Work Text:
Boyd’s mother was the reason why he started taking ballet, although it’s really more of his choice now that he’s sixteen; his arm, leg, and stomach muscles are pretty defined, and he’s really starting to understand why exactly male ballet dancers stay so much longer than female dancers.
He’s never really understood why the guys in the locker room always seem to say that ballet is some kind of girl’s sport or something that only gay guys ever “get” — and that always ends with Danny giving whoever's talking the stink eye, and Jackson cutting them off really quickly, but Boyd figures they’ve never actually paid attention to where the male ballet dancers keep their hands. Boyd believes in karma, though, and is always especially nice to the two male cheerleaders on the squad that only ever seems to cheer on the football team even though it’s a lacrosse town.
It all started when his mom started up her ballet studio about five minutes from town, buying out what was once a karate dojo. Boyd was ten years old when she finished renovating the building, and it was a few months before anyone really started going besides Boyd and his two younger sisters. Boyd’s only going because his sisters keep telling him how they need someone for the lifts, and he really can’t say no to their twin puppy-dog eyes. He was pretty slim, so he worried about dropping them, but the girls take after their mom: skinny as a twig.
A few months of lifting up his sisters wasn’t really what he thinks of as ballet, but by the time his mother has enough people signed up to have a class, he’s hooked. He’s the only boy in the class, but that doesn’t mean much when he’s more flexible than half of the girls.
In the beginning he played all the leads when they did performances: the Nutcracker, all of the Princes in the ballet universe, and by the time other boys start to dance, he’s surprised to find he’s actually good at this. It’s a shame that all the other kids are either much younger or go to the private school fifteen minutes away from Beacon Hills, or else he’d actually have someone to sit with at lunch.
Being a werewolf makes everything easier, especially his ballet: his jumps are higher, he can spin faster, and he learns control faster than Erica or Isaac because he’s worried about hurting his dancers.
So when his mom tells him that this spring they’re doing Firebird, he’s excited. He’s used to being the Nutcracker practice in the winter, and some ballet in spring before all the kids graduate, and Firebird is new to him. When he finds out he’s dancing Ivan Tsarevich, he realizes that this will be the first time performing as a werewolf.
And when Erica, Isaac, and Derek all receive invitations to the local ballet company’s performance of Firebird, complete with two tickets each, all he does is smile.