When the workday had ended on friday evening, Arthur had left with a cheery "See you tomorrow Skip!"
Waking up on saturday morning, Martin had a lump in his throat that resisted to go away for the whole day. His thoughts kept on drifting to the upcoming evening, which made work considerably harder.
He had to carry a cupboard from Fitton to Hounslow. Not a very big job, so he had the afternoon off. Not the very best thing to happen, he found out as he nearly burnt himself with boiling tea-water because his thoughts had been elsewhere.
Before he went off to the Shappeys' house, he changed his clothes three times, finally settling on a plain shirt, jeans and jacket. He wasn't even sure this was a proper date, so in case Douglas had gotten it wrong, he didn't want to dress up too much. (Not that he even owned fancy clothes.) That way he could always pretend it was just a normal movie-night between friends.
He needed a full five minutes to bring himself to ring the doorbell, and when he finally managed to do so, he had the sudden urge to turn around and run as fast as he could.
Though that plan was ruined by a smiling Arthur, opening the door, and loudly proclaiming "Hey Skip! Come on in, the popcorn is nearly done."
The house was quite big, Martin wondered how many rooms it had. He hesitantly followed Arthur to the kitchen, already smelling the sweet flavour of slightly burned popcorn.
While the steward was busy getting the bag out of the microwave and pouring its content into a large green plastic bowl, Martin noticed that he had never seen Arthur in normal clothes before.
Jeans suited him quite well, as did the open ruby shirt, showing the plain black T-shirt underneath. His hair also looked a bit different, seemed like he had put styling gel in it.
All that was topped off with a pair of colourful striped socks. Martin smiled, that was so Arthur.
His thoughts were interrupted by the subject of his musings, asking him if he wanted anything to drink.
"Uh, yes. What do you have?"
"I found this brilliant beer with pineapple-flavour, isn't it great how many things there are with pineapple-flavour? You want to try it?"
Arthur seemed very enthusiastic, like he always did when he had found something new and brilliant. And that happened quite often.
Just as Martin wanted to agree, although the thought of sticky sweet tropical beer didn't excite him much, he remembered his van outside.
"Sorry Arthur, I can´t. I have to drive later."
"You don't need to, Skip. You can stay over.", the steward replied casually while fumbling for two bottles in the fridge.
Martin suddenly felt as if it had just gotten about ten times hotter in the room.
Naturally Arthur hadn't meant what was now racing through Martins mind, but still he couldn't shake the thought.
"So, what do you say? We have a nice guestroom.", the other man said, handing him the beer.
The captain did a little cough so his voice wouldn't make that sound Douglas endlessly teased him about. Still his voice was a little wonky when he spoke.
"Err... I don't know Arthur..."
The steward looked very disappointed, an expression Martin had last seen on him when Carolyn had turned down the offer to fly a whole circus to Belarus. ("No dear, our plane is just too small for ten acrobats, fifteen workers, five fire-breathers and a clown. And we wouldn't have carried the elephants anyway.")
"Oh... OK.", he put the bottle back in the fridge. "So what do you want to drink then? We've got lemonade, pineapple juice, water and cola."
Martin was a little surprised at how quickly Arthur had let the subject drop. Usually he would beg and claim it would be great when he wanted something, like seeing the polar bears when they had flown the people from "Unbeaten Track".
"Um, lemonade please."
Arthur handed him a glass, picked up the green bowl and gestured to the kitchen door. "Let's go to the living room then."
His mood seemed to have gone down a little, unusual for the otherwise enthusiastic steward.
Surely he had thought they'd have a pyjama-party and play video-games or something along these lines.
How could Martin ever have thought that this could possibly be a date? Arthur had probably never even thought about him in that way.
Come to think of it, how would Douglas even know if Arthur was gay, or bi like himself? He was so used to Douglas always being right that he hadn't even wasted a second thought on the matter.
Stupid! That's what he was, utterly stupid. He sighed inwardly. Another hopeless disaster to add to the list.
He followed the other man into the vast living-room. The sofa looked a little shabby but comfy, and the small table was already stacked with snacks that would last a whole army. He grinned a bit. Arthur always tended to go overboard with these kind of things.
The steward was already busy trying to figure out how to get the DVD to start, pressing buttons and frantically looking for the remote control. Eventually he found it, on top of the television.
The movie started, and Arthur let himself slump into the sofa on which Martin was already sitting, clutching his glass of lemonade.
"You'll like it, Skip, it's a brilliant movie.", the other man smiled at him, now more his cheery self again. "Hmm", the captain replied.
He would just try to get through the evening without embarrassing himself, drive home and forget about all this. Like he had always done.