Who: Gabe and Laura What: Lunch not-a-date Where: Diner near the flower shop she works at. When: Before Max and Dylan's exploding adventure Warnings/Rating: More awkward flirting and hints at bad pasts.
Even the best days at the flower shop were taxing for Laura, working with unhealthy plants and dealing with the occasional customer. But the bad days were much worse, when the owner was in the shop all day, singing along to bad music on a scratchy radio station and hovering over Laura’s work all day. She tried to make conversation, consistently pointing out that Laura wasn’t getting any younger and that she should find herself a husband and settle down to have children. That there were men out there that would be big enough to overlook her past and (with a glance at her neck and the sleeves that usually covered her scarred arms) her appearance. That she was “pretty enough” to find a decent man. And while it was true enough that Laura was of an age that most people had already well started in on their families, the concept held little appeal to her. Maybe at one point she’d thought about children, a stable, well-paying job and a family. But it felt foreign to her now. And any sideways comments about her appearance only made her resistant to any other suggestion that her boss might make.
So when her lunch rolled around, instead of staying in the shop and eating the sandwich she’d brought with her, Laura escaped and pointed her heavy, annoyed footsteps toward the diner up the road that she’d never actually set foot in. She barely paid attention to her surroundings as she walked, her thoughts still caught back in the loop of “helpful” advice that was more insulting than anything. She was usually able to ignore such things, but she felt something hard and heavy at the back of her throat that might want to be tears. She shoved that feeling away and tried to pull a deep breath as she stomped along, and by the time she pushed her way into the diner and headed for the counter, she was mostly outwardly calm. She paid attention to the diner only enough to register that there were other customers before she pulled up a stool and rested her arms on the countertop.
Gabe liked the diner. He liked a collection of them; Las Vegas had enough that it offered up a collection of those less greasy but noisy, those with the laminate over the menus that kept them from being disgusting and those with a man (usually) behind the grill who could cook. He had worked inside the steel and cement of the CIA post until half past three in the morning, and when he had taken a cab - halfway only; no companies used twice - back to the motel, he had fallen asleep in his clothes, sprawled across the laundry-crisp sheets without bothering to kick off his shoes. It had hurt, the next morning. It had hurt like a missed dose of painkillers, and like sleeping with his knee bent in the old way, before hospitals and sedative dreams and like sleeping too hard and too heavily like a drowning man gasping at air until he chokes. But a shower - short and sharp, the hot water was better in the motel than in most, but it was not lasting - and a clean shirt and he was off, stilted walk and cane and the long, black coat left behind and ‘do not disturb’ flipped over on the door handle.
It was quiet as he walked across faded, dirty carpet and the only other people around were the women pushing carts piled high with fresh sheets. Most guests checked out before ten or they had places to be - the desert sunshine was dry and bright and a warm spill across Gabe’s shoulders as he limped toward the curb and the diner on ahead.
The diner was not quiet. The diner was walled noise and hustle and Gabe looked at the counter and the stools there and he waited patiently, hand on cane and a warm smile that was all honey and dimples for the harried woman serving as hostess when he asked for a booth - and one where he could see the door. She looked him up and down and she lingered on the clean, pale blue shirt and the jeans and then the cane, and she smiled back, and he was sat in that booth with a cup of coffee at his fingers and a little orange bottle of painkillers at its edge when the door went again, and Laura Daniels - blond, and a little harried looking herself, but nonetheless, pretty in the wholesome, plants-and-fresh-air kind of way she had about her, walked on in.
Gabe raised an arm and as the waitress came on by, he asked - again the smile, the splay of it across his face, wrinkled around his eyes - and then the waitress was at Laura’s elbow with an apologetic look and a point across the diner, to the occupied booth.
Still lost in her thoughts, all Laura had been expecting was a server with a cup of coffee, something dark enough and bitter enough to replace the way she was feeling. Instead, she was confronted with words and a gesture, and she was about to yell (or maybe even leave the diner altogether), but then she focused enough to realize what the waitress was saying, and angled her gaze across the diner. It took a moment for recognition to set in, and when it did, she still needed a moment to gather herself before pushing herself off the stool and crossing the diner.
She didn’t slip into the booth, standing next to it instead and leaning her hip against the edge of the opposite seat. She wasn’t going to crash his lunch without an explicit invitation, but she had to admit that it was nice to see a somewhat familiar (and friendly) face after the morning she’d had.
“Hey.” It wasn’t the best greeting, but it was what she could manage in the moment.
Gabe had coffee. It was warm rather than hot, but it was black and it was strong and the place was busy enough that he didn’t mind; calling back the waitress for fresher coffee was, he thought, rude. He had, after all, used her once already as a messenger. He looked up, one hand fastened around the mug, and the cane tucked neatly away beneath the booth. After enough sleep and the shower, the faint lines around the eyes and the mouth that pain inevitably caused had smoothed away - he smiled now, and his eyes creased. His hair was still damp from the shower and it was greying, but despite the creases and the grey, he looked young enough to be pleased and to be obvious about it and he was obvious then.
“You decided to try it out,” he reached forward, and he cleared a space opposite, the jumble and detritus of ketchup and salt and pepper moved out of the way so that she could sit. It was an invitation, as much as the smile. Gabe enjoyed watching people in the diner and he enjoyed the slow pieces of conversation with wait staff, now and again but he liked company as much as anyone else. She didn’t look like she was waiting on anyone, but Laura didn’t look exactly pleased.
“Sit down; I’d stand but,” a shrug, a splay of hands, a ‘what can you do’ conveyed with range of motion. His palms were wide, the backs of his hands showed scuffs at the knuckles, were still a faded tan. “Join me.”
“I needed to get out of the shop,” Laura replied in response to Gabe’s first words, and though she smiled, there was a tension around her eyes and laid across her shoulders that she couldn’t banish in that short moment. It betrayed the reason why she needed to leave the shop behind, even for a short time, though the specifics were obviously lacking. It didn’t stop her from sliding into the booth, though, easy and loose in her movements, though there was an unthinking economy of movement - nothing unless it was needed. It was that, more than anything, that pointed toward her state of mind: that something was hunting her in one way or another.
“I’m not going to make you stand,” she smiled again with a forced easing of her shoulders. “I like to think I’m not that rude.” She looked across the table at him, taking in the obviously recent signs of a shower, the way the scent of whatever soap or shampoo he used was still fresh enough to reach her. It was a good scent, masculine and fresh, and were she a younger, more foolish woman, she would have leaned her elbows on the top of the table to bring herself just that little bit closer. As it was, she noticed it but didn’t visibly react to it. Her eyes did shift down to his hands though, studying them for a lingering moment before hauling her gaze back up to his face. “So what’s good here?”
There she stood - Gabe craned his neck to see her fully, broad shoulders pressed against the solid, plastic back of the booth and he took the lot of her in, the blond hair and the tired blue eyes, the tension that rode her like they were old friends who didn’t want to let go of one another. She looked, he thought, like she was trying to decide whether it was a decision to make - rather than something as easy as lunch. It made him think back to that silver-wire marking on her neck, curling as vicious as any marker left over from old fights - Gabe watched her fold herself down into the booth and his eyes, warm, friendly, flickered with interest that lingered.
“Anything on the sticky side of the laminate,” he said cheerfully. Gabe’s voice was low, it had the husky rasp that made you think of cigarettes and whiskey, despite the clean, soap-and-skin smell that clearly indicated he was not a smoker and his clear-headed warmth that said he was not hungover. It was a rich kind of voice even if it was quiet, suited to reading things aloud and words uncurling slowly and thoughtfully but he used it carelessly, without deliberate effect. It made you lean in, to hear.
“Anything other people have pointed to with sticky fingers. Burger’s good.” The hands curled on the table-top were broad, the fingers curled loosely, easy. Gabriel sat in the comfortable sprawl of a relaxed man, and if the leg beneath the table was awkwardly angled to aid in this all-too obvious comfort, then that was out of sight. He leaned just a little to his right, and he snagged the passing waitress’s arm and within a few minutes, they both had fresh coffee in front of them.
Laura could tell that she was being watched, and while usually it made her lash out, vicious and ruthless, Gabe’s regard was somehow less abrasive, even in her current mood. It didn’t relax her any, but it at least didn’t provoke her. And he was actually able to pull a soft, almost relieved laugh out of her. “The sticky side, huh? Never thought of it that way.” She flipped the menu though, looking over traditional diner offerings as she listened to him talk. She’d gotten to the point where she could honestly take or leave other people’s chatter, but his voice was nice enough. Everything about him seemed nice enough - appearance, voice, attitude. She didn’t want to run from him, and she didn’t want to hit him. Both things were a milestone to mark, and she leaned both forearms crossed on the table as she looked at the menu.
When the waitress stopped to refill the coffee, she followed Gabe’s suggestion and ordered herself a burger, not wanting to put too much thought into anything else. After the waitress had gone again, she looked across the table at Gabe. Really looked. And wondered why he seemed nice enough to her. After longer than was likely polite, she finally cleared her throat, hands around her mug of coffee. “You get away with just touching people a lot?” she asked of his interaction with the waitress.
Gabriel was warm laughter, the surprised strength of it checked a moment later. “Yes.” He looked at her, the fan of wrinkles at his eyes very visible, and the amusement in them very strong and he curled his own hands - one over the other - around the solid china of his own mug slowly, where she could see. “People like being touched. People like a hand at the elbow, or at the lower back, they like human contact. Do you not like being touched?” It was the same quiet, reasonable way he’d suggested the burger; she was looking at him as though she would peel away what was there and examine what remained, Gabe sat calmly, deeper in his seat with the solid assurance of knowing exactly what he looked like.
“She has a look on her face as though she’s tuning out the world,” he said. It was slow, thoughtful; Gabriel’s eyes were tracking the woman around the room. “She’s not listening, except for the words she needs to hear. She’s probably not hearing her own name - it’s Anne, I saw the name-tag. She touched my shoulder when she came over so she doesn’t mind contact; would you mind, Laura?” He was looking at her very deliberately.
She didn’t necessarily like the tone, or the gentle way in which he was prying into and under things that had been (mostly) successfully buried for years. Or if not completely successfully, then at least viciously and without sympathy for herself. Her eyes hardened with a slight withdrawal and she shook her head. “No, there are plenty of people that don’t like being touched.” She didn’t quite answer his question about herself, but it was easy enough to read. She took a deep drink of the coffee, not even wincing even though it was likely still a little too hot to drink, and glanced again at the waitress while still keeping Gabe in her peripheral vision. She began to speak again without turning back to him.
“She’s probably tired. Physically and mentally.” She finally looked back to meet Gabe’s eyes for a silent beat before continuing. “She’s surviving, and it’s not always a favor to draw someone out of that with a touch.” Her jaw was set and her expression flat, the look of a veteran, a survivor herself. She didn’t answer his question.
Laura was giving away pieces of herself, cards spilling from her hands. A terrible poker player if she rolled up at any of the city’s casinos, he thought, and Gabe was glassy smooth and transparent, he allowed each card he picked up to flicker behind brown eyes, all warmth simmering down to sympathy. She didn’t like to be touched, but she looked at him like she had, once and she thought it was surviving instead of still being locked up with whatever it was. Gabe, who had sat across from half a dozen veterans, was quiet. “No,” he agreed, calm and thoughtful, “But she’s working out here where people can touch. It isn’t right,” a pause, all splayed hands and obvious comfort, the roll of his shoulders back against the booth as if Gabriel - six foot and the rest, broad and bulky with hidden muscle - were attempting to make himself small, a non-entity. “But it’s where she is.”
She wasn’t looking at him directly and that was fine; Gabriel thought maybe she’d spent time looking at people in the half-way, the peripherals, that maybe she was more comfortable like that. She reminded him briefly - for all the blond hair, the smile twitched out of her, reluctant but bright, that loping way she moved like she knew how - like one of those animals put on TV, to remind people that it wasn’t all walks in the park and Christmas presents. The scar was a tracery that lipped at her throat. Gabriel smiled at her.
“I regret not ordering the burger. You got an appetite on you, Blossom? I’ll be angling for your fries.”
Laura had always given too much, in one way or another, and every time it had gotten her in trouble. Giving too much trust to her ex-husband, too much hope to a relationship that was destined to get kicked by Fate, too much of herself to a city that never wanted her help. It had taught her to fold in on herself and yet she still gave too much - this time to a man who was pulling away at pieces of her, unravelling her in ways she was certain she didn’t like. And yet the irony was that she was good at poker. It was just herself that she was bad with.
She didn’t reply to his continuing assessment of the waitress, but watched as he settled back farther in the booth, making sure her own legs were tucked close to the seat of the booth in case he needed to shift his leg. She knew the bulk behind the smiles and calm words, and watched the way he shifted, knowing that even with an injured leg there was enough to him to be dangerous. That thought reflected clearly in her expression for a moment before she forced it away, replaced by a very small smile. “Don’t even think about stealing my fries.” And then, with a wrinkle of her nose: “And come on, don’t call me Blossom.”
Gabe’s smile widened. It was coffee bleeding warm beneath his fingertips and the lazy overview of the entire diner, not a bit of trouble to make the heart kick up a pace. Laura was blue eyes wary but watchful and Gabriel pretended not to notice with the bland good grace of a man who is used to wary people and women in particular. “You’re going to eat every single fry on that plate?” The smile was - if Laura’s was small - then something large, something that unfolded slowly, coaxed at hers. “I need to call back Anne.” There was space beneath the booth table; she’d shuffled herself aside, made it possible that he could stretch. It was thoughtful; thoughtful enough that he wondered how much she knew about injury and then Gabriel remembered Max and let go of that one thread.
“You put together pretty enough an arrangement for Buttercup, half my office got up in arms,” he said slow and mild and like Gabe was enjoying each of the words in turn, and he took a sip of coffee for good measure because looking at her scrunch her face like the name was distasteful was downright fun. “What, you want Peanut? That one’s taken.” He made it curl like disappointment, the ‘oh well’ spread of hands, shrug of shoulders. The coffee was cooling, and Gabe drank it like it was water, like coffee was a necessary substance rather than a pleasure.
“I’m going to eat every. Single. Fry.” Laura had recovered enough of her general mask to lean forward on her arms, insistent in her declaration. She would do her best to eat them, just to spite the man sitting across from her. But not maliciously. The smile on her face was genuine, wider than it had been moments ago, as she slipped from wary into friendly again. “Better ask for your own. And then I might eat those too.”
“Do they think you’re courting him now?” The teasing came naturally, almost without her thinking about it, and once she realized, Laura took another drink of her coffee. Still with a mouthful, she made another face at him. “No,” she said when the coffee had been swallowed. “Not Peanut, either.” She set the mug back onto the table with a click, but kept her fingers domed loosely over the top. “Don’t want to steal that from Max. She’d be heartbroken, I’m certain.”
Gabe laughed. It was a solid thing, hearty and he didn’t seem to care that people turned their heads to locate the source; it was easy as breathing and the smile fell into worn creases, a thing well-used but not worn thin. Laura’s patter - the rhythm of it, the catch of it, in and out and just as easy was cut off, and he looked at her, brown eyes and unhidden curiosity, before he leaned on forward, elbows on the table, and a napkin in his fingers, folding it into pleats.
“Main makes heartbroken look painful for whoever’s stood around waiting for the bomb to blow,” and it swung on out, like he knew the woman, like he’d seen her enough times to know how she worked. The CIA team was like working around psychiatrists, all of them trained enough to see down to the bone. Gabe made it sound like a light observation; it wasn’t. “I’ve got to keep my flower arrangement gifts to a minimum, it might look like I’m about to propose. Don’t want Buttercup to be getting any ideas now.” He’d bought flowers by the armful, once, asked a florist to load him up - they’d counted after, it had taken at least a hundred, before they’d given up.
He smiled and that looked easy, too, like he hadn’t noticed the hitch between teasing that Laura managed to make lilt on over like she knew how, like she wasn’t tense as strung wire and the little dance with the coffee. Oh, Gabriel noticed, same way he noticed the way her smile lit her up, made her look like sunshine. He liked the smile. Pretty women got themselves noticed in the same, calm way Gabriel noted the prettiness in women who didn’t think they were. He enjoyed looking at her, like a painting that got better the longer he looked.
“I’m afraid you’re stuck with Blossom. Peanut’s Max and I think Buttercup would have a problem. It’s Blossom.” Palms up, momentary tug at the corners of the mouth upward. “Paperwork’s all filled out.”
Laura smiled in response to the laughter and leaned in just slightly, drawn in by the sound of it, almost against her will. She could tell herself that she was not going to fall into the trap of a rough man with a good smile and a generous laugh, but there were some things that she didn’t have much choice over, and when combining those things with warm eyes and strong hands and wide shoulders, she really was having to fight hard against that almost unwanted attraction. It was a fight with herself between safety and interest.
“If it helps, I’m going to guess you’re not his type. Flowers or not.” Her smile shifted into a teasing smirk, sass and gentleness at the same time, continuing the internal battle with herself. The Laura of the past few years said to get up from the table and leave, but the Laura from before said to stay and flirt, even though she was rusty with it. She laced her fingers around the mug, looking down into the dark drink as her smirk slowly faded, but was drawn back again by her new nickname. With a smile, she shook her head.
“I suppose it could be worse. Blossom could at least be a real name.”
There it was, sunshine behind the clouds. Laura sassed back and Gabe about grinned, dimples and appreciation and a secondary look up to his right as the waitress approached, enough fries around the burger to make thieving easy. Against the clatter of cutlery, rolled out of paper napkins - “Oh, I don’t know. Peanut could be a name,” Gabe was the kind of casual that came off like it was worn in and natural, even if some men perhaps - if they were interested in all that sunshine, that quiet, wary wittiness - would be something like apprehension. “My daughter was ‘Peanut’ for the first six months. Got mixed up the first couple months she had a real name.”
He spread the napkin over his knee, all smoothed out paper creased and male ignorance of anything to be wary of. “You know Buttercup’s type?” Gabe hauled up sleeves to tackle the burger on his own plate; there was a scar gone faded - the tan helped - that wrought his left arm, looked like whatever it was had had teeth, barbed wire or something that bit into bone. It was pale enough it didn’t draw notice, pale enough it wasn’t much. “I always figure he’s one of those you watch. The quiet kind.” Gabriel bit into his burger with all the relish for a meal after long absence.
Laura laughed in response to the grin, caught by it for a moment before the soft, delighted sound was drawn out of her. She shook her head with the smile though. “No, Peanut is not a real name. Don’t even try to pretend that it is.” The smile caught and held at his next statement, no longer easy and genuine, but instead wary and cautious. She knew it wasn’t always the case, but children often came with a spouse, and that was something she wouldn’t get mixed up in, no matter how easy her smiles and laughs came around Gabe. “Please tell me you didn’t keep her name as Peanut.” It was still a casual statement, and likely plenty of people wouldn’t have noticed the flicker change of her emotions.
“Her type? Well. I think Jack’s too nice to qualify, really.” ‘Nice’ was a loaded word, but one that was meant to take in his personality, the way Laura knew he treated women, and not anything else she might know about his past. She might not be up to date on what Jack was doing now, but she’d been aware of things that had happened in Seattle, and she had a long enough memory to recall those things now. She watched Gabe bite into his own burger, but suddenly eating more than a french fry or two seemed like a daunting challenge.
Gabe was the kind of man people had called ‘nice’ all his life. It came with the quiet, thinking kind of silence that encouraged speech and it came with knowing when to walk someone home and when to leave them be. He knew Jack’s record and he knew what he had done recently as well as ten years hence, and he didn’t think ‘nice’ was exactly what summed up Jack. Troubled. Troubled and well-intentioned, which went hand in hand all the way to ‘fucked up’. It was, he recalled, now his problem. Main had bundled it up in paperwork and dropped it off in his lap, wheeling herself away. He’d wondered why, initially. These days he knew. “You know Jack well?” Gabriel ate the way people did when they were extremely hungry; the burger was pulled into pieces and he ate with his fingers, as though either he didn’t care much for knives and forks, or he wasn’t used to them. It was a neat affair, though - clean. He made it look as though everyone ought to eat that way.
“We called her Ophelia. Phee for short. She was Peanut until she was good and big, though.” He looked at her plainly, all steady eyes and honesty in the open. It was clear, looking at Gabriel, that he loved the mention of his daughter; his eyes went soft and his mouth went slack - like the mention was enough. Gabriel smiled often, when in company. This one stretched all the way up and went through. He’d seen that flicker, that waver - had surprised himself, not by noticing, but by giving a damn which way she came down on the toss.
Laura’s eyebrows both rose, simultaneously, but just a fraction. She’d snagged a fry and dragged it through a puddle of ketchup, but it hovered in mid-air at Gabe’s question. “Do you?” It was delivered as a challenge of sorts. No, she didn’t know him well, but she did know things, and how much did Gabe know of those things? She’d never been the absolute best at secret identities, but she could talk around a point if needed. At least where other people were involved.
French fry shoved into her mouth, it gave her a moment’s reprieve to gather her next questions. She was torn between the Peanut and the “we”, and she needed another drink of coffee before she decided on which to address, glance flickering down toward Gabe’s hands even though she knew that the absence of a ring didn’t mean that there wasn’t a “we”. “And how big is she now?” It seemed like an easy enough question for a man whose face went soft when he talked about his daughter. Though every word began to put him into a category of men - married, taken, off-limits - that Laura had vowed to steer herself away from, since she’d always made such a mess of things in the past. The withdrawal was accompanied by hidden disappointment but a wry sort of acceptance that once again she’d steered herself in the wrong direction.
Her eyes slid sideways and oh, Gabriel saw it. The same look in airport lounges and at bars, the frank little glance toward the left hand. He saw her retreat, too, saw all that sunshine dim down like a cloud had scuttered across the sky. Gabriel picked up his burger and he chewed thoughtfully, swallowed. “She’s seven. Her brother is five, and I’ve been divorced for over a year.” A smile - faint, but there, all amused there, is that your question? in the curl of his mouth, playing cards laid on down on the felt and for her to look at. He held up the bare hand, the hand he’d hardly worn a ring on when he had been married, given assignments and offices, given security and safety and he slid it off the table to pummel his thigh, the coil of knotted muscle just above his knee bitching something fierce about painkillers and the lack. Gabriel reached across as natural as you please, and snagged a French fry from Laura’s plate. An exaggerated look, all eyebrows. “Thanks, Blossom. Yours are better than mine.”
He considered the question, both sides of it - shadow and the bold negative most got to see. “I know him fine.” He showed up to work and he left after, and he was cloudy instead of clear, wasn’t good enough to get a solid front going but wasn’t obvious, didn’t leave everything out on show. He was murky, like reading something through blurred glass and that worried Gabe, same way it meant he’d see something coming - maybe - even if it was just outlines. “Just wondered how you knew him.” He finished the fry. Smile. “Buttercup’s hard to get to know.”
For a moment, Laura’s eyes stuttered in disbelief that he could have children that old, but she reined the feeling back in when she acknowledged to herself that she could easily have had kids that age or older, and he had a few years on her, even. So it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility. It still gave her a start, and it took a minute for the rest of his statement to sink in. When it did, she frowned. “Stop that. You don’t get to read my mind over lunch. We don’t know each other well enough for that.” She looked at his hand when he held it up, though, eyes flickering between left and right, categorizing the marks on his skin just as much as the lack of metal around his finger. And because she was focused on them, it was too easy to shoot a too-quick hand out to wrap around his wrist, the one with the hand that was attempting to steal her fries. “I said I was eating all of those.”
Her fingers tightened for just a moment, just until she realized that they’d come full circle to their previous conversation about people touching people, and she eased her fingers off and pulled her hand back. Not so much the smiling florist that replied, it was someone else that uttered the next words. “Mutual friends. We knew the same people.” And there, that was a challenge. If he did know that much about Jack, it shouldn’t be hard to connect the dots. And for once, she was in a mood not to care if he did.
He was quirked corners of the mouth, all amused intent and a light response all ready, rising - no mind-reading, didn’t take a person that to lift the surface skim of Laura’s thoughts. Sunshine she might be, but it showed, clouds and everything else passing on over there in the opposite corner of the booth. And then she was warm fingers pressed on around his wrist - not soft, not delicate, roughened edges due, no doubt to flowers and their particular bite - and Gabe looked at her, at her hand with the surprised lift of eyebrows and the particular blankness of mouth that implied that perhaps it had been unexpected but was not unpleasant. She was fast, too fast - a quickness that implied training, and that was interesting; Gabriel’s smile was pleasant as he slid his wrist free, but with the interest of someone trying to read what had been written on the reverse of a piece of paper.
“The same people.” It perhaps meant what it could - but it was an assumption to make, even if Laura wore wariness like a worn coat, had a scar on the side of her throat that said she did more than stand in back-rooms and arrange flowers. Gabe frowned; it was an expression all thought, wrinkles at his eyes, across his forehead. He picked up another fry from the edge of her plate very deliberately, munched it.
“Strange social circle, that Buttercup.” Careful. Watching her.
If Laura was at all embarrassed by her territoriality over her lunch plate, it faded when Gabe pulled his wrist back, and she ignored the few beats of pulse that she'd felt under her fingers, warm and solid like everything else about Gabe. She didn't apologize, but made a face and tried to crowd her plate closer to herself when he snagged another one. Though she didn't stop him again, which was almost as good as permission. If there truly had been an issue with him stealing her fries, the next step would have been to employ the dull-tined forks that sat off to the side.
She bore his gentle scrutiny with as much patience as she ever had, wondering what he was truly reading there, knowing that she was a puzzle of hints and statements of things gone wrong, for those that had the ability to read it. And she was certain that he had that ability, as everything else had pointed in that direction since they first started talking. "Very strange," she replied, eyes back on his frankly. "Then and now." A judgement on the man with an injured knee and old scars and the ability to read her.
It was a small laugh, low - it was meant for her, rather than the diner and it sounded like it, Gabe appreciative of both the jibe and the gesture and what they meant. It was coffee and whiskey, warm like shared amusement and given over entirely to her. He was a man who looked pleasant even when he wasn’t pleased, and now he was both, even if the pulse was steady as wound-down clockwork, slow as an athlete’s - for all the damaged leg. “The man chooses lunatic company,” he said solemnly, through a mouthful of fries, and he looked at Laura as frankly as she did him; picked out the landscape and cartography of old things worn deep and close to the skin both. “Can’t be helped. No accounting for taste.”
Stealing lunch-fries was as thoughtless as it was deliberate; a looseness when enjoying company - for all her guarded nature, Laura did not put him on his guard. There was nothing of Jack’s dark quiver of something almost wrong that set teeth on edge and set Gabriel looking for the loose end ready to unravel. She was easy, even if she was high-strung, and Gabriel knew high-strung well enough to ignore it. “Still think you got the better fries.”
There was a pause. A long one as Laura decided what direction to take things. And with Gabe's laugh, quiet and somehow intimate, only for their small space, her decision was made. She dug up a very small, very wry smile. "I'm sorry, you must be mistaken. They didn't officially diagnose me as a lunatic." Was she kidding this time? She certainly wasn't going to say one way or the other.
Her wry smile dissolved quickly enough into an exasperated sigh, something that was laid over a growing base of fondness. "There is nothing different about the fries, and you know it." There was another passing moment of expectation as she clearly fished for another decision, and then, slowly, reached across the table and helped herself to one of his fries, dragging it through her own ketchup before eating it. "See? Yours are fine."
There was a pause, an appreciative one all dimples and elbows on the table. He liked the smile, no matter how small or wry it was and Gabriel thought in a quiet, put-away place, that it would be easier and easier to pull it out, to pry at the flattened seams which were Laura’s scars and pull them up. He knew they were scars, the way he knew that the salt and pepper were in different shakers, the same way you learned to read people like writing in a book and to wear sober grey each day with your regulation haircut and still fold into the shadows and look normal. He liked the idea of it, of that smile. Laura’s face lit - not luminous, not stage lights flood-lit but like a candle, wavering if steady with the warm glow of something that had been there once.
“If you’re going to eat mine,” Gabriel said, comfortably - it was words sliding into one another just shy of a drawl, lazy-pleased with the notion - “Then I think I’m about due some more of yours.” He reached over, and there wasn’t the slightest caution nor care taken, there was no due consideration that Laura disliked to be touched or that her space was being taken up by someone overly large and bulky. It was simply a practical assumption that it would be accepted. Gabriel found that most often people permitted liberties when you assumed them because they believed you would be correct if you took them, and not when you asked first.
“Yep. Still better. Don’t know what you’re thinking.”
"No!" The word was quiet and delivered with another smile and a disgruntled sound. She shifted forward and her fingers were on Gabe's wrist again, holding and pushing back toward his own plate even though he'd already managed to snag some of her fries. There was just a hint of a tremor where her fingers pressed to his skin, but she hid any reflection in her expression, keeping the slight smile on her face. "You've already had mine. I should get more of yours to make it even." It was juvenile and immature, but it was easy, and that was more helpful than anything else in the moment.
"If you're not careful, someone's going to cut your hand off one of these days." She shot a look down at his scarred arm, a flicker passing over her expression before she regained her mostly-easy attitude.
Gabe looked down himself, at bare brown skin and a dusting of hair and the tattoos and map of a lifetime dancing at Uncle Sam’s tune. There was a slice out of his arm in Macau and a knife fight he’d got into without meaning to but entered into whole-heartedly in Germany. There had been others - there were others - but the worst was faded, long gone. Dulled down by time, by a wife who asked questions and gave sullen silence when they weren’t answered, by children he wanted to see sooner than ‘sometime’. He inspected his own wrist, the electric slide of Laura’s fingers a fragment of a second. He spread out his fingers, looked at his palm. “Nope. Figure I’ve had it this long, I’ll stay attached.”
Gabe settled on back and he looked her up and down, the easy appreciation of a man who is used to looking without touching, and who finds very little offensive in doing so. It was a clean sort of look, the kind of coffee lines and passing on the sidewalk rather than anything with heat behind it, and perhaps he was looking because she was a pretty woman or perhaps because that smile was rocky enough to flicker now and again, but he looked all the same. “I need more fries than you do,” reasonable, as an argument in court, “I’m a growing boy. I need all the fries I get.” A deliberate grin, both dimples going at once and a sleight of hand worthy of the streets of India to grab a handful.
"Risky chance you're taking. The other side of that coin is that it's overstayed its welcome and it's high time for it to part." The threat was gentle though, no real risk of her picking up the butter knife to hack away at the arm that was already mapped by past scars. She only just kept herself from sliding her thumb along the inside of his wrist when she pulled back, some left-over instinct from long-ago years when she was actually comfortable with the back and forth between herself and an attractive man. Instead, she just let her hand slip away, no dragging of fingers at all.
The up-and-down made her shoulders inch up incrementally, just tense little fractions that she tried to fight against. "Growing boy, my ass. You keep eating fries, the only way you'll be growing is sideways." The slight of hand was just quick enough to elude her, though her own hand was just a hair behind, and her eyes flashed with something between frustration and the satisfaction of a long-absent challenge.
There were men in the service who spoke of near risks, enough of them lined up after one another that when it came - ‘it’ - limbs lost, or deaths up close, it was relief, it was breathing easier. Gabe didn’t think that way, he didn’t think of near risks as ‘almost’, he thought of them as ‘not now’, and even with the leg under the table, the brace and the cane propped against the corner of the booth, he didn’t think of overstayed welcomes and deserved risks come home to roost. His eyes flickered up, to the cane leaned there, like he was checking it still was, and the smile that hazed over was dulled-down warmth, the kind that simmered rather than was full on heat. “I think the arm can stay. I’m attached,” he said, slow and easy, and like there was nothing at all beyond a mishap or a motorbike accident when young and stupid enough to get on board one.
He grinned at the next, teeth and dimples and the wolfish sort of enjoyment of it all that was laughter lilting in the eyes and unashamed joke; “I didn’t say how I’d be growing. Shame on you, Blossom, trying to make a man feel all ashamed.” He crunched one of her fries and he didn’t look a bit like he was ashamed, just interested in that almost-catch, the way she reached like she knew what she was doing.
Laura watched the shift of his eyes to the cane, wondered what sort of thoughts were slipping through his mind that only showed on his face as a flicker of changing expression. But then her eyebrows went up and she actually laughed a little. “Attached, hm?” It was funnier to her than it should have been, but she didn’t hide her smile, shaking her head with a smirk.
She leaned one forearm on the table, using the other one to keep reaching across to eat the fries solely off his plate. If he was going to be that way about it, she’d just play right along. “You know, all the extra fries, they’re just going to make you pudgy.” It was an easy tease, one accompanied by a glance downward, toward where his belly would be if it weren’t being blocked from sight by the table. She stole another fry, then a small handful, dropping them back down on her own plate so that they blended with the others. She’d need to get back to work soon, but a few more minutes wouldn’t hurt.