'I used to breakdance with my crew on the streets of Chicago for cash.

'Heck, Grant Park was like my second home, it always hurt not being able to go to Lollapalooza. I couldn't even work at the festival because I had to be 18 and I left for London at 18... But now – now I'm back in Grant Park, on stage. On the actual Lollapalooza stage.

'It's crazy.'

Odile stopped reading as footsteps approached. Vincent Friday came to sit on a neighbouring chaise and nodded at the magazine she'd lowered on her chest.

"I didn't know you had an evil twin."

She declined his offer of a cigarette and sat up to stare at Jun frolicking in the hotel pool with some of the other dancers. Vince's lighter clicked, the tobacco sizzled and smoke mixed with the cool chlorinated air.

"You're probably the last person in the world who didn't," Odile replied. "And technically speaking, I'm the evil twin."

"That's good to know." Vince grinned. "Villains always have more fun."

She stood and threw a bathrobe on over her swimsuit. "I'll take your word for it."

Jun noticed them watching and waved. Vince saluted. Odile couldn't pinpoint why her partner's infectious enthusiasm failed to reach her tonight. Their cover feature article had just been published in a major entertainment magazine. The fashion photoshoot had attracted advertisers and a lot of love online.

So, what nagged at her subconscious?

"He's adorable, isn't he?" Vincent remarked out of the blue. "Truly living the American Dream."

His forlorn expression resonated with her strangely soured mood.

"And you're not? It's your show, after all."

The singer chuckled through a haze of tobacco mist. "We've actually got a lot in common, Jun and I. Single moms, lots of busking, fending for self on a shoestring budget... Except I didn't learn how to cook."

Odile rolled her eyes. The interviewer had gushed over Jun's skills in the kitchen.

'If this whole dancing business doesn't work out,' he'd bragged, 'I'mma become a chef. My mom, she used to work two or three jobs at a time, so I was home alone a lot. And I had to eat everything I made because you just don't throw away food. Let's just say... necessity is the mother of invention.'

"And I didn't get to go to college," Vince resumed, exhaling smoke. "They plucked me off the streets and threw me to the wolves. So, I know a lamb when I see one."

"A lamb?"

"Mhm. Good kid, big dreams... Can't see the big bad wolf because he's staring down its throat. But you..." He squinted up at her and sucked on his cigarette. "You were raised by the wolves."

"Such a stellar lyricist," she retorted.

Odile finished packing her bag and picked up the magazine as she walked away. Vince got up to follow her.

"Nice read, that," he noted. "More than a lap dance, was it? Happy to hear I was an inspiration."

Odile froze in her tracks.

That was it. That one throwaway wisecrack which would no doubt plague their partnership for the rest of their lives.

"Uh-oh," Vince exclaimed, behind her now. "Someone's mad."

"I'm not mad." Gripping the handle, she shoved the glass door open.

He chased her across the lobby. The elevator doors didn't close fast enough.

"You look mad to me, baby girl."

"Oh, don't you baby-girl me! I'm not one of those floozies you love to sing about."

A suggestive smirk. "But don't you want to be?"

A snort of laughter. "Why would I want to be? You treat them all like shit."

He had the decency to look wounded.

"Besides, singing about sex hardly means you're all that. Quite the opposite, I should think."

His eyebrows leapt into his forehead. "Is that a challenge?"

"Oh, get over yourself, will you?"

The metallic doors dinged open. Odile winced. She and Friday had adjacent rooms.

"Well, if you change your mind..." Vince winked. "You know where to find me."

"Goodnight, Vince."

*

Try as she might, Odile couldn't fall asleep. Her stress levels were through the roof after three months of touring and the exhaustion came with heaps of adrenaline that kept her awake at night.

"I give up," she muttered in the dark and hopped to her feet.

Against her better judgment, she decided not to raid the minibar on her own and went to knock on Vince's door. He answered before she had a chance to wonder whether he'd gone to bed.

Odile held up the miniature tequilas. "Nightcap?"

"You know, if you can't sleep, those won't help."

She dashed inside past him. "You sure?"

He nodded and met her in the middle of the room, clad in nothing but boxer briefs. Odile gulped. The walls shrank and squeezed their bodies together. The bottles dropped to the carpet.

"But this," Vince whispered, their noses touching, "might."

His palm cupped her nape next and his lips found her mouth. Thankfully, all trace of tobacco was gone and she only tasted fresh mint on his breath. His hands clutched at her midriff. Then they travelled down her hips, to her thighs, and up under the long T-shirt she wore for a nightgown. Seizing her bare waist, he hoisted her up and her legs wrapped around his torso.

Vince didn't speak, but his smugness glowed in his eyes. Spotlight-stealing, cocky charisma turned her off tonight and she almost kicked him off as he laid her down on the mattress. Almost, because his face soon disappeared between her breasts.

Her fingers dug into his dense curls, pushing his head lower. He took the hint without hesitation. Odile the Banshee strained to rein in her screams under the weight of his ministrations. He took his sweet time torturing her – and testing her flexibility. She derived some pleasure from wowing him with her flawless splits.

"Let's get creative, shall we?"

He guided her into an array of acrobatics – holding onto her hips as she did a handstand and leaning in to sample her horizontal split. One leg raised up to her ear, between her and his chest, as she propped her shoulder sideways against the wall. His knees flexed, so her hands on his thighs could support her as he grabbed her from behind and her legs locked around his waist.

This last one he couldn't hold long and they crumbled to the floor, laughing.

Dawn crept up on them cocooned under the covers. Vince sealed off their tryst with a slow, sensual kiss, softer than she'd ever expected, before he slid off her to light a cigarette. She caught her breath, licking her lips, and her dilated pupils wandered to the magazine on the nightstand.

A grey-toned picture of her and Jun graced the cover. She wore all black, a strapless, see-through corset, attached to a long bell skirt woven out of a sturdy, tulle-like material. Embroidered with flowers, feathers and the piéce de rèsistance: two swans whose necks created a heart shape as they faced each other.

Jun, on the other hand, donned a white costume reminiscent of a fairy-tale prince. A knight in shining armour, with a stiff collar and silver epaulettes. Much like what her father used to dance Swan Lake in.

The theme of the photoshoot had been Yin and Yang, a complementary concept wherein one could not exist without the other.

Yet Yang always seemed to get the upper hand.

"Are you jealous?"

Odile looked up from the magazine. "What?"

"Are you jealous?" Vince repeated. "That suddenly this no-name kid from Chicago is getting all the attention?"

"No, of course not. Jun deserves it all, he's a great dancer."

"Better than you?"

Her thumb rubbed at the glossy page. A solo picture of Jun in all his magic glory.

"My father was also absent," she ended up saying. "Unwillingly so, however. He had to move to America after my mum divorced him, so it was nice to see him in Chicago. He's teaching ballet in Jun's hometown, what kind of coincidence is that?"

The singer put out his cigarette on a coaster from the nightstand. "Remind me to book you guys for a video next time I sing about daddy issues."

Odile smiled. "Will you sing about me?"

Vince swung his legs out of bed and glanced at her over his shoulder. "Maybe?"

She flipped another page, to a dramatic shot of Jun holding her in the air, her spine arched and one leg curved up behind her, her foot almost touching her head.

"I'm not jealous," she reiterated, absent-minded. "I just – This is what happened to my parents. They were together for so long, the world saw them as inseparable, and then they were stuck. I... I don't even think they ever loved each other – "

"So that's why you're here," Vince interrupted, twisting to face her.

Her eyebrows furrowed.

"In my bed," he clarified. "You're here because I don't love you, but I can fuck you. Whereas your boy, Jun..." The singer whistled. "That's a pussy-whipped puppy if I ever saw one."

"What do you mean?"

"What do I mean? The guy lurvs you, baby girl."

Her frown deepened. "Did he tell you that?"

"No, I could tell."

Her mouth opened to ask more questions, but Vince bolted towards the bathroom. She shook her head and gazed at the interview in her lap.

In their world, you either dance or you die.

'It's not that we don't have lives outside dance,' Jun Yang, 21, tells me. 'But those lives that we do build revolve around dance like Earth on its axis.'

So, if the dancing stops...

'I used to strip for cash in my last year of school. And I'm not ashamed of it. I was dancing and I was making money, so I could keep dancing.'

Odile Proctor, 19, smiles at her partner.

'You can call him Magic Jun,' she offers and a bulb lights up above my head.

The Phenomenal Partnership of Magic Jun and the Black Swan.

A millennial power couple, rebelling against the norms. Against the paths that have been laid out for them and carving out their own.

I wonder if she's ever seen him strip.

'I did,' Odile admits. 'When we couldn't make it work during the Phenomenal shoot, he took me to his club and we got a rehearsal in before the show started.'

That begs the question: did she get a lap dance?

'Oh, she got more than a lap dance!' Jun pipes up on a chuckle, earning himself a graceful swan glare.

'I did get a lap dance.' Odile holds her chin high. 'Then I ambushed him on stage.'

Of course she did. If there's a stage, the axis trills and tremors. It needs to be danced on, or else...

Odile sighed. Jun's endearing ingenuity would be the death of her.