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Fabian Salah has had dozens of Pinterest boards of costuming inspo prepared for a hypothetical future tour since he had first quit the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and decided to join the queer music scene. All of them are different vibes, or fits, or fabrics, but what they have in common is that the thought of wearing them makes Fabian feel beautiful. It’s the sort of thing that his parents might never understand, because it’s more visual evidence of all the ways in which Fabian hasn’t lived up the ideal of the hockey player son that they had wanted, but Fabian understands it, and he understands that he wants it, and he thinks that is all that matters.
“We could have some big name brands collaborating with us on this tour,” his agent says, scrolling through his phone idly. “You’re hot stuff at the moment, Salah.”
Fabian pauses, leans closer to the mirror, adjusts the angle of the kohl pencil that he is winging out from the corner of his eye. “I don’t want big brands,” he replies, moving onto the other eye. “That’s not what my music is about.”
“So, what - you want some unknown designer? Fabian, you could have anyone you want. Just think!”
“Unknown queer designer,” Fabian corrects, because he has had enough of cishet white men trying to tell him what to do with his body, and all the ways that he should make himself or palatable or exotic for his audience.
Fabian’s agent pauses. “I could get you a list,” he says, eventually, “but there’s this one designer -”
A stagehand pops his head around the door of Fabian’s dressing room. “You’re on in five.”
“Shit, alright.” Fabian swipes a quick layer of gloss over his lips, then gathers the sheet music he had been reviewing together. “Look, send me a list of them. Or, no - I trust you. Choose someone good, let me know.”
“Fabian -”
“Unknown! Queer!” Fabian calls over his shoulder, already rushing towards the stage and leaving his agent behind, exasperated.
He doesn’t really think of it again for a the next couple of weeks. He’s performing in a nonstop sequence of smaller, more intimate shows, letting himself get caught up in the whirlwind of music and lights and joy. This is what he is doing it all for. To be on stage, crooning into a microphone or bending the bow of his violin across the strings, close enough to see the sweat and exaltation on the blur of faces of the pulsing crowd, and to know that he is at the centre of it all. Maybe there are more people than there had ever been before his music had made it onto the radio and then the charts, but Fabian feels no different about performing than he did before it all. He wonders how he feel when he’s on tour, in venues like city halls and theatres, seeing rows of people and knowing that they had bought tickets especially for him. He wonders if it will feel different at all.
His agent sure seems to think so, running Fabian through a rigorous parade of preparation. There’s practices and rehearsals, travel logistics, lodgings, equipment list, and - eventually - Fabian’s being herded into a small Toronto studio for his measurements to be taken so that the (unknown and queer, he is assured) designer can craft him the armour that he will be able to take with him on tour. Fabian likes it immediately, from the very first moment that he steps foot through the door; the decor is placid and calm, all bright and airy colours, and the walls are covered in sketches and photographs - all of them clothes, beautiful, stunning clothes, that Fabian wants so viciously that it builds to an ache in his teeth.
“He comes highly recommended,” Fabian’s agent assures him, watching as Fabian turns in a slow circle to take it all in. “A lot of people in the field have worked with him - say he’s very good at understanding vision.”
“I’m excited to meet him,” Fabian says. “I -”
He’s interrupted by a side door swinging open. And he looks up, just in time to watch as Ryan Price walks through it. For a moment, he thinks that he’s dreaming. That this is some strange thing that his mind, reverting back to high school has conjured up for him. Because it can’t be Ryan walking through the door: Ryan sat in the front row of his conservatory with shining eyes; Ryan being kind to him, even when Fabian was at his most dismissive and rude; Ryan, on a ferry, leaning in, the wind combing through his hair; Ryan leaving again, because his billeting had only been for a year and Fabian hadn’t thought he’d ever see him again. Ryan’s supposed to be playing hockey, with his strong, sure hands and his broad shoulders and the thicks bands of muscle in his arms and thighs that Fabian had spent far too much time thinking about. Ryan’s not supposed to be here, in a tiny studio in Toronto, looking at Fabian with wide, startled eyes.
“Fabian?” he asks, clearly having the same internal struggle as Fabian is. Fabian wonders if he, too, is thinking about the ferry.
“It is you!” Fabian cries. “Gosh, I thought I was seeing things for a minute there.”
Huffing a quiet, disbelieving laugh, Ryan replies, “so did I. Wow. I can’t believe you’re here.”
“You guys know each other?” Fabian’s agent asks, glancing between the pair of them.
“My parents billeted him for a year back when we were in high school.” Fabian turns back to Ryan, and finds himself drinking in the sight of him, trying catalogue all the ways in which Ryan has changed. Not many, except for his face is a little older and wiser, and the patchy highschool stubble he’d had has grown out into a full, luscious beard. “I thought you’d be - I don’t know - a wildly successful hockey player by now.”
Ryan seems to wilt a bit. “Not quite.”
Fabian pauses. Somewhere, he thinks, he’s misstepped or overstepped. “Sorry,” he says, quietly.
Visibly rallying himself, Ryan rolls his shoulders in a forcibly loose shrug. “Don’t be. I just found that hockey wasn’t for me. You, meanwhile - Well, music’s exactly where I thought you’d be.”
The conservatory, the ferry, Ryan’s fingers on his wrist -
“But you didn’t know it was going to be me walking in,” Fabian points out.
“It was booked under your agents name,” Ryan explains, “so, no, I didn’t know it was you. But the briefing, you know, said music tour. And I remember how much you liked to play, and how good you were. So, I’m not really surprised, except for you being in my studio. Congratulations on the tour.”
“Thank you,” Fabian says, and means it. He’s almost surprised to mean it, because he’s rarely sincere these days when he’s thanking people for their gratitude - because it’s usually not gratitude. Usually, he thinks, most people who congratulate Fabian on his career don’t care about his music. But he thinks that Ryan does. He thinks that, when Ryan congratulates him, he’s being sincere.
It’s an exhilarating feeling, like watching the first flurry of snow in the winter and picturing what it might be to fall in such a way. Fabian feels breathless with it, dizzy and spinning.
“I’d love to hear what you’re thinking,” Ryan says, and produces a tape measure from the pocket of his shirt. “Are you alright for me to take your measurements while we speak?”
Fabian is led to a small pedestal that Ryan pushes into the centre of the room. At the urging of his agent, he strips away his blouse until he is left only in the tight vest that he had worn for modesty purposes so that Ryan will be able to get more accurate measurements. He feels - strange, being set apart like this, so that people can pour over the details of how his body is made up. He feels vulnerable and watched, but finds that Ryan is a steadying presence, bustling around Fabian and always busy, always purposeful. Every look that he sends Fabian’s way has a task, and Fabian is so grateful for that - grateful that Ryan is not just looking because he feels entitled to Fabian’s body.
“So,” Ryan says, as he comes closer to Fabian, “what’s the vibe your wanting?”
“Flowy,” Fabian says immediately. “Like, ethereal, billowy, other-worldly. I think a lot of my music, stripped back, is romantic and sensual.”
“Something romantic like regency?” Ryan suggests. “Mr. Darcy when he’s coming out the lake. It’s suggestive, obviously, but it’s only suggestive because of the romance - you know, the intimacy, the vulnerability, the feeling.”
“Exactly,” Fabian says, a little surprised at how deftly Ryan has summed it all up. “You watch Pride and Prejudice?”
Ryan hums affirmatively, and finally moves to touch Fabian. Just a brush of his knuckles against the bare skin of Fabian’s arm as he reaches around him with the tape measure, nudging Fabian’s arms up to stretch out the full length of his wingspan, but it’s enough to send sparks ricocheting across Fabian’s skin, a pleasant burn like he’s being lit up from the inside. Fabian draws in a small, startled breath, struggling to cling to his train of thought.
“I was thinking as well,” Fabian adds, wrestling his composure back, “that we could maybe try and incorporate some Lebanese elements. I want - It’s part of my identity. On stage, I need to be authentic - I can’t be separating bits of myself off to one side when I’m playing.”
“I’d have to some more research,” Ryan says, after a pause for the thought. “I’d want to do it right. If I can’t, I’d rather not do it at all.”
“I can send you some stuff,” Fabian says, “and if you have any questions, I’ll answer them as best I can.”
Fabian’s Canadian. He knows his Lebanese roots and he loves them, but he worries sometimes that he doesn’t understand them. Not in the way that some people might. He thinks, sometimes, that it’s entirely possible that he’s losing more of it every day and just not realising, that he’ll wake up and he’ll be as distant from it as Canada is from Lebanon geographically, loving it still but never truly being able to reach it again.
Ryan’s hands are gentle. They run over his chest as he wraps the tape measure around Fabian’s torso. He’s constantly moving away to jot down notes in a little spiral bound pad that he has resting on a desk. It’s then that Fabian is taking the chance to steal little glances of him, looking him up and down, watching the shift of his muscles as he moves and the way that his body bears him. He’s still thinking about the ferry. He’s trying not to think about the ferry. He’s thinking how Ryan had leaned forward, his fingers on Fabian’s wrist, and how Fabian had turned towards him, and how Fabian’s eyes had been drawn down to his lips again and again, thinking -
Ryan makes him think about a lot of things. Fabian doesn’t know what to do with all these things that he’s thinking. He’s thinking that Ryan is gentle. Kind. He’s thinking that he likes Ryan’s eyes, and the way the way that he’s looking at Fabian instead of just his body. He’s thinking - thinking, thinking, thinking.
Ryan’s hand is on his hip, burning. Then his ankle, drawing the tape measure down the height of his leg. Fabian’s tiny beside him. He thinks that Ryan could swallow him whole, engulf him entirely, and he likes that, in a way.
“What happens next?” Fabian asks, when Ryan is finished, folding away his tape measure and reviewing the measurements he’s taken.
“Sketches. A lot of them. I’ll sketch out some designs, make some notes on fabrics and colours and everything, and then send them over for approval. After that, I’ll actually start constructing some for you.”
“If I gave you my number,” Fabian blurts, “would you send them straight to me?”
Ryan blinks. “Yeah. I would.”
“Would you lt me take you out for breakfast as well?”
Ryan looks flummoxed. “You don’t have to,” he starts.
Fabian cuts him off. “I want to.” Ryan looks a little like he doesn’t believe him, which Fabian thinks is criminal, so he steps forward, towards him, and repeats, “I want to.”
Fabian’s agent - bless his soul - has turned around to give them the illusion of privacy, and Fabian has never been more grateful.
He remembers, when Ryan’s billeting year had ended and he had left, just another one in the endless train of hockey players that came rampaging through Fabian’s life and home. Except -
Except that Fabian had missed Ryan when he had gone. Not enough to derail his whole life, or to send him on the hunt for the contact details of wherever Ryan had ended up after, but just enough that he had been aware of the hollow absence of it in the months after. Enough that it had felt strange when he had woken up and tumbled down the stairs for breakfast and there had not been Ryan at the table, looking up with a smile already on his face for Fabian, like he’d been excited to see him, like he’d wanted Fabian around.
“I want to,” Fabian says again, quieter, and reaches out for Ryan’s hand.
But Ryan’s already reached out, and his fingers end up wrapped around Fabian’s wrist, like another day entirely. Ryan looks down at where they’re connecting, and a grin - small and wary but there - cracks across his face. “I’d like that,” he tells Fabian. “I’d like that a lot.”