smackenzie

This is the thing, Sam thought, as he took his saxophone apart and put her away in her case. I like guys. I've known that for a while. So ok, so I've only dated girls, but I kissed Teddy on New Year's Eve, which counts for something, and this guy is really pretty good-looking, and I'm nervous why?

He wished his cousin Spencer was there to give him some advice, although knowing her it would be "Stop seesawing and ask the guy out, dammit."

And the other thing was, he had asked the guy out, dammit. Sort of. After three or so weeks of talking to Aurelian between (and occasionally after) their sets, he'd uttered the magic words, "Do you wanna get a coffee sometime?" Aurelian had looked a little stunned, which wasn't as bad as looking absolutely blank, but wasn't nearly as good as looking excited. Sam had immediately stammered "Or, um, if you don't like coffee, we could, uh, shit, I feel like a moron," and that had made Aurelian smile.

"I would like to have coffee with you sometime," he'd said, looking pleased. (Finally, a reaction Sam could respond to without acting like a spaz.) "Tomorrow night?"

Since they'd had that conversation last night, which was Wednesday, that meant coffee tonight, which was Thursday. The trio had just finished their second set of their second Thursday ever at the Bluebird, and while Scott talked to Joaquin and Teddy talked to Dori (who had come to see them for once, instead of just driving by to pick Scott up when they were done), Sam packed up his sax and tried to prepare for his coffee date.

(That's what Spencer had called it, when he told her about it earlier that afternoon. A coffee date. He'd tried and failed to argue with her, failing mostly because she just wouldn't shut up long enough for him to say anything other than "Shut up, it's not a date!")

Where were they going to go at eleven-thirty at night that wasn't an all-night diner? Although if they went to a diner Sam could order some fries. He was kind of hungry. He'd have to start eating more for dinner on Thursdays.

Teddy came into the back office as Sam was shrugging into his coat and said "That guy's waiting for you. Joaquin thinks we should start later on Thursdays, like at nine-thirty or ten or something." Teddy shrugged. "Scott's negotiating. I said that guy was waiting for you, right? And Dori's gonna give me a ride home." He grinned.

"What'd you promise her?" Sam asked. He picked up his sax case and started out of the room. Teddy followed.

"My undying love and devotion, a pound of flesh, and a barbecued chicken."

"A what?"

"A barbecued chicken, barbecued with my own two hands on my own barbecue grill."

"Dude, you almost burned the building down last time, remember?" They'd had a cookout for Labor Day and hauled Teddy's Weber up to the roof of his building. He'd used a little too much lighter fluid and almost burned his face off. His eyebrows were a little singed after the smoke had cleared and Scott had been persuaded not to call the fire department, the superintendent of the building, or Teddy's landlord.

"Too much lighter fluid. I learned my lesson." Somehow Sam doubted that. "Who is this guy, anyway? That you're going out for a coffee with."

"His name's Aurelian. He's a fan of ours, I dunno. He's cool. Doesn't know a thing about jazz, but he's neat to talk to. Besides, I don't have to be in until noon tomorrow so I can go hang after the gig." He grinned at Teddy. Teddy stuck his tongue out. Teddy hated working a nine-to-five - he was an assistant or a file boy or a mail clerk in some law office - no one was really sure what he did, only that he had to be there at eight-thirty every morning and he wasn't really a morning person. Left to his own devices, Teddy was kind of a slacker. He also had a rich uncle who'd promised to leave him money when he kicked off, but the way the old guy was chugging along, Teddy didn't think he'd ever die.

"Aurelian?" Teddy repeated. "What the hell kinda name is that?"

"Beats me. Tell you Saturday." They had a morning practice, which Scott had scheduled reasonably early so he could go play basketball afterwards.

"We gotta talk to Scott about that Saturday morning thing, you know. I'm gonna be a zombie all practice."

"And that's different from your normal state how?" Sam grinned and ducked as Teddy tried to swat him. "See you Saturday, dude." Teddy sighed, sounding put-upon, and ambled over to where Dori and Scott were chatting about something over a half-eaten ramekin of artichoke dip. Sam headed to the back of the club. Aurelian sat in the back a lot, he'd noticed.

"Hey," he said. "Ready?"

"Always," Aurelian said, and stood up. Damn, he was tall too. Tonight he was wearing pinstriped pants and a white shirt and dark red suspenders, but not a suit jacket or a tie. He looked like a banker in his off-hours. He looked really good.

This is the other thing, Sam told himself, I haven't been on a date - this isn't a date! Damn Spencer for mentioning it.

"Are you ok?" Aurelian asked.

"Um. Yeah. Sorry. I guess I kinda blanked. I was thinking, there aren't any good coffee houses that are open now, except for the Mountaintop, which either has a poetry slam or some guy on an acoustic guitar singing hippie peace songs - it's ok during the day, but they get this crunchy granola crowd at night, and no offense, but it doesn't seem like your scene."

Aurelian looked down at himself. "I don't think I'm dressed for a hippie poetry slam."

"Oh, the Thursday poetry slam gets a lot of wild lesbian poets. My cousin Spencer likes to go and heckle the girls." Sam blushed suddenly, nervous that he was going to offend this really good-looking guy he thought he liked, and nervous that he was outing Spencer to a stranger. Although, if Spencer had been there she would have outed herself, so he shouldn't have been worrying about that.

But still, he was babbling, which he did sometimes when he got nervous. He babbled and he panicked, and said no to things right away. He'd have to work on that.

But Aurelian was grinning now, which Sam took as a good sign, so he added "Unless you want to hear some hippie peacenik with a guitar, or a lot of militant feminist lesbian poets. Actually I was thinking we could get a beer somewhere. There's this bar, the Red Hat, it's usually pretty quiet - "

Shit. The Red Hat was pretty much a gay bar. Sam liked it, although he'd been there all of twice, and he knew how to get there, and they had Sam Adams on tap and good potato skins. But still, if Aurelian knew it was a gay bar, he might think Sam was interested in him, and was Sam interested in him?

He was probably overthinking it.

"A bar is fine," Aurelian said. "I'd prefer someplace fairly quiet. I'd rather talk to you than sit and listen to someone else."

Yeah, he was definitely overthinking it.

They caught a cab to the Red Hat (and had Leo waved at them as they left? A "have a good time" wave?) because Aurelian said he didn't want to wait around for the bus. Sam hardly ever took cabs. He didn't have the money, mostly, and he liked the bus. He had a vague fear that the cabbie would drive him the long way and take advantage of him, a fear that had probably been instilled by his mom early on. They'd moved around a fair bit when he was little, and it generally took his mom three years to learn her way around a city enough to trust the cab drivers. Sam couldn't say where she'd gotten her paranoia from, probably her dad.

Aurelian seemed like the kind of guy who took cabs when he had to go somewhere, or who drove himself. Sam wondered if he had a car, and if he did, what kind. A nice car? A big car? He looked a little bit like a sedan person, a seriously nice European sedan, like a Mercedes or a Volvo. Something solid and expensive, not flashy but definitely tasteful.

The Red Hat was pretty crowded, but it was a Thursday night, and some people did start the weekend on Thursday. They managed to get a table against the wall, towards the back (again with the sitting in the back of the bar, Sam thought), and Aurelian went up to the bar to get them beers while Sam held the table. He put his sax case under it right by his feet and reminded himself that if he had two beers he might forget it.

Not that he'd ever forget Ella, but sometimes beer made him tired and stupid, and he'd left his coat and his keys and a couple of new CDs at a bar a month ago, just because it had slipped his mind that they were there. Well, that and he'd been talking to a very cute girl....

"You have that look again," Aurelian said, appearing out of nowhere with two pints of beer, which he set on the table before he sat down. Sam blinked.

"What look?"

"That look that says you're talking to yourself." Aurelian sipped his beer and smiled again.

Jesus Christ, Sam thought, he has to stop doing that or I'm gonna... uh... I'm gonna want to kiss him.

And to think, he hadn't even drunk his beer yet. Shit.

"What were you thinking?" Aurelian asked.

"That if I have two beers I'm going to forget my sax." Better to be honest and let him know right away what kind of dork I am, Sam thought.

"I wouldn't worry about that. I can remind you."

"Thanks."

Aurelian smiling that way was very distracting. Sam drank his beer.

"What did you think of the set?" he asked finally, taking a breath and wiping foam off his chin. Sometimes the beer came out of the tap with a very foamy head.

"It was very good."

"Just very good?"

"I told you I don't know a lot about jazz," Aurelian admitted. "I enjoyed it. You're very talented."

"Thanks. I like to play, you know? It's like a, um, a loop kind of thing - the more you like to play the better you get, and the better you get the more you like to play. Like a rechargable battery."

"But I still think you're talented. You would have that no matter how much you played."

"Nah, I think sometimes talent gets confused for hard work. You just sound better when you've had practice. I practice a lot." He shrugged, sipped his beer.

"If you say. What do you do when you're not playing at the Bluebird?"

"I work at this record store, Play It Again." Aurelian grinned. Evidently he got the joke. "Yeah, yeah, I know. Sometimes Bruce - that's the owner - he tells me he hired me because I could answer the phone 'Play It Again, Sam.' He's a nut. We don't have any copies of that song, though, 'A Kiss Is Just a Kiss.'"

"'A sigh is just a sigh...'" Aurelian sang softly. Sam blinked. He could sing, too. "I think it's called 'As Time Goes By.'" Sam shrugged.

"Whatever it's called, we don't have any. At least once a week someone comes in and wants to make jokes about it. It used to be mostly used records, which explains the name. We still do that, but we also specialize in obscure indie stuff, weird little labels that no one's ever heard of, and the less mainstream mainstream stuff - we get a lot of people coming in looking for Bjork, as an example. She's kind of mainstream, but not really. Jazz, hip-hop, blues, folk, alternafolk, Celtic folk, Celtic pop, Celtic rap - yeah, Irish boys rapping, it's really weird - punk, you name it."

"Classical piano?"

"Not so much. You like piano?"

"I play piano." Aurelian paused to drink his beer. Sam waited for more of the sentence. "I compose small things, short dances, little songs. I play the harpsichord too, but I prefer the piano. It has more keys to play with." He grinned.

This was new to Sam. They'd always talked about music before, in their little conversations between and after gigs at the club, but now that Sam thought about it, he'd been doing most of the talking. He'd probably done all the talking. That wasn't good.

He had some more beer and managed to get Aurelian to talk about himself, although he wasn't forthcoming with a lot of details. He'd lived in Europe for a while, which explained the accent. He liked Italy, Rachmaninoff concertos, medieval cathedrals, Armani, the Sunday crossword puzzle, and Krispy Kreme doughnuts. So far he liked jazz, at least the kind of jazz played by Sam and Scott and Teddy.

How old was he? What did he do? Where had he come from, before he moved to Eden? (Did he have a nice solid European sedan?) Sam didn't know. Sam was at least getting a vibe that Aurelian was interested in him, and since Sam could be thick as a brick it must have been a very heavy vibe. It was nice, actually, when someone you were interested in was interested back.

Even though Aurelian was a guy, and Sam couldn't think of any time when he'd wanted some guy who actally wanted him back. That was a little weird, in fact, to be wanted by a man, and to want him back.

Maybe he was overthinking that too. They were just having a beer, it wasn't as if either one of them had professed his undying love, or even made any kind of move. But maybe Aurelian would kiss him goodnight....

They stayed at the Red Hat for a couple of hours, during which time Sam had a beer and a half and an order of potato skins, and Aurelian had a beer and a glass of water. They talked about a lot of nothing and some slightly more involved things. Sam told Aurelian about his dad. Aurelian told Sam about Clare and Alex. They talked a little about places they'd lived and things they still wanted to do. Neither of them talked much about past lovers, although Sam did at least learn that Aurelian was single, which was something.

(And he hadn't flinched when they walked into the Red Hat and saw the place full of gay couples, which was also something.)

They left not long after one and took a cab back to Sam's apartment building. (He remembered Ella. Aurelian remembered to remind him.) They both got out of the cab, Sam because he was home, obviously, and Aurelian because he said he wanted to walk around for a little bit.

"You'll be cold, dude," Sam said. "Won't you?"

"I have a warm coat," Aurelian told him. "I'll be fine."

"Well, I'd normally ask if you wanted to come up, but I'm pretty fucking tired. Next time, maybe. I've got a whole bunch of records you oughta listen to, if you want to know more about jazz."

"Are you asking me to come up and see your etchings?" Aurelian grinned. Sam did too.

"Yeah, I guess I am. Is that... uh... is that a problem for you?"

"Not at all. I would love to see your etchings. I would love to see you again. What are you doing Sunday evening?"

Now that really threw Sam for a loop, so much so he said the first thing that came to mind. "Hanging out with you."

Obviously that was the right answer. Aurelian was smiling that smile that made Sam want to kiss him, and while Sam was trying to decide if that meant he should've stopped after one beer, or if he was kind of generally lonely for someone who would kiss him, or if he really was interested in the guy, Aurelian stepped up close to him, took his face between leather-gloved hands, and kissed him himself.

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