Scream Me a Dream

“I still haven’t forgotten the question I asked you.” Ville said as he took a seat on the couch next to Soya.

Josef perked up sitting straighter in his seat. “What question?”

“It’s nothing.” Soya said with a wave of her hand.

Ville smirked, “I asked her to join me in Westchester for the week.”

“I’ll pack her bag.” Josef said standing up and starting back towards the stairs.

“You’ll do no such thing!” Soya laughed, grabbing his arm.

“Why not?” Josef asked as he sat back down. “You’re going to go Soya.”

Soya shifted uncomfortably in her seat with a frown. “I’m not sure if I am.”

Josef rolled his eyes but not before he caught the look of hurt that passed through Ville’s own eyes. “Don’t take it personally Valo, she’s like this with everyone.”

“I am not.” Soya argued leaning back on the couch with her arms crossed.

“You are so!” Josef argued back then turned to Ville. “Soya hates stepping out of her comfort zone. She doesn’t date you know, mostly because she’s too shy to get to know the men that ask her out.”

Ville smirked. “Is that so?”

“Shut up Josef.” Soya said with a glare.

“When we were in school, she never hung around the other girls, not that I blamed her, but the few girls that did show a genuine interest in Soya, she rejected.”

“I did not!”

“During our breaks between lessons, she would sit in the hallway, earphones in her ear, a small stack of CD’s besides her, and a book, while she ate.”

“Okay, so I wasn’t social, I was sixteen Josef, almost seventeen in a new country…of course I was shy.” Soya defended with a glare.

Ville laughed. “Come on Soya, even in Finland you weren’t that shy that you ostracized yourself. You had friends, hell, if you saw someone sitting by themselves you’d go over, introduce yourself and refuse to leave until you had lunch with them.”

“Really?” Josef asked with a raised eyebrow. “Completely different Soya when she came over here then.”

Soya scoffed. “And you expect me to believe you were your bright cheery self when you first came over?”

Josef snorted. “Please, I never claimed I was, and I’ve already admitted that I was a right bastard when you first met me.” He looked at Ville with a wink. “I thought the world revolved around me.”

“He still thinks that.” Soya muttered.

“But,” Josef continued ignoring Soya’s interjection. “At least I put myself out there and made friends. Soya you’re twenty-eight and you’re still holding yourself back and I know why.”

“Please enlighten me, oh wise one.” Soya said dryly as she looked at her best friend.

Josef shook his head. “Listen up Soya, you’re mother doesn’t live here and when she does she could care less what you do with your private life as long as she doesn’t find out about it. You still act like she’s going to criticize every little thing you do and because of that you hole yourself up in your studio teaching, up in your room drawing, or on the stage dancing. You rarely have fun Soya.”

“I have fun.”

“Really?” Josef asked smirking over at Ville, who was sitting quietly watching the exchange in amusement, before he turned back to Soya. “Other than the time I got you drunk, when was the last time you drank, for reasons other than the end of the show.”

“I don’t like to drink, you know that. Half of that reason is now your fault by the way.”

“I still really want to hear that story.” Ville interjected.

Josef laughed. “I’m sure you’ll hear it eventually.” He turned back to Soya. “Other than with me, when and with whom have you gone to go see a movie in the cinema in that last….four…No! Six months?”

Soya frowned as she thought about the last six months. “We haven’t had time Josef, we’ve been rehearsing and then the show…” she trialed off only to have Josef jump in again.

“Other than your business classes that you took to open the studio, when was the last time you took one of your art classes?”

Soya rolled her eyes. “It’s a hobby Josef, not something I want to excel at.”

Ville frowned thinking of something she had said at dinner. “Soya?”

Soya rolled her eyes. “Oh great, now you’re going to start!”

“When was the last time you picked up any type of instrument?”

“Oh! That’s easy it was…”

Jose was quick to cut her off and pointed at Ville. “You have to elaborate on the question; she fiddled around with the instruments the orchestra used during our show.”

“All right,” Ville nodded, “When was the last time you picked up any type of instrument, just for fun, not for work?”

“That’s like asking you when was the last time you sang just for fun, not for work.” Soya muttered, causing Ville to laugh.

“That’s easy love, I sang for fun last night. I don’t have to do what I do Soya, but because I enjoy it and I’m having fun still doing it, I continue to do it. When it stops being fun or I go insane from the things inside my head, then I’ll stop and even then I’ll take the insanity if I’m still happy performing.”

“Now for my last question.” Josef said happy that Ville had jumped into the conversation when he saw what Josef was getting at. “When was the last time you danced for fun? Not for a performance, not for your family, for you?”

Soya bit her lip, as she remembered the night after the last performance up in her studio as she had danced. “You’re a bastard Josef.”

“I know I am.” Josef smirked. “You’re going to Westchester, and you’re going to have fun.”

“But-”

“What in the world is holding you back Soya? It’s a week of doing nothing but being with Ville, someone you use to be close with, you have a chance to regain this closeness with a week of no responsibilities, so tell me what is holding you back?”

“I’m still teaching Anya’s classes Josef.”

Ville frowned. “I thought that was only for the week.”

“Ha!” Josef laughed; loving the fact, that Ville was also ganging against Soya to crack her resolve on the issue. “It’s only until Anya’s daughter is better Soya, and best bet that’s going to be in a couple days, after that you have three weeks of doing absolutely nothing. You had purposely planned it that way Soya.”

“But what about you going to visit...”

“My mum?” Josef asked with a raised eyebrow. “First, I did not know you wanted to go see my mother that badly. Secondly, I haven’t even called my mum to let her know I was thinking about going, and third, if I did go, it would be next month or late August Soya, I have commitments to the company with the new recital to complete before I even think about leaving.”

“It’s not that I don’t want to go.” Soya said looking at Josef, then up at Ville. “I do want to,” she assured. “I would love to spend the week with you Ville, you know that…”

Ville nodded. “I do.”

“I just…” she sighed before she muttered something under her breath.

“Wait what?” Ville asked, leaning closer.

“I don’t think Bam likes me very much.” She said a bit louder looking at him with wide eyes.

Ville stared at her wide eyes before he started laughing. “Seriously? That’s what’s keeping you from coming and spending time with me?”

“Well I don’t want to put myself in that type of situation if someone doesn’t like me.”

Ville shook his head. “Bam…he comes off as a little fucker, but he’s harmless kulta. He really is that way with many people. I’m not asking you without him knowing my plans Soya, I asked him before he left yesterday if I could invite you to come spend some time with me, and he said it was fine.”

Soya bit her lip. “I just…”

Josef rolled his eyes as he got off the couch. “I don’t know why we’re arguing about this, you’re going to end up going. Ville, she will be in Westchester this weekend. She’ll leave the minute Anya steps back into the studio and when I get back from my date I’ll start packing for you.” He called just before he jogged up the stairs to his room.

Soya shook her head and looked at Ville. “I guess I’m going to Westchester.”

“I don’t want you to feel forced to go Soya,” Ville told her, reaching over and grabbing her hand, clasping her small hand with his bigger one.

“I don’t feel forced.” Soya laughed, tightening her hand on his, she looked over at the clock by the TV and sighed. “I should probably take you back to the hotel now. It’s nearing eight.”

Ville nodded scratching the back of his head through his beanie, “Finding a cab to take me to Westchester is going to be hell.” He muttered as he stood up.

Soya gaped at him. “I’m not letting you take a cab there Ville!”

“Well how else will I be getting to Bam’s?”

“I’ll take you.” Soya shrugged walking around the couch towards the stairs and stood on the first step. “Josef!”

“Co?!”(what) Josef shouted back in Czech.

“We’re leaving! I’ll be back in a few hours!” she heard the door to his room open then close before she saw him appear at the top of the stairs buttoning his shirt.

“It’s going to take you a few hours to take Ville to his hotel?”

“I’m taking his to Westchester,” Soya said. “He was going to take a cab there; you know I can’t let him do that.”

Josef sighed as he walked down the stairs, reaching her and kissed her forehead. “Být Opatrný”

Soya rolled her eyes. “I’m always careful.”

“If I’m not home when you get back, text me and let me know you got back all right.”

“You act as if I’m going to on a road trip.” She teased. “It’s only a three hour drive.”

“Soya.” Josef warned.

“I’ll text, I’ll text.” She laughed as she backed away and motioned for Ville to follow her. She opened the door and smiled at Russell who was getting ready to knock.

“Soya.”

“Russell.” She grinned. “Josef is almost ready.”

“And he thought I was going to be late.” Russell laughed.

“Oh!” Soya said looking at Ville behind her. “Russell this is my friend Ville, Ville this is Josef’s….well…”

“We’re seeing where things go, I’m Russell.”

“I saw you earlier, you worked security at the venue we played last night.” Ville said shaking his hand.

Russell nodded. “I actually own the security company, but every once in a while I like to jump in the fray.” He looked at Soya. “I see those tickets Josef gave you worked in your favor.”

Soya laughed. “I’m guessing Josef didn’t tell you that Ville is an old friend?”

“No, he did not, just that he had a friend that was a fan of the band.”

“That’s an understatement.” Ville muttered, causing Soya to hit his stomach with a playful glare, before turning back to Russell.

“Have fun tonight.”

“You too.” Russell returned before he walked into the house as Soya and Ville exited.

“He seems nice.” Ville commented as they walked towards Soya’s car.

“Doesn’t he?” Soya asked as she got in, turning on the car before buckling her seatbelt. “I really hope it lasts between them. Russell seems like he has the patience to deal with Josef’s moods and Josef has a lot of them.”

Ville smirked. “I’ve witnessed his temper.”

“Yes, and you didn’t even see the worst of it.” Soya nodded as she made sure there were no cars coming before she pulled out.

“So…what exactly is your relationship with Josef other then best friends?”

Soya sighed as she drove towards the hotel Linde and Ville had mentioned they were staying at. “Josef’s family doesn’t know he’s gay.”

“Oh.”

“And when my mother met him she took an instant liking to him.” Soya nibbled her bottom lip and sighed. “I don’t date, maybe it’s because I don’t want to step out of my comfort zone like Josef said, maybe it’s because I have a hectic schedule and I don’t think any self-respecting man will want to deal with it, or maybe it’s because no one has caught my interest in years really.”

“So…” Ville hedged.

“So, when we’re in front of our families we’re in a relationship, Josef already acts like my other half so it’s really not like we have to put much effort into it. The problem has been the media.” Soya sighed. “Especially when we’re in season, my mother and Ivana, Josef’s mother, they took to the relationship a little better than we anticipated so the media found out about it. It’s difficult for Josef to be himself when he’s stuck in a fake relationship with me.”

“I bet that also contributes to you not dating.” Ville put in.

Soya laughed. “Not really. Like I said, no one has caught my attention.” She looked at him with a little smirk, causing him to smirk back.

“What?”

“Technically other then Josef when I first met him, you’re the only other person I’ve ever had an interest in.”

Ville looked at her in shock as she parked in front of the hotel. “I…Really?”

Soya rolled her eyes. “You really think I let you have my first kiss just for the hell of it Ville?” she pushed his arm playfully. “Please! I liked you…a lot in fact.”

“Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

Soya’s eyes widened. “Ville! I was sixteen, you were twenty, I didn’t think you would ever even show interest in me. That and I could barely sneak out of the house to hang out with you and the guys for an hour, if, by some miracle, you did like me back how would I have ever managed to hide my relationship with you from my parents!”

Ville laughed. “Wow, you’ve thought about this a lot.”

“I use too,” she said quietly, she shook her head. “Now, let’s go get you packed.”

He thought about the room he was using and winced slightly. “It won’t take me long, give me ten minutes.”

Soya laughed. “You have a disaster in your room don’t you?”

“A bit of one yes.” Ville smiled, “Ten minutes?”

“Fine, I’ll go get some coffee at the shop down there, you want anything?”

“Anything you get is fine.” Ville said as they got of the car, Soya walking down the street to the coffee shop while Ville went into the hotel.

He made it to his room in record time and started gathering his clothes and belongings stuffing them in his bag, not bothering to fold anything. Most of his clothes were dirty anyway so wrinkles wouldn’t matter at this point. Zipping the bag up, he put his guitar case on top of the bed, grabbing his guitar that was leaning against the wall near the bed, placing it inside and snapping the closed as well.

He made one final round around the room, making sure he didn’t forget anything, before he went to the bathroom and gathered everything there, then stuffed his toiletry bag on the side of his bigger bag. One more trip around he had managed to find a pair of converse he had stuffed under the bed as well as one of his notebooks that was sitting on the table outside where he had left it that morning.

He gathered his bags and made his way out the door, giving one last glance at the room, before heading out and back down to the lobby. After checking out, he made his way outside where he saw Soya leaning against her car, sipping on a coffee cup.

“Fifteen minutes, not bad.” Soya teased as she opened the trunk of her car.

Ville rolled his eyes at himself. “I kept having to recheck the room.”

Soya laughed. “You’re like the girls in the company.” She teased as she watched him put his suitcase in the back and then the guitar case carefully on top.

“How so?” he asked as he closed the trunk.

“The girls in the chorus line are always the last to check out of every hotel or get on the bus, because they’re always packing at the last minute. It’s usually the new girls too.” Soya said as they got back into the car. Soya handed Ville his coffee and he smiled gratefully.

“I’m usually better about it, just got caught up today.” Ville admitted, looking over at her with a smirk.

“You can’t blame me!” she laughed. “It’s not my fault you forgot to pack.”

Ville shook his head in amusement as he looked at her CD player. “So do you have any music besides me in here?”

She shifted her arm as she drove down the street heading towards the freeway and opened the center console between them. “Everything I have in the car is in here.”

He put his coffee in the cup holder next to him and looked inside. “You have ‘The 69 Eyes’.” He said with raised eyebrow.

“Mmm, Josef actually turned me onto them when we started in the company together; he’s got a thing for Jyrki.”

“Does he?” Ville laughed as he sifted through the CD’s.

“I’m pretty sure that is one celebrity Josef would die to meet….or maul.” Soya teased.

“I’ll let Jyrki know to watch himself whenever he’s in New York next.”

“Please do.” Soya laughed. “Didn’t find anything?” she asked as she watched him close the console. She checked her mirrors as she turned into the freeway and merged lanes expertly.

“No, I’m having fun talking to you.” He said though he did turn on the radio, turning it on low so it would be background noise. “So tell me the full length story of how you met Josef. You keep talking about it, but you never elaborate.”

Soya chuckled. “There’s really not much to tell,” she admitted. “I had been in New York a total of…I don’t know two weeks before I actually met him. He’d already been here a year so he’d had a group of friends and he was quite popular, not to mention he was having much better luck at his school then I was at mine. I met him on my first day of one of our Partnering Classes.”

“What’s that?” Ville asked curious as to what exactly she had done at Julliard. He’d known she was an amazing dancer in Finland, and from what he’d read about Juilliard only to best and talented got in and even then, most of them had so much more to learn.

“Um…it’s where we learn the art of working with partners. Men work on developing their strength to lift a partner and still make the move look effortless while women work on strengthening their legs to do all the Pointe work required to do the moves. It’s a lot of work.” Soya sighed. “Especially when you have bad partners, you leave in a lot of pain after that class.” She said rubbing her side as she remembered one nasty little incident after working with a newer dancer.

“So you met him during that class?”

Soya nodded. “It was my first official day there, they’d let me settle into the dorms and into school before I was asked to start my dance classes. I walked in…and I saw him and just…fell in love.” She laughed, causing Ville to raise an eyebrow. Soya bit her lip. “He was dancing, showing off, now that I think about it, and I’d never seen someone dance like that, not even back home. It just amazed me. And then he went and opened his mouth.”

Soya shook her head amused as she thought back to the day she met Josef.

Soya stood in shock as she watched the blonde headed boy twirl around the room to the sound of the music one of the girls had put on. She quietly set her bag down next to all the others, never losing contact with his form as he moved.

“Amazing, isn’t he?”

Soya turned and looked at the redheaded girl standing next to her. She thought about the words carefully before she spoke them. “Um… he is very good.”

“Ah, you transferred here to.”

“Sorry?” Soya asked.

“Hey Josef!” The girl called out walking away from Soya, Soya looked over and saw the boy stop mid Pirouette and turn to the girl clearly annoyed to have been stopped.

“What?” he asked.

“We have another foreigner.” The girl said pointing to Soya.

Josef sighed looking straight at Soya, his blue eyes meeting her grey ones before muttering, “Další kurva amatérská, jsem si jistý” (Another fucking amateur, I’m sure)

Soya stood in shock, sure she didn’t know much Czech but she knew enough to know that he had just called her an amateur and she had worked for far too long and far too hard to ever be called that, pulling out the little Czech she did know she glared at him.

“Ukážu vám amatérská, nechat tu hubbe zpĕt.” (I’ll show you amateur, have them turn the music back on” She said in what she was sure was broken Czech, his smirk just confirmed it as he turned to the rest of the group.

“We have quite the feisty one on our hands, I say she quits in two weeks.”

“I don’t quit.” Soya bit out.

“Really?” Josef smirked. “It doesn’t matter how good you are miláček, you will never be as good as me.”

Soya felt a smirk cross her lips as she crossed her arms over her chest and walked closer to him. “Is that right?”

“That’s right.”

“I bet you a thousand Euros I’m better then you.”

Josef laughed. “Euros?! I don’t know if you’ve noticed but you’re in America now, Euros aren’t worth shit here.”

She winced at the profanity, which he noticed causing his smirk to widen.

“Ah, not only an amateur, but a prude as well.”

“A thousand dollars then, that I’m better then you are.”

Josef raised an eyebrow. “You really are a tenacious little bitch, aren’t you?”

“Why are you so rude?” Soya asked exasperated, not taking the obvious insult to heart, she’d been called much worse at the private school she was attending.

“Why are you so hell bent to show me that you’re better, if you really are better you’d shut that pretty little mouth of yours and just dance.”

Soya nodded. “Fine,” she said, her own smirk appearing, “Do you know Swan’s lake, Dance of the Swans?”

“Like the back of my fucking hand.”

“Then try to keep up.”

Soya laughed when she was met by Ville’s silence. “I don’t know if you’ve ever seen Swan Lake, or even The Dance of the Swans, but it involves a lot of lifting. It is the prime example of partnering because there’s so much strain involved. Our teacher walked in just as Josef was dropping me from a headstand that he was holding me in, above his head granted and we got in so much trouble for doing it without any type of supervision. We were both sent to clean all the mirrors on that floor, which is a good twenty rooms, floor to ceiling mirrors.”

“You both bonded?” Ville asked with a smile.

“God no!” Soya laughed, looking at him in disbelief, “he demanded his a thousand dollars, and when I told him he wasn’t getting it, he had a fit, saying that obviously he was the better dancer since he was the one that had to lift me up, while I argued that I had to keep myself straight and still work my legs. We argued the entire time.”

“Did you ever pay him?”

Soya grinned at him. “Why? Obviously I’m far more the superior dancer then he is.”

“I’m sensing that this is an ongoing argument between you too.”

Soya nodded. “At least once a year we’ll start up again, and then a round of competition starts and we both just end up calling a truce before forgetting about it. But we still battle it out, which is a nice tradition if I do say so myself.”

“You are both very odd.”

Soya scoffed. “You’re one to talk.”

The rest of the ride to Westchester continued in that fashion, a series of comfortable silences and random conversations about everything and nothing. Soya smiled at the dark road during one of their silences and couldn’t help but relax, this is what she had missed most about being around Ville for long periods of time. He was one of the only people that she could be absolutely silent with and feel comfortable.

She looked over at him out of the corner of her eye, he was staring out the window, his fingers drumming lightly to whatever tune was in his head. They had picked up exactly where they had left off thirteen years ago with their relationship, there was no awkwardness in any of their conversation and she found herself un-censoring herself, the only way Ville was capable of making her do. This is where she was comfortable; this was where she loved to be.