2020-05-27 - Minor Swing

An invite came from Dante to Itzhak to come have a look at the new restaurant - or more specifically, the piano bar. It's a few days from opening. There's still fine-tuning to be done in the kitchen, but the restaurant itself looks ready for the general public. His name's with security, so he'll have no trouble getting in. A staff member lets him in through the glass door into the restaurant proper.

There's the sound of a piano, though it seems a bit of aimless jazz rather than something structured. Either that or the pianist is trying (and failing) to pull a piece from memory. Dante is sat at the grand piano, in a burgundy three-piece with a white shirt and subtly checked pocket square. There's a glass of a whiskey drink on the top of the piano (with a white napkin as a coaster.) There's the faint sound of clinking of dishes from the kitchen, and the rich aroma of sauces and soups being prepped.

Itzhak shows up, violin case slung over his back and mandolin case in hand. He's brought everything! He's wearing his usual very snug, worn-soft jeans, steel toe boots, and an old battered hoodie with 'GHPD' in flaking, aged letters. Aaaand whew does he feel out of place, anxiety and wariness infusing his body language as he tries very hard not to slink towards the grand piano and Dante. He's like a pebble someone accidentally put in a beautiful jewelry mount.

"Yo!" he calls to Dante, anyway, because he overcompensates for literally everything. "What, you had to build a place just to wear ya suits to?"

Dante grins brightly when he spots Itzhak. He flutters his fingers across the keys and then stands. "Ah, you're not too far off the truth, if I'm being honest. Somewhere where I'm not overdressed by default." Though if he didn't like the attention, he wouldn't do it. And hey, at least the restaurant is closed? And there are staff members dressed casually who scurry about in the background doing last-minute-prep. "What do you think? Am I completely foolish? Will anyone in town actually come here?" He gestures to the silver tree sculpture that dominates and separates the two spaces.

The great, and awful, thing about Itzhak is if you ask him that kind of question, he gives you a real answer. First he looks Dante over, smirking a little in one corner of his mouth. Dante is extra as ever. Then he gives a closer look around, reassured somewhat by Dante lending him validity by talking to him. "Well, Thorne will," he says, admiring the silver tree, "that's for sure. I dunno. But I bet you'll get a lotta people from Seattle, I was just reading this thing about how a bunch of long-time stuff there is closing and people need new places." Yes, because Itzhak knows a lot about the bar and restaurant trade...no he doesn't.

"I do hope the locals come. I've been fighting hard with the menu and profit margins. And suppliers." Dante gives half an eye-roll, as if to say, 'what is my life?'. "To try and keep the prices reasonable. I don't want to price out the residents of the town." Then he motions to the beautiful and expansive bar. "Drink?"

Itzhak pauses, recalibrating his assumptions. "Well, yeah everybody's gonna come," he says like it was never in doubt. "Love a drink. Man, this bar looks super fuckin' cool. Like Mad Men." He goes on over, his stride transforming into something much closer to his usual saunter. "You gonna mix me one?" he asks Dante, with a teasing light in his hazel eyes.

"Ah, I will attempt to do so. I'm not very adept with a cocktail shaker, but I can stir," Dante sets his own drink down on the bar and then moves behind it. Despite the fact that he's in a suit, he doesn't really look well-suited to being behind the bar. He braces his hands wide, eyebrows arching. "What can I get you, sir?" he asks in a sort of honeyed voice. "Don Draper at your service. Except, no. I haven't got his jawline." He rubs at his chin.

Unslinging his violin case, Itzhak sets it down by the barstool, then leans his mandolin case against it, like he'd rather have the mandolin stolen first. He would. Even though the violin is just a rental. Then he snorts as Dante uses that tone on him and calls him sir, tinting red. Sliding onto one of the barstools, he rests his elbows on the bartop, leaning forward. "Whiskey sour. It's my favorite and it's easy. Seriously, Taylor, Don Draper wishes he was you."

Dante chuckles and shakes his head. He's not much of a blusher - though he's been known to. In this situation, he just takes the compliment with a twinkle in his eyes. He then goes about making the drink, which contains whiskey, so he knows how to make it without consulting a book. "So what do you think? Would you be willing to lend your prodigious talent to my humble establishment? You could play more challenging music," both technically and for the audience, "And, we could work on our duet performance? Though I do admit it's likely I'd struggle to keep up with the added pressure of public performance."

Itzhak watches the other man go about mixing the drink. Leaning over his folded arms, his eyes follow Dante's hands as they work. When he's asked that, though, up go the eyebrows and he switches his attention to Dante's face for a second, checking for information. "You want me to come play here?" He repeats the question, to make sure he has it right. "Like, on the reg?"

"Well, how regular would depend on you. And yes. You're undoubtedly the finest musician in town." Dante says that with authority. He does have confidence in his own taste, after all. "Paid, of course. I am a writer. I know how important it is to compensate creative people fairly for their work." He sets the whiskey sour down in front of Itzhak on top of a white square of napkin.

Those expressive eyebrows tilt up towards each other, when Dante says Itzhak is the finest musician in town. That makes him really blush, dropping his gaze to the bartop and unwinding his arms so he can scruff his fingers through his curly dark hair. "Taylor, c'mon," he mutters, laughing in embarrassment. "That's a matter of opinion. I'm definitely the best violinist in town." That, he'll cop to! He laughs again, shaking his head. "You'd be just about my only paying gig then. Musically. I mean, yeah. I'd love to. That'd be fun. And I'd get paid."

Dante smiles brightly. He looks quite pleased. "Excellent." And then he leans over the bar, conspiratorially. "You know, we will have to get you a suit. Which I'd be happy to help with. You've got some lovely lines. I can think of a few styles that would suit you well."

Itzhak takes up his drink, sips it while Dante leans to him like that, all conspiracy-like. He's shifted forward himself, elbow on the bar. Dude's got dang long arms, skinny under the bulk of the hoodie. "Mmm. That's good. A suit, ya say? Like yours?" Itzhak looks like he's not sure if he likes that idea or if it's alarming. Possibly both.

"A three-piece, certainly, But I think you'd look good in a mix of textures. And something not too formal. Something you could move in, naturally, so you wouldn't be restricted when playing." Dante steps back a little so he can take in Itzhak a little more. "Something classic, but with modern patterning, perhaps. Or the other way 'round. A modern cut with classic fabric patterns."

"Oh man, you're serious." Itzhak takes a somewhat larger drink. "Okay, uh, the fact is, your suits are fuckin' fantastic. And your shoes. I don't even know where a guy gets shoes like that. I been low-key jealous the entire time I known you." He's a lean guy, is Itzhak, the kind of body type that will never understand how to put on bulk, whether fat or muscle. His proportions are kinda funny, long arms, legs for days, huge hands and feet. Not what one would call classical by a long shot.

There's that glimmer in Dante's eyes again. He sips from his own drink. "Have you ever had a properly tailored suit? It can totally transform the way you hold yourself. It can draw attention to some parts of your body while downplaying others. You're slim. That's actually a good thing for suits to drape properly. It can be fairly difficult to fit things properly if you get too bulky. In fact, for the longest time, I avoided putting on bulk so I wouldn't mess up my lines." And yes, he's that dedicated. Or he was. He did say that in the past tense.

"I, uh, I have, actually," Itzhak says, like that too is kinda embarrassing. "I mean, from last year, not any time before that, but yeah. My girlfriend had one lyin' about and had someone come in and tailor it for me." For Gohl's funeral, but Itzhak doesn't say that part. "It's so weird to put it on. Like. It fits." Which he says with the emphasis of a guy for whom a lot of things don't fit so well. He catches that past tense, and he glances at Dante's face again. "Yeah? Why'd you stop?"

"It's a revelation, isn't it? To put on something that was fitted specifically to you? It's why I don't feel quite so comfortable in off the rack things." Dante pauses, grins sheepishly. "Which sounds horribly snobbish of me, doesn't it?" There's a little bit of colour to his cheeks at that. "I ah, got divorced and started dating men again?" The sheepish look deepens.

Surprised, Itzhak says, "I didn't know you were married. To a woman?" Look, it's not that Dante's incredibly gay, it's just that he's incredibly gay.

"Ah, heh," Dante inclines his head. Now he is blushing. "Yes. For three years. We were together for five. And, to be fair, I wasn't wearing suits every day then. I was a lot more..." he clears his throat, "...toned down, I should say? Dodging in and out of the closet depending on the circumstances."

Itzhak is notoriously terrible at reading between the lines and picking up on cues. But this one? This one, he gets. "She didn't like it, huh." His eyebrows quirk, and he takes a drink, ice gently clinking in his glass.

"She didn't, ah, know. About the bisexuality," says Dante. His smile is a bit sad. "And things got very tense after I confessed it. I think in part because Bethany wasn't...isn't," he changes his tense, "...a delicate woman. And I think that gave her some anxiety. She was at the time I met her, a competitive marathon runner. And had abs that at her peak would give mine a run for their money."

Itzhak tips his head, eyebrows hiking, mouth tugging, in a quick but poignant little gesture. "My experience, not a lotta women like it when their guy likes guys too. Been lucky to meet a couple here in town." He gets a little sad at that, too, then obviously puts it aside. "...delicate? You mean she was tall, or built or somethin'?"

"Built, tall, not particularly curvy. Strong shoulders. I always thought she looked like an Olympic athlete and found the strength very attractive. But when she found I was bisexual..." Dante shrugs. "She, well, she not only started thinking I was flirting with every man I was polite to, but I think she started seeing herself as mannish." There's definitely some guilt that lingers there.

Itzhak listens, curious and intent, the way a musician listens. He pulls a face and hitches one shoulder. "She sounds hot. I dated a girl was six feet tall a little while, it was great." But--oh. Ohhhh suddenly he gets what the problem was. "Oh," he says, eyebrows up. "You mean...yeah. She thought you were into her because she looked like a guy. Not that she looked like a guy but that she thought you thought she looked like a guy. Ahhh, that's a shame."

Dante rubs at the hair at the back of his neck and lifts a shoulder. He doesn't often touch his hair, coiffed as it is. "She did not, in fact, look like a guy. I like muscles, on men or women. I tried to explain that to her, but I only dug more of a hole for m'self." He twists the glass of his drink around on the bartop. "Not that we weren't having problems before I told her. But that certainly didn't help the stability of our relationship. Nor did my eventual infidelity. Certainly not proud of that."

Thinking about it, Itzhak drains the rest of the whiskey. "Yeah, dick move, buddy," he says, not without sympathy. There but for the grace of God. "That sucks, but, I mean c'mon, it's not like she was handling you being queer. In fact kinda sounds like she the opposite of handled it." He falls quiet a moment. "...if ya into muscles, no wonder you're into Cruz. Jesus Christ."

"She was certainly not handling it. I think it was the difference between the hypothetical and the physical. I never heard her be homophobic. Quite the opposite. But it was different when it was her husband and not a friend of a friend or something on television." Dante grins at the mention of Cris, then chuckles, sips his drink and simply says, "Indeed. But not exclusively. I have eclectic tastes."

Itzhak makes an awful face. "She shoulda fuckin' handled it or divorced you right then instead a making you miserable." Verdict decided, he pushes the empty glass away. "Eclectic," he says, tipping a finger at Dante like he scored a point. "Good word. Me too. Eclectic."

"I won't ever say I shouldn't have been a douche and cheated on her," Dante somehow manages to make that relatively crude insult sound both ridiculous and sophisticated at the same time. "But she did assure me she had no problem with it and proceeded to have a very large, persistent problem with it. And that is the long story about how I decided to stop hiding my inner dandy." He smooths down the lapel of his suit. "At least anyone who gets involved with me knows what they're in for." He smiles toothily. "And variable as well. There are things that I'm attracted to physically that stay relatively constant. From an aesthetic perspective. But I am quite constantly surprised about who I find myself drawn to. Cris, for instance. On the surface we don't seem compatible at all."

"Good. You oughta be yourself. World would be poorer without you being yourself." Itzhak listened close and attentive to all that, head turned a little to focus on the words, on Dante's accent and the way he shapes them. He smirks, that Dante and Cris don't seem compatible. "Guess you don't seem so compatible. But he's actually..." one hand flips over, palm up, while Itzhak tries to make words come out. His fingers flex as if he's beckoning them forth. "You told me one time I got the soul of a poet. He's like that too."

"He's certainly softer than he seems at first blush. But the harder edges aren't an illusion." Dante smiles a bit sheepishly. "I suppose I like my bad boys. As do you, it seems. And well, you're a bit of one yourself, now aren't you?" There's that smile - the one he doesn't mean to look vaguely predatory but ends up looking that way nonetheless. "But it's my experience that most men aren't actually the hard edges they pretend to be made up of. Some just hide the softer bits better than others."

"Poets ain't soft," Itzhak raises those eyebrows. "They're all edges and fuck-you." A smirk appears when Dante calls him a bad boy, and he looks the part, doesn't he? Six-foot-plus of tattooed attitude. "All this bad boy stuff is just protective coloration." He learned that phrase from Alexander. "At heart I'm a violin nerd."

That's...probably not strictly true. That's probably protective coloration in and of itself, claiming to be merely a front.

"True enough. I studies some of those poets in school. They were rebels in a lot of ways." Dante looks up, thoughtfully considering that, then smiling to himself. "I'm not a poet. I'm a mass entertainer. I shamelessly write what sells. And I hope this place..." he motions around the bar, "...is somewhere that sells. If it's not, then well, I'm fucked, aren't I? The restaurant business is risky when you do know what you're doing and aren't in it for access to a grand piano and a mixologist."

Itzhak follows Dante's motion to look around the place. It's as handsome as its inventor, classic yet devastatingly trendy. "Sure it's risky. But what's life without risks? Makes it worth the living." Easy for him to say, he's not an investor! And speaking of a grand piano, Itzhak jerks his chin towards it. "So let's practice. Yeah? Whaddaya say?"

"I'm an Englishman with Lords in his family tree who writes ghosts stories for a living. I'm the least adventurous person you're likely to meet," says Dante with a self-depreciating drawl. "What would you like to practice? You get to choose. If left to me, I'll go for something fairly safe that I know I can plonk away at with moderate skill." He crosses to seat himself at the grand piano, taking a moment to appreciate the beauty of the instrument. It looks new at first blush, but closer inspection shows that it's an older piano that has just been extremely well cared for.

Grabbing his instruments, Itzhak comes along. "Ah, she's a beauty," he murmurs, admiring the piano, too. "I like older instruments. They got character." He crouches to open his violin case, get the instrument out, along with a sheaf of music. "Got a present for ya. You're gonna love it. Or hate it, maybe." The look he shoots Dante is more than a little sadistic, as he reaches over his shoulder to place the music. "That's Django Reinhardt, but I found a version transposed for piano. Tell me what you think."

"I wanted something with history. So much of this place is shiny and new. I felt for a touch of real class, it had to be an older piano. And a few other touches as well. Some of the bits of the bar are repurposed. Some of the glasswear for prohibition-era cocktails are vintage." Dante looks up as Itzhak reaches over his shoulder. He grins wryly. "Uh oh. Are you going to put me through my paces, Mister Rosencrantz? Careful," he drawls, "I'm not as experienced as you. I might not be able to keep up. You might break me." And yes, the innunedo in that is entirely intentional.

Itzhak snorts derisively--and totally blushes, turning vermillion in a flash. He elbows Dante, while he rosins up his bow. "Better fuckin' believe I'm puttin' you through ya paces. Safe plonking's all well and good, but you own a piano bar on purpose. You're in trouble now. You got yourself access to a grand? You're gonna use that grand if I gotta make you."

Is this counter flirting, or is he serious? OR BOTH? ...probably both.

Dante's laughter is bright and followed by an up-and-down look. "Cheeky." He runs his fingers over the keys, tickling out a warm sound from the instrument. For a big room, the acoustics are actually quite good. There's strategic baffling disguised as decor both to keep the atmosphere intimate and to make performances more pleasant. "Shall we establish a safe word?" He's not even pretending this is all about music anymore.

The acoustics catch Itzhak by surprise; he tilts his head, eyes unfocusing as he listens. "Hey, that sounds great. Like, really great. Nice." Dante's look catches him just like that, bow in one hand, rosin in the other, his bright gray eyes faraway and his expression intent, his mane of curly black hair glossy under the stage lights. Then he unfreezes, tossing his rosin back in the case and taking up his violin. He shoots Dante another Look(tm), mouth twisted like he's trying not to smile. "Safeword?" A second to think, then, "Paganini."

"I think you overestimate my class, Itzhak. I'm going out on a limb and saying he's a composer?" Dante idly plays a little 'They Can't Take that Away From Me' just to warm up his hands. "Isn't the point of a safeword that you're supposed to be able to remember it in a pinch?" And then he looks around as the sound bounces off the walls in a pleasing way. He closes his eyes and smiles. "Mhmm. I paid an expert to come down from Seattle to get the sound just right. No point in having a piano bar where the piano sounds like shit."

"One of the greatest composers in history, and also one of the biggest assholes in history." Itzhak tests his tuning, drawing his bow slow across each string in turn, tweaking pegs. "I'm not just saying that because I can't play most of his stuff, but I'm totally saying that because I can't play most of his stuff. That's what you get when you don't start violin at five years old, you wind up thirty-seven and you can't play any Caprices." Satisfied, he hikes them eyebrows at Dante. "To be honest, 'holy shit stop my hands hurt' is just fine with me."

Dante laughs brightly. "I suppose the abrupt end to the piece on my part would be sufficient too." He leans in to examine the sheet music, cheeks puffing up as he reads it. "Oh my. This is...well, that's quite the tempo isn't it? And a solo." He flexes his fingers. "This...is going to take some work on my part. But maybe if I wear a flashy enough suit when I play it, no one will notice the flaws, mhmm?" He tries to play a bit of it, finding the rhythm of the piece. "I played piano my entire childhood. Then I stopped for years and years. Then I picked it up again when I started writing on a schedule as a way to help push past my blocks. I would pull out some of my favourite pieces and try to think through my plots while I played. Or, I would try to learn something new when I needed to just think of something completely different from a horror story for a bit."

"Ahh, distract 'em with how hot you are and your gorgeous, extra af suits! Master plan." Itzhak, that smirk riding his face, taps the end of his bow on the first line of the music. "We can go slow. No shame in that. I always take a new piece slow. Measure," tap, "by measure," tap, "by measure." He plays a chromatic scale, G through E, long fingers hitting the intonation perfectly, warming up himself. "Look, not for nothin' but music is awesome for pretty much everything. Why'd you stop playing? I mean, I didn't play for five years, but I was in prison."

Someone might not feel like playing an instrument for a while? Weird!

"It's a strategy that's served me well. And let me get away with a lot, if I'm being honest," says Dante with a cheeky grin. "It was the usual thing that my parents and my school made me play, and I had to be away from it for awhile to realize that I actually liked it. That and I was off knocking about the continent, getting into trouble. And the piano isn't exactly a backpacking instrument." He does his best to follow the other man. He's better at the piano than he lets on, but it's clear he teeters the line between confidence and imposter syndrome when it comes to his musicianship. "You and I have very different backgrounds, Itzhak. But I feel like I've known you far longer than I have. And I'd like to think we would've been mates when we were younger. But I was pretty insufferable for parts of my youth. You probably would've knocked a few of my teeth in."

Itzhak does in fact go slow, quite slow, although he's ruthless with that damn tempo. Easy and it is, he set it and that is how it's gonna be. Graceful, sprightly, he winds his way through the violin parts, taking it easy, taking it slow, boot rapping out the beat on the stage. Occasionally he encourages Dante with a "Nice!" or a "Great, don't stop now." Until they do stop, both of them kind of flailing to a halt, and Itzhak laughs, letting his violin swing from his hand. "Ahhh that's good. You're better than you think you are, Taylor. You gotta trust yourself. Trust those instincts. Let ya fingers move."

He listens to Dante, then, curious as always. There's so many things to learn and he's gotta stick that giant nose of his into all of them. He snorts a laugh when Dante says he'd have knocked his teeth in. "Maybe I mighta. I never got on too well with insufferable rich assholes. But hey, we're grownups now, at least that's what they tell me, and I can figure out that you're pretty cool under all the extra af suits."

Dante is almost visibly trying to force himself to not overthink the details of the piece and to just feel the music and the tempo and complement Itzhak. He's an analytical person, though, so he's trying to follow instructions more than interpret the music. That's his weakness as a musician, but he's clearly recognized that and tried to work on it. He puffs up his cheeks when the piece finishes. "I'll need to work on that."

"Ah, see, that's the secret. I didn't actually grow up rich. I'm doing fairly well now but that's due to some smart investments and my books doing well. And, well, no crippling student debt. But even now, ah, well, you've seen my car." He chuckles. "I just prioritize my money in different places. But in England, it's about names. As much as the country tries to imagine class isn't a thing. And class doesn't always equal money. And in fact, these days it more often than not doesn't. I have an old family and an old name and some tenuous and distant connection to the royal family, and that opens doors. And encourages certain kinds of manners. And a certain accent. If you ever meet anyone from Cornwall, you'll quickly discover they don't sound like me."

"Huh." Itzhak has to turn that one over in his mind. "Thought you were like Marshall, but you're actually kinda the total opposite of Marshall." A flicker of darkness crosses behind his eyes, then he's saying, clearly invoking another topic, "So this is a huge risk for you. I didn't know that. Hey, that's baller, though!" The glance Dante gets now is approval.

"Oh good lord, yes. Yes it is indeed a risk. Even if I were flush, it would still be a risk because the restaurant business has notoriously small margins." Dante looks around, sighs, and tries to keep tension from bunching up his shoulders at that thought. "I've sunk a fair bit of m'nest egg into this place. I actually only ended up at Bayside because it was the only decent place in town that would rent it furnished. And when I came here, I didn't intend it to be long-term."

Itzhak, tapping his bow against his leg, chuffs a wry and resigned sound. "Yeah. Me neither. Planned on going back to New York soon as I could. Now look at me." He flicks the bow down at himself. "Stupidly in love with a guy, made amazing friends, got work to do. Guess we're stuck." Like all things to do with Gray Harbor, his tone is conflicted. Good things and bad, braided together into a challah loaf of difficulty, that's life in this town.

He gives his head a toss, shaking off any growing trepidation--or at least hiding it. "A'ight. Let's work on this bad boy. Shake 'em off, Taylor, I'm about to be a real dick to you."