Sean and Valentino – Part 2

He wants to run away, gulp air into his lungs greedily and scream into the void, but he has a rehearsal for their concert today – one of two. He can’t miss today, and he wouldn’t want to let down the other performers.

Shaking out his clothes as best as possible and leaving a sparkling circle behind, Val sets his jaw and marches out into the gym, being greeted by the exaggerated whoops from a bunch of bullies in the otherwise empty ranks and incredulous stares from his co-performers.

“What happened?” Jamie whispers with a deep furrow between her brows, taking Val by the arm and shielding him from gazes.

He shrugs. “Derrick.”

“This is going too far! He’s bullying you! You need to-“ “Jamie.” “You need to-“ “Jamie!”

“What?” she hisses, her eyes glaring daggers at them.

“Leave it be. I just want to dance.” He just wants to distract himself, to forget it.

Her face morphs into silent understanding because this girl is too similar to himself sometimes; she gets it so well.

When he takes up his starting position together with the others, who have set everything up by now, Val meets Sean’s eyes across the room. The handsome Asian boy, one year ahead of him, is standing together with the singers, waiting for their part of the rehearsal – although he looks like he wants to punch someone, fists clenched and face alternating between cold fury and worry.

The whooping from the ranks still hasn’t stopped, changed up now by the idiots making girly noises and cooing sounds in his direction. Val closes his eyes and forces himself to blend them out.

He moves with the music, ignores everything but the beat until his own heartbeat is one with it, until he forgets that he is a person and not just floating around, existing for the sole purpose of spinning and jumping, breathing and dancing.

When their first performance is over and Val’s eyes refocus, he realizes that Derrick and his idiot gang are gone.

‘When did that happen?’ he wonders in confusion, but when he goes to retrieve his water bottle and – thankfully – gets Jamie’s unglittering spare towel thrown at him, he sees Sean talking to a teacher, animated and still more outraged than Val has ever seen him.

“What happened?” he asks his dance crew when he gets enough air into his lungs to form words again.

Joana rolls his eyes at him, but she smiles indulgently. “What do you think? Sean let them be thrown out. He’s very upset.”

When Val turns back to look at Sean and their eyes meet once more, the older boy gives him a tentative smile. Helplessly, Valentino smiles back; he always does.

The beam he gets in return is even brighter than the pink sparkles on his clothes.