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Tweak says, "he don't want your sympathy"

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Gabe Wilder ([info]afterwedie) wrote in [info]we_float,
@ 2010-06-20 18:36:00

Previous Entry  Add to memories!  Tell a Friend!  Next Entry
Current music:"The Manual" : Travie McCoy
Entry tags:character: gabriel wilder, character: matt cavanaugh

"Now we all make mistakes..."
Who: Matt Cavanaugh and Gabriel Wilder
What: A couple postponed meetings finally result in the real thing.
When: Monday, June 21, 8 pm (forward-dated, takes place after a yet-to-be-posted rp)
Where: Beth's Cafe, Seattle
Status: Open; in progress

What Gabe liked the most about Beth's was that it was one of the few places in the city that had gleefully embraced the lifting of the smoking ban. Most Seattle restaurants still clung to the idea that smoke tainted food or disdained the small pockets of ash that seemed to float to the bottom of Beth's floors but this cafe had gone as far as to place an ashtray on every table the moment the ban was lifted.

He ashed his cigarette in the one at his table, then slowly took a drag, staring at the ember at its tip.

He should have been home by now. Gabe knew it and yet he was sitting at a table, pulling out his notebook and sketching out the faces at a distant booth. Waiting for someone to come and tell him that the impossible was possible. His mind kept running over everything that had happened over the weekend. He wondered where his other self had gone after he'd locked him out. Wherever it had been, he was gone now.

Not for the first time, Gabriel felt guilty about leaving him in the cold. Them. He shuddered, wondering, and then went back to his idle sketching as the waitress set a second cup of coffee down in front of him. He smiled at her, ordered a piece of pie and went back to the drawing.


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[info]palehorses
2010-06-21 05:06 am UTC (link)
Matt slid into the booth in an untidy sprawl of limbs and hair and cigarette smoke as the waitress brought the pie. He did what any self-respecting person would do and spoke to her first, grinning. "Can I get one of those? And a really, really big cup of coffee?"

She snorted, but seemed more amused than not, so he counted it as a win as he looked over at Gabe. "Hi, how're you, eat your pie, what's up?"

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[info]afterwedie
2010-06-21 05:16 am UTC (link)
"Uhhhh." It was too long a pause for the question. "Fuck, man..." Was Matt the kind of person he should mention Julie to? Gabe decided not to lead off with it. He wanted to do something productive. Whatever was going on at home wasn't, right now.

"I guess, um, I kind of, like, wanted to grill you," Gabe admitted, taking a swig of the coffee in front of him. "I'm not sure about the whole government thing but no one's like, come to hunt me down, you know?"

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[info]palehorses
2010-06-21 05:34 am UTC (link)
"Wow, remind me to play fucking poker with you or something, man," Matt said admiringly. "I like how you totally just told me your whole dastardly fucking plan right there. Can I scream for my girlish virtue, or am I getting grilled no matter what?"

The waitress brought the coffee and pie and slapped the latter down; the former was more carefully placed on the table, and Matt noted with some glee that it was a larger cup. "Blessings on you," he said fervently to her.

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[info]afterwedie
2010-06-21 05:38 am UTC (link)
"Dude, you can totally scream," he said. "I don't care." Gabe's face broke into a grin. "Fuck, it wouldn't be the first time I went to jail. Just not for that." He looked at Matt. "What would that be anyhow? Like, torture by pie or what? I once read they tortured people in some war with cookies."

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[info]palehorses
2010-06-21 05:44 am UTC (link)
"Torture by pie's a lot better than, like, fucking waterboarding, man. Did you ever hear about the, you know, the thing where they'd torture someone by going to his fucking house and playing music he hated at him until he surrendered? I never could decide if that was just totally fucking awesome or completely ridiculous, you know?"

He inhaled half the cup of coffee in the pause between sentences and said "I don't feel very much like screaming yet, so I guess you're allowed to go ahead. I'll scream if I need to, though."

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[info]afterwedie
2010-06-21 05:51 am UTC (link)
"Nope. Never heard that." Gabe took a drink of his coffee, then said, "I guess... what is it you're doing there?"

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[info]palehorses
2010-06-21 06:01 am UTC (link)
"Beats the fuck out of me," Matt said frankly. "Seriously. Like, we kind of take orders from Katherine, except that she's not really giving them and just, like, laid the fucking smackdown on everyone about how she's not going to give them because she expects us all to think independently and do what needs to be done, whatever we decide that to be. And beyond that, I really don't fucking know. I've gone out to places with a couple of other people, and it's been like woefully fucking obvious that we need a coordinated game plan - hell, we probably need a field leader - and we don't have that. And I was really pissed off about the whole thing for a while there, so I wasn't going to say shit if I had a mouthful, you know? And meanwhile, I actually think that everyone else in the house is fucking twelve, you know? They all kind of act like it's one giant sleepover, or half of them do, and the other half are just monumental dicks that no one likes anyway."

He paused - for breath as much as anything - and said "It needs some organisation. I'd just about decided that, after you and I talked about why it should be done, that I could do that, I mean. I don't know if I can do it with the people who are there - going to fucking depend on whether they want to, like, fucking giggle at sleepovers or if they can kick fucking ass as needed - but I think I can at least do it."

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[info]afterwedie
2010-06-21 06:18 am UTC (link)
"Okay... um..." Gabe thought for a moment, then said, "Stop thinking of them as jerks and assholes for a fucking minute, okay? Like, imagine you don't know them... and tell me about them, what they can do."

He grinned quietly, then said, "If life gives you lemons, right?"

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[info]palehorses
2010-06-21 06:20 am UTC (link)
"Maxxie blinks - short teleportation hops - and Zadkiel heals to some kind of limit, but I don't know if it's arbitrary or fixed. And I think Tom, like, can do something to time." He grinned again, but this time there was absolutely no humour to it at all; the expression was very dry. "In other words, I don't fucking know. Never asked, never been told."

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[info]afterwedie
2010-06-21 06:22 am UTC (link)
He flipped to a blank page in his sketchbook and wrote the names down. "There were more there, I remember. Am I, like, not the only one who didn't sign on the motherfucking dotted line?"

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[info]palehorses
2010-06-21 06:25 am UTC (link)
"Well, there's me," Matt said, a touch of caution to his voice. "I can kill - it's sort of complicated, but the main point is, I don't and I won't. And then there's Ganesh, Del, Alec, and that guy who was, like, changing faces every ten seconds that one day. Oh, and JT, who's a nat. And Jael, that girl with the goat legs. And I think you're the only one who didn't sign on the dotted line."

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[info]afterwedie
2010-06-21 06:27 am UTC (link)
"Go me," Gabe smiled. He wrote the other names down, thinking it over. "Um. That's a lot of fucking people when you think about it." And he was thinking as he lit another cigarette, sliding the pack across the table to Matt in offering.

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[info]palehorses
2010-06-21 06:31 am UTC (link)
Matt took a cigarette and drained his coffee before he lit it. "It kind of is," he conceded, "but I kind of think that's only a - a - you know, a real fucking statement, if they - we - can all work together to achieve something. Like, we need a fucking plan, and a sense of what everyone can do, but that got real stalled real quick when someone went to Katherine about it and got kind of smacked down about her not having unlimited cash, you know? So the idea of a plan's faded, and it doesn't fucking matter how many there are, if everyone's tripping over everyone else, you know?"

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[info]afterwedie
2010-06-21 06:38 am UTC (link)
"Cash isn't it," Gabe said calmly. "I mean, shit, cash isn't going to get much of anything other than weapons, right? And fuck, aren't we- you- supposed to be the weapons?"

He looked at the list again. "Dude, if we were cops, we'd start by knowing where we were. Walking the streets. Talking to people. Figuring out the good and the bad. You don't need money for that. Fuck, if you've got too much of it, you'll just get fucking killed."

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[info]palehorses
2010-06-21 06:41 am UTC (link)
Matt sat back and looked at him in surprise. "Okay," he said slowly. "So ... how does that become cash other than by selling Alec for spare parts?"

The other part was a good idea - he thought back to Zadkiel saying he didn't know where he was, and his own dismissal of that because Matt did know where he was - and he wouldn't have seen the lack in a million years.

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[info]afterwedie
2010-06-21 06:43 am UTC (link)
Gabe shook his head. "Dude... I just am not seeing why you need a lot of money. For what?"

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[info]palehorses
2010-06-21 06:47 am UTC (link)
Matt shrugged, but at the same time, he mentally laid some cards on the table. "We've got to get off the government tit," he pointed out. "Means rent, food, transportation, utilities, at the basics. No one's got a really good job - it's a bunch of unemployed and half-employed people who could be fired at any fucking minute for their genes. Same time, if we don't get away from the government, I don't see how to turn this group into what it needs to be. And if they won't come, fuck them, I'll go find the people who will do it, you know? So we need cash to stay alive."

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[info]afterwedie
2010-06-21 06:49 am UTC (link)
"That makes more sense," Gabe said. "But dude, you take what you can get now and you hide that shit. Train people on the streets or what the fuck ever- that's where you're doing this, yeah?"

He thought about the problem for a moment. "So why'd everyone say yes? Do you know that part? You need that to make it all work."

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[info]palehorses
2010-06-21 06:56 am UTC (link)
He grinned again, and it was sharply dismissive. "Course I'm not doing this, let alone on the streets. Again, point taken, and I like it, but you're not seeing what the situation is. Right now, and seriously, this is my best guess, people see the house as protection, and they're hiding - most of them - behind the idea that Katherine hands them fucking orders when she wants something done, you know? Until she says hop, most've them are fine not figuring out how to jump on their own. Same time, it's a bad fucking idea to be out in the wild if you're an ace or a joker, so Katherine's offer came at a great time. But I don't think the ideological underpinnings are fucking there - I know they're fucking not. And until that's in play, training won't happen. Hell, until it fucking does, I might not be in play. Don't want to spend the next six months beating my head against entrenched fear and laziness when I could walk right the fuck now and set something like this up with people who want to make the change that needs to happen, you know? Not saying that I think everyone in the house is a fucking loss, just that right now, I don't trust them as professional heroes any further than I can fucking piss in a hurricane, you know?"

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[info]afterwedie
2010-06-21 07:05 am UTC (link)
"Then call them to order. Take whoever signs on, maybe." Gabe wasn't grasping the difficulty, not entirely, though he knew part of it was simply knowing none of them. "Um... can't you just, like, pull a Bangaro and fake an enemy?"

Bangaro had been five presidential terms before- the first president to have been caught manufacturing his own war.

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[info]palehorses
2010-06-21 07:07 am UTC (link)
"Fuck no," Matt said. "If they don't believe the Acts are enemy enough, I'm not fucking making shit up." His voice twisted with repugnance. "I'll work with what I've got. And I hope you're saying that you're part of it, because if not, this is one fucking disappointing conversation. But I won't lie to convert someone to something they don't believe is right, you know?" He smiled. "I'd make a fucking terrible politician, man."

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[info]afterwedie
2010-06-21 07:10 am UTC (link)
"Yeah, you're right. You sound pretty fucking desperate though." Gabe bit his lip, considering it. "Yeah. I think I could be in. I don't want on the payroll. I've got a place to work."

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[info]palehorses
2010-06-21 05:24 pm UTC (link)
"Not, desperate like where dogs are about to start eating my foot, I hope," Matt commented, lighting another cigarette. "But come on, it's completely fucking pointless to be this if we don't use this, the right way. And that's what bugs me about the whole fucking thing, you know? It could be really amazing, and instead it's afraid."

He tapped the cigarette in the ashtray and looked at Gabe curiously. "So where d'you work, then?"

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[info]afterwedie
2010-06-22 01:08 am UTC (link)
"Then use it," Gabe said. "What's stopping you?" He was deliberately ducking the question of his employment as he picked up his cup of coffee. He wasn't even sure that Sean would hire him back, son or not.

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[info]palehorses
2010-06-22 01:11 am UTC (link)
Matt didn't miss the refusal to answer the question; he tabled it as less relevant for right now. "What was," he said slowly, after too long a pause for a drag and exhale of the cigarette, "was that I was ... angry is probably best. You know, here we are, for no fucking reason we get selected to do shit that is deliberately left vague, with nothing really in the fucking works to say what, where, or anything like that, and with people who don't know each other, most cases. So I spent a while being angry," he said honestly. "I knew what was wrong, you know? But I didn't connect that I also knew how to fix it. Not till you started talking to me, and that was the sort of the fucking catalyst, you know what I mean? That made me go kind of 'oh, here's point A, and this's point B, and we bring them together like this.' " He gestured with his hands as he spoke.

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[info]afterwedie
2010-06-22 01:43 am UTC (link)
"Did you ever think..." Gabe paused. "That they're not asking for anything specific so they can hang you when the time comes?" It was his grandparents talking, he could hear it in the way that he phrased the question. It even held a faint taint of the northwestern speed that his grandfather's voice had, Gabe's own muddled accent receding.

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[info]palehorses
2010-06-22 01:50 am UTC (link)
Matt nodded grimly. "Which is why, far as I'm concerned, the first thing to do is to make it harder for them to find us. They don't have a concentration of power in the house, but I'm not prepared to be someone's tame wild card, you know?"

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[info]afterwedie
2010-06-22 02:27 am UTC (link)
"How will you go about it?" Gabe leaned forward, his gaze intent. "Uh, fuck, how do you know they're not, like, tracking you or something?"

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[info]palehorses
2010-06-22 04:01 am UTC (link)
"I don't," Matt said with honesty. "In this day and age? Man, no fucking chance that we're not under some kind of surveillance, even if I wasn't, like, fucking bugged by the government. But if they have to drag us out of somewhere not fucking theirs, that's gonna look real bad if they decide to trot out their tame aces, you know? So best I can figure is find a new place to stay, at least make a nominal effort. And I don't fucking know where, nor how to pay for it, but that's a bridge that can wait a minute, at least."

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[info]afterwedie
2010-06-22 04:09 am UTC (link)
"You know," Gabe said, "There might be a place." He tapped his finger against the cup. "I mean, do you want remote or what?"

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[info]palehorses
2010-06-22 04:15 am UTC (link)
"Probably not," Matt said cautiously. "I'm the only one with a car, far as I know, and I'm not really interested in being the fucking bus. What do you have in mind?"

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[info]afterwedie
2010-06-22 04:23 am UTC (link)
"I was thinking Elbe- my grandparents have a cabin out there." Gabe shrugged. "Might be good for practice."

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[info]palehorses
2010-06-22 04:28 am UTC (link)
"Too far out for living, though," Matt said. "Fuck, we need, like, a whole laundry list of shit, the more I think about it, and I don't know how to get it. But we can scratch the cars if we're living in-city. Be nice if someone else had one, but that's real low on my priority list to give them, you know? So, a house is the most important thing ... I might know a guy," he added thoughtfully. "Big maybe, but I might know someone who wouldn't ask too many questions. No idea if I could buy it - I mean, I'm on fucking record as a wild card - but ... that's later too." He stubbed out the cigarette. "Get off the government tit by moving out, start there. Need some income so we don't fucking starve, and I'm damn sure that no one's job, even if it wasn't in jeopardy, is going to pay for that. Maybe a scam of some kind - mess with the extra decimal places or something."

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[info]afterwedie
2010-06-22 04:32 am UTC (link)
"Or um, you stay with the government until you get what you need," Gabe said quietly. "Dude, it's not like you can just, leave. You signed on the dotted line." He lit a third cigarette and puffed on it for a moment.

"I guess I'd fucking think some more on that if I was you." It wasn't said unkindly but thoughtfully. "Make a list, yeah?"

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[info]palehorses
2010-06-22 04:36 am UTC (link)
"Yeah," Matt said, and it was a sound of disagreement. He lit another cigarette as well and gestured to the waitress for a refill on the coffee. "Thing is, we're not getting much from the government, other than the fucking house, you know? Granted, it's nice not to have to scavenge the streets for garbage for the Maker, but ..." He paused, and a truly terrifying grin crossed his face. "What we need is someone who wants us to disappear."

He waved that away with a gesture and added "Anyway, I told Katherine that I was only sticking until I figured out whether I wanted to be there. The pay's nice and all, but yeah. I don't know, I want to be away from her and her troops right now - I think it'd be a huge fucking motivator to make people do something, aside from everything else, but it'll need to be rock-solid before I go. I don't know." He looked at Gabe. "You sound like you've done stuff like this before. I mean, thinking about the organisational end and all. Yeah?"

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[info]afterwedie
2010-06-22 04:48 am UTC (link)
"Um. Kind of. My grandparents are labor activists." Gabe fell silent again, thinking.

He put the cigarette to his lips and inhaled slowly. "When I was a kid, I went with them a couple times to hear the speeches. They like to get people together, have them march against the corps. Grandma's been in jail more times than I can count. It's...uhhhh... kind of a family tradition."

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[info]palehorses
2010-06-22 04:55 am UTC (link)
"Getting arrested or activism?" The question was rhetorical. "So, yeah, since you're in and all, I totally want your help with this. I mean, I know what I want to do, but man, I fucking want help too, and you're thinking about this and all. You've got experience, you know? My parents kind of fought the law a little bit, but not anything useful like you're talking about - my mom's an attorney for fuck's sake. But I don't know whether it's better to, like, try to adapt the existing structure - which is basically completely nothing - or, like, be all my-hidden-partner and shit for a while, or how to handle it."

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[info]afterwedie
2010-06-22 05:06 am UTC (link)
"I dunno, man," Gabe said. "You know them better than me. I know Zadkiel but I don't think he's the same as the others." He hesitated. "I can come around if that'd be good. I just gotta take care of some shit first, get the job nailed down."

He wasn't quite sure why he was so reluctant to tie his lot with the government when he felt completely able to do so with Matt. There was something about the other man that implied a lack of deception, however.

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[info]palehorses
2010-06-22 05:26 am UTC (link)
"Don't know if it would be," Matt said. "I mean, come on, if we're under surveillance, you're gonna be noticed, and it looks like they didn't bother to fucking go after you or something, so clearly they weren't watching before."

He paused and looked stricken. "Jesus, do you suppose that maybe they're just completely fucking incompetent? That'd be fucking frightening."

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[info]afterwedie
2010-06-22 05:36 am UTC (link)
"I don't think you're giving anyone enough credit," Gabe said quietly. "Be careful about that."

He dug in his pocket for his credstick and added, "Um, let me get this. Just in case." It wouldn't do any good if he was being watched but if he wasn't, Gabe thought it might help to avoid a connection for the time being.

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[info]palehorses
2010-06-22 05:53 am UTC (link)
Matt looked mulish, then shrugged. "It's better to overestimate and find out later that you didn't need to, I get it. But man, the whole thing's been presented like it's a major fucking issue for Katherine to have any contact with us - I don't think I'm wrong that we're not being watched. It's like something on that end's not getting said or something."

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[info]afterwedie
2010-06-22 05:58 am UTC (link)
"I dunno." He slid his credstick into the table, watching as the numbers began to glow and scroll across the tabletop. Beth's hadn't bothered to invest in any sort of privacy screen. With a sigh, Gabe's fingers plucked out a tip, then pressed for a thumbprint.

He frowned, thinking that even that wasn't foolproof.

"You might be right," he said, relaxing after the amount had been accepted. "I, fuck, it's not like, I'd know, yeah? Uh, I'm just throwing shit out there."

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[info]palehorses
2010-06-23 05:03 am UTC (link)
"No, it makes sense. Just, if that were the fucking case, why are you still, you know, walking around on your own legs? I mean, you know some of what they planned and where they - we - are ... honestly, if it'd been me setting that up, you wouldn't have walked away."

He watched the numbers disappear, and added "Maybe we shouldn't email. In case they're wondering. I mean, I don't know what kind of system we've got, and that means it's open for every fucking person who can tag a datastream to walk in and play pretend." He also made a note to ditch his phone and get a new number.

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[info]afterwedie
2010-06-23 05:08 am UTC (link)
"Yeah." He frowned. "Dude, that... that really wasn't something I wanted to fucking think about. Guess I better." Gabe sighed. "So, how the fuck do we do this cloak and dagger shit? Leave notes in a drop? Meet up some place?"

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[info]palehorses
2010-06-23 05:44 am UTC (link)
Matt smiled, but it was a ghost of his usual easy humour. "That way lies fucking madness, man. Either they're tracking me, or us, or neither, and we assume the worst and do fucking nothing, or we risk it. Personally I'd rather not risk it far - if they're watching me, it's for no fucking good reason, and I really don't want to lose you to their net. A drop - I'll take out a box and text you the fucking number, does that work? Maybe at that pod hotel on Pine - I know they also handle mail services, and they really don't like people prying into guests' affairs. If we need to meet for some reason, it'd be a convenient place, too, for the same fucking reason, you know?"

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[info]afterwedie
2010-06-23 02:25 pm UTC (link)
"Yeah, let's do that. Sean knows people there. They're quiet," Gabe felt comfortable with the idea, relaxing visibly at Matt's suggestion. "You want to set up another meeting time or just text me later?"

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[info]palehorses
2010-06-23 11:35 pm UTC (link)
"Say a week?" He figured that had to be long enough to get things sorted out at the house. "If something comes up, text me, or I'll text you, but in a week, let's meet there. Like, same time and all."

It made him twitchy just thinking about it - this was the classic definition of overthinking it, but ... at the same time, the risk of not was too great.

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[info]afterwedie
2010-06-24 02:09 am UTC (link)
"Yeah. Awesome." Gabe grinned. "I'll catch you then." He wondered what Matt would do in the interim- there was a lot of work if half of what he'd said was true. But there wasn't point in planning further, not when his own future was so uncertain.

He gave a wave to Matt before disappearing, his head full of thoughts about the probable future.

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[info]palehorses
2010-06-24 03:42 am UTC (link)
Matt sat a few moments longer, wondering if he would see a tail if one existed, but nothing looked out of place, so he left as well, going the opposite direction from Gabe.

He hoped that he'd have something to bring to the table next week.

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