ballet dirk fuckign Happened

[hanka]

i did it man........ i made it Hapen

big thanks to davedudie and Debbie Does Dallas for helping with research, and Chairubplay for yelling at me when i got distracted.

EDIT: dirk's color is fucking eye-searing on this bg. sorry. fixed.

[ Ballerina Dirk overestimates his physical capabilities. Win my heart with a Caliborn, an AR or a Roxy, but I’ll accept any canon character. FC at bit.ly/1otvTBA if verbal descriptions aren’t your speed. Please maintain solid post length and give me plenty to work with in your first reply. ]

The graveyard shift staff at this CVS know him by name, but as Dirk hobbles past the counter, he doesn’t recognize this cashier. He hasn’t been here since last Saturday’s caffeine-fueled raid of its energy drink fridge, and that was in totally different circumstances. For one thing, he was a man on a mission then, and this time he expects it’s gonna take him more than a quick in-and-out to get sorted. For another, the goddamn stupid bullshit modern-art-ass Cinderella production hadn’t been announced yet, and Dirk hadn’t been working his ass off day and night to get on pointe.

There’s a reason that shit’s not meant for guys.

It’s a whole federal fucking deal when some chick scores her first pair of foot-binding torture-shoes. Girls train for years to break their feet a certain special way, and when they figure it out, their proud dance moms bring them flowers. Dirk gets a month and a half of warning, plus the reminder that he’ll never be enough of a square-jawed Aryan to play the male lead, but maybe if he tries really hard and breaks his ankles and does believe in fairies, he can be the villain. In drag. On pointe. For motherfucking comic relief. But it’s not like he’s bitter, or anything.

That’s how he ends up working his ass off to get on pointe and make it look easy. As if that’s not hard enough, he has to do the whole thing in a mountain of black crêpe de chine, without stepping on any of it, and learn how to jump all over again without breaking any toes.

Rather expectedly, he breaks a toe. Possibly more than one, and his ankle as well.

That’s how he ends up in one sneaker and one pointe shoe, around which his poor right ankle is swelling too painfully to even think about fucking with right now, limping down to the last 24-hour pharmacy in a three-block radius, white with pain but damned if he’s going to let anyone help. It’s too bright inside after fifteen minutes of dragging himself down the street in the dark. He’s squinting more than usual if that’s possible, which can only mean his eyelids have collapsed into another dimension. It’s not like there’s anywhere else for them to go.

That’s how he ends up wandering aimlessly in search of ACE tape that might as well be mythical for all he can find. Somehow, he passes the same display of Five-Hour Energy twice and he has to pause, leaning lightly against the cardboard cutout to assess the damage. His ankle looks like it’s the right shape, but there’s an unsettling purple shade to his whole foot starting below the bone where it sticks out. Yeesh.

He sets off again, bracing his right side against the aisles because fuck if he’s going to try putting pressure on that foot. It’s kind of like working his way along the bar, except instead of the constant threat of failure and judgment, he’s looking for medical supplies and any goddamn pain pills he can find. The pain from his ankle is distracting enough that he must go down the wrong aisle again, because there’s that goddamn fucking piece of shit Five-Hour Energy tower again. He knows this place, and a neurotic popper like him knows where the pain meds are like he knows the sky is blue, so how is he getting turned around every few steps?

Halfway through the walk of shame back to the counter, he loses his footing and trips into a display -- blessedly not Five-Hour Energy this time -- and time seems to slow down as he falls. Before he catches himself on one hand and bangs his knee on the linoleum, sending lightning bolts of pain down to his already fucked-up ankle, before he resigns himself to eternal shame and a probably broken ankle and definitely broken toes, before he falls on his face in public and never performs in this city again --

Dirk thinks, very clearly, “Nailed it.”

And then the pain in his foot registers, and he screams.