He pushed what could have been a simple pose up into an arabesque—limbs stretched to their maximum potential as he balanced on the ball of single foot.  

A heavy clapping from the doorway startled the focused dancer.  His balance shifted awkwardly, rolling over his heel as he fell out of the pose.  Eyes flashing open, Louis was met with a lanky figure leaned in the doorway before he crashed to the floor in an ungraceful heap.

"Damn it," he muttered quietly, not wanting the boy or the policeman he knew would be several feet behind the vandal to hear his expletives.  The boy, Harry, for his part still kept up his sarcastic applause.  He was smiling wryly, a dimple pocking his otherwise blemish-free face.