2020-09-09 - Go With the Raven

Regular performances might be worth shaving and dressing up for, Ravn Abildgaard had said to Dante Taylor. Or at least he said something along those lines when he visited the Eighty-Eight the first time, to check on Taylor. The promise of getting to watch Itzhak Rosencrantz perform in front of a live audience is a lure that dangled in front of him for some time, causing the Dane to waffle in indecision; on one hand, the posh restaurant and its piano bar is so much not his scene -- but on the other hand, a live performance by someone he knows personally to be damn bloody good, and a showman to boot.

Art, of course, won.

And that's why Ravn trimmed his beard down to the amount of morning-after stubble that seems appropriate for the black silk jacket and midnight blue button-up shirt he wears as he wanders onto the premises. It's not his scene by far, but it once was, and he knows how to dress for it, and how to put on that relaxed, mildly superior air that says, My name is on the list, now get me a table and a bourbon before you embarrass yourself further. He can do rich boy. He used to be rich boy.

Although the variety of the act that he prefers to do is the quiet one, someone who prefers to indeed not draw all the attention. Someone regularly hounded by photographers and celebrity hunters -- and in this, the Swedish chef story works to Ravn's advantage because the nice waitress who directs him to a seat and gets him that desired drink does indeed understand the man's wish to stay out of the public eye. Everything is nice and quiet.

Just watching the show, then slipping out and off nice and quiet, too.

Preferably before someone like Hyacinth Addington turns up and forces him to engage in actual conversation.

Itzhak's 'on stage'--really just a little space cleared near the piano--as Ravn walks in. He's wearing deep charcoal, nearly black trousers and waistcoat, with a crisp bright pink shirt because Itzhak Rosencrantz does what he wants. His shoes are very fancy, oxford wingtips in black with a blushing cherry gloss at their tips. He's even wearing a tie (fashionable hipster floral) and pocket square (same). But no jacket, and his shirt cuffs are turned back (they too have a floral lining on the upturned cuffs). And he hasn't shaved either, he's still rocking the same whiskers that aren't quite a beard but are more than a shadow.

He's alone, standing there in the softened spotlight, his violin under his chin, his big hands working on fingerboard and bow. Eyes closed, eyebrows up, he's swaying back and forth, playing something sweet, something longing. Not slow, though, for all its sweetess. Lively, dancey, a song for wishing on a late summer's day.

A simple drink for a man who likes to try to keep things simple. An uncomplicated scenario, for a man prone to overthinking. Ravn settles and relaxes, nursing that Glenfiddich and letting his mind wander. Music that feels each note teased from the violin's strings drift off into the room, lazily prowling for some woman's exposed shoulder to land on like a wandering kiss. Sensual like a summer's evening, one of those dreamy, half un-real nights of the scent of honeysuckle, and chickadees making their little racket in the tall grass. Something something pitch black Georgia night, or maybe one of those endless, not at all dark Scandinavian summer nights of leisure. Nights spent lying on the deck of someone's boat, listening to the waves kissing the hull, counting stars together.

Either way, it's a pleasure to listen. And indeed to watch, because Rosencrantz never seems to do anything half-heartedly. He does not play with his mind and his fingers; the New Yorker makes love to his instrument, seduces it, becomes one with it. And that, Ravn thinks, is the difference between someone who knows how to play, and someone who is a musician.

Some people here must think Itzhak is a spy. Nothing's changed about the weird beliefs, other than they got weirder. A Russian spy who's cheating on his violent Mexican chief-of-police boyfriend with the glamorous Swedish chef, by this point. (It's all very multicultural.) Itzhak must know people think that about him, as he's slugged more than one guy who ran his mouth and left a trail of broken cameras and phones in his wake.

To look at him now, you'd never think he knew it, that it was on his mind, that a thousand ugly dark things simmered in his thoughts. To look at him now is to see a man doing what he loves, lost in it, in the delicate way he presses each string, in the fluid precision of each bow stroke, coaxing notes from his strings that seem delighted to leap forth and show what they can do. He's not rocking and rolling, not at the moment; he's crafting an atmosphere, something to make people fall in love.

Not necessarily with him, of course, but from the way a few of the women in the room are watching him... well, August Roen once accused him of playing so beautifully that whoever he played for fell in love with him. ("A fairy king is going to sweep you away," is what Roen had said, teasing Itzhak.)

He's oblivious to anything happening beyond his violin for the moment. Ravn comes in, people watch him, some of them look like they want to eat him, and all he cares about is spinning gypsy jazz magic.

Ravn is only dimly aware of the multi-cultural setup of which he is supposedly part; he has noticed, of course, the newshounds and he's not blind to the headlines nor deaf to the occasional patron at the Twofer who genuinely thinks it's his or her business whom the celebrity chef slash apprentice bartender is shagging. The answer's always the same, though -- a noncommittal shrug, a non-answer. On some level, the complexity of the drama fails to register, making it all not really Ravn's problem in the first place.

Love takes many forms. The one it is taking now is a physical manifestation of body and sound. One that Ravn understands, although from a somewhat academical angle. He watches the faces, the hunger in the eyes of the people watching the violinist. Some of them are enraptured by sound; some by his appearance and his movements; and some, by both. A spellbound audience. If he had known about the fairy king analogy, odds are that he would have corrected Røn: The fairy king will not sweep Rosencrantz away because Rosencrantz is the fairy king. The pied violinist of Gray Harbor.

And we are the rats. We are the children who would follow him anywhere. This is real magic.

A hill to die on. Let this town and its Veil conjure up monsters and shadows and hummingspiders. Real magic looks and sounds like the passion of a violinist.

Itzhak winds up, letting his bow whisper into a diminuendo, putting some vibrato on it just for the hell of it. He lets his bow drop, and the patrons of Sitka applaud him. Itzhak looks out over them, blank at first, then--right! he's playing at Dante's place. He steps to the mic. "That was by the great violinist Stéphane Grappelli, called 'How High The Moon.' Anybody new here, you're gonna get a lotta this stuff because I freakin' love Grappelli." There's scattered low laughter. Itzhak pauses for a swig of the drink he's got sitting by. That's when he realizes Ravn's come in, and glances at him through the ranks of tables and people, smirking a little at him because he knows he snuck in and is hiding back there.

"Gonna switch it up," Itzhak goes on, deliberately looking away from Ravn so nobody follows his gaze. "The season's turnin' towards fall. I swear I can smell it coming. Middle of New York City, you can't smell hardly nothin' but exhaust and the hot dog cart on the corner. I can see it coming there, the way the skyscrapers start castin' longer shadows. Here, I can smell it. Walked outside this morning and was like, yep, fall's coming." He takes another drink, unhurried, making the audience wait on his pleasure.

Spotted.

Ravn nurses his bourbon with a small smile. He did not plan for the New Yorker to notice him but then, he did not exactly hide either. No doubt the other man is going to have a few comments to make later, but later is indeed later, and this is the present in which Rosencrantz is weaving spells as old as the first caveman thumping a rock against another rock and noticing that rythm is kind of interesting.

He appreciates the other man's discretion in looking away. It'd be a shame to ruin this beautiful moment -- and there's always one, it seems, some tourist with a cell phone thinking that no one will mind if they just squeeze through here, take a picture, ask a few quick questions. No one came to the Eighty-Eight to watch Ravn, and taking away attention from the actual attraction is the last thing he wants. Also because -- well, because the whole celebrity thing still isn't true and the idea that it might detract from something that is would be exceedingly frustrating.

"'So where you going with this, Rosencrantz, get to the point already.'" Itzhak grins out at the audience, which rustles back at him, quietly amused. "Gonna play you somethin' a little spooky, that's where. They say this town is spooky, they say it's got weird magic. Well, this is the magic I believe in."

And he's not even lying, is he?

He takes one last swig of his drink and sets it down. A classical singer wouldn't dare drink anything except water before or during a performance, but Itzhak's not one of those. His tradition is that of the hard-drinking, hard-smoking musicians who sold their souls to the Devil, from Paganini on down to Robert Johnson. He'll drink whiskey if he fucking wants to.

Swinging his violin to his shoulder with a flip of his sinewy wrist, he draws up a crescendo, playing fast, playing loose, a skirling country sound. Then he leans to the mic and, dropping fiddle and bow, he sings.

Woodpecker woman, chippaway, whittle, carve my name in a hick'ry fiddle
Dance all night, dream just a little, I go like the raven
Down in the meadow, deep in the holler, bullfrog sing to the bug-eyed crawler
Slide to the rake, hop to the caller, reel with the willow wavin

Shine the merlin moonbeam eye
Set my dancin feet to fly
O'er the dark and dervish sky
I go like the raven

Then up comes the violin and Itzhak fiddles away, quick and wicked.

It's probably all right to feel called out now, Ravn notes with a small grin to no one in particular. And bloody hell, that man can command an audience.

He's perfectly content, a bit relieved even, that no one else in the bar seems to catch the look. There was a time in his life when other kids occasionally accused him of picking that bloody name in order to be goth and interesting -- something he found amusing even back then because no, he did indeed not. Ravn used to be a common boy's name -- and still is, in the circles of society his parents belonged to. Couldn't have ended up with a name much more set and conservative if he tried. Take that, Lenore.

He wonders how a raven actually goes. On its wings, of course, but Ravn has never actually seen ravens fly about much. They're not common to his part of Scandinavia anymore. He saw some in Nuuk, Greenland, where they seemed to have taken over the role that blackbirds play in his home, hopping around lawns like big, black, well, blackbirds. Ravens, by that logic, go hop hop, cant head, check you out for bread crumbs, hop hop.

That is... probably not what the song writer intended to bring to mind here. Imagery of moonlight and chickadees and honeysuckle cloying up the senses resurface. He didn't make it to the Deep South. He wants to go, at some point. Wants to sit out in the wetlands, knowing that the night is dark and full of things that slither, crawl, and potentially eat you, but also beautiful and serene and wild. Nights like that no longer exist in Denmark, and probably haven't for at least a century. Too many people, too little space.

And that too is the magic of music, sending the mind down alleys and off in unexpected directions.

Long time ago I had me a feller, three-cocked hat and a coat o' yeller
Locked me down in a sawdust cellar, fed me beans and bacon
Through the doorway he did enter, played him coy, played him tender--Itzhak smirks, lip curling, voice dipping and rising to make it clear just how tender he played this imaginary feller,
Played him slumber through the winter, gone when the birds awakened!

Having felled his lover with the power of his fiddle, he swings into the chorus with a victorious lilt to his voice. Even though this song is nominally from a woman narrator, Itzhak steps into its power and makes it his own. In some ways, he has a female power, himself, a queer man unashamed of who he is or what he likes.

Shine the merlin moonbeam eye
Set my dancin feet to fly
O'er the dark and dervish sky
I go like the raven

The fiddling now, as he whips the instrument again to his shoulder, is faster and more savage. Itzhak taps one long oxford in time, rapid smacks against the hardwood floor. He's grinning to himself, ferocious, envisioning himself the wild woman-thing fiddling music and magic in the hollers.

A man so beautiful that women love him and men wish they were women.

Looking at the violinist working his spell and indeed, glancing at his enraptured audience, Ravn is reminded of a Japanese science fiction novel he picked up in an airport (and presumably left in a hotel somewhere eventually because he has no idea what happened to it later). The protagonist was like this -- possessed of a dark, seductive power and a pull that takes one look at the traditional ideas of male and female and laughs long and hard at them both. Except, of course, this was indeed a Japanese novel and the attitude of Japanese pop culture towards the whole queer phenomen back in the nineties was not exactly progressive. Which is why men wished they were women because in Japanese young adult novels of the nineties, men were manly and they sure as heck did not fantasize about other men, no matter how hot.

He gets it, though. And so did Hideyuki Kikuchi, even if he could obviously not write that outright in a story intended for that audience, at that time.

Ravn sips his bourbon and signals for a replacement. He's getting a little buzzed. That's all right. At the moment, there's nowhere he'd rather be, nothing he'd rather be doing. And on some level, the idea that the man who has the spellbound attention of the entire lounge picked out a song for him personally is absurdly flattering, and entirely too complicated to deal with in a strictly sober fashion.

Itzhak sings the next verse with an impish thrum in his throat and that fierce grin on his lips. He's having so much fun up here.

When they hear my bowstrings tightening, angels gay, devils frightenin
C'mon fire and midnight lightning, to the garden gancy
Hail the wayward werewolf howlin, haints and shades and goblins growlin
Fiends and demons, deevs a-prowlin when I break and fancy

Shine the merlin moonbeam eye
Set my dancin feet to fly
O'er the dark and dervish sky
I go like the raven!

It's a beautiful late summer evening, a week past Labor Day, the brief best of the Pacific Northwest weather. Sitka is a gorgeous, cosmopolitan bar that could have been lifted out of London whole and gently deposited in place. For once, nothing is going weird, nothing terrifying is happening--and yet. As Itzhak launches into the last lengthy run of fiddling, music snarling and leaping from his strings, the air seems to go darker and more strange. The silver aspen statue could be a massive live oak dripping with Spanish moss, the surroundings could grow vast to become the Appalachian Mountains with the audience held in the cup of a holler, while beings profane and fey cavort just outside the lantern-light.

He winds off the last mad notes with a sweep of his bow and in the same motion, leans back from the mic so he can whoop in the proper fashion. In other words, loud. Spell broken (a spell he wove with nothing but his music and his own lyrical madness), Sitka does nothing...but at the same time, becomes itself again. People in the audience are a little hesitant to applaud, glancing at each other, unsure. Itzhak smiles at them like the magician he is, everything's okay, folks, all part of the show. "'I Go Like The Raven,' by Dave Carter and Tracey Grammar. Pretty great, right?"

Then, there's applause, slow at first, but building until it's enthusiastic as heck. Itzhak bows an elegant soloist's bow.

An applause well earned, indeed, and one in which Ravn gladly participates. Some patrons will be going home tonight thinking, hey, that bloke on the violin wasn't half bad. Some will go wandering off quite shortly to do each other, enflamed by the man's sheer passion. And some will sit for a while, thinking that tonight they saw magic, real magic. They will wonder why their minds are full of whatever images and scenes their personal head canon adapts to lyrics about dark, enchanted skies, moonlight and corvids, the seductive pull of the secrets of the night. They will wonder if every night is secretly magical and the only thing that makes a regular evening mundane and trite is their own limited perception. And some of them might start looking, maybe, for a little magic of their own.

Ravn is certainly in the latter demographic. He knows it. Welcomes it, even. Has been looking for a bit of magic for far longer than he realised when a trucker in a red cap dumped him in front of Gray Harbor's art gallery.

This is the Veil's bait for me. What it offers up to me, to make me want to stay in spite of all the horrible things that keep happening to people here. In spite of good, common sense. The bait is the human connection. The notion that existing in a bubble of your own is a choice, and that you can shatter it, if you want to. A little magic of my own that is neither fantasy sparkle nor deft manual dexterity but the very sensation that there are things in life actually worth caring about. That life might happen to you, and not just to other people. All you need to do is reach out and take it. Hook, line and sinker, I swallowed everything.

Damn that bourbon. And bless it, and bless Rosencrantz, and bless this whole bloody mess of a nightmare town. It's complicated all right.

"That's my set, you all been fantastic," Itzhak's saying, to even more enthusiastic applause. There's calls of encore! and he laughs, flushing. "Maybe in a few. For now I'm turnin' you back over to Franklin, ya fiddler needs to take five." He shakes hands with the handsome dark-skinned pianist approaching the bench, leans in to murmur to him, and then they both grin at each other. Meanwhile several people from tables all around the club get up to tuck a little somethin' in Itzhak's tip jar, and a few of them pass his tip to him directly with their compliments. He's reasonably gracious about all this, joking with them and shaking hands, but there's something tired out in him, something that's done with being in the public eye.

So even he has his limits.

Once his violin is packed up and Franklin is well into a smoky jazzy piece, Itzhak slips away, weaving through tables towards Ravn.

The thought of slinking off into the night before the New Yorker can make it over to where he's sitting does flash through Ravn's mind. He gives it a few seconds of due consideration before dismissing it. If anyone is still paying attention to things in this direction it'll be Rosencrantz they're looking at -- not him. He feels awkward and very much like this place was designed with the single purpose of making him uncomfortable, but that's how it works; this is not the Eighty-Eight's fault. This is his anxieties having a party with the fact that Ravn is very well aware that he has -- well, not lied to the other man on several occasions and subjects, because keeping your mouth shut isn't lying. Except it is, and he knows it.

The Dane looks up as the other man approaches, and holds his bourbon in one hand, waving lightly with the other. "You do put on one hell of a show. Dante Taylor wasn't wrong about that."

"Thanks, bruddah, appreciate it." Itzhak drops into a seat at Ravn's table. A server comes up to set a drink in front of him, and he thanks her along with a little joke that sends her off laughing. He leans back, stretching all his long limbs, then sagging with a relieved sigh as something pops in his back. "Oy vey. This's a great suit you got by the way. Looks fantastic on you."

"I hate it," Ravn murmurs honestly. "It doesn't feel like me at all. But you walk into a place like this in jeans and t-shirt, you're going to attract a lot more attention than if you dress the part. I get more than enough attention than I want as it is. And I really did want to hear you play."

Itzhak tips head and eyebrows in the same direction, paired with a one-shouldered shrug. "You can come dressed down if you want. Dante don't want the place to be somewhere you can't come if you don't got a nice suit. I rehearse in street clothes all the time here." He's letting his mouth run a little, realizes it, and stops with a sigh, picking up his drink. "You've heard me play a bunch, Abildgaard, what makes this so special? Did you wanna see me wearin' a suit?"

"I know Taylor wouldn't insist on me dressing up but my personal ensemble of fans and photographers -- they would notice, and tomorrow I'd be reading about my new statement in the Gazette. I just wanted to see you -- not just play, but perform. Put on the full show. I mean, not that you don't look good in that suit. Just -- there's playing, and there's performing. I wanted to see that."

He trails off and looks into his glass, swirling its contents. "And I guessed that if I wanted to see you put a show -- I have to go where you put it on, yes? I admit, the idea of sneaking off before you finished did occur to me, but..."

Itzhak stretches out his legs in front of him, crosses them at the ankle. (His socks are pink.) "I guess that's fair," he murmurs, smiling with one corner of his mouth in the way he does. "Glad you didn't sneak off." He was practically glowing on stage, but now he's quieting, a little weary, a little lost. "So what did ya think?"

"I think we're going to argue about it." Ravn sips his bourbon -- and raises the empty glass a moment, just long enough for the waitress to notice. Another little mannerism of easy familiarity with this kind of scene that seems a little off for the image he usually projects with such care. "Because I'm going to say it again. This is the difference between someone who has learned how to play, and someone who is a true musician. I could never do what you do, Rosencrantz. Never."

There--that little flare of anger. Yep, they're gonna argue about it. Itzhak narrows his eyes. "I know you didn't just say you're not a real musician," he mutters, giving Ravn a hell of a side-eye. "If you're not a real musician, nobody's a real musician. What's that supposed to mean?"

"That," Ravn says quietly and looks towards the place by the piano where the other man was standing a moment before, spell binding his audience. "Standing there. Playing. Being the music. In front of an audience that loved every minute. I couldn't do it. I wouldn't manage to squeeze a note. Odds are I'd faint before they even got me near the piano."

"Who gives a shit?" Itzhak's tone ratchets up a notch, making a nearby couple glance at him. He ignores them. "If someone's real good at painting but never shows anyone, does that make 'em not a painter? No, that's ridiculous. What's important is that you do it and you love doing it. Why should it matter if you can't play in front of an audience?"

"It matters to me. And it's why watching you here is important to me. Because it's the whole experience." Ravn falls quiet when the waitress delivers his bourbon. Only when she leaves again does he look at the other man again. "I mean, you're not wrong. And I am glad I let Taylor convince me to come watch you play. You're a genuine showman, Rosencrantz. You've got a something that makes them eat out of your hand. How would I not appreciate watching that? I used to be a confidence artist, getting that kind of attention out of people is hard bloody work."

Itzhak's mouth twists downwards. "I don't like hearin' you talk about yourself like that." But it's not an order to stop. Not that. He shrugs again, more uncomfortably this time, and sips at his drink. "I never used to be a front man. Not like this. Lyric put me in front of her band because they needed a lead singer. I tried to tell 'em, shit, I'm a backup singer at best...but she was right. She saw me at karaoke and told me to come audition. So what the hell, I did. Now look at me." Dry.

"Nobody's perfect." Ravn throws the other man a small, crooked smile over the edge of his tumbler. "And looking at you is exactly what I've been doing for the last hour. I rather enjoyed the experience."

His gaze wanders to the piano and the dark-skinned man teasing sensual jazz from it; Franklin is no hack either but the piano never talked to Ravn the way his own instrument of choice does; never whispered seductively or breathed against his chin the way a violin will. The mood of the lounge is pleasant, laid back in that if there's trouble, it's somebody else's trouble manner of people who can afford to hire people. Not everyone is more or less self-proclaimed society -- Taylor has made little secret of his intention to turn the Eighty-Eight into a place of quality, yes, but also a place where the natives of Gray Harbor feel welcome as well, taste a little of the finer things in life. There are people in this audience who absolutely think they're all that and a bag of very exquisite chocolates. And there are people who, like the two men at the table, dress up for the occasion and then go home to far humbler abodes. Some might consider it a curious experiment in social machinations.

He looks back at Rosencrantz and decides to leave the matter of stage performances be, at least for now. The two men are from very different worlds, have led very different lives; right now is one of those times Ravn feels the differences between them keenly. "I liked that song -- the one about going with the raven. Cajun? And don't think I didn't notice you calling me out there, though I'd argue that spell binding lovers in some swamp shack surrounded by werewolves and crocodiles is not something I've done whole lot in the past." A small grin flits across his face. "Who knows, maybe I should give it a shot sometime."

The ice in Itzhak's glass clinks as he tips it for a drink--and then he blushes, sliding Ravn a narrow sideways glance that's not terribly serious. (He has to tilt the glass carefully so he doesn't just dunk his huge nose in it.) "You can blame Dante, he's the one who was excited to play dress-up with me and got me all this." His last two fingers, not wrapped around the glass, flick down at himself to indicate his threads. "I get more numbers in my tip jar, let me tell you." Drinking, he allows Ravn to change the subject. "Mm. Alligators, mostly. American crocodiles got a real limited range."

That's what's important here, correct crocodilian identification.

"Anyway, nah, it's kind of...I dunno, doesn't really have a genre name. Country but with magic. Great band, if you liked that, you'll love the rest of their stuff." Itzhak quirks half a smile back at Ravn. "People tell me I spellbind lovers. I gotta say it's a good time."

"Can't say I've tried it," Ravn murmurs with a lopsided smile. "I'm not really -- you know, very romantically inclined. Had a total of one steady relationship and that didn't exactly end well. But I can relate to the idea. To be madly in love with somebody, to obsess enough that you want to keep them right there with you and the rest of the world can go to hell. Just you and that other person, and nothing else matters."

Then he laughs softly and sips his own drink, smooth and wonderful bourbon -- a simple drink for a simple man, or at least he likes to tell himself that he is. "You know, I can absolutely picture Dante Taylor playing dress-up with you. He's a generous nature and he really, really likes fancy clothes. You probably made his week, letting him do it."

Itzhak looks over, eyebrows tilted, gray eyes hooded. "Just one?" he murmurs, lips against the glass.

Ravn looks away, anywhere else. The bar is nice. There are people there, ordering colourful drinks from colourful bottles with colourful labels. He wants to wonder at who they are and why they are here tonight, and anything else that might be less bloody embarassing. He can feel a slight flush creeping up his neck and he mentally curses the fact that he's wearing a button up shirt with the top buttons left open, instead of one of his customary turtlenecks.

There goes my dignity. Was nice knowing you, dignity.

"I'm not very romantically inclined," he murmurs, repeating himself. "Some people aren't, you know. You have to... open up a lot. Give a lot. Let someone in, let them see who you really are. Take chances. I'm not very good at that."

Quiet, with the ear of a musician, Itzhak listens. His eyes drop down to the skin exposed by Ravn's open collar, and he huffs a silent laugh through his nose. It's a with-you-not-at-you kinda laugh, from the guy who blushes a lot. In fact he sympathy blushes himself, and rubs at his throat with a bemused expression. "Guess that's true." Which part? All of the above. "Worst times of my life were when I had to hide who I was."

"Yeah. I sound like a complete dick saying it but, honestly, I just don't see how it's worth it. I have had that argument a great deal of times with well meaning people, though." Ravn shrugs and samples the golden bourbon in his tumbler. He is not blushing. You are blushing. There is no blush if one ignores it hard enough. "And that's it exactly. Hiding is... what I do. Not because I have anything in particular to be ashamed of. No horrible secrets swept under the carpet, I just -- don't really work well with people."

He's had a few. It loosens tongues. He'll probably deny that this conversation ever took place, come the morning. For now, though, the urge to talk about things that should be kept quiet overrides the need to keep them quiet. "I've wondered sometimes. Talked to a few therapists, that sort of thing -- trying to find out if I'm on the spectrum or something like that. They all said I'm not. That I just don't understand how to connect with people, that I don't see when they reach out to me. Or sometimes I do but I'm just thinking, oh heavens, no, I can't deal with this."

Itzhak mms, slouching gracefully back in the chair while Franklin plays jazz and servers move about and people at tables talk low or listen. "Ain't gonna argue with you about that, why should I? You are how you are. Bein' yelled at don't change that, ask me how I know." He sets the drink on the table, fingers cupped loosely around it, thumb rubbing a rhythmic little squeak on the glass. "I reached out to you," he says quietly. "Seemed to work okay. Even though I'm on the spectrum myself."

"You scared the shit out of me, that's what you did." Ravn toys with his glass and can't help a small laugh at the memory of himself and the other man on the beach, surf lapping at their ankles, playing Brahm's in duet at the sunrise.

"I freeze up when there are too many people looking at me. Most of the time I can handle one on one, or a few people -- more so if they're pretty straight forward. I was in a ... situation, a few days back. A shop. And things happened -- as they do around here. I froze. I could hear my brain shutting down. If Maggi Gyre had not been there to do whatever it was she did to my head I'd probably have just run right out of there, leaving everyone else to sort things out." The copper blond remembers the feeling of noise in his mind, and sets his glass down; old habits die hard and hands sometimes start shaking when he thinks of these matters. "Think I might have had enough. I'm getting into drunken confessions mode here, aren't I?"

A low chuckle in Itzhak's chest is Ravn's reward for that bit of honesty. "Roen and de la Vega steered away meltdowns for me once or twice. Weird fuckin' feeling."

He was such a glittering presence on stage, but now it seems he's put it aside, and it's time for a quiet moment in the back of the club with this new friend of his. Who confesses further to him, and Itzhak grimaces in sympathy. "So that's why you can't play in front of an audience? ...aww," as Ravn says he's had enough. "I thought the drunken confessions were just getting good." A glint of that mischief in his eye sparks to life. "Fine, I guess you deserve a drunken confession from me. Whaddaya wanna hear?"

"What do I want to hear..." Ravn looks thoughtful. If he is indeed a bit drunker than he wants to admit, then at least he's not one of those drunks who get loud and insist everyone is their best friend, or try to pick fights. Not very surprising, really, that he would be the introspective kind. Then steel grey eyes fix on the other man and he asks, "How do you deal with -- well, half this bloody town gets this dreamy-eyed look when they talk about you. They've seen you perform like you did tonight and at least as far as they're concerned, you're a star. How do you even go pick up groceries without people being all over you? How do you cope with all that attention?"

"Shit," Itzhak mutters as a blush blooms vividly on him from scalp down into his collar. It's wry, though, amused. He loosens the knot of his tie so he can undo his own top button. "Uh. I don't deal with it so good," is his confession. "Mostly by being an asshole, which comes pretty natural. You run away from people when they're too much, I get in their faces." Which Ravn got to witness him doing, that night on the beach, when he'd realized Ravn had been less than totally honest about his violin skill.

He goes thoughtful, studying the whiskey in his glass. The ice is one of those beautiful clear spheres that lasts forever. "It's just runnin' away with a twist. I yell at someone, they think I'm a dick, they don't bother me. ...it's weird, actually. I hated attention all my life. I woulda told Lyric to go jump in a lake before I got here. Front man, are you kidding, no fucking way. Let me stand in the back and fiddle, that's what I'm good at. But something changed."

The other man can't help laugh as he reaches for his glass again, tension diffused a little. "I get that, I really do. So essentially -- you're as terrified as I am. You just don't cave to it. That's admirable, Itzhak -- I mean that. I could do with some of that. I was raised to not argue. I mean, I'm not British, obviously, but that whole 'keep a stiff upper lip' thing, that's where I'm from. I kind of wish I had a little of your -- what's the word, chutzpah?"

"What changed? It's Gray Harbor, isn't it?" Ravn's face is open with curiousity and perhaps a little flushed from the alcohol and the heat of the room full of people on a warm summer's night. "It just won't let me do my thing. I keep meeting people and meeting them again. I'm making friends. I've spent three years of my life very pointedly avoiding the hell out of any kind of commitment. This town changes people."

Itzhak really grins at that one, crow's-feet crinkling. "Yeah, well, arguing is what Jews do best. Chutzpah has a slightly different meaning in Yiddish than in English though. In English it kinda means brass balls, right? In Yiddish it's an insult, and a nasty one. The definition of chutzpah is someone who murders his parents, then asks for the mercy of the court because he's an orphan. In Yiddish, I'm more of a gembeh and a no-goodnik. A loudmouth hooligan, in other words.

"...yeah," this about Gray Harbor changing people. "It changes you. Kinda part, I think, because it's so messed up. Stuff that was important before ain't so important anymore, and new stuff is more important. My sister said cancer's like that. Changes your priorities. And part..." Itzhak pauses. He's smiling when he goes on. "For me, I think maybe it's part being with de la Vega. He's into me bein' on stage and all. And, I dunno, I think...I just feel safe with him. Nothing and nobody's gonna get through him, yannow?"

"I don't know, no. But I like the sound of it." Ravn nods firmly. "I only know the chief as someone who orders tequila at the bar and who took time out of his schedule to come look at that camera lens on my boat, really. He's very intense. Pretty intimidating if I have to be honest -- I mean, I'm not a small guy, but de la Vega is somehow capable of staring me down from -- well, down. You could definitely convince me that he's the wrong man to screw with."

He pauses. Realises what he just said. And backs up with a soft laugh. "All right. Wrong man to piss off. You know what I meant."

"Yeah. Definitely like the sound of it. Who knows? I've been here a month and I've probably talked to more people in that month than I have in the previous decade. Give it a year at this rate, I might be settling with a wife and kid somewhere for all I know." Ravn grins slightly; he's joking, clearly, and then maybe not entirely. "Gray Harbor is a wild ride. I don't know what's happening to me, but I think that on some level, the fact that it's happening is a good thing. I belong here."

Doesn't Itzhak look pleased? "That's my man," he murmurs. That's the look of a man in love: his smile gone private, his tense expressive face softened, and a gleam in his eyes speaks far more than he could ever say with all the words at his disposal.

All of which fades when he reruns what Ravn said through processing. "He's the interim chief. It's not his permanent post. He's a captain." Why is Itzhak being insistent that his boyfriend has a lower rank? Possibly mysterious, but the look he gives Ravn is very serious. Then, wry, he hitches a shoulder. "So, yeah, if he and me are settling down, and with each other no less, it can happen to you too. If I didn't come here, I never woulda met him. And if other stupid Gray Harbor shit didn't happen, we wouldn'ta got involved. Hate to say it, but him and me, we belong here too. Until further notice, you know what I'm sayin'?"

On stage, Franklin's saying into the mic, "Rosencrantz, where'd you slink off to? You promised these good people an encore." The good people applaud encouragingly.

Itzhak sighs, but he doesn't mean it, it's for show, and flashes a half grin at Ravn. "Duty calls." He knocks back his drink and gets up to wend his way back to the piano.

Ravn signals for another bourbon. He has every intention of watching the other man perform until the second but last note, and then slink off into the night unnoticed.

He doesn't drink to the point of inebriation often. Drunk men say stupid things. He's pretty certain that this time, at least, he managed to not say anything too embarrassing, but it's always better to play it safe.

Bloody hell, that man can perform, though.