Haller and Gabriel - Drinks (Backdated)
Jan. 28th, 2025 06:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsAt Haller's suggestion, he and Gabriel discuss the end of the world at a bar.
When Gabriel went out in Westchester, a relative rarity compared to the amount of time he'd spend at bars in the city, he typically eschewed Harry's. No disrespect to the bar or the man — Gabriel had a fondness for both. But he found the place to serve as a kind of mansion living room. It was a place you went if you still wanted to be bothered or found.
But Harry's was walking distance from the mansion, and though Gabriel knew he could convince Haller to be the DD, he didn't want to come off as overly presumptuous. Plus Gabriel knew that if the conversation got too heady, he could sway Harry to let them have the private room in the back they wouldn't be bothered.
For now, though, Gabriel was sitting at a table with a half-consumed Negroni, contemplating whether Harry would frown on vaping inside. Irritated enough with everything that he was unwilling to wait for Haller to, he'd sped ahead and texted the other man where and when to meet him.
He didn't have to wait long before the telepath found him. While Gabriel had correctly identified him as one of nature's designated drivers, even he didn't regard total sobriety as an option right now. Still, like many people who didn't drink often enough to form strong preferences Jim was strictly an "on-tap" man; he took what beer Harry recommended and left it at that. The part of him that handled pop cultural osmosis was functional enough that the deep red cocktail in front of Gabriel looked familiar, but only insofar as it had a name Jim wasn't sure he could say aloud.
"Hey," he said as he slid into the booth opposite the younger man. He gestured to the drink with his own. "You beat me to it."
"Likely thing for me to do," Gabriel raised his glass in greeting. "It's my first," he added, out of habit answering a question that hadn't yet been asked. "And I'll be responsible and switch to beer. Probably." He shrugged. "I just like it when Harry judges me a little." That form of judgment Gabriel could handle.
"Don't worry about moderation on my account. My choice of drinks is based around my early morning meetings." Jim stared at his beer for a moment, then just cut to what was on both their minds. "Ten years. It's . . . hard to believe."
"Yeah." Gabriel stared at his hands as he swirled his glass. "I mean, it is and it isn't? Like, we've been through 200 catastrophes since then. And a lot of therapy. Well, at least, I did a lot of therapy. I dunno, I mean, I'm surprised I noticed but like I said, I need calendars to keep me grounded, and there are some things you just don't forget."
He took a sip from his drink, practically grateful for the bitterness. "Well, I mean, the rest of the world knows it too, but not really."
Jim gave a short, equally bitter laugh. "You know, I never thought about it, but it's actually kind of fucked that to the world M-Day is 'only' about spontaneous mutant deaths rather than reality collapsing. Sometimes if I'm really in a bad place I think about all the graves I can't visit because the people I would have buried never existed. Not the same ones, anyway."
"I know what you mean. There's that thing in the house that Amanda set up, but I guess that's not the same. And you can't really, like, stand there and take your moment." Not that Gabriel saw much use for having a physical place to grieve, particularly in this case. Why bother when the ghosts were just going to follow you around anyway? "Then you're just the sad creepy old man staring at the rock or whatever on the stairs."
"Yeah." Jim stared at the dissipating foam on his beer, and for a moment he had a flash of depersonalization, as if he were listening to his mouth move of its own accord. "That, and people might ask who you're remembering."
It was a concession Jim rarely made, at least out loud. True, at first discussing their losses risked destabilizing the fragile repairs Xorn had made to salvage their damaged reality, but it was more than that. In truth, the majority of the people he would have most wanted to talk to about it were among the dead. However, he had the vague memory that Gabriel and Clint Barton -- another Clint, the one who hadn't survived the turn-over of the world -- had been in some sort of relationship. He suspected the other man understood.
Jim sighed. "Anyway," he said, raising his glass for a drink, "if we're going to be sad, creepy old men, a bar is a less pathetic setting for it."
"I reject 'old' and 'pathetic.'" Gabriel watched as Haller sipped, then decided to brush past this remark. "My problem is, like — well, one of my problems — is that all these new fuckers have no idea?" He began swirling the cocktail straw in his glass. "Like nobody knew except the people who knew, and then there was that thing a few years back, so more people knew. Now we have brand new people who never knew and they weren't here to be told when everyone else found out, you know?" He stopped suddenly, staring at the eddy he'd formed in his drink. "And I know, why should they know? But still..."
"No, I know what you mean. Knowing isn't the same as experiencing, either. And it . . . how do I explain it." Jim frowned, absently turning his glass in a slow pirouette between his hands. "In a way, it doesn't even feel fair to bring it up. Especially not with the younger crowd. What are they supposed to do with that information? Wonder if they're supposed to feel sorry for us? Re-examine their whole existence from the cut-off point on? For some of these kids that's more than half their lives."
"I'm not saying we should tell them." Gabriel said. "I don't even — I draw lines around that stuff even with the people who know." He scanned the bar, taking stock of the other patrons, making sure there weren't any of their other housemates around. "That doesn't mean I don't find them fucking annoying."
"Because it's alienating. The fact so few other people remember how the world used to be makes it feel like . . . I don't know. Just . . . every year it feels like I'm getting farther and farther from the people who didn't make it through. We like to think our most important memories are indelible, but every time someone new comes or someone old leaves it's like the tide is coming in. Each year a little more goes, until all that's left is the memory of a memory." The telepath paused, odd-colored eyes still fixed on his drink, and then pulled a hand down his face.
"I should probably have gone with something stronger," said Jim.
"Probably," Gabriel nodded in agreement. "But that's what the second drink is for." As if to punctuate that point, he took a decent-sized sip of his cocktail. "I try not to romanticize the old world. I mean, it's like, what's the point? I wasn't here for that long." He paused, considering this. "There's your therapy, I guess. But I still find some of these people tiresome."
Jim raised an eyebrow. "Why? Because they can't relate, or because a lot of them are in their early 20s?"
“Age has nothing to do with it,” Gabriel huffed. “They’re just … annoying? I don’t know. I am not a foster child. I didn’t ask to get sucked into the fucked up Brady Bunch.”
The other eyebrow rose to join the first. "You mean you don't like the unique combination of found family and Stockholm Syndrome? Joking," Jim added, although he wasn't entirely sure he was. "It is a lot sometimes. We have at least two people from other dimensions, and a few more who might as well be. If you know of an easier way to navigate that let me know; I have one of them rooming with me right now."
“You what?” Gabriel raised an eyebrow, then dramatically punctuated the gesture by finishing the drink. “Absolutely not.”
Jim shrugged and took a swig of his own. "Normally, yeah, but he's got an especially steep learning curve. It's one of those familiar-with-my-alternate-self situations. We're working on it."
"I can proudly say I am not familiar with those situations." Gabriel said.
The telepath eyed him dubiously over the rim of his glass. "You've been here this long and you've avoided any and all exposure to parallel selves and what-ifs shoved directly into your brain? Tell me your secret."
"Oh, no, I mean, I've met them." Gabriel acknowledged. "A few of them. But we haven't communed. And most of them sucked." He shrugged, then stood. "Pretty hard. Hold on. I don't like being empty handed. I'm gonna get another round."
Jim nodded at Gabriel and spent the other man's absence reflecting on the path of his own particular variants. When the younger man finally returned he almost spilled his drink.
"Sorry," he said as Gabriel returned to his seat, "I was paralyzed by the thought that this universe might actually be the best case scenario."
"Want me to run down the list?" Gabriel plopped three tequila shots and two beers on the table. "Here." He put one tequila shot and one beer in front of Haller, then put the second in between them both. "That's probably for you," he nodded to it, "but it's a free agent depending on how the conversation goes. But you need to catch up." He took a swig of his beer. "Anyway, drink your juice, Shelby, and I'll tell you how fucked up the other versions of me were."
Jim glanced down at the shot. He wasn't a tequila guy -- or at least, not for very long.
Without hesitation, the telepath downed the shot in one and set the glass back on the table with a solid tump.
"Okay. You show me yours, I'll show you mine."
When Gabriel went out in Westchester, a relative rarity compared to the amount of time he'd spend at bars in the city, he typically eschewed Harry's. No disrespect to the bar or the man — Gabriel had a fondness for both. But he found the place to serve as a kind of mansion living room. It was a place you went if you still wanted to be bothered or found.
But Harry's was walking distance from the mansion, and though Gabriel knew he could convince Haller to be the DD, he didn't want to come off as overly presumptuous. Plus Gabriel knew that if the conversation got too heady, he could sway Harry to let them have the private room in the back they wouldn't be bothered.
For now, though, Gabriel was sitting at a table with a half-consumed Negroni, contemplating whether Harry would frown on vaping inside. Irritated enough with everything that he was unwilling to wait for Haller to, he'd sped ahead and texted the other man where and when to meet him.
He didn't have to wait long before the telepath found him. While Gabriel had correctly identified him as one of nature's designated drivers, even he didn't regard total sobriety as an option right now. Still, like many people who didn't drink often enough to form strong preferences Jim was strictly an "on-tap" man; he took what beer Harry recommended and left it at that. The part of him that handled pop cultural osmosis was functional enough that the deep red cocktail in front of Gabriel looked familiar, but only insofar as it had a name Jim wasn't sure he could say aloud.
"Hey," he said as he slid into the booth opposite the younger man. He gestured to the drink with his own. "You beat me to it."
"Likely thing for me to do," Gabriel raised his glass in greeting. "It's my first," he added, out of habit answering a question that hadn't yet been asked. "And I'll be responsible and switch to beer. Probably." He shrugged. "I just like it when Harry judges me a little." That form of judgment Gabriel could handle.
"Don't worry about moderation on my account. My choice of drinks is based around my early morning meetings." Jim stared at his beer for a moment, then just cut to what was on both their minds. "Ten years. It's . . . hard to believe."
"Yeah." Gabriel stared at his hands as he swirled his glass. "I mean, it is and it isn't? Like, we've been through 200 catastrophes since then. And a lot of therapy. Well, at least, I did a lot of therapy. I dunno, I mean, I'm surprised I noticed but like I said, I need calendars to keep me grounded, and there are some things you just don't forget."
He took a sip from his drink, practically grateful for the bitterness. "Well, I mean, the rest of the world knows it too, but not really."
Jim gave a short, equally bitter laugh. "You know, I never thought about it, but it's actually kind of fucked that to the world M-Day is 'only' about spontaneous mutant deaths rather than reality collapsing. Sometimes if I'm really in a bad place I think about all the graves I can't visit because the people I would have buried never existed. Not the same ones, anyway."
"I know what you mean. There's that thing in the house that Amanda set up, but I guess that's not the same. And you can't really, like, stand there and take your moment." Not that Gabriel saw much use for having a physical place to grieve, particularly in this case. Why bother when the ghosts were just going to follow you around anyway? "Then you're just the sad creepy old man staring at the rock or whatever on the stairs."
"Yeah." Jim stared at the dissipating foam on his beer, and for a moment he had a flash of depersonalization, as if he were listening to his mouth move of its own accord. "That, and people might ask who you're remembering."
It was a concession Jim rarely made, at least out loud. True, at first discussing their losses risked destabilizing the fragile repairs Xorn had made to salvage their damaged reality, but it was more than that. In truth, the majority of the people he would have most wanted to talk to about it were among the dead. However, he had the vague memory that Gabriel and Clint Barton -- another Clint, the one who hadn't survived the turn-over of the world -- had been in some sort of relationship. He suspected the other man understood.
Jim sighed. "Anyway," he said, raising his glass for a drink, "if we're going to be sad, creepy old men, a bar is a less pathetic setting for it."
"I reject 'old' and 'pathetic.'" Gabriel watched as Haller sipped, then decided to brush past this remark. "My problem is, like — well, one of my problems — is that all these new fuckers have no idea?" He began swirling the cocktail straw in his glass. "Like nobody knew except the people who knew, and then there was that thing a few years back, so more people knew. Now we have brand new people who never knew and they weren't here to be told when everyone else found out, you know?" He stopped suddenly, staring at the eddy he'd formed in his drink. "And I know, why should they know? But still..."
"No, I know what you mean. Knowing isn't the same as experiencing, either. And it . . . how do I explain it." Jim frowned, absently turning his glass in a slow pirouette between his hands. "In a way, it doesn't even feel fair to bring it up. Especially not with the younger crowd. What are they supposed to do with that information? Wonder if they're supposed to feel sorry for us? Re-examine their whole existence from the cut-off point on? For some of these kids that's more than half their lives."
"I'm not saying we should tell them." Gabriel said. "I don't even — I draw lines around that stuff even with the people who know." He scanned the bar, taking stock of the other patrons, making sure there weren't any of their other housemates around. "That doesn't mean I don't find them fucking annoying."
"Because it's alienating. The fact so few other people remember how the world used to be makes it feel like . . . I don't know. Just . . . every year it feels like I'm getting farther and farther from the people who didn't make it through. We like to think our most important memories are indelible, but every time someone new comes or someone old leaves it's like the tide is coming in. Each year a little more goes, until all that's left is the memory of a memory." The telepath paused, odd-colored eyes still fixed on his drink, and then pulled a hand down his face.
"I should probably have gone with something stronger," said Jim.
"Probably," Gabriel nodded in agreement. "But that's what the second drink is for." As if to punctuate that point, he took a decent-sized sip of his cocktail. "I try not to romanticize the old world. I mean, it's like, what's the point? I wasn't here for that long." He paused, considering this. "There's your therapy, I guess. But I still find some of these people tiresome."
Jim raised an eyebrow. "Why? Because they can't relate, or because a lot of them are in their early 20s?"
“Age has nothing to do with it,” Gabriel huffed. “They’re just … annoying? I don’t know. I am not a foster child. I didn’t ask to get sucked into the fucked up Brady Bunch.”
The other eyebrow rose to join the first. "You mean you don't like the unique combination of found family and Stockholm Syndrome? Joking," Jim added, although he wasn't entirely sure he was. "It is a lot sometimes. We have at least two people from other dimensions, and a few more who might as well be. If you know of an easier way to navigate that let me know; I have one of them rooming with me right now."
“You what?” Gabriel raised an eyebrow, then dramatically punctuated the gesture by finishing the drink. “Absolutely not.”
Jim shrugged and took a swig of his own. "Normally, yeah, but he's got an especially steep learning curve. It's one of those familiar-with-my-alternate-self situations. We're working on it."
"I can proudly say I am not familiar with those situations." Gabriel said.
The telepath eyed him dubiously over the rim of his glass. "You've been here this long and you've avoided any and all exposure to parallel selves and what-ifs shoved directly into your brain? Tell me your secret."
"Oh, no, I mean, I've met them." Gabriel acknowledged. "A few of them. But we haven't communed. And most of them sucked." He shrugged, then stood. "Pretty hard. Hold on. I don't like being empty handed. I'm gonna get another round."
Jim nodded at Gabriel and spent the other man's absence reflecting on the path of his own particular variants. When the younger man finally returned he almost spilled his drink.
"Sorry," he said as Gabriel returned to his seat, "I was paralyzed by the thought that this universe might actually be the best case scenario."
"Want me to run down the list?" Gabriel plopped three tequila shots and two beers on the table. "Here." He put one tequila shot and one beer in front of Haller, then put the second in between them both. "That's probably for you," he nodded to it, "but it's a free agent depending on how the conversation goes. But you need to catch up." He took a swig of his beer. "Anyway, drink your juice, Shelby, and I'll tell you how fucked up the other versions of me were."
Jim glanced down at the shot. He wasn't a tequila guy -- or at least, not for very long.
Without hesitation, the telepath downed the shot in one and set the glass back on the table with a solid tump.
"Okay. You show me yours, I'll show you mine."
