2021-01-17 - Boy Talk (Exactly What It says On the Tin)

Somewhere outside there's the rumble of Itzhak's shop truck. Then there's his voice exchanging a few words with the woman half of that Polish couple who fight all the time--he reminds them of the old country. Then he's tap-tap-tapping on Ravn's Airstream door. "Yo, Abildgaard, open up, we got business!"

His business with Ravn this evening is apparently serious, because he's got a canvas grocery bag full of what looks like liquor and soda and food.

Ravn eyes the grocery bag with one quirked eyebrow even as he lets the other man in. "This is either the smallest party in the world, or you've got something serious on your mind. What's up? Do I skip the make coffee part and go straight for a couple of glasses?"

He's made the place his own, after a fashion. There are natural limits as to how homey you can make what's essentially a combined bedroom and kitchenette on wheels, but with the chat noir glaring down from one wall and various piles of books and cat here and there, there is a decidedly Abildgaard feel to the place. Much like on the Vagabond, Ravn has managed to use sparse belongings in a small space to somehow make the trailer feel like his territory. He travels light, but nothing in his meager inventory is accidental.

Except, perhaps, that pile of books over there which goes mao? as a small black head pops up. Somebody else owns this territory too.

Both Itzhak and Ravn are tall dudes; the two of them in the Airstream at the same time seems to stuff the place to overflowing. Itzhak maneuvers in nonetheless, setting his bag on the tiny dinette table. He's moving funny, a little stiff, a little favoring. "Hell, rum's good in coffee too, I don't mind if you make it."

But, apparently, rum is on the menu, as he unpacks his bag. Rum, yep, a middle of the road decent brand, one regular and one coconut. A couple two-liters of Coke. A bag of limes. Pineapple-mango-orange juice and a jar of maraschino cherries, the fancy expensive kind. And, out of the pocket of his ancient battered GHDP hoodie, a baggie with a couple of thick joints.

Itzhak is serious about this shit. He glances over at the little black ears that pop up and smiles a touch. "Hi there, sweetheart, I brought something for you too." Which turns out to be a bag of soft meaty cat treats.

He pulls his knit cap off and--hey look at that, he is shaved down to the scalp, completely bald except for the faintest dark shadow of hair.

"Did you have a fight with an angry barber? Stick your head in a lawn mower? The heck?" Ravn does a double take at the sight. Itzhak's trade mark black curls are -- well, his trademark. "Bad dream? Other bad news? You're not shy of drinking but this looks like get drunk enough for confessions and mutual sobbing time."

He puts the kettle on while procuring a couple of whiskey tumblers -- his array of available glassware is not quite satisfactory from a bartender's point of view, so it's those or wine glasses. Meanwhile, the owner of the black ears saunters onto the table because she has no manners whatsoever and the newest minion brought interesting things from a kitty perspective.

"Bad dream, bad fuckin' day," Itzhak mutters. He's also got other stuff: roast beef, pickles, horseradish in a little jar, a loaf of sliced sourdough, and salt and vinegar chips. Oh man, he came loaded for bear. This has all the signs of a serious drunk-on in the making. Kitty Pryde hopping on the table gets him to try luring her off it with a treat. "C'mon, feet off the table, were you born in a barn?" But his tone is kind and he's offering her a bribe to get down.

Kitty Pryde swats at the treat but shows no intention of leaving the table. Sitting on it, she will be the centrepiece of the conversation after all. The boss of Ravn's life is how she thinks of herself, and she misses no chance to remind the world of this fact.

Her minion settles across from Itzhak and quirks that eyebrow again. "I'm getting used to the idea that dreams can land you with a meat cleaver in one arm and cost you a jacket that you're very fond of since you've had it for a decade. This is the first time I've considered the idea of that a dream might cost me my gorgeous copper curls, though, and now I'm truly terrified."

His hair is too short to curl even if it tried (which it doesn't). Ravn's not letting facts get in the way of a joke, though. "Want to talk about it? Or do we skip right to drinking and swearing about things? Tell me what to swear about."

"Please, you should know from curls!" Itzhak tucks the treat back into the bag and zips it up. "I asked nice, but you didn't want it," he informs the cat, amused, because she is being a cat. "You wanna Malibu Sunrise or a Cuba Libre?" That's to the cat's minion, as Itzhak sits to join him. Then he gusts a sigh and makes the gesture to rake through his curls, but, oh, no curls. So he scruffs over his stubble furiously. "Goddammit. Cavanaugh said it looked good at least. I don't even know where to start. I'm just sick of literally fucking everything in this fucking town."

"It doesn't look bad at all. Just different from how I'm used to picturing you. Cuba Libre -- I think. Either's good." Ravn dips into the pocket of that poor ruined coat and takes out a packet of cigarettes. He lights one with a match and leaves the match on the table. "Not sure whether Vic considers this place non-smoking or not, but I'm of the mind that I'll make sure she never knows and that means I don't need to ask. So, I'm guessing that you don't mean to say you've become the official fucker of everyone in Gray Harbor -- but that you're tired as shit of everything. Lay it on me?"

Itzhak snorts a laugh. "Nah, I ain't, but you'd never know it the way some people act. Jesus, I'm tired of the way de la Vega gets treated too." That makes him hesitate, glancing at Ravn like he's said too much. "Forget it," he mutters, and flicks out his pocketknife to start slicing limes. "There's a ton of bullshit going on I can't tell you about and I kinda hate it. No, I REALLY hate it. And I wish I could tell you." Vengefully he stuffs an entire cut-up lime into his tumbler. He must like a very limey Cuba Libre. "Fuck, I'm just so fucking over it. I want it to be done with."

Ravn nods slightly. "I hang out with people like Kelly and Seth Monaghan, there's lots of questions I don't ask. But I still get the general sentiment -- people treat each other like shit sometimes, and there's probably an entire forest's worth of tree-like entanglements of owed favours, old debts, people who are other people's people, and so on. It's like that anywhere that's out of the public eye, Itz. At least you don't have the element of clan feuds -- or I suppose you actually do if we include the Baxters and Addingtons."

He studies the New Yorker's face. "I don't need to be up to speed on the jungle drums to realise that sometimes, de la Vega's job must suck. Or that this town has a number of things going on under the surface that really doesn't deal well with sunlight."

Itzhak's hard-worn face has all its lines showing; a sure tell of the stress he's under. But he sighs, letting his hands come to rest for a moment on the table like battered and bruised butterflies. STAY and DOWN are inked forever on those huge knuckly paws of his. He's been fighting; there's bruises and scrapes.

"Yeah," he murmurs. "Yeah, exactly that." He cracks the rum to pour it. "And his job sucks all the time. He pulls back to back shifts pretty often, I find him asleep in the shower. I always heard being a cop's wife was tough, now I know why. Not that we're married. But maybe someday. He didn't even wanna date at first, either." The thought does make him smile a little, again. He pours the Coke, then sets to slicing up another lime for Ravn. A bartender he ain't, but that's why he brought the makings of the simplest possible drinks.

"The bloke owns the desk where the buck stops," Ravn nods. "Authorities coming down on him, no doubt, about the high murder rate here. Finances? Any organisation has accountants bleating about the costs. Community? Police is doing too much or too little, or they should be doing something else. People don't like police -- because almost everyone's got a guilty conscience about something. And yet they sure as hell complain when the police isn't there. It has to be an extremely ungrateful job. Heaven knows I'm used to thinking of the pigs as the enemy -- I've actually had to do some readjusting of how I think and feel on that one, after settling here. Mostly because most GHPD people I've met have been folks just trying to do their bloody jobs, make life a little safer."

"Big fuckin' mood," Itzhak says, crankily--well, he's doing everything crankily. "The NYPD is the nastiest gang in the city. They do what they want, when they want. It ain't like that here. Here they're just tryin' to stay afloat, help someone make it to another day. Maybe there's New York cops who do that too, but I only ever met one. And I didn't fuck him."

Ravn's drink prepared, he slides it over to him. He went slightly less on the lime for that one. Slightly. Then he sips his own, a distinctly brooding cast to his eyebrows, and gets out a pack of cigarettes to shake one out then toss the pack on the table.

"I didn't fuck any cop that I ever knew about, until de la Vega," he adds. "But Marines and ex-Marines? By the dozen, man."

"Hey, whatever rocks the boat, bad pun absolutely intended." Ravn grins slightly and samples the rum. "Mm, not bad. You're as good as mixing these as I am, which is kind of embarrassing for someone who did at least a few shifts as a bartender. Copenhagen police has that rep too. Small town like the one I'm from? It's more you know which pigs to avoid, and which will just take some pot off you and move on. There's always going to be at least one guy in the precinct who gets off on bullying people. But still, when some jackass is taking a knife to his wife, no one's sorry to see the cops turning up before he cuts her to ribbons, you know?"

He shrugs. "I guess everyone's gone through some part of their troubled youth where they did things they knew they'd end up regretting later. I never had a fuck anything that moves phase -- but I had a women are evil and the feminazi conspiracy phase is what's wrong with the world phase when I was in my very early twenties, I suppose that counts."

Itzhak hitches his eyebrows in a wordless acknowledgement, but he doesn't remain wordless for long. Does he ever? "Thanks. I only know how to do these real simple ones. Those are always the ones I like best anyway. Complicated shit, eh, it just tastes complicated." Lighting his cigarette, he nods--then snorts smoke out in a huff of a laugh. "I made up for lost time when I got outta prison, believe you me. For a pretty good while, the only things I was good at was gettin' laid and fiddling. The second helped a lot with the first. Feminazi conspiracy, really? Shit. I bet I had more fun."

"Probably. I got into the so-called manosphere because I was kind of looking for reasons I seemed to be born single and staying that way. I got out of it again when I realised that it's basically a community of men who are convinced that women don't like them because their jaw is one tenth millimeter too narrow or that because they're tools of a globalist conspiracy to replace the white race. I don't think I need to tell you of all people what globalist is a replacement word for, and at some point a guy has to go take a look in the mirror instead of blaming everyone else for the parts of his life that he's unhappy with. If you meet one asshole, he's an asshole. If you meet two, maybe they're both assholes. If you meet fifty, then you're likely to be the asshole." The Dane puts his feet up on the chair next to him. "Self pity gets boring after a while. There's a lot of guys out there, though, who are absolutely genuine in their belief that if they can't get laid, it's because society is failing to provide the women they are owed."

That really makes Itzhak laugh. "Look, if a guy with a schnozz like this one can get laid like tile, it ain't that ya jaw is a millimeter too narrow. Jesus, is that really what they think? I mean, to be fair, I slept with more guys than girls. Maybe those manosphere guys oughta try that, they hate women so much. I mean, it's the obvious solution!" Itzhak...pretty clearly is not familiar with the scene. "Yeah, I know what globalist means. It means the guy saying 'globalists' needs a fist to the face. He wants to be scared of Jews, I'll teach him."

Then he's eyeing Ravn through the smoke. "Glad you're not like that no more. I like you like this a lot better."

"I can read. Some of this stuff makes sense at first glance. But when you start read through the supposed philosophy and treatises by the top brass of the movement, it loses cohesion fast. Apply a bit of fact and source checking and there's nothing of that card house left standing. Those writers are a group of smart white guys who found a way to make money off not so smart white guys looking for scapegoats. It's a scam." Ravn can't help laugh at the New Yorker's pretty obvious suggestion for a solution, and adds, "I mean, they should absolutely be screwing each other instead sitting around mewling, then, but they're all pretty damn homophobic on top."

He glances at Itzhak curiously and seems to hesitate for a second. But there's rum and while most of that is still in the bottles and not in the men -- a situation which shall be remedied, no doubt -- this is definitely the kind of situation that qualifies for asking questions you'd never ask while sober. "Is it very different, then? I mean, being with a guy. Not so much the bits -- more, the whole experience?"

"Yeah well you know what they say about real homophobic guys. They're just trying to convince themselves they don't wanna take it up the ass." Itzhak's making pretty good progress on his drink because he needs to get his drink on. He keeps looking at the joints consideringly, too.

The question from Ravn makes him look at him, eyebrows way up in surprise. Then he breaks into a grin that seems to forget all the troubles that drove him here in the first place. Ravn asked a thing! "Yeah. Yeah, actually, it's real different. Guys aren't soft like women. Not even chubby guys, it's still different. Got a lot more hair, got stubble, which I'm into." That turns him a little red, inevitably. "Heavier all around, a lot more muscle usually. Guys can act pretty damn different, too. You ask a girl you never met before to sneak into the bathroom with you, ya liable to get pepper sprayed. Ask a queer guy, chances are pretty good he's down. ...Uh, why?"

The other man hitches a shoulder and keeps pace where the rum is concerned. "Because why not? Can't help but wonder sometimes, but it's not the kind of question you'd just walk up and ask some queer guy in a bar -- mostly because he might think you're looking to hook up, yeah. I kinda figured it wouldn't be so different and at the same time, that it'd be very different. Guess it depends a lot on context? Whether you're hooking up with someone and moving on the day after, or you're after something more permanent."

"Some guy comes up to me in a bar and asks me what it's like to fuck a man, that'd be the first thing outta my mouth. 'Wanna find out?'" Itzhak smirks, obviously picturing it. "Guy who looks like you, I'd figure there was no way he didn't want a piece of the action. Maybe he wouldn't know it, but just him asking would make me think he wants it." He tips the glass back to empty it, pours himself some more. "It's kinda complicated sometimes like that. Guy really might not know he's queer, not on the surface. Not me, I always knew, but I known plenty who had to figure it out." Something about the way his eyebrows pop up manages to imply a 'like my actual current boyfriend' without saying it.

The statement about moving on the day after makes him shrug. "I never dated a guy I didn't hook up with first. Probably a bunch of times." There go the eyebrows again: 'also like my actual current boyfriend'. "But honestly? I hardly dated anybody, not really. Aside from the schmuck I told you about, there was only a couple others. 'Cause I was a lousy fuckin' boyfriend and people could tell. Hot lay, yes, someone to bring home to Ma, not so much." He refocuses on Ravn. "How 'bout you?"

Ravn decides that he is as capable as Itzhak of mixing the next batch of drinks -- he's the one who's had bartending lessons, surely he can be trusted with a fruit knife. Doing so also gives him something to do with his hands, a fact which he's not sorry about because this is not a kind of conversation he's really accustomed to having, and it's not a topic he's accustomed to breaching in conversation.

The Dane chuckles lightly and murmurs, "Well, I've only gotten on the dating level and beyond with one woman -- you met her, and killed her a second time. She was the one doing the hard work there -- I really am pretty oblivious when it comes to picking up on those things, it's not just something I'm faking to avoid having to deal with complications. I used to get propositioned now and then -- single guy with a name back home, or for that matter, other warm body in a bus stop somewhere -- but most of the time, there's just not the level of trust I'm comfortable with. Even just for a hookup, I need to know that they get the whole neuropathy deal. Otherwise, it's going to be a pretty damn unpleasant experience on my end. And, of course, I'm not into guys -- which narrows the field somewhat, since women tend to rush into things less."

Itzhak takes a long drink this time, not least because Ravn's talking. And talking. And TALKING. He drinks, and pulls off his smoke, and listens with that musician's ear, finely tuned to the music of speech. Even though he doesn't always, or even most times, quite get all the subtext.

He lets Ravn run out of words, and then he lets the silence hang there. Two beats. Three. Four, getting uncomfortably long now. Then he stirs from his drinking-and-smoking slouch.

"Hey, listen. You don't gotta justify yourself to me." Itzhak quirks one eyebrow at Ravn, just one. "You're talking a whole lot and usually you do that when you're freaked the hell out. You don't gotta convince me of a single. Damn. Thing. Aight?"

Ravn opens his mouth. Then he shuts it again. He glances at Itzhak and then back at the fruit, and then back up at Itzhak. And finally, he just shrugs a little helplessly and says, "I suck at this, all right? Doesn't mean I'm not curious. Just, inexperienced. And a little embarrassed about it."

Itzhak reaches over and pats the table nearish Ravn's hand, as a substitute for actual contact. "Just because ya boy here is a total slut don't mean you gotta be embarrassed. Not for being inexperienced. Why should there be anything wrong with that? It's okay if you suck at it, too. You got a lot of shit going on. That said, I'm embarrassed about a whole lotta ridiculous stuff so I feel ya." That crooked grin appears. "Drink more, it'll help."

"Hell all the yes." Ravn slides one glass Itzhak's way and helps himself to a generous sampling of the other. "I think you're supposed to be know how to do this stuff when you're thirty. Or maybe never, who the hell knows. I like women. I just don't understand women."

Tipping a hand and his head back and forth in the classic gesture, Itzhak says, "Ehhhhhh," (also classic), "who says you're supposed to? Man, everybody's different. It don't matter. You live your life like you live it." With a snort of a laugh, he adds, "Nobody understands women. If I understood women I wouldn't have lost two girlfriends in the space of like, three months. They both really had enough of me."

Which calls for another drink.

Ravn gets to peeling the next lime. "Yeah, that's... harsh, mate. I'm not good at letting anyone that close to me. I never even really let Benedikte that close. I do wonder sometimes. About the things I miss the cues for, I mean. Like that bloody stargazing on boats thing. I really had no idea what was going on there. Makes a guy wonder what else he missed, you know? I'm no different from other blokes, I figure. I'd like to figure it out some day, just like other guys."

"I had to teach myself." Itzhak hitches one shoulder. The ice in his glass clinks as he swirls it. "I really had to fuckin' study people and work it out, like, painfully and slowly. And Christ knows I miss a ton of shit still, but when someone's into me, that I can ehhh mmmmostly figure out." There goes the hand wobble again. "Javier did me the favor of making it real obvious. Bex too. Isolde, eventually, but I made her be obvious. On purpose, so I should know if she actually wanted to go to bed with me or not. 'Cause sometimes I really can't figure shit out. I think of a lot of it like a math problem. You know. Girl plus booze, plus coming to my place alone at night, plus some kinda plausible Netflix-and-chill excuse, equals she wants a ride."

"Makes sense when you put it like that, yeah." Ravn reaches for another cigarette; keeping those hands busy is not a bad idea. "That doesn't usually happen to me, you know? The coming to my place with some excuse thing. I've had the occasional direct 'So, are we going to fuck?' in hostels and places like that. At least then I know what I'm dealing with."

"Most women don't work like that, direct, though it's nice when they do." Itzhak stubs his cigarette out, eyes the pack considering another, debating the merits--then what the hell, takes another himself. This is a conversation for heavy smoking. Vic's just going to have to be mad. He shifts, stiffly, and lights up. "Yeah? Not real surprised," he murmurs, about Benedikte. "She don't strike me as the kind of girl it's easy to love. Okay, now I'm gonna lecture you though, so strap in.

"This's something Roen told me, and it's true as hell. Sometimes you meet somebody and all the barriers you put up, all the ways you try to say, nah, I'm not someone you want, I ain't someone you want in your life...they just stroll on in. They see you, they want you, boom, that's it, and you can't stop it no matter how much you try to tell 'em that you're a pile of hot garbage. The right people for you, the ones who fit you like a puzzle piece, that's what they do. Ya fiancee? Not one of them. I dunno if you ever said yes to one of them hostel girls, but not them neither. Roen was like that for me. De Santos was like that for me. De la Vega, too."

Itzhak pauses. He taps the ash off. He quirks half a smile at Ravn. "You're like that, too."

"Yeah. I definitely get that," Ravn says and smiles in a lopsided fashion that makes him look almost boyish. "Yeah. That's what this place has been like for me a lot. And some of the people here -- like a certain ass who made me play with him in the surf in spite of all my efforts to convince him that I sound like I torture cats. It's just... right. And I can deal with that? It's different -- deeper, somehow. It's not looking at someone and thinking to yourself that you wouldn't half mind a piece of that. I'm not going to say its not love but it's a different kind of love. Like you find your people, you come home."

He cuts the lime into little limey boats. "Different things, relationships and, well, relationships."

"It is love." Itzhak's definitely drunk enough to say that, his smile growing into a brilliant flash for a moment when Ravn calls him 'a certain ass'. "It don't seem all that different to me. A little, sure. Mostly, though? Just seems to me like sometimes my dick is involved and sometimes it ain't." He ruminates on that. "My dick gets me in trouble, so it's for the best when it ain't."

"See? I keep mine in my pants, I don't get these problems." Ravn nods with the absolute seriousness of a man who is on his third glass of rum in entirely too little time. "I have this idea that if I meet a woman again sometime who's genuinely interested in me -- in me, not just some bloke to fool around until the right guy comes along. Then it'll be like that. She'll walk into my life whether I give in or put up a fight."

Itzhak claims a limey boat to squeeze it, then drop it, into his drink. Guy likes things sour, what can we say? His Cuba Libres are a lot more rum and lime than they are cola. "I think it'll be like that," he says, licking lime juice off his thumb with the unselfconsciousness of a cat washing. "The other real kinda relationship I had before," before, that time they both know, before Gray Harbor, "was the front man of the band I was in. And he sure as hell was like that. Heard me fiddling one night in this old-timey string store in Brooklyn, he walked in and said, you, I want you in my band. I thought he must have been crazy. Well, he was crazy, turned out, the good kind of crazy. I think it's like that. I think it's just like that. The right people come and you can't help but let 'em in. Can't help but love 'em."

He's drunkenly rambling, a little (a lot), and clears his throat and hoists his eyebrows at Ravn. "Okay, listen, I said you don't gotta justify yourself to me about what you like, and you don't. I mean that. You don't gotta explain anything about why you don't this or that. Who cares? But." And he leans forward over the tiny table, smile crooked and more than a little wicked. "You do gotta tell me what you like."

The first thought that goes through Ravn's head at that crooked smile goes something along the lines of, Whelp, now would be the right time to say something about inner strength and connecting on a deeper level. But that's not at all what the other man means, and while Ravn is in fact very good at faking obtuse, Itzhak knows him too damn well to buy that act. A fact which leads to the next conclusion: There's usually two reasons that a guy might ask question like that, and since the New Yorker knows that Ravn isn't on the table figuratively speaking, the conclusion here has to be that it's the other -- he's genuinely curious.

He takes a generous sip from his drink -- more cola, less lime for him -- and thinks a moment before grinning slightly. "It's not so much looks that does it for me. Though a face and body that looks like it was designed by a surgeon kind of undoes it for me. I don't mind looking at a good ass in a pair of tight jeans, and living next to a beach isn't going to be a bad thing when the bikini season starts. That what you're after?"

"Aww man, those girls--and guys too, in New York--with all the plastic surgery?" Itzhak rolls his eyes. "I mean, whatever they wanna do, but that does the opposite of turn me on." His smile turns approving. "Yeah, that's what I'm after. Keep going. You a boob man? An ass man? What is it about a girl that makes you turn ya head when she walks past?"

"I don't read faces very well, so yeah -- botox away the ability to emote, and it's like watching a plastic doll make noises." Ravn gives a theatrical little shudder. He tilts his head slightly, considering the question with the solemnity of a guy who just had three strong rum drinks in rapid succession and is giving serious thought to chatting up the next. "Mostly it's the attitude. Girl walks in like she knows exactly who she is and what she wants, that gets my attention. Not complaining if she's got a pretty face or a good rack to rest my eyes on but I do like a pair of hips that say 'hold on here, big guy'."

Is he blushing? He actually is, a bit. Must be the rum. "I'm not really the prude I must be coming across as," the Dane murmurs as a not too sober afterthought. "I'm just not used to talking about it? And not in a foreign language at that? I don't want to sound like a shallow piece of shit."

Itzhak points at Ravn like he might be a genius. "The faces, right? I feel you on that. Tough for me to pick up cues as it is." Tipping up his drink, he's nodding as Ravn goes on. "Yeah. Me too. Attitude, on just about anybody. I like the ones who're trouble." Laughing, he adds, "I mean, obviously, right?" with a flourish of one wrist as if to present Javier de la Vega. "Oh, I love a good pair of hips on a woman. A good ass on anybody. I actually like boobs on the smaller side but I used to go with this one girl, everything on her was huge. Breasts, hips, ass, thighs, belly, Christ so hot. Like one of them goddess statues." When he rolls his eyes this time it's appreciative for a long-ago lover.

He's turning a little red, too, which gets worse when Ravn does. But he just says, "Nah, I don't think you're a prude. Or a shallow piece of shit. I'm the shallow piece of shit, you are doing great."

"You're not, though." Ravn shakes his head; nope, not. "You're just more likely to say things that everyone is thinking. Which means that if you're a shallow piece of shit we all are, you're just more vocal. Or less uptight. Don't think it's so much trouble for me, though, as it's -- me not having to guess? I mean, it's not just about what's hot. I like people in general who are pretty up front about who they are and what they want. People keep telling me that Vydal or Hyacinth Addington are scary and I'm just -- no, they're not, they just tell you exactly where they stand and that's actually pretty damn neat."

Then he giggles slightly, because, well, rum. "And then of course there's someone like Vic who makes a habit out of castrating guys with her eyes if they look at her twice, I mean, you know where she stands too."

"I am a real, real bad guesser, so yeah, that's big for me too. I've had guys, girls too, come up to me and just kinda, I dunno, go limp?" Itzhak frowns, trying to explain this. "Like, I look like I do, they figure just some kind of wet-blanket submission is gonna get me going, get 'em slapped around. But it don't. What gets me going is someone going 'c'mere and do me good, stud.' That gets me to fuck someone up against a wall with my hand around their throat. Not just kinda falling over with their legs in the air. That's never gonna work on me. Especially not since my first boyfriend, that was him all the way. Ugck."

Now he's quite red, and it's not all the rum. "Nah, nah, that's not why Hya's scary!" he protests, laughing. "She's scary because she can't be stopped. Vyv, too." Then he snorts and he's laughing too over that description of Vic. Because, rum. "Listen, Vic Grey is hot as hell and she's definitely trouble, but she's like a coral snake. Bright colors, says keep ya distance if you know what's good for ya. Hope Seth can handle her."

"Vic's hot, definitely. She's also reading a clear signal of don't you fucking stare at my ass, and I respect that. She wants you to stare at it, she'll tell you." Ravn steals a lime boat for that next drink and ponders.

"Limp, hmm? I think I know what you mean. Not quite like that. More like, super attentive. Hanging on every word I say. Trying to make me feel like I'm the only person on the planet who matters. Like they're practically getting off just listening to me. But at the same time you can see how they're doing the calculations -- guy with a family name like mine must think the universe revolves around him. Acting like she thinks it does because she thinks that's what I want. I don't get off on being treated like I'm special because I got born." The Dane shakes his head and makes a little yuck grimace. "I get off on somebody wanting me for me."

Itzhak gives Ravn a confused look. Almost he says something more, probably about Vic, then gets distracted. "I don't got no fancy name or royal bullshit for people to think they gotta suck up to me. Well, I guess it is a royal name where you come from but where I come from we're just a bunch of Jews trying to get by. Honestly, when I get treated like that, and it ain't too often lemme tell ya, it's because of the music." He goes to rake through his hair again, discovers nothing but stubble, and sighs. Then, continuing his thought, "I pick up my violin and suddenly I'm not just some asshole with a lot of ink and a schnozz. Suddenly I'm a fucking wizard. Not gonna lie, it got me laid a whole hell of a lot." That wicked smile is back, making Itzhak's crow's-feet crinkle.

"I am not a bloody royal." Ravn laughs all the same; he remembers the looks on the faces of at least some Sitka patrons that night when the violinist decided to spend his break at his table. "Yeah, I bet. You're a star when you're performing. I've seen how the audience looks at you like they want to eat you or screw you across their table, or both, at once. That's a little different, though -- you earned it. It's a mutual agreement. You're creating a fantasy that they're renting -- one that's part beautiful music but also part what if."

He lights another cigarette because alcohol makes him want to smoke and yes, he's probably going to wash the whole inside of the trailer down tomorrow and air it out well and proper, but tomorrow is like alcohol too -- you can worry about the hangover when it gets there. "I got to admit though that it's probably one of the reasons I enjoy spending time with Hyacinth and the little lunch club. Vydal isn't impressed by anyone or anything. Bax isn't either, because he's blissfully oblivious. And Hyacinth herself -- she doesn't do impressed."

"Fuckin' A I earned it." Itzhak wriggles fingers at Ravn. "Thousands of hours, right here." But he blushes harder when Ravn says that thing about how audiences react to him. Because it's true, and he can't even say that it's not. "I don't really know what it is," he admits. "I just know it happens. Before I played for him, I know de la Vega thought I was hot. Probably even thinking about railing me. But after I played for him?" The smile now is wonder. "That's when he got serious about landing me. ...Also after we beat the hell out of each other." Itzhak says it wryly but there's hearts in his eyes. Oh no, he might start rhapsodizing about his boyfriend again--but Ravn manages to distract him enough with more talk of their friends. "I dunno, I think maybe I mighta impressed her one time," he says, grinning. "Just the once, though. Talk about attitude! Whew. She is smoking hot."

"Yeah, but you just said it yourself. It's the attitude." Ravn grins at the other man with more than a trace of gotcha on his sharp features. "Not saying she's a bad looker, but the world's full of pretty women. The world's not full of attitude like that, and when you do meet it, the person behind it is usually a selfish primadonna. I'll say for Hyacinth, I thought she was too at first, but the more I get to know her, the less selfish she turns out to be -- even when she's trying pretty damn hard to convince me and her PA alike that she's the most spoiled brat this side of San Diego."

He looks at the other man with fascination as a thought creeps up on him and announces itself with the random courage found somewhere between the cuba and the libre. "It's such a different world. Hearing you talk about shoving people up against a wall or beating the hell out of each other. I'm kind of fascinated. Not in the 'oh god me too please' way -- but because it's something I could never do? I have to think it through carefully if I want to hug somebody."

Itzhak's eyebrows tip up in amused resignation. "Aight, aight, fair enough. And she's totally a prima donna, but selfish?" He shakes his head. "No. Not her." Then he's humming, then singing a snatch of song. "Priiiiima donna, first lady of the stage, your devotees are on their knees to implooore yooouuu..." Random showtunes time, he's drunk.

Ravn's confession of fascination gets another amused look. Itzhak slumps back, smirking at him like ten miles of trouble. "Yeah, well, that's the other thing I like. I like it rough." He pronounces each word with a certain emphasis, mouthing them tenderly. "Both ways. I like giving it, and I like getting it. And I love being in charge. Love it when I ain't in charge, too, but...there ain't many people who I can give that to. They gotta be worthy, you know? Someone I can trust. Someone who..." he hesitates, groping for the words. "Who honors that. Who knows it's beautiful and don't think it means they can treat me like a cum rag. Y'know, unless I want 'em to." A pause, Itzhak's hazel eyes going unfocused. Dreamy, even. When he looks like that, just one name comes out next. "Javier's like that."

"Worthy." Ravn nods slowly. The New Yorker's words resonate with him deeply, though for slightly different reasons. "Yeah. Yeah, I think I get it. The sentiment at least."

He swirls the liquid in his glass speculatively because words are difficult and elusive little bastards, and stringing them together is harder than it sounds like. "The way you say that... That's what I want, some day. To feel like that about somebody, that I can trust them -- and that I have enough to give them that they'll see past my anxiety shit and my touch issues and still think I'm worth it. But it's not something you can just go out and get. If you try -- then you get assholes like your older guy in New York or my ex, people who see a weakness and exploit it. It's something that just has to happen when and if it wants to happen. And maybe it won't, but that's life too -- we don't always get what we want."

Itzhak shrugs with eyebrows alone. Is this something they teach you when you're a New York Jew or does he just have a gift for it? "I was not looking to fall in love with a guy. Get drilled by one, hell yeah, I hadn't had that since I moved and I was thirsty. But fall in love? Nah. Wasn't even thinking about it. And believe me, you are not the only guy in the room with issues. Are yours bad? Sure. Trust me, so are mine." The way his eyes change now has nothing to do with adoration; they go flinty, unseeing. It seems harder for him to shake off while drunk; his jaw clenches and for a moment there, it's not Ravn's violin buddy at his table. It's some bitterly furious ex-con, a man to think twice about sharing a bus shelter with.

The folklorist watches the other man's face go dark and for the duration of that moment, he observes in silence. Ravn knows that look. He knows that presence. He's spent enough time around it, years ago. Not on the road down Europe or across the USA from New York, where he would indeed never stick around a bus shelter for a night if someone like that turned up; someone looking for trouble, waiting to be provoked so they'd have an excuse to take their anger out on someone -- anyone. Before that. During this moment, Itzhak reminds Ravn of the people he used to hang around with in Copenhagen while going to university, joking that he was reverse Clark Kent -- mild mannered scholar by day, confidence man and small-time thief by night. The kind of men who, by means of existing, taught him that this was not the road he wanted to travel (and unlike them, he had the privilege of choice).

He waits for the moment to pass, realising that it needs to do so unchallenged -- and unjudged.

"I'm happy for you," Ravn says quietly when it has. "Something like that happens when and if it wants to. Like I was saying -- you go out there to hunt for it, all you find is an asshole looking for someone to take advantage of."

He chuckles softly as the mood lightens again. "Not that I can't relate to -- being thirsty. That's such an odd expression to my foreigners' ears, but yeah. All the complications afterwards just don't seem worth it to me, for something I can take care of myself in the shower. I'm too -- lazy? Anxious? Both? And too oblivious -- you know me, I don't realise that someone's actually coming on to me before they've given up and gone off to the next guy at the bar. If I do meet that special someone some day, they'll stick around if they're interested enough. If they don't -- then they're probably not up for dealing with the rest of the package either, and it's better that they walked on down the line to find someone quicker to drop his pants. Sleeping alone has yet to be the death of anyone, much as guys may gripe and whine about it."