smackenzie

If Sam hadn't gotten up in the middle of the night to pee and then not been able to fall back asleep right away, he never would have heard the knocking. He usually slept like a dead person, and the only reason his alarm clock ever woke him up was because it was right by his head annd annoyingly loud. The knocking wasn't loud so much, but it was steady and insistent and whoever it was really wanted to talk to Sam now.

He groaned - he'd been so close to falling asleep - and blinked at the clock. Three in the morning. Who the hell had to talk to him face to face at three in the morning? It had damn well better be important. Someone better be dead.

...Not that he actually wanted that. But it had better be that kind of urgent, and why hadn't they just called him? The answering machine would have gotten it, and yeah, he'd still be awake, but at least he wouldn't have had to have gotten out of bed.

And he sure as hell hoped it wasn't someone who had the wrong apartment - you couldn't really bitch out a stranger for waking you up, unless they wouldn't apologize for it.

"I'm coming, I'm coming," he called as he shuffled through the apartment to the door. The streetlights from outside lit up the front room enough for him to see his furniture so as not to walk into it, although it was pretty much a clear path from the bedroom door to the front door, and the room wasn't that big anyway. "Don't get your panties in a wad."

He opened the door and found Aurelian standing in the hallway, soaking wet and carrying something so wrapped in plastic Sam couldn't tell what it was. He blinked. What was so important Aurelian had to get him out of bed at three in the morning and tell him in person? What couldn't wait?

"You're soaked," Sam said stupidly. "You woke me up. You couldn't have called? Or waited until morning?" In answer Aurelian held out the plastic-wrapped whatever-it-was, like an offering, like that was the reason he'd appeared at Sam's apartment at an obscenely early hour of the morning, to give it to him.

"I brought this for you," Aurelian said. Sam wasn't sure but he thought Aurelian's hands were shaking. The guy had to be cold.

He yawned and scratched himself and took the thing. Now that he had it in his hands, it looked like an album cover. Aurelian got him out of bed to give him a record? He remembered that Sam worked in a record store, right?

"Uh, thanks," Sam said, turning the thing over in his hands to try and see what album it was. It was too well wrapped and the plastic was too opaque, and there were a lot of layers of it. Obviously Aurelian had been paranoid it would get wet. "You wanna come in?" Aurelian just looked at him. "Well, you're here, you may as well. Dry off, at least, you know?" He gestured for Aurelian to come in and then shut the door behind him and flipped the light on.

Aurelian just stood thhere dripping gently in the floor as Sam wrestled with the plastic swaddling the record album. "Take off your coat," Sam told him absently. "Have a seat. There's a towel in the bathroom." He could feel Aurelian's eyes on him, and that was a little weird, but it was an anticipatory look, like the way his mom would watch him Christmas morning when he was opening his presents. Whatever it was, Aurelian was definitely waiting for a reaction. If Sam had been more awake and able to concentrate on more than one thing at a time he might have thought it was sweet.

And then he got the plastic untaped, pulled it off, dropped it on the floor, and knew why Aurelian had waited for him to get it open.

It was his dad's record. The Voice of Venus. In what looked like near-perfect condition.

No wonder Aurelian had been knocking so persistently.

Sam looked up at him, unable to make his brain work enough to form a coherent sentence, or even "thanks." His legs couldn't hold him up any more and he sat on the floor. Aurelian knelt down next to him, took Sam's face in his cold hands and whispered "My heart, my love, the music in my soul," and kissed him. Sam dropped the record in his lap, wound his arms around Aurelian's neck, and kissed him back. He was pretty sure he was about to cry.

After they pulled apart, Aurelian stood up, took the album from Sam's lap, slipped the record from the sleeve, and went over to the turntable (which had also belonged to Sam's dad). He put the record on, lowered the needle, and came back to where Sam was still sitting on the floor, holding the record cover like he'd forgotten about it. He turned and stared at Aurelian as the other man sat on the floor next to him, stared blankly, stupidly, not sure what to say because "Thank you" seemed so inadequate, and Aurelian smiled gently.

"Thank you," Sam said anyway. Inadequate, but polite, and he had to say something.

They listened to both sides of the album in silence, Sam concentrating on the music and the cover in his hands, Aurelian concentrating on... what? Sam didn't know, couldn't tell.

The Voice of Venus was clearly a concept album, strange and wandering and atonal and very, very experimental. It was broken into four parts - The Prologue, The Journey, The Ascension (itself broken down into three parts: Venus, Astarte, and Isis), and a two-minute Epilogue. It reminded Sam of nothing so much as jazz stretched to fit a prog-rock mold, and he'd never admit it but he wasn't sure if he would have liked it, if he'd been twenty-two when it was released and he'd gone into his local record store and bought himself a copy.

But he could hear his dad's horn, and there it was in black and white on the back of the album cover - "William Mackenzie, trumpet" - and that was all that mattered.

There were no photos of the band on the cover, just abstract art and the title on the front, and a narrower slice of the same art across the top of the back, along with the track listing and a list of the musicians (there were seven of them, plus a guest vocalist for the "Isis" part of the third track, "The Ascension"), and at the very bottom edge, in tiny type, the year and studio in which it was recorded, and the name of the record label.

"Nile Records, Eden," Sam read, his voice a whisper, talking more to himself than to Aurelian. "It's defunct now." Aurelian didn't say anything, but when Side One came to the end he got up, turned the record over, and went back to his spot on the floor, watching Sam watching nothing.

After Side Two came to its and the album's conclusion, he flipped it again, and when he sat back down Sam looked at him, finally able to focus on something besides the music and the past and the ghosts of what could have been.

"Thank you," he whispered again. He meant it this time. His heart was full, his head, his whole existence, full of his dad's failed shot at immortality and full of the man who'd given it back to him.

It was like finding the last piece of a 1000-piece puzzle hidden in the couch cushions, fitting it in and finally being able to see the whole picture. Like finding a lost love letter buried in the attic under thirty years of newspaper clippings and old holiday cards. Like waking up and finding a ghost sitting on the end of your bed, waiting patiently to talk to you.

Sam thought he really was going to cry now, with all the things he couldn't say - not to Aurelian, but to his father.

Aurelian laid a cool hand on Sam's cheek. "I couldn't wait," he said. "I am sorry for waking you up." Sam just shook his head. No problem. It doesn't matter.

He leaned forward and kissed Aurelian again, thinking that he'd wanted this for as long as he'd known it was worth wanting - longer, since before he'd even really understood what it meant - wanted this strange secret part of his father's past, and wanted someone who would find it for him.

Aurelian pulled away, stood up, offered Sam his hand. Sam put the album cover on the floor and got to his feet as well.

"Aurelian..." he began, not sure what he was going to say but feeling like he had to say it.

"Sh," Aurelian said, putting two fingers to his lips. "I know."

"I've never heard this," Sam went on, his voice close to cracking and his brain finally detaching. "The Voice of Venus. My dad - "

Aurelian kissed him a third time, effectively shutting him up, and as William Mackenzie's trumpet warbled in the background, Aurelian turned off the light in the front room, took Sam's hand, and led him into the bedroom.

Sam could only faintly hear the Voice of Venus in here - his bed was right under a window and he could hear the rain now. He sat on the bed and watched as Aurelian kicked off his shoes, pulled off his shirt and his pants, and then they lay down together on the bed, their arms around each other, legs tangling, kissing and nibbling and licking and touching, Sam trying to express his gratitude and what he now knew for sure was love, and Aurelian trying to express... well, who knew? Sam didn't care. The fact that Aurelian had brought him that record, had given him his dad back - ten years and Sam could hear that trumpet again, could hear Parvati, could hear Bill Mackenzie's one true abiding passion, the one thing of value he'd passed on to his son - Aurelian had given him that, and it was enough.

And yet, it wasn't. Sam wanted more. Needed more.

He let go of Aurelian long enough to struggle out of his long-sleeve t-shirt and pajama bottoms.

"Want you," he murmured against Aurelian's skin, his mouth at the hollow of Aurelian's throat, moving down his sternum and over to a hard dark nipple. He only half knew what he was doing, going on instinct and his admittedly limited experience with girls and trying not to think too hard about what was going on and where it was leading, and wanting it so badly it didn't actually matter.

Aurelian moaned softly above his head, so he was obviously doing something right.

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