Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Nothing excites Avery more than the start of a new year. Not of a calendar year, or of a school year, but of a dance year. A new year full of dance classes, recitals, and pure art and expression.

And this is the year he gets to wear a leotard and tights.

The Beautiful Life dance studio has levels. The girls get new leotards every level. He’s always been a bit jealous of them. The boys, up until the black level (that’s the color of the girls' leotards, and therefore what he calls the level), wear the same thing. A white shirt and black dance shorts.

It’s a bit stupid, how different the expectations for the boys and girls are.
But that doesn’t matter.
Because he’s moving up an age level.
Because he gets to wear a leotard.
Because he gets two recitals instead of one.
Because he’s a real dancer.

His mom brought him and his little brother Greyson to last week’s orientation.
Greysons only a year younger than Avery, but it makes all the difference.

From blue level to black level, the hours of classes you take increases.
Two hours on Sunday. An hour everyday Monday through Wednesday. Off on Thursday. An hour and a half on Friday night and three Saturday afternoon.
Nine and a half hours a week.
An extra recital.
Avery is a real dancer now.
And he’s never been more excited.

The only thing that Avery has ever really wanted to do was dance. Whenever he had the chance, he would dance. For his friends, his family, his teachers.

So it was a dream come true when, right before freshman year, his mom signed him and Greyson up for classes at BL dance studio.

He eats a protein bar before today's class. Friday, 7 pm. 45 minutes of Ballet, 45 minutes of Jazz.

The teachers give everyone their floor spots. Alphabetical and orderly.
Dance is an art.
Dance is a science.
Dance is methodical.

A girl is absent on the first day of class. Avery considers that irresponsible, yes. But there are more important things to focus on. His ballet teacher is reintroducing herself.
Mrs. Dancer.
He finds it a bit funny, but he doesn’t laugh. Laughing is unprofessional, and he is never going to screw this up.

He’s always wanted to be a ballerina. Tutu and everything. He said that to people a lot as a kid, until they started making fun of him and calling him gay.
He just says he wants to be a dancer now.
But he still wants his hair long enough to put in a bun, his body petite and curvy and enough to be graceful.
He wants to look like a girl. Just a little bit.

But he dances that idea off while going across the floor. He feels the thought slide off his shoulders as he helps another girl lift a ballet bar to the center of the room so they can do-
Not another girl. A girl. Avery is not a girl.
Even if he was, he wouldn’t be. Boy ballet dancers get more opportunities, because there are less of them.
And ballerinas have to look a certain way.
If he became a ballerina, no one would hire him. He doesn’t look the way ballerinas should.

Tendu. Rond de jambe. Relevè. Plié.
First, second, third, fourth, fifth.

And Avery isn’t anything other than a dancer anymore.
Avery is free.

Ms. Dancer corrects his form, as she does everyone else’s. It hurts a bit. Like an insult. But he knows she knows better.

Modern dance.

Runs across the floor.
Stretches.
Pliés in second position.
Sixth position. Flat backs.
Angles, flows, movements with more meaning strung together.
He makes a story for the first class, in his head.

A ballerina is trapped, but through dance she expresses herself. Through dance, she is free.
Through dance she is still under control.

The teacher does not ask before she puts her hand on his chest and straightens his back.

Through dance there is freedom, but a controlled one.

After class, he takes his first drink of water in ninety minutes.

He goes to the basement dressing room and changes. He changes in the shower stall, usually. But there are signs now.
“Do not use for anything other than intended purpose.”

He asks one of the boys from his class what it means. (Was his name Teo? Or Theo?)

“Oh, I heard a rumor that some girl passed out while changing and broke the shower door. It was the second time, so they put the sign up. I mean, remember Jet?”

Avery does remember Jet. They go to the same school, live in the same apartment building.
He misses them. He was hoping that he would come back to classes this year. He understands why he didn’t, though. After what happened last year.

He leave the changing room, still wearing his tights under his pants. He wants to cling to the feeling for a moment longer.

When he meets up with his mom and brother in the lobby, they fill up their water bottles and leave.

A girl he recognizes is sitting on the bench outside. Ms. Dancer walks out of the building right behind Avery, and says goodnight.
She sees the girl too. She frowns.

“Jenny? Why weren’t you in my class today?”

The girl looks up, terrified. Like she’s been caught. And she has been caught. Skipping dance. To…draw, in her sketchbook. Right outside.

“Jenny, you are going to show up tomorrow. You have some real potential, and I don’t like you wasting it.” She takes her phone out of her purse and starts dialing.

She walks away.
Avery thinks he can hear her say something.
“Hello? Is this Jenny’s mother? Yes, she’s back at it again, I’d advise keeping a strong eye over-”

Avery can see the girl wipe her eyes. She’s crying.
Avery has more important things to worry about.

They walk away and get some ice cream.

Chapter Text

Greyson tries so hard not to resent his brother, he really does.
But it’s hard when you’re dragging yourself out of bed at nine am on a Saturday to go to dance class.
It’s hard when your mother spends thirty minutes putting your hair into a tight bun and takes you on the bus to the most boring and painful place in the world.

Greyson and Avery have the same start time for their Saturday classes. 1 pm.
So their mom drops them off and Greyson drudges off to the girls locker room to get changed.

Even if he could make himself be a girl, he would still hate these classes. Too much time, too much effort, too much work to put into something he really couldn’t care less about.

He hasn’t told his mom yet. About hating dance or being a boy. He doesn’t think she’ll understand either.

Anyway, she’s already made the payment for this year. So he can’t quit until it’s over, anyway.

When he first signed up, he was a pink level. There were two pink levels, actually. But he was the oldest one. At some point, when he moved up to blue, two hours on Saturday turned into six and a half hours spread over three days.

He hated the two and he hates the six and a half even more.

The only good thing about the classes is Riley.

When he walks into the dressing room, Riley is waiting for him. The first thing she says is “Why does your shirt have a cat on it?”

He rolls his eyes. He has to admit his best friend can be…a bit blunt sometimes.

“Because all my other shirts are dirty, okay?”

“All animals suck. They’re all ugly, especially cats. Except-“

“Hamsters. Yes, I know.”

“Can I punch your shirt?”

“No.”

The last time he made that mistake, Riley punched him in the stomach. Not hard, but it still hurt.

Greyson and Riley are friends because they’re in the same predicament. They’ve both been dragged to lessons they hate because of their older siblings. For him, it’s Avery. For her, it’s both her older sister and her twin brother.

They’re stuck, so naturally they became friends. And it’s only natural that one friend takes charge.

“Come ON, Lila! You always take forever to change!”

He also hasn’t told Riley about it. He doesn’t think she’d be too happy.

When he finally gets his leotard on over his tights, he notices something in the locker next to him.
Someone.
She has her eyes closed, and she’s compressed in there in a way that can’t be comfortable. It isn’t even a full sized locker.

He frantically tries to open the door. The girls eyes snap open and she glared at him through the slats.

“Don’t. You. Fucking. Dare.” She hisses. She pulls the door shut and latches it from the inside without an issue.

She’s like him.
She hates this too.

He walks to the elevator with Riley after putting his stuff in a locker. He holds his ballet shoes in one hand and tries really hard not to look at the floor.
The floor is reflective. He can see every curve on his body. His breasts, his hips, and he wants to claw them off like clay and throw it as far as he can.

Avery is the only one that knows.

The elevator doors open. He gets on.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees a woman storm into the girls changing room. She storms out, seconds later, dragging the girl from the locker to the elevator by the arm.

The elevator doors close.

First is Jazz. His jazz teacher is an angry bald man who his mother compares to a teacher from Fame. But he isn’t allowed to watch that movie, so he doesn’t know if it’s accurate.

Next is ballet. He and Avery have the same ballet teacher. She teaches the class a combo and yells at Greyson after he and Riley laugh at her name.

90 minutes each class. And he’s counting down the minutes the whole time. He repeats the start of the chorus to “Living On A Prayer” every time they reach a milestone through the class. He is exhausted.

He and Riley walk barefoot down the stairs, just like they always do. Talking about everything and nothing.
They never really have serious conversations. They just complain about things and joke around, and Riley makes a joke whenever he brings up something serious.

They change.
Almost everyone leaves before he’s done. Riley is right, he really is a slow changer.

The girl from the locker is there again, staring down at the tiny gray tiles.
He tells Riley to wait for him outside, because “he needs to pee.”

And it’s just the two of them.

He takes a breath.

“Hey.”

The girl looks up at him. “Is this what you call peeing?”

He chuckles a bit. “No, no.”

Silence. The girl starts to pack her bags.

“Wait, just, uh. You don’t want to be here, right?”

She glares at him. “What?”

“It’s just, you clearly don’t want to be here, and I don’t want to be here, so. We have something in common?”

She rolls her eyes. “So? Who gives a shit. What do you want? A friend who’s not a psycho? You’re looking in the wrong place.”

“Riley’s not a psycho! She’s just…not having a great time.”

“Yeah, okay. And she’s totally not using you for a power trip. Right.”

She zips up her bag.
And Greyson recognizes her.

“Wait a minute, you’re Jenny, right? You’re in my brother’s class. I saw you last night.”

She stops.
“Okay, look, asshole. I just want to go home. I want to go home without anyone calling me that. So fuck off.”

“So, your name isn’t Jenny?”

The girl pauses.
She sits down.

“My name is Ronnie. I’m a guy. And I don’t really want to be having this conversation, so if you’ll just get it over with and call me a slur, I’ll go.”

Oh.
Oh.
He’s like him in more ways than he thought.

“Um, actually. I’m a guy too. My name, my names Greyson.”

He looks at him, shocked.
“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“I didn’t know there was another one.”

“That’s a weird way to put it, but yeah. There is.”

Ronnie looks at the clock and gets up.

“Well, Greyson. It was nice to meet you, but I gotta go. See you around?”

Greyson smiles.

“Yeah. See you around, Ronnie.”

It’s been a long time since something actually made dance more bearable. Since he meant it when he left the changing room and told his mom that he had a good day.

Chapter Text

Ronnie is sick. Not literally sick, unfortunately. If he was literally sick he could skip- no, he couldn’t. His mom still makes him go to his dance classes when he’s sick. He’s had a day off from dance, but he still hates the fact that he has to get up in the morning.
Ronnie is sick, yes. Sick of everything in his stupid life.

He puts on his baggiest shirt after he drags himself out of bed. When he goes to get his breakfast, he can practically feel the anger radiating off of his mother.

“You know, Jenny, if you started dressing like a girl, maybe you’d have more friends.”

He ignores her. He doesn’t care what she thinks. As long as she doesn’t yell at him or hit him again, everything’s fine.
She took away his headphones on Friday for skipping his lesson, so he rides the bus in silence. Well, relative silence, since no one is really quiet on public transportation.

He doesn’t really talk to anyone at school. Sometimes they talk to him, but he doesn’t really care. He doesn’t need to make friends. He just needs to make it through the day.
As soon as the bell rings for second period, two words come to his mind: Modern. Dance. He hates the fact that he thinks of it, because he knows he’ll be dreading it for the rest of the day.

Lunch. God, he hates lunch. He hates everything though, doesn’t he? He’s staked out a little table in the corner of the lunchroom, and no one ever comes near him.
Usually.

Today is different. Ronnie sat down to work on his Spanish project, and he can see someone standing in front of him. He doesn’t acknowledge them. He’s sick of people.

The person in front of him knocks on the table.
He flips them off.
He wants to draw. How do you draw how you’re feeling? How do you capture the idea of wanting for more but refusing to change? Does he ignore other people because he hates them, or because he’s scared?

How do you draw the fear of someone being your light, your anchor, only to become as shitty as everything else?

They don’t move.
He just wishes they would go away. He doesn’t have the energy to gamble on a friendship with someone who will never understand him.

“Okay, jeez. I just wanted to say hi, Ronnie. Are you always this aggressive?”

Ronnie’s head snaps up.
The boy from the locker room.
Greyson.

“Shit, sorry.” He mumbles.

“Wait, do you actually flip off anyone who tries to eat lunch with you?”

“Just… whatever. Sit down.” Greyson does. “So, since when have you gone here?”

Apparently, Greyson has been going to the same school as him for two years. Ronnie’s a junior, he’s a sophomore. They’ve just never met.
And when they see each other after school, get on the same bus, and get off at the same stop, it just gets weirder.

“-I just feel like everyone at school knows. That I’m different, I mean. It’s like they ignore me, but…on purpose. They’re pretending I don’t exist to make me feel like shit, or whatever.” Greyson pauses. “That must sound crazy, sorry.”

“Oh, believe me, it doesn’t.”

“So, you live around here, right?”

“Yeah. Big brick apartment complex over there.” Ronnie points to his house. It’s the tallest building for a couple blocks, so it isn’t hard to spot. Greyson stops.

“No way. This can’t be real.”

“Why?”

“Because I live there too.”

They pause for a second, and then burst out laughing. How, after all this time, could they have not met?

A little voice inside Ronnie, one that he’s tried so desperately to quiet, thinks that it’s fate. That they’ve never truly needed each other until right now.

They go inside and drop off their school bags. They don’t live on the same floor, but they meet up in the lobby with the things they need for class.

As they walk to the bus, Greyson asks, “So, what do you have today?”
“Modern dance. You?”
“Jazz. I hate modern dance. You know, my brother is amazing at it, but he’s into everything about dance. He even built a barre to practice with in our living room out of pvc pipes. Man’s a menace to non-dancers everywhere. ”

Something clicks in Ronnie’s head.

“Holy shit, your brother’s Avery, isn’t he.”

“Yep.”

Ronnie’s had class with Avery since he joined. And he hates him. He points every toe perfectly, moves with the grace of a swan in water, and raises his hand for every question. The dude’s perfect, and he knows it. Well, perfect except for the fact that he’s a total suck up.

Ronnie doesn’t say this to Grey, though. Because that would be rude. And, despite the opinions of his mother and his teachers, he does have some impulse control.

Modern dance goes as usual, with Greyson’s brother being a prick (seriously, he loves it a bit too much. Perfect posture, sharp movements, and he only moves when told to do so. Sometimes Ronnie thinks he’s a robot.) and his teacher yelling at him.

She asks him to hold a pose. She leans on his arms to test their strength, before adjusting his form. As she pushes his butt forward, he wants to scream. And when she puts her hand on his chest, he wants to hit her.
He wants to hit her.
He wants to scream and shout and punch her in the face and crash through the window onto Vernon Avenue. He wants to take one of the Bobby pins in his hair and stab her in the eye. He wants to tell her to never, ever, ever touch him. He wants to drive his fist into the mirror and slit his throat with the broken glass.

But he doesn’t. He doesn’t even move. Because he’s afraid of what she’ll do if he does.

Ronnie doesn’t know why he hates being touched like that so much. He doesn’t know why he’s so afraid of what a teacher can do.
He can’t remember a lot of what’s happened in dance. Sometimes he thinks it must have been horrific for him to not remember.

His gaze turns to Avery in the mirror. No matter how annoying he might be, Ronnie sometimes wishes he was Avery. If he loved what he had to do as much as he did, life would be a lot easier. If he was half as good as Avery at dancing, he might not hate it as much. Avery’s hair is short enough that it looks masculine, but long enough that it can be put in a ponytail. His frame is perfect, all muscles, and so flat. If Ronnie could cut into his breasts and give himself surgery to have as flat a chest as Avery, he would.

But he’s not Avery. He’s Ronnie to himself and Greyson. He’s Jenny to everybody else. Ronnie will never have anything half as good as Avery does.

Greyson walks out of the dressing room with nothing more than a little wave to him. More accurately, Riley drags him out calling him the wrong name.

Now that Ronnie has a friend, not having him with him makes him feel even lonelier.

His mom comes and picks him up from class, since it’s dark. She glares at him the whole way home, and he knows that she’s trying to make him feel guilt for the inconvenience it causes her. As if it isn’t her own fault that he has to do this.

He’s tried to quit, he really has. He tried explaining it to the school guidance counselor, but she didn’t get it. Ronnie’s mom needs him to dance because she never got the chance. She needs him to be her perfect little ballerina, and anything that goes against it is perceived as treason towards her. And god forbid he ever transitions. The one time he tried to tell her, she punched him in the face and told him that he was just a rebellious bastard.

Ronnie is stuck. He can’t stand it anymore, but he can’t stop.

He locks himself in the bathroom when he gets home. Masked by the sound of the bathroom fan, he scrambles with his phone case.
Ronnie can’t deal with anything right.

When he pulls the razor blade out of its hiding spot, just like he’s done a million times before, he considers adding to his collection of scar tissue and scabs. He almost lifts his shirt up to draw another familiar line across his stomach, but he doesn’t.

He looks himself in the mirror, thinks of Avery’s hair, a midway between masculine and feminine.

He raises the blade to his hair and cuts off a chunk.

Chapter Text

Jet hates how many bad days she’s been having. This morning, she didn’t even get out of bed at all. His aunt was…annoyed, to say the least, but they’re pretty sure she’s resigned herself to this fate. The fate where she single-handedly takes care of a 16-year old lunatic and a five year old girl. She picks her battles and drops Grace off at school on her way to work. Jet can stay home.

Jet is more exhausted than anyone who rarely moves rightfully should be. Maybe it’s left over from all that dancing. God, she misses dancing.

This time last year, she would be on the barre with Avery, moving with the grace of a swan in the water. Now, she’s a swan out of the water. An unhinged, desperate, mess.
He really should get up and eat breakfast. But if he does, he’ll have to look at himself again, and he can’t do that right now.

He knows he’s hideous. He knows he’s disgusting. More accurately, he knows that he thinks that- whatever. But that’s what their therapist has been telling them. That they’re not really hideous and disgusting. They only half believe her.

Instead, he reaches over towards his phone and begins to scroll Tumblr. He spends more of her time online than with people these days. It’s so much easier.

But it’s boring. The only thing she can do right is extremely boring. Mind numbingly boring. And before she knows it, she’s been scrolling for an hour.

She’s fallen out of practice. With everything. Being a human, being smart, dancing. He was a good dancer. He was good.

But then Ms. Dancer had to say that thing about him. That he was “a bit too chubby for a male dancer, and if he was a girl- oh, we would kick him out!” It was a joke, she thinks, about how dancers should look a certain way. About how he didn’t look that way. And then it somehow spiraled in his head and she ended up here.

Unfit for dancing. Unfit for living. Just…unfit in general.
Because once you’re crazy, you’re crazy forever in the eyes of everyone around you. She’s being treated like a porcelain doll, ready to crack. And she wishes that wasn’t an accurate assessment.

No one posts that often on the ballet tag. It’s like any other sport: it’s not a fandom, it’s not fully populated by queer nerds, so it’s not worthy of a popular tag despite its cultural importance. well, it has thousands of followers, but how much substance does it really have for scrolling?

Videos, unrelated videos, fundraisers, porn bots, an article link, more videos, fanfiction, and-

She’s considering clicking off and heading to a less positive tag when she sees a post. An actual, substantial post.

“Hey guys! So I’ve been getting a lot of shit from this post, and I just wanted to provide some context before anyone else tells me to go kill myself or calls me a fun-hating elitist,-”

Jet clicks on the post the account linked.

“The ballet industry actually sucks so much and no one’s even talking about it. It’s sad.”

Huh.

“-I do have an explanation for this. When I was six, my mother put me and my twin sister into dance classes at the local school. For me, it was too intense. I quit because of the expectations only a year later. (I still do think it’s wild to not allow a six year old water because real dancers don’t take breaks, btw.)”
“I quit, but my sister didn’t. I really wish she did. They started weighing her when she turned thirteen and told her she would get kicked out if she didn’t lose weight (context: she was 5’4 and 130ish pounds, well within the healthy range for that height). This led her to develop three eating disorders over the span of the next three years. She was extremely extremely underweight at this time, and we couldn’t convince her to quit dancing.”
“No matter what we tried, it just got worse. She almost starved to death at the age of eighteen and was sent to a recovery hospital for the first time. She hated herself for years.”
“When we were 20, she took her own life.”

Jet paused. She looked down at herself, and back to the screen.
She took her phone with her as she got up to make breakfast.

“So yeah, I think I have a fucking right to hate the ballet industry, since it killed my sister. But you know, that’s not the only reason. As you guys know, I’m a mental health account, and I always want you guys to do what’s best for yourself. The world of professional dance is full of racism, bullying, abuse, fat-shaming, exploitation, classism, etc. I can understand that dancing can be a healthy outlet for some people, an I don’t discourage that. All I’m saying is that dance can have an extremely negative impact on both your physical and mental health.
Anyway, doc out, please stop sending me death threats.”

Everything that he had been thinking about over the past three months just came rushing back into their mind. This person had put into words everything he had felt so weird about feeling.
Jet couldn’t count how many hours he spent going through that account after that. He had never felt so understood by a stranger on the internet. All he knew about this guy was: he was a doctor of psychology, he was 28, and he saw her. Before he knew it, it was time to pick Grace up from her bus stop.

Jet wished that Grace could‘ve known his mother. She had died when little Gracie was only one, but he felt like they would get along.
No one would tell him how she died. She disappeared one day, and she was gone for two weeks before anyone was able to confirm that she was dead.

Sometimes he wondered if he would still be alive When Gracie was her age. Or if she’d disappear one day too.

When they got back to the apartment, Jet holed herself back up in her room. The account.
How-2-defy-death.

It went back years. Before the owner even got a degree. The account was older than Grace by a long shot. There was no post about the guy's sister's death, but the account hadn’t even existed at that point. She wondered if that’s what made him create it.

“Jeeetttt, youwah fwiend Avewy is hewe!”
Grace had the cutest little speech impediment. It made her sound like a baby. Any time she mentioned it, it would piss her off to no end. Grace hated how she sounded almost as much as Jet hated how she looked.
He got up to go meet Avery, who was standing right outside his door.

Avery met her with a big hug. That was weird, because Jet knew her best friend hated hugging.

“Are you okay? I’ve been worried, because you weren’t at school today and you quit dance and-”

Jet smiled at him. “Hey, I’m alright. Just had a rough morning today. How are you?”

Avery frowned. Clearly, that wasn’t exactly what was on his mind.
Jet sighed. “How’s dance? You guys miss me?”

Avery grinned an launched into a rant- she wasn’t fully listening to, about how “oh, classes will never be the same without you, it’s so weird not having anyone to change with, but classes are so fun and we’re doing great except for Jenny-”

That piqued Jets interest. She had always thought that Jenny was a bit unenthusiastic, but now that she had spent so much time thinking about the dark parts of dancing, she was a little unenthusiastic too.

“Oh, she’s gone off the rails. She skipped the first lesson, tried to skip the second one, and yesterday she gave the teacher the most violent death stare I’ve ever seen. She’s terrifying this year.”

Jet had s little bit more sympathy for the poor girl, but he didn’t say anything. After all, he didn’t even know her.

They paused.

“They, um, put up a sign in the locker rooms. We’re banned from…” Avery trailed off.

“Banned from what?”

“Changing in the showers.”

And Jet knew that this was his fault. His fault and the fault of that stupid eating disorder. Ms. Dancer’s fault for making fun of him. His own fault for taking it to heart.

The disorder’s fault for making him starve to the point where he passed out while changing and fell directly through the glass shower door.

Chapter Text

Winter recital.

Avery has never had a winter recital. The idea of it seems to have fully absorbed his brain for the past two weeks, and today Class 3-C officially starts their preparations. The recital is on January 24th: exactly four months from today.

It would be selfish of him to hope for a solo—he's only been in the class for four years. But, fuck, how he would love it. Just to live in that serenity on stage is one thing, but to have everyone else see nothing but that serenity? Pure heaven. Pure. Heaven.

When he and the other girls (the girls. Avery, you're not one of them.) walk into the dance studio, he can immediately sense something is wrong. That energy that usually courses through the entire studio has been replaced with something heavier, more volatile.

As Avery goes to place his bag by the studio windows, he spots her. Jenny. If course this is because of her.

Jenny's hair looks like someone has taken a razor blade to it, and for all Avery knows, someone has. It's: A. Short, shorter than his own hair; and B. Unruly. It's a clear violation of the class hair code. Jenny's hair is not in a bun or pulled back in any fashion. Despite its appalling nature in the context of a dance class, Avery has to admit that it does suit her.

If she could do it, why couldn't he?

Whether it suits her or not, it's inappropriate. Avery rolls his eyes and pulls his water bottle out of his bag.

A few sashays across the floor separates him from the tense atmosphere. The familiar sensation of the butterfly stretch manages to recenter him completely. After the barre exercises, Ms. Dancer does something Avery wasn't even sure she was capable of.

She gives them all a water break.

However, instead of suffering through his break, Avery finds himself next to Jenny for the first time in months. She seems to be trying very hard to burn a hole in the marley floor with her mind. Ms. Dancer has called them aside, and he can't even begin to think of what it might be about.

Maybe, he thinks, she's like me. Maybe that's what we have in common. He shakes it off as soon as it crosses his mind, because there is nothing the two of them could ever have in common. Not in a million years.

Ms. Dancer offers them a warm smile. Ms Dancer is not a warm person, so this immediately terrifies Avery. What does she know?

"So, I didn't necessarily want to say this in front of the class, but I just needed to talk to the two of you as soon as I could. You see, I've been looking for solo dancers-"

Oh God. This is it. Everything that Avery has spent the last four years working towards. A section of the recital section all his own.

"-but I think it would be even better to give the two of you a challenge."

A what.

"Obviously, you haven't been training with us for very long, Avery,"

But I've been working way harder than everyone else!

"and despite having over a decade with us, Jenny, you remain resistant to any form of structure. "

We are not the same, madame. I actually want to be here!

"Despite these issues, you both have shown amazing potential in the art of dance. Which is why we have decided to offer you the chance to perform a duet together in our next recital!"

To say that Avery is stunned would be a vast understatement. He looks over at Jenny, who seems to be actively attempting to morph into the wall behind her. This is…in no way ideal. Nobody wants to be paired with the single least professional girl in the class. After all, trying to dance a pas de deux with someone who has no interest in the dance itself is nearly impossible.

But somehow, Avery doesn't even consider refusing.

Jenny clearly wants to walk out of the room and never come back, but in the end, she doesn't refuse either.

Avery doesn't know what to do on the bus ride home. He frantically types in BALLET BADSITUATION WHAT DOE I DO into the Google search bar and, after a lot of scrolling, comes across a Reddit post, made by some guy named H0w2defyd34th.

"Being trans in the 'Ballet Culture' "

Avery isn't sure why this piques his interest. It has nothing to do with having a shitty duet partner, but he clicks on it anyway.

"For context I'm a doctor of psychology, I've done a lot of research into the psychological ramifications of the dance industry, as I lost my sister to mental health problems caused by her experiences around eight years ago. And I swear to god there's been like no movement made to reform the issues in this industry especially with body image issues. As far as I can tell, this is exacerbated greatly by gender dysphoria and can lead to some serious mental health problems and even elevate the risk for eating disorders but I haven't collected enough evidence to make a concrete conclusion. Are there any trans Ballet Dancers/ex ballet dancers who are willing to share their experiences with this?"

There is not a single response.

Avery doesn't know what to think about this.

But he decides to click on the user account anyway.

Because maybe, just maybe, something in that post might have explained something he's been feeling for years.