Work Text:
Ugh. Finals week. Mark never liked them. The difficult tests themselves, the anxious waiting for the scores to drop, and the general importance of his academic performance. It was especially stressful with him floating around different medical concentrations like he was.
He wanted to take a break from the slog of studying and finally visit more of the events around campus. It's been something he's been meaning to get around to, but never actually doing, even with the impressive student life here. He'd been a regular member of the book club, sure, and he attended a few events sporadically, but he was just too busy with study sessions to commit to anything else.
Which he honestly didn't mind much. Not flunking tests was very much worth it! And it was always a great feeling studying with a full stomach, after eating a big lunch with Gabriel. Mark might not’ve taken stock of everything around campus just yet, but he had basically been on a full tour of all the food it had to offer. He liked to eat, and he had a high metabolism to back him up. But he wasn't eating all to himself. If he bought a large pizza pie it would be for the whole study group with whatever toppings they wanted. Sometimes it felt like that was the only reason some classmates came to study with him and Gabriel, which Mark supposed was understandable. On days when it was just them, a pie got finished all the same. Gabriel would act like he wasn't hungry and still scarf down his slices like he hadn't eaten all day. That Gabe couldn't at least see the irony of a med student not taking proper care of himself baffled Mark, but that they were eating at all was important enough not to bruise his ego over it; so Mark would leave it alone.
Of the two of them, Mark was great at recall. He could tell you which part of the body did what and how with ease. He associated all the key terms to characters and plot points in all the media he's seen. Gabriel was better at note-taking during the lectures. He was a crazy fast writer. He had the doctor scrawl downpat already and an index of his own shorthand too. But sometimes he would have to ask Mark what he wrote.
Gabriel was like the nebulizer to his asthma, the symptom to his diagnosis. They were a needle and stethoscope, peas in a pod! Mark needed to pick a specialisation, he’d have better wordplay that way. Anyway, point was, they made a great team.
Sometimes, though, Mark wished he could see Gabriel outside the lens of medicine or academia. He wanted to spend enough hours of unfocused time doing whatever or just absolutely nothing together that he could call Gabriel his friend, not his friend-from-college. The saying went that you either had a friend for a reason, a season, or a lifetime, and Mark had enough circumstantial friends already.
It was rare that the two of them would go to an event together, but rarer that Gabe would be seen somewhere alone. Gabriel didn't seem to like big social functions, which was fair enough. But he also didn't like performances, movie screenings, field trips, anything. If Mark didn't ask for a plus one, Gabe wouldn't go.
Luckily for him, there was an event he was fairly certain Gabriel would enjoy. The student government sent out a push email announcing they would bring therapy dogs and cats on campus. Everybody liked pets.
He texted the RSVP. Gabe's response came fairly quickly.
“Therapy animals?”
“Yeah,” Mark tapped back,
“I'm stressed as fuck out here, and I'm gonna go pet a puppy about it. We're paying for it with our tuition money anyway, might as well get the most out of it. You coming with?”
“We have class before this thing ends.”
“So we'll just leave early”
“No promises,” Gabe replied, but he put the little thumbs up reaction thing on ‘we’ll leave early’, so. They were going.
—
That day, when Mark arrived at the entrance to the student center, Gabe was already waiting for him. “Well, well, well. Look who's early.” he greeted.
“You have never known me to be late to things.” Gabriel stated.
Mark waved it off, and just opened the door for them to enter.
Gabriel led the pair up the stairs to the event room to sign in. There was a line already. It didn't snake out of the room, but it was long enough to feel like you were missing out by just watching. Short fence dividers made big play areas where students were handed small kittens and caressing cats. By the desk there were lint rollers, wristbands, a bin of cat toys, and bottles and bottles of hand sanitizer.
“Where are the dogs?” Mark asked after finally signing the sheet.
“Next room over.” The greeter answered. “We want allergies to stay as much to a minimum as possible, but your college wanted to make sure everyone got an opportunity to spend time with the furry buddy they wanted. This is actually the ‘extra room’.”
“Oh, ok.” Mark said. He went to join Gabriel, who was already seated criss-cross in the play area's open space. There weren't many others in there with him, but they all had a pet to play with.
“So…” Mark tried, “Did you grow up with any pets in your family?”
“No.” he said simply. “Did you?”
“Y– oh,” Mark began to answer, when he felt a soft prick behind him. There, a black and white cat now brushed against him, moving around to within easier reach. He caught sight of students leaving the area, from about where the cat likely was.
It purred easily as he petted it. “Yeah. Well, not personally. My aunt and uncle have a dog, a Cocker Spaniel, Bailey is his name. I got to see him a lot when we visited.”
“Mm.” Gabriel replied. He held out his hand to invite the cat to be interested in him, which it was, though still testing how far even he could reach. It circled him a few times, and curiously wandered a short ways away, before sauntering back, noticing a lack of being pet.
“Do you think I should grab a more stationary toy for it to play with?” Mark asked.
“No, I think it's fine-” Gabe said, and at that very moment, the cat became distracted by a rolling toy and chased it away. “ah.”
“And then there were two.”
One of the pet keepers came up to Mark and Gabe and pointed out the cats in the room in a ‘you, you, you’ gesture. “Do you two want a kitten?” they asked.
“Okay,” Gabriel nodded.
They left and returned with a tiny grey ball of fur with bulging blue eyes. “Her name is Sugar.” The Keeper told them, and handed the kitten to Gabriel, who gasped upon receiving it, trying to be oh so gentle. They made sure Gabriel was holding her correctly, and then let them be.
“Hello, Sugar.” Gabriel cooed to her. She chirped a meow back at him. "You've never seen a heart fail for class, have you?”
She became a tiny car motor. “No,” he decided, “You haven't worked a day in your short life.”
He turned to Mark belatedly. “Do you want to hold her?”
“Sure.” Mark shrugged.
But the moment Gabriel attempted to hand her off, her tiny claws protested, and he hesitated. “I don't think she wants to.” he defended, and clutched her closer instead. Sugar did seem to calm down
“That's ok,” Mark replied, getting up, “I was gonna head over to the puppies anyway. You have fun.”
.
The next room is set up the same way, except with dogs and dog toys. And the line is longer. But Mark does get his turn with an adorable baby golden retriever.
Biscuit is his name, oh. And he’s very playful. Mark relished the time he got with Biscuit, which turned out to be quite a while, since the time limit turned out to be very lax. It was just the medicine he was looking for, to have his only problems be that of an over-excited dog, for a while.
But like all good things, the event would have to come to a close at some time, and Mark and Gabriel would have to leave even sooner, if they wanted to make it in time for class. The keepers started packing up the dog toys, and he took it as his cue to leave.
When he returned to the cat room, they were similarly closing up and the vast majority of students had long since left. Save for one. Right there where he left him, Gabe sat, absolutely surrounded by cats. They were all around him, on him, cuddling up to him. He looked the most emotional Mark had ever seen him.
Gabriel locked eyes with him and said, “What have you done to me.”
He was very reluctant to leave.
They went to class. All in all, the most boring thing Mark got up to that day.
—
Early that evening, Mark receives a call from Gabriel. He's the only friend to be auto-favored in his phone, aside from a few high school buddies previously, alongside his immediate family. He accepts the call, and waits. “Mark,” comes the voice at the other end.
“Hmm?”
“Thank you again for today.” Mark hums again, and lets Gabriel take his time with whatever it is he had really wanted to say. He's content to sit in the silence with him, while he catches up on reading. An autobiography, this time.
“If you follow me into cardiology… You know I can't promise you it will be easier because you know me, or financially comfortable, or socially rewarding, although those were the excuses only the other classmates would use,” he knew. Gabe continued, “I can say that I deeply enjoy your company and would delight in keeping it, no matter the path it is you choose. You make me see the world in ways I might never have, and I consider myself lucky to even have someone like you with me in this moment of my life.”
Mark closes the book, forgetting to leave the sash to note the page. (he would find it again later)
“Well gee, Gabe. That's, like, the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me. Thank you. I'll try not to let it butter me up,” he says, sitting up with the phone to his ear. “For now, I just hope we both pass those exams. The grading percentage is brutal.”
“We’ll pass. If there's anything I believe in, it's us. We've put in the work, we’re sure to get the results we're after.”
“Yeah…” Mark says in a sigh.
“That's all I wanted to say. Goodnight.”
“Ok. Goodnight, Gabriel. Bye.”
—
They do pass their exams. Both of them, flying colors. They spend the night the grades are posted out drinking, but don't do much celebrating beyond that. Gabriel finds an internship for the both of them that they can start in as soon as possible, so they both get to work. When the semester starts up again, Mark tries with renewed fervor to find activities around campus for the two to get up to when they can spare the time. They keep that rhythm going for a while, and the rest is history.
–
A few years later Gabriel Edega would adopt a cat of his own from the shelter, an orange shorthair. She had a rough history of neglectful ownership before being under his care, but he would pamper her like he's never pampered anyone. She, in turn, was sweet to him and no one else, hiding away the rare moments there was anyone else over. He named her Cookie. Illfitting, perhaps, for an orange cat; but as they got acquainted, Gabriel couldn’t help but remember the first time he ever got to hold one.