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Asking Favors

hand on person's shoulder
That’s no problem

Joscelyn, the Queen Bee of the senior ladies’ donors organization, is not happy, not one bit, and Dance knows she has good reason to feel that way. Robert is coming in from the front doors over an hour and a half late, cello case dragging tiredly in his hand, entourage scurrying up to take it from him, and the lesser lights who feed from his crumbs like remoras swoop in to cut out every bit of money in the lot. Robert looking tired means he’s probably swinging out of arguing with his star-making patron, Bud Innes, and into dramatic gestures like dumping all his worldly possessions into a friend’s car. He won’t find another like Bud, either. That means his whole clique will be prone to tears and tantrums backstage, and Dance really doesn’t want to leave his hiding place up here in the mezzanine.

Then Dance hears a voice, and he gives a sigh of relief. It’s the rumbly voice he’s begun to expect would find him up here. Drin is approaching from the corridor at the back of the seats. “No, thanks, I just wanted to check how it sounds up here,” Drin’s voice says. “See you later.”

Dance doesn’t move. It’s curiously comforting, knowing that Drin has no trouble shedding remoras, even the really shameless ones who try to molest their targets in the restroom.

“Does it sound as crappy as I think it does?” Drin says.

“Worse,” Dance says, and rests his face tiredly in his hand. “We can’t hear Mister Young’s best soprano up here.”

“It’s a basketball court with folding chairs,” Drin says, gently.

Dance snorts, and rubs his face. All that effing work, and nobody will hear it in the blurry harsh echoes off that multipurpose floor. It’s probably no good for basketball, either. “It won’t do for Mister Young’s first big show on the road.”

“Upgrade the seats for the newspaper reviewer, and put them where they can duck out an exit really easily, if you want to make them happy–that’s my advice,” Drin says.

Dance rests his head in both hands.

“You’re really invested in making Mister Young look good, and he doesn’t even know it, does he?” says Drin, standing closer.

“It doesn’t matter if he knows,” Dance says.

Drin is silent a moment. Dance already knows that means a silent refusal to argue.

“It would be better if he didn’t,” Dance says then, lifting his head sharply. “The man’s ego does not admit of needing help from the likes of us.”

“The likes of–“ Drin begins to say.

Dance sees the flare of anger in the tall man’s pale yellow eyes.  Odd color, one he always notices on other people, because it only shows up in his own mirror when he’s about to lose it.

It was a stupid, self-indulgent thing to say. He waves it aside, asking wordlessly for it to be dropped, too tired to even care if it gets passed on.

Drin gives a really weird smile. “Oh, you mean, the likes of the best Concertmaster they’ve had in thirty years, according to your buddy the first cellist.”

Dance draws in a deep breath, tilts his head back, and folds his arms as if he’s taken an aching belly shot. He blinks hard several times. Then he says, knowing he sounds funny, “Well, our Miss Amalia is our buddy. Miss Amalia said that? Bless her gnarly cellist brain.”

“You’d never hear it from her, would you? Not when she’s giving you grief all day long. Don’t tell me–now you’re going to say Amalia keeps you sharp, thank God.”

Dance gives a crooked grin. “All are knowing these stupid sayings of ours.”

“And don’t tell me, Young started yelling when you wouldn’t tell him who scouted and booked this hall?”

Dance shrugs.

“Will you tell me?”

Dance shrugs. “To our Mister Drin, seeing it all anyway in auditing the books, we say, this is what we get at the price. We’re here.”

Drin looks at him. “And there’s worse jobs if you don’t like this one.”

“Much worse,” Dance says. He gives another crooked smile. “We are– I am– still practicing to– to convince the troops, as Young says it.”

Drin snorts a laugh. He turns, propping his weight against the mezzanine rail, folding his arms, as if he could wait all day. Close. A lot too close.

Damn it, Dance thinks and closes his eyes, Emma’s right. She said it just last night: He always smells so damn good. It may be mostly just the man himself, not something he splashes on in the morning. And it’s not just the remoras who would like to find out how far the freckles go, either. Dance banishes various unhelpful images and blinks and stares past the rail at the disaster in the making.

“Could we ask a very large favor?” he says.

“Well, coming from you, of course,” Drin says, with that little purr in his voice.

Dance shifts carefully so he doesn’t make such a silly parade of what’s going on down in the pants region. It can be awkward, given how he reacts to the man. Thank God for black clothes.

“Can our Mister Drin sweet talk Mister Robert into talking to our Miss Joscelyn for a little bit? We hope it might improve the larger mood.” Dance gets it out in a rush.

“You mean they’ll bitch happily at each other,” Drin says coolly, with a little smile. Oh, he can manage that much without even breaking a sweat, and he knows it, doesn’t he?

Dance glances up gratefully. “We– I– will owe our Mister Drin.”

Drin reaches out and pats him lightly on the shoulder. “Consider it handled,” he says, and then he’s walking away, whistling softly.

We are the total idiot, Dance thinks, resting his face in his hand. I am a fucking idiot. Sending off our Mister Drin to sweetly talk Robert and Joscelyn. The poor man isn’t going to surface for weeks.

“You’re an idiot!” Emma says cheerfully, and swats him on the arm at intermission. “My God, isn’t this hole totally nasty? You know you’re an idiot, right?”

Dance mumbles.

“Just look at them! Joscelyn is purring and Robert thinks he’s got a line on his next meal ticket!” She leans close, and shouts it in his ear. “You’re an idiot!”

“But it worked, everybody’s happy,” Dance mumbles past his hunched shoulder.

“Not Drin!” Emma says.

Dance stares at her.

“He’s got that constipated look,” Emma says. “Now get over there and rescue that poor man, right this minute. I’m not having one of our best guys stuffing his fingers in his ears to get that voice out of his brain all night.”

“Did you mean Miss Joscelyn’s voice, or Robert’s?” Dance asks, genuinely curious, because they’re both awful. But then he goes, propelled by Emma’s glare.

He can’t think of anything useful to do, either. All he can do is walk over and blurt, stupidly, “We can hit the ATM if our Mister Drin likes,” to the blank look on Drin’s face.

“Oh,” Drin says. He scrubs his face. “Right. Sorry, folks, I forgot. Later, right? No, no, you two have a nice talk,” and he’s up and moving before they can react. He strides off down a corridor, not looking back.

Dance is appalled to find them both standing in front of an actual ATM. Trust Robert to make sure Drin had to hunt it down, Dance thinks grimly. “How much did Robert borrow?” Dance says, looking at the machine, getting out his wallet.

Drin leans on the wall and names a figure.

Dance flinches. Literally, flinches. But he gets it under control. “Right,” he says, and gets out his card.

“Are you Robert’s boyfriend?” Drin says.

Dance flinches. “No.” The idea makes him feel ill.

“Then why are you trying to cover that?”

“It is bad form,” Dance says grimly, “to permit the Symphony’s patrons to feel taken advantage of by musicians who cannot manage their impulse spending–”

Drin’s fingers come down over the slot in the machine, blocking it. “No,” he says, one brow lifted.

Dance raises his hand. “Please–”

“Uhhhh uh,” Drin says on a rising note, warningly. “Uh unh. No. But I appreciate the thought. Believe me, I do.”

Dance closes his eyes for a moment, rests his elbow on the wall, and scrubs with his fingertips at the ache in his temple. “We– I am– owing our Mister Drin that at least–I asked our Mister Drin to speak with them both.”

“Yeah, you did,” Drin says.

Dance frowns, and squints at Drin. “If there is a need for something else, by all means we– I– shall try to–”

“Don’t go there,” Drin says, chuckling. “Don’t ask.”

Dance blinks at him. “We am feeling very stupid.”

“That’s all right, because I’m brilliant tonight,” Drin says.

“Our Mister Drin kindly gave Robert money there is no getting back, how brilliant is that?” Dance says, scowling at him. He isn’t even appalled at what is coming out of his mouth. Yet.

“Utterly, completely brilliant,” Drin says, grinning at him.

Dance lifts his hand toward the ATM again, and Drin folds those long fingers around Dance’s wrist. Dance is just standing there, blinking stupidly, with Drin gripping his wrist gently away from the ATM.

“I could do this all night,” Drin says, grinning. Then he lowers Dance’s arm, turns the palm upward, and plucks the card out of Dance’s grip. He holds it up. Then he pushes open Dance’s jacket, and he tucks the card neatly into Dance’s front pants pocket, and tidies the lapels of Dance’s jacket, and buttons one button, as if he’s been doing it for years. And then, grinning, he holds up his other hand, with the selfsame card between two of his fingers.

“Oh shit,” Dance says, and starts to laugh. “Doing magic tricks too?”

“Oh yeah,” says Drin, and holds up Dance’s wallet. “And I don’t do all the noisy blather that people always think makes it easier. It doesn’t, you know. Poor guy, no wonder you have a headache, you’re playing when you’re sick!” and he holds up the humiliating little clutch of cough drops and the tissues.

Dance sags a little, and feels the other man rest a hand on his shoulders. He’s got Dance’s jacket unbuttoned again, putting the card in the front pants pocket while he’s also tucking Dance’s wallet into Dance’s back pants pocket, when they both hear a sound. Dance glances around, and sees somebody with curly hair–it might have been Robert–darting away across the end of the corridor and back toward the hall. Clearly, they saw exactly what Drin wanted them to: Drin with his hands in all kinds of outrageous places. And Dance is twitching, trying to avoid pushing his desperately hard dick into every last touch on his skin.

Dance says, indignantly, “Our Drin is being the big tease!”

“Shh,” Drin says, grinning. “Don’t tell!”

Dance frowns at him. “What, we should not reveal that our Drin can do sneaky things like card tricks too?”

Drin leans back into the wall, and folds his arms, chuckling. “Blame it on my misspent youth.”

“More likely being very bored for very many long hours!” Dance says. “Please not to be forgetting we have musicians to keep out of trouble, so we know! We know what they get up to if we leave them stuck in some hotel for a whole weekend. Emma says– how does Emma put it, let’s see– fightin’, fuckin’, boozin’, gamblin’, and blowin’ their damn noses, all getting sick as dogs.”

Drin’s eyes widen, and then he’s laughing, a big belly laugh that echoes down the corridor.

“It’s funny?” Dance says. He knows the straight face just makes people laugh harder. “Did we– did I– say it badly?”

“Would you like to have dinner with me?” Drin asks.

“We will give you the cold! We probably have already!”

“If I get sick, then you owe it to me to have dinner and a lunch with me, just to make up for it. My treat, of course.”

“What?” Dance says, knowing he’s getting royally bamboozled.

“Promise,” Drin says solemnly, holding out his hand.

“This is another magic trick, isn’t it?” Dance says.

“Absolutely,” Drin says.

“We should say no!”

“Absolutely we should,” Drin says, grinning at him.

Dance glares up into the tiger-yellow eyes. “Fuck it,” he says, and shakes hands with Drin. Then he says, crossly, “We should both wash our hands with soap, a lot.”

For some reason, that makes Drin laugh even harder than before.

Read the next series; Who’s Your Daddy?

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