xp_logs | Gabriel & Kevin | Valentine's Day Drinks

Gabriel meets up with Kevin on Valentine's Day, and the conversation gets personal.

The car let Gabriel out in a block of Alphabet City that seemed to be resisting the influx of money and gentrification better than those around it. He could only assume the 'doorman' Kevin had mentioned was the biker standing with his arms folded, leading against the fence next to the short set of concrete steps leading down to a down. A battered metal scene under a blue lightbulb named it as 'The Senator', although it was hard to find anything that suggested power or influence involved. The man stopped Gabe, but once given Kevin's name ushered him down the steps and through the door. Inside was a long wooden bar that was scuffed and spotted with decades of hard use and wear. It was surprisingly well lit, eschewing the current dive bar tendency to keep the lights as low as possible. As a bartender himself, the stocked shelves behind the bar were impressive; inside of the current trend to locally source alcohol mixed with high end brand names, the list was populated with bottles labelled in a wide range of languages, many options that Gabriel hadn't ever heard of, much less tried. What was more surprising was the clientele. The dozen scattered around were all men, most well past their fifties.

Kevin was sitting in an old banquette, drinking something orange coloured from a tall glass and talking to the old, white haired man in the tattered army fatigues who sat on the barstool, nursing a bottle of Bud Light. He waved Gabe over as he came through the door.

"Gabe, have a seat. Charlie, we need-" Kevin craned his head back over the edge of his seat. "Charlie!"

"What?" The bartender emerged from the back area at the end of the bar, pushing back his snow white dreadlocks from his face.

"Got a guest. Round of the same for us both."

"Bah..." He dismissed them both with a wave of his hand, turning back to the shelf and starting to select some bottles.

"And to think I thought I'd need a suit." Gabriel, now that he was seated, gave the bar a more thorough look. It turned out he'd walked by this spot a few times, on the way to some bizarrely-named Avenue C hangout or other where he knew the bartender and wouldn't have to pay for drinks. He hadn't really thought much of it from the outside, though as he scanned the room, it seemed like the bar was intentionally playing against his kind of clientele.

It was the most gray hair he'd seen on a night out in some time. "So." Gabriel turned his attention to Sydney and raised an eyebrow. "Been here long?" It came out a bit more buoyant than he expected, his words amplified by the whiskeys he'd already consumed.

"Not long. Five decades or so." Kevin took a sip from his drink with relish. "Half this bar is old sources of mine, the other half are people who actively tried to link me into the grand global conspiracy. Ages does weird things to people."

"I believe it," Gabriel said, because months of being around Kevin had suggested as much. "Especially with you covert illuminati types. Something to look forward to, I guess, if I ever make it that far."

The bartender set two more drinks in front of them. "Thanks," Gabriel smiled. He lifted the glass up and gave Kevin a curious look. "What am I drinking?"

“Not a clue. You can’t trust Charlie with a dollar, your wife or your pets, but he’s absolutely the best when it involves drinks. He’s got stuff behind the bar that’s banned in the Geneva Conventions. It probably won’t kill you.” Kevin, with the casualness of the insane or alcoholic, took a heavy slug. “So what happened to your company tonight?”

Gabriel sniffed the liquor and raised his eyebrows before taking a tentative sip. His face relaxed as he swallowed; he'd drank worse. "Oh, who knows?" He waved a hand idly. "I mean, you know. It's a Wednesday. And it's Valentine's Day. Some people have work in the morning." He scrunched his face up in disapproval. "Coupled dudes had plans. Single dudes on the prowl thought they could take advantage of a other people's feelings." He shrugged. "A lotta artificial pressure on a random day in February, but you know."

“I do. I remember bringing home a bouquet of roses and paying a lot to get into the Copa for drinks and a Dick Gregory set.”

"Yes, yes, we get it, you're old." Gabriel winked at Kevin. "You're probably not the only one here with that memory, to be honest. This is quite the collection of AARP cardholders."

"Hey, if you want me to commiserate about Valentine's Day with you, you have to accept that the last time I had a romantic partner for one was during the Ford Administration." Kevin spread his hands in an innocent gesture. "As for this lot, yeah, you can say that for them. For example, David at the bar built the first two bombs used on the Haymarket Police Statue, before having a falling out with his fellow Weatherman. Became an ardent pacifist and moved to New York a year later. Charlie was a school friend of Mark Clark, and became a spy for the Soviets after his death and then a double agent for us a few years later."

"Hm. So less Piano Man than I was thinking, maybe. And more... I dunno. Some spy thing? Not Bond, too cliche." Gabriel was a bit more buzzed than he'd realized. Which didn't stop him from taking another healthy sip of whatever this was. "Chartreuse in here, maybe?"

He shrugged, then shifted his focus back to his drinking buddy. "So, the Ford years? You haven't dated since the 70s?"

"Hardly Bond. This is what happens to extreme activists, professional anarchists and bitter career intelligence guys like me after decades. We get old enough that all the lines that used to separate us get blurred and realize that revolution doesn't mean a solution, but a process that comes around again, over and over." It has actually been the first place Kevin had come once he'd pieced his shattered mind back together. Being secretly a mutant and assassinated by the CIA was considered one of the less fantastic fates they were willing to believe at face value. "And while I certainly dated, I haven't had a relationship that merited the candy and roses treatments since my wife left me, no."

"Hm." Gabriel wrinkled his nose as he chewed that over. "You said that like it was an obvious statement, but we've never actually talked about your wife that I can remember. Or you're being married." He stared at the glass as he swirled its contents. "I've never really done the Valentine's thing, though. Candy and roses are stupid, the holiday is bourgie as fuck, and I'm just not the kind of person who's going to pick up some lonely sadsack."

"You might be surprised to know I thought mostly the same... back in the 50s. Flowers and bullshit aside, it did mean something different when you have someone you care about that way. I'm not talking the kind of sad, desperate pick ups that people do to try and make every holiday special artificially. And, if you had the right person, you both figured it out for yourselves how it worked. Beth liked roses, which at least made it easy to find flowers on the day." Kevin shrugged. "I figure most holidays are the same way. You either figure out how to make them mean something real to you, try and bullshit your way through the motions, or ignore them all together. Since, no offense, you're not my ideal Valentine, I figure option three probably works best for now."

"Okay, one, rude." Gabriel raised an eyebrow. "I am delightful company. At the very least, I'm always good for a laugh, and it's usually at my expense. So." Another shrug. "Two, your wife sounds lovely, I don't have a joke about that, roses are classic, and you're classic, so it all kind of fits together."

"I'm not classic, Gabe. I'm old. One doesn't automatically become the other." He finished off his drink and waved for another. "So, if you're not the kind of person to pick up some lonely sadsack, what are your plans? We've never talked about your partners who weren't casual."

"There aren't many to talk about, honestly." Gabriel followed Kevin's lead and downed the rest of his drink. "I mean, I dunno, the first guy I was really, like, seeing, if you can call it that... got complicated. And that first Valentine's Day was, like, right after I got kicked out of the house. So it wasn't really romantic." That wasn't for lack of trying. Drew Fulton, the senior with whom Gabriel had been fooling around when his dad caught them, had made the effort. But Gabe had other things on his mind. "Not a ton of romance after that, not for a few years, anyway. Kind of hard to get things going when—"

He realized how open he was being, and he felt like he'd been talking for a while. It was all very unlike him. "Anyway, I dunno. Mostly casual, depending on how you define casual."

"I think I define casual differently than you do. I also think we both use casual for very different reasons." Another round arrived on the table, accompanied by a shot of clear liquid so cold that a cold sweat was forming on the outside. "Charlie thinks it's time for akvavit, it seems." Kevin picked up the shot and held it out levelly, waiting for Gabriel to do the shame. "So tell me about when it hasn't been casual."

Gabriel lifted the shot glass. "I have clearly not experienced enough of the world's booze. Cheers." Ever the believer in drinking-related rituals, he touched his glass to the bar before downing the clear liquor inside. It was light and clean in a way he hadn't entirely been expecting; the sensation was not altogether unpleasant, although it felt like a sharp contrast from whatever concoction the bartender had first served him.

"Smooth," he said, because it seemed expected. "Unlike my dating history." He placed the glass back on the bar and eyed Kevin a little cautiously, his guard still up even after the additional booze. "I dunno. What do you wanna know? The first boy who I guess I kind of dated — if sneaking around in backseats of cars and quiet rooms at parties counts as 'dating' — was a senior on the track team. Drew. Standard brown-haired Anglo type. Wiry, though."

"El Paso is a tough town. Backseats and quiet rooms sounds like the only way a gay kid from a Catholic family was going to be able to do anything." Kevin said. "In a different world and place, did you imagine holding hands, going to movies, bringing him to prom? If so, I'd call it dating."

"I guess so?" Gabriel wrinkled his nose. "I mean, yeah, sure. It was nice, you know? And I'd never really felt that way about anyone else before, so..." He shrugged. "But then life happened, so that was that. I left town, and there was a long drought after that, relationship-wise. I mean, really long." It was hard to date, it turned out, when you were homeless. Even harder when you were hustling. "Things were complicated."

"In my experience, things usually are. Still, long drought suggests that there was something inbetween then and now."

Gabriel didn't respond right away, taking a slow sip of his beverage as he considered how best to phrase his reply without breaking the rules that kept the universe intact. "There was," he finally said, his eyes fixed on the hands clasping the glass. "It was — he was... good. Different, too. He made me better." He scratched the back of his neck, letting out a small breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. "It was short but intense. And it ended around the time the world went to shit." He'd said as much before (to new-Clint, no less), and the fabric of reality hadn't unspooled. "Took me a while to get over," he said, hoping it would explain some of the cryptic phrasing. "Hard to talk about sometimes."

"I'm going to take a stab in the dark... which is what you're going to get if you don't get us another round of shots, Charlie." Kevin said, turning to the bartender for a moment. "Sorry, as I was saying, I'm guessing that this person got caught up in M-Day? I'm sorry, Gabe. That's a hell of a thing."

"He didn't make it," Gabriel confirmed, because it was more or less true, even with all the asterisks. "It fucking sucked. And it was just..." He stopped himself. "Ugh, god, listen to me." He frowned and sat up a little straighter. "I sound so fucking... maudlin. I'm a cliche."

"For mourning someone who didn't come home? Fuck Gabe... you ever considered that trying to pretend it doesn't matter isn't exactly working for you?" Kevin sat back as more akvavit hit the table. "I buried friends in Korea. Half the women on the block I grew up with got a Western Union courier around to tell them their husband or son had been killed in action. I sat anonymously surrounded by the family my wife couldn't have with me to watch them put her into the ground. New Age, huggy feely Doctor... what's his name... Phil? That bullshit aside, grief is poisonous. It's like an infection. If you don't release it, it will poison and kill you eventually. I've seen that time and time again."

"I've dealt with it. Been dealing with it. Whatever." Gabriel shrugged. "I mean, I didn't for a little bit, but I've been working it out. And trying to move forward at the same time. It's all been very... I dunno. Enlightening, I guess." He shifted in his seat, considering Kevin for a bit. "You've dealt with a lot," he said, as if he hadn't fully processed it before. "You keep going. That's encouraging."

"Well, the alternative is pretty awful. But if you think I've dealt with it, I'm a much better spy than I thought." Kevin sighed. Normally, Gabe would be the last person he talked to about this but... the young man had been honest with him and he deserved some of that trust in kind. "I haven't dealt with it. Every since all of... this happened, I've been trying to hold on to a sense of identity. The problem is that the identity I'm trying to hold on to believed a lot of things I'm pretty ashamed of these days. I can be anyone, which means how do I hold on to being me? Is me even a real thing any more? And is it worth being me when me believed a lot of shitty things? So, yeah, I've been trying to work it out and move forward at the same time too."

Kevin took a sip of his drink and paused. "Also, you tell anyone I said that, and I will put a hit out on you."

"Breathe easy. Your secret's safe with me." Gabriel gave Kevin a mock salute. He picked up the fresh shot of akvavit. "People change. People evolve. You can and you will." A small shrug. "I think a lot of people think that's bullshit, but if I didn't think that were true, I'd be even more fucked up, so." He lifted the glass slightly. "You don't have to pretend to be strong all the time, you know? Other people will manage. Cheers."

"Change is what I'm afraid of. The line between being a better me and being a different person altogether is really thin for me, Gabe. I completely lost who I was for a long time and slipping back over that line is perilously close some days." He picked up his shot and motioned with it. "So I'll try and... accept change a little more and you try and excise some of that grief that you're letting separate you from others. Sound like a deal?"

"Well, that's just..." Gabriel's shot glass hovered. "I mean, that's really over-simplifying things, really. It's not like I'm living in an emotional bubble." The craving for a cigarette hit him. "But yes, sure, fine. Deal."

"Of course it's over-simplifying things. It's a toast, not a position paper. And you know what I mean."

"Yeah, yeah, fine. Here's to self-improvement." He eyed the shot. "Starting tomorrow, I guess."

"Damn right. After these, I'll see if Charlie has any of the stuff he got smuggled out of Kazakhstan. I think serving it is still considered a war crime by the UN."