Re: Rafe/Gabe - Cabanas - 7:45 p.m.
"He doesn't live with me." The words came out awkwardly, and Gabe immediately wondered at his own phrasing. He, like Eshan was some foreign entity, a separate, singular thing that had little to no relation to Gabe despite the fact that they were an item. "I mean, we don't live together. He has his own place, downtown; got it pretty cheap, considering how businesses are leaving the Hollywood area left and right. So, uh, yeah." His cup lifted to his lips, a long, slow sip allowing him to consider his next words.
"We've only been dating for three months. Known him for six." What he wanted to say was not everything is us and we were different. Their time together, though short, seemed like a blur -- two months in Florida, followed by their time together in California. After that burn (and that was what it felt like, when it had ended, a terrible crashing burn), Gabe had started taking things a little more slowly, cautiously. He admitted to himself slowly when he liked people, but was always careful about taking things to the next step. It was always easier, too -- he'd quickly found that he'd never felt quite the way about any of his other paramours the way he did about Rafe, and that knowledge was getting enthusiastically underlined the more time he spent with the other man. The other side of the coin, though, was that it was deeply and unsettlingly unclear how Rafe felt about him, and Gabe had no desire to manipulate the other man into something that wasn't real.
"I'm just... I'm just saying, you could have stayed. But I'm glad that Alice is being good to you. You always were good about picking yourself up," he admitted, glad to see that Rafe had, indeed, pulled himself together in spite of the tragedy that had recently visited him. "If there's anything you need, though, let me know. You know that, right?"