When Lenalee came into the green room, her hair was done but not her face, and Lavi could see her tights peeking out from under her yoga pants. He smiled to himself, but he knew that time in the girls' dressing room was often at a premium, and if she wanted to watch everyone who mattered to her, she would have to dress in stages.
She cared. She tried not to because she knew how much it would hurt, but she cared.
Allen was up soon, and Lavi was curious to see what he'd do. So far in rehearsal, he'd proven himself to be incredibly versatile, which made him the most unpredictable of the Order's dancers when left to his own devices. Fortunately, he was also one of the most talented of the Order's dancers, so if he decided to go off the deep end, he'd probably do an excellent job of it. It made him well worth watching.
"Am I too late?" Lenalee asked.
"No, just in time." Lavi patted the cushion beside him. "Sit down."
"Thanks," she said, collapsing into the couch.
"Your hair looks good," he said.
"Don't mess it up!" she warned.
"Why would I mess it up if I like it?" he asked.
"Just don't."
"You wound me," he said.
"You'll get over it. Now shut up and watch."
There was nothing to watch, unless one wanted to try to see the shadows of stagehands working in near darkness. The girl before Allen had used a small set, and they needed to remove it to give Allen the bare stage he preferred.
When the lights came up, Lavi smiled. Allen was dressed in what could be best described as vintage American gangster, a dark suit, white shirt, string tie, and slicked-back hair pulled into a small, useless ponytail. Then Lavi heard the guitar riff familiar to any Quentin Tarantino fan, and his mouth fell open. "What's he doing?" he asked. It was a song sometimes danced by girls trying to prove they'd grown up, although this wasn't the version they used. This version was raging with reverb and drums.
"Oh wow!" was all Lenalee said, and Lavi couldn't blame her. Heart problem or no, Allen was more than capable of keeping up with Dick Dale's frenetic strumming, and there were suggestions of a sinuous elegance in how he moved, reminders of the little-known fact that there was something explosive right on the border between androgynous and effeminate, something rarely seen because few men dared to set foot there. Allen was dancing right on top of it, feeding on the raw energy and not giving a single fuck about what the shrapnel hit.
"That is..." Lenalee said, fanning herself before she set her hand on her chest. "Holy crap!"
"You're not kidding," Lavi said, grabbing her. "You have to help me."
"Why?" she asked.
"Because I'm starting to reconsider this whole gay thing in a way that could get me arrested." Actually, he wanted to distract her, but he didn't like the way he felt when she watched.
Lenalee laughed. "He's sixteen now, remember? Sixteen's legal."
"Lenalee, don't tell me things like that! You're not helping."
"You want to be a pedophile?"
"No, I want brain bleach. What is he doing?"
"You know," Lenalee said slowly. "I think he's trying to outscore Tyki."
"Why? Tyki's Kanda's problem."
"I know, but Tyki's an easier target than Road. Cross used to do this all the time. If he was up against someone he thought was a lot better than he was, he'd try to beat someone who was only a little better. It was a way of pushing himself without making himself nervous."
"That's not going to help when Allen has to face Rouvellier."
"I know," she said softly, "but Allen hasn't spent enough time with Rouvellier to know that."
Lavi squeezed her again, this time for her benefit. "This might help him avoid the worst," he said. "Although it's doing nothing good for my mental health." Allen must have found a live version of the song, because it reached a guitar solo Lavi didn't remember, and he stopped to watch. Apparently, Allen hadn't just studied with Cross and his foster father. It looked like he'd studied with Eastern dancers, and he was taking advantage of the slower pace to demonstrate that. It might have looked ridiculous, except that instead of trying to do some variant of baladi in Western clothes, Allen was doing what Dick Dale had done with the song itself, fusing the influence with his native style, creating something entirely new.
"Jesus!" Lenalee said, slipping into one of her rare moments of borderline profanity. "Where did he learn that?"
There was only one possible answer: Cross. Lavi wondered how many other pieces Allen had ready. Enough to get through the War? Had he come prepared for it after all? "I have no idea. It's kind of too bad he's not competing with Tyki. I'd love to see those two judged back to back."
"I'd love to see those two back to back," Lenalee said, then she turned slightly pink.
"Maybe it's not such a bad thing that you can't. We'd need smelling salts."
Lavi watched Allen finish with a set of flourishes that made him think it was a shame the kid couldn't dance shirtless, then he kicked himself as he realized that part of the point was to make people think along those lines.
He was Cross's protege, all right. The fact that he was so polite and soft-spoken most of the time made it easy to forget that, which was apparently a very stupid thing to do. It was going to be very interesting to see what happened if the person registered as Marian Cross was actually the Marian Cross.
The stage lights dimmed, and he felt Lenalee relax. "He'll score well," she said.
Better than well. "With luck, he'll screw up Road's score this time."
"It won't be by more than a point," Lenalee said.
"Every little bit helps." Allen needed to at least close the gap between them a little bit.
There wasn't much time needed between Allen and Road, because although they were allowed props, neither of the two used them. It was just a matter of getting the control room ready, making sure that volume levels were right and the light crews knew what they needed to do.
The solo piano didn't alarm Lavi at first, and neither did the rich, ethereal voice because he didn't recognize the song right away. Nor did he see anything strange about Road's costume, although it was worth noting that she was wearing heeled shoes for a change. Her white dress was draped Grecian-style from her shoulders, and her arms were wrapped in indigo ribbons that trailed from her wrists.
The shoes didn't last long. She mimed leaning against a wall as she took them off, then the lyrics started to sink in.
"What is she doing?" Lavi asked, his mouth open as Road unfastened the shoulders of her dress, letting them fall to her waist, effectively turning her costume into lingerie as what he thought was the top settled into place over the skirt, revealing a snug, strapless bodice that made the most of curves he had no idea she even had.
Lenalee giggled. "Oh, that is awesome!"
"No it's not," Lavi said while Road rolled over the floor as if it was a very large bed and she was just tipsy enough to make her giggly. "She's thirteen! What was her father thinking?"
"I don't know," Lenalee said. "Komui would never let me do that, but the Campbells are different."
"Someone should have stopped her," Lavi said.
"Maybe they didn't want to. You do realize what she's doing, right?"
"Trying to make every straight man and lesbian in the building need years of therapy?" This was going to haunt Lavi's nightmares for a long time.
"She's messing with Allen. She knows he's going to watch the video. We all do. Every time he wants to study her performance, he's going to have to deal with this."
"I really hope he's gay," Lavi said, thinking of the hug Road gave Allen earlier. She might not be able to rattle Allen enough to throw off his dancing, but if Allen was attracted to her even a little, she could make it very difficult to learn from her video.
Lenalee turned and smiled. "Why, so you can have him?"
"No!" Lavi leaned his head on Lenalee's shoulder as Kate Bush started singing about feeling and needing things he really didn't want to think about. "Spend the night with me," he said. "Please? I have so many things I need to prove to myself."
Lenalee laughed. "It's not aimed at you, so chill."
"Look," Lavi said, turning her around so they could make proper eye contact. "That kind of hot?" He jerked his head to the monitor, where Road was demonstrating the fact that her hips could defy the laws of physics in ways that would make certain profoundly illegal acts deeply gratifying. "That's not a sniper rifle. It doesn't hit just the thing it's aimed at. What she's doing there, that's a thermonuclear warhead, and she's too young to have it."
"You know," Lenalee said, and he could have sworn there was something wistful in her voice. "This song's from The Kick Inside, which was Kate Bush's first album. Some of those songs were written when she was Road's age."
"I didn't need to know that," Lavi said, but he looked back at the monitors, where Road lifted her leg by her toe until it was straight over her head, then ran her hands down the length of it, as if it was a lover, or perhaps she was mimicking a lover's touch, he couldn't tell, and she looked happy, a young girl dancing to another young girl's daydreams.
Lenalee was right. She'd never been allowed that. It was for her own protection, Lavi understood that, but it occurred to him to wonder if what protected her had also stifled her. Lenalee was good, but she wasn't in Road's class. Perhaps rather than neglecting Road, the Campbells had chosen to let her go here and learn from it. It wasn't really that dangerous. Maybe someone would leak the video, but even if they did, it was just a performance by the granddaughter of a well-known flamenco dancer. Road's grandmother, in her day, could set the stage on fire. So could her uncle. This kind of thing ran in the family.
Lavi sighed as the auditorium went dark. "That was really dirty of her."
"I don't know," Lenalee said. "She has to watch him, too, remember?"
"That's different."
"No, it isn't. You were the one talking about going gay, remember?"
And he remembered the reason why. "Chicks really get flustered over that?"
"Oh yeah! Unless she's a hard-core lesbian, she's going to have to work to do anything but drool."
"I don't think it's the same."
"Why, because they aren't naked?" Lenalee asked. "Then you don't know much about women."
This was true, but Lavi hated to admit it. "Why?"
"It's not so much about body parts," Lenalee said, rolling her eyes at him as if he was a child who was refusing to learn his colors. "It's about the feels. Allen's dancing hits right in the feels. So does Tyki." She sighed. "Tyki's dancing is pure porn."
"You're no longer allowed to watch," Lavi said.
"Lavi, what's wrong with you?"
She really didn't know. He was simultaneously relieved and heartsick. "I need to be packed in ice and have my memories wiped," he said. Maybe it would kill his feelings for Lenalee in the process. "Who's up next?"
She looked at the program. "Someone I don't know anything about. Looks like she's Korean."
"Good," he said. "I could use some nice K-pop."
"You hate K-pop," she said.
"Not nearly as much as I hate kiddie porn."
"Grow up, Lavi," Lenalee said, and they turned their attention back to the monitor.
Allen dances to Miserlou performed by Dick Dale, Road dances to Feel It by Kate Bush.
Allen in his performance looks like the cover picture of this story ! This is a fanart made by Shaerahaek on Deviantart, check the link in the bio if you want to see the full image.