“you couldn’t do the silk swinging, 가시 배. …maybe. maybe trampoline.”
not that they know – the videos on the internet, when that was of interest, showed it difficult. where your body would never stop aching, your ankles would throb and whine as they were bent to near breaking. but that’s not the point. refusal of gabriel’s abilities is like a fire to loose gunpowder. sometimes gabriel can control the explosion and agree, other times he gives a rise. looks offended, almost insulted, arms crossed and arguing for the life he hasn’t – and will likely never – lived. sure. he has the attitude for performing. but not the one that would keep him out of breaking the law.
seyoon methodically wipes most of the blood from their hands. not enough wipe for their face, already wet and dripping pink, alcoholic scented fluid that makes their nose curl. bad. almost enough that they miss the smug raise of gabriel’s lips. one that speaks of i knew it and just begs for an answer.
without control, seyoon throws the wet wipe at him, and settles down as though such a thing had never touched their body at all.
“sure. numbers.” seyoon says, a half sarcastic motion of hand following the request.
like it matters. as if grades matter with the lives they live, gabriel an illusion that his town barely remembers as more than a story to warn children about strangers. the twins may have never existed beyond an abandoned apartment with moth eaten fabric and broken furniture across every inch.
still. they like offering. like the idea of telling off the people that made gabriel’s life hell in their own little ways.
a slow shrug of shoulders. rocking to stand after a moment, seyoon pads towards the aisle for cleaning. ironic to be splashed with blood, almost to the bottle of bleach that they pick up and bring back over. pausing for a display of ziplocs. quart. big enough for that organ waiting in a pile of gore. seyoon tears it open not seconds later, freeing a single bag from the cardboard and working it open.
“you’re like…. a mom.” seyoon settles on. “like you should have these on you in a pocket. gabriel ramos, purse full of knives. money. condoms. wet wipes. right.”
“okay. that’s fair. i’m not that good. and also, i’m not a fucking gymnast in my spare time or anything. i’m sure i could manage something, though.”
gabriel’s biggest talent is not his flexibility. he’s fairly flexible, enough to pull some pretty scary shit in a fight, but that’s dependent more on how fast he is than anything else. he would be a terrible cirque performer. but it’s the drama that counts, of course. the hyperbole. he’s trying to look fake convinced of himself, but it’s not really working. it’s just a fucking joke at this point. gabriel likes stupid hypothetical arguments over things he would never ever know, do, or be involved in in his whole life.
then the wet wipe hurtles at him, distracting him from his train of thought. gabriel ducks out of the way and the wet wipe hits the side of the counter with a particularly horrible slap.
“it’s not just numbers, babe. you’re going to make some college student who sunk their whole high school career into thirty ap classes and a perfect gpa burst into fucking tears, throwing shit like that around.”
gabriel puts a hand to his heart and makes his best effort to look absolutely crushed about it. he’s not. he was the exact opposite of that kid. pretty much everyone back in irvington, new york would remember gabriel as the opposite of that kid, if they remembered anything outside of the tragedy. that was one of the things that really pissed him off about living there after the cabin. he wasn’t a person - even a person that used to get shitty looks from waitresses for being loud. he was just that poor boy with the dead friends, and the trauma, and everything else.
some of that bitterness still lives in him.
he lets seyoon head off to the cleaning aisle and gather appropriate supplies. he’s never liked the smell of bleach, but it’s effective for what they need it for. he’ll probably take the box of ziploc bags with them. no reason to leave them. there’s always something useful with them - sometimes even kyara stores some witchy things in bags.
“i’m not - i’m not like a mom, fuck you. i didn’t even bring those wet wipes. the rest, yeah, guilty as charged, but you and ky are the reason i even need to bring condoms places. you fucker.”
