xp_logs | [backdated] Gabriel and Stacy-X

Gabriel, on his trip to clear his head and sort out his mind after the chaos around District X, makes an impulsive visit to the X-Ranch to deal with the memories that the last several years have resurfaced.

(CW: discussion of sexual assault)

"Gabriel Cohuelo. She's expecting me."

It was a lie. And Gabriel knew, as he sat in the car waiting for the receptionist or the security guy or whoever was on the other end of the intercom to deliver the message, that she'd know it was a lie. If she even remembered who he was.

He sighed as he instinctively reached for a cigarette, then remembered he was in a rental car and thought better of it. It was a shame. He needed something to take the edge off. He'd housed a cold brew before he even got in the car, then stopped for another along the way. Not he was jittery, plenty out of sorts from the caffeine and egged further on by whatever he wanted to call the feelings that had propelled him here, outside Las Vegas to a hotel that he hated on a ranch that he hated run by a woman who, at the very least, he had complicated feelings about.

He hadn't (he reflected as he reached for the bag of sunflower seeds he picked up at a gas station) really even intended to come to Nevada. But for whatever reason, many flights out of New York were canceled, and a direct to Vegas wasn't. He thought it would be a nice way station, a place he could stop and blow cash on gambling and cocaine and overpriced drinks until he figured out where he actually wanted to go. Instead, he was as restless there as he'd been in New York.

And now he was here, waiting, even if he wasn't sure for what. Maybe she wouldn't let him in. Maybe he'd turn around at the gate, forget whatever impulse led him to make the trip, and go straight to the airport to Puerto Vallarta or Honolulu or somewhere else warm and carefree where he could pretend to be warm and carefree for a little while.

He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. It had been a long time since he'd believed that all you had to do was think something hard enough to make it true.

"Guest house parking. Stay to your left." The voice finally crackled to life. As he pulled the car around, by the time he pulled into the smaller lot, a woman was sitting on a chair out front, smoking a cigarette and watching him finally park.

Gabriel sat, pretending to fiddle with car settings for a while, checking the parking brake a few times before hitting the ignition button. He grabbed his bomber jacket from the passenger seat and, aware of her eyes on his, resisted the urge to check his reflection in the rearview mirror.

"I think you owe me one of those," he called to her as he stepped out of the car. It was the only thing he could think of as an opening shot, considering he figured neither of them thought they'd ever see the other ever again. He walked toward her, ignoring the weird pounding in his heart, but at least having the decency to give her a smile. "Hi, Stacy," he finally said when he reached her.

"Gabriel Cohuelo. I'm told I'm expecting you?" She said with a viper-like grin. She passed over a cigarette and pre-offered a lighter. "Want to share a smoke out here first?"

"Thanks." Practically as soon as he'd taken them from her, the cigarette was lit and between his lips. He passed the lighter back to her after he'd taken a drag, which he hoped might make him feel less tense. As if he hadn't chosen to come here. "It was easier to lie," he said after a second, giving her a light shrug. "Besides. You strike me as the kind of person who expects anything."

"Expecting anything is great for the reputation. It's more that I expect what I think is likely from people I've met." She said. "So Kevin hasn't sent me a head's up and Darcy just finished her last session and headed home. So what are you here to face?"

Gabriel sat down next to her, glad that Kevin's training had taught him the importance of keeping's one face neutral. It was maddening how she was always a few steps ahead of him. "You never told me what your powers were," he finally said, looking out at the horizon. "I never asked."

"Pheromone based. I can affect people's moods. I can make them be relaxed or agitated or horny." She said, settling in next to him. "And before you ask, I only use it with consent at the ranch."

"Of course you do." He turned over the idea of that in his mind. "Bet that would have been useful," he said, more thinking aloud than meaning to say anything in particular.

"The opposite. When I manifested... well, it was chaos. After I got it under control enough, it became a question." She huffed her mouth for a second and then took a long drag. "Our armor in this business is consent and take that away... it was frightening."

Gabriel was quiet, taking a puff of his own cigarette. "To the extent there's armor at all," he finally said, his voice sounding small.

"What we do is complex. And imperfect." Stacy said, bracing her elbows on her knees. "But imperfect isn't wrong. It's the human... or mutant condition. We're all wrong a lot. It's not a bad thing to embrace that and try to do better."

He made a vague noise to acknowledge he'd heard her as he shrugged off his jacket, maneuvering carefully to avoid dropping ash on it. He wanted to tell her that he thought some things were more imperfect than others. But he didn't want to relitigate their disagreement on her business, because there was no purpose it could possibly serve.

"I'm not used to talking about this," he said instead, finally looking at her instead of the distance. "And I'm trying..." He paused, trying to find the words to verbalize what he felt. "Every word has, like, ten different feelings. Even just this little conversation, I feel everything at once. I can't modulate. I am angry and sad and weak and scared and cold and hot." The hand with the cigarette trembled just a bit, but he steadied himself. "How did you — I mean, how do you..."

"Gabriel, in my experience, it's different for each person. And a lot of them don't really find a way to reconcile the time they had in this world." She paused, taking a long drag and slowly letting it out as she thought about it. "Can I ask you something?"

"You can certainly ask." He wiped his free hand on his pants.

"You've been in the game. You know what it can be." She shrugged a bit. "Do you really want to know the other side? You got out. Why isn't that enough?"

Gabriel looked back into the distance, at the dusty grounds that stretched for miles toward a mountain whose distance he could only guess at. He imagined that's how people got trapped in places like this; always heading toward something and never really understanding just how out of reach it was. And so then you just stayed where you were, because at some point, that seemed like the better choice.

He took a drag of his cigarette, then exhaled slowly. "There were so many times I thought I was done," he said, unable to look anywhere but the distance. "I'd say 'One last time, I just need a little more to get by.' Just to leave the shelter. To not go hungry, to fill the gaps, to get a bus ticket, to..." His voice quavered, and he flicked ash off the cigarette. "And then one day, it was just... true. It just... happened. I was out. I didn't mean it to be, I didn't even know it was the moment at the time. But I was done."

He fell silent again for a few seconds. "A few years ago, I was... I don't know. Not raped, exactly, but someone, he..." The words fell away, and he focused instead on composure. He wouldn't cry again in front of her. "There were things he said. Things I did. Things he made me do, but it just... I just..." He trailed off. Other things had happened after that too, the more recent things that had let him here. But they weren't important to whatever it was that had led him here, that thing he still couldn't name.

He turned to her again, his palms clammy, his breath feeling unsteady, hoping his expression was conveying what he couldn't verbalize. "There's a feeling," he said, sounding more uncertain than he meant to. "There's a feeling I used to get when I was..." He tossed the cigarette to the ground, snubbing it out with his shoe. "I haven't thought about it in years. Haven't felt it in even longer." He ran his hands through his hair, hoping it would ground him. "I know I got out," he finally said. "But it sure as shit doesn't feel like it."

"That I can understand a little." Stacy said, her normally sharp gaze turning inward. "When I turned twelve, my step-father started to sexually abuse me. If I said no or fought back, he'd hit me. Tell the neighbours what a tomboy I was, falling out of trees and getting into scraps with other kids. After a couple of years, I stole whatever I could, got the first bus out of town and ended up being claimed by a pimp in the Vegas bus terminal." She waved her hand by her head, as if brushing away the memories. "I know, tale as old as time in this world. Over the years, even as I took over and was in the position to make choices, I'd built up this distance between what I was doing and my emotions. I was a professional, it was a job, and behind layers of consent and choice and control, I found a place that let me keep what I was doing within the right boundaries for my mental health."

She ground out the end of a cigarette and lit another. "So, fast forward to 1992. At this point, I'm rarely talent. Just a few select clients, including one I'd known over a decade. Special request." She shrugged. "Energy was wrong right from the start. I pulled the plug and said the night was over. And that's when he started to hit me." She let out a long plume of smoke. "And continued to right up until he raped me. In that instant, years of distance and control disappeared, and I was right back to the girl I'd been at twelve, helpless and afraid. I'd faced down all the trauma associated with being in this world; processed it, dealt with it... but I'd never faced the trauma that led me here in the first place. And he made it all real again. I'm not saying the experience is the same, but the feeling you're describing is the one I remembered after it happened."

"I'm sorry." He wasn't sure what else to say. He wished he could say what happened to him so clearly, but it was just so complicated, he wasn't even sure how to explain it. "That happened, and I didn't — well, I didn't push it aside, but I was figuring it out. And then I came here, and everything just kind of..."

"Put you right back to what this place would have made you feel if it had been back then?" Stacy said.

"No. Maybe." He needed a drink. "I dunno. It's more like, it was easy not to think about it. Well, not easy, like, I still — what happened was horrible, it all still bothered me. But I was managing, in my own way." Which wasn't all that well, but that wasn't relevant to this conversation. "And then I ran smack dab into it. And now there are things that happen to me that just... summon it up. And I just..."

He looked at his hands. "I'm not used to talking about this," he said after a moment. "I don't even really know how. And you do, in your way, and that's frustrating as hell to me, but my head's all..."

"One of the few advantages of age. I've had a long time to come to terms with my past. It's not easy." She sighed. "Lord, it is not. And how I managed it isn't likely what you need. It's all individual."

She paused for a moment. "Have you ever really just told someone what you feel? Not try to qualify it or make it make sense... just vomit up what's in your head at the moment?"

"Yeah," he said, reaching for his own pack of cigarettes. "Not really about this, though. I mean, it's come up, but not like this." He shook out a smoke, then stared at it for a second and slid it back into the pack, which he pocketed. "And I don't — it's hard to know who you can talk to about this, you know? I mean, I don't..." He looked at her fairly suddenly, something occurring to him."God, I'm sorry, I'm fucking burdening you with this shit like you don't have your own shit going on."

"I'd let you know if it was a burden." She said easily. "It is hard to find people who know what it is like to be in this world. Watching them trying to fit their brain around what you're trying to talk about."

"They bring their own baggage," he added. "Their own ideas. And I don't — it's like, I don't want to worry about what they're thinking while I'm trying to explain it." That was what had changed. He was close enough to people to care about their thoughts. And rooted enough that he couldn't run.

"I have this one — he's my..." He gave her another shrug, the only way he could bail out of this particular digression and save face. "He knows a tiny bit of it. I mean, I think. And even that's excruciating."

"Why is it so painful? I mean, I know most won't really get it in the way you'll try and explain. But-" She paused for a second. "Are you worried they'll see you for who you think you were?"

Gabriel considered how to reply. Because he felt lately like he was swimming in a sea of unanswerable questions, many of which he couldn't articulate. This one, at least, was easy. He just wasn't sure he was ready to give it up to her.

"Dunno. Maybe." Apparently he wasn't. So instead, he scanned the property, looking away from the guest house and toward the main hotel. "So much of you is out in the open here. That make it any easier?"

"To an extent. Out here, I can always see what's coming. That an apt enough metaphor for life for you?" She chuckled a little.

"Too apt, maybe." He did her the courtesy of responding with a smile. "I'm sure you've already figured this out, but Darcy and Kevin can't know I was here."

"No, but I wish you would tell them. I think it could help." She said but put up her hands. "I'll respect your privacy. You sure you don't want to stick around for a drink at least? After all, the two professions that strangers feel comfortable telling their feelings to are bartenders and whores."

Gabriel laughed at that. It had never struck him before. A whore, a bartender and a spy. A life made of other people’s secrets.

“I can stay for a drink,” he relented. “Let me pour. It’s the least I can do.” He did feel like he owed her something, though this was as close as he’d get to admitting it.