Ficlet: Cirque Missing Scene
A tiny one-shot companion piece to Cirque de Céline. naga_battousai asked for the break-up scene between Dean and Béa. Thanks to JM and lemmypie as always, just for looking.



The light slanted through the hotel room window sideways, full daylight, hot day and she let him sleep.

An empty bottle stood on the table, Polish vodka, surrounded by peanut shells and a crumpled brown bag that had once held hot bagels dripping with grainy mustard and Montréal smoked meat grease. Yesterday’s lunch. And dinner. And breakfast, even, though the vodka was gone by then. Tadeusz and the others had been there until four in the morning, at least, happy as Lithuanians got, in Béa’s opinion. Her mother had never cracked a smile, was feral and suspicious as a raccoon in a dumpster.

Her suitcase was already loaded with the others; not all of them were going to the Las Vegas show, but enough that Team Céline had rented a separate cargo van for their things. Béa had been hoping for Montréal after this, and Las Vegas held all the excitement of a three-o’clock Christmas tree. No suitcase, only strewn clothes across the room, neither of them particularly neat and tidy people. She stretched out of the bed, the scratchy sheets in need of a wash, really in need, not like that time in the Hilton, where he’d been as dazed as any kid in a candy shop.

Stretched languidly, the effects of vodka still felt in her sore muscles, now two weeks past her last performance, exercised in a different arena. Standing, Béa stretched one leg to the wall, held it there for a full minute, concentrating on the static pose, the thrill of nerves and stretching muscle humming along the length of her leg, pulling to sweet pain in her thigh. Alternated. On the floor, passive stretch into a hairpin, then a tortoise, then a bridge. Pulled two chairs facing the other, tested their balance, then relaxed into a suspended split, one foot on either chair. Held, then put hands on the floor, moved into an elbow stand, legs extended. Felt a trickle of sweat roll down between her breasts, looked up and saw him watching her.

Green eyes utterly opaque; she had no idea what he was thinking. Might have thought, ‘this is so weird,’ or ‘I want to fuck you right now,’ or ‘get me outta here.’ She’d had them all, over the years.

The rented apartment hotel was small but her roommate was currently with Tadeusz, so she’d had it pretty much to herself since they’d returned from Montebello. Well, not to herself. Dean had been here too, quite a bit. He worried over his brother, though, as well he might.

Béa was enough of a Lithuanian to be suspicious, to make a ward against the evil eye with one hand hidden. She knew what Dean would do if he saw her make those kinds of signs, especially to protect herself against his brother.

Who was not evil, but who was chosen. The zubir had come and gone and Dean had told her enough for her to know that Sam was marked in a fundamental way beyond what René had done to his back.

He’d apologized, René, in quiet French, taken the acrobats and contortionists aside, invited them to Las Vegas, doubled their salaries. It was a good deal, one that Béa couldn’t refuse. Didn’t want to, because head office had sent a letter, too. Train the new performers in Las Vegas, do a good job. Next year, you’ll be moved to the school in Montréal. It was enough.

She uncurled, walked over to the bed, bent down to him. “You can sleep a little more,” she said.

“No I can’t,” he replied, pulling her on top of him, his American accent rough and deep and she liked the way it sounded like cigar smoke and leaf mulch and maple syrup. “I’m not going to,” he clarified, stroking his fingers though her hair. At some point last night, after lime vodka shots, she’d talked him into cutting it and she hadn’t looked in the mirror yet. She’d rather remember the way his stare roamed over her head, maybe admiring his handiwork, maybe wondering what the fuck he’d done. She’d rather remember that than think about what it looked like.

Her heart raced as well it might; he was unshaven and his eyes alternated between pleased and turned-on and what might have been sad.

Since the fire, she hadn’t held back anything and she could tell that’s what he’d been waiting for, what he’d wanted from her in the first place. To not care, to not edit or keep anything from him, including – especially – herself.

Just because a plane was filling with fuel for a cross continental flight didn’t mean she couldn’t leave it all at his doorstep, hand it over. Feet off the pedals, she remembered, thinking of a time as a little girl, going fast down a hill, heading for a crash but not minding, not minding because the wind was in her hair and no one could catch her and all wounds healed, eventually.

Just because.

When he touched her there and there and there, the noise she made shocked her, surprised her, a moan that sounded more like the noise a tree made when it fell, split in the center, in motherwood of the oldest core. He drew her out like a bucket from the bottom of a well, and there she was, her body a map to her soul.

After, when he’d fallen asleep again, sunlight playing across his scarred and perfect torso, she realized that he hadn’t come, that he’d been there with her, had known and pleasured but had held back himself, had not leapt off that edge.

The plane, she had thought, would end it. But as she dressed, slowly, sore in a new way, she realized it was over now and although he would wake to find her gone, he had in many ways left already.

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