summary: he doesn't believe in coincidences but that's all it takes to change everything he's ever known.
He desperately wants her gone.
She scares him. Right from the moment he had first laid eyes on her, in a badly shot video wearing her short white dress and dancing around like she didn't have a care in the world, surrounded by a room full of people in a smokey dark room, she's haunted him. That scares him.
At first he believed it was the sheer audacity of her act. To jump and dance around drunk copying his move and claiming to be what he had become after years of discipline, control and sheer hard work. He had given up more in his life than she could have possibly earned. The very thought of it enraged him, made his blood roar and it took everything he had, all his restrain to erase her image, to quieten his mind, to stop thinking about her, to not hunt her down and teach her a lesson or two about what it took to be Mikhail.
And then, when he had had a chance to do that, all he could do was show her who he was in the best way he knew how. Through everything he had learned, trained so hard for, everything he was, everything he had become. He expected his actions to speak louder than words but finds them crushed under her matching steps. She's putty in his hands. Trusting him blindly, letting him play with her body as he wills. Mold and bend it however he wishes. He finds her trust in him intoxicating and finds himself pushing her further and further just to see how far she was willing to go, was willing to let him go. And that scares him too.
He's never shared this level of ease with someone he's not shared a bed with. He had discovered very early in his career that trust and comfort were crucial to a good duet. The nights he shared with his partners rid them of more than just their clothes and frustrations, it rid them of their inhibitions. It was all about chemistry after all, with no room for hesitation, awkwardness or shyness. He had shared that with her, without even knowing her name. It shouldn't have been that way, it wasn't supposed to be. But it had been, but it was.
When he had called her on stage, he had intended to humiliate her, to strip her of her inhibitions, to use her own sense of virtue against her. But she had gotten rid of his control, his motives, his sense of here and now. By given in she'd made him give up and all there was left were his hands on her and her eyes on him and the music. Just the two of them against each other, with each other, around each other, alone and everywhere. The world a distant memory until she had pushed him away and brought it crashing back around him.
It would have all been okay, normal, ordinary, if only he hadn't held her in his arms and moved her to the beats of the rhythm in his head. But he had and there was no going back now.
Apart, they're a hurricane and a waterfall. He dances under a ring of lights and she dances hidden in the shadows. He dances to stay alive and she dances to stay aloof. His steps reek of his desperation, madness and turmoil while hers are light with joy, dreams and hope. He's pure decadence and she's candidly divine. But together they are clandestine. They weren't supposed to come together, share a stage, clash but they did, because he willed and what he willed so it was. But what he didn't know then was that would be his downfall. He had poured gasoline on his world and she'd been the spark.
When she steps into his academy, he uses his words against her because his moves had proven to be futile. When he slowly breaks her down and pushes her to the ground, he expects her to stay there. Fallen on his floor and from his thoughts. He waits for her to disappear from his sight and out of his mind. And she does, only to come back, rising like a phoenix and he finds his carefully constructed world burning at the edges.
His academy is his haven. A place he'd built piece by piece, performer by performer for the rebels, the misfits and the dreamers. It was as much a sanctuary for others as it was a refuge for him. It was for those who felt, not thought. For those who chased their own dreams not lived for others', for the ones who created their own paths not those that followed road maps, for those that listened to their hearts, not obeyed their minds.
She didn't belong in the academy, in his world. The way she moved around, careful and wary, and acted around him, like a fly caught in a web, he could tell that she knew it too. And yet she didn't try to stay away no matter what he did, how much he tried and he had come to realise people around him didn't want her to, a part of him didn't want her to either. And that scared him too.
He often catches himself watching her and then chides himself. She doesn't deserve his attention. And yet, she seems like an oddity, an optical illusion that would reveal answers if you stared hard enough. She's carefree, cautious and protected - like she's got nothing at stake, like she's never lost something. She's got a selflessness to her, a self-depreciating quality, a naivety about her that's almost foreign to him. Yet despite her somewhat meek appearance and demeanour, she's not a pushover like he expected her to be. She's smart and has a backbone. That surprises him, intrigues him. And scares him.
She's different from the kind of girls he usually sees in the academy and yet somehow she isn't. It bothers him that he can't quite figure her out entirely. Especially since she looks, dresses and behaves like everyone else but there's something about her, something off, different, strange. Something that's almost concealed, something he had accidentally caught a glimpse of that night in the Shack, something she hadn't intended to reveal, something perhaps she herself was unaware she possessed. Underneath the calm and the control, she had a fire, a spark that had left a scar burnt on his mind.
They have an unspoken bond between them. He doesn't know how it happened but he wishes he did so he could shatter it into pieces and free himself of its shackles, of this heaviness he feels whenever their eyes meet. He wants to pretend she's one of the others, one of the many faces he sees moving in and out everyday, but he can't.
Those few accidental moments have tinged his reality and left him feeling disoriented and restless. The more he sees her pretending, the greater that itch grows, the more he wants, the more he craves. The need to uncover that side of her claws on his insides, the side that went against everything she otherwise appeared to be. A side that had matched up to his intensity, his rage, his madness and urged it on. And that scared him the most.
It's not her, not really. It's who she turns him into, pushes him to become. He needs her gone so he can hold on to himself. Reign in his instincts, his thoughts that threaten to spill over, drown, destroy and burn to the ground everything he has built. It scares him what he can do, wants to do when he sees her around, the questions in his mind that he needs answers to, the mystery she posed that he slowly wants to slowly unravel, taking his own time. She's a challenge he's driven to, almost needs to defeat, conquer, own.
It's hilarious really, morbidly, ironically so. Of all the things, all the people that could rattle him, unhinge his sanity, and threaten his dreams, he would have never guessed it to be a deceptively innocent looking girl named Baby'.
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