Ship/Member: Minghao/Junhui Major Tags: Major character death (ambiguous though) Additional Tags: Angst, jealousy, injury+blood Permission to remix: Yes
disclaimer i don't know much about ballet + terminology except for what i learned from watching black swan and some googling so. sorry in advance for whatever this is!!
***
Have you heard the one about the two swans? They’re humans, actually, but they have the hearts of birds. In the daylight they’re cursed to grow feathers. One of them is good and one of them is bad. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Both of them are beautiful, and, by the end of this story, dead. One drowns in the lake and the other one, the one with the spotless white feathers, white as enamel, white as bone, ascends to the heavens, consigned to eternal and shimmering perfection.
“Now show me the black swan,” says Soonyoung.
Minghao stares at his own reflection. Inescapable, because they are walled in by mirrors. The sheen of his face. Pale under the dark slick of his too-long hair, pale under the studio fluorescence. He tries to school his expression. Attack. Become a black widow.
“Remember,” Soonyoung says, “you’re a spider spinning a web.”
Minghao knows how to be the white swan Odette like he was born into it. Odile’s fouettes don’t come quite as natural to him. But he’s been studying Junhui in rehearsal, studying so closely that he figures he knows, by now, how it might feel to be Junhui.
How it works is: You raise your leg. You whip it around, transform into a perfect vessel for the spinning. With each rotation Soonyoung says loudly, “Attack it! Attack it—” The room revolves like you have become the lens of a kaleidoscope, a rotoscoping animation, scenes blurring together: Soonyoung, Attack it, the mirror and your own face, which is actually not Junhui’s face but your own and therefore imperfect, which you are realizing now too late in the middle of your idiotic spinning, Soonyoung, Attack it, the mirror and your own stupid face, Soonyoung Attack it the mirror your own wrong face—
Junhui spills into the practice room late and beaming. Minghao is still spinning and Soonyoung is still saying Attack, and Minghao’s foot lands wrong and he stumbles and Soonyoung cuts out in the middle of the word and it sounds like the gasp of someone being stabbed.
Ah—!
The world flattens. Junhui at the center of it now. He has such guileless eyes. He seems, at every moment, to be hiding nothing at all.
“Soonyoung? Should I try it again?”
Minghao can hear his own voice retreating into soft uncertainty. He would call it uncharacteristic, but it seems more and more lately that he is slipping into whatever this is. Only the white swan, when he should be both.
“That’s okay,” Soonyoung says, eyes fixed on Junhui. “You’re late, Junhui. Go warm up.”
“Already warmed up,” Junhui says, lilting. Grins a little.
Even when he stands at rest he’s perfect. A sunny storybook face. Soonyoung says that when Junhui dances he is sometimes imprecise, but he is always effortless. Minghao could look at Junhui forever. Instead he looks into the mirror again, at his own wrong wrong face, and he wants to scream, or lunge towards Junhui and— and do what?
***
You and I don’t have the hearts of humans, Junhui tells Minghao in his dream, one hand warm against Minghao’s bare chest. Are they dancing? They’re onstage, trapped in gauze made of white stage lights. Minghao looks down and sees a trail of black and white feathers behind them. Yours is beating so fast, little bird, says Junhui, his eyes lined in inky black, his hair pure white, his palm burning into Minghao’s skin like a knife wound. You’re terrified. How can you hide something like that?
***
He fucks up. He can’t hide it. He is trying not to shatter into pieces when he flees into his dressing room after Act 1 and he thinks he’s alone, beginning his crumble, when,
“Rough start, huh?”
Junhui is sitting in front of the mirror. Watching him. They’re almost reflections, but it’s off. Junhui is in his Odile costume with twin sheafs of satin black half-covering his eyelids.
“Get the fuck out,” Minghao says.
No bite to it. Junhui seems to absorb his fury unscathed. Swallows it whole.
All of this should be mine, Minghao wants to say. That’s what he told Soonyoung two hours ago when he, with the force of his own conviction, relegated Junhui back to understudy. Every feather is mine, every feather, he had ground out, feeling like a spider, grasping at invisible threads. Even if— even if he wears it effortlessly, I had to work for it, I had to work myself to the bone and fucking tendons to become someone else. Doesn’t that mean I earned it more? Me? Me me me me me?
“You don’t actually have to become the black swan, you know,” Junhui tells Minghao’s reflection, almost dreamy. “You just have to wear it. Like a costume. Like a masquerade mask.”
“Is that what you do? It’s so easy for you to just say shit like that.”
“If you can’t do it, I can,” Junhui says. Like he’s offering some generous lifeline. Despite himself Minghao steps closer. Their reflections are almost superimposed, so familiar, so alien to each other. What does it feel like to be Junhui?
“I’m only trying to help, Minghao. I can see what it does to you, trying to be Odile. Trying to be something you’re not.”
Minghao looks up from Junhui’s reflection and at his own and is startled by the true malice in his face.
He wonders if Junhui has the same dreams as him. The ones where they have the same mouth, where they are the same creature. Or at least it feels that way. Feels, when Minghao wakes up, like he has two heartbeats.
But he only has one heart, and it’s his own.
“You don’t know anything,” Minghao whispers into Junhui’s ears, sounding like Soonyoung when he says Attack it, and he rears his fist back from the mirror glass.
***
Anyways what is dancing but the soul trying to flee? Take wing from the flawed and imperfect human body? Dancing is not make believe. Dancing is the only true reality. It’s a person saying: Am I not worthy of your love? Can’t you see me now? Wasn’t I perfect?
Minghao has known Junhui for only four months, but he feels so familiar in motion. Junhui came running into the dressing room that first morning, breathless. “I missed my bus! Oh, aren't you Xu Minghao? You're the swan!” And Minghao was too startled to say, Yes, that's me, because Junhui was shy but he wasn't truly hidden. It was strange. When Junhui started stretching at the barre it grew stranger. And when he finally began spinning into his fouettes, Minghao knew with certainty that he had known Junhui forever, knew him as well as he knew himself. From a past life. Maybe they really were birds once. Or extensions of the same soul. A future, or a yesterday, or both.
But it’s negligible now, isn’t it. Now there is only Minghao. Minghao looks down and there’s a floret of almost black spreading across his white feathers like tar, starting from his heart. He doesn’t know what it is exactly but he knows that he’s flying, that he can hear the beating of his wings his ears, that he’s become a swan. The white swan and the other one, too. He is himself and Junhui now. He is both of them at once. He is at the very top of the stairs at the center of the stage.
He pitches backward into the lake, but the lake is only a spotlight and he lands in the middle with his wings spread like an angel, and everyone is cheering. Cheering for him, for only him. He closes his eyes and when he opens them again what feels like one eternity later, Soonyoung is standing over him, dazed with ecstasy. They love you, they love you, they love you, he says. Behind him is Junhui, Junhui— oh, who did Minghao stab, then, in the dressing room?— Junhui, whose guileless eyes see Minghao, really see him, the red-black spreading into his feathers, and Junhui goes stricken suddenly, terrified like a little bird, drops to his knees and with his newly horrified face asks, What’s that on your costume? What did you do, what did you do oh god what did you do, Minghao? And he tries to tell Junhui I was perfect, but before he can the stage lights grow white and fill his vision and it’s like heaven.
[FILL] the only person standing in your way is
Major Tags: Major character death (ambiguous though)
Additional Tags: Angst, jealousy, injury+blood
Permission to remix: Yes
disclaimer i don't know much about ballet + terminology except for what i learned from watching black swan and some googling so. sorry in advance for whatever this is!!
***
Have you heard the one about the two swans? They’re humans, actually, but they have the hearts of birds. In the daylight they’re cursed to grow feathers. One of them is good and one of them is bad. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Both of them are beautiful, and, by the end of this story, dead. One drowns in the lake and the other one, the one with the spotless white feathers, white as enamel, white as bone, ascends to the heavens, consigned to eternal and shimmering perfection.
“Now show me the black swan,” says Soonyoung.
Minghao stares at his own reflection. Inescapable, because they are walled in by mirrors. The sheen of his face. Pale under the dark slick of his too-long hair, pale under the studio fluorescence. He tries to school his expression. Attack. Become a black widow.
“Remember,” Soonyoung says, “you’re a spider spinning a web.”
Minghao knows how to be the white swan Odette like he was born into it. Odile’s fouettes don’t come quite as natural to him. But he’s been studying Junhui in rehearsal, studying so closely that he figures he knows, by now, how it might feel to be Junhui.
How it works is: You raise your leg. You whip it around, transform into a perfect vessel for the spinning. With each rotation Soonyoung says loudly, “Attack it! Attack it—” The room revolves like you have become the lens of a kaleidoscope, a rotoscoping animation, scenes blurring together: Soonyoung, Attack it, the mirror and your own face, which is actually not Junhui’s face but your own and therefore imperfect, which you are realizing now too late in the middle of your idiotic spinning, Soonyoung, Attack it, the mirror and your own stupid face, Soonyoung Attack it the mirror your own wrong face—
Junhui spills into the practice room late and beaming. Minghao is still spinning and Soonyoung is still saying Attack, and Minghao’s foot lands wrong and he stumbles and Soonyoung cuts out in the middle of the word and it sounds like the gasp of someone being stabbed.
Ah—!
The world flattens. Junhui at the center of it now. He has such guileless eyes. He seems, at every moment, to be hiding nothing at all.
“Soonyoung? Should I try it again?”
Minghao can hear his own voice retreating into soft uncertainty. He would call it uncharacteristic, but it seems more and more lately that he is slipping into whatever this is. Only the white swan, when he should be both.
“That’s okay,” Soonyoung says, eyes fixed on Junhui. “You’re late, Junhui. Go warm up.”
“Already warmed up,” Junhui says, lilting. Grins a little.
Even when he stands at rest he’s perfect. A sunny storybook face. Soonyoung says that when Junhui dances he is sometimes imprecise, but he is always effortless. Minghao could look at Junhui forever. Instead he looks into the mirror again, at his own wrong wrong face, and he wants to scream, or lunge towards Junhui and— and do what?
***
You and I don’t have the hearts of humans, Junhui tells Minghao in his dream, one hand warm against Minghao’s bare chest. Are they dancing? They’re onstage, trapped in gauze made of white stage lights. Minghao looks down and sees a trail of black and white feathers behind them. Yours is beating so fast, little bird, says Junhui, his eyes lined in inky black, his hair pure white, his palm burning into Minghao’s skin like a knife wound. You’re terrified. How can you hide something like that?
***
He fucks up. He can’t hide it. He is trying not to shatter into pieces when he flees into his dressing room after Act 1 and he thinks he’s alone, beginning his crumble, when,
“Rough start, huh?”
Junhui is sitting in front of the mirror. Watching him. They’re almost reflections, but it’s off. Junhui is in his Odile costume with twin sheafs of satin black half-covering his eyelids.
“Get the fuck out,” Minghao says.
No bite to it. Junhui seems to absorb his fury unscathed. Swallows it whole.
All of this should be mine, Minghao wants to say. That’s what he told Soonyoung two hours ago when he, with the force of his own conviction, relegated Junhui back to understudy. Every feather is mine, every feather, he had ground out, feeling like a spider, grasping at invisible threads. Even if— even if he wears it effortlessly, I had to work for it, I had to work myself to the bone and fucking tendons to become someone else. Doesn’t that mean I earned it more? Me? Me me me me me?
“You don’t actually have to become the black swan, you know,” Junhui tells Minghao’s reflection, almost dreamy. “You just have to wear it. Like a costume. Like a masquerade mask.”
“Is that what you do? It’s so easy for you to just say shit like that.”
“If you can’t do it, I can,” Junhui says. Like he’s offering some generous lifeline. Despite himself Minghao steps closer. Their reflections are almost superimposed, so familiar, so alien to each other. What does it feel like to be Junhui?
“I’m only trying to help, Minghao. I can see what it does to you, trying to be Odile. Trying to be something you’re not.”
Minghao looks up from Junhui’s reflection and at his own and is startled by the true malice in his face.
He wonders if Junhui has the same dreams as him. The ones where they have the same mouth, where they are the same creature. Or at least it feels that way. Feels, when Minghao wakes up, like he has two heartbeats.
But he only has one heart, and it’s his own.
“You don’t know anything,” Minghao whispers into Junhui’s ears, sounding like Soonyoung when he says Attack it, and he rears his fist back from the mirror glass.
***
Anyways what is dancing but the soul trying to flee? Take wing from the flawed and imperfect human body? Dancing is not make believe. Dancing is the only true reality. It’s a person saying: Am I not worthy of your love? Can’t you see me now? Wasn’t I perfect?
Minghao has known Junhui for only four months, but he feels so familiar in motion. Junhui came running into the dressing room that first morning, breathless. “I missed my bus! Oh, aren't you Xu Minghao? You're the swan!” And Minghao was too startled to say, Yes, that's me, because Junhui was shy but he wasn't truly hidden. It was strange. When Junhui started stretching at the barre it grew stranger. And when he finally began spinning into his fouettes, Minghao knew with certainty that he had known Junhui forever, knew him as well as he knew himself. From a past life. Maybe they really were birds once. Or extensions of the same soul. A future, or a yesterday, or both.
But it’s negligible now, isn’t it. Now there is only Minghao. Minghao looks down and there’s a floret of almost black spreading across his white feathers like tar, starting from his heart. He doesn’t know what it is exactly but he knows that he’s flying, that he can hear the beating of his wings his ears, that he’s become a swan. The white swan and the other one, too. He is himself and Junhui now. He is both of them at once. He is at the very top of the stairs at the center of the stage.
He pitches backward into the lake, but the lake is only a spotlight and he lands in the middle with his wings spread like an angel, and everyone is cheering. Cheering for him, for only him. He closes his eyes and when he opens them again what feels like one eternity later, Soonyoung is standing over him, dazed with ecstasy. They love you, they love you, they love you, he says. Behind him is Junhui, Junhui— oh, who did Minghao stab, then, in the dressing room?— Junhui, whose guileless eyes see Minghao, really see him, the red-black spreading into his feathers, and Junhui goes stricken suddenly, terrified like a little bird, drops to his knees and with his newly horrified face asks, What’s that on your costume? What did you do, what did you do oh god what did you do, Minghao? And he tries to tell Junhui I was perfect, but before he can the stage lights grow white and fill his vision and it’s like heaven.
***