Work Text:
Dr. Teeth was the first to notice, and the first to stop jamming. His fingers hovered in place over his keys, and he stared straight in front of him, glasses raised. Floyd and Janice picked up on it next, their strings falling silent as they watched, too. Even with Animal, all it took was a quick shush from Floyd for him to quiet his rampaging drums.
Zoot and this new trumpet player, Lips, were - there was no other way to describe it - flirting. Wordlessly. Flirting through their instruments.
They'd never seen Zoot quite like this. When they'd asked him about adding a trumpeter to the band, Zoot had just shrugged. For so long it'd been just him and his sax, the one-man horn section of the band, and Zoot had seemed content enough with that, off in his own untouchable world when he played. But here he was, inviting Lips right into that world.
Zoot was going so hard on the sax that Teeth almost had to laugh - peacocking it up, that was the only thing Teeth could think to call it. Every riff and every run was punctuated with an excessive amount of Zoot's signature honks, and he even did a few of his signature spins. Sure, the band had seen Zoot be a showoff on the sax plenty of times before, but this was something entirely different - something more.
This wasn't the same Zoot they'd found years ago, busking out on the street after his solo album had sold only six copies, trying to prove he wasn't just the washed-up, burnt-out musician the world had written him off as. Zoot never talked about that time. Not that Zoot ever talked about much at all.
But even when Zoot was quiet, his sax never was. His sax wanted to be heard. And this was his way of reaching out to Lips, the only way he knew how.
As for Lips, he talked a lot, but the band understood maybe half of it. But he had a vivid vocabulary through the valves. While every word of his might've been mumbling, every note on his trumpet spoke loud and clear. That's why the band had put him in the mix, after all. Teeth knew this cat had next-level chops when they'd brought him on board, but never in a million years did Teeth think he'd be using them to charm their one and only sax man.
No one in the band could look away - there was something downright fascinating about the way Lips seemed to somehow anticipate Zoot's every move. Whenever Zoot's sax went somewhere unexpected, Lips' trumpet was already there to meet him. The music was an invitation all right, but when their sounds entangled together, it was impossible to tell who was extending the invitation to who.
It wasn't until they both paused for breath at the same time that they became aware of the silence around them.
As if coming out of a trance, Zoot turned around, looking at each member of the band one by one. Finally it dawned on him. "You stopped?"
Dr. Teeth nodded. "Twenty minutes ago."
* * *
Every night, Lips came home from the theater and took out the same record. The one he'd found in a thrift store years ago. The one with a lone figure hunched over his sax, his hair falling in waves to his shoulders. Even though half his face was obscured by a pair of sunglasses and the shadow from the brim of his hat, Lips had always seen in it the same focus and passion that came through in every note of every track.
Lips had tried to tell him. He'd mumbled something about it when they first met. How finding this record had changed him. How the music had been there for him when he'd needed it most. How even on his darkest days, it'd reminded him that beautiful things could still exist in this world. He got a "huh?" in response.
Then again, Zoot seemed to respond that way to most things, so Lips was pretty sure it wasn't just him. Maybe it was for the best that he hadn't gotten the message across. Words couldn't exactly capture how he felt about Zoot Plays The Blues, anyway.
He looked at the cover again, recognizing the face he saw every day now. He used to wonder if it was the moody lighting or if his hair really was that blue. Now he knew.
There was still so much more he wanted to know.
* * *
Of all the places Zoot found around the city to sleep, the Muppet Theatre was by far the nicest. He could curl up in one of the seats in the empty auditorium, or make a little space for himself in the prop room, and he could almost call it a home. After everyone had left and taken the chaos of the day with them, the theater was surprisingly quiet - sometimes too quiet.
Which is why, the night he was awoken by the sound of a trumpet outside of the stage door, his first thought was how welcome the sound of it was, before he even stopped to wonder what it was playing.
He knew this song. Knew it, but couldn't place it. The memory of it itched at the back of his brain, until he realized what it was. Track 5 off of Zoot Plays The Blues. "B-Natural." But it couldn't be.
Zoot had actually kind of liked this one, even if it had been too experimental, too different, for most people to dig. Though he'd never been able to shake the feeling that it was missing something. Without thinking, he grabbed his sax, and he followed the sound of the trumpet all the way to the stage door. He opened it just in time to jump onto the riff that Lips was playing, and they finished it together, each adding their own impromptu flourish.
Lips looked up from where he sat on the stage door steps. With a surprised little laugh, he lowered his trumpet, waiting expectantly for Zoot to play the next part.
If only Zoot could remember what came next.
He knew every song he'd ever done with the band backwards and forwards and inside out, could play anything by Bird or Prez at the drop of a hat. But his own - he couldn't. It wasn't coming to him. Wherever it was in his mind, it was locked away and he didn't have the key.
He could only stare blankly down at his sax. "Uh..."
Lips hesitated for a moment, but then shuffled closer to him. He set down his trumpet, and then, gently, he reached out and gestured at Zoot's sax.
Zoot didn't move at first. His sax was his prized possession. At times it had been his only possession other than the clothes on his back. He never thought he'd let anyone else even touch it. But he never thought anyone else would've known "B-Natural," either. So Zoot gave a rigid little nod and handed it to him.
He didn't expect the jolt that rushed through him when Lips took it in both hands. And when Lips closed his mouth over the reed, he might as well have kissed Zoot on the spot; Zoot had to sit down on the steps, his knees suddenly weak. He might've wanted to be that sax, if he didn't already feel like he was.
His sax was a part of him, there was no doubt about that. So to hand it to Lips was to share a part of himself, in a way that had never seemed possible before. And hearing Lips play his song was like getting to see himself through someone else's eyes - and seeing that he'd actually made something beautiful.
Lips was taking Zoot's sound and turning it like a prism in the light, showing it at a different angle, in a different color. Making it sound more raw, more vulnerable, than Zoot remembered. The way Lips breathed new life into it, maybe that's what it was missing all along. Maybe his song just needed a second chance, and so did he.
Somehow Lips had found the heart of it. Somehow he'd reached in and figured out what Zoot had been trying to say with it. And that took the air right out of Zoot's lungs. He must've let out some kind of sigh, or gasp, because Lips raised his eyebrows in Zoot's direction, asking if this was okay, asking if he could keep playing.
Zoot nodded slowly, mouth agape. It's all yours. I'm all yours. He didn't know which to say, so he said neither.
But whatever Zoot was feeling, Lips could feel it too. So he threw himself into it, making that sax sing into the night. Zoot could feel the reverberation of every note in his core, like it was coming from inside him even as Lips played. And that feeling was nothing short of magic, a kind of magic that neither of them would have been able to do alone.
Lips kept playing on and on, until the pair was interrupted by Sam the Eagle, who poked his head out of the window above the stage door and glared down at them.
"Do you mind?" Sam huffed. "Decent people are settling in for the night, and you're out here causing a racket with this - this glorified kazoo." He made a motion to shoo them away. "Go home!"
Lips let out a reluctant sigh and passed Zoot's sax back to him. Zoot stared at it in his hands like he was seeing it for the first time - like letting Lips play it had transformed it in some way, or had transformed him.
As if needing to test it out again, he raised it to his mouth. And then, under Sam's watchful eye, he gave one short, final, singular little honk.
While Sam spluttered furiously above them, Lips burst out laughing. It was a laugh that pierced the night just as loudly as the sax had, and just as joyfully.
Zoot didn't know what he'd done that was so funny. But he was starting to know that laugh. He'd heard it come out in different pitches, and at unexpected times, and he was never sure what sounds he was going to get next. Like an instrument he didn't know how to play yet. But maybe he could learn.
Sam had said to go home, so Zoot stood up and turned to go back inside the theater. But he froze when Lips stood up too, holding out his hand to him. Just like he'd held out his hand to play his sax. Except this time, he spoke.
"I gahya abbum a' my place. Y'know, ifya wanna refrezz ya memry or zummin." He shifted where he stood, somehow both wanting to say more and already having said too much, yet his hand remained outstretched.
Zoot still wasn't entirely sure he understood. But he understood enough to know that he wanted to take his hand and go with him. So he did.
* * *
The rest of the band didn't know what happened that night; they never asked, and Zoot and Lips never said.
But they could see the difference, even without having the words to put to it. It was in the way they looked at each other, standing side by side on stage. The way they moved together, effortlessly, in sync without even trying. And most of all, the way they played. As though everything was in a shared language that went past the limits of words.
It was such a quietly intimate thing that Dr. Teeth could only bring himself to tease them about it some of the time. It was hard not to; he had to chide them a bit whenever they turned even the most melancholy of tunes into a rhapsodic love song, or whenever they'd disappear into some corner of the theater for their own private jam session.
But after all, Teeth mused, wasn't this why they all played music in the first place? Pouring your heart into these intangible sound waves and putting them out there in the universe, just hoping there'd be someone on the other end that they'd connect with. Having something to say, and wanting to be heard and understood, even if it's not being said in the most conventional way. And for Zoot and Lips, well, it seemed only natural that they'd finally found that in each other.