zach & gabe // [ the party ]
Gabriel, who has been dragged along to parties and social gatherings since he was younger, used to loathe them. A large part of that was because he used to get very overwhelmed in large crowds and around unfamiliar people to the point that it developed into mild anxiety attacks. His parents, always advocates for mental health (especially in children and adolescence), made him go to therapy. Ironically, he had an anxiety attack the very first time he stepped foot into the office, so that was fun and not at all traumatizing. He hadn’t wanted to return the following session, but his parents encouraged him and he was so thankful that they did. it was during one of his early therapy sessions that he was shown that he could harness his creative abilities and use them as an outlet.
Now, though the anxiety has never completely vanished and thanks to his parents and his best friend, parties are just a common part of his life more of a nuisance now than an anxiety-provoking situation.
Having had wondered off for a bit, he finds Isabelle once again. She’s leaning against the railing of the stairs, looking over everyone. She’s no longer wearing her large black dress; instead, she’s in nothing but custom white and gold. Her hair falls in loose curls around her shoulders, crowned in a laurel leaf headpiece. It’s a weird, unsettling experience to see her just standing there with nobody around her, nobody paying special attention to her – which was exactly what her and Zach wanted apparently. Gabriel didn’t have enough practiced care to ask why they wanted to spend their big night apart.
“Are you looking for Zach?” he asks as he settles in next to her. He already knows the answer, but he wants her to acknowledge it before he gets to his real question. Which he, once again, already knows the answer to.
“Are you looking for Noah?”
“No.” And it’s the same word, but it’s laced in differences that few people would notice. For starters, she responded a fraction quicker than when he asked about Zach and her tone was ever so slightly changed. She also has a tell in which she stands a little bit straighter, almost indignantly, when she’s lying.
“Then who are you looking for?” he prompts indulgently, following her gaze out below them. He hadn’t recognized anyone tonight, though he didn’t think he’d recognize any of them with their masks off either.
“You don’t watch people,” he says with an incredulous laugh, “people watch you.” He watches her rolls her eyes, but there’s a smile that tugs at her now gold, shining lips. “Here,” he says, extending his hand towards her. He’d almost forgotten that some very drunk, very high, group he passed through had handed him one of their joints that they were passing around.
Isabelle blinks slowly at him, looking at his hand and then back up to him. Then, dismissively, “I don’t know where that’s been, whose lips it’s touched, or what’s in it.”
“Oh, come on,” he says with a smile, laughter bubbling out of him. “It’s not laced or anything, I’ve already had some and I’m perfectly fine.” As if to prove his point, his places it between his lips and takes a long drag from it, watching Isabelle narrow her eyes at him. He hands it to her, as if challenging her. She rolls her eyes exasperatedly, muttering under her breath about something before she takes a hit from it.
Isabelle falls into a coughing fit almost instantly, making a face of regret as she hands it back to him. It mixes with his own laughter as he takes it from her hand, causing people around them to watch them. As he recovers from his hysterics, Isabelle muttering under her breath about how much she hates him and is going to kill him, he hands it off to someone else walking by.
“I’m going to go find a room to trespass in” he finally says, but he doesn’t move just yet. Watches the way she nods and looks back into the crowd after saying something that was too low to hear over the sudden booming yelling and singing in reaction to a popular song. He uses his hand to turn her attention to her to him and leans in closely so that she can hear him. “He probably wants to see you as much as you want to see him,” he says honestly. “I’m just not sure if this is the right place for that.” He presses his lips to her forehead, squeezes her hand, and walks away, hoping she’ll take his advice, but knowing that she’s capable of her own decisions.
He knew the ins and outs of their relationship and how complicated it was. It was built on a friendship, which, in Isabelle’s own words, made it that much more special, but also made it that much harder when things went wrong. She told him one night that she wasn’t just losing the love that came from a relationship, but the love that came from a friendship.
Gabriel knew that Isabelle looked like the villain within her relationship with Noah. She was always the one to break it off, but always the one to welcome him back. He didn’t think anyone understood how much she loved Noah, how hard it was for her every time she ended things. They were always focused on Noah and that was fine, but it also meant they never saw how devastated she was every single time. They never saw her with mascara smudged around her eyes, almost hyperventilating as she tried to breathe through the tears. They never had to console her for sometimes seemingly never-ending weeks, because it was only with Gabriel when she allowed herself to fall apart. They didn’t know that, the first time they broke up, Isabelle almost dropped out of school to travel the world. That she had begged Gabe to come with her, that she could pay for everything, that she couldn’t be there anymore because it was too hard.
They didn’t realize that every time she took Noah back it wasn’t because she was playing with his feelings. It was because she wanted to be with him, because she was in love with him. It was just that as much as she wanted it to work, she knew it never would—they wanted different things. He never asked, but he thinks Zach gave her an opportunity to finalize their relationship in a way she never had before. That cutting it off with a practiced ruthlessness made it easier.
Gabriel’s been aimlessly wandering along one of the longer halls, hands trailing over doorknobs and occasionally trying to open them. Two of them were locked—which he thought was smart—and a few others were opened. Some were messy, a few were occupied. He just wanted somewhere where he could just wait out the party for a while, be by himself. It wasn’t until he opened a door that led to a surprisingly neat and well put together room that he decided to walk in and shut the door behind him.
It’s larger than the other rooms he had seen and it lingered with a scent that was all too familiar to him. Gabe doesn’t have time to really look around because his eyes almost immediately lock on a sketch that’s hanging above the desk. He feels his heart stutter softly, eyebrows furrowing in confusion. He walks towards it as if magnetically drawn to it. It’s accompanied by similar line art composed of a pinky promise and an even bigger painting, a beautifully constructed piece of art that would have had his full attention and appreciation if not for his own staring back at him.
His hand reaches out towards it, fingers brushing over the bottom left corner where he scrawled his signature two years ago. Gabriel had participated in the college’s art exhibit every year since freshman year, always submitting an art piece or two just to get out of his comfort zone and begin showing off his work. He never stayed by his own, never introduced himself as the artist to anyone viewing them; rather, he was content to walk around and enjoy everyone else’s. He had never expected, especially not his sophomore year, for the director to find him in the midst of it all and tell him that someone was looking to buy his work. It wasn’t something he even realized was a thing that people did or that was allowed, but he agreed, declining information about the buyer. Gabriel look at it almost like a closed adoption—whoever bought it was the new owner, it belonged to them and he didn’t need to know who that was.
As his gaze drops down to the framed pictures situated on the desk, he wishes it would have stayed a secret.
Zachary Easton’s stupid, perfect smile looks back at him and he finally recognizes the scent as Isabelle’s perfume and he wonders somehow if he just walked into a nightmare. His brain tries to tell him that he could have bought the painting as a result of Isabelle’s insistence, but they weren’t even dating at the time and—
Gabe honestly doesn’t understand what he was supposed to do with this information. How he’s supposed to react to something so intimately his being hung up in the room of someone he despises and who also knows that his eyes are blue.
He thinks about leaving, because he’s feeling a bit overwhelmed, but his curiosity causes him to stay. He hates to admit it to even himself, but he doesn’t exactly know a whole lot about Zach except what Isabelle’s supplied him with and that he’s the son of a politician and by definition the exact kind of person Gabe didn’t want anything to do with. He’s spent his entire life trying to get away from that aspect of his family and the people who faked their way through conversations.
He walks over to the mirror, examines the pictures that decorate it. He doesn’t recognize some of the guys in the pictures, but he recognizes Christian and Isabelle, some of them from tonight, and those are the ones that cause him to smile. A betrayal that he sees in his reflection before moving to the bookcase where his focus catches on Grimm’s Complete Fairy Tales. The addition was something else that doesn’t make sense in the way that historical and Shakespeare books that took home in his bookcase did.
Pulling the book out from the shelf, he sits down on the arm chair settled against the foot of the bed and starts skimming. Gabriel hopes it will not only pass the time, but distract him from all of the thoughts and confusion swirling around in his head.
