#one day i'll write a fleshed out dancer steve au but for now have some of This

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welcome to dot drops something that's been sitting in her tumblr drafts for 4 months Saturday I hope you enjoy your visit mwah! Steddie; Ballet AU; Dancer!Steve; mentions of cancer treatment; 1.5k words

Dress rehearsal is supposed to be a mess.

That's the point of it, really, to get all the mistakes out of your system and start the actual show run with a clean slate. Or at least, that had been the point of which they'd all convinced themselves when Steve was the one performing.

Bad dress meant good show, or so the old adage went, and so at least there was some ease of worry with the collective understanding that it won't happen on the night within the company.

That was the case when Steve was a student, when he was an apprentice, even during his time in the big leagues at Joffrey, but right now? At the end of a truly abysmal dress in this run-down theater on the edge of a town from which he'd once run away?

Steve is not the performer. He's the guy in charge.

And so he spirals.

He'd never wanted to be a director or an instructor or the head of a studio like this. It had never been in his plans. Steve was a man of action, where the people who do these jobs are the brains behind the operation.

Steve knows how to work hard, how to force his body and even his mind into submission until he gets the steps just right, but this? These past six months back in Hawkins temporarily helping out?

(God, please let it be temporary.)

He's not built for this. He's sitting center stage after everyone has left with only half the house lights to illuminate his misery and he's not. Built. For. This.

Not built for being a mentor or a leader or a role model; not built to handle the strenuous nature of his mother's legacy; not built to carry the name she's made for herself as a teacher and a choreographer and a shaper of young dancers.

Steve's not built for it!

They'd had a shitty fucking dress.

"Hey, uh, you gonna be a while? I kinda need to close up for the night."

The voice echoes across the empty space, bouncing off the high ceiling and straight up to land on the Marley floors at Steve's feet. The stage isn't built for dancers, much like Steve isn't built to be here, so they'd had to pull up the floors from the studio and drag them halfway across town just to roll them out here.

"Hello? Are you, like, alive up there?"

Steve sighs. "Yeah," he calls back, catching sight of the figure talking to him at the back of the theater, the young guy who runs the place and who Steve met a grand total of three days ago. His name is Eddie and he dresses more like he's running a music venue than a local community theater, but he's mostly stayed out of Steve's way so far. "Sorry, I'll get outta your hair."

"Sure," Eddie says, but he's just sort of leaning against the back wall by the window to the sound and lighting booth without an ounce of urgency to him as Steve drags himself to his aching feet and lugs his three separate bags of show stuff onto his shoulders.

There's an energy to an empty theater, one which has held a performance and one which now holds the ghosts of that performance, which tugs at the anxieties sitting buried deep beneath the more immediate ones.

Fears about his mom's health, about what will happen to the studio if she doesn't win this particular battle, about what will happen to him.

There's an energy here in the creak of the steps which lead down off the front of the stage and there's an energy to the plod of Steve's sneakers up the long, racked aisle between the seats.

There's an energy, but it's also not empty, is it.

"Hey, good show, dude," Eddie says, pushing off his wall as Steve grows nearer. "Like, talented kids you've got there."

Steve scoffs before he can help himself and then pinches the bridge of his nose in a grimace for not being able to help himself.

"Uh, yeah, thanks," he grits out, thinking about his bed. Thinking about how he never made time for dinner and he has to be here early again tomorrow.

"Wow, resounding confidence on this one," Eddie snorts, and when Steve opens his eyes it's to genuine amusement, genuine curiosity in the tilt of a head and furrow of a brow.

"No, just," he shakes his head, "you should see 'em when they're really on their game, y'know?"

Eddie hums, and when did Steve come to a stop right in front of him? He's leaving. He has to leave. Go home. Think about all the spacing corrections he needs to fix tomorrow and run through with the girls before show time.

"Bad dress, good show though, right?"

Steve startles. Maybe a little too visibly because Eddie is actively holding back laughter at the sight of him.

"What, I've worked at a theater for four years and I'm not supposed to pick up a thing or two about the ballet?" he snarks good-naturedly. "Caroline, the lady who did your job before you, she was a chatty one, taught me everything I know about Giselle."

It's a knife between the ribs. It's a soothing sort of heat, like from a roaring bonfire.

"You--" he clears his throat, "you know Caroline?"

"Highlight of the job honestly, before she retired," Eddie shrugs.

"She didn't retire."

"Oh. She...?"

"Chemo," Steve doesn't know why he's saying it all so willingly, why after months of trying to run the studio without having to talk about how's your mom doing, sweetheart? he's opening up to this stranger with the curly hair and curious eyes. But he knows her. He's-- Well, he knows her. "I'm just here to-- to fill in until she can come back. So."

Eddie is studying him now. Curious eyes turned intelligent, knowing, sad with the weight of realization.

"You're the wonder boy," he says on a breath like oh, I get it now.

"The what?" Steve balks.

"Her kid," Eddie says like it's simple. He's leaning against the wall again, like he's not planning on getting back to work anymore, "she was-- Shit, man, she loves the hell outta you. Oh, you should see my son, he's in Les Corsaire this season! Oh, my boy, he's just gotten promoted to soloist, he'll be a principal in no time! Oh, the talent on him, the--"

"Okay, okay, Jesus," Steve cuts him off, a half-hysterical laugh bubbling up out of his chest in the process.

"You should tell her I say hi next time you see her," Eddie isn't remotely deterred by having his little, lilting performance derailed. There's a softness to him that deserves a smaller space, walls less prone to echo.

"I will," Steve nods. His bags grow heavy on his shoulders.

"And you should chill out a little bit," he says, this time with the kind of glint to his eye that needs a bigger space, needs to be up on the stage to the point where it has Steve floundering, "y'know, about the the shitty dress that, between you and me," he leans in conspiratorially, close enough to feel the heat of his breath, "wasn't really all that shitty."

Steve sucks in a breath.

It strikes him somewhere old, the reassurance, somewhere young deep inside of him. The comforting from a mother that if he just works hard enough he’ll land that double tour in fifth some day soon, the unbroken promise that she would never give him special treatment as the son of the studio owner, but that she would never hesitate to reward him when he’d earned it on his own.

It strikes him because no one tells you how little reassurance the guy in charge is ever offered and it strikes him because it’s been such a long day and it strikes him because—

“Hey, have you had dinner yet?”

Eddie’s eyebrows lift high on his forehead and Steve sees it, the attitude on this dude that his mother absolutely would have loved in an instant. There’s a performer in there, even just in the brief interaction they’ve shared so far. There’s a spotlight pointing inwards and a show begging to be dragged out.

“No,” Eddie drags out slow and curious, “you offering, ballet boy?”

Steve needs a sounding board and he needs another set of eyes and he needs his mom to be okay and the show tomorrow to prove that he can handle this for her if she’s not, but maybe what he needs most right now, on the other side of a spiral in a dark and echoing theater, is this.

“Meet me at Benny’s in thirty,” he says simply as he makes his way for the door. “Since you’re such an experienced test audience.”

Eddie’s responding laugh is bright and his eyes glitter with curious amusement and maybe this is what Steve needs because maybe all of this is one big rehearsal at a big new life in and old small town.

And maybe this is his chance to make a mess of it. At least until the real show starts.