Chapter Nine

Days passed in a blur. Roger and Mickey thoroughly enjoyed their new status, going on dates and sharing a bed as well as their apartment. The dance company started casting the important roles for the upcoming spring tour, and Mickey was feeling confident that he would make it out of the corps de ballet in all four of the company’s productions. Roger and Erik fell into a writing groove that he had never experienced before, and the songs that they churned out were some of the best that Roger had ever written. The band loved them, and the rehearsals were becoming more cohesive. They were no longer just noodling about; now they were performing the Valhalla catalog in practice concerts, getting ready for the tour in the spring.

Erik’s cast finally came off, and he presented it to Roger in a shadowbox along with police caution tape, a toy car and a T-shirt with a well-known racecar driving character on the front. He put it on the wall in his old bedroom, where he wouldn’t have to look at it every day, but where he could say he was honoring the gift. As promised, Kyle refused to let him live down the method of his first meeting with their band leader, and Roger was duly re-christened as “Crash”.

In mid-October, one of Valhalla’s rehearsals was truncated because Erik needed to keep an appointment with his lawyer. The band left his house early, giving him the time to take care of his business. He was still keeping the details of whatever was happening in his private life scrupulously private, and Roger worried about him. Penny, who was supposed to return to Nyack after her brother’s leg healed, had stayed past the point of his recovery, which convinced Roger that something serious was going on. He respected Erik’s wishes, though, and tried to stay out of it.

His curiosity and concern were killing him.

Roger stopped at the mailbox on the way into the building, and for the fourth time in three weeks, it was clear that all of the mail had been ripped open. He didn’t know if it was someone breaking into the post box or some sort of personal vendetta by the postal carrier, but it was beginning to annoy him. He checked the envelopes and looked around on the ground, making sure he wasn’t missing any pieces of paper, then went up the stairs.

When he reached their door, he heard classical music playing inside, just a little louder than strictly necessary. He smiled. Mickey was home, and he was probably doing some barre stretches and practice. The door was locked, because they always kept it locked, and he used his key to get in.

His lover was in the living room, one hand on the portable barre, the other extended gracefully to his side. His lithe body was clad in a black leotard and leggings, and his elegantly pointed feet were in his ballet slippers. He had a look of utter concentration on his face and a sheen of sweat on his skin, and to Roger’s eyes, he was devastatingly beautiful.

Roger closed the door quietly, not wanting to interrupt Mickey’s focus, and he put his guitar case down on the floor, leaning it against the wall to keep it out of the way. He looked more closely at the mangled mail. The statement from his credit card company was the worst off, and when he pulled out the contents, he could see that the paper had been incorrectly refolded, as if the person who’d been examining it had been in a hurry. He frowned, annoyed and confused. Why would the postman care how he was spending his money? It made no earthly sense.

He went through the rest of the battered envelopes. The mail addressed to Mickey had been opened, every piece of it. The envelopes that had been addressed to him had been opened and pawed through, refolded or bent in ways that betrayed that they’d been examined. He was grateful no medical bills or documentation had come in the mail that day. He didn’t need his private information floating around with strangers. It was bad enough that whoever had opened his credit card statement had access to his account number.

He decided that it was better to be safe than sorry, even if it was a huge hassle. He went into the bedroom and dialed the customer service number to cancel his card.

Roger was still sitting on hold when Mickey came in to change out of his dance clothes. The dancer raised his eyebrows in a silent question, and Roger said, “I’m on hold.”

“With whom?”

“The credit card company.” He held out the remains of his statement as well as the other pieces of mail that had been ravaged. “Someone got into the post again. I’m calling to cancel my card.”

Mickey took the mail and looked through it. “I think this is just from the automatic sorter. I mean, even the junk mail is opened. If they were looking for credit card info, they wouldn’t have opened…” He looked at one of the envelopes. “…Big Jim’s Discount Rewards Club.”

Roger hesitated, then ended his call. “I suppose you’re right. Am I paranoid?”

“A little,” Mickey smiled. He kissed him. “But it’s part of your charm.”

He broke into a wide smile. “I’m charming?”

“On occasion.”

He stripped out of his clothes and tossed them into the hamper, then walked toward the bathroom in the nude. Roger didn’t mind a bit, and he feasted his eyes on the display.

Mickey caught him looking and gave him a wry side-eyed smile. Roger grinned back. “Need me to scrub your back?”

His lover chuckled. “Nope. I don’t like to have sex in the shower. Lube wears off too quickly and it’s too much work.” He must have seen the disappointment in his face, because Mickey amended, “But if I should happen to come back out and find you in bed…”

“You’ll need a shower again.” Roger pushed the envelopes off of the bed. “Why don’t we just… rearrange the order of things so you only have to shower once?”

Mickey stopped in the bathroom doorway and leaned against the jamb, his hand drifting down to give himself a few long, languorous strokes. Roger watched, captivated, as his lover’s body responded readily to the stimulation. Mickey’s cock hardened and rose before Roger’s eyes, and he was stirred by the sight, as the increasingly uncomfortable containment of his jeans could testify.

“Really? Right now?” Mickey asked, his voice a seductive purr. “But I’m all sweaty.”

“Oh, I know.” He stood up and walked toward his lover, who watched him approaching with affection in his eyes. Roger kissed him soundly, then ran his tongue down the length of Mickey’s muscled but elegant neck. “That’s part of the appeal.”

“Then why are you dressed?”

Roger grinned. “I have no idea.”

Mickey grinned back, his nose wrinkling. Roger loved when his nose did that. “Fix it.”

He wasted no time divesting himself of his clothing. While he was occupied, Mickey sat on the bed, still pleasuring himself with one hand while the other reached into the bedside table for the necessary supplies. Roger threw his shirt on the ground and tugged down his jeans, releasing his own cock to bounce up toward his belly. He pulled one foot free of the denim, but his other foot caught, and he swore softly as he awkwardly wrestled his way loose. Mickey chuckled at his fumbling.

“God, you’re a dork.”

The words could have been insulting, but Roger could recognize the affection behind them. “Yes,” he agreed, leaving his combative clothing behind on the floor. “But you love me for it.”

Mickey laughed. “Guilty as charged.”

The dancer had pulled a tube of scented oil out of the drawer, the kind that they normally reserved for intimate massages, and he applied some to his hand. Roger took a step forward, but he stopped him with a shake of his head.

“Uh-uh. You stay right where you are.” Mickey went back to stroking himself with one hand while the other, the fingers well-oiled, reached down behind his balls. He leaned back and spread his legs into a perfect 180-degree angle, as only a dancer could do, and he began to prepare his opening. He spread the oil over the pink pucker before he pushed two of his fingers inside, keeping his eyes on Roger the whole time. Roger tried to maintain the eye contact, but he couldn’t resist watching Mickey fingering himself. His lover no doubt would have been disappointed if he could.

Mickey worked his fingers in and out of his tight hole, his cheeks flushing. Roger’s erection was straining for attention, and he started to stroke himself, too, watching the way his lover’s body stretched to accommodate him. He wanted to be the one to stretch that hole, and he took a step forward.

“Patience is a virtue,” Mickey told him with a smirk.

“I’ll work on it later.”

He couldn’t wait any longer. He walked to the bed and leaned on his hands, kissing Mickey deeply. His lover reached down and batted Roger’s hand away, then he took control of Roger’s cock, taking it in his firm grip and rubbing from base to tip. This was no gentle stroking, but something much more insistent and demanding. He was more than happy to comply.

He grabbed Mickey’s hips and held him still. His lover stopped what he was doing with his hands and looked up at Roger with aching need written across his face. He propped himself up on his elbows and kissed Roger again, their tongues doing battle. Roger lined himself up with Mickey’s opening, taking a moment to apply a little of the sweet-smelling oil to himself. Mickey broke the kiss.

“Hurry up, man.”

“I thought patience was a virtue.”

“Shut up."

Somehow, he spread his legs even wider, and then Roger plunged inside him, sheathing himself completely in one steady push. The dancer groaned, and Roger could see in his face that he was caught by the strange combination of pleasure and pain that a fast entry could cause. Mickey shivered.

“Oh, God… I love it when you do it like that…” He bent his knees and hooked his legs around the small of Roger’s back. “Fuck me, baby. Fuck me hard.”

Roger was more than happy to comply. He pulled back, then snapped his hips forward, spearing Mickey once again as far as he could go. His lover grasped his shoulders, leaving fingerprints to match the ones that Roger was leaving on his hips.

The heat and the tightness were entrancing, and Roger could no longer think. He was entirely consumed by the feeling of Mickey’s body clenching around him, and he could only thrust again and again in a delirium of passion.

He rammed him, their bodies slapping against each other, the wet, erotic sound of their union filling their ears. He was overtaken by the stimuli of his senses – the sound of their bodies and Mickey’s moans, the scent of the oil and the sweat on his lover’s body, the taste of salt and musk on Mickey’s nipple, and the sight of his enraptured face. Roger wanted to hold on to the moment, to make it last forever, but they were both too needy and too excited to pace themselves that much.

Mickey’s legs pressed on Roger’s ass, urging him to go even faster, and he happily did as he was told. He drove into Mickey, watching as his lover’s body was jostled on the mattress by the force of his thrusts. Mickey’s head tipped back, and Roger pressed a breathless kiss to his neck, followed by the lightest of nips. His lover yelped, more out of surprise than pain, and his body tightened around him.

“Mmm, you brat,” Mickey sighed.

Roger drilled into him until his partner cried out again, this time in pure delight. His body squeezed and gripped him as Mickey came, his semen spurting onto his own chest. Roger licked it away, savoring the salty, musky taste of his lover’s passion.  He kept his hold on Mickey’s hips and maintained his rapid pace, thrusting deep and fast for as long as he could. To his surprise, Mickey came again, and this time the spasms of his anus were more than Roger could stand. He shouted and filled his lover with his seed before he collapsed.

Mickey kept his legs around him, and he added his arms, pulling Roger into a tight embrace. His body was still shaking, his abdomen quivering with the after effects of his orgasm. Roger was deep inside him, feeling the aftershocks that rattled Mickey’s body, and it brought another wave of ecstasy crashing through him. His breath caught in his throat and his own hips stuttered, pressing his rampant cock into the beautiful man beneath him.

The insanity of pleasure fell away from them slowly, and they were left in a damp and sated heap of intertwining arms and legs. They kissed deeply with the laziness of afterglow, slowly returning to earth.

Roger sighed, his face pressed into the hollow between Mickey’s neck and shoulder. “Ohh, God….” he moaned softly. “You are incredible.”

His lover stroked his hair, fingers gripping the soft black strands and holding him close. “I love you,” Mickey breathed. “So much.”

Roger kissed the dewy skin next to his lips. “I love you, too. Forever.”

“Mmm… I like the sound of that.”

They cuddled for a while in the afterglow, holding each other and dozing lightly. After a while, Mickey sat up and kissed Roger soundly. “Now I really need that shower,” he said with a smile. “I’ll be right back out.”

“Okay.”

He watched his lover walk away, then rolled over onto his side. The mail he had dumped on the floor was scattered beside the bed, and he gathered it up to keep Mickey - or more likely himself - from slipping on it and taking a tumble. The ragged edges of the ripped envelopes annoyed him again, but this time with less vehemence, because he just felt too good now to let anything bother him that much.

He had been so preoccupied with the snooping into his credit card statement that he hadn’t really paid attention to the other correspondence they’d received. He sifted through it now. There was yet another “special offer” from Big Jim’s Discounts, as Mickey had pointed out earlier, and he tossed it onto the bedside table with every intention of throwing it away. There were apartment-related bills - electric, gas, trash pickup, parking fee - and a subscription renewal offer from International Cartographic, which he liked to get for the travel articles. He put that aside, as well.

The water in the shower started, and he listened closely. Mickey started singing, as he always did, and as he always denied doing. Roger thought his lover had a pleasant voice, helped by the acoustics of the ceramic tile walls. He liked it when Mickey sang, because he almost always sang Russian folk songs, something Roger had never heard anywhere else.

He realized that he knew almost nothing about his lover’s family, or about their reaction to his homosexuality. He knew his own mother had been supportive, but he’d never asked about Mickey’s parents. He had never wanted to be pushy or invasive, and though he’d been curious - he was always curious about the lives of people he knew - he’d kept it to himself, if only to be polite. It was probably time that he asked those questions.

There was a letter to Mickey from the St. Petersburg School of Dance, the envelope printed in both Latin and Cyrillic alphabets. He guessed that it might have been a request for donations, since it was coming on that time of year, and he put it aside to give to his lover when he came back out of the bathroom. They had also received a set of adverts from local candidates for the upcoming midterm elections, and all of them were conservatives; he put those with the trash, as well.

The last piece of mail he came to was an orange envelope with a greeting card company’s insignia embossed onto the back. He smiled at the reminder that Halloween was coming. He needed to give some thought to costumes. Maybe he and Mickey could match, somehow.

The card was addressed to both of them, so he went ahead and opened it. The front of the card showed a cute black cat in a witch’s hat, perched inside a jack o'lantern. Its impossibly sweet expression softened the holiday’s scare factor into non-existence. It looked like the sort of invitation that parents sent for kids’ parties. He didn’t know anybody who had kids. He opened it.

It was an invitation, just as he’d supposed, with the party information written into blank spaces in the printing. The handwriting was small and neat, the letters made with almost draftsman-like precision. He didn’t recognize it. The party was for six pm on Halloween night, and costumes with masks were required. The location of the party was on Long Island, in an enclave of the rich and well-connected. He had no idea whose address that was, or how they’d gotten their names and address.

Roger puzzled over the invitation while Mickey finished his shower, and by the time the bathroom door opened, he thought he knew who’d sent it.

“Hey,” Mickey said, smiling. “Your turn.”

“Thanks.” He stood up and handed the invitation to Mickey. “I think one of your company’s patrons is having a party. Nice of them to invite us.”

He went to get cleaned up while his lover looked through the mail. He showered quickly and returned to the bedroom, but Mickey was no longer there, and all of the mail was gone. Roger got dressed and went out into the living room.

His lover was sitting at the kitchen table with a bowl of yogurt, liberally sprinkled with dried cranberries. He looked up as Roger approached. “Do you want to go to that party?”

He shrugged. “Sure. Why not? Sounds like fun. We’ll have to come up with costumes.”

Mickey nodded. “Yeah. I just wish I knew who sent the invitation. The address is to the kind of place where one of our patrons would live, but when I did a reverse search on the internet, the name that came up wasn’t one I recognized.”

“What name?”

“Alexander Mosby.”

“Hmm. I don’t know that name, either. If the invitation hadn’t been so clearly addressed, I’d think it was a mistake.” He sat down at the table with a bottle of sparkling water. “Weird.”

“Yeah…”

There was something about Mickey’s demeanor that made him nervous, and he frowned. “What’s going on, love?”

“Did you see the letter from the St. Petersburg School?”

“Yeah.” He sipped his drink. “I thought they were begging for money.”

“No. They don’t need to.” He stirred his yogurt and took a deep breath. “It’s… an offer for me to come and study with them, and to dance for the St. Petersburg Ballet.”

“Russia? Really?”

“It’s where the best classical ballet teachers are,” Mickey told him. “It’s like the Ivy League of ballet schools. And the company is one of the oldest and most revered companies in the world.”

He had a sinking feeling. “Do you want to go?”

His lover hesitated, then answered without looking at him. “Yes.”

Roger felt like someone had slugged him in the stomach. He couldn’t breathe for a ragged second, and then his heart dropped like a stone. “Russia is a long way away.”

“I’m aware.”

He put the cap back on his bottle and pushed it aside. He leaned his elbows on the table and clasped his hands in front of himself, gripping so tightly that his knuckles went pale. “When did you apply?”

“Before we got together. Months ago. They had auditions in the City Center, and I took a chance. It was right after you slept with Dave the first time. I was… I guess I was looking for a way to run away, since it hurt so bad to see you with someone else.” He finally looked at Roger, his blue eyes stormy. “I honestly didn’t think I’d make the cut, and I certainly didn’t expect for us to happen the way we have.”

He felt stiff, as if his insides were preparing him for an incoming blow. “Do you regret it?”

“The audition, or us?”

“Both. Either.”

Mickey sighed. “No. I don’t regret either one.” He pushed his bowl away and put his hands over Roger’s. “This is a once in a lifetime chance for me. It’s the crème de la crème of ballet, and I want to study there. I want to dance with and for the best. It’s a dream come true.”

Roger pulled away, and Mickey looked stung. “Do you know how they treat gays in Russia?”

“I know. But this is my chance to really make a name for myself in the dance world.” He looked into Roger’s eyes with pleading desperation. “This is a chance I have to take.”

“But…” His voice was small, and he felt like a horrible person, but he had to say it. “What about us?”

“Come with me?”

Mickey said it like a question, a begging sort of plea for the answer he wanted to hear. Roger sat back from the table.

“Valhalla is here,” he said flatly. “And I don’t want to go to Russia.”

“Not even for me?”

“That’s not fair.”

“And it’s fair to ask me to give up this opportunity?”

He ran his hands over his face. “No, it’s not fair. But… let me think about it, all right? When do you have to leave?”

“I’m supposed to be there in March,” he answered, his voice quiet. He looked like Roger had physically struck him, and Roger hated that look.

“Then there’s time for us to think about it and really consider our options.” He took a deep breath and put a hand on Mickey’s forearm. “I love you, and I want to find a way to still be with you. I just need some time to think.”

“Then it’s not a flat no?”

He sounded hopeful, but with an air of fear. Roger squeezed his hand on Mickey’s arm. “No, it’s not a flat no. It’s a maybe.”

Mickey tried to smile, and it flashed across his face, almost fluttering. “It’s better than nothing, I guess.”

Roger stood up and left the table, carrying his mineral water with him. “I’m going to practice in my old room and think a while,” he told his lover. “This is a big decision and I need to really be careful. I have too much to lose.”

“With Valhalla?”

He shook his head. “With you.”