soot - 2

Even though he's been here more than three times a week for the past five months, the barista still gives him a bored once-over as Arthur steps up to the counter and rolls his eyes. "What can I get started for you today?"

Art pretends to give a quick glance at the menu, as if he isn't going to get the same "Mocha Frappe with no whipped cream, no mocha, with a shot of espresso." He thinks about texting Cece, thinks better of it.

She'll show when she shows. A quick glance around the room after getting his chilly caffeine reveals that she still hasn't arrived. He makes a move for a table pressed against the window, across from a heavily tatted medical student pouring over piles of papers.

He plops down, pressing his purple notebook onto the table as he shrugs his jacket off. He carefully rolls up the flannel sleeves and flips the notebook open. He thumbs to a pink paper clip and glares down at the empty schedule template, now yellowing with use and various food stains.

Fifteen minutes of meticulously copying the chart, he's become lost in his work. He doesn't spy Cecelia standing in line and actually jumps a little when she plops her oversized purse on the table. "Oh, boy, wait until you hear about the absolute bullshit she's been saying now..."

Arthur smiles a little, marking Jenny for Friday mornings even though she absolutely did not believe they needed a host on Friday mornings, which was funny because when she was serving, she most certainly made it known how upset she was that they didn't have a host at the door. He was high-key hoping she'd quit.

"Oh? Surely it can't be any worse than last week when she insisted that she cheated because you made her do it." Arthur remarks, taking a long sip of his coffee, blinking up through innocent eyelashes.

"Oh fuck off, you know she was just rolling her ass off and Sheena was fresh out of a break-up, one that you had quite the hand in but I guess you forgot all about that. No, she thinks that we should get another dog! Another dog! As if there isn't already enough shit to pick up around that zoo..."

As Cecelia launches into the reasons that she and her ex-fiance/landlord/chiropractor do not need to get another dog - a sentiment which Arthur agreed with, given their pack of seven - he allowed his mind to wander back to that break-up that he very much did cause last week. On accident, of course, but still his fault all the same.

You never know who you'll end up making out with in the darkness of a twenty-four seven gay club.

You also never know who might happen to walk over just when things are getting very touchy-feely on the dance floor of said gay club.

Needless to say, once Cece found out, she'd been quick to let Arthur know that what he had done was wrong, because it had somehow created a domino effect for Sheena, a recovering lesbian, to fall back down the pink rabbit hole, right into the arms of a Home Alone Helen who had been re-decorating the house with blowed-out pupils when Sheena appeared that afternoon, shivering in the rain.

Arthur is beginning to hit the snooze button, as Cece has only ever needed a listening ear to figure out her own problems. Two conversations six years ago was all Arthur needed to realize he was a backboard so she could serve balls to herself. She didn't want any advice he had to offer, she already had the answers. She just needed to take her own steps. A "really?" here and a "but how?' there went a long way with Cece.

"...which is why it's so stupid that she chose this weekend because my nephew is in town for his art show and I'm already worried about how the dogs are going to act because they've never been around ferrets before. I mean, do dogs and ferrets get along? Will he let the thing just run around? I have nothing against ferrets, I just don't know where he can keep it. Maybe we can put it in the basement?"

Arthur's eyes have snapped back into focus as he's suddenly watching her very closely. "I think if your nephew is visiting and bringing his ferret, it's safe to say he isn't gonna be okay with keeping her in the basement." Arthus pops the lid off his drink to take a big gulp. His cheeks are warm and he's suddenly found himself very thirsty.

Cece gives him a weird look, taking a candid photo of him to undoubtedly update her fanatic followers. Cece had been the bar manager of All Sizzle, No Steak for six years, following a cold-feet wedding stunt in Huntsville. She'd started out there as  a server and when her emotionally reckless now-roommate realized she didn't have time to manage a rag-tag group of misfits to building an all-vegan restaurant/bar, dipped on their wedding and workplace to run off with a skydiving artist from Nashville. Luckily, Cece had already become the defacto den mother, so Jimmy was more than happy to promote her when they realized Helen wasn't coming back.

Helen eventually came back, as she always does.

"How did you know she was female?" Fuck, why does she have to be such a Virgo?

Arthur accidentally lets the silence go too long.

Cece's eyes widen. "Oh my fuck, you met him didn't you? He's a little fucking prick but he's a genius. You have to see his paintings, they're fucking surreal."

Arthur's head is swimming. Too much information to process. Just before coming in here, he'd decided the redhead had been a fever dream, just the tail end of another sleepless night rolling into the day. A beautiful hallucination he'd never be able to forget.

"He didn't seem so bad to me." Art shrugs, trying to look casual as he takes another sip of coffee.

Cece's eyebrows raise and she's suddenly glaring at him with glittering green eyes. "Arthur Tennyson London. Don't even think about it."

Art smiles out of the corner of his mouth and peers at her as he lowers his coffee. "I'm quite sure I don't know what you mean."

"Artie, I'm serious. This is an off-limits kind of situation, there is so much you don't know. God, I should have known he'd do this again..."

Arthur's eyebrows are furrowing now, more serious than curious. "Do what again?"

"Well, I guess it doesn't matter now. You're an adult, you can find out on your own." She's standing up and Arthur looks up, worried she'll leave before he can ask more questions about her beautiful nephew. Visiting? Art Show? Emotional baggage? What more could a provocative water-bearer want?

"What do you mean it doesn't matter now? Aren't you going to- Ahhhhhhh, HeLLLO." Arthur finishes his sentence with a much-too-loud greeting as he's turning in his chair to see why Cece has gotten out of her chair.

That hair. Arthur is entraced as the man of his dreams (literally -  he'd seen the stranger do a kickflip 890 off of a giant scoop of strawberry ice cream last night) strolls toward them, completely ignoring the barista who has perked up and is bouncing on his toes to greet the stranger.

He's wearing a different jacket today, though the sleeping ferret still rests on his shoulders, this time in a purple vest. An artist never repeats an outfit. Then: Shut up, Arthur, that's not the moral of the story here. Oh fuck, he's looking at you, you have to say something. Anything!

"Nice boots. An artist never repeats an outfit, right?"

The stranger glances down at the calf-high patent leather boots and smirks, tongue sticking slightly out of his mouth. He gives Cece a tight hug and curt kiss on the cheek before sitting down in her seat across from Arthur. She frowns and huffs, stepping around him to sit in the seat by the window, pulling out her phone.

"I'm not sure I can agree with that. It would be economically silly to not wear your clothes again. Aren't they meant for wear and tear?"

Arthur, likely emboldened from listening to Cece ceaselessly ramble for an hour, is quick for the volley. "I don't know if you can use 'economically' and 'silly' in the same sentence. I think it's an oxymoron."

The smirk gets bigger.  "Well, sure, but do you think the capitalistic society really pushes us to use, use, use and waste waste waste? Or is it not trying to give us hope, train us up and spit out those who can't hack it?"

"Can't really tell if you're trying to deny planned obsoletion which is absolutely a thing or argue that capitalism actually provides fair opportunities to everyone, which is simply not true."

The man leans down to place his chin on his hands which he's poitely folded on the top of the table. "So you're saying that artists making art out of whatever they can didn't first have the opportunity to seize that vision? They were somehow afforded the opportunity to create and continuously choose to change clothes every day because an artist never wears the same outfit?" Those haunting blue eyes bore into him.

Arthur is warm all over. He feels it especially in his neck, warming where his Adam's Apple should be. It's the last of his surgeries. He wants it to be over with, though he knows he passes well. No one even misgenders him anymore. Why would they? He has a full beard, a standard bulge, and a flat flat flat chest. Years of focus, struggle, and sacrifice brought him to where he is today. He fully intends to carpe his diem.

Say it. Say It. Say It. SAY it. SAY IT.

"Well, with an art partner like me, you wouldn't need anything but the one outfit anyway because you'd be naked in my house all day."

"Alright, I think that's my cue. I'll see you boys later." Cece rolls her eyes as she makes a big show of leaving the table, kissing the stranger on the top of the head. "Don't  get into too much trouble, Dustin."

It's now Arthur's chance to smirk. "Yes, Dustin, don't get in too much trouble."

Dustin is staring across the table at him, with an unreadable expression. Arthur is suddenly very aware of how forward he's dove. It was playful before, just jabs back and forth at the other's ability to think on the spot. This is the first time Arthur's actually hit on him. Why did you have to hit on him like that, you dumbass? Now he's gonna run and you'll never see him again and people will watch you slink out of the shop with that stupid look on your

"Bold of you to assume I'm a neophile. What if I'm terribly afraid of new experiences?"

For the first time, there's a tug of vulnerability in the artist's piercing glance. Arthur softens, like cheese on a burger and leans in slightly to murmur. 

"I can show you the world."

Dustin smirks and leans in. Arthur gets a quiet whiff of Little Miss Sierra Godiva, who smells of baby soap and fur. He's in sensory overload and doesn't know where his own aura stops and Dustin's begins.

"Shining shimmering splendid?"

Arthur grabs him by the chin.