overdrawing | There is no sweeter innocence than our gentle sin [Closed to Caleb, Pre-Dated 8/23/15]

Caleb finally got word of Gabe's location, and he can't believe it. His first thought was relief, both at Gabe still being alive, and also that he's still in the area. But a bar? Caleb can hardly believe it.

He shouldn't be so surprised, though, maybe. After all, look at him.

Feeling an anxious mix of emotions, Caleb heads inside the building. He looks around as his eyes adjust to the dim room, and when he doesn't see Gabe right away he walks right up to the bar-- and there. Wiping down a booth.

Caleb just stares.

He feels eyes on him, but these days it's not so unusual. Ever since his appearances in the Cove, people occasionally watch him. Sometimes it's with curiosity or pity. He tries not to guess which, just wipes down the counters and does his job like a penance. What else has he got but that?

Noting a new customer, Gabe glances up too fast for any real eye contact before coming over to hand him a menu and some silverware. "Just call over a waitress when you're ready," he says, still rabbit-scared of people.

Gabe is acting like somebody kicked him. He's always been shy, but this is a whole other level. Caleb can't even tell if Gabe just doesn't recognize him, or if he never even looked. He takes the menu and roll of silverware automatically, but doesn't pay them any mind.

"Forget me already?" he asks quietly.

"Forget...no I didn't..." Gabe drags his eyes up and startles. The dark hair is gone, replaced with platinum blond and aqua tips, but he can still pick out the delicate features and high cheekbones that he'd wanted to drown in when he stood in a hotel shower.

"Oh God," he whispers. It's as much a prayer as an exclamation and he freezes, somewhere between fight and flight, unable to commit to an action and rooting there to the spot.

There he is. Those pretty eyes, the curve of his lips that Gabe used to stare at when choir practice dragged on. The mouth he'd kissed more than once. Gabriel Fletcher, whole and safe and sound and looking just like he looked three months ago - or had it been four?

Gabe is alive. He's fine. He's slumming it in Maine. Caleb's relief drains away, leaving anger in it's place. It doesn't even build up, it's just there, flared up in his chest like a match tossed on gasoline.

"I can't fucking believe you," he says without taking his eyes off Gabe's, a minute shake of his head.

That expression inspires real fear in him before Caleb even says anything. He flinches like a dog that remembers being hit, even when there's no fist to be seen. Anger is terrifying, passionate, and Gabe has learned to avoid it.

"I-I..." he stammers. Under the counter, he grips his hands tightly together as if it can keep him from flying apart. "I can..."

But he can't explain. How can he possibly explain?

Gabe looks like Caleb's about to punch him, and he would never, and that only pisses him off more. He tosses the menu and silverware roll carelessly onto the table and shoves his hands in his pockets. He shrugs, still staring at Gabe, trying to keep his temper at bay and failing. "You can what?" He waits a long moment, but when Gabe doesn't say anything he keeps on. "Feed me some bullshit reason why you're in the middle of Maine? Why you just disappeared?"

Now that he's started, the words keep coming. He keeps his voice low because there are other people in here, but it doesn't make him sound any less angry. Or hurt. "That was a really shitty thing to do, Gabe! Just leave. No note, no goodbye, no-- hey, I'm fucking off to points unknown, wanna come with me? Because I would have!" he hisses, throwing his hands up. "You think-- Do you know, your parents called the cops on me? Like I was a murder suspect. I was terrified, and I was so. worried. about you! And my parents--" He breaks off and shakes his head. "You don't care."

He grabs the Cove paper out of his backpack and throws it on the table in front of Gabe. "No. You just found some other guy. Started some bullshit life out here. Well, I hope you're happy. Nice to see you're alive."

Edited 2015-08-22 04:47 (UTC)

Caleb's anger terrifies him, perhaps more than anyone else's, even his father. He knows now that Caleb's anger is deserved. All he can do is mumble, the words tripping over themselves lowly. Behind him, a rack of glasses begins to vibrate to the frequency of his anxiety and Gabe swallows. He has to rein it in or they'll all shatter.

"That's not true," he whispers, looking at the paper. The Cove says all those awful things about him, about the imaginary string of lovers he's had. "I haven't...not since you." But what kind of reassurance is that after the treatment Caleb must have endured in his parents' search for him.

Hands shaking, the glasses rattling behind him, Gabe glances around for the manager and signals that he's going on break.

"O-outside. Please...Can we..."

All he wants to do is run.

It's not a reassurance, not at the moment. Not when Caleb's mind is clouded by so much bottled up anger and god knows what other emotions. Part of him wants to just tell Gabe fuck you and leave him here, the way Gabe had left him...but he knows he can't. He shrugs again and shakes his head.

"Fine." He puts his backpack back over his shoulder and walks outside ahead of him.

He remembers Caleb but he doesn't think that the man in front of him is the Caleb he remembers. All of him bristles with real anger that Gabe had never thought he'd see in his friend.

Mostly, he wants to run, run until he's at the beach and can just throw himself into the ocean, shapeshifting and losing his fears in the deep.

Outside, he sits, staring helplessly at his own hands. "I don't know what happened. I just...I blanked. I blanked out and all I knew was I had to go. When I was lucid again, I was in the bus station."

Caleb stays standing, leaning against the wall. He looks at the ground instead of Gabe, it's easier to focus that way. He tries to calm down. He tries, also, to put himself in Gabe's shoes, how Gabe was feeling that morning. He reminds himself he came here because he was worried. He wanted to make sure Gabe was okay, not start a fight.

He listens to the brief explanation, and it's not like he thinks Gabe is lying, he's still just so hurt that he did it in the first place. That Gabe could have just left him in bed like that.

"You've been gone for months, Gabe. Why didn't you...call me?" he finally asks.

Edited 2015-08-22 06:24 (UTC)

His whole body is tense with fear. Gabe can't even specify what, exactly, he's terrified of, only that he's afraid. Questions swirl through his head and he can't even think of where to start. Is Caleb going to tell his parents? Call them as revenge or because it's what he's been asked to do? Is Gabe going to have himself dragged home?

But he answers Caleb's question first, still unable to make eye contact. "Haven't turned my phone on," he mumbles. "Been off since that...that night. Haven't called anyone."

Caleb shrugs a shoulder, still mostly looking at the ground himself. He realizes belatedly what a futile request it is, getting a phone call when he never even had a cell phone until after he himself had left home. If Gabe had called his parents while he had still been there they never would have let him talk to him. "Not like I would've been able to answer it anyway. I just..."

He sighs, dropping it.

"So, you live here now?"

"I guess," he agrees, fidgeting with his watchband again. He's destroyed two since he got to Siren Cove, ripping a plastic one to shreds when he accidentally transformed his hand to otter claws. August has been a nervous, agitated month and looks like it might only continue that way.

"This girl's parents let me stay in their house. I've been trying to pay rent."

"That's cool of her. You're probably better off here anyway," he says, squinting into the distance.

"Don't worry, by the way, I didn't tell the police or your parents anything. I only found out you were here because I found that paper at a rest stop on my way to Portland."

If Gabe left like he left, not even checking his phone, he obviously doesn't want to be found. Caleb doesn't blame him, he just wishes he'd been an exception to the rule.

"The Cove just makes up whatever it wants about me," Gabe says, sounding exhausted. The rumors about him are dizzying, none of them true. Caleb finding an old issue is exactly the kind of thing he's come to fear.

Then, because he realizes he hasn't even said it, Gabe forces himself to look Caleb in the eye. "I'm sorry that all of that happened to you. You should have never gotten hurt because of what I did."

Caleb should have realized it was a tabloid magazine, honestly. It had the exact sort of gossip-y set-up as one. Just...when he'd found it, it had been such a shock, his brain must have bypassed logical thought.

Caleb looks back, and then quickly looks away. Because that's it, isn't it? He thinks part of him has been blaming Gabe all this time. And he realizes now that it's unfair, because Gabe couldn't have predicted the police would come to him. Caleb sure hadn't expected it. Maybe Gabe wasn't thinking about the consequences of his actions affecting Caleb, but he thinks he knows Gabe at least well enough to know he wouldn't have wanted to hurt him. It's enough.

He can at least give this some closure before he leaves.

"You didn't mean to," Caleb says, glancing back over. "It's...better, anyway, in the long run. I can finally be myself now that I left."

Edited 2015-08-23 04:38 (UTC)

"Is that why you're blond?" Gabe sits carefully on a discarded wooden crate, the motion turning him birdlike with his height and lanky arms and legs. It looks as though he's perched to fly into the air, flee. He hugs one of his knees to his chest, like it might root him down from such flight.

He looks at Caleb, but doesn't meet his eyes. Now Gabe is looking for scars, ghosts of bruises. "My parents didn't hurt you, did they?" His mind pulls up the image of folded over belts, jars of impossibly hot oils that linger on skin and tongue.

Caleb smirks, humorlessly. "Sort of. I guess I wanted to reinvent myself." He watches Gabe, kind of wishes he could sit down next to him, but there isn't room. Plus, probably just not a great idea.

"Your parents?" He raises an eyebrow. "No. Your dad yelled at me, I think they thought I did something. I mean-- I guess in a way I did? But it was mostly the police I talked to." He shrugs his shoulders, a slow motion that takes a little while to come back down. "I just said I woke up and you were gone, that I didn't know why you'd leave after a big win."

Gabe lets out the nervous breath he'd sucked in, relieved that his parents hadn't done anything. It's not the same as saying no one hurt Caleb, but Gabe doesn't think he has the right to ask.

"I'm sorry," he says again, finding the words useless but necessary. "I didn't think. There wasn't a plan. Just...I got scared, so scared that my whole head went empty."

Caleb inhales deeply through his nose, and slowly lets it out. He thinks...he can feel at peace with this. More of the initial relief he'd felt starts to settle in, replacing any anger or bitterness.

"I forgive you," he says, finally meeting Gabe's eyes for more than just a fleeting moment. "And I'm sorry you were scared that bad. I hope things have been good for you here, and I hope..." He bites his lip a moment. He doesn't think he can bring himself to voice it, that Gabe may have regretted what happened. His voice, when it returns, is quiet. "I hope I didn't hurt you."

Caleb's forgiveness isn't a thing that Gabe had known he craved but now that he has it, all of him floods with a kind of relief. "Thank you," he says, deeply grateful. Their parents would have told them that forgiveness is basically required of others but they aren't part of that world anymore. Neither of them.

Then he frowns and shakes his head immediately. "You didn't hurt me." If it had been awful, then the decision to reject it would have been easy. That night with Caleb was the first time Gabe thought he'd felt something like real desire, passion. "I was confused and then I was scared."

And that's something he needed to hear. There had been too many emotions and questions tied up with Gabe's disappearance; he'd blamed Gabe for the repercussions he'd had to face, but he blamed himself for scaring Gabe away. He doesn't know what he would have done if he'd found out Gabe ended up hurt, or worse, after he'd ran.

But he's here now. He's okay. Caleb has to keep reminding himself.

"Are you still scared?" he asks quietly.

"Of a lot of things," Gabe admits. The world where he lives now is different from his first nineteen years of life. Even with work and the odd jobs he does for Mira's family in an attempt to be useful, Gabe still has more time than he knows what to do with.

Typical pastimes here are all so secular and Gabe doesn't know how to reconcile the God he'd been raised to fear with the life he's living now.

"I don't think God would approve me."

Caleb glances up, a look of derision lining his face, accompanied by a soft snort of disgust.

"Fuck God, Gabe. Don't you get it? They were brainwashing us," he says, pushing off the wall with his foot, bitterness lacing every syllable.

Edited 2015-08-23 07:48 (UTC)

There's a yard of space between them, but Gabe still flinches as if he'd been struck. Caleb's anger isn't aimed at him but Gabe still fears it.

"Brainwashing?" he echoes faintly, trying to understand what Caleb means. "Who is they?" Even though he asks it, Gabe knows what Caleb means. Who Caleb means. And Gabe has a hard time believing it. What his parents did couldn't really be brainwashing.

"Our parents. The church. Society," Caleb says, throwing his hands up in frustration. "Read a book, Gabe, seriously." He moves away from the side of the building entirely, coming to stand in front of Gabe to make sure he's listening. "There's a reason why our parents kept us at home like that, cut off from the world-- and it wasn't for our benefit. Now that you're out here, can't you see it?"

"It was supposed to protect us." He know the protest is weak but Caleb's raised voice leaves him nervous and uncertain, his own hands in front of his chest like it might rescue him from violence.

"I already know I can never go back there. Not with who I am. What I am."

"But it didn't protect us, it just made us hate ourselves. That's not right," Caleb says, his voice verging on pleading. He needs Gabe to understand. He wants to tear Gabe's hands away, tear his chest away and expose his heart to the truth. "Whoever you are, Gabe, whatever you are? Is perfect. Fuck them for thinking otherwise."

He's not perfect, not at all. Gabe knows what he really is, which is flawed and broken and no longer completely human. But how can he even explain that to Caleb? Everything he knows about God and humanity is pointless when he no longer its in with the latter.

"Please don't swear," he says instead, voice soft.

Caleb looks skyward and lets out a sigh of frustration. "They're just words," he mumbles, returning his gaze to the ground. He begins to pace, like he has all this bottled up energy he doesn't know what to do with.

"Just forget it, believe what you want. I'm supposed to go to Portland. I just wanted to see that you were okay."

"What's in Portland?" he asks even though it's not really his business. Caleb doesn't owe him anything after what Gabe's put him through and he has no right to concern when Caleb's obviously facing the "real world" far better than he is.

"This guy I know has an older brother who owns a construction company in Portland. I'm broke, and I've basically exhausted all my...uh, housing options back home. So. I'm going to get a job doing whatever guys do at a construction company."

Benny had promised him it was stuff that he'd be able to learn, no problem. Truthfully, Caleb had mostly just wanted to get out of Pennsylvania. It's not like he can see his brothers and sisters anymore, so what else is there? Just a longing for a family he couldn't have, and bad memories.

Gabe frowns minutely, mind suddenly suggesting several terrible possibilities that might befall Caleb as he tries to get there. Or once he gets there. Or on the job. "Is that safe?"

As if that matters when someone is desperate. Gabe can hardly make a comment, not when he works for cash because he's afraid of his parents finding him through pay stubs.

"Are you going to stay here first?"

"I don't know, honestly," Caleb quietly admits. "Maybe just doing demo or putting floors in or something." It's not something he's super eager to do, but he doesn't have a ton of options.

"I...hadn't planned on it. I think he's expecting me soon," he doesn't look at Gabe when he says it, absently rubbing the knuckles of his left hand with his thumb.

He nods, because he can understand the impulse to leave. It had overtaken him, after all. That doesn't necessarily make it easy. "I didn't think anyone would come looking for me," he admits. "Not if my parents found out what I did. They wouldn't want me anymore."

Maybe it doesn't matter to Caleb, but it matters to him.

"Do you want your parents to come looking for you?" Caleb asks, glancing over at him. It's not like he knows Gabe's parents beyond his father's furious yelling, and his mother's scared expression. "They were worried about you, for what it's worth. When I saw them."

"What good would it do?" Gabe asks. "If they find out how I've been living and what I am, they won't want me back. If they know why I left, they still won't want me back either." There's no winning in that situation. All there is left to do is to go forward.

"There's not much of a point."

"I'm sorry," Caleb says quietly. He feels responsible. It feels like this is his fault. He kissed Gabe first, at the time he hadn't known it would go as far as it did, but he still had wanted something to happen. And anyway, in their world, a kiss was bad enough.

"You probably have to get back to work," he finally says, shoving his hands in his pockets. "I'll let you get back to it."

Gabe nods, chewing on his lip a little bit. "I do but...I get off at ten." He looks somewhere between penitent and hopeful and he finds himself troubled by the idea that Caleb might be so near but also very far away.

"If you want."

Caleb looks over at Gabe, not even bothering to hide his surprise. "You want to see me again?" he blurts out, quiet, but a little disbelieving. He was pretty sure Gabe would be glad to be rid of him.

"You're my friend. Or you were," Gabe says. His ability to maintain eye contact gives out and he glances down, thumbnail pressing against his teeth. "I'm surprised you wanted to see me."

"You're my friend," Caleb echoes. "I didn't know what had happened to you..."

Also, there's the matter of what he won't say: that that night at the hotel meant a lot to him. He can guess from Gabe's reaction that it probably falls under the Regret category, that thing that was nice at the time but overall probably should have never happened. But for Caleb, despite how tangled everything had gotten, it was a different story.

"Okay. I'll see you at ten."

There is no sweeter innocence than our gentle sin [Closed to Caleb, Pre-Dated 8/23/15]

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