qunqun
Give me your herbs, worm.
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basics
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TL;DR: Heeeeeeeere's Johnny!!!
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tl;dr
Auguste
Auguste was the easily frightened sort.
Years of abuse and paranoia and gang life had led him to be extremely jumpy and twitchy, even if outwardly he didn’t show it.
But, somehow, Ezra Gray didn’t intimidate him one fucking bit. Not anymore at least.
It reminded him of a movie his friend made him watch. The Shining or something.
Something sharp tugged at the corner of his mouth as he turned from the very soft and mild small talk he’d been making to see Ezra bursting into the room with his usual swagger.
Thank you, Ezra, for giving him a very lengthy heads up. It had given him time to prepare mentally.
A demand for the notes. Auguste could barely resist rolling his eyes. He took a cursory glance at the shorter guy who’d entered the room, staring down at him with a look that was probably about five times more intimidating than what he really meant. “... nice to meet you, too.” Then at Ez.
He mouthed two words: “Okay Thaddeus”
But then before Ez could even respond to the ghost words, he spoke.
“We’re in the middle of a rehearsal, Ezra. Go bother someone else, no?” Pause. Head tilt. “Unless the Great Ezra Gray wishes to demonstrate the amazing ballet skills which you tell me you definitely have, I will have to insist you leave…” And then a pointed look as he - for once - straightened out his posture so that he was no longer slightly hunched over to make himself appear smaller and around Ez’s size. He stared down at Ez with a sharp grin. He didn’t pull the height card very often, but he knew that it was often pretty effective. 6’7” and with a wiry meanness to his frame. Not Ez’s toned musculature, but still taller than him. And also just generally more of a meaner look to him. “… you don’t want to actually try to physically resist this, no?”
He knew that oops, the gang shit had slipped out earlier that day in a moment of sheer confusion on his part. Hopefully Ez would have a little bit of sense to not fight the formerly violent criminal.
Another pause as an idea entered his head. An awful idea. Wouldn’t his planning of Ez being too stubborn to leave going to waste just be a damn shame? Wouldn’t it be better if he convinced Ez to actually stay and go through with dancing?
And also, he did, in fact, resent the “boasting” that Ez had done earlier about being able to beat him in a dance-off. It wasn’t the idea of being overtly prideful in his activities, the idea of being beaten, it was just the fact that Ezra Gray had decided to bluster about being better than Auguste. Auguste took quite a bit of pride in his art - after all, he did dedicate an inordinate amount of time to making himself a perfect dancer. This was the one thing that he was absolutely confident that he could floor his friend with.
“… I tell you what. I may have lied to the burning of my notes so I can indeed give them to you. But we will do a little challenge, no? Someone of your skills could… obviously beat me in ballet. With how very flexible and talented you are, of course. So, best me here and you get your notes and to continue the disruption.” Auguste’s lips drew back into another grin. “I’ll even go first.”
A turn to Maggie, a softer more apologetic tone
“Sorry for the lesson being disrupted.”
And then he took center stage. Quickly changing the music to a routine that he’d been carefully crafting for his senior project. Not complete yet, but it’d make do for this.
Auguste’s head snapped up as began to go through the routine. Spins and leaps, dizzyingly fast. One right after the other, extending his long limbs so that they floated and spun without a single hair out of place. Filling them with enough power and control that even though he was spinning in the air, it held the beautiful appearance of being carefully calculated and not even a little bit messy to stare at but with the kind of easy elegance that made it seem like anybody could do it - that it was completely natural.
He may have been showing off. Definitely showing off. So much careful control and beauty in each movement. Emotion and passion of his heart and soul pouring out of every leap and turn and spin - the appearance of being able to defy gravity itself for just mere fractions of seconds. Weightless. Making it look easy and at the same time absolutely gorgeously powerful. Nothing like the stuff he was showing Maggie which was both simplified and not what he specialized in. And none of the playful flirtatious cockiness of his tap solo. This was Auguste at his peak and also completely in his element, every deliberately graceful move bleeding a certain confidence that he seemed to lack in normal everyday life.
At the very end he had a hand extended upwards stretched towards where the stage lights would be, on both knees, staring to where he’d been reaching. And then his head snapped to Ezra as he rolled back onto his feet and stood to the full 6 foot 7 inches and simply gave Ezra a smirk. A confidence - damn near arrogance - that came from a near perfect run of a routine, and knowing that Ez - a potter who’d never gone through a full dance lesson in his life - could never realistically beat him, not at ballet dancing.
“Alright. Your turn now. I know that you are… just… the best, and need no advice from someone as novice at dance as I am, but I suggest stretching before you try to emulate this.” Yeah, he was enjoying this just a little bit too much. He was going to make stretching an annoyance as well.
———-
Auguste watched Ezra’s failure of a dance with a sharp grin. Slow clapping as he approached the boy, he clapped the definitely-not-a-dancer on the shoulder as his ice eyes bored into Ezra’s “Never try to challenge me at my strengths again.”
And then he pulled out his phone. Watched as Ez’s phone went off. He looked up at Ez, and gave him a little wink “There’s your notes, courtesy of Nikolai. They say to ignore the things at the bottom.”
The corners of his mouth were twitching, as he failed at repressing a smirk that easily mirrored the one usually upon Ez’s face. He was definitely being a bit of a smug bastard but hey, wasn’t that their entire friendship? Handing back and forth the smug bastard stick.
“Qu’est ce. All of my notes are in French, Ezra. You suddenly learn how to speak my first language for a calculus class? À moins que vous n'appreniez soudainement le français, vous ne pourriez pas comprendre mes notes. Tu ne peux même pas comprendre ce que je dis maintenant.”
Unless you suddenly learned French, you couldn’t understand my notes. You can’t even understand what I’m saying now.
“Oh. And here.” He pulled out a scarf from his backpack. Dark green and brown. Nice and warm despite the very clearly handmade quality. He wrapped it around Ez’s neck very gently and gave a couple of hearty back slaps to his best friend 5ever. “Bon Noel, mon frere. Get out of my rehearsal space.”
Later, when he was grabbing something from his locker, so pumped up on adrenaline and victory, he didn’t recognize that a letter from the school had fallen out, and was kicked around until it rolled to the feet of one Nickie Abrams.
—-----------------
Auguste didn’t win much. Quite frankly, the world seemed fixated on smacking him over the head whenever he tried to rise above anything.
So yeah, he was absolutely taking beating Ezra at a thing Ezra had no fucking clue what he was doing but was too stubborn to back down from as a win.
And he’d been having a great time at his holiday job teaching ballet to little children. For some reason they liked him. Liked climbing all over him. Liked it when he glared and grumbled because heheh funny angy man.
He played it up a little bit around the children, but still, it was nice. He got paid too.
Tried to not feel too fucking lonely when he was getting high by himself on Saint’s weed on Christmas, wishing that his friend would call even though he knew he wouldn’t. They’d already said their Merry Christmases the day before, no reason to call. But it was still a depressing thought.
Anyways, Ezra had clearly unlocked some kind of repressed need inside of him for socialization (ruined his life) because even though life was going pretty alright for him, he was feeling… lonely.
So, when the annual party at Chas’s place came ‘round… Auguste reluctantly went. Reluctantly as in “decided to actually poke his head out on his own free will.”
So here he was. A cup of mystery juice in hand, while he was looking around for that Felix guy. He was starting to feel bad for “stealing” Saint’s stash. So instead he had started branching out…
… Listen when he was in a gang, he usually beat people up, he wasn’t the resident drug dealer. He had no fucking clue how this works.
And- oh fuck he just stepped on someone’s foot this night was a mistake he wanted to go home now.
“Oh my god I’m so sorry for- oh it’s you.”
Kian’s stupid face was staring back at him.
“... hey.” Was this sober Kian who bought Chas’s coffee for him and drove him to school? Or was this high Kian who he’d have to babysit for the rest of the night. Based on the lack of hugging and crying and general “deer staring into the headlights” look that Kian seemed to have suddenly taken on, Auguste assumed that it was the former. “... you seem… well.”
“... How’s your break been?”
code by valen t.