Gabe/Stephen (Bryce/Jared); tell me about it, stud
Because I had to do ~something for Valentine's, and while there was plenty of romance in COTT if you looked (Holden Chase shutting up for twenty minutes is true romance), I figured it'd be a good day to feature the stars of the upcoming Kickstarter.
No Expectation of Returns doesn't really roll off the tongue, so I've dubbed them (and the Kickstarter project itself) The April Fools, because they were both born in April (April 25 and 27, 1991, for those curious). Stephen's lived two whole days without Gabe in his life. Gabe's happy with the tally of none.
Everybody knows Gabe's a sucker for Stephen. Very few realise just how mutual that is.
“Okay,” Gabe says, which is all Stephen needs to hear to give him his undivided attention.
Stephen had been rifling through the kitchen cupboards when Gabe called, trying to find himself a low-effort snack, though the food gathering operation gets abandoned as soon as Stephen’s finished asking Gabe how his day’s been.
It’s something about the way he says it, a thread of laughter in his voice, but incredulity too. It’s easy to make Gabe laugh, though Stephen acknowledges he’s saying that as someone with decades of practice, and also as the person who is, he thinks, the best at it. Dmitry probably spends more time with Gabe, with them on the road half the season, so he might win for volume, but frankly, his attempts are all crude, so Stephen thinks he still has the edge.
It’s easy, it turns out, to make someone laugh when you’ve known them their entire life. Extremely difficult to surprise them, however.
Though it’s hardly only Stephen who has a hard time surprising Gabe. He has this — vision, Stephen supposes, seems to see well past the horizon everyone else does, and everything he does see, he tends to take in stride. It is, frankly, one of his most infuriating qualities — possibly even the most infuriating, tied with that particular way he says ‘Steve’ that always makes Stephen want to bite him. But it’s also the reason Gabe’s so steady — not to mention the reason Gabe still puts up with him — so Stephen has grudging respect for it.
But Gabe sounds incredulous, so Stephen knows, without another word, that whatever it is Gabe has to say, it takes priority over balancing effort versus nutrition.
“One sec,” Stephen says, and goes straight to the nearest junk food stash — or, at least, the nearest one he recalls, sometimes Gabe finds hiding places Stephen had entirely forgotten about — and grabs a bag of Smart Food. He suspects it will be an appropriate snack.
“Okay,” Stephen says. “I’ve got the popcorn ready.”
“You mean that literally, don’t you,” Gabe says. It isn't a question.
“Yep,” Stephen says anyway, tucking the phone against his shoulder as he rips it open. "Lay it on me."
“Jared’s married to a Calgary Flame,” Gabe says, then, “Did you just drop the popcorn?”
“It’s literally everywhere now,” Stephen says. “And yes, I meant that literally too. Wait, which Flame?”
“Bryce Marcus,” Gabe says, and all Stephen will say is that it’s a damn good thing he’s holding his phone to his ear again, or he might have dropped it too.
*
Gabe only continues after Stephen’s substituted the popcorn with chips, opened a bottle of wine, and assured Gabe that he will not leave the popcorn all over the kitchen floor, but Gabe has to know he’s not allowed to just drop that bomb without following up by giving Stephen every single salacious detail he’s gathered.
Infuriating, like Stephen says. Do you know how difficult it is to outwait someone as patient as Gabriel Markson? Stephen doesn’t. He doesn’t think he’s ever succeeded, not once. And believe him, he he has tried.
Not tonight, though. Tonight he doesn’t bother. When Gabe’s asking how Stephen’s day was, sounding genuinely interested, because he’s always genuinely interested — that particular tendency of his is one Stephen likes more than he would ever admit out loud — Stephen says, “Jared. And Bryce Marcus. Are you sure you got the right Flame, Gabe, he’s kind of—“
“I mean, Jared introduced me to him,” Gabe says. “So I’m pretty sure.”
“Wait,” Stephen says. “You met him? When did you meet him?”
“At the dinner Jared had me come along for,” Gabe says, then, “Jared told me I could tell you all this, by the way. About Bryce, I mean. I wasn’t going to say anything if he wasn’t okay with it.”
“Gabe!” Stephen says.
Gabe’s — discretion, Stephen supposes the word would be, means there are likely plenty of things that Gabe doesn’t tell Stephen, simply because he thinks the other party would prefer he keep his mouth shut.
Meanwhile Stephen gives Gabe every single bit of gossip from wine nights — and there is a dizzying amount of gossip, a perpetual motion machine of gossip, most of the ones who aren’t working are bored as fuck —which he can trust never to reach anyone else’s ears because, again, Gabe would keep a secret to the grave. Which is probably the reason that Jared already trusts him enough to introduce him to his husband.
Obviously Stephen’s a little torn about this one.
Gabe doesn’t even say anything, just mutely waits Stephen out, like he always does when he knows he’s in the right, and he knows Stephen knows it too, or he will if he thinks about it for a minute. The worst part is he’s usually right. Like yes, obviously Stephen would prefer Gabe be reliable and trustworthy, but when someone's always that guy, every time you argue with him, it probably means you're being the unreasonable one.
“You don’t have to sound so smug about it,” Stephen says.
“I literally didn’t say a word,” Gabe says, and unfortunately the literality of that ‘literally’ doesn’t have to be confirmed, considering he didn’t.
“Dinner,” Stephen says. “Jared. Bryce Marcus.”
“And one of the other Flames,” Gabe says. “Jared’s buddy from Juniors. Bryce’s buddy too, I assume? I don’t know, we didn’t actually talk much, just kind of grimaced at each other as Jared and Bryce kept alternating between pretending they were just buddies and giving each other longing looks.”
“Wait, did they tell you or not?” Stephen asks. It wouldn’t surprise him at all if they hadn’t intended to let Gabe know, but he figured it out anyway. Even Stephen forgets sometimes just how quickly Gabe can take a few pieces of information and put together an entire essay.
“I think they were kind of testing me out?” Gabe asks. “Like, when I told Jared he should go home to his husband he got really embarrassed but he also seemed almost — relieved, maybe? Like he didn’t want to tell me but he wanted me to know. Or he wanted me to know, but only if I was okay with it, which I obviously was.”
“Wait,” Stephen says. “Was in front of Bryce, or—“
“Oh,” Gabe says. “Sorry, this was later, Bryce and Chaz left first and then I finished my beer while Jared stared at me like he was going to kill me if I took any longer, so I told him he should go home to his husband.”
This is all getting confused in Stephen’s head now, but he focuses on the most important part first. “You say there were longing looks?”
“I’d call them gazes,” Gabe says.
Never mind what Stephen said earlier: his favourite thing about Gabe is the way he plays along.
“There was also a little bit of eye fucking going on,” Gabe says, and Stephen chokes on his wine.
“Sorry,” Gabe says, as Stephen sputters.
“I got it up my nose, Gabriel,” Stephen says.
“Sorry,” Gabe says, but he sounds a little less repentant this time.
“Just tell me about the eye fucking,” Stephen says, then, “Wait, no, you’re skipping around too much, you need to establish the details. Where was dinner? A restaurant? Was this a planned dinner or was it more spontaneous? How exactly was this framed to you, did Jared say you were meeting his husband or that he was meeting some friends, or what? The buddy’s name is Chaz?”
“Do you want to know what I’m wearing too?” Gabe asks. "Help you set the scene better?"
“Right now I’m more curious about what everyone else was," Stephen says. "But we can have phone sex after if you want."
Stephen smiles into the sip of wine he takes then, safe in the knowledge Gabe can’t surprise him into a laugh when he’s the one laughing instead.