Chapter 2: Chapter 2
Letting himself into his apartment, he’s greeted by his pit bull, Lou, who comes straight over, tail wagging, sticking his nose everywhere, and Arkady has to push Lou around a little so they can both get in the apartment and close the door behind them.
“You want food, boy? Yeah, me too.” Arkady walks further into the apartment, ditching his jacket on a hanger near the door. Lou licks his hand as he walks toward the kitchen. Lou is never overly demanding. He loves to eat, but always waits for permission.
Arkady gets out a can of wet dog food and puts it in Lou’s bowl, wanting to feed Lou before he feeds himself because he’s not the kind to leave his dog hungry while he eats.
“Dinner,” Arkady announces, setting the bowl down. Lou gives a small woof, almost like he’s thanking Arkady, before he starts devouring his food.
It’s after ten, and it would be easier to eat junk, maybe a pizza, but Arkady works hard on his body. He’s five-foot-seven of muscle, toned stomach, the works, but then you have to be strong to hold a grown woman above your head. Dancers are no weaklings, and Arkady doesn’t stay in that shape by eating take out, so he makes some chicken and rice.
Arkady cooks with the practiced ease of someone who lives alone, checking on Lou every now and then. He dishes his dinner into a bowl and goes to the couch to eat it, putting the TV on for some background. Once he’s finished, he puts the bowl in the sink to wash later. Lou looks up, licking his chops and he seems to have finished, because he follows Arkady back to the couch.
He kicks off his shoes and gets more comfortable, Lou’s head in his lap, and scratches at Lou’s ears. Arkady watches TV, looks through his phone, trying to ignore the ache in his face. He gets comfortable with Lou, and not for the first time, ends up falling asleep on the couch to the drone of the TV and the sound of his dog snoring softly.
* * * *
“What’s that on your face, Arkady?” Jason, the head of the ballet company he’s working for, yells as Arkady is helped into a harness. Jason has him doing a photo shoot for the company to advertise them, and that requires he look like he’s flying.
“A bruise,” Arkady replies. He thought the makeup girl had covered it when she did his dramatic stage makeup.
“Have you been fighting again? Never mind. I don’t want to know. Just don’t do it again. And someone get the makeup girl. Get it covered up,” Jason orders. At over six feet, he can seem a little intimidating at first, and he loves to shout, but that’s as far as his temper goes, whatever racist bullshit people occasionally spew about a large black man being in charge.
Someone gets Tracey, and she manages to do magic as people bustle around them both, covering up the purple on his jaw, muttering in Spanish. Arkady can’t help thinking of the man who’d hit him, and feels a surge of anger. He hates homophobes and bullies. He wishes they weren’t a part of his life, but they are and always have been. He knows that it’s at least better here than it would have been if he’d stayed in Russia.
Finally, after adjustments and safety checks, Arkady finds himself in the air, doing ballet poses, like fourth position, en hautof the arms with feet in the fourth position croisee. He shows the Attitude pose in a terre, sur la pointe. He does port de corpsand en coux. Not all the positions they have him doing are technically perfect ballet poses. They ask him to make his body look like it’s flying, and he does, keeping his toes en pointe
They bring him down for breaks, to give him water and let him pee because, in Jason’s words, he doesn’t want Arkady to have ‘I need to tinkle face’. They have him up for the last time. He’s stretching one arm above his head and leaning his head against it as they ask, legs out to the side as if he’s mid leap.
“Look to the heavens, my dove,” Jason yells, and Arkady looks up, up into the walkway above him. There’s only one person, when there should be at least three, and Arkady notices the man’s face is covered with a red scarf. Arkady opens his mouth, ready to ask what’s going on, when he sees the knife.
He yells, but the man slashes through the cords keeping Arkady in the air. He thinks he screams as he hurtles to the ground, but he’s not sure he even breathes. Pain bursts bright like a supernova, only to be replaced by a darkness more dim than any he has ever seen. He has strange thoughts that the darkness will last long after he opens his eyes. 2
Waking up happens slowly, like a heavy fog lifting. That’s when the pain hits him, wave after wave, and he doesn’t know why, what happened. He searches his memory and remembers a party and a fight. He wonders if the pain is from that? Then Arkady opens his eyes, and the room he’s in is much brighter than his bedroom, and he can’t feel the weight of Lou on his feet. His body is screaming, and it takes a long time to realize he’s in a hospital room. There’s a buzzer placed near his hand, and he’s surprised by how hard it is to focus through the pain to make his arm move so he can pick up the buzzer, and there isn’t even a mark on his hand.
Gifts
-- Gift
received Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone