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When Gilbert shows up at your house at 3 am, drunk, insisting on going shopping with his long, cold fingers tugging purposefully at your arm, you do the normal thing and drop everything to humor him.
You know there’ll be few shops open, even fewer that’ll cater to Gilbert’s eccentric tastes, but his shoes march on the icey streets anyways, two considerably less steady ones his side. Finding a grip on the snow is almost impossible, less so with Gilbert practically lying on him. Its almost like walking backward, like a moonwalk, and christ Gilbert your hands are freezing, stop touching my face.
At this time of night, the buildings seem abandoned. Huddled, prosaic things that whisper conspiratorially, the lamplight a bit too yellow. Blackened windows and really who thought this was a good idea. Gilbert just laughs and readjusts your scarf and pokes at your nose once again as you swat at him like a fly.
He tells you with a grin that he’s better these days, that he’s actually bought a vintage theatre a few blocks down from here (its actually 30 blocks, you will find out later, with your internet sleuthing). A decript little chalet whose mass is at least 30% termite but Gilbert insists its an investment that’ll pan out, really, this totally won’t be like the bakery I tried to start 6 months ago.
You rack your brain for a mention of said bakery and can find none. Misplaced memory, maybe. (This isn’t true, now more than ever you file away your increasingly fewer moments with Gilbert in your brain with a devotion that you’re not ready to name.)
It used to be a real art hub in its prime he tells you, walking backward, and your hand grabs his arm to prevent him from tripping over an innocuous fire hydrant as he talks about all the plays he intends on putting on. Nothing like broadway, he says, it’ll be real cinema , love and honor and fisticuffs, and god. Hamlet and Othello and Faust and anything by Miller, really. Maybe Elisabeth if he can find someone devastating enough to play Death, Phantom of the Opera.
Oedipus Rex.
The last one makes you start and Gil misreads (he’s always doing that, you think) it as a dismissing. Some of that greek shit is still good, he argues, hubris and pride being someone’s downfall. History loves repeating itself, humans do too, its the same old story dressed up different. It’s real, gorey shit is real. Fucking your mother and then gouging your eyes out, what’s real-er than that, Lutz?
He’s going to fix up the place himself. That’s when you know its a pipe dream.
“You and your six months of engineering school are going to reconstruct an entire theatre yourself,” you raise an eyebrow at him, a move he hates because he thinks it makes you look smug. (older, more competent, judgy, are better words.)
Gil huffs at you, ignores your offer to help. You can’t tell if his feelings are hurt or if he’s trying to get a reaction. Probably the latter. Its almost always the latter.
Your hand is on his shoulder for a fleeting moment, you’re not going to apologize obviously but neither of you have ever been big on words. For the longest time, touches have been enough. Gilbert shrugs you off angrily but five minutes later his arms are hugging yours as he tells you eagerly about his new pet snakes. Venomous and with the entire house at their disposal (you pale slightly), Gilbert didn’t have the heart to put them in a shitty glass terrarium, animals always deserve more than us humans give ‘em, West, remember that.
At the end, you stumble home bleary eyed with absolutely no shopping done but your stomach full of greasy pizza fries that definitely werent good for digestion. Gilbert had insisted on getting them and insisted on paying. You stumble in the dark up the stairs and then into your bedroom that you share now with your boyfriend of five years who takes up only 1/4th of the bed because he likes to sleep like a normal person, instead of Gilbert who liked to sleep spread eagle, one arm or leg flopped over your limbs always. Gilbert could never sleep without physical contact. You wonder if thats true now.
You wonder when you will see him next, whether it’ll be tomorrow like he promised or if it’ll be two weeks or if you’ll end up nearly accidentally hitting him with your car again after 6 months. Or purposefully hitting him with your car after a year. Two. Maybe Five.
You consider, briefly, the fragile little ball of Gilbert’s shoulder bone that you had maybe gripped too tightly. How human it had seemed, how porrus and very much made of calcium and cells instead of cool stone.
How he had tried not to flinch.
These thoughts have been sneaking up on you recently, a cold hand squeezing your heart dry of worry. That’s what you like to call it, at least. (There’s a morbid explanation you know, maybe something elderitchy and wordless, a story that’s never been written about how mountains devour other mountains and erased words on maps.) ((Even more lurid are your dreams, which are not so easily explained by the supernatural, and are accompanied by more blood and naked skin then you’d like to admit with that niggling thought that is about you and not about Gil’s non-de-facto state.))
You decide to call Animal Petrol on Gilbert tomorrow. He’d be sad, yes, but less sad than he would be when his snakes actually killed someone because he always thought he was capable of things that he wasn’t. Also, you really don’t want to deal with another Gilbert inspired legal case this close to voting season.
With that, you slip your phone out of your denim pocket (you were too lazy to put pajamas back on) and fiddle with the liquid crystal display as blue light flashes into your eyes and all sleepiness evaporates. Science was fun like that, eyes and their roads and cones and brain-linked-sensitivities.
You’d drink at least three coffees to get through tomorrow.
It takes longer than it should for you to pull up Google Street View (curse your stupidly big fingers) but your eyes focus on that indifferent metropolitan apartment. The one with the blue star-spangled curtains that’re just barely visible through the grainy footage. Bezos or whoever it was that owned Google should really up the adage on these things, those billions should go somewhere.
Some taunt metallic spring in your chest compresses at the sight of the window sliding open, a blurry face and an even blurrier lit cigarette. The spark is a singular reddish dot at the in of Gil’s hand, like he’s holding flame. You don’t really need to see to see , though. You know the asymmetrical cut of his silvery bangs and the circles under his eyes. The barely visible cut on his left cheek and that look he gets when he is quietly pensive.
You know that fifty paces to his left is an old lady he looses poker to every Saturday evening and that fifty paces to his right is a 35 year old, divorced, professor of clinical psychology at the local uni that Gil fucks twice a month. (You’re not jealous, you think, because jealousy is reserved for things you have rights over, things you own. Gilbert, despite everything you’ve been through, has never been yours. You’ve always known that. Whether he was naked and panting in your arms or half way across the country, he’s never been yours.)
You press the Power Off button and slide your phone tersely to your nightstand table. Gilbert does not know you do this, doesn’t even know that you have his address. It’s funny, you think, because he’d be pissed if you knew, despite all his previous assurances that they’d share a home forever. That he’d never be more than a few rooms away unless there was some sort of political crap to deal with and even then it’d be a month at worst.
Maybe you feel a little jilted. Only sometimes. Enough that you fantasize about nailing Gilbert physically down to a chair when slightly drunk. He’s been through worse, you think, what’s a rusty screw and a hammer claw going to do?
Violence has always been an inherent part of your relationship.
Your love for Feliciano is different, it’s the sort of thing that people envy and its more than enough for you. It’s a warm blanket and matching sweaters on christmas, its kiss goodbyes and familiar smells in the kitchen. Something that, you admit, is mostly rooted in companionship and timing. (You’ve never lived alone before, either, and there is something absurdly cruel about an empty house. Something you’re afraid will leak into you if you let it.)
It’s good enough and more than you deserve.
Your love for Gilbert is wrongness incarnate. It mostly manifests in midnights and self-loathing. Its something entrenched in you, something you were born with. For all your life you’ve been hungry for his sea salt, pale skin. It is a cancer that eats you when you let it, turning your cells against you one be one if you let it.
Mostly, you don’t let it.
The next day you see Gilbert is a Wednesday, which is three days from when you saw him last.
He brandishes a Betty Crocker Pure Vanilla cake mix at you and you’re audibly scandalized.
“We are not making a cake from a box,” you hiss at him, angry that he even thought you’d lower yourself to this. You point to the yellow ingredient list on the side of the box, “carcinogens. All of them. The taste of cheap artificial vanilla sponge isn’t worth the price of stomach cancer.”
Gilbert gives you a look. He tilts his head.
You glower at him.
Ten minutes later you are poutily whisking melted butter into the batter as Gilbert does absolutely none of the work and fiddles with the radio and “taste tests” when you’re not looking.
You don’t know why he bothers. The white splotch on his cheek is right there.
With a sigh you grab the paper towel to dab at his face. Something about the moment catches you off guard, and Gilbert looks almost as if he’s frightened by the idea of tenderness. The paper towel falls away and your rough fingers are barely gliding against his now clear cheek.
You haven’t been this close in years. Maybe a decade. Such poignant skin on skin.
Gilbert takes your fingers in his mouth. Looks you in the eye as he does.
“Gilbert,” you say, your voice hoarse. You’re not sure if it’s a plea or a warning.
Very bad things happen when you two cross boundaries.
Time stops as you feel his tongue, warm and alive and familiar against your two digits. You’re not sure if this is sexual. You’re not sure what this is at all, in fact, except that you want more of it and that without realizing, you’ve stepped closer. Trapping Gil against the marble island.
But then the front door opens and you practically throw yourself to the other end of the kitchen. You whisk like a hurricane is powering your hands, looking no where but the swirls of flour and vanilla extract and baking powder.
You don’t need a mirror to tell that your face is bright red.
You don’t turn to look at the imploring look on Gilbert’s face, as if rejected. As if it’s been You that’s been putting this damnable distance between you. You don’t. You refuse to. The liquid, edible whirlpool has your full attention as Feli pops his head in the doorway, a slightly confused smile on his face.
“Oh hello, Gilbert! I didn’t know you were visiting!”
“He doesn’t like to warn people before he drops in,” you say gruffly.
Gilbert looks at you, pointedly upset. Still, you do not look back.
“Oh, okay… well it was nice to see you, Gilbert!”
The front door closes before Feli is even half way up the stairs and you’re left with an empty kitchen and a cake that you no longer have the stomach to digest.
You look at the whirlpool. Then you close your eyes.
This time it Gilbert is nice enough to send you a warning text before barging in. You can only enjoy the curtesy for a brief 3 and a half minutes because Gilbert barrels through and drags you to a BMW that he certainly couldn’t afford and when you narrow your eyes at him and ask, he responds loftily that nothing is technically a crime until you get caught and you remind him that that’s not how anything works, not via a grammatical loop hole, nor constitutional mandate. Not even Rouseau agrees with him here.
On principal, you don’t like museums. They’re shambling constructs that serve as an ode to times you’d much rather put to rest. You don’t enjoy ancient history, nor do you understand art. The curtains are just a cornflower blue to you, there’s not sadness or melancholy or motherhood. You are as Gil molded you; apathetic and maybe slightly derisive.
You also fucking hate tourists.
Gilbert makes things slightly more bearable with his narratives though. Half of them aren’t true, you think, and you’re not entirely sure which. But the story about Schiele breaking down to Gilbert about the trauma of his pet cat dying of salmonella when he was 7 after a mediocore round of anal sex before proceeding to do a line of hard cocaine is… amusing.
The walk back is what makes the tendons and muscles in you finally loosen up, your tie slightly undone and your hair slightly messy from the cold wind.
You’re in the touristy section of Berlin now, romantic balconies and clean, blue cobble stone streets. The moonlight shines down lacily on the laquered street lamps, the roads mostly empty.
You dislike Berlin for the same reason you dislike museums; it’s very much a testament of a past you’d rather forget. Parts of it at least, old Berlin meshes with new Berlin like a patchwork quilt. Beaurcratic muddles. A lot of the city officials argue that dilipidated, dysfunctional buildings serve as monuments. Broken down churches, like corpses waiting in open air to rot.
Gilbert loves Berlin. He loves the business of it all, the colourful shop fronts and subculture ridden streets. The Soviet Era buildings on the east side that make Ludwigs skin crawl with the feeling of dystopia. He likes motorcycles and the fact that there’ll still be something open after 12, always.
Mostly he likes that a lot of it hasn’t changed. Gilbert has always been a man ramshackled by his own past. Berlin mirrors him in this way.
Regardless, Ludwig prefers Bonn.
When you were younger, Roderich once told you that you had a bad propensity for wanting to fix things. This has lead to a bad taste in cars.
And men.
Looking at Gilbert now, hands practically flailing with how he’s pointing to things even though you’ve been on this road a hundred times and will a hundred times hence forth.
“See that alley- this one! Are you listening to me, Lutz?” He grabs your arm impatiently, dragging you over to it.
You squint into the dimly lit corridor with a sigh, “why did you bring me here.”
“Well I got mugged in it once!”
“Fascinating.”
“‘Course it wasn’t like that- do you really think I’d just get mugged Lutz- I let him mug me because when I fought him off- very very skilfully, mind you, like one of those James Bond movies-“
“I’m fairly sure James Bond movies don’t feature muggings. Or hand to hand combat. But continue.”
“- don’t interrupt me you little shit- but then I was absolutely railing him to the ground-“
Ludwig choked, his coughing fit forcing Gil to pause in concern. “Please,” he begged weakly, “please never use railing again in that context. Or ever. In any context. Please. For the sake of humanity.”
“Whatever you say, Lutz- but anyways! A picture fell out of his pocket- and it was of this little boy-! and like this guy. Clearly not a dad, y’know? Too scrawny, not enough intelligence”
“I had no idea there was a minimum abi score one had to achieve before they were legally allowed to insert their p-“
“NO SEX JOKES. Dear lord, West, those Italians are really beginning to influence you.”
“It’s one Italian, by the way. Singular. The other Italian maintains his distance and I’m very grateful for that. And it wasn’t a sex joke, just spiking holes in your otherwise iron clad logic.”
“Not another word from you. So I asked ‘im who this kid was, y’know? Because I’m curious and because I’ve got him up against the floor he’s kinda in no position to lie to me so like he gives me this whole story about how his parents had been hauled away by the Stassi and how no one would employ him and he had a baby brother at home that was absolutely starving. And I was like fuck man , because his story was sad, you know? And so I let him go. And gave him my wallet.”
You look at him, unimpressed, “you gave the mugger your wallet.”
“His brother was starving, what was I supposed to do-?”
“Maybe not fall for every sob story that falls into your lap,” you mumble, walking off into the less shady part of the street and leaving Gil behind in the darkened corner. There’s weird, unfounded anger at Gilbert for being stupid, naïve. When he could’ve very well starved to death on his own and then where would Ludwig be?
It takes a few minutes before Ludwig is calm enough to turn back.
Gilbert stands a lone figure, yellow streetlight obscuring half his face and his shadow shortened to a small circle under him. Ludwig feels his angle unfurl more.
“What is it.” You say, instead of what’s wrong like you should.
Gilbert shrugs despondently, as if you’ve missed some grave message. He’s pouting.
“Gilbert.”
“I was like that kid, okay?!” The tenor of his voice catches you off guard, makes your eyes widen, “I was... I was lost and confused and I thought I was just a kid too but suddenly you were there and you were so much smaller than me and you needed me to be not those things and maybe you weren’t starving exactly but I did some pretty- pretty shitty things to keep you alive! And maybe it would’ve been easier if someone had tossed me a wallet but no one can, obviously, because it’s eat or be eaten and everyone you’ve ever been close to, everyone you love would trample you if they had a chance because love doesn’t matter here and-“
“I’d toss you a wallet,” you interrupt quietly, your thumb wiping away a stray tear that Gil would’ve blinked away in embarrassment if you hadn’t been so quick. “I’d toss you everything if you needed it. You know that, don’t you?”
Gilbert takes you home for the first time.
“Does this mean you’re going to move soon?” You joke, pretending you haven’t known the address for years.
Gilbert shoots you a look that’s both stressed and offended but doesn’t say anything.
You spy waist pants that clearly couldn’t be Gils laying like a crumpled tissue in the corner. Other than that, there’s little trace of anyone else. It’s all vintage-y furniture that you memorise. Kitschy, mostly. A lot of colorful figurines on every coffee table, lots of rugs, and dark wood. A glass case containing two swords, one significantly more chipped than the other, tucked into a dusty corner.
The walls make you pause though. Besides one or two paintings (gifts from other, older humans. Centuries gone by) and old grandfather clock with a bird caricature, all the frames are pictures of you. Old, yellowed ones from when you were younger. Rosy cheeked and big blue eyes, not yet eroded from life.
Multiple of you two together; that one time where Gilbert took you to the beach in the middle of Autumn because it was the only time his skin wouldn’t burn to a crisp, Disneyland in France where you mostly sat sardonically on a bench and watched as Gilbert tried and failed for 45 minutes to win you a plush that you didn’t really care about. Sansocci, fifteen minutes before you were both kicked out of the castle for vandalizing a William the ii portrait.
Gil doesn’t really understand why you’re staring. What else would he have kept on his walls.
With a lurch, you realize you may not know Gilbert as well as you thought you did.
Gilbert fusses about bedsheets when you come in, scrambling to straighten out the wrinkles. It’s not usually like this, he says as he stumbles with a pillowcase, I woke up in the middle of the night- and I just. I needed to see you and I didn’t think I’d bring you here-
You shut him up with a kiss. Mouth on mouth. It’s been a while but tastes and feels exactly he always has. Salt of the earth. And you fall forward.
From Feli, you learnt monogamy has never been apart of the equation. Not between nations- everyone fucks and fights and bleeds on everyone else. Sometimes there are human indulgences.
“We’re so vast ,” he’d told you dreamily, “how could one person ever think to contain us?”
For you, at least, there is one. But yours is not that type of relationship.
You’ve never said I love you. Not once.
But as your fingers skim his scarred body, you’re not sure what else it could be. Devotion, maybe. A finely tuned web of resentment and dependency, also.
Just like you’d expected, his bones feel weak under your fingers. Like clay. Sand. Amorphous solids, fitting the definition of their state only on a myopic level.
He gasps under you.
The bedsheets are seafoam green.
He’s just about to disappear into the waves, his existence flickering out like an Anderson story.
Your hands clamp down on his wrist like a handcuff. An anchor to this world. If Gilbert dies today, you would be the only one left to love him. There’s a possessiveness in that. To let go of his memory would be a type of murder.
You had so much love for him, all of it complicated and terrible and stuff poets were terrified of- if he died, where would you put it?
“You’re not that kid,” you tell him, your hand lingering on his neck. You kiss him instead. (Gilbert has always loved kissing, made it an erotic tangibility that Feliciano never had), “and I’m not that kid’s brother.”
“I know,” he whispers, taking in your largeness, your magnitude. You could eclipse him entirely if you wanted to, “I know.”
You wonder if it’s better like like this, tilt his face up to ask but you can’t because you know what his answer is and he kisses you again before you can.
“Lube-?” You grunt, yanking off gils shirt.
“Don’t have any,” Gilbert licks his lips, giving you a grin, and you can feel his long, elegant fingers on your abdomen and going down, making you shudder as he does something that makes you see stars.
Afterwards, you lay there, sweaty, muscles tired. Sex with nations is always so different from humans. Sex with Gilbert on the other hand has always been something else entitely and Gilbert is fidgeting with the blanket like you’ve both done something terrible, something you can’t take back.
You’re more hurt than irritated, but your voice comes out annoyed anyway, “stop doing that.”
Gilbert stops fiddling with the comforter and scowls at you, his canines sharp and pointy and the memory of them is there on your skin and you shudder slightly.
“You know, words would be a more productive way of dealing with.. Whatever this is instead of brutally murdering me in your head a billion times over. Still, I’m no psychologist, so take this advice with a grain of salt.”
“I wasn’t-” Gilbert begins, but falls silent, eyes skyward.
So you give in, just slightly, choosing the least pathetic option. “Why do you avoid me?”
“I don’t!” Gilbert protests, “That’s not what it is-”
“I nearly bumped into you in a Nestos one time and you nearly ran an old lady over with your shopping kart to get away from me.”
“The aisles there are too damn small,” Gilbert complained, but theres a hint of a smile there, and you can work with that. You kick him with your foot gently, nudging him on.
“I’m giving you space.” He says after a moment of quietness, “I want.. I shouldn’t be invading all parts of your life. You deserve more than that, Lutz.”
Now it’s your turn to scowl.
“It’s a valid reason!” Gilbert defends, suddenly crossing his arms over his stupidly pale chest.
“I fucking hate you sometimes.” You lean back, still scowling, “You should be grateful. I wouldn’t have the patience or the energy or the will to psychoanalyze anyone else.”
“No one asked you to psychoanal- hEY-” Gilbert glares up at you from his place on the floor, where you kicked him off the bed, and you glare back.
You huff, “I don’t need space. Not from you.”
“Don’t you think that’s part of the damn problem?”
“No.”
“Well, then, you’re stupid.”
“Nothing you’ve said so far has made any sense,” you fume, “you and your god damn martyr complex is the reason we’ve been strangers for a decade-?”
“I’m scared, okay!” Gilbert suddenly bursts out, in a frantic tone of voice you haven’t heard in years. He throws a hand over his own face, “I’ve never been this dependant on anyone- that’s not how we’re supposed to work-! And while its good and fine for me to have to deal with that, it goes both fucking ways- It’s even worse for you, in fucking fact, because you don’t even remember a time before me, you’ve always had me, and that’s going to be your fucking downfall if you’re not careful, Ludwig, because I’m not going to be around forever!”
Gilbert’s fist hits the carpet automatically. You’re cold all over.
“During the GDR-”
“I was fine. It was hard, but I made through it fine.” Your voice is an ice shard.
“And then you became a frigid bastard as a flight response, damn it.”
“Maybe that’s just who I am,” you say coldly, “ a frigid bastard . Maybe I was born this way.” You don’t care about this though. The words not around forever have made you clamp up like a shell. “And I don’t know if you’re delusional, or just trying to imply something,” you tell him fiercely, “and I don’t fucking like either option. You’re not some porcelain cup, as you’re so fucking fond of reminding me, you’re not going to die anytime soon.”
“Ludwig-”
“I’m not going to hear any more of it. I don’t fucking care. You’re not going to di-”
“ Ludwig.” Gilbert says in that orderly voice, and you stop like second nature. “Your hand is bleeding.” And it is, seven little specks of red on the bed from where your nails dug into your own palm.
Bandages, antiseptic, and you both silently simmer with unspoken resentment. Both of you so fucking sure that the other is wrong, stupid, out of his mind.
Gilbert makes tea. You squint suspiciously down at the mug of brown liquid in front of you. There a kick against your leg.
“Calm down,” comes his rough, amused voice, “I made you hot chocolate. I haven’t forgotten your unfounded hate for normal-people-drinks.”
“Oh fuck off, when my research paper comes out about how the population is constantly peer pressured into thinking they like tea or coffee, you’ll be sorry.” You mutter childishly, your eyes caught on the swirls of dark.
Gilbert laughs at that, his hand snakes across the brown mahogany and onto your hand. “Your fingers are freezing,” you complain as you interlace them.
“If I didn’t have you,” Gilbert says, around a mouthful of green tea to soften the saccharine-ness, “I’d have probably kicked the bucket a long time ago.”
“I don’t know about that, you’re pretty stubborn. I feel like you’d have lived anyways out of mere spite for the world.”
“Maybe,” Gil concedes, smiling at a point on the wall above Ludwig’s shoulder. “But isn’t that all of us? What do you live for, Lutz?”
You shrug, unable to properly answer. Unable to think about it, really. Above all, you’ve always been a practical man. You like your dogs, your house, you like the way good chocolate melts on your tongue, the satisfaction of smelling muffins you baked come to life in the oven through a myriad of chemical reactions and the thrum of an engine without knocking. You like books, but only the boring ones about economy and statistics and non fiction. You like stories about violent revenge, too, but you’d rather not ponder about what that means.
You like your work enough, you enjoy tractor simulator, you like fixing things like clocks and cars, the unvariablity of problems, the answers tucked neatly away in manuals that you read religiously. You like Feli, but you’re not sure if you’d live for him.
You love Gilbert, but that’s difficult too, because you don’t know what part of it is your own, what part of it is his, what part of it is the result of a cataclysmic joke, the problem of sharing one heart.
His red eyes are trained on yours, his smile slightly strained now as if he’s been reading your mind this entire time. Maybe he has been. Isn’t there some folklore about that, human twins in unison, though you’re neither human nor twins.
“I wonder if the others are like us,” you mutter, and you can feel Gil spring for that immediate answer. No. How could anyone ever be like us? He’s about to say, but although Gilbert is impossibly older and has darkness you couldn’t comprehend, you know his history is a long soliloquy comprising of loneliness. That he doesn’t really know.
“I wonder if others get jealous,” you continue, and then you feel a little swivel of questions: where is Feli right now? Is he worried about you? Should you be worried about him? But it’s a static amongst other things. Nothing like the monster of anxiety that comes with Gil. “The lack of monogamy must be hard.”
Gil shrugs flippantly, his eyes glazing over as they gaze into the watermelon pink of the sunrise from the window. “I wouldn’t know.” It’s 5 am. Ludwig has work tomorrow- today, really, now. For once, he doesn’t give a damn.
You raise an eyebrow at the sweat pants, the ones far too large for Gil’s skinny hips, in the corner of the room, still not folded away, still a reminder of the side of Gil you’re not privy to. The side that blends seamlessly amongst humans. Gil looks at where you are.
Laughter booms from Gil’s chest and catches Lud off guard, his voice mused and scratchy, like a wooly sweater, “I’ll break up with him.” He says it so easily, leaning into the wood of the chair. Too easily.
“I never asked-”
“I’ll break up with him. We’re hardly together anyways. I only see him twice a month, generally,” Something about Gil has been put at ease, “You still get that weird vein twitch on the corner of your temple when you get jealous, you know.”
“I’m not jealous,” you say stoutly, glaring into your hot chocolate, “You’re so vexing sometimes.”
You could leave right now, if you wanted. There’s a chill in the apartment, it isn't really insulated properly, and if Gil hasn’t moved out by the end of the week, you’ll end up returning with overtly thick curtains. The velvety kind, triple-layered. Maybe a carpet or two. The floor is fucking freezing too. Gil’s never been practical about decorating. You can still remember the 5 tier cat house he’d built even when he didn’t really have a stove. That was just how Gil was.
“Sure, Lutz,” he’s smiling that ghost smile again, pale, thin lips, haunted.
You sigh and sip your coffee. You don’t leave.
The building is a wreck, reminiscent, maybe, of a bird's nest, hamfisted bricks and concrete slabbed together with some heavy-duty glue. Was that a crumbling gargoyle in one corner? It certainly was… eccentric, you’ll admit, with a sigh, and with a warning sign in your head that blared HEALTH CODE VIOLATION, BUILDING CODE VIOLATIONS, EVERY CODE VIOLATIONS.
You shove the neurocism down. For Gil’s sake.
With a wince, you enter the house of cards- theatre of cards, eyeing every bit of splintered wood. Gil had been right. This place had certainly been… well used. It was large. Matted, dust-stained depictions of those chubby cupids in the corners. You frown, thinking, shouldn’t this stuff be in a museum? How the fuck had Gil gotten a hold of the place?
Every step causes a creak, and it feels like the building is breathing in tandem with your steps.
Gil is near the stage, ripping out floor boards with no clear plan, whistling horrendously along to some old Paul Anka song from a warm, worn radio in the corner.
“You came,” he stops suddenly, holding his hands awkwardly at his sides, just a moment, before grabbing yours and yanking you foreword gleefully, “Look at it, Lutz-! Don’t you think it’s grand-?”
“A grand accident waiting to happen,” you muter, but squeeze his hand back anyways. You haven’t seen that manic, heedlessly happy look on Gil’s face in a long time. You’ll do anything to keep it there, “I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a whole wall made of asbestos somewhere.”
“Thats part of the charm of the place,” Gilbert tells you cheerfully, directing you to the tool box, “Whats the point of something that doesn’t need to be fixed up a little? That isn’t a little broken? This place has secrets, history- it has character!”
“Sure. Character. I hope you don’t think this’ll be functional soon- it’ll take at least 6 months to get this to a base level, and thats before we hire actors and- are you even listening Gilbert-?”
“Not in the slightest,” he informs you, even more cheerful, dragging you by the arm, practically jumping, “C’mon, I gotta show you the back- there was a guy I knew, Fernendez- Spanish man, a good man- a hundred years ago or sumthn’- maybe more! Well, he stood right here when he proposed to his sweetheart- kinda fucked, isn’t it? To propose right in front of everybody, like how could you even think about saying no without making it hella awkward? But well the girl. Elizabeth was her name, I think. OR Victoria, something snooty and British, and well, she-”
You sigh loudly, glancing at the cobwebs in the corner, the roof just a few feathers from caving and then at Gil, and you think of how it must’ve been been a hundred years ago, like Gil said. Your mind wipes off the layers of grime, undoes all the cracks, straightens all the headings and all the seats are once again red and new, and the theatre is bustling with people in 1900s splendor, maybe 1800s, who cares.
You can see the stories Gil spills forward, humans he’d known, loved, hated.
And as Gil speaks, you can almost see it, you can see the main actress, opera-born and prim for this, you can see the peasant boys, milling about as stage hands, the younger ones excited, the older ones bored by the gratuitous luxury of those wealthier than them. He sees the stories Gil spins for him, all these humans that Gil had held so tenderly in the palm of his hand.
The piano man shot as a result of a deadly love triangle.
The pale girl in the pale white dress, fainting during her first performance, but stunning everyone with her singing that she becomes a revolutionary and twenty years later she will kill herself in the dressing room for insatisfaction.
There are happier stories, too, lovers in the backroom, the unimportant people, falling in love, having families, moving on.
And then there's Gil, swimming in and out through the decades, always shocked by the changes, but unable to keep from coming back. There was something about the wood that made the building, he explains, something, something buried under the supports. This place is like a village in one place, Lutz, there are so many stories, so many.
It’s still a fraction of Gil’s life, and not even that, a blip, a star in a sky of billions of stars, one of those tiny insignificant ones too.
But it’s still a little more of the universe thats known to you know. Another part of Gilbert's cosmos that isn’t entirely stranger to you, and as you look at him, fully animated, recreating entire moments in history with his words and hands, breath stumbling over and over. It’s enough.
For now, it’s enough, and the cobwebs, and the college professor with the sweatpants that were too big, and the lack of insulation and the fact that Gil hasn’t given you a straight answer yet, even now and all the fights to come. Even Feli. All of that can wait.