Quentin Quire (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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xp_logs2020-02-15 10:47 pm
xp_erverse) wrote in xp_logs2020-02-15 10:47 pm
Entry tags:
Quentin & Gabriel, backdated to Saturday, Feb 15
Quentin and Gabriel bump into each other at a party and finally reconnect for the first time since Quentin's "death." Probably best to avoid reading this at work.
Gabriel didn't bother with the pretense of a shirt. When he had shown up at this queer dance party — a circuit party, by any other name — he had stripped off his cheap black tee and handed it over at coat check. Even though the molly hadn't hit yet, even though he'd only taken half a pill, he knew what would happen when he started rolling, and there was no point fighting it. After enough parties like this, he'd learned.
That was two hours ago, and now he was dancing in a throng of sweaty, shirtless men, many of whom appeared to be on similar substance-induced journeys of their own. As these revelers tried to pass, their hands brushed his shoulders, their pecs pressed into his back, and Gabriel sometimes turned to make eye contact. As the bass pounded, its rhythm becoming his, he'd sometimes let his gaze linger smiling as he caught sight of pupils he assumed to be as dilated at his own.
Then his lips would touch against another set of lips, or a hand would trace the lines of his tattoos, and his mirth would turn into something else, something more carnal and perhaps more free.
The track changed, the mood shifted, and Gabriel took that as his queue to leave the pulsating circle and head to the bar for a bottle of water. The club had filled, and for a second, he was tempted to use his powers to push through the crowd and serve himself. But knew it'd be too easy to control, and so he bumped his way through a cluster of people on his quest to rehydration.
Perhaps he had been too aggressive with this crusade, because he rattled one hapless victim who spilled half their drink on their shirt. A hapless victim of fair complexion, pink hair, and a hair-trigger temper that now threatened to detonate.
"Are you for real? This is a McQueen!" Quentin barked over the din of the club, looking down at his ruined top. Already he gathered his telepathy to smash through whatever brain — or lack thereof — the offender possessed. "Son of a bitch, enjoy the rest of the night thinking you're a . . ." But he stopped when he looked up and identified the man standing before him, and all the rage rushed away. "Oh. It's you."
Gabriel had to laugh at the serendipity of this moment, and not just because he was in a state of chemical-tinged euphoria. "Oh, it's me," he said with a grin, not the least bit sheepish. "Hey." He edged a bit more gingerly around Quentin, raising his hand to get the attention of a bearded bartender he'd worked with once. After the two made eye contact, and Gabriel mimed a water bottle, he turned his attention back to his friend.
"I'll get the cleaning bill," he said after he'd had a chance to give Quentin a kind of once-over. "Let me get you another drink too. Sorry about that."
It would be gauche to finish a drink that had been half spilled, so Quentin set down the glass on the bar, instead, and grabbed a handful of cocktail napkins. At least it was a Tom Collins and not cola or juice. "It's the least you could do. I just got this last week, shit."
"And you wore it here?" It was a light tease, and Gabriel's amusement was more than clear. "Not that it doesn't look great, but like, this is not really the club night for that." He reached into the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out a pack of gum. His head was bobbing idly to the music, and he realized he'd been half-shouting to be heard. He unwrapped a stick then held out the pack to Quentin.
In many ways, Quentin was a simple man. He saw the minute downward tug of Gabriel's pants when upon retrieving the gum, and he looked. His eyes stayed fixed on Gabriel's bare torso, the sharp lines of his hip bones, the manicured strip of hair that led down past the waistband. Even though there were dozens of other men in the same state of undress and also cut from marble, Gabriel stood out. Quentin cursed himself in his head for his fixation, and waved away the offering when he returned to his senses a second later.
"I had to make an Appearance earlier," he said, the capitalization evident by the derisive emphasis on that word. "Didn't have time to change."
"Ah," Gabriel nodded, unsure exactly how to react. He sensed the capital letter, and he had a vague idea of what it meant, but he wasn't entirely sure how to engage with it. The bartender arrived with both the water and the cocktail. As he handed them to Gabriel, the man's eyes lingered on the tattoos around his waist. Then his gaze drifted to Quentin, locking on the younger man's eyes for a few moments.
The bartender looked back at Gabriel with a quirked eyebrow, then departed for another thirsty clubgoer, leaving Gabriel chuckling as he handed Quentin his drink. "Here you go," he said. "I think Marcus wants to fuck you."
He was surprised by how amused that made him. He twisted the cap off his water bottle, and, feeling buoyant off the drugs and emboldened by the music, leaned toward Quentin. "And you know, you're not at an Appearance now," he said, his voice low despite the booming electronic chaos around them. "So lose the shirt."
Given its price tag, Quentin refused to do that literally, so the most he offered was to unbutton it. "Think this will appease Marcus?" he asked. The throng of people threatened to be so oppressive that they would be crushed to death, so Quentin led Gabriel away, still off the dance floor so they could hear each other. "You rolling?"
Gabriel just nodded. Their movement away from the bar reminded him why he was here: to lose himself in motion, in the beat. "Yeah," he said, as if the nod weren't enough of an answer. As if the gum hadn't been a dead giveaway. "You want?"
Quentin held out his free hand and made a "gimme gimme" gesture. "Cleaning, the drink, and a hit. We'll call it even. Clearly I could use some of your mood to rub off on me."
Gabriel just snorted as he reached into his back pocket for a small baggie with a number of small pills broken in half. He palmed it and subtly slipped it into Quentin's free hand. "Take half now, and then the other half." He raised an eyebrow, slipped his water bottle in his pocket and took Quentin's cup out of his hand. "You've rolled before, right?" He took a sip from the Tom Collins and winced.
That rhetorical question just earned Gabriel a withering look as Quentin popped the half-tablet into his mouth. "You're lucky you're so pretty or you wouldn't be able to get away with asking dumb shit like that. Also, I would have mind-blasted you. Thank your abs for distracting me."
"They come in handy." Gabriel laughed. He tried somewhat unsuccessfully to bounce his pecs as he handed the drink back to Quentin so he could swallow. "You can hang onto the bag. Control your own destiny or whatever." A hand grazed the small of his back as a group of twinks passed the two of them on their way to the dance floor. Gabriel yearned to follow, more out of a desire to start moving again then anything else.
The contents of the drink vanished an instant after Quentin took the glass, and he set it on the windowsill before nodding towards the dance floor. "You're getting antsy, and that's just going to make me antsy. C'mon." He did not wait for Gabriel's assent before grabbing his wrist and pulling him into the writhing mass of bodies. Between the booze, the anticipation of the narcotics, the bounty of beautiful bodies (and specifically Gabriel's), Quentin quickly lost himself in the moment.
Between the molly and the music, it was all too easy to lose track of time, and with the crowd, it was perhaps just as easy for Gabriel to lose track of Quentin. Though he'd try to keep the other man with his view, Gabriel found himself getting distracted by the fog occasionally filling the dance floor, the bodies and faces that kept pressing against his, the brazen public displays of sexuality that he found more amusing than anything else.
At one point, as a throwback Erasure song played, a particularly tall man with a tattoo of Orion on his shoulder tried to pull Gabriel into a group makeout session that he did not find appealing. He tried waving him off, but when he migrated away from the position he'd had on the dance floor, he realized he'd lost sight of his erstwhile — well, whatever Quentin was. He felt a pang of guilt but then the music swelled, and the euphoria took over.
He needn't have worried, as Quentin had found a dance partner of his own. Whose hands were busy exploring the telepath's more exposed body, his designer shirt now lost. Judging by the expression on Quentin's face, he either had not noticed or did not care. As the ecstasy hit, the sensation of rough hands dancing over his skin was all that mattered. He shivered in the other man's embrace, but when a hand went too far, Quentin's glassy eyes fixed on the offender, and with a snap of his fingers, the other man found himself on the floor, several feet away. Quentin just laughed and flipped the bird as he meandered around the dance floor, through pulsing masses, and serendipitously found himself in Gabriel's arms.
"Found you," he mewled, and pulled Gabriel in for a deep, languid kiss.
It took Gabriel a few seconds to react, both to Quentin's sudden appearance and to the touch of the younger man's lips on his. When he did, he let out something between a chuckle and a giggle. "Hey there," he said, his eyes wide as he started dancing again, his hands finding their ways to Quentin's back and pulling him a little close. "So you did."
"Someone just tried to finger me in public, and I just." Quentin shook his head with disgust, but he was smiling. The drugs had quickly taken effect, it seemed. "I took a peak in his head and I know where his hand and other parts have been, so no thanks. My standards are low, but I still have them."
"And yet here you are," Gabriel said, clearly amused. "My hands have been places too, you know." As if to punctuate the point, he slowly moved one of his hands down to the small of Quentin's back as they danced.
Quentin's hands mirrored Gabriel's, dancing down the speedster's back. "Hmm. Should I stop you, then? Do I want to know where they've been? Or do I just forget about it and make an exception for you?"
On another night, Gabriel might have stopped to remind Quentin of their last real conversation. Or he might have taken pause, at least, or laughed Quentin off, or said something clever or sly.
But this night he was rolling, and there was music and there was dancing and there was Quentin, and none of the complicating factors came to mind because he was in no state to conjure them up. So instead of doing any of the things that might be considered more prudent, his hand made its way to Quentin's waistband, lingering teasingly on it as he pulled the other man closer for another torrid kiss.
~*~
Much like the first time they had slept together (and, to be truthful, several times after the first), Quentin awoke in a post-high, post-drunk hangover fog that sent him to the bathroom for relief before he was even aware that A) he was in his parents' Upper East Side penthouse, B) his clothes were nowhere to be found, and C) an equally nude Gabriel standing at full mast was shuffling to consciousness in his bed.
Quentin would later remember A) the Quires were in Southeast Asia for the month, either on business or for sex tourism, he couldn't remember which, B) his clothes had been lost on the other side of the front door, C) after the two of them spent another hour rolling on the dance floor, unable to keep their hands off each other and all the other revelers who got within two feet of them, they had taken their leave and, judging by the number of empty condom wrappers on the floor, taken full advantage of Gabriel's powers of swift recovery.
After a brief moment of consideration, Quentin decided to greet the day by saluting the flag, so to speak.
“Oh,” Gabriel half-grunted as he awoke. His eyes stayed shut, and he laid still. His head was pounding; against his better judgment, he’d taken another half a pill, and the come down had hit him hard.
He tried to will it away, and after a few seconds he let out a moan that started as pleasure and ended with a little agony. “I — fuck, Q, I need...” He slowly opened his eyes. “I don’t want you to stop, but fuck, my brain feels like it’s going to fucking explode.”
"There's Excedrin in the medicine cabinet if you want to put more chemicals in your body, or I can fix that so you don't have to get up," Quentin answered, tapping his forehead with his free hand while his other hand tried to convince Gabriel to stay put.
Gabriel wrinkled his nose. Having to confront this made his head hurt now. He'd have thought, even with all this time, that Quentin would know that mind powers made Gabriel somewhat uneasy. Even with Quentin having so far been in Gabriel's head more than anyone else, at least in this universe, than anybody else. "I'm..."
But he was aware that he was still quite, well... and then Quentin looked still quite eager. And it had been literal years, and judging by the foil detritus around the floor, they were making up for lost time. Plus there was this thing that Quentin did that...
"Yeah," he relented. "Okay."
It was simple, really, a trick all telepaths with even a modicum of talent could learn. Just tell the brain to ignore the pain and boom, instant relief. A few thoughts and memories flitted past Quentin' awareness, and for the briefest of moments he considered just looking. A glance wouldn't hurt. What was Gabriel thinking right now? What had he been up to since they put a pause and their whole fuck-buddies thing? Without the fucking, they had not even been buddies. Curiosity gnawed at Quentin, and it would have been so easy to sate that.
But in the real world he looked up at Gabriel, saw what waited for him, and Quentin shoved the urge down into a box that he could shelve out of the way. Gabriel's privacy was his own, and besides, if they were fucking again, then the buddy would come again soon. Really, Quentin just wanted to get back to doing what he loved.
Gabriel didn't bother with the pretense of a shirt. When he had shown up at this queer dance party — a circuit party, by any other name — he had stripped off his cheap black tee and handed it over at coat check. Even though the molly hadn't hit yet, even though he'd only taken half a pill, he knew what would happen when he started rolling, and there was no point fighting it. After enough parties like this, he'd learned.
That was two hours ago, and now he was dancing in a throng of sweaty, shirtless men, many of whom appeared to be on similar substance-induced journeys of their own. As these revelers tried to pass, their hands brushed his shoulders, their pecs pressed into his back, and Gabriel sometimes turned to make eye contact. As the bass pounded, its rhythm becoming his, he'd sometimes let his gaze linger smiling as he caught sight of pupils he assumed to be as dilated at his own.
Then his lips would touch against another set of lips, or a hand would trace the lines of his tattoos, and his mirth would turn into something else, something more carnal and perhaps more free.
The track changed, the mood shifted, and Gabriel took that as his queue to leave the pulsating circle and head to the bar for a bottle of water. The club had filled, and for a second, he was tempted to use his powers to push through the crowd and serve himself. But knew it'd be too easy to control, and so he bumped his way through a cluster of people on his quest to rehydration.
Perhaps he had been too aggressive with this crusade, because he rattled one hapless victim who spilled half their drink on their shirt. A hapless victim of fair complexion, pink hair, and a hair-trigger temper that now threatened to detonate.
"Are you for real? This is a McQueen!" Quentin barked over the din of the club, looking down at his ruined top. Already he gathered his telepathy to smash through whatever brain — or lack thereof — the offender possessed. "Son of a bitch, enjoy the rest of the night thinking you're a . . ." But he stopped when he looked up and identified the man standing before him, and all the rage rushed away. "Oh. It's you."
Gabriel had to laugh at the serendipity of this moment, and not just because he was in a state of chemical-tinged euphoria. "Oh, it's me," he said with a grin, not the least bit sheepish. "Hey." He edged a bit more gingerly around Quentin, raising his hand to get the attention of a bearded bartender he'd worked with once. After the two made eye contact, and Gabriel mimed a water bottle, he turned his attention back to his friend.
"I'll get the cleaning bill," he said after he'd had a chance to give Quentin a kind of once-over. "Let me get you another drink too. Sorry about that."
It would be gauche to finish a drink that had been half spilled, so Quentin set down the glass on the bar, instead, and grabbed a handful of cocktail napkins. At least it was a Tom Collins and not cola or juice. "It's the least you could do. I just got this last week, shit."
"And you wore it here?" It was a light tease, and Gabriel's amusement was more than clear. "Not that it doesn't look great, but like, this is not really the club night for that." He reached into the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out a pack of gum. His head was bobbing idly to the music, and he realized he'd been half-shouting to be heard. He unwrapped a stick then held out the pack to Quentin.
In many ways, Quentin was a simple man. He saw the minute downward tug of Gabriel's pants when upon retrieving the gum, and he looked. His eyes stayed fixed on Gabriel's bare torso, the sharp lines of his hip bones, the manicured strip of hair that led down past the waistband. Even though there were dozens of other men in the same state of undress and also cut from marble, Gabriel stood out. Quentin cursed himself in his head for his fixation, and waved away the offering when he returned to his senses a second later.
"I had to make an Appearance earlier," he said, the capitalization evident by the derisive emphasis on that word. "Didn't have time to change."
"Ah," Gabriel nodded, unsure exactly how to react. He sensed the capital letter, and he had a vague idea of what it meant, but he wasn't entirely sure how to engage with it. The bartender arrived with both the water and the cocktail. As he handed them to Gabriel, the man's eyes lingered on the tattoos around his waist. Then his gaze drifted to Quentin, locking on the younger man's eyes for a few moments.
The bartender looked back at Gabriel with a quirked eyebrow, then departed for another thirsty clubgoer, leaving Gabriel chuckling as he handed Quentin his drink. "Here you go," he said. "I think Marcus wants to fuck you."
He was surprised by how amused that made him. He twisted the cap off his water bottle, and, feeling buoyant off the drugs and emboldened by the music, leaned toward Quentin. "And you know, you're not at an Appearance now," he said, his voice low despite the booming electronic chaos around them. "So lose the shirt."
Given its price tag, Quentin refused to do that literally, so the most he offered was to unbutton it. "Think this will appease Marcus?" he asked. The throng of people threatened to be so oppressive that they would be crushed to death, so Quentin led Gabriel away, still off the dance floor so they could hear each other. "You rolling?"
Gabriel just nodded. Their movement away from the bar reminded him why he was here: to lose himself in motion, in the beat. "Yeah," he said, as if the nod weren't enough of an answer. As if the gum hadn't been a dead giveaway. "You want?"
Quentin held out his free hand and made a "gimme gimme" gesture. "Cleaning, the drink, and a hit. We'll call it even. Clearly I could use some of your mood to rub off on me."
Gabriel just snorted as he reached into his back pocket for a small baggie with a number of small pills broken in half. He palmed it and subtly slipped it into Quentin's free hand. "Take half now, and then the other half." He raised an eyebrow, slipped his water bottle in his pocket and took Quentin's cup out of his hand. "You've rolled before, right?" He took a sip from the Tom Collins and winced.
That rhetorical question just earned Gabriel a withering look as Quentin popped the half-tablet into his mouth. "You're lucky you're so pretty or you wouldn't be able to get away with asking dumb shit like that. Also, I would have mind-blasted you. Thank your abs for distracting me."
"They come in handy." Gabriel laughed. He tried somewhat unsuccessfully to bounce his pecs as he handed the drink back to Quentin so he could swallow. "You can hang onto the bag. Control your own destiny or whatever." A hand grazed the small of his back as a group of twinks passed the two of them on their way to the dance floor. Gabriel yearned to follow, more out of a desire to start moving again then anything else.
The contents of the drink vanished an instant after Quentin took the glass, and he set it on the windowsill before nodding towards the dance floor. "You're getting antsy, and that's just going to make me antsy. C'mon." He did not wait for Gabriel's assent before grabbing his wrist and pulling him into the writhing mass of bodies. Between the booze, the anticipation of the narcotics, the bounty of beautiful bodies (and specifically Gabriel's), Quentin quickly lost himself in the moment.
Between the molly and the music, it was all too easy to lose track of time, and with the crowd, it was perhaps just as easy for Gabriel to lose track of Quentin. Though he'd try to keep the other man with his view, Gabriel found himself getting distracted by the fog occasionally filling the dance floor, the bodies and faces that kept pressing against his, the brazen public displays of sexuality that he found more amusing than anything else.
At one point, as a throwback Erasure song played, a particularly tall man with a tattoo of Orion on his shoulder tried to pull Gabriel into a group makeout session that he did not find appealing. He tried waving him off, but when he migrated away from the position he'd had on the dance floor, he realized he'd lost sight of his erstwhile — well, whatever Quentin was. He felt a pang of guilt but then the music swelled, and the euphoria took over.
He needn't have worried, as Quentin had found a dance partner of his own. Whose hands were busy exploring the telepath's more exposed body, his designer shirt now lost. Judging by the expression on Quentin's face, he either had not noticed or did not care. As the ecstasy hit, the sensation of rough hands dancing over his skin was all that mattered. He shivered in the other man's embrace, but when a hand went too far, Quentin's glassy eyes fixed on the offender, and with a snap of his fingers, the other man found himself on the floor, several feet away. Quentin just laughed and flipped the bird as he meandered around the dance floor, through pulsing masses, and serendipitously found himself in Gabriel's arms.
"Found you," he mewled, and pulled Gabriel in for a deep, languid kiss.
It took Gabriel a few seconds to react, both to Quentin's sudden appearance and to the touch of the younger man's lips on his. When he did, he let out something between a chuckle and a giggle. "Hey there," he said, his eyes wide as he started dancing again, his hands finding their ways to Quentin's back and pulling him a little close. "So you did."
"Someone just tried to finger me in public, and I just." Quentin shook his head with disgust, but he was smiling. The drugs had quickly taken effect, it seemed. "I took a peak in his head and I know where his hand and other parts have been, so no thanks. My standards are low, but I still have them."
"And yet here you are," Gabriel said, clearly amused. "My hands have been places too, you know." As if to punctuate the point, he slowly moved one of his hands down to the small of Quentin's back as they danced.
Quentin's hands mirrored Gabriel's, dancing down the speedster's back. "Hmm. Should I stop you, then? Do I want to know where they've been? Or do I just forget about it and make an exception for you?"
On another night, Gabriel might have stopped to remind Quentin of their last real conversation. Or he might have taken pause, at least, or laughed Quentin off, or said something clever or sly.
But this night he was rolling, and there was music and there was dancing and there was Quentin, and none of the complicating factors came to mind because he was in no state to conjure them up. So instead of doing any of the things that might be considered more prudent, his hand made its way to Quentin's waistband, lingering teasingly on it as he pulled the other man closer for another torrid kiss.
~*~
Much like the first time they had slept together (and, to be truthful, several times after the first), Quentin awoke in a post-high, post-drunk hangover fog that sent him to the bathroom for relief before he was even aware that A) he was in his parents' Upper East Side penthouse, B) his clothes were nowhere to be found, and C) an equally nude Gabriel standing at full mast was shuffling to consciousness in his bed.
Quentin would later remember A) the Quires were in Southeast Asia for the month, either on business or for sex tourism, he couldn't remember which, B) his clothes had been lost on the other side of the front door, C) after the two of them spent another hour rolling on the dance floor, unable to keep their hands off each other and all the other revelers who got within two feet of them, they had taken their leave and, judging by the number of empty condom wrappers on the floor, taken full advantage of Gabriel's powers of swift recovery.
After a brief moment of consideration, Quentin decided to greet the day by saluting the flag, so to speak.
“Oh,” Gabriel half-grunted as he awoke. His eyes stayed shut, and he laid still. His head was pounding; against his better judgment, he’d taken another half a pill, and the come down had hit him hard.
He tried to will it away, and after a few seconds he let out a moan that started as pleasure and ended with a little agony. “I — fuck, Q, I need...” He slowly opened his eyes. “I don’t want you to stop, but fuck, my brain feels like it’s going to fucking explode.”
"There's Excedrin in the medicine cabinet if you want to put more chemicals in your body, or I can fix that so you don't have to get up," Quentin answered, tapping his forehead with his free hand while his other hand tried to convince Gabriel to stay put.
Gabriel wrinkled his nose. Having to confront this made his head hurt now. He'd have thought, even with all this time, that Quentin would know that mind powers made Gabriel somewhat uneasy. Even with Quentin having so far been in Gabriel's head more than anyone else, at least in this universe, than anybody else. "I'm..."
But he was aware that he was still quite, well... and then Quentin looked still quite eager. And it had been literal years, and judging by the foil detritus around the floor, they were making up for lost time. Plus there was this thing that Quentin did that...
"Yeah," he relented. "Okay."
It was simple, really, a trick all telepaths with even a modicum of talent could learn. Just tell the brain to ignore the pain and boom, instant relief. A few thoughts and memories flitted past Quentin' awareness, and for the briefest of moments he considered just looking. A glance wouldn't hurt. What was Gabriel thinking right now? What had he been up to since they put a pause and their whole fuck-buddies thing? Without the fucking, they had not even been buddies. Curiosity gnawed at Quentin, and it would have been so easy to sate that.
But in the real world he looked up at Gabriel, saw what waited for him, and Quentin shoved the urge down into a box that he could shelve out of the way. Gabriel's privacy was his own, and besides, if they were fucking again, then the buddy would come again soon. Really, Quentin just wanted to get back to doing what he loved.