Log: Kevin/Gabe
Jan. 26th, 2021 01:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsAfter Siege Perilous, Gabe and Kevin have a talk about the two universes and loss.
"Hey, I've got a mission for you." It was their first day back at the office at the same time, although Kevin hadn't seemed to take any time off at all during the holidays. After the incident, most of their operations had been suspended for the week, to better let people adjust to literally universe altering information. The snow had just started falling past the office windows when Kevin had turned up at his desk. "We need a place to drink within no further than a half hour cab ride from the lobby."
"And your encyclopedic knowledge of the city's finest bars has suddenly come up short?" Gabriel tapped a few more words on his keyboard before looking up. It had not occurred to him before that moment that he had not really seen Kevin in days. He hadn't been keeping track of people; between the holidays and the existential crisis that had absorbed much of their community, his friends had been coming and going, and he hadn't paid much mind. "I've been asked on dates in more roundabout ways, I guess."
"I've dragged you to the finest bars. It's time to see the bars that you choose." He said, not raising to the bait. "If it's a date, I expect something romantic. I'm pretty picky."
"You really are," Gabriel agreed, closing the lid on his laptop. He tapped on his phone to check the time. "A bit early for most of my favorite haunts. But I know a spot where you won't seem too out of place, if you dress down."
"I'll take suggestions." Like most of them, Kevin kept a closet's worth of extra clothes at the office. He pulled off his tie on the way back to his office.
"Yeah," Gabriel said as he followed. "I have some thoughts."
***
Roy's was a bar on the edge of the Village bordering Chelsea that had played its small part in gay history. It had not been particularly queer-friendly when it was the site of a protest in the 60s whose importance had become inflated in the retelling. In the intervening decades, the bar had changed hands several times but had become a kind of landmark in the LGBTQ community. Its popularity waxed and waned with the times. Throughout it all, a number of older men all seeking younger trade had constantly occupied a number of the bar stools.
Gabriel happened upon Roy's when he first moved to the city, at a moment where younger gays were "re-discovering" the bar as a nice spot for a post-work happy hour and a prelude to further partying. It wasn't quite a dive, but it was relaxed with a lack of pretension he found refreshing. It helped that, at the time, he'd been enough of a twink that he rarely paid for a drink.
Those days were gone. But Gabriel knew that he and Kevin would be taken for some kind of May-December situation, and he knew Roy's would be busy enough that they'd escape much notice. The two of them were now at a table in the back, where Gabriel was sipping on a gin and tonic that had benefited from a fairly healthy pour.
"You can see," Gabriel said as he put his drink down, "why I suggested a tie might be out of place."
"I don't know. I think if I came in here in my normal suit, I'd get plenty of attention." Kevin sipped from an altogether well constructed martini. "This is a nice place. You been coming here long?"
“I guess?” Gabriel shrugged. “On days off, or as a stop on nights when I was working the later shifts at clubs. It’s not one of my usual spots or anything. But it’s reliable, and sometimes that’s what you need.” He pulled the straw out of his glass and set it on the table. “Nice to have places that feel like they’ve been here forever, you know?”
"Oh believe me, I do. That's one of the nice things about New York. There's still places that may have changed hands a dozen times, but stayed basically the same from owner to owner for decades." He fished out one of his olives and tossed it into his mouth. "Actually, that's something you can find all over the world. The more time you spend in the field, the more of these personal places you'll start to pile up."
"That a hint?" Gabriel cocked an eyebrow. "Trying to get me the hell out of dodge?"
"Consider it more of a warning. You've excelled at the networks we've already assigned to you. Which means it's time to give you more responsibility. Lucky you, right?" Kevin mocked toasted Gabe with his drink.
"Guess so." Gabriel's eyes drifted around the bar, more out of habit than because he was actually looking for prospects. "Though I think I'm sticking around here for a little while." He watched as two young men swiped through the offerings on the digital jukebox. "People have a lot of questions, and for once in my life, I actually have some answers."
"I didn't want to push about.. well, the other world." He took a long sip draining the rest of his drink and motioned for another. "Emma said you had relationships that didn't make it here. Do you want to talk about it?"
"Do you?" Gabriel shrugged. "I've had five years to sit with it." He'd also had a reasonable amount of therapy with Professor X, but he decided to keep that to himself. "But you, a man who loves knowing everything..." He trailed off and took a sip of his drink.
"True. Being a nosy prick is both my job description and reason d'entre. But, I don't know... maybe it could help talking to a friend who wasn't part of all of it." Kevin accepted his drink as the waiter brought it past, swirling the contents for a moment. "But as someone who also hates sharing himself, I won't pry if you don't want me to."
"I don't mind talking about it," Gabriel said. "Just weighing the value of keeping things hidden from you for a little while longer before you inevitably hear a version of the whole story from someone else." A holiday song came on the sound system, and he looked down at his drink, which suddenly felt unseasonably bright. He waved for another one anyway. "I told you I lost someone on M Day, I think, right?"
“You mentioned it in passing. I thought you were being uncharacteristically vague about them.”
"Not so uncharacteristic," Gabriel said, unable to help sounding a little defensive. "You just seem to find out things about me without me sharing them." Even if he wasn't as guarded as he used to be, he still had his secrets. "I don't know what to say that won't make it sound kinda... I dunno, melodramatic." He waved for another drink had not talked about this, not to people who didn't know of it so long. "I guess it was, though."
"The world being blown up by the mad doppelganger of a trusted friend? I think you've got the right to claim a little legitimate drama there." Kevin was still trying to wrap his head fully around the concept. The overall fact of a prior universe didn't phase him as much as the ways the current one had been interwoven with it, and he was picking at the seams to try and understand just what it meant. "Look, I try to find things out that I worry about impacting your role in the field. Because my first priority is you coming back alive. But I try to not push harder than I need to, believe it or not. If you want to talk, we can talk. If you need a break, I'll personally pay for the vacation. If I'm an asshole and you just want me to leave you alone, I'll finish my drink and get out of here. It's your call, Gabe."
Gabriel, quiet, nodded to the waiter as the drink arrived. It was remarkably quick service, and his eyes drifted to the bartender, who was busy serving other patrons. Not his type. "No," he said, turning back to Kevin. "It's fine. I mean, people know. If you're gonna hear it from somebody, might as well be me."
He drained the rest of his first beverage and sighed a little, unsure how to start. "My boyfriend, he was... he was kind. Smart. Funny. And good." Gabriel gave a small smile. "Yeah. He was so good in a way I wasn't. Not back then. I didn't — I mean, I was different then, but I hadn't been with 'good' before. Not in a while, not like that." One of the hard things about the Clint that came with this collage of a universe was how much more weathered he was. Jaded, almost. And Gabriel had always been the jaded one.
"Anyway, he and I were — it was supposed to be casual. I didn't do relationships, and I think he thought it was mature not to want one. But I let him in, or he wore me down and..." He offered Kevin a shrug. "I don't know. I loved him." His heart ached as he said it. "I'd never loved anyone like that before. Or been loved like that before."
"I get that. Especially with what you told me about your upbringing." Kevin toyed with his garnish for a minute, turning the skewered olive over in his fingers. "What do you remember best about being with him? I mean, what really sticks out?"
Gabriel considered that question as he took another sip of his drink. He was unsure how to answer, and it made him realize he had not had a conversation like this in a long time. So much was grief, for so long. And then the folks with whom he'd have been most comfortable reminiscing had gone back into the world. He'd been left behind, his memories locked away. "I felt safe," he finally said, placing the glass down and running his finger around the edge. "But I don't know if — I mean, I think I remember that more because of what came after."
Kevin nodded, letting his eyes drift around the bar. "That's a fair reaction to have. That's one of the things about this job. We tend to end up idealizing the parts of our life we spend most of our time away from." He took a sip. "It's weird. I remember the stupid crap the clearest, you know?"
"I guess," Gabriel said, though he wasn't so sure. Nothing felt stupid; he and Clint had so little time together, and it had ended so abruptly that everything still felt important. "Like what?" He said after a second. "I mean, you've lived a few lives."
"This might surprise you, but those lives didn't include a lot of special people. My ex-wife, Mary, my nephew..." He gave a rueful shrug. "And like you said, some of them were a few lives ago. So it is strange what sticks, you know?"
"Characteristically vague," Gabriel said wryly. "Do go on."
"My first wife couldn't cook. I mean, when we first married. She'd grown up New York society, so not truly rich, but her father had been a successful attorney before being named a federal judge, so she always had a cook and a housekeeper. Three weeks after the wedding, we're in our new house on a Sunday and she asks me if I want some lunch while I'm watching the football game. I say 'how about a toasted sandwich?' Seems safe, right?"
"Simple enough." Gabriel nodded. "I assume she set your house on fire, otherwise this is a pretty anticlimactic story."
"Not entirely. See, we had a 'modern' kitchen, which included one of those... you know, the grill with the wire rack that slowly passes the food under it. Beth made a peanut butter sandwich and then put it on the rack to toast it. Of course, it made the peanut butter melt out oil on to the grill, which like you guessed, caught fire." Kevin leaned back, a faraway look in his eyes as he talked about it. "So there's smoke and flames coming out, but rather than yell for me, she grabbed the fire extinguisher. She'd never used one and didn't know about the pin. So she's in the kitchen, the smoke alarm is going wild and she can't make the fire extinguisher work. By the time I got in there, she's resorted to bashing the grill thing with the canister."
He laughed, making a weighing gesture with his hands. "We got the window open and the smoke cleared... she's standing there, hair messed up, carbon smudges on her dress, and holding that fucking extinguisher... she never looked lovelier."
"I'll bet." Gabriel smiled back, deciding not to remark on how nice it was to see Kevin border on moony. "I don't think that counts as 'stupid crap,' though," he added. "Those are human moments. That's how you build love for someone, I think. Those stories contain a lot of who a person is." This was not, of course, an insight he'd reached on his own, but even if therapy prompted it, it still felt like his.
"She tried to beat a fire to death with a metal cylinder." Kevin said wryly, motioning for another round of drinks. "Beth hated not knowing things. Within two years, she'd taken hundreds of cooking classes and oddly, a basic mechanics class. At one point, she rewired the toaster."
He paused as their drinks hit the table. "What about you? It couldn't have all been flowers and candy and... actually, I have no idea what dating involves for your generation."
"Netflix and chill, mostly." It was meant to be a quip, but Gabriel wondered if it had mostly been true. At least in his case. "We went ice skating once. Something he wanted to do, a cute date idea." It was funny how wholesome it seemed given how much sex and Chinese had preceded it. "I don't know. We didn't have enough time for more. Maybe six weeks after we realized it was more than fucking." The vulgarity didn't hide the sorrow, not that he'd meant it to. "I don't know what would have happened. We never got enough time for things to get complicated, you know?"
"That's almost worse. All of the 'might have been', you know?" Kevin agreed. "I had twelve years with my wife. Losing her hurt more than anything I could imagine, but I still got those years. You've had a hell of a path to walk, kid. I don't envy what you went through."
"Everyone's been through something." Gabriel shrugged, then reached for his glass. "I don't think I'm that special. It's just, like, you know..." He took a sip, considering his words carefully. He knew it would seem hollow to explain the depth of his particular loss to Kevin. The other man knew a different kind of loss in a way Gabriel didn't and couldn't.
"It broke me for a while," he finally said. "I mean, I don't know what Emma told you, I don't even know what she knew, but yeah. I really didn't handle it well. And when people kept, like, coming back, it wasn't — that was a different kind of hard. For all of us."
"Emma said some of the people seemed almost the same and others different. Like, Braddock was apparently a 40-ish operative before, and pretty much the only thing the same with the purple haired college student at the mansion is the name." Kevin paused. "Wait... one of the people who came back was- jesus..."
"I didn't say that," Gabriel pointed out. "A little presumptuous, don't you think?"
"No, you're right. I apologize. It's just-" Kevin sat back and sighed. "The way you talk about him sounds like... well, this is still relatively fresh. As if you've had a constant reminder."
"Observant as always," Gabriel said. "Look, I don't want to, like..." He waved his hand in circles as he searched for the right phrase. "I don't want to talk about who it was or wasn't. Not with anyone. Nobody should have to live with a past that wasn't theirs. I just meant, like, it's hard to move toward any kind of closure when every time the doorbell rings, it threatens to open your wound." He was quiet for a beat. "That was 100 different metaphors."
"Most of them apt, so you're certainly improving." Kevin said. "I don't need to know, but if you ever want to talk about it, You know, I have all kinds of old man advice. You know, call the manager and see if they're hiring. Cut out the avocado toast in order to buy a house. Consider trade school, stuff like that."
"Consider trade school?" Gabriel raised an eyebrow. "That particular piece of advice might be wasted on me." He picked the lime off the rim of his glass, squeezed it and tossed it in. "I'm really okay. I mean, I've worked through it. I think everyone thinks that my apparent calm in this situation is just like, an omen before a storm, which is sort of... patronizing."
"I trust that you have. But people are going to worry, regardless how much they trust you can cope, kid." He gave him a shrug. "One of those annoying side-effects of getting close to people."
"Is that what this is? You worried about me, Sydney?" Gabriel smirked and cocked an eyebrow. "Guess that means you're buying."
"Hey, I've got a mission for you." It was their first day back at the office at the same time, although Kevin hadn't seemed to take any time off at all during the holidays. After the incident, most of their operations had been suspended for the week, to better let people adjust to literally universe altering information. The snow had just started falling past the office windows when Kevin had turned up at his desk. "We need a place to drink within no further than a half hour cab ride from the lobby."
"And your encyclopedic knowledge of the city's finest bars has suddenly come up short?" Gabriel tapped a few more words on his keyboard before looking up. It had not occurred to him before that moment that he had not really seen Kevin in days. He hadn't been keeping track of people; between the holidays and the existential crisis that had absorbed much of their community, his friends had been coming and going, and he hadn't paid much mind. "I've been asked on dates in more roundabout ways, I guess."
"I've dragged you to the finest bars. It's time to see the bars that you choose." He said, not raising to the bait. "If it's a date, I expect something romantic. I'm pretty picky."
"You really are," Gabriel agreed, closing the lid on his laptop. He tapped on his phone to check the time. "A bit early for most of my favorite haunts. But I know a spot where you won't seem too out of place, if you dress down."
"I'll take suggestions." Like most of them, Kevin kept a closet's worth of extra clothes at the office. He pulled off his tie on the way back to his office.
"Yeah," Gabriel said as he followed. "I have some thoughts."
***
Roy's was a bar on the edge of the Village bordering Chelsea that had played its small part in gay history. It had not been particularly queer-friendly when it was the site of a protest in the 60s whose importance had become inflated in the retelling. In the intervening decades, the bar had changed hands several times but had become a kind of landmark in the LGBTQ community. Its popularity waxed and waned with the times. Throughout it all, a number of older men all seeking younger trade had constantly occupied a number of the bar stools.
Gabriel happened upon Roy's when he first moved to the city, at a moment where younger gays were "re-discovering" the bar as a nice spot for a post-work happy hour and a prelude to further partying. It wasn't quite a dive, but it was relaxed with a lack of pretension he found refreshing. It helped that, at the time, he'd been enough of a twink that he rarely paid for a drink.
Those days were gone. But Gabriel knew that he and Kevin would be taken for some kind of May-December situation, and he knew Roy's would be busy enough that they'd escape much notice. The two of them were now at a table in the back, where Gabriel was sipping on a gin and tonic that had benefited from a fairly healthy pour.
"You can see," Gabriel said as he put his drink down, "why I suggested a tie might be out of place."
"I don't know. I think if I came in here in my normal suit, I'd get plenty of attention." Kevin sipped from an altogether well constructed martini. "This is a nice place. You been coming here long?"
“I guess?” Gabriel shrugged. “On days off, or as a stop on nights when I was working the later shifts at clubs. It’s not one of my usual spots or anything. But it’s reliable, and sometimes that’s what you need.” He pulled the straw out of his glass and set it on the table. “Nice to have places that feel like they’ve been here forever, you know?”
"Oh believe me, I do. That's one of the nice things about New York. There's still places that may have changed hands a dozen times, but stayed basically the same from owner to owner for decades." He fished out one of his olives and tossed it into his mouth. "Actually, that's something you can find all over the world. The more time you spend in the field, the more of these personal places you'll start to pile up."
"That a hint?" Gabriel cocked an eyebrow. "Trying to get me the hell out of dodge?"
"Consider it more of a warning. You've excelled at the networks we've already assigned to you. Which means it's time to give you more responsibility. Lucky you, right?" Kevin mocked toasted Gabe with his drink.
"Guess so." Gabriel's eyes drifted around the bar, more out of habit than because he was actually looking for prospects. "Though I think I'm sticking around here for a little while." He watched as two young men swiped through the offerings on the digital jukebox. "People have a lot of questions, and for once in my life, I actually have some answers."
"I didn't want to push about.. well, the other world." He took a long sip draining the rest of his drink and motioned for another. "Emma said you had relationships that didn't make it here. Do you want to talk about it?"
"Do you?" Gabriel shrugged. "I've had five years to sit with it." He'd also had a reasonable amount of therapy with Professor X, but he decided to keep that to himself. "But you, a man who loves knowing everything..." He trailed off and took a sip of his drink.
"True. Being a nosy prick is both my job description and reason d'entre. But, I don't know... maybe it could help talking to a friend who wasn't part of all of it." Kevin accepted his drink as the waiter brought it past, swirling the contents for a moment. "But as someone who also hates sharing himself, I won't pry if you don't want me to."
"I don't mind talking about it," Gabriel said. "Just weighing the value of keeping things hidden from you for a little while longer before you inevitably hear a version of the whole story from someone else." A holiday song came on the sound system, and he looked down at his drink, which suddenly felt unseasonably bright. He waved for another one anyway. "I told you I lost someone on M Day, I think, right?"
“You mentioned it in passing. I thought you were being uncharacteristically vague about them.”
"Not so uncharacteristic," Gabriel said, unable to help sounding a little defensive. "You just seem to find out things about me without me sharing them." Even if he wasn't as guarded as he used to be, he still had his secrets. "I don't know what to say that won't make it sound kinda... I dunno, melodramatic." He waved for another drink had not talked about this, not to people who didn't know of it so long. "I guess it was, though."
"The world being blown up by the mad doppelganger of a trusted friend? I think you've got the right to claim a little legitimate drama there." Kevin was still trying to wrap his head fully around the concept. The overall fact of a prior universe didn't phase him as much as the ways the current one had been interwoven with it, and he was picking at the seams to try and understand just what it meant. "Look, I try to find things out that I worry about impacting your role in the field. Because my first priority is you coming back alive. But I try to not push harder than I need to, believe it or not. If you want to talk, we can talk. If you need a break, I'll personally pay for the vacation. If I'm an asshole and you just want me to leave you alone, I'll finish my drink and get out of here. It's your call, Gabe."
Gabriel, quiet, nodded to the waiter as the drink arrived. It was remarkably quick service, and his eyes drifted to the bartender, who was busy serving other patrons. Not his type. "No," he said, turning back to Kevin. "It's fine. I mean, people know. If you're gonna hear it from somebody, might as well be me."
He drained the rest of his first beverage and sighed a little, unsure how to start. "My boyfriend, he was... he was kind. Smart. Funny. And good." Gabriel gave a small smile. "Yeah. He was so good in a way I wasn't. Not back then. I didn't — I mean, I was different then, but I hadn't been with 'good' before. Not in a while, not like that." One of the hard things about the Clint that came with this collage of a universe was how much more weathered he was. Jaded, almost. And Gabriel had always been the jaded one.
"Anyway, he and I were — it was supposed to be casual. I didn't do relationships, and I think he thought it was mature not to want one. But I let him in, or he wore me down and..." He offered Kevin a shrug. "I don't know. I loved him." His heart ached as he said it. "I'd never loved anyone like that before. Or been loved like that before."
"I get that. Especially with what you told me about your upbringing." Kevin toyed with his garnish for a minute, turning the skewered olive over in his fingers. "What do you remember best about being with him? I mean, what really sticks out?"
Gabriel considered that question as he took another sip of his drink. He was unsure how to answer, and it made him realize he had not had a conversation like this in a long time. So much was grief, for so long. And then the folks with whom he'd have been most comfortable reminiscing had gone back into the world. He'd been left behind, his memories locked away. "I felt safe," he finally said, placing the glass down and running his finger around the edge. "But I don't know if — I mean, I think I remember that more because of what came after."
Kevin nodded, letting his eyes drift around the bar. "That's a fair reaction to have. That's one of the things about this job. We tend to end up idealizing the parts of our life we spend most of our time away from." He took a sip. "It's weird. I remember the stupid crap the clearest, you know?"
"I guess," Gabriel said, though he wasn't so sure. Nothing felt stupid; he and Clint had so little time together, and it had ended so abruptly that everything still felt important. "Like what?" He said after a second. "I mean, you've lived a few lives."
"This might surprise you, but those lives didn't include a lot of special people. My ex-wife, Mary, my nephew..." He gave a rueful shrug. "And like you said, some of them were a few lives ago. So it is strange what sticks, you know?"
"Characteristically vague," Gabriel said wryly. "Do go on."
"My first wife couldn't cook. I mean, when we first married. She'd grown up New York society, so not truly rich, but her father had been a successful attorney before being named a federal judge, so she always had a cook and a housekeeper. Three weeks after the wedding, we're in our new house on a Sunday and she asks me if I want some lunch while I'm watching the football game. I say 'how about a toasted sandwich?' Seems safe, right?"
"Simple enough." Gabriel nodded. "I assume she set your house on fire, otherwise this is a pretty anticlimactic story."
"Not entirely. See, we had a 'modern' kitchen, which included one of those... you know, the grill with the wire rack that slowly passes the food under it. Beth made a peanut butter sandwich and then put it on the rack to toast it. Of course, it made the peanut butter melt out oil on to the grill, which like you guessed, caught fire." Kevin leaned back, a faraway look in his eyes as he talked about it. "So there's smoke and flames coming out, but rather than yell for me, she grabbed the fire extinguisher. She'd never used one and didn't know about the pin. So she's in the kitchen, the smoke alarm is going wild and she can't make the fire extinguisher work. By the time I got in there, she's resorted to bashing the grill thing with the canister."
He laughed, making a weighing gesture with his hands. "We got the window open and the smoke cleared... she's standing there, hair messed up, carbon smudges on her dress, and holding that fucking extinguisher... she never looked lovelier."
"I'll bet." Gabriel smiled back, deciding not to remark on how nice it was to see Kevin border on moony. "I don't think that counts as 'stupid crap,' though," he added. "Those are human moments. That's how you build love for someone, I think. Those stories contain a lot of who a person is." This was not, of course, an insight he'd reached on his own, but even if therapy prompted it, it still felt like his.
"She tried to beat a fire to death with a metal cylinder." Kevin said wryly, motioning for another round of drinks. "Beth hated not knowing things. Within two years, she'd taken hundreds of cooking classes and oddly, a basic mechanics class. At one point, she rewired the toaster."
He paused as their drinks hit the table. "What about you? It couldn't have all been flowers and candy and... actually, I have no idea what dating involves for your generation."
"Netflix and chill, mostly." It was meant to be a quip, but Gabriel wondered if it had mostly been true. At least in his case. "We went ice skating once. Something he wanted to do, a cute date idea." It was funny how wholesome it seemed given how much sex and Chinese had preceded it. "I don't know. We didn't have enough time for more. Maybe six weeks after we realized it was more than fucking." The vulgarity didn't hide the sorrow, not that he'd meant it to. "I don't know what would have happened. We never got enough time for things to get complicated, you know?"
"That's almost worse. All of the 'might have been', you know?" Kevin agreed. "I had twelve years with my wife. Losing her hurt more than anything I could imagine, but I still got those years. You've had a hell of a path to walk, kid. I don't envy what you went through."
"Everyone's been through something." Gabriel shrugged, then reached for his glass. "I don't think I'm that special. It's just, like, you know..." He took a sip, considering his words carefully. He knew it would seem hollow to explain the depth of his particular loss to Kevin. The other man knew a different kind of loss in a way Gabriel didn't and couldn't.
"It broke me for a while," he finally said. "I mean, I don't know what Emma told you, I don't even know what she knew, but yeah. I really didn't handle it well. And when people kept, like, coming back, it wasn't — that was a different kind of hard. For all of us."
"Emma said some of the people seemed almost the same and others different. Like, Braddock was apparently a 40-ish operative before, and pretty much the only thing the same with the purple haired college student at the mansion is the name." Kevin paused. "Wait... one of the people who came back was- jesus..."
"I didn't say that," Gabriel pointed out. "A little presumptuous, don't you think?"
"No, you're right. I apologize. It's just-" Kevin sat back and sighed. "The way you talk about him sounds like... well, this is still relatively fresh. As if you've had a constant reminder."
"Observant as always," Gabriel said. "Look, I don't want to, like..." He waved his hand in circles as he searched for the right phrase. "I don't want to talk about who it was or wasn't. Not with anyone. Nobody should have to live with a past that wasn't theirs. I just meant, like, it's hard to move toward any kind of closure when every time the doorbell rings, it threatens to open your wound." He was quiet for a beat. "That was 100 different metaphors."
"Most of them apt, so you're certainly improving." Kevin said. "I don't need to know, but if you ever want to talk about it, You know, I have all kinds of old man advice. You know, call the manager and see if they're hiring. Cut out the avocado toast in order to buy a house. Consider trade school, stuff like that."
"Consider trade school?" Gabriel raised an eyebrow. "That particular piece of advice might be wasted on me." He picked the lime off the rim of his glass, squeezed it and tossed it in. "I'm really okay. I mean, I've worked through it. I think everyone thinks that my apparent calm in this situation is just like, an omen before a storm, which is sort of... patronizing."
"I trust that you have. But people are going to worry, regardless how much they trust you can cope, kid." He gave him a shrug. "One of those annoying side-effects of getting close to people."
"Is that what this is? You worried about me, Sydney?" Gabriel smirked and cocked an eyebrow. "Guess that means you're buying."
