Chapter 14 #2
Gabriel looked like he wanted to put his head in a blender, but he nodded tersely, lips pressed together tightly. Blake knew he was loath to let his team separate, especially without any means of contact. But the mission was first.
“I’ll go, too,” Scott said, sitting up slowly. His muscles had stiffened, and his face was pale. His brain had taken a hard knock.
“Sit down,” Blake snapped.
Scott snarled. “I’m going.”
“Oh? Are you? Stand up then.”
Eyes bright with malice, Scott buried his fingers into the arm of the couch and tried to push himself up. Arms wobbling, he got about halfway before his face went slack and he fell back, eyes blinking against impending unconsciousness.
Blake resisted rolling his eyes. “That was just sad.”
Scott managed to bare his teeth before falling back into the cushions.
“I’ll go,” he offered, ignoring Tommy’s squeak of protest. “I know the city. And you’ll need someone to drive so you can do the whole soldier thing.”
Tommy grabbed his shirt as he tried to stand, but Blake shook him off. “Stop,” he said, voice softening when he saw the look on his face. “You need to stay here and keep these morons alive, okay?”
It wasn’t a great argument, but Tommy nodded slowly, guilt swimming in his pretty brown eyes.
Blake moved away from the group and began cherry picking through his jump bag, trying to see what he should take and what he wanted to leave. The blood in his veins was buzzing, but he was grateful to have a plan. Something to do.
Gabriel crouched beside him. He inhaled to begin speaking, but Blake slingshot a latex glove at his face.
“I swear to god if you start some dramatic ass speech, I will stab you with my trauma shears.”
He shook his head faintly, but the look on Blake’s face kept him quiet.
“The mission, right?”
Inhaling deeply, Gabriel finally seemed to agree. “Tomorrow morning, then.”
The late night seemed to press down on Gabriel like a living thing.
The single birthday candle stuck to a plate beside him struggled to cut through the gloom.
He sighed, leaning his head back against the glossy wood paneling.
This close, he could just barely catch a whiff of tobacco.
He wondered how many generations of first responders these wooded walls had seen.
Maybe even as far back as when smoking was considered the norm.
Gabriel could just picture a bunch of tough, old-timey firefighters with thick mustaches and a cigarette poised between their fingers.
Resting his wrists on his bent knees, he fought to keep his eyes open.
Night watch was never easy, but usually he was watching for the enemy, listening for the crack of a stepped-on stick, a rustle of bush.
Maybe even the hushed murmur of an order caught on the wind. A human enemy he had a chance against.
This was…he didn’t want to say pointless, because he knew none of them would be able to sleep without someone keeping watch, but it was an exercise in futility. There was nothing he could do to fight off an alien attack. And if they attacked from their ships? Well. They’d be nothing but ash.
At least it would be quick.
That was a small mercy.
Stretching his legs out across the narrow hallway, he felt the pull in his muscles. He’d chosen the hallway for some privacy. Not necessarily for him, although he did appreciate the breathing room—but more for the others.
Scott and Victoria were probably too tired to care, and Judd and Phin didn’t mind; they were used to being watched over.
They found comfort in it. More than once he’d woken up to find Phin camped out on his couch.
Usually, he would wake up with some kind of excuse, like he’d been drinking nearby and didn’t want to drive home—Gabriel would always let it slide.
Phin didn’t want to talk about it, and Gabriel knew if he pushed, Phin would shut down and stop coming.
Then he wouldn’t be able to provide his friend even that small comfort from his nightmares.
No, it was more for Tommy and Blake’s sake.
Well, mostly Blake.
After everything that happened, it felt like years had gone by since he told Blake he was attracted to him.
The medic wasn’t acting any differently.
He didn't hurry his sponge bath or even get angry when he caught Gabriel watching him.
Which, objectively, was definitely creepy, but Gabriel was only human and Blake was…
A bright spot, something to look forward to. Like a rainbow at the end of a storm or a cold beer after a long mission. If he couldn’t have the beer, he could at least look at a hot guy.
Only Jesus was perfect.
So Gabriel thought maybe it would be best if he gave Blake some room. Give himself some room, because as much as he hated to admit it, Gabriel knew that anytime he was in a room with Blake, that’s where his gaze would be drawn.
Rubbing his tired eyes, he tried to steer his thoughts away from Blake to something a little more sobering. It was a well-worn track. He’d gone over and over all the information, and he hadn’t come up with any better plan than for Judd, Victoria, and Blake to go looking for the shield.
If they could get the shield down, then maybe they could communicate with the outside world. And, more importantly, the outside world could get in. They could launch a proper fight with some real heat—tanks, planes, bombs.
Taking down the shield was a non-negotiable, but he hated the idea of sending them out there without him. Gabriel wasn’t foolish enough to think he would make any real difference, but he didn’t like the idea of not knowing. Not being able to talk to them. To protect them.
He’d seen what the aliens were capable of. In the corners of his eye and in the things he had to step over. Gabriel thought he was used to seeing dead people, but this was on another level. This was home. And maybe it shouldn't make a difference, but it did.
The floor creaked, and he looked up, fingers tightening on the textured grip of his gun. Blake half-heartedly lifted his hands.
“Don’t shoot. I come in peace.”
Gabriel snorted and relaxed back against the wall as Blake padded down the hall toward him, quiet in his socked feet. He sat beside Gabriel, close enough for their knees to bump.
“Shouldn’t you be asleep?”
Blake’s lips quirked. “You sound like a broken record.”
He had him there; Gabriel had to give him that. “Can’t help it. I’ve always been like that.”
“Protective?” Blake asked, pulling his knees to his chest.
“I guess,” Gabriel said. “When I was a kid—maybe ten or so—a friend offered me candy cigarettes, and I was so offended. I slapped the package from his hand and lectured him on underage smoking.”
Blake’s teeth flashed white in the gloom, a hand sliding over his lips to muffle his laughter. “Are you serious?”
“I was not very popular.”
That had Blake laughing harder. His head thudded against the wall as he struggled to keep quiet.
Gabriel couldn’t remember seeing Blake laugh this hard.
His eyes squeezed so tight the skin around them wrinkled and his nose scrunched up, flaring a little.
The laugh itself was hoarse, a little strangled.
It shouldn’t have been as endearing as it was.
“You know, I can see it,” Blake said when he stopped laughing.
That made him pause. Gabriel didn't know how badly he needed to hear that. To hear that Blake saw him as more than just an alcoholic soldier. Or a gay man. That he saw Gabriel for something that wasn’t just the sum of his parts.
Swallowing back what he wanted to say, he gestured to Blake. “And what? You were some kind of hoodlum?”
Blake sobered a little. “No, nothing that exciting. I was more like…” he trailed off, looking at the ground between his boots.
“At first, I was that weird kid. Before I learned that people didn’t really want me to know things they didn’t tell me.
After middle school, I just became that quiet kid.
The one no one really remembers. Just a picture in a yearbook. ”
Gabriel had a few kids like that in his classes. He just assumed they had other friends or interests. “That must have been hard.”
“Not as hard as having a girl you were friends with start to ignore you because you told her she should stop stuffing her bra.”
“Hard to come back from that.”
Blake made a face. “That was a fun parent-teacher meeting.”
Gabriel hadn’t had many of those. He was a middle-of-the-road kind of student.
A few good friends, passing grades, didn’t really get into any trouble.
Not like his sister, who was a star student.
Class President, member of almost every academic club she could reasonably attend, 4.
0 GPA, she even volunteered to help after school.
A star so bright, Gabriel got lost in the shadows.
And it was hard not to in his family of overachievers. They loved him. They just had nothing in common.
“You never did tell me about your parents,” Gabriel finally said, turning to meet Blake’s green eyes. They looked darker in this light, more like the ocean than spring grass.
“To be fair, you didn’t tell me about yours,” Blake pointed out, crossing his arms to rest on his knees.
“Well, we don’t all have superpowers.”
“Ah, yes,” Blake drawled dryly. “The powers of noticing. Right up there with flight and super strength. Let me get my codpiece and cape.”
Privately, Gabriel thought Blake would look pretty good in tights.
“They were good parents,” Blake continued.
“My mom is a force. She bulldozes her way through everything, including my father. Which is fine. He was born with a spine made of jelly.” Blake’s lips twitched in an aborted laugh.
“But he…he’s so smart. Like, not in a college degree way, but in a way that he just knows a little bit about everything. He loves to learn.”
Gabriel thought back to when they were at the communications tower. “Trains, right?”