chapter 9 (sam)
Nov. 21st, 2002 05:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
smackenzieSam hadn't told anyone at Play It Again that he'd had a date Sunday, and he certainly wasn't going to tell anyone the guy he'd had the date with had shown up at his apartment last night, brought him a record, and fucked him until he came. Oh no. No one at Play It Again even knew he liked guys, although he thought Peter Baron had an idea, and sometimes he caught Bruce looking at him sideways.... But it was always kind of a contemplative looking at him sideways, like maybe he'd said something Bruce was trying to figure out. It never made Sam uncomfortable, but very few things about Bruce did.
Bruce wasn't in but Marley was, bitching and moaning when Sam arrived about how busy it had been and where the hell had Sam been, and what kind of emergency made him two hours late, and Hey don't bitch to me, man. Marley wanted details. Sam told him it was personal. Marley wanted to know what kind of personal. Sam told him it was none of his business. Marley said it damn well was, he was in charge when Bruce was out and if Sam was going to be late like this he wanted to know why. Sam told him to fuck off. A couple of girls standing at the register waiting to pay for their Lyle Lovett CDs gasped and giggled. Sam shot them a look of pure annoyance mixed with "mind your own business" and stomped back to the office.
He practically threw his coat at the coat rack and wished for what had to be the billionth time that Bruce had put a little employees' office back here, a room where he could put his coat and his crap and sign in and out and not have to deal with the utter mess that was the office. It was a big office, and Sam figured if you took some space from it and some space from the stock room, you could make a third room for the staff. Maybe with a little couch he could go collapse on.
"Hey, Sam," Marley said, poking his head through the doorway. "Rule number one: don't tell me to fuck off in front of customers. Ok? Rule number two: get your ass out here. Bruce isn't coming in at all, his kid's sick, so it's us until Dan shows up at three. Got it?"
"Yeah, yeah," Sam muttered. He should have called in sick too and just taken the day off. He could have... well, what would he have done? Called Spencer at work and bent her ear about Aurelian, probably. Maybe called his grandma Nina and come out to her, to see how she'd take it. (Out of all of his family, she had the fewest issues when Spencer came out. Spencer, understandably, adored her. Grandma Nina was a tough woman, and very cool. Sam was pretty sure he could tell her he was bi and dating a guy and she wouldn't wig out on him, although he was pretty certain she would have a harder time once he told her the guy was a vampire. Although she wasn't superstitious, so who knew. She probably wouldn't believe him. He wouldn't believe him, if he was her.)
Marley went back to the front of the store and Sam followed. For the rest of the day he managed to dodge Marley's repeated attempts to find out what had made him so late and only lost his temper once, averting actual hand-to-hand combat by chucking a Tim Buckley CD at Marley's head. Marley caught it, told Sam he was an asshole, and went back to filling out order forms for something or other.
On his lunch break, which was only twenty minutes because he was suddenly only working four hours today, Sam went down to the street to a pay phone and called Spencer at her apartment. She wasn't there, obviously, so he left a message. He knew she wouldn't be home, but he wanted to tell her the important stuff right away.
The important stuff in this case was "Hey, it's me, weird shit is happening, Aurelian came over last night with this copy of Dad's record - The Voice of Venus - he found it for me, I have no idea how - but he showed up at like three in the morning soaking wet, and we listened to it, and he stayed over, and... we slept together. And it's complicated now and I have a gig tonight so I'll talk to you tomorrow. Just wanted to give you a head's-up that I'm probably gonna wig on you. Bye."
He spent the remaining ten minutes of his break wandering up and down the pedestrian street, chomping on a roast beef sandwich from one of the little cafes and thinking about Aurelian. What the hell was he going to do now? Besides calm down enough to be rational and normal at the diner later....
He thought about it on and off for the rest of his shift at the record store. Dan showed up at three, Marley went home (and Sam breathed a sigh of relief), and at four Sam collected his coat and left too. He went back to his apartment, took a shower, ate something, practiced for an hour, ate something else, put on his black suit and a white dress shirt and the blue tie with the penguins on it, packed up his sax, and got back on the bus and headed towards the Bluebird.
He thought about Aurelian on the bus ride home, he thought about him while he puttered around his apartment and got ready, he thought about him on the bus ride to the club. He couldn't get the guy out of his head. That was a good thing, right? It meant he was dealing pretty well with the vampire thing, right? It meant he was really interested, right?
Sam wanted to ask Teddy his opinion but he knew that was just asking for trouble, and it meant he might actually have to explain why it was so important, and, again, so not going to go there. He wasn't telling anyone anything until there was something to tell.
He tried to work out the pros and cons of dating a vampire, having decided that particular detail was more important than working out the pros and cons of dating a guy. (There was one very big pro - the sex - and one very big con - the fact he'd be dating a guy. The greatness of the sex was hopefully more related to Aurelian specifically, whereas if Sam was dating any guy he'd still have that problem. He wasn't about to put himself in a position to get beat up and generally treated like a leper or a criminal because he happened to like kissing boys. No fucking way. If he'd been more politically-minded, like his cousin, he might have looked at it differently. But he wasn't, so he didn't.)
Was there a pro to dating a vampire? Well, besides the blow jobs, and again, that could be Aurelian-specific. It was pretty much guaranteed that if Sam wanted to stay up to all hours, Aurelian would be more than willing, and you couldn't say that about everyone. So ok, one pro.
Cons? Oh, Jesus, a whole pile of them. The bloodsucking. The not being able to go outside during the day, unless it was cloudy or raining or snowing or something. The bloodsucking. The fangs being possibly involved in those blow jobs. The bloodsucking. Sam couldn't imagine opening someone's fridge to get something to eat and being confronted by a rack of blood bags. That was just disgusting. He didn't even like his steak cooked medium - any blood and he was too grossed out to eat it. And here he was seriously considering dating someone who had to drink it to survive.
And let's not even think about the future stuff, he thought morosely. In five, ten years, if you're still together, he'll still look just like that, he'll still be twenty-four, and you'll be old. You'll get older and he won't, and won't that be strange.
Sam thought about his mom, and he thought about his dad, and he thought about surviving your lover, and he would never knowingly put something through that. And yeah, it was so far off as to be almost inconceivable, and maybe if it hadn't happened to him he wouldn't even have thought of it, but still, there it was. He'd age. Aurelian wouldn't. Maybe Aurelian would even get tired of him and break up just because of that, and man, that would really hurt.
Well, fuck, he was thinking about the guy breaking up with him, and they weren't even going out. Sam sighed. A woman sitting across the aisle from him turned and stared at him. He ignored her. He decided he was definitely fucked. He'd tried to wrap his head around walking away, saying Well, you know, this vampire thing is too twisted on top of everything else, what if you lose your head and bite me or something and just leaving it, and you know what, he didn't want to.
Yeah, the vampire thing was weird and possibly dangerous, and he had no idea how he'd integrate Aurelian into the rest of his life - very slowly, he imagined - what the hell was he going to tell his mom? Sam hated keeping secrets from his mom, especially really big ones like the truth about the guy he was dating.
But. What was the alternative? Like hell could they stay just friends. Not after last night. Not after Aurelian brought him his dad's record. Not after... not after that.
Was he in love? He wasn't sure. Like? Definitely. Lust? Oh, fuck, yes. Maybe they could go from there.
You're a sick fucking pervert, Sam Mackenzie, he told himself, as the bus closed in on the stop for the jazz club. Wanting to date a vampire. You're sick and you're nuts.
(And yeah, he probably was in love. Dammit.)
By eleven-thirty he was sitting in a booth in the Blue Plate with a piece of apple pie and a glass of milk, and he'd made up his mind. He wanted Aurelian, no question. He was willing to work on the vampire-human thing if that's what it took, because when he got right down to it, the vampire weirdness was much easier to cope with than the thought of never seeing the guy again.
words: 1,769
total words: 49,493
Bruce wasn't in but Marley was, bitching and moaning when Sam arrived about how busy it had been and where the hell had Sam been, and what kind of emergency made him two hours late, and Hey don't bitch to me, man. Marley wanted details. Sam told him it was personal. Marley wanted to know what kind of personal. Sam told him it was none of his business. Marley said it damn well was, he was in charge when Bruce was out and if Sam was going to be late like this he wanted to know why. Sam told him to fuck off. A couple of girls standing at the register waiting to pay for their Lyle Lovett CDs gasped and giggled. Sam shot them a look of pure annoyance mixed with "mind your own business" and stomped back to the office.
He practically threw his coat at the coat rack and wished for what had to be the billionth time that Bruce had put a little employees' office back here, a room where he could put his coat and his crap and sign in and out and not have to deal with the utter mess that was the office. It was a big office, and Sam figured if you took some space from it and some space from the stock room, you could make a third room for the staff. Maybe with a little couch he could go collapse on.
"Hey, Sam," Marley said, poking his head through the doorway. "Rule number one: don't tell me to fuck off in front of customers. Ok? Rule number two: get your ass out here. Bruce isn't coming in at all, his kid's sick, so it's us until Dan shows up at three. Got it?"
"Yeah, yeah," Sam muttered. He should have called in sick too and just taken the day off. He could have... well, what would he have done? Called Spencer at work and bent her ear about Aurelian, probably. Maybe called his grandma Nina and come out to her, to see how she'd take it. (Out of all of his family, she had the fewest issues when Spencer came out. Spencer, understandably, adored her. Grandma Nina was a tough woman, and very cool. Sam was pretty sure he could tell her he was bi and dating a guy and she wouldn't wig out on him, although he was pretty certain she would have a harder time once he told her the guy was a vampire. Although she wasn't superstitious, so who knew. She probably wouldn't believe him. He wouldn't believe him, if he was her.)
Marley went back to the front of the store and Sam followed. For the rest of the day he managed to dodge Marley's repeated attempts to find out what had made him so late and only lost his temper once, averting actual hand-to-hand combat by chucking a Tim Buckley CD at Marley's head. Marley caught it, told Sam he was an asshole, and went back to filling out order forms for something or other.
On his lunch break, which was only twenty minutes because he was suddenly only working four hours today, Sam went down to the street to a pay phone and called Spencer at her apartment. She wasn't there, obviously, so he left a message. He knew she wouldn't be home, but he wanted to tell her the important stuff right away.
The important stuff in this case was "Hey, it's me, weird shit is happening, Aurelian came over last night with this copy of Dad's record - The Voice of Venus - he found it for me, I have no idea how - but he showed up at like three in the morning soaking wet, and we listened to it, and he stayed over, and... we slept together. And it's complicated now and I have a gig tonight so I'll talk to you tomorrow. Just wanted to give you a head's-up that I'm probably gonna wig on you. Bye."
He spent the remaining ten minutes of his break wandering up and down the pedestrian street, chomping on a roast beef sandwich from one of the little cafes and thinking about Aurelian. What the hell was he going to do now? Besides calm down enough to be rational and normal at the diner later....
He thought about it on and off for the rest of his shift at the record store. Dan showed up at three, Marley went home (and Sam breathed a sigh of relief), and at four Sam collected his coat and left too. He went back to his apartment, took a shower, ate something, practiced for an hour, ate something else, put on his black suit and a white dress shirt and the blue tie with the penguins on it, packed up his sax, and got back on the bus and headed towards the Bluebird.
He thought about Aurelian on the bus ride home, he thought about him while he puttered around his apartment and got ready, he thought about him on the bus ride to the club. He couldn't get the guy out of his head. That was a good thing, right? It meant he was dealing pretty well with the vampire thing, right? It meant he was really interested, right?
Sam wanted to ask Teddy his opinion but he knew that was just asking for trouble, and it meant he might actually have to explain why it was so important, and, again, so not going to go there. He wasn't telling anyone anything until there was something to tell.
He tried to work out the pros and cons of dating a vampire, having decided that particular detail was more important than working out the pros and cons of dating a guy. (There was one very big pro - the sex - and one very big con - the fact he'd be dating a guy. The greatness of the sex was hopefully more related to Aurelian specifically, whereas if Sam was dating any guy he'd still have that problem. He wasn't about to put himself in a position to get beat up and generally treated like a leper or a criminal because he happened to like kissing boys. No fucking way. If he'd been more politically-minded, like his cousin, he might have looked at it differently. But he wasn't, so he didn't.)
Was there a pro to dating a vampire? Well, besides the blow jobs, and again, that could be Aurelian-specific. It was pretty much guaranteed that if Sam wanted to stay up to all hours, Aurelian would be more than willing, and you couldn't say that about everyone. So ok, one pro.
Cons? Oh, Jesus, a whole pile of them. The bloodsucking. The not being able to go outside during the day, unless it was cloudy or raining or snowing or something. The bloodsucking. The fangs being possibly involved in those blow jobs. The bloodsucking. Sam couldn't imagine opening someone's fridge to get something to eat and being confronted by a rack of blood bags. That was just disgusting. He didn't even like his steak cooked medium - any blood and he was too grossed out to eat it. And here he was seriously considering dating someone who had to drink it to survive.
And let's not even think about the future stuff, he thought morosely. In five, ten years, if you're still together, he'll still look just like that, he'll still be twenty-four, and you'll be old. You'll get older and he won't, and won't that be strange.
Sam thought about his mom, and he thought about his dad, and he thought about surviving your lover, and he would never knowingly put something through that. And yeah, it was so far off as to be almost inconceivable, and maybe if it hadn't happened to him he wouldn't even have thought of it, but still, there it was. He'd age. Aurelian wouldn't. Maybe Aurelian would even get tired of him and break up just because of that, and man, that would really hurt.
Well, fuck, he was thinking about the guy breaking up with him, and they weren't even going out. Sam sighed. A woman sitting across the aisle from him turned and stared at him. He ignored her. He decided he was definitely fucked. He'd tried to wrap his head around walking away, saying Well, you know, this vampire thing is too twisted on top of everything else, what if you lose your head and bite me or something and just leaving it, and you know what, he didn't want to.
Yeah, the vampire thing was weird and possibly dangerous, and he had no idea how he'd integrate Aurelian into the rest of his life - very slowly, he imagined - what the hell was he going to tell his mom? Sam hated keeping secrets from his mom, especially really big ones like the truth about the guy he was dating.
But. What was the alternative? Like hell could they stay just friends. Not after last night. Not after Aurelian brought him his dad's record. Not after... not after that.
Was he in love? He wasn't sure. Like? Definitely. Lust? Oh, fuck, yes. Maybe they could go from there.
You're a sick fucking pervert, Sam Mackenzie, he told himself, as the bus closed in on the stop for the jazz club. Wanting to date a vampire. You're sick and you're nuts.
(And yeah, he probably was in love. Dammit.)
By eleven-thirty he was sitting in a booth in the Blue Plate with a piece of apple pie and a glass of milk, and he'd made up his mind. He wanted Aurelian, no question. He was willing to work on the vampire-human thing if that's what it took, because when he got right down to it, the vampire weirdness was much easier to cope with than the thought of never seeing the guy again.
words: 1,769
total words: 49,493
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Date: 2002-11-21 06:23 pm (UTC)