asoncalledgabriel | (no subject)

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Gabriel doesn't immediately remember where he is when he wakes up. He lays there for a moment, trying to push down the wave of panic that comes when he does remember. He closes his eyes again and tries, desperately, to focus on Anthony's steady, quiet breathing next to him. It's no use, though. He's awake now.

Carefully, quietly, he eases out of bed, and he does his best to ignore the unwelcome rush of shame when he realizes he can feel dried come on his thigh. Christ, he should have made some effort to clean up last night. In the dim morning light, he manages to find some of his clothes: his boxer briefs and t-shirt should suffice for now. He doesn't plan to just disappear before Anthony's awake, but neither can he bring himself to leave the bedroom in a complete state of undress. He just needs to clean up and get his head straight.

He glances back at the bed. Anthony Blunt looks very different still asleep in bed than he does when he's out in the world. Gabriel holds that vision in his head as he slips out of the bedroom and takes a moment to orient himself.

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Guy was one of those people who tended not to distinguish between talk and politics. But that was in England, where politics mattered, where everything he believed in mattered, where bloody anything mattered. Here, he was just talking to a recently fucked boy, who was, quite frankly, insulting his friends.

Anthony appeared, as he always appeared, dressed impeccably and calm. “I didn’t bring him here,” he commented to his friend’s mild accusation.

He couldn’t see any bruising, since Gabriel had had the decency to at least wear a shirt, but if he had seen it, he would have grinned knowingly to Anthony and made some manner of remark to embarrass Gabriel. It wouldn’t be the first suspicious bruising spotted on the body of a young man after spending the night with Anthony Blunt.

Anthony settles a Look on Guy—what did you do?—but Gabriel doesn’t look very traumatized. In fact, he looks quite at home, despite Guy’s sour expression. That’s...promising.

The corner of Anthony’s mouth curls up just slightly as his gaze settles on Gabriel. “Thank you,” he says, and then he goes to get the coffee from the kitchen.

Gabriel sets his coffee down and retreats back into Anthony's bedroom long enough to get back into his jeans and sweater; being a bit more dressed bolsters him. He returns to his mug and finds a place to sit that isn't Guy's sofa so he can enjoy the rest of his coffee.

He watches Anthony as he comes back into the room, and he feels a little ridiculous for it. He is handsome, all put together like that. But he remembers vividly how Anthony looks all undone, too. A smile ticks the corner of his mouth.

"I'm not making you breakfast."

Guy decidedly didn't smile at that comment, but immersed himself in the book to avoid a grin from appearing on his face. Admittedly, that was a good line. He could concede to that, albeit while pretending to read.

When Anthony comes back with his coffee, Gabriel is decidedly more dressed (which is a pity) but no less disheveled (which isn’t). He can feel Guy smirking from behind his book, and that makes him roll his eyes. “I wouldn’t dare ask.”

He lifts an eyebrow at Guy, who was presumably the one who had expected coffee. "That would be rude."

"Do either of you cook?" Gabriel lifts his eyebrows, wondering.

He didn't exactly do any intense investigation in the kitchen beyond making coffee. He's learned his way around the kitchen since getting here, and he'd learned a bit at home but it was always Caroline that his mother pulled into the kitchen to help her.

Not just expected; Guy had gotten coffee. That was partly what made the comment so humorous.

The cooking question was silly, but it was a lot more common here in Darrow than it had been in England. The question, that is, not the cooking. Because neither Englishmen cooked. Ellie cooked sometimes, when he was around, and they went out to dinner as much as they could afford. It wasn't something that was on Guy's mind very often. He could survive on pizza and beans just as easily as he could on Michelin star dinners.

"Do you?" He challenged.

Anthony thinks that Gabriel can probably guess the answer to his question from Guy’s response.

He leans against the side of the armchair where Gabriel is sitting and sips his coffee. “I wouldn’t recommend answering in the affirmative,” he warns the boy, “or he may ask you to fry up some eggs after all.”

He looks between them and just shakes his head, smiling. He lolls his head back to look at Anthony. "Is that an aristocrat thing or just an English thing?"

Gabriel cannot honestly imagine Fiona or Mrs. McFarland in a kitchen. He takes a sip of his coffee; he is hungry. He could disappear, fend for himself, but--

"Is the kitchen even stocked?"

Guy cast a glance over at Anthony accusingly. 'Is this really the sort of boy you want to be bringing home?', it wordlessly said.

Then he looked back to Gabriel. He didn't answer the stupid question (of course the kitchen was stocked; they did eat). "If you are making breakfast, be a dear. I'll have mine scrambled," Guy said, very deliberately, almost as if reading from a theatre script.

Edited 2018-10-23 20:21 (UTC)

With an amused twist of his lips, he considers the question, his expression softening as he looks at Gabriel. “Public school thing. Probably,” he decides.

Anthony lifts a brow right back at Guy. ‘And exactly how useful is your American Marine?’ The request makes him snort. “Don’t listen to him,” he tells Gabriel, just in case he needs the assurance that it’s perfectly all right--nay, encourage--to ignore Guy Burgess when he’s being an arse.

"Are you sure I won't spit in them?" he says to Guy as he gets to his feet. Ignoring people that gave him shit had gotten him nowhere before. "Hard to tell when they're scrambled."

Gabriel finishes his coffee. At least there's more of that in the kitchen. He looks at Anthony and ignores the silly flutter in him. Christ, he feels ridiculous.

"Do you want anything?"

Ellie didn't complain and just made eggs. And he made eggs for Anthony as well, so Mr. Blunt really had no business complaining.

"Are you sure I would care if you do?" Guy countered easily, before going back to his reading.

Edited 2018-10-23 20:50 (UTC)

Anthony casts a despairing look ceilingward. Children, behave.

He shakes his head. “I’m fine, thank you.” Honestly, if Guy hadn’t been there, he would have taken Gabriel up on his offer. The truth is, he has gotten used to the idea over the years that someone he or Guy is sleeping with will make breakfast for them, more often than not.

But right now, he isn’t going to give Guy the satisfaction.

"I suspect you might be thrilled," he shoots back to Guy. "Bit of working class verve to get you through the day."

He lifts an eyebrow at Anthony's decline, dubious but not prepared to insist.

Doing a little fry up doesn't take long. He finds plates, silverware, and bread to toast for himself. Scrambled eggs for Guy; a fried egg on toast for him. It would get him through the next few hours, at least.

He reappears with plates balanced on one arm and a fresh mug of coffee in other hand. He sets that on the table first before setting a plate by Guy and then taking up the arm chair again.

"You might add a little protein then," Guy retorted. His hand clarified his meaning by making a jerking-off movement in the air.

He was infinitely pleased when Gabriel returned with scrambled eggs. He hadn't really expected them. He cast an amused grin to Anthony, who in all politeness was now breakfastless, while he, in all his taunting, was going to feast on eggs. "Thank you, dear." Might have been said to either of them. Thanks to the eggs, or thanks for procuring a house boy.

All right, fine, now Anthony feels like a little bit of an idiot. And he’s hungry. But he has no intention of admitting either of those things to Gabriel or Guy.

He goes to get a cigarette instead, pointedly ignoring Guy’s crassness. After all these years, his response is so automatic that he barely realizes he’s doing it: he looks at Guy for a moment, ticks an eyebrow up disapprovingly, and turns away to do something more important. When he comes back with his cigarette case, he offers it to Gabriel, but not to Guy.

Never let it be said that Anthony Blunt can’t be petty.

Gabriel looked between them and rolled his eyes.

"You're both ridiculous."

He offered his plate up to Anthony when he reappears. He doesn't know if either of them are the sort that shares food but he'll offer anyway. He isn't sure that Anthony's pride would let him get up and make more eggs while Guy is sitting there.

Regardless, he accepts the cigarette and tucks it behind his ear.

Edited 2018-10-24 23:45 (UTC)

Guy leaned over and took the plate of scrambled eggs to set it beside him on the sofa. It was a picture of pure amused satisfaction, as he took a first bite. Ridiculous? Of course. One had but to look at the sofa. Guy owned ridiculousness.

Anthony’s pride, meanwhile, would let him starve rather than give in and actually make eggs, which was probably why Guy wasn’t being offered a cigarette. That only amused Guy more.

“We’ve been called worse.” And Anthony can’t exactly argue with Gabriel. They are ridiculous. It’s Guy’s fault, of course.

He isn’t going to refuse breakfast a second time, so he does take a bite, then passes the plate back to Gabriel.

“Thank you.”

Gabriel looks more or less satisfied when Anthony eats something. "I've no trouble imagining that you have."

Especially not with Guy looking so smug and so very pleased with himself as he eats his eggs. Gabriel just shakes his head and tries to hide a smile of his own.

He does his best to split the toast and egg between them - it's not quite as easy as a plate of eggs to share, but he makes a go of it.

Ridiculous was two men sharing a plate of eggs because pride and stubbornness forbade them to go to the kitchen and fix up a third plate.

Guy rolled his eyes and continued reading.

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