Quentin & Gabriel, Friday evening
May. 25th, 2018 04:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsQuentin and Gabriel run into each other in the gym, and catch up after months of silence and avoidance. It goes pretty well for them, all things considered.
Summer body season was approaching fast, and Gabriel felt ill-prepared.
It wasn't as if he hadn't been working out. But something about the winter — this particular winter, with its meteorological vagaries, but also its taxing personal shit — had thrown his diet into whack. He felt like he hadn't found the time to really bulk up. The few days he'd spent in Limbo had fucked with his body, and having to rescue the city from a literal inferno hadn't helped. So Gabriel hadn't really hit the gym with full force in a while.
Arms and abs were about to be more on display, and he had work to do. It had already been a rough workout, but he was determined to get everything working and hop over whatever mental hurdle was keeping him from his gains. With Drake playing in his earbuds, he took a deep breath and started another set of bench presses.
The doors swung open when a new patron arrived, already well into their workout playlist. "'I'm putting both hands over my mouth, I can only hope nothing's gonna come out, but there it is, on the tip of my tongue, I think I love . . .'" MNEK's confession died on Quentin's tongue when he identified the other occupant, who was already at work at the same station he had planned to use. The irony that this was the song he was listening to. Quentin would have laughed if he did not suddenly feel sick to his stomach.
The sound and sight of Quentin after all this time distracted Gabriel somewhat in the middle of his fourth rep, but he gritted his teeth and pushed through it. The bar was shaky as he pushed up, and he held it up for a second before moving into the fifth and final rep, as he'd planned.
His focus had slipped, though — his mind was a bit of a whirlwind as he tried to remember just how long it had been since he'd actually seen Quentin — and it brought his form with it. As the bar lowered, he knew he'd be in trouble.
Well, fuck. "Could use a spot," he called out, trying to hide the deep embarrassment he now felt as he struggled to get the weight back up to the rack. "If you don't mind."
Quentin stepped in but stopped halfway to the weight rack. Gabriel, in mesh shorts and a tank top, muscles straining to lift the weights, sweat dripping down his face and arms . . . If Quentin got any closer, he'd be about as helpless as Gabriel was. So instead he held out a hand, using the gesture to focus his telekinesis to help Gabriel left the bar back to its resting place. "Who're you trying to impress with all that?" he teased, hoping to lighten the mood. He did not lower his hand.
"Instagram," Gabriel quipped back. The bar now restored, he sat up on the bench and reached for a towel to wipe sweat off his forehead. "Thanks." He stood and turned to face Quentin. He smiled, because despite the mild pit in his stomach, he knew it was the right thing to do. He wasn't entirely sure what to say. He'd been avoiding the other man for a while now — well, avoiding was too strong, but he wasn't going out of his way to say hi. What greeting really sufficed in a situation like that?
"Guess I'm kind of pushing it today," he admitted, falling back to gym conversation, because he could. "I'm lucky you showed up." Not that he totally felt that way.
"Hmm." Trying to maintain this careful balance between keeping their space while not being standoffish, Quentin lowered his arm and turned his hand so he held it palm up, as if beckoning to Gabriel. Except instead, a 30-pound dumbbell lifted off the rack and came his way. "What's your routine?"
"That's the question." Gabriel shrugged. "I've been sort of — I dunno," he shrugged again, "off my game. Running was easier, and it's been nice out, and I guess I just... haven't felt on my game lately." It was a weird thing to admit to a person with whom he'd ended things because they'd both needed to figure their shit out. He grabbed his water bottle from next to the bench and made eye contact with Quentin as he took a sip. "How have you been?" He genuinely wanted to know.
"Fucking same." The weight levitated in front of Quentin, bobbing up and down an inch though he tried to keep it steady. "Wonder if I have seasonal affective disorder, or whatever it's called. Cold weather and no sunlight for eight months, it's a wonder I haven't put a bullet in my head. Again."
Gabriel gave what he hoped was a mildly sympathetic half-wince. “Yeah, it was a rough few months." An understatement, in a lot of ways, but whatever. He couldn't really believe they were talking about the weather. It was so banal, when nothing about their past conversations had been. "Surprised it got you down, though," he added after a second, watching the weight hover in front of Quentin. "Doesn't seem like you."
The psi stared at the weight, only the weight, pushing Gabriel's blurry form as far out of his vision as he could without turning his back on him. It made it easier to talk, as if he were talking to himself and not one of the only people who ever managed to make Quentin open up. The weight continued to wobble.
"Haven't really been me much lately, anyway," he responded softly. "A few moments of tranquility here and there, but most days, I still don't know."
Gabriel just nodded, then turned away from Quentin and moved toward the water cooler. "I know the feeling. Fucking sucks." He began re-filling his bottle. "Did you hear I went to a hell dimension? Or something like that. Not really sure, but either way, I didn't have enough cigarettes to last three days."
"Good, give your lungs a break." For all his own bad habits, Quentin never failed to shame other people for theirs, especially Gabriel for his smoking. Even with whatever their status was now, some things did not change. "What even is that, anyway? A 'hell dimension.' Is this one of those magic things that makes no sense?"
"As opposed to the magic thing that do make sense?" Gabriel took a swig and turned around. "I dunno. Demons, gargoyles and shit. Here I thought I was in hell this whole time. Not so much." He shrugged and looked at his feet for a second. "I did get to swing an axe, though," he added, looking back up. "That was kind of cool, I guess."
"Ooh, how butch. Are you . . . are you okay?" The question came out slowly, Quentin's voice trembling a bit over the words. His gaze shifted to Gabriel for just a second before returning to the still-wobbling weight.
"Oh, uh... Yeah." Gabriel was taken aback by the question. It wasn't what he'd expected from Quentin. Not that Gabriel thought Quentin didn't care, but they'd rarely talked so directly about feelings even when they were doing whatever it was they'd been doing. "I mean, you know me. I'm resilient or whatever." He wiped sweat off his forehead and moved back toward the bar, eyeing it a bit warily.
Then he stopped and looked up. "Okay, it kind of sucked," he admitted. "It just got fucking bananas and, like, it's weird to have to be the adult in that situation, you know? That's so not me."
The shift in Gabriel's tone triggered something in Quentin, and he set the weight down on the floor. "You're more put together than every other asshole here, so I'm sure it could've been much worse. No casualties, I assume? Haven't heard of any mourning lately."
"No casualties," Gabriel confirmed, unable to help but look a little relieved. "Other than my feelings, which were sucked out of me for a good few hours in the fight against some hellspawn or other."
"What, like some kind of psychic parasite?" Quentin asked, his voice going up an octave at that last word. He cleared his throat. "What did that do to you?"
"Oh, no," Gabriel responded quickly, "no, sorry, not like that. It was Topaz. It's all a little... complicated, but she, you know, sucks the emotions out of you. It was..."
Quentin had been standing up straight and stiff when Gabriel mentioned the psychic intrusion, and his posture softened when Gabriel relieved his concerns. He let out a breath he did not know he was holding, too. "Shit, G. Lede up front."
"Sorry, sorry." Gabriel gave him an apologetic look. "I'm still kind of making sense of it, honestly, so, like, I'm not even sure how to explain it. The TL;DR is that it turns out feelings are good, probably? Still a little fuzzy."
"Congrats on your Sesame Street breakthrough, I guess?" Quentin raised an eyebrow, clearly skeptical of such a conclusion when he did not have the same evidence to support it himself. "I mean, no, that was . . . sorry. Self-realization and introspection. It's . . . good, I guess. Healthy."
"It was kind of forced upon me," Gabriel pointed out, a little more defensively than he'd intended. He resisted the impulse to cross his arms. "But whatever. I made it, right? Feels like that's all you can ask for around here."
"You're miles ahead of me," the other man admitted, snorting. "So what does it mean for you, exactly? Your whole new outlook on life."
"I wouldn't call it a new outlook," Gabriel protested. "I'm not sure what it was. Or what it means. More food for thought, I guess? I've been finding myself with an awful lot of time to think these days. Probably because I'm never at the gym."
"Maybe you're not drinking enough."
Gabriel had to laugh at that. "Maybe, but we both know that's never been my problem." He smiled. It was quiet for a second. "What are you even up to these days? I mean, not, you know, I just... haven't really run into you."
It was almost embarrassing how much nothing Quentin had been doing since they had last spoken. Working, getting drunk, getting high, antagonizing people for fun, sleeping around with strangers to avoid confronting his own feelings, sometimes all five at the same time . . . "Same old. Boring as fuck. Oh, but I did try Rave the other week. My advice? Don't do it. Not worth it. Should've just gone with coke instead." His tone was light, and he wore a grin, though he turned his head and looked away from Gabriel when he spoke.
Gabriel did his best to keep his face-neutral. "Coke's a good high," he said, rather unhelpfully. "But honestly, Rave's a hard pass. My powers are fucking me up enough. Can't imagine I'd get out of that one unscathed. Probably be, like, 5 years older in an hour."
"I thought it would get me back my telepathy. Kickstart my brain or something, you know? I've tried everything Jean, David, Frost, and Chuckles suggested, and nothing's worked. So I had nothing else to lose, really. And if I OD'd, well . . ." Quentin did not finish the thought.
“You’d be dead.” Gabriel saw no reason to beat around the bush. And it was nice to be reminded that their decision to end things had come from a real place.
He also knew Quentin would bristle at that, though, so he opted to push the conversation ahead. “I’m sorry that didn’t work, though. Honestly. I can’t - to miss a part of yourself like that, it seems like it would fucking suck.”
An understatement for sure, but Quentin had struggled for the words to describe his loss to Jean, and he found it no easier with Gabriel. "Like an amputation," he said, repeating the best comparison he could think of. He shook his head and waved his hand dismissively. "Stop. This is weird enough for us as it is, I don't need to bring it down any more with my self-pitying bullshit. I'm distracting you from molding yourself into a thirst trap, anyway."
Gabriel chuckled and gave Quentin a small, vague smile. He wasn't wistful, exactly, but something close to it. "You're right. What will Instagram do without me." He glanced at the bench. "Not to make it more weird, but I really could use a spot on the last set." He looked at Quentin, his expression a little sheepish. "And then it's all yours."
Perhaps against his better judgment (but that really was par for the course), Quentin agreed and walked over to stand behind the bench. He could have done this remotely with telekinesis, but why make wise choices when you can get yourself into situations you'll angst over later?
Summer body season was approaching fast, and Gabriel felt ill-prepared.
It wasn't as if he hadn't been working out. But something about the winter — this particular winter, with its meteorological vagaries, but also its taxing personal shit — had thrown his diet into whack. He felt like he hadn't found the time to really bulk up. The few days he'd spent in Limbo had fucked with his body, and having to rescue the city from a literal inferno hadn't helped. So Gabriel hadn't really hit the gym with full force in a while.
Arms and abs were about to be more on display, and he had work to do. It had already been a rough workout, but he was determined to get everything working and hop over whatever mental hurdle was keeping him from his gains. With Drake playing in his earbuds, he took a deep breath and started another set of bench presses.
The doors swung open when a new patron arrived, already well into their workout playlist. "'I'm putting both hands over my mouth, I can only hope nothing's gonna come out, but there it is, on the tip of my tongue, I think I love . . .'" MNEK's confession died on Quentin's tongue when he identified the other occupant, who was already at work at the same station he had planned to use. The irony that this was the song he was listening to. Quentin would have laughed if he did not suddenly feel sick to his stomach.
The sound and sight of Quentin after all this time distracted Gabriel somewhat in the middle of his fourth rep, but he gritted his teeth and pushed through it. The bar was shaky as he pushed up, and he held it up for a second before moving into the fifth and final rep, as he'd planned.
His focus had slipped, though — his mind was a bit of a whirlwind as he tried to remember just how long it had been since he'd actually seen Quentin — and it brought his form with it. As the bar lowered, he knew he'd be in trouble.
Well, fuck. "Could use a spot," he called out, trying to hide the deep embarrassment he now felt as he struggled to get the weight back up to the rack. "If you don't mind."
Quentin stepped in but stopped halfway to the weight rack. Gabriel, in mesh shorts and a tank top, muscles straining to lift the weights, sweat dripping down his face and arms . . . If Quentin got any closer, he'd be about as helpless as Gabriel was. So instead he held out a hand, using the gesture to focus his telekinesis to help Gabriel left the bar back to its resting place. "Who're you trying to impress with all that?" he teased, hoping to lighten the mood. He did not lower his hand.
"Instagram," Gabriel quipped back. The bar now restored, he sat up on the bench and reached for a towel to wipe sweat off his forehead. "Thanks." He stood and turned to face Quentin. He smiled, because despite the mild pit in his stomach, he knew it was the right thing to do. He wasn't entirely sure what to say. He'd been avoiding the other man for a while now — well, avoiding was too strong, but he wasn't going out of his way to say hi. What greeting really sufficed in a situation like that?
"Guess I'm kind of pushing it today," he admitted, falling back to gym conversation, because he could. "I'm lucky you showed up." Not that he totally felt that way.
"Hmm." Trying to maintain this careful balance between keeping their space while not being standoffish, Quentin lowered his arm and turned his hand so he held it palm up, as if beckoning to Gabriel. Except instead, a 30-pound dumbbell lifted off the rack and came his way. "What's your routine?"
"That's the question." Gabriel shrugged. "I've been sort of — I dunno," he shrugged again, "off my game. Running was easier, and it's been nice out, and I guess I just... haven't felt on my game lately." It was a weird thing to admit to a person with whom he'd ended things because they'd both needed to figure their shit out. He grabbed his water bottle from next to the bench and made eye contact with Quentin as he took a sip. "How have you been?" He genuinely wanted to know.
"Fucking same." The weight levitated in front of Quentin, bobbing up and down an inch though he tried to keep it steady. "Wonder if I have seasonal affective disorder, or whatever it's called. Cold weather and no sunlight for eight months, it's a wonder I haven't put a bullet in my head. Again."
Gabriel gave what he hoped was a mildly sympathetic half-wince. “Yeah, it was a rough few months." An understatement, in a lot of ways, but whatever. He couldn't really believe they were talking about the weather. It was so banal, when nothing about their past conversations had been. "Surprised it got you down, though," he added after a second, watching the weight hover in front of Quentin. "Doesn't seem like you."
The psi stared at the weight, only the weight, pushing Gabriel's blurry form as far out of his vision as he could without turning his back on him. It made it easier to talk, as if he were talking to himself and not one of the only people who ever managed to make Quentin open up. The weight continued to wobble.
"Haven't really been me much lately, anyway," he responded softly. "A few moments of tranquility here and there, but most days, I still don't know."
Gabriel just nodded, then turned away from Quentin and moved toward the water cooler. "I know the feeling. Fucking sucks." He began re-filling his bottle. "Did you hear I went to a hell dimension? Or something like that. Not really sure, but either way, I didn't have enough cigarettes to last three days."
"Good, give your lungs a break." For all his own bad habits, Quentin never failed to shame other people for theirs, especially Gabriel for his smoking. Even with whatever their status was now, some things did not change. "What even is that, anyway? A 'hell dimension.' Is this one of those magic things that makes no sense?"
"As opposed to the magic thing that do make sense?" Gabriel took a swig and turned around. "I dunno. Demons, gargoyles and shit. Here I thought I was in hell this whole time. Not so much." He shrugged and looked at his feet for a second. "I did get to swing an axe, though," he added, looking back up. "That was kind of cool, I guess."
"Ooh, how butch. Are you . . . are you okay?" The question came out slowly, Quentin's voice trembling a bit over the words. His gaze shifted to Gabriel for just a second before returning to the still-wobbling weight.
"Oh, uh... Yeah." Gabriel was taken aback by the question. It wasn't what he'd expected from Quentin. Not that Gabriel thought Quentin didn't care, but they'd rarely talked so directly about feelings even when they were doing whatever it was they'd been doing. "I mean, you know me. I'm resilient or whatever." He wiped sweat off his forehead and moved back toward the bar, eyeing it a bit warily.
Then he stopped and looked up. "Okay, it kind of sucked," he admitted. "It just got fucking bananas and, like, it's weird to have to be the adult in that situation, you know? That's so not me."
The shift in Gabriel's tone triggered something in Quentin, and he set the weight down on the floor. "You're more put together than every other asshole here, so I'm sure it could've been much worse. No casualties, I assume? Haven't heard of any mourning lately."
"No casualties," Gabriel confirmed, unable to help but look a little relieved. "Other than my feelings, which were sucked out of me for a good few hours in the fight against some hellspawn or other."
"What, like some kind of psychic parasite?" Quentin asked, his voice going up an octave at that last word. He cleared his throat. "What did that do to you?"
"Oh, no," Gabriel responded quickly, "no, sorry, not like that. It was Topaz. It's all a little... complicated, but she, you know, sucks the emotions out of you. It was..."
Quentin had been standing up straight and stiff when Gabriel mentioned the psychic intrusion, and his posture softened when Gabriel relieved his concerns. He let out a breath he did not know he was holding, too. "Shit, G. Lede up front."
"Sorry, sorry." Gabriel gave him an apologetic look. "I'm still kind of making sense of it, honestly, so, like, I'm not even sure how to explain it. The TL;DR is that it turns out feelings are good, probably? Still a little fuzzy."
"Congrats on your Sesame Street breakthrough, I guess?" Quentin raised an eyebrow, clearly skeptical of such a conclusion when he did not have the same evidence to support it himself. "I mean, no, that was . . . sorry. Self-realization and introspection. It's . . . good, I guess. Healthy."
"It was kind of forced upon me," Gabriel pointed out, a little more defensively than he'd intended. He resisted the impulse to cross his arms. "But whatever. I made it, right? Feels like that's all you can ask for around here."
"You're miles ahead of me," the other man admitted, snorting. "So what does it mean for you, exactly? Your whole new outlook on life."
"I wouldn't call it a new outlook," Gabriel protested. "I'm not sure what it was. Or what it means. More food for thought, I guess? I've been finding myself with an awful lot of time to think these days. Probably because I'm never at the gym."
"Maybe you're not drinking enough."
Gabriel had to laugh at that. "Maybe, but we both know that's never been my problem." He smiled. It was quiet for a second. "What are you even up to these days? I mean, not, you know, I just... haven't really run into you."
It was almost embarrassing how much nothing Quentin had been doing since they had last spoken. Working, getting drunk, getting high, antagonizing people for fun, sleeping around with strangers to avoid confronting his own feelings, sometimes all five at the same time . . . "Same old. Boring as fuck. Oh, but I did try Rave the other week. My advice? Don't do it. Not worth it. Should've just gone with coke instead." His tone was light, and he wore a grin, though he turned his head and looked away from Gabriel when he spoke.
Gabriel did his best to keep his face-neutral. "Coke's a good high," he said, rather unhelpfully. "But honestly, Rave's a hard pass. My powers are fucking me up enough. Can't imagine I'd get out of that one unscathed. Probably be, like, 5 years older in an hour."
"I thought it would get me back my telepathy. Kickstart my brain or something, you know? I've tried everything Jean, David, Frost, and Chuckles suggested, and nothing's worked. So I had nothing else to lose, really. And if I OD'd, well . . ." Quentin did not finish the thought.
“You’d be dead.” Gabriel saw no reason to beat around the bush. And it was nice to be reminded that their decision to end things had come from a real place.
He also knew Quentin would bristle at that, though, so he opted to push the conversation ahead. “I’m sorry that didn’t work, though. Honestly. I can’t - to miss a part of yourself like that, it seems like it would fucking suck.”
An understatement for sure, but Quentin had struggled for the words to describe his loss to Jean, and he found it no easier with Gabriel. "Like an amputation," he said, repeating the best comparison he could think of. He shook his head and waved his hand dismissively. "Stop. This is weird enough for us as it is, I don't need to bring it down any more with my self-pitying bullshit. I'm distracting you from molding yourself into a thirst trap, anyway."
Gabriel chuckled and gave Quentin a small, vague smile. He wasn't wistful, exactly, but something close to it. "You're right. What will Instagram do without me." He glanced at the bench. "Not to make it more weird, but I really could use a spot on the last set." He looked at Quentin, his expression a little sheepish. "And then it's all yours."
Perhaps against his better judgment (but that really was par for the course), Quentin agreed and walked over to stand behind the bench. He could have done this remotely with telekinesis, but why make wise choices when you can get yourself into situations you'll angst over later?
