2022-04-01 - Not Next Week

Paint and whiskey. One goes on the boat, the other goes in the painter. Or in this case, in the painters. It's a strange way to treat a bottle of twelve years Chivas Regal but there you go -- Ravn Abildgaard is a whiskey snob, and if he's buying, he's buying something he enjoys drinking, even when treating it like cheap paint fumes and drinking it out of plastic cups. Maybe there are some extravagant habits he has yet to manage to shed.

Cargo shorts and a sweatshirt combined with flip-flops make the day's ensemble. Clothes that are easy to shed at the end of painting and bundle up for the washing machine. Maybe Ravn should toss himself into the laundry too because his coppery hair still has a certain blue tint, and there's still glitter turning up in the most curious of places. The picture Della snapped of him covered in paint, glitter and wine gum dicks has made the rounds. And if anyone missed it, there's the picture Seth snapped from his car, also making the rounds.

"Blue ain't really your color," Itzhak says, working the paint roller like a guy who did a lot (a lot) of pickup jobs in another life. He's quite good at it, fast and neat. "Look, it ain't my business, but whatever you did you got off light."

He's wearing one of his endless supply of clingy tank tops, tattoos and scars bared to the sun, and old jeans. No shoes at all for him, for some funny reason nothing seems to hurt him to walk over.

"I know," Ravn replies with a wry look at the other man. "That's why I'm not actually going to do anything about it. Normally I'd go yell at him, or prank him back, or whatever. I'm not going to. I don't think I did something wrong per se, but I do agree that I did not make something clear enough to someone else. And I do realise that if Felix had gotten wind of it all, it wouldn't have been a paint bomb. So, this buck stops here and I will get all the glitter out eventually."

He's not as skilled a painter at Itzhak is; what Ravn lacks in expertise he has in stubborn, though -- one way or the other, the Vagabond will get painted. Just like last year, and the autumn before that when he redid her original paint job in pink, grey, and mint (Vyvyan Vydal did call her the Good Ship Cannabis Discowhore for nothing).

A glance goes towards his friend with the other paintbrush. "Speaking of regrets and fuck-ups, though. How's things going with you and, well, things?"

"Never thought I would owe Seth Monaghan one," Itzhak mutters. Dunk the roller in the paint tray, roll roll roll, apply to boat, roll roll roll. Easy to picture him on a sweltering Manhattan summer day, shirtless, working some dead end construction job.

He grunts. "At least one of those kids--" college kids sharing the duplex next door, he means, "is pissed at me because he brought some girls over and they wanted him to introduce 'em to me. I was smoking on the porch, playing my mandolin, minding my own damn business, suddenly like five girls want me to play something for them."

That's very clearly avoiding answering the real question.

"Seth Monaghan's an okay bloke. Not his fault he's got a piece of shit for a cousin. If he didn't, Seth'd never have gotten mixed up with bad things." Ravn hitches a shoulder; hardly news to anyone that that's how the mob works -- duties, family obligations, debts invoked and then called in.

Then he smirks slightly at his friend. Yeah, yeah. Don't want to talk about the relationship he's still hoping to repair? Fair enough, things take time. The rest, though? "So, are you banging five college girls now, or did you decide you prefer them out of kindergarten? I mean, I'm not judging but, old enough to have a conversation not about a mutual teacher or the newest Netflix show is a good start in my book."

Itzhak smirks, too. "I thought about it. But shit, yannow? They're all kinda the same after a while. Glossy like a magazine. Want me to pull their hair and slap them around a little, then they get weird and turn up crying in the middle of the night and I'm just not gonna deal with that. I spent my first ten years outta prison dealing with that."

He pauses to glug some water. "How about you?"

"Well, no, I'm not banging five college girls. Don't tell me you even thought for a moment that I might be." Ravn laughs softly. "I wasn't even banging college girls when I actually went to college, or the Danish equivalent to college. I did see girls do that though -- the whole falling dime a dozen for some badass and then not getting why he's not into the whole white picket fence dream thing. Town's full of grown-up women too though."

He can't help a mischievous grin. "Looked to me like Brennon took to you. Mind, she's got some other bloke sniffing around her so maybe ask yourself if you can be arsed to compete."

Itzhak frowns over at Ravn, finishing the bottle of water. "Okay was I that high or was she actually inviting me over and talking like she wanted me to put her over my knee? I was pretty high but I remember something like that."

"Barking up the wrong tree here," Ravn reminds his friend with another soft laugh. "I never pick up on those things, at least not in time to act on them -- but I got the kind of impression she found you interesting. Ball is in your court, maybe? Could probably get her to at least consider the idea if you play it back, can write it off as just banter if you don't, no harm done."

He hitches a shoulder and then decides to reach for the whiskey bottle and the plastic cups. A generous shot is poured in each and he offers one over. "So, to college girls, may they find college boys. Irving did say Brennon's cop buddy came across kind of territorial. If I was considering it, I'd stop considering right there -- but that's me, you know how I feel about competing. All it leads to is bruised egos."

"Buddy, what I remember is that if you and Una hadn't been there, she woulda climbed in my lap, that's a little more than interested." Itzhak tosses down the paint roller, accepts the cup, taps it to Ravn's. "I'm not gonna chase anybody, we decided no complications with other people while we're tryin' to make it work. So I ain't on the market. Anyway, if some asshole is mad that his girl likes me, that's his problem. Maybe he should be hotter."

Standard Rosencrantz boilerplate: not my problem and if someone tries to make it my problem, I'm gonna be theirs.

Ravn grins slightly. "I don't think Brennon is anyone's girl as of yet. So yeah, if someone thinks she is, she's the one he needs to talk to about it. That'd be like me declaring that some girl's mine, without telling her. Glad to hear you're still -- you know. Hoping to make it work. Sometimes ending things is the right choice, but it's fucking sad, and I kind of hope it's not the right choice for you two."

He sips the whiskey (and thinks to himself, okay, maybe this does in fact deserve a proper crystal tumbler and ice but what the hell). "Chasing, eh. I mean, I never have. Got my reputation for being as romantic as cardboard from somewhere, you know." Then the Dane laughs again, softly. "Reminds me, Irving and Scullins nearly had me choking earlier. Said the only reason Gabriella came over to teach me to cook chicken was to get into my pants. I mean, I thought she was maybe considering some kind of future opportunity, but she was busy with two other blokes at the moment, so I also figured that was probably just me being paranoid. People like to keep opportunities open, just in case."

"I never loved anyone in my life like I love him." Itzhak stares into the surface of the whiskey. "I give up on him, I may as well go back to banging college girls and drinking myself to death."

Speaking of which, he drains the whiskey. "Yeah, probably," he says about the getting into of pants, "never met her, but probably. Girls love doing that stuff, but lemme tell you, cook for a girl, that's the way to get her into bed." Itzhak almost cheered up talking about that, but something makes him scowl again. Nobody can look menacingly melancholy like he can.

"Hey. First off? I cook for a girl, she goes to hospital with food poisoning. Second? I know he cooks, and well. It'll work out, all right? Somehow, things always work out -- not always how we want, granted, but usually in the way that we need." Ravn shoots Itzhak a concerned glance and then, without further ado, hands the whiskey bottle over. Other whiskey snobs in the region are having chills and not knowing why.

Then he offers a wry little smile. "I think I've been fully accepted into the girls' club, mind. I kind of invited myself to a hair dye and beer thing, didn't even occur to me that it might have been intended as girls only. So Irving and me are going to do galaxy hair on Scullins, eat pizza, and drink beer. I mean, there are worse ways to spend an evening, I figure."

Itzhak pours himself another with an air of don't mind if he do. Down it goes. He turns his beaky face to the sun, eyes closed, turmoil bubbling under his surface. For all he's loved and lost, he obviously can't bear the thought of letting de la Vega go.

He makes a wordless Yiddish noise of disgust with himself and passes the bottle back. "Why's that always happen to you? I never get treated like one of the girls. That sounds fun. I bet I'd look great with a galaxy hair streak."

"Really? I would have thought you were a sure-in for girl talk. You actually go to town all dressed up, sometimes literally dressed up." Ravn quirks both eyebrows. This thought had clearly not occurred to him. "I guess I thought that if you were into that sort of thing you'd just go do it. I'm not really into -- you know, hair dye and make-up and the works but I'm on board with pizza and beer and having a good time, so hair dye or football game, no big difference for me."

He sips his whiskey. "Irving did sort of ask whether it's safe to bring you baked things, without giving the wrong impression. You may end up with a lot of baked things -- that's her way of showing she likes people. You're in luck, because her baked things are damned good. And she won't be secretly hoping for you to pull her hair unless she's managed a surprisingly convincing ace with a whiff of lesbian act."

"Nah, girls don't treat me like I'm one of 'em." Itzhak shrugs. Who can know the ways of girls.

He steps back to critically eye the keel he's been painting. "...Nice," he concludes. "Let it dry. She what?" Itzhak glances back. "Awww. I like her a lot. Ace girls are probably the girls I get along best with," he admits, sounding a little embarrassed about it.

"Because you don't have the sexual tension. Which is exactly why I get along fine with a lot of 'em -- I'm the ace as far as they're concerned." Ravn cracks a grin. "Which, honestly? I'm good with that. Better to be seen as non-threatening and have friends, than have to sort through those complications every time you just want to have a beer and a chat."

He draws long, steady brushes of cobalt blue along the Vagabond's hull. And then, after a few moments, changes the subject completely (or maybe not so completely, it all depends): "I don't like being the centre of attention. That Dream last week -- the one where we played, and I had a shocking pink electrical violin. That's how I feel -- like the entire stage wants to eat me."

"I know ya don't," Itzhak says, quieter, suddenly more serious, and not looking at Ravn. He's looking at the very interesting flecks of paint speckling his arm, rubbing at them to flake them off. "Look, I, uh, I feel kinda rotten about that."

Ravn draws the brush calmly, methodically, patiently. After a few moments of silence he asks, "Why? You did not arrange for us to be on that stage. I'm just sorry I panicked."

He pauses a moment and looks at the paint jar. "I'm afraid of what's happening to me. I used to know what I could do -- and what I couldn't do. It doesn't work like that any more. I think that when de la Vega bit the collar off me, that's what he unleashed -- power. And I don't know how to handle it, or how to restrain it. I try to flick a chocolate bar at someone and the entire display goes flying. I try to flick a pebble at someone and throw a granite boulder. And now, apparently, I break reality so hard we both fell out of it. We could have ended up anywhere. It's pretty damned terrifying."

"Because I didn't notice things were fucked up until," Itzhak curls his fingers, gripping the air, "until they were really fucked up. I coulda got you killed, whipping 'em up like that."

Doing nothing is terrible right now so he picks up a brush too and starts laying down lines of paint. "Yeah," he mutters. "I know that feeling. I didn't figure that out, either. That your Song is getting crazy strong. You can open doors out, that's what I can do, but getting out of there was dumb luck."

"It makes me wary of using it at all," Ravn murmurs. "I was always careful but now I feel like I have to be extremely careful. Not like I can go look up how it works. And you know how the Veil works -- now that I'm afraid of this? I'll keep getting trapped in Dreams where using power is the only way out. Hopefully I won't get someone else hurt in the process."

Itzhak turns, brandishing the paint brush, scowling his best tough guy scowl. That's how it's obvious he's having emotions. "Listen, fuck that. You're gonna learn everything I know and you're gonna practice it until... until..."

He twirls the brush in a circle. "Not until you ain't scared. You're always gonna be scared. But until it ain't a curse. Until it's a gift."

"Is it going to be a gift?" Ravn looks up and meet his friend's hazel gaze with his own steel grey. "It's the Other Side, Itzhak. I've never been there. Not even once. They say there's another city just like Gray Harbor on the Other Side -- where the Lost become servants of the dolorphages. Where those who die in Dreams become residents. If that's true, I know who will be waiting for me there."

He shakes his head and swallows, before drawing the brush in a straight line. "I'm going to end up there some day. I have no doubt about it. I may learn how to walk in and out, but there's going to be a day where I don't walk out. I've belonged to the Veil since I was a child. It just took me thirty years to get here. But maybe that's reason enough to learn how to use it properly. If I'm going to end up in there some day, at least I won't be completely at the mercy of the Them."

Itzhak's mouth twists. He doesn't look away, squinting from the strain of eye contact. As if he wants to hold Ravn there with his gaze, while he tells him, soft, "Yeah. That's true. But that ain't all there is on that side of the reality border. There's beautiful things too. It's just like here. Awesome things. Ugly things. It's just times a million."

"Pitcher plant town. Pitcher plant reality. It draws you with sweet nectar and beauty. Even when we flies are smart enough to realise it, it's still worth it. That's why we stay in Gray Harbor, after all -- not because the Veil chains us down but because what we gain is worth what we lose." Ravn nods; he's considered this many times in the past. "Some of the things I've seen -- myths come real, gods made flesh. I know I will end up there some day, Itzhak. I will go willingly. I'm just not ready to go yet. And I do want to learn to use the power I have, so that when I go -- I get to make terms and conditions. But I will go, someday, I know that. I want to go, to walk in there and just keep on walking. Some day, I will."

"Stop it," Itzhak says, voice not quite wavering. Then, "Stop it!" as he flings the brush down, causing a spatter. The look he turns on Ravn--he may be six feet and change of tough guy, but he's never stopped being a grieving child whose father will never come home. "You can't. You, you just fucking can't."

He covers his eyes with one paint-stained hand and heaves in a breath, struggling to get a hold of himself.

Ravn freezes for an instant in that fashion of his; freeze, look, process, identify the threat. Then he looks up at the other man from where he's sitting below the prow. "Why is it that when I say this, people assume I am about to disappear in thirty minutes? I am talking long term. I'm not about to pack a bag and disappear out of town on the next Greyhound."

He looks genuinely puzzled. "I swear, this came up in conversation the other day as well, and somebody got all 'just because you think no one can love you' about it. That's not the point at all. I'm not a broken bird who just needs to find true love, bloody hell. I'm a researcher looking at an entire field of research laid out ahead of me. This is my field. People dream of a white picket fence and the two point three kids and two SUVs in the driveway, and no one worries. That sounds like hell to me."

Not understanding his friend's distress does not not mean not acknowledging it, though. Ravn looks at Itzhak and then puts his own brush down in favour of resting a couple of gloved fingers on the other man's arm. "I've spent my entire life trying to find a way out of this world. I am not going to rush and get it wrong, don't worry."

Itzhak isn't crying. "Because we don't want to lose you, ya schmuck!" He's not crying and that's why his eyes aren't wet when he drops his hand to glare at Ravn. Actually, they are kind of wet. But Itzhak isn't crying so it's fine. "At least," he adds, in a smaller voice, "I don't wanna lose you."

He pets his own arm next to Ravn's fingers. "Can I hug you?" Just like he isn't crying, his question is not plaintive.

Ravn looks up, genuinely surprised. Then he straightens up. He's not going to comment on the glitter at the corner of crow's feet eyes; he would not have commented even if Itzhak had been the teariest of teenage girls prone to bursting into tears at the drop of a hat. He would not comment on the Pacific Ocean. He will, if pushed, acknowledge that he's got a stripe of toxic masculinity of his own because among many other things drilled into him as a boy is, men don't show weakness. Men may have a breakdown and end up hanging themselves in the barn before they admit to not doing too great.

Carefully he maneuvers himself into a position where a hug is indeed an option, without any surprises of the kind his nerve system loves blowing its lid about. "I'm not getting Lost," the folklorist murmurs. "Getting lost implies you are going without your consent. This will be more like -- some day I want to move on. Just like some day you want to go back to New York with that special asshole of yours. It's not something you're booking a ticket for. It's just something you know that some day you want to do."

When Itzhak hugs Ravn, he wraps him up careful but firm. Eyes shut, he squeezes him not as if he's made of glass, but something tough yet precious. That Triumph, perhaps.

"It better be a long fucking time," he mutters, and unwinds from him to pull a handkerchief out of a pocket.

Ravn Abildgaard; too skinny, all hard edges under the kind of muscle one gets from walking for hours every day. Probably not what anyone would expect from a soft-spoken academic; there's nothing fragile about the man but his persistent, and persistently annoying, asthma.

"Yeah, yeah," he mutters awkwardly because hugging and emotions, neither were part of the Abildgaard upbringing. "You'll probably have ended up with a flock of brats somehow long before then. And I'll be Uncle Ravn who tells them weird stories that make them try to strike bargains with the monsters under the bed and succeed."

Hugging Itzhak is the worst because there's no manly I'm-not-gay backslapping. He doesn't do anything to relieve the tension of anybody worrying they might like it too much. He just holds him tucked close, then lets him go.

"Hafta get de la Vega to knock me up," he mumbles into his hanky, and blows his nose. Honk.

"Careful saying shit like that in this town," Ravn murmurs. He's not embarrassed, and if someone should get the idea that he's gay, that would hardly be the first time, either (after all, to some, all men who don't thirst obnoxiously after any unescorted female is surely gay). It's more a complete lack of programming: Friend touches -- Error 404, Page Not Found.

He dips into a pocket for his pack of cigarettes and his battered old zippo because you got to do something with those hands. He lights one. He offers it over to his friend. Sharing a cigarette means something, right?

Lighten the mood a little, maybe. "I used to say I'd retire as the local crazy cat lady but I'm trying to amend it to cat lord just in case, too."

Moment over, back to being the toughest New Yorker in this joint. Itzhak stuffs his hanky back in his pocket, where it makes no lump. Cigarette accepted; he takes a drag and passes it back. "Well ya wouldn't want to be some kinda stereotype, right?"

What were they doing again? Itzhak, eyes red rimmed, examines the paint job on Vagabond. "That looks great. Very respectable."

"Yeah, that's me. Respectable." Ravn snort-smirks (snorks? smirts?). "Blue is probably very boring and respectable but did you see her before the paint job? I know you did. Vydal called her The Good Ship Cannabis Discowhore for a reason. Besides, I'm pretty good at boring and at least surface respectable."

He draws on the cigarette. "I do want to get started on travelling over there. Because I want to know what I can do. Not to go there and stay. Just to go and go back because I can. I'm sick and tired of being that guy who can contribute nothing. Shit hits the fan enough around here I owe it to the rest of us to find out what I can do, and pull my own weight."

"Yeah, but what's so wrong with cannabis, disco, or whores?" Itzhak smirks, too, just one side of his mouth pulling up. His hands crave his violin, but instead he folds his arms. "We'll go. I'll show you what I know, but you won't need me for much."

"I don't get high often, I don't care much for disco, and I've little use for whores." Ravn smirks.

Then he pauses. Thinks for a beat or two, maybe. And then throws his gloved hands up (without dropping the cigarette, at least). "You know? I ought to find somebody, just for a night. Or at least get seen ogling somebody like a normal bloke. I'm sick and tired of how a lot of the time, women seem to see me simultaneously as a threat and as a non-entity in terms of romance. If I had a buck for every time I've heard some version of 'you are so awesome, I can't understand why someone who isn't me doesn't want you', I'd buy the Casino Hotel and turn it into a wellness resort. It's as if somehow, I'm Schröedinger's Fuckboy. And all I really want? Is to some day settle down with some woman who doesn't mind me being a distrait nerd too much."