eighty-five
eighty-five • r • travis/gabe, travis/nicki, others
continued on from part one.
beating:
a slang term for beatboxing; a form of vocal percussion which primarily involves the art of producing drum beats, rhythm, and musical sounds using one's mouth, lips, tongue and voice.
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It appears that the sleep over had been previously organised, because by the time Travis and Gabe gets back to the tunnel that evening, everyone is already there with their sleeping bags. Disashi and Wayne are leant over a slightly pathetic pile of sticks and scrunched up pieces of paper, trying to catch light to the wood with their cigarette lighters. Tyga lays on his stomach on his sleeping bag close to them, trying to steal the flame for his cigarette.
Travis leaves Gabe’s side to approach Nicki. He kisses her on the lips for a moment, which sends Gabe’s glance elsewhere as to not feel awkward watching them. He glances back up to see Travis with a hand around her waist, walking her over to the fire. He leans down to slap a hand against the back of his cousin’s head, making the boy grunt and look up.
“You’re fourteen,” he grumbles at him, squatting down to snatch the cigarette from him and press it between his lips. “Leave that shit for the big kids, idiot.”
Tyga frowns at him and starts to sit up so he can protest, but Disashi reaches out to tug him into a headlock and distract him. He says something about helping with the fire and Travis takes it as his chance to escape with his girlfriend.
“Hey Gabey,” Nicki coos to Gabe, waving as she leans against Travis. “You don’t look very prepared. How ‘bout you have my sleeping bag?” Gabe opens his mouth to protest, but Travis just nods in reply for him.
“That’d be good, Gabe. We ‘aint lettin’ you sleep on the concrete, y’know. We ‘aint that heartless.” He grins his toothy grin that causes Gabe to smile as well, before finally mumbling his thanks.
When it gets dark, Gabe finds it oddly comforting to have the small fire close to him, keeping him warm and well aware of his surroundings. Nicki is curled up close to Travis, sharing his sleeping bag made for two. It’s more of a swag than a sleeping bag, which is lucky to add warmth and space.
Gabe is pretty sure that everyone is asleep. He can only hear quiet breathing, and he’s sure that if Travis or Nicki were awake then they’d be kissing and he can normally hear the soft smacking of lips when everything else is this quiet, especially in the echoing tunnel. Gabe isn’t awake because of discomfort, because he’s thankful Nicki had given him her sleeping bag, but he’s just distracted. He caught himself looking into the low burning fire for a good ten minutes at least, just thinking back to everything Travis taught him about tagging that day. The hours must be turning over into the AM by the time he falls asleep, but he’s just thankful for some shut eye.
Despite being one of the last to fall asleep, though, Gabe finds himself one of the first to be awake. He thinks that it may partially be because of discomfort this time, because he finds himself laying half against the wall, which is awkward in itself for the curved shape of the tunnel. He thinks he might have cranked his shoulder muscle.
Still, he’s awake now, so he might as well get up. When he pulls himself into a sitting position, he rubs at his tired eyes and takes a look around as his senses begin to wake up. He can hear the pattering of rain outside, and he’s sure he can smell the dew from the park close by as well. The rain sounds fairly heavy, so he decides he might go out to wash his face with the earth’s free shower to wake himself up some more.
He stumbles to a standing position, almost slipping over from the material of his sleeping bag against his socks. When he gains his composure and finds his shoes, he tip toes carefully between the sleeping bodies and heads towards the mouth of the tunnel, head down and hands in his pockets for warmth.
When he reaches the mouth, he has to stop when he sees someone sitting close to it. He recognises it as Travis for the mounds of curly hair and the long limbs wrapped around each other; his knees to his chest and his arms around his shins. “Hey,” Gabe says quietly, his voice threatening to crack from its early morning use.
Travis looks up lazily and smiles at him, half lidded and peaceful, but at the same time he still appears a little more awake than Gabe feels. Travis nods at the ground so Gabe takes that as an invitation to sit down, making himself as comfortable as possible on the concrete ground. He crosses his ankles over and wraps his arms loosely around his knees, hands holding onto each other as he relaxes his legs into the crooks of his elbows.
“Nice morning,” Travis murmurs, smirking the slightest as he gestures out the mouth of the tunnel at the pouring rain. Gabe looks at the hand he used to gesture and only just notices the cigarette in it, which is when he starts to crave.
He realises what Travis has said and laughs quietly, his voice still tired and so it comes out as a heavier breath of air. “Yeah,” he murmurs, bringing his legs in closer and resting his chin on his knees.
“Cigarette?” Travis finally offers, holding out his half-smoked one for Gabe to take. Gabe thanks him with a smile and takes a hand away from his legs to hold onto it, then presses it to his lips to try and wake himself up with the nicotine.
They sit quietly for a few moments longer, taking in the peaceful scene of heavy rain splattering against the city’s skin of concrete. Gabe finally asks, once he’s squashed the cigarette out on the ground next to him, “You wanna get a coffee?”
Travis doesn’t seem to think about it, but he does pause for a moment or two to watch the rain before he gives a slow nod. Both boys stand with the aid of each other and step outside the tunnel, not afraid of the water falling from the sky. The cold instantly wakes Gabe up and he finds himself rubbing at his eyes, then squinting to avoid getting raindrops in them.
At first, they don’t really talk. They just walk, mostly along the sidewalk but occasionally stepping onto the road just for the fun of it, just to annoy the cars of early morning workers. Gabe ends up laughing quietly to himself when he glances over at Travis, which catches the other’s attention.
“What?” He asks, mainly with his eyes as he shoves Gabe gently towards the road.
Gabe stumbles and smiles, then sways back to walk on the sidewalk. “Your hair. It’s really long.” He can’t really help but reach out and touch the wet curls slumping down Travis’ back after losing their life from the rain. After realising what he’s doing, he brings his hand back to himself and hides it in his pocket.
They step into a Starbuck’s coffee house, dripping wet and without care for what they dampen on their way. Travis buys them both espressos with wet money from his wet wallet in the back pocket of his wet jeans. Gabe grins to himself as the barista makes them their coffees then hands them over, all the while giving them strange looks for their physical state.
They sit outside to drink, despite the welcoming cushioned seats of the coffee shop only a few inches of wall away. The rain, along with the caffeine, wakes them up. It wakes them enough to talk, at least. Gabe ends up asking about the only thing he knows about Travis, but Travis doesn’t seem to mind.
“Have you ever lost a piece? Like, a really good one that you didn’t want to lose?” He thought of it because of the rain, because sometimes, rain can get into those alleyways and wash away wet paint, leaving the artworks to run down the sidewalks and into the gutters.
Travis seems to think about it for a moment before he leans back against the wall of the coffee shop and shrugs. “When I was just startin’, I thought every paintin’ was special, ya’ know? I didn’t wanna paint over nothin’. But then I realised that you gotta. You gotta be fresh with art. It don’t matter who misses out on seeing the old stuff, because it’s who did see it that matters. They been there longer.” He pauses to take a long sip from his drink now that it’s cool enough for his tongue, then continues. “I do got a wall, though. Where I don’t paint over nothin’. Where I practise everything. Where my special’s go.”
Gabe smiles to himself without realising it as he watches Travis talk. “You wanna walk?” He asks after a moment, so Travis nods and they bring themselves to their feet. Neither say it out loud, but they know they’re heading for Travis’ wall.
He leads them back, back the way they’d gone the previous day, to the residential street where Travis’ house is. Travis leads Gabe down a path along the side of the house, jumping a small wooden fence to get to the back yard. Gabe jumps after him, following him back.
The yard is small and unkempt, but most of the grass is dead enough to not require mowing anyway. To Gabe’s surprise, Travis just shows him the back wall of the house, littered with pictures, barely a speck of wall without paint. The bottom of the wall lies rows of spray cans, some presumably full and a couple laying on their sides, empty and forgotten. Gabe takes a moment to admire the graffiti before Travis approaches the wall to break his focus.
Gabe doesn’t want to paint on this one. He doesn’t even want to ask to. Travis doesn’t offer, either, so he figures that’s enough for him to spectate rather than join. This is Travis’ wall, not one for the public.
Gabe barely realises how quickly the time passes. He’s sat, once again in indian style, on the ground watching. The rain has stopped without their noticing and the back door of the house opens, catching Gabe’s attention but not Travis’. Gabe feels frozen when a tall, African-American man with much darker skin compared to Travis stands in the door way and stares at him, but he finally breaks his gaze and looks to Travis instead.
“You had one of your sleepovers?” He asks, so Travis just nods as he stops painting in order to shake up the can. “Tell me next time. Your dinner got cold.”
The man looks at Gabe again before he brushes him off and steps inside. The screen door swings shut and bangs against the wooden door, unevenly fitting with the frame. “That was my pa,” Travis says absently as he continues to paint. “He’s cool with you here, don’t freak.”
“Wasn’t gonna,” Gabe murmurs, even though he’s still a little intimidated from the encounter. He keeps quiet about it, though, remaining where he is for most of the day, only standing up to join Travis when his father invites them inside to have some lunch of ham sandwiches. Gabe feels a little guilty when he peels the ham off his, but Travis doesn’t ask questions and instead eats his portion while Gabe settles for bread and butter. Travis figures, Gabe is either vegetarian or Jewish, though truthfully, he’s both.
It turns out that Travis hadn’t noticed how fast time flew, either, because he curses when he looks at the clock a few hours later. It’s getting dark out, so he disappears into his bedroom and comes out a few minutes later in a change of clothes to stay fresh. He slings his hoodie over one shoulder and beckons Gabe out, telling his father he’ll see him another time before they leave the house.
Gabe can’t help but stare on their way back. He watches Travis more than he watches where he’s going, so when he nearly crashes into someone, Travis pulls him out of the way and asks him what’s up. Gabe bites his lip and shrugs, kicking at a stone before pointing lamely at Travis’ arms. “You have cool tats.” He really hadn’t seen them before; he swears Travis has been wearing long sleeves every time they met.
“Oh.” Travis looks down at his arms and nods, smiling dreamily. He runs a hand against his forearm and Gabe then sees the tattoos of letters on his knuckles, too, which is when he feels guilty for not noticing those. “Yeah.” Gabe looks up at him and smiles, but this time he glances forward to make sure he doesn’t crash into anyone. “I wanna get a full sleeve one day,” he says as he takes his hoodie from over his shoulder and begins to tug it on. “Y’know,” he adds when he sees Gabe’s blank look, “a whole arm of tattoos. See, I got gaps?”
He tugs his sleeve up to show where there are patches of skin bare. Gabe thinks that Travis would look good with tattoos all over him, but when he thinks about it in his head, it might sound a little strange out loud so he decides to keep it to himself. “I like them.”
“Thanks.”
Even though Travis has sleeves on now, Gabe can’t help but glance over at him every now and then while they walk. At one point, Travis looks back and catches him, but he just smiles a little shyly and laughs under his breath, then averts his gaze to his shoes.
When they return to the rest of the group, Travis is greeted with a slap to the face. Nicki crosses her arms over her chest and mutters, “Where have you been? You didn’t tell us or nothin’.” Travis doesn’t answer, just shrugs. “Don’t scare me like that,” she grumbles, then leans up to kiss him.
Travis’ face falls for the first time that day and he holds onto her arms, keeping her back. “I don’t feel like you today,” he says honestly, then walks right past her. Nicki stands, dumbfounded for a moment before looking at Gabe with a cold stare, as if he has something to do with it. Gabe holds his hands up in defence, so she rolls her eyes and storms past Travis to sit with the other boys.
Gabe tentatively approaches Travis, sitting on the ground next to him by the wall. His hands are cupped around the end of his cigarette as he tries to light it, only looking to Gabe when he succeeds. “Want one?”
Gabe nods and watches Travis get out another. He lights that with the end of his own, held between his lips, before handing it to Gabe. “What’s up?”
Travis shrugs gently. He knows what Gabe is referring to. “Just not feelin’ like a good boyfriend today,” he admits, tilting his head back and sucking in a hit from the cigarette. “Not feelin’ the commitment.”
“That’s dumb,” Gabe murmurs, leaving his cigarette perched between two fingers and far from his face. “How can you-”
“I just don’t,” Travis mutters. “You’re single, you don’t get it.” He looks at Gabe seriously, unintentionally forcing Gabe to apologise. “Sorry,” he adds in return, “but really. I don’t know. I just don’t feel like her.”
Gabe tries not to question it and instead presses his cancer stick to his mouth, breathing it in. It tastes different than normal and he wonders if they’re another brand, but figures it’s pointless to ask. “I’m gonna go play Bullshit,” he says after a moment, looking at Travis almost apologetically, but when Travis nods, that’s Gabe’s approval to go.
He sits over with Nicki and the boys, with only half of his heart in the game. He watches Travis at the end of the tunnel, spraying something low on the wall with only one colour of paint. He wants to know what he’s working on, wants to know if there are any tips he can give Gabe for it. He suddenly feels a strong obsession with the paint, a desperation to be close to him and to hear his wise words and what he has to say. But he stays put until nightfall, when Travis beckons Nicki over to see. She examines the graffiti he’d been painting for only a second before leaning into his arms and kissing his lips.
Gabe doesn’t recognise his feeling of disappointment when he sees Travis kiss back.
The group sleeps in the tunnel for the second night in a row, Nicki once again sharing a sleeping bag with Travis. The next morning, it’s a little more comforting for Gabe when he finds he’s not the first one awake. He can’t hear rain but he can hear spray cans, and that alone is enough to make him sit up and smile at everyone in the tunnel around him.
Tyga is the only one still in his sleeping bag, but he’s not sleeping. He shuffles closer to Gabe and they talk quietly for a while, although the conversation mainly consists of grunts and grumbles and the occasional breath of laughter. Gabe finally reaches out to mess up the younger McCoy’s hair then sits up, getting himself out of the sleeping bag and walking over to where Travis is playing cards with Disashi.
“Morning, guys,” Gabe greets as he sits down, crossing his legs and looking down at the game of snap between the two opposite him.
“Afternoon, Gabe,” Travis corrects with a grin, making Gabe pull a face and scratch his head. “How’d you sleep?”
“Like a bear,” Disashi fills for him, earning him a punch in the arm from Gabe. They laugh and Travis picks up the cards laying in the middle of the three, then takes Disashi’s hand off him without protest. He begins to shuffle the cards then deals them out to all three of them, without waiting to see if Gabe even wants to play.
“So, Travie. Are you and.. Nicki? Are you okay?” Gabe asks a little hesitantly, earning him a look from the aforementioned.
“We’re fine, G. Don’t wanna talk about it,” Travis shrugs as he deals out the last of the cards then evens out his hand, holding them face down in his palm.
“Don’t wanna talk to me, or don’t wanna talk?” Gabe pesters as he does the same, noticing Disashi shifting uncomfortably from the corner of his eye.
“You’re single, you wouldn’t get it,” Travis laughs quietly, putting the first card down on the floor, the suit facing up. “We’s cool, G. Stop freakin’.”
Gabe reluctantly gives up and focuses on the game instead. He loses the first two snaps, but on the third he only just gets his palm down on the cards before Travis slaps his hand down on top of his. Gabe laughs as Travis slowly pulls his hand away and lets Gabe take the pile.
Despite his breezy start, Disashi gets out first. He throws his last card down on the pile and stands up immediately, claiming something about milkshakes with Matt before he waves lazily and walks away from the two. Travis looks up at Gabe from the card pile, then, as if waiting for him to put the next card, down, but Gabe sets his hand down beside him instead.
“D’you wanna paint? This ‘aint as fun with two people.”
Travis thinks for a moment before he sits back and turns his cards over, spreading out his hand. “Sure,” he says, his pursed lips turning into a smile before he pockets the deck and stands up with his friend.
Gabe follows him to the opposite end of the tunnel, keeping his focus on Travis and his graffiti, so he doesn’t realise how clingy he might seem to the others. He tries to keep a distance, but at the day goes on, his eyes gradually move from the wall, to Travis’ hands, to Travis himself. He’s watching for techniques, he tells himself, but in all honesty, he’s sort of just mesmerised by the concentration on Travis’ face. Like he’s really putting his heart into the paint. He smiles gently to himself when Travis will bite his lip or poke his tongue out, then covers it up with a laugh whenever Travis gets paint on his fingers.
For Gabe, the days pass as a blur like that. Barely going home, staying in the tunnel whenever he can. The Schleproks will leave and he’ll lag behind, giving the impression that he’ll leave too but only ending up falling asleep against the wall of the tunnel with his backpack for a pillow. He traces the pictures on the walls, like cave drawings of their moderns times. He pieces together stories from the tags, smiling every time he finds a faded heart in amongst all the words.
A week of watching Travis paint passes too quickly and they decide to go out again; dropping their spray cans and leaving the tunnel. They head as a pack, as a herd of friends towards the Clandestine skate park with simple intentions to just hang out.
Pete’s crew migrate easily over to the Schleproks once they’ve been spotted. Pete and his girlfriend walk along with Travis and Gabe, where Gabe finds out that the girl’s name is Ashlee. Even after being introduced, she still appears shy and rests her cheek against Pete’s shoulder as they walk with their hands held tightly together. She doesn’t really look like the skater type of girl, but Gabe decides against pestering her with questions.
Gabe would step back into the bigger group of people in order to say hello to Cassadee again, but she’s lingering with Nicki and the red-haired girl, appearing deep in conversation. He’d rather not disturb, plus it means he gets to walk with Travis for a bit. Gabe doesn’t see himself as possessive; he believes he’s just taking this as an opportunity to hang out with Travis more and get to know him better.
The two combined crews stop walking when they reach the ice cream parlour and head inside. Everyone branches off into their own little groups to find booths for themselves, and Gabe is pleased that this time, he gets to sit with Travis, Pete and Ashlee instead of being cooped up with a bunch of people he doesn’t know.
“Who’s buying, this time?” Pete asks with a nod as he takes his fly sunglasses from his face to rest them on top of his head. “I can’t cover this many people again,” he adds with a laugh as he snakes his arm around Ashlee’s shoulders.
Travis just rolls his eyes and taps his fingers against the table, leaning back in his seat as he does. “I will,” he offers, “but just you guys. I’ve only got a bit of cash left over.”
Gabe tucks his feet up onto the seat to let Travis shuffle past him in order to get out of the booth. When he stands over them, he points to Pete and Ashlee and thinks aloud, “Chocolate and strawberry,” jabs a thumb at himself, “chocolate,” and then at Gabe, “vanilla. Okay. I’ll be right back.”
Just before he manages to leave, Gabe reaches out and grabs at his shirt to get his attention. “I’ll pay you back for all this, I really will,” he promises, but Travis just laughs at him and pries his fingers from his hoodie.
“Don’t worry about it.”
Travis returns a matter of minutes later with a small tray of milkshakes, all in parlour shop glasses. He sets them down on the table then sits down, scooting over to Gabe so he’s not sitting on the edge of the seat. They all take their drinks and begin to sip at them, waiting for somebody to start talking.
At first, Ashlee starts talking to her boyfriend, but Gabe instantly zones out. He only caught a few words; something about her girlfriends and what they did on the weekend, and if Pete had fun at the park. Travis finds it easy to throw himself into the conversation with them, but Gabe remains quiet in his corner of the booth with his lips around the straw of his vanilla milkshake.
“Do you think he’s awake?”
“What? No, his eyes are open.”
“He’s zombied-out on us.”
“Fuck off, man, he does that sometimes.”
Gabe feels a hand nudge his arm and he snaps out of his daze to look over at the three staring at him expectantly. Travis questions him, “You a’ight, man?”
Gabe laughs to himself and quickly nods as he taps his finger against the edge of his glass. “Yeah, sorry,” he says sheepishly, “Just zoned out.”
“We noticed,” Pete teases, smirking before letting it disappear as he kisses into Ashlee’s hair.
Pete seems to find it easy to pick up the conversation again, but he speaks quieter to address only Ashlee, leaving Travis and Gabe to converse amongst themselves. “What’chu thinking ‘bout, man?” Travis asks, nudging him again before he leans back and picks up his milkshake to take a sip.
“Nothin’,” Gabe shrugs it off. “Just itchin’ to paint, y’know?” He laughs at himself as he turns his head to look out the shop window, admiring the sunny day outside.
“Gets addictive, don’t it?” Gabe nods and smiles dreamily, then turns back to his friend as he speaks again, “We could always head back to the tunnel, get you some time to practise without the others chillin’ around.”
Gabe only thinks about it for a second before he nods again, adding, “Yeah, sure.” He’d love some private time to work on his graffiti, especially more one-on-one time with Travis so he can learn without distractions, or without Nicki always wandering over to them and stealing Travis’ attention. He’d settle for an afternoon at Travis’ house, watching him paint on his back wall, but he feels he may be too intruding if he asked for them to go there. So he’ll settle for the tunnel.
“Hey, guys,” Travis calls to his Schleproks as he stands up from the booth and picks up his milkshake with him. “Me and Gabe; we’s just going back to paint for a bit. Y’all right to just chill with the Clandies?”
Nicki leans over the back of her booth seat to look at him, giving him a salute and a nod. “I was gonna take us scoutin’ to have a look for some new space. You don’t mind if we take our time, do ya’?”
Travis looks at Gabe for an answer but Gabe only shrugs as he stands up. Travis looks back at Nicki and shrugs as well. “Should be fine,” he says, “I’ll see ya’s all tonight, then.”
He puts his milkshake back down then beckons Gabe with him to head out of the parlour, immediately starting on their way back to the tunnel.
---
clandestine:
done or kept in secret, sometimes to conceal an illicit or improper purpose.
---
It’s still a little nerve-racking for Gabe to paint on their wall. Despite the many assurances and mentions that he’s part of the crew, he still feels like a bit of a burden to paint over what they’d done years ago. It’s worse that Travis isn’t painting with him; just standing beside or behind him (Gabe isn’t sure because he keeps changing positions) and occasionally praising him or suggesting he try something different.
The conversation has died down from graffiti, though, as Travis leans his shoulder against the wall and watches Gabe trying to shade the edge of one of his letters. Travis smiles to himself as he watches, wondering if he has that same look of concentration when he paints as when Gabe does.
“I’m sorry,” Gabe murmurs after a moment, making sure to keep his eyes on the wall and not on Travis. “Still sorry, I mean. About the other week, when Nicki got mad at you. That was my fault for keepin’ you.”
Travis tips his head against the wall and rolls his eyes before he reaches a hand out to nudge Gabe in the shoulder. “You keep frettin’, bro. There’s nothin’ you could’a done, I wanted to go taggin’ anyways. Stop thinkin’ it’s your fault. She ‘aint leavin’ me that easily.”
Gabe smiles just a little at the reassurance as he bends down to pick up a different colour of paint. “You know, you look like a boyfriend kind’a guy,” Travis points out. “D’you like any girls ‘round here?”
At first, Gabe just laughs quietly as he lifts up the black spray can to begin outlining what he’d been painting before. He has to think about it for a moment, because although he had a few crushes at first, he hasn’t been thinking about people as much as he has about paint.
“I guess some are kind’a cute,” he concludes with a thoughtful frown. “Most o’ who I like are, I guess, taken, though.” He forces himself to keep his eyes away from Travis and just keeps painting, chewing his lip while he does. Gabe doesn’t have these sorts of conversation often, so he doesn’t really want to talk eye-to-eye with someone about it.
Travis just laughs, though, quietly to himself and completely not mockingly. “You like Nicki?” he asks immediately, and Gabe can see the grin from the corner of his eye. He chuckles to himself again but Gabe quickly cuts him off with his stammering.
“No - Shit, man, I mean. Yeah, but. No. Not.. like.” He screws his face up as Travis continues to laugh at him until he finally corrects himself, “I liked her a bit at first, but then I saw the whole.. ‘alpha male’ thing that you’ve got goin’ on.”
Travis falls into an eventual silence and looks down as he taps his fingers against the wall. “So, what?” he asks, finally, “Who do you like? I guess Cass is kind’a cute, you guys’d be cool together.”
Gabe’s teeth start to attack his lower lip again as he starts to spray his can higher up. It takes him a moment to finally say it, to finally admit it to himself that he doesn’t really feel the way he first thought he did. “She’s not my type.”
He can feel Travis’ expectant stare boring holes through his head and Gabe braves a glance at him, to which he smiles sheepishly and caves into his thoughts. He does have a crush, but Travis is the last person he wants to talk to about that. Gabe doesn’t want to talk to anyone about it; it’s probably the kind of childish attraction that will go away as long as he ignores it, so telling people will just complicate things. “If I tell you, you’ll rip on me,” he says finally, looking further away and starting to paint a little further away, just for an excuse to keep his head turned in the opposite direction of Travis.
Travis frowns gently at him although Gabe can’t see. He nudges his gently, but Gabe still doesn’t look. “Dude,” he murmurs, “I wouldn’t do that, c’mon. I won’t tell anyone and I won’t rip on ya’.” He pauses as he watches Gabe spray the black paint slowly along the wall to create the bat wings that he first showed Gabe how to paint. “Promise.”
Gabe nervously looks back at Travis just to make sure he appears sincere. His words sound promising enough, so he shuts his eyes for a little longer than a blink then looks away again. “There’s this guy I think I like.”
Travis is glad Gabe isn’t watching him, because he’s sure his reaction would be offensive. He just sort-of gawks for a moment, before quickly composing himself then clearing his throat. He crosses his arms and shifts his weight from foot to foot, then finally just looks back up at his friend. “That’s not - not, like, bad or nothin’. You just.. don’t seem like the type.”
Gabe frowns to himself as he stresses, “I ’aint. I swear to God.”
Travis sighs to himself and leans his back against the wall. “Well?” Gabe still doesn’t look at him. “Is it Pete? Pete’s kind’a cute, I guess. I can’t really tell. He’s. I don’t know, short, but-”
“No,” Gabe quickly interrupts, shaking his head as he bends down to pick up a different can again. He shakes it up as he tries to find his words, then starts to spray again. “He’s a Schleprok.”
Travis hasn’t said anything for a minute or two and Gabe doesn’t want to look at him. He feels like his head is about to explode, like the tunnel has been corked at each end and the pressure of the intense silence is building up to be just too much, so he finally opens his mouth and starts to babble. “He’s amazing, I guess, and he’s like, good at everything he does. And I only known him for a little bit, because I only started hangin’ with you guys a few weeks back, but I think I really do like him even though I didn’t really think about it ‘till you started mentionin’ crushes and shit.” He takes a deep breath and grumbles, more to himself, “he’s fuckin’ great, but of course he’s got a girlfriend.”
Travis turns his head against the wall again, looking up at all the graffiti thoughtfully. He takes a second to mull over what Gabe had said, before finally looking at him and watching him paint. “You know, G,” he says quietly, beginning to chew on his lip as he does, “I’m the, uh. Only Schleprok with a girlfriend.”
And that’s it. He can see Gabe freeze up, he can see his hand begin to shake and make the lines he paints crooked and uneven. But Gabe keeps painting, Travis can tell that he doesn’t want him to see that he’s been found out. Doesn’t want to give in. It makes Travis smile a little bit.
“It’s okay, G,” he finally murmurs, trying to be as reassuring as possible. But the colour still hasn’t returned to Gabe’s face and he finds himself admitting something he hadn’t want to admitted, that he’d kept hidden down just like most of his emotions. “I kind’a think about you too.”
Gabe stares hard at the wall for barely a minute before he drops the can, kicking at the bottom of the wall and making Travis jump. “It can’t be a crush,” he stresses, clenching his fists for a moment as he turns away to slump against a dry section of the wall. “I just see you paintin’ or smokin’ or even just talkin’ and I wanna fuckin’ jump you. It ‘aint right, it’s unfair.”
Travis shoves both hands in his pockets as he walks to where Gabe is leaning, offering lamely, “sexual tension?”
Gabe screws up his face and runs his fingers through his short, curly hair. “Somethin’ like that,” he grumbles.
Travis looks down as he takes a hand from his pocket and reaches out to Gabe’s hoodie. He takes a hold of the zipper at the bottom and just plays with it for a moment as he thinks aloud, “I made out with a guy once.” It catches Gabe off guard at first, but Travis doesn’t say it as any kind of offering. Just mentions it. “Did you know one of my step brother’s is gay?”
Gabe shakes his head and Travis just shrugs, looking up at him before dropping his gaze back to Gabe’s zipper. “He was tryin’ to gross me out; tell me how two dudes did it. It doesn’t sound that bad.”
Gabe chews the inside of his lip and watches Travis innocently playing with his zipper until he finally lets go. He can tell where this is going, he can tell what Travis is saying. But he can’t figure out why he doesn’t stop it. Maybe he’s realised that this might be the only chance to get everything off his chest and to stop feeling so bottled up.
It’s not as if he has much of a chance to talk, though, because Travis has leant in closer and pressed their lips together, innocently enough at first. Gabe figures he should be pulling away, telling Travis that he appreciates it, but Nicki could come back at any time. The Schleproks could come back from their scouting trip and find these two boys kissing. They could get kicked out of the crew.
But this is his first kiss with a boy. He doesn’t want to cut that short or have it be a forgettable moment. Sure, Travis has Nicki and Gabe doesn’t need a relationship right now, but it doesn’t mean he doesn’t want a memorable first kiss.
He quickly leans into it to start kissing back, just as he feels Travis begin to pull away. It can’t be that short, he has to know the extent of what he’d been avoiding for so long. When he kisses back, he can feel Travis smile against his lips and so Gabe finally plucks up the courage to part his lips and reach a hand out to grab Travis’ shirt.
His tentative offer for a deeper kiss is met when Travis opens his mouth as well, immediately diving his tongue past Gabe’s teeth and lips. It catches him off guard but he doesn’t complain, instead taking the time to savour the peculiar touch of another boy’s tongue.
Travis finally pulls his mouth away, but keeps his body close. They catch their breath but Gabe doesn’t want to let go of his shirt and doesn’t want to get rid of the closeness. Just a couple more minutes, he tells himself, just a little longer in order to save this memory in his brain.
And although he does it slowly, it’s still unexpected when Travis reaches both hands up to start pushing Gabe’s hoodie off his shoulders. The whole time he’s watching Gabe with these wide, slightly hopeful eyes, a question of Can we? hiding behind the stare. Gabe swallows the lump in his throat but he can’t bring himself to reply, so he just shrugs his jacket off and tugs Travis’ shirt again as his silent answer.
When he’s got the confirmation, Travis works his hands like magic to run them up Gabe’s stomach under his shirt to send goosebumps breaking out across his skin. The whole time Travis leans against him, touching under his clothes, he can only think how lucky Nicki must be to have a guy so fond of using his hands.
Gabe lets out an unintentional moan in the back of his throat when Travis presses his thigh up against his crotch. He purses his lips and glares at him, making Travis laugh before ducking his head down and kissing gently at Gabe’s collar. Although the touching is all good and fun, Gabe need to touch down there more, needs to know what he’s getting himself into.
Somewhat nervously, he nudges his hands past Travis’ to his low-riding jeans and pushes them down that little bit further. He doesn’t look and instead just undoes his fly and dips a hand down past his boxers, wrapping a hand around his length. He can feel the way Travis presses his blunt nails into Gabe’s skin from the second he’d touched him, and surprisingly, the feel of another guys’ dick isn’t as strange as he first thought it to be.
“We’re both guys,” Travis says after a moment, dropping his head to rest his forehead on Gabe’s shoulder, burying his face into the warm crook of his neck. “And - yeah. We don’t need any protection, you know?” He nips at the skin at the base of Gabe’s neck and kisses it gently. “I mean, you can’t get pregnant.”
Gabe makes a small sound in the back of his throat as he twists his wrist and makes Travis gasp. “S-So, I’m going to be..”
“Under,” Travis mumbles. He lifts his head to look at him, giving him that pleading look again, so reluctantly, Gabe just nods in agreement.
Travis leans back just enough to let Gabe slide his back down the wall, cradled comfortably by the curve of the concrete. He takes Gabe’s hand from his pants before he starts to pull Gabe’s down, kissing him while he does as his own way of reassurance. The kisses do make it better, really, for they take Gabe’s mind off his nerves and his heavily beating heart.
Gabe keeps his eyes closed for as much of it as he can. For the stretch, for the burn, and even for the pleasure. When Travis is inside him, he wraps his arms tightly around his shoulders and grips onto his shirt for dear life, keeping his jaw tightly shut so he won’t make a sound. He feels it humiliating enough to be bottoming, and even though it feels better than he’d ever thought it would, he figures it’ll be less embarrassing in the long run if he isn’t a stuttering, whimpering mess.
Gabe decides against mentioning that as well as being his first time with a boy, Travis was his first time in general. He’s made out with girls before, maybe fooled around, but never to the extent that he and Travis had gone to. They don’t kiss when they finish. Travis helps Gabe clean up, though, and Gabe is relieved to realise that he’s still able to look Travis in the eye. They keep away from each other for a few minutes, allowing Gabe time to pack all the spray cans back into his backpack and for Travis to fetch a few sticks from the park.
By the time the rest of the Schleproks are back, the sun has begin to set and the two boys have a small campfire between them. As soon as they’re close enough, Nicki makes herself comfortable sitting in Travis’ lap and Gabe does whatever he can to avoid watching them.
---
Gabe wakes up the following morning with a cramp in his leg and a sore shoulder from sleeping on the concrete. He can hear rain, again, which makes him want to go back to sleep, but the discomfort of the ground he lays on is enough to convince him to sit up and rub his eyes.
His first instinct is to migrate over to the barely-lit fire where most of the crew are, maybe to talk a little, sit close to the others to get warmer or just have a game of cards. But when he takes a quick glance around, he sees the figures of Travis and Nicki sitting by the far end of the tunnel. He frowns gently and stands up, beginning to approach the couple to see if he can hear what’s going on.
Fear settles in his gut when he sees the slightly distraught look on Travis’ face. He sits by the edge of the tunnel mouth, just sheltered from the rain with Nicki sitting next to him. Her hand is on his knee and both of his hands are on top of her’s, with his head low and his gaze directed at his shoes. Gabe hopes they can’t see him when he leans against the opposing tunnel wall, out of their view.
Nicki suddenly jerks her hands away, and at first, Gabe thinks it’s because she’s spotted him. But she stands immediately and looks down at Travis with a hurt expression, rather than looking over at Gabe. She says something so quietly Gabe can’t hear it, only see her mouth move before she frowns and folds her arms tightly over her chest as she begins to walk away.
Travis calls out to her, catching the attention of the other Schleproks, but he ignores them and rises to his feet.
“Don’t you dare go followin’ me, McCoy,” Nicki calls back after looking over her shoulder at him. She holds herself tighter in the rain and watches, waiting for him to stand completely still before continuing on her walk away from the tunnel.
“Trav?” Gabe tries, almost afraid of what will happen when he does get his friend’s attention. But Travis just shakes his head, not even looking at Gabe as he slumps back down against the wall.
“I had to tell her,” he says, looking out at where she’d walked off to. “She’ll be back,” he adds after a moment, speaking so surely, but so sadly. “Don’t worry. She’ll come back.”
---
breakin’:
short for breakdancing. a style of dance popular in the hip hop era that uses the beat and the pulse of a song to create unique dance moves.
---
It’s alarming and a little frightening when Travis approaches Gabe a matter of days later, catching him off guard from where he’d been doodling graffiti designs with a pen and pad. They hadn’t talked very much over those couple of days, not since Nicki stormed out, and Gabe is legitimately worried that Travis has finally built up the guts to give him the boot. This is Gabe’s fault, after all. Isn’t it?
“You need to go home,” Travis says quietly. Gabe lowers his eyes back down to his pad, tapping the pen against the paper nervously as he tries to hide how disappointed he really is. The Schleproks have been his only home for such a long time, he doesn’t know what he’ll do without them.
“Gabe?” Gabe looks up as Travis squats down next to him, resting a hand on his shoulder. “You really gotta go home, Gabe,” he says again, but his expression has changed. From what Gabe had presumed to be anger is actually a look of concern, though Gabe isn’t sure which he should be more worried about.
He puts the pen down and shoves the pad into the open backpack in front of him as he sits up properly, leaning back against the tunnel wall. “I know you’s having fun here and we love you a real lot.” Gabe shuts his eyes, not wanting to listen to any kind of goodbye speech. If they want him gone, he’ll go. But Travis continues, his hand still on Gabe’s shoulder. “Your dad’ll be worryin’ ‘bout you, y’know? At least go let him know you’re alive, a’ight? And come back as soon as you can, yeah?”
“What?” Gabe’s eyes widen and he tries not to give away how much of a relief it is to hear the words come back. “You want me to stay?”
Travis laughs a little forcefully but at least he’s smiling, and that’s better than the sulking he’s been failing at hiding over the past couple of days. “No, we want you to go check on your pa’. Then we want you to come back. A’ight?”
Gabe takes a deep breath and looks up and around the tunnel that he’s called him home for the past week or so. “Guess that makes sense,” he finally says, glad to see a Travis wearing a proper smile. “I’ll be back tomorrow, okay?”
Travis nods and stands back up, holding a hand out for Gabe to take in order to help him to his feet. Once they’re both standing, Gabe scoops up his backpack and tugs it on, figuring it’ll be nice to have a change of clothes from the few he packed in his bag and a shower with actual soap and warm water.
He resists any cheesy kind of goodbye, especially something like a hug, and instead just holds a fist out for Travis to bump his own against it. He leaves it at that, telling himself he will be back tomorrow, showered and dressed and feeling better. The rest of the crew get a wave from him as he passes and thankfully, they return it.
When he arrives back at his little house in the suburbs, he thinks that he should probably feel relieved in some way to be back, but it dumbfounds him to see how emotionally unattached to the house he really is. The only thing he’s relieved about is a warm bed, a shower and a wardrobe of fresh clothing, but otherwise, he’ll be glad to be back at the tunnel the following day.
He steps inside and takes a deep breath as the door swings shut. He’d honestly been planning on heading straight for his room, but his father is standing in the kitchen giving him a deathly glare, to an extent that Gabe hasn’t received before. “Hey,” he says simply, raising an eyebrow in confusion as he walks towards the breakfast table.
“You reckless, psychotic.. selfish little shit,” his father spits at him, gripping the edge of the table. Gabe frowns and sways backwards, unsure of what’s making his dad speak so fiercely. “What on earth made you think running away like that was a good idea? And you just come waltzing back inside like you own this fucking house, do you?”
Gabe scoffs as he folds his arms tightly over his chest. To be honest, he hadn’t at all been thinking about home, because when he thinks about it more deeply, the tunnel is his home. The Schleproks are his family. Not this dingy unit with three other men who he’d rather leave behind in a burning building.
“I didn’t run away. How the fuck’d you know, anyways? You’s always out, doin’ shit, wastin’ time at school ‘n shit,” he spits back at him. He can see his father’s eyes light up in fury, so Gabe takes it as his opportunity to dash down the hall to his bedroom.
As Gabe drops his bag on his bed and begins to empty everything out of it, he can hear his father calling through the wood of the door, banging on the door itself to try and get it open. Gabe hurries to stuff some clean clothes into his bag, as well as the last of his money hidden under his mattress, before finally turning around to face the door. In the time span of five minutes, his dad has called him a liar, selfish, psychotic and reckless, and it’s starting to get to Gabe’s head.
“Fuck off, old man!” He shouts at him, walking over and kicking the door. The banging stops only for a second before he begins to yell again, more fiercely this time.
From down the hall, Gabe can hear the sounds of his brothers’ yelling, whining in their stupid sing-song voices about how Gabe hasn’t gone to school for years, hasn’t been cooking dinner and hasn’t been cleaning his section of the house. When he hears Ricky say something about Gabe stealing money, he wants to reach through the door and strangle his little brother, but that would take too much time. He needs to get out of the house and away from the yelling as soon as possible.
Gabe takes a risk by putting his bag on and slipping his feet into a fresh pair of socks before tying up his sneakers. He yells to his dad, “I’m opening the door!” and walks over, waiting for the banging to stop before finally unlocking it and swinging it open. He tries his hardest to keep his composure casual as his father glares up at him, and although he’s quiet for now, Gabe can hear the insults resting on the tip of his tongue.
“This family needs you,” his dad finally spits, clenching his fists by his sides. “You can’t just go off for days and weeks at a time without telling us. We worry.”
“Yeah, Gabe’s such a cunt!”
Gabe and his father both turn around to see Ricky standing in the hallway with his arms crossed, looking up at the fight. Gabe grins at him while his father glares hard, then looks back at Gabe. “Look at what you’re teaching your brothers! Rude, vile, stupid fucking child!” He looks as if he’s about to hit him, so Gabe holds his hands up and squeezes past. His father makes a grab for his hoodie but Gabe keeps walking, just out of reach as he heads for the front door.
“Don’t you dare step out of that door,” his father threatens, long finger pointing at him as Gabe’s two brother stand together just behind him, watching the ordeal. “Don’t you dare or you’ll never come back here again. Not for money, not for family, not for anything.”
Gabe folds his arms and watches as Adrian gives him dirty looks from behind his father’s frame. Gabe gives him the finger, which just makes his father snap and growl like an angered dog. “You’re not even paying attention!”
“Look,” Gabe mutters, grabbing onto his backpack straps and tugging on them lightly, mainly for his own amusement. “I’m gonna walk out this door, yea’? I’m gonna walk out and you ‘aint gonna care, ‘cause you never do.” He rolls his eyes and shakes his head, turning around to grab the door handle. “Surprised you noticed I was missin’ in the first place,” he spits.
His father suddenly laugh, loud and sarcastic and sharp enough to cut the tension in the room. Gabe has to stop and look over his shoulder at him, curious enough to see what’s so funny. “So you’re just looking for attention, is that it?” He questions, hands on his hips and glare still fierce.
Gabe’s had enough. He swears one last time, “No, fuckhead. And don’t come lookin’ for me either,” lifts a hand to give them all the middle finger before he steps outside and slams the door shut after him. He keeps his arms crossed tightly as he walks against the afternoon sun, squinting into it until he reaches a spot of shade where he can stop and sit down on a bench outside of a coffee shop.
He runs his fingers through his hair and rests his head in his hands, looking back the way he’d come. Despite his words, he does feel a little disappointed that no one came after him, not even to scold him. His father’s probably in the living room right now, talking to his brothers sternly about how they should never use Gabe as a role model, how they can do so much better than him. Just thinking about it makes Gabe feel sick, but he stands back up to keep on walking anyway. He’d rather get back to the tunnel before it gets dark, and hopefully no one will complain about his being there.
When he reaches the Schleprok’s place, he slows down when he sees a figure slumped against the inside wall. He can see the glow of a cigarette and the fuzzy curls on their head, so he does end up managing a smile when he realises it’s Travis.
“Hey,” he calls to him as he approaches, looking around as he does to try and find everyone else but not succeeding. “Where is everyone? It’s getting dark.”
Travis looks up with tired eyes and smiles at him as Gabe sits down next to him, back slouched against the curved wall. “They went to a rap battle,” he shrugs, taking a puff from his cigarette before holding it out between his fingers, his wrist resting on his knee. “Wanted to do some breakin’, maybe a bit of spittin’. I don’t know; I don’t feel like it today.”
Gabe shrugs his backpack off his shoulders to rest it by his side, looking out at the park as the setting sun stretches the shadows of the trees. “Dad kicked me out,” he says after a moment, not surprised when Travis gives him a shocked look. “Or I ran away. I can’t tell.”
Travis sits back, resting his head against the wall as he breathes in his cigarette. “Shit, man,” he mumbles to himself, then a little louder, “You wanna talk?”
Gabe instantly shakes his head. There’s nothing to say about his home life, he thinks. It’s not fun and that’s why he stays at the tunnel all the time, but he thought that would be obvious by now.
Travis thinks for a moment before he tries again. “Wanna paint?”
Gabe just shakes his head again, though. “Wouldn’t wanna burden the wall with my downer shit.” Travis nudges his arm gently but Gabe just shrugs and looks at him. Maybe this is one of those moments in the movies, Gabe thinks, where silence is better than talking. Where a picture paints a thousand words. He’d suggest it out loud but he thinks that would defeat the purpose, so he just holds a hand out instead. Travis instantly gets the message and reaches into his pocket to pull out his packet of cigarettes.
They smoke through a couple each as the sky outside begins to dim and the sun gradually disappears altogether. As Gabe dubs out his third cigarette, Travis is still puffing on his fourth. He turns to him, wonders aloud, “Maybe you should be going. It’s getting dark,” but Travis just looks at him.
“Maybe,” he says finally, breathing smoke with his words. “I should, yeah.” Gabe prepares to scoot over and give Travis the room to stand up so he can leave, but instead, Travis just leans over. He reaches a hand out to hold onto Gabe’s face, his thumb and fingers pressing to either side of his jaw with his cigarette poised between two fingers. He leans across and kisses him, slow and long enough to allow Gabe time to melt into it before he finally pulls back and stands up. Gabe can taste the nicotine on his breath, just behind Gabe’s own aftertaste, but he doesn’t mind.
He stands, gives the obligatory bro-hug with their hands held together between them before Gabe is waving goodbye. He sits back down in the same spot he was in before once Travis has left, watching the swaying trees in the park across from him and counting the leaves. He can’t remember what happens between yawning and falling asleep, but he’s sure it would be a long and boring story to tell.
---
Gabe is shocked awake by a sudden thwack to the side of his head. He sits up and looks around in alarm, only noticing the bright morning out outside the mouth of the tunnel and a small, wrapped-up sleeping bag sitting on the ground next to him. He feels another thwack and realises that something’s being thrown at him, and when he looks around again, all he sees is Disashi standing over him with as many sleeping bags in his grip as he can take.
“What are-”
“Morning,” Disashi interrupts, rocking on his toes as he drops the bundle of swags on the concrete ground. “Travie said you was having troubles at home,” he adds after a moment, not noticing when Gabe’s face pales. “So we’s gonna sleep out here and keeps you company!”
He grabs one of the sleeping bags and sets it down so he can sit on it, facing Gabe with a big smile on his face. “Travie also said you was a dumb cunt who’d get cold and complain, so we’s all bought you this.” He points at the sleeping bag next to Gabe, giving a little nod as he does.
“Thanks, Disashi,” Gabe murmurs sleepily, smiling just as. He picks up the sleeping bag and rests it in his lap, cuddling it to his chest for something to rest his head on as he looks around. “Where is everyone?”
Disashi thinks for a moment before recounting everyone on his fingers. “We gots one group buying groceries, some out buyin’ cigs, another little group getting their IDs from Wentz, and Nicki’s just in the park.” Gabe’s eyes widen when he hears Nicki’s name and so he leans around the edge of the tunnel wall, looking out to see her sitting on the small brick wall that Gabe and Matt first talked on.
“I’ll be right back,” he murmurs, dropping his sleeping bag and standing up. He walks over to the wall, pausing a few feet away, but before he can chicken out, Nicki looks up at him and tries to force a smile. “Hi,” he calls.
“Hi, Gabe,” she replies, looking down as she swings her legs off the edge of the wall, waiting for Gabe to approach and sit up on it with her. “Feelin’ okay?”
Gabe frowns gently as he leans up against the bricks and looks up at her. Just as pretty, just as fascinating as the day he met her. “You came back.”
Nicki takes a deep breath, closes her eyes and nods. “Yea’, I did,” she says, finally.
Gabe screws up his nose and looks down at his feet. He doesn’t want to pester, but, “Why?”
She gives him a look that makes him feel horribly naive, but it soon relaxes out to a slightly frustrated smile. “Because,” she says, “I just did. I don’t know why I did, ‘cause I’m still mad at that boy.” She pauses and adds, a little lower, “and you; don’t think you’s off the hook.” She shakes her head and swings her feet, sighing as she looks up and bites her lip in thought. “‘Cause we’s a family, yeah? And in families you do shit you don’t have a reason for. What you can’t justify all the time. You know? And I’m mad at my boy but I bet you two had a good reason for that thing you did, and if you got’s a good reason then fine, I guess I don’t got a right to be mad at my brother,” she concludes.
Gabe smiles a little thoughtfully at everything she’s said. Although he’s planning on walking away and leaving her to think, she holds her arms out to him, so he leans in closer to hug around her waist instead. “Don’t you run off any time soon,” she mumbles. “I like havin’ you in my family.”
Gabe closes his eyes as he rests his head on her shoulder, not having any plans to let go of her waist any time soon. “I like it too,” he admits quietly, smiling at the thought. This is the family he needs, he thinks. This is where he belongs.
continued on from part one.
beating:
a slang term for beatboxing; a form of vocal percussion which primarily involves the art of producing drum beats, rhythm, and musical sounds using one's mouth, lips, tongue and voice.
---
It appears that the sleep over had been previously organised, because by the time Travis and Gabe gets back to the tunnel that evening, everyone is already there with their sleeping bags. Disashi and Wayne are leant over a slightly pathetic pile of sticks and scrunched up pieces of paper, trying to catch light to the wood with their cigarette lighters. Tyga lays on his stomach on his sleeping bag close to them, trying to steal the flame for his cigarette.
Travis leaves Gabe’s side to approach Nicki. He kisses her on the lips for a moment, which sends Gabe’s glance elsewhere as to not feel awkward watching them. He glances back up to see Travis with a hand around her waist, walking her over to the fire. He leans down to slap a hand against the back of his cousin’s head, making the boy grunt and look up.
“You’re fourteen,” he grumbles at him, squatting down to snatch the cigarette from him and press it between his lips. “Leave that shit for the big kids, idiot.”
Tyga frowns at him and starts to sit up so he can protest, but Disashi reaches out to tug him into a headlock and distract him. He says something about helping with the fire and Travis takes it as his chance to escape with his girlfriend.
“Hey Gabey,” Nicki coos to Gabe, waving as she leans against Travis. “You don’t look very prepared. How ‘bout you have my sleeping bag?” Gabe opens his mouth to protest, but Travis just nods in reply for him.
“That’d be good, Gabe. We ‘aint lettin’ you sleep on the concrete, y’know. We ‘aint that heartless.” He grins his toothy grin that causes Gabe to smile as well, before finally mumbling his thanks.
When it gets dark, Gabe finds it oddly comforting to have the small fire close to him, keeping him warm and well aware of his surroundings. Nicki is curled up close to Travis, sharing his sleeping bag made for two. It’s more of a swag than a sleeping bag, which is lucky to add warmth and space.
Gabe is pretty sure that everyone is asleep. He can only hear quiet breathing, and he’s sure that if Travis or Nicki were awake then they’d be kissing and he can normally hear the soft smacking of lips when everything else is this quiet, especially in the echoing tunnel. Gabe isn’t awake because of discomfort, because he’s thankful Nicki had given him her sleeping bag, but he’s just distracted. He caught himself looking into the low burning fire for a good ten minutes at least, just thinking back to everything Travis taught him about tagging that day. The hours must be turning over into the AM by the time he falls asleep, but he’s just thankful for some shut eye.
Despite being one of the last to fall asleep, though, Gabe finds himself one of the first to be awake. He thinks that it may partially be because of discomfort this time, because he finds himself laying half against the wall, which is awkward in itself for the curved shape of the tunnel. He thinks he might have cranked his shoulder muscle.
Still, he’s awake now, so he might as well get up. When he pulls himself into a sitting position, he rubs at his tired eyes and takes a look around as his senses begin to wake up. He can hear the pattering of rain outside, and he’s sure he can smell the dew from the park close by as well. The rain sounds fairly heavy, so he decides he might go out to wash his face with the earth’s free shower to wake himself up some more.
He stumbles to a standing position, almost slipping over from the material of his sleeping bag against his socks. When he gains his composure and finds his shoes, he tip toes carefully between the sleeping bodies and heads towards the mouth of the tunnel, head down and hands in his pockets for warmth.
When he reaches the mouth, he has to stop when he sees someone sitting close to it. He recognises it as Travis for the mounds of curly hair and the long limbs wrapped around each other; his knees to his chest and his arms around his shins. “Hey,” Gabe says quietly, his voice threatening to crack from its early morning use.
Travis looks up lazily and smiles at him, half lidded and peaceful, but at the same time he still appears a little more awake than Gabe feels. Travis nods at the ground so Gabe takes that as an invitation to sit down, making himself as comfortable as possible on the concrete ground. He crosses his ankles over and wraps his arms loosely around his knees, hands holding onto each other as he relaxes his legs into the crooks of his elbows.
“Nice morning,” Travis murmurs, smirking the slightest as he gestures out the mouth of the tunnel at the pouring rain. Gabe looks at the hand he used to gesture and only just notices the cigarette in it, which is when he starts to crave.
He realises what Travis has said and laughs quietly, his voice still tired and so it comes out as a heavier breath of air. “Yeah,” he murmurs, bringing his legs in closer and resting his chin on his knees.
“Cigarette?” Travis finally offers, holding out his half-smoked one for Gabe to take. Gabe thanks him with a smile and takes a hand away from his legs to hold onto it, then presses it to his lips to try and wake himself up with the nicotine.
They sit quietly for a few moments longer, taking in the peaceful scene of heavy rain splattering against the city’s skin of concrete. Gabe finally asks, once he’s squashed the cigarette out on the ground next to him, “You wanna get a coffee?”
Travis doesn’t seem to think about it, but he does pause for a moment or two to watch the rain before he gives a slow nod. Both boys stand with the aid of each other and step outside the tunnel, not afraid of the water falling from the sky. The cold instantly wakes Gabe up and he finds himself rubbing at his eyes, then squinting to avoid getting raindrops in them.
At first, they don’t really talk. They just walk, mostly along the sidewalk but occasionally stepping onto the road just for the fun of it, just to annoy the cars of early morning workers. Gabe ends up laughing quietly to himself when he glances over at Travis, which catches the other’s attention.
“What?” He asks, mainly with his eyes as he shoves Gabe gently towards the road.
Gabe stumbles and smiles, then sways back to walk on the sidewalk. “Your hair. It’s really long.” He can’t really help but reach out and touch the wet curls slumping down Travis’ back after losing their life from the rain. After realising what he’s doing, he brings his hand back to himself and hides it in his pocket.
They step into a Starbuck’s coffee house, dripping wet and without care for what they dampen on their way. Travis buys them both espressos with wet money from his wet wallet in the back pocket of his wet jeans. Gabe grins to himself as the barista makes them their coffees then hands them over, all the while giving them strange looks for their physical state.
They sit outside to drink, despite the welcoming cushioned seats of the coffee shop only a few inches of wall away. The rain, along with the caffeine, wakes them up. It wakes them enough to talk, at least. Gabe ends up asking about the only thing he knows about Travis, but Travis doesn’t seem to mind.
“Have you ever lost a piece? Like, a really good one that you didn’t want to lose?” He thought of it because of the rain, because sometimes, rain can get into those alleyways and wash away wet paint, leaving the artworks to run down the sidewalks and into the gutters.
Travis seems to think about it for a moment before he leans back against the wall of the coffee shop and shrugs. “When I was just startin’, I thought every paintin’ was special, ya’ know? I didn’t wanna paint over nothin’. But then I realised that you gotta. You gotta be fresh with art. It don’t matter who misses out on seeing the old stuff, because it’s who did see it that matters. They been there longer.” He pauses to take a long sip from his drink now that it’s cool enough for his tongue, then continues. “I do got a wall, though. Where I don’t paint over nothin’. Where I practise everything. Where my special’s go.”
Gabe smiles to himself without realising it as he watches Travis talk. “You wanna walk?” He asks after a moment, so Travis nods and they bring themselves to their feet. Neither say it out loud, but they know they’re heading for Travis’ wall.
He leads them back, back the way they’d gone the previous day, to the residential street where Travis’ house is. Travis leads Gabe down a path along the side of the house, jumping a small wooden fence to get to the back yard. Gabe jumps after him, following him back.
The yard is small and unkempt, but most of the grass is dead enough to not require mowing anyway. To Gabe’s surprise, Travis just shows him the back wall of the house, littered with pictures, barely a speck of wall without paint. The bottom of the wall lies rows of spray cans, some presumably full and a couple laying on their sides, empty and forgotten. Gabe takes a moment to admire the graffiti before Travis approaches the wall to break his focus.
Gabe doesn’t want to paint on this one. He doesn’t even want to ask to. Travis doesn’t offer, either, so he figures that’s enough for him to spectate rather than join. This is Travis’ wall, not one for the public.
Gabe barely realises how quickly the time passes. He’s sat, once again in indian style, on the ground watching. The rain has stopped without their noticing and the back door of the house opens, catching Gabe’s attention but not Travis’. Gabe feels frozen when a tall, African-American man with much darker skin compared to Travis stands in the door way and stares at him, but he finally breaks his gaze and looks to Travis instead.
“You had one of your sleepovers?” He asks, so Travis just nods as he stops painting in order to shake up the can. “Tell me next time. Your dinner got cold.”
The man looks at Gabe again before he brushes him off and steps inside. The screen door swings shut and bangs against the wooden door, unevenly fitting with the frame. “That was my pa,” Travis says absently as he continues to paint. “He’s cool with you here, don’t freak.”
“Wasn’t gonna,” Gabe murmurs, even though he’s still a little intimidated from the encounter. He keeps quiet about it, though, remaining where he is for most of the day, only standing up to join Travis when his father invites them inside to have some lunch of ham sandwiches. Gabe feels a little guilty when he peels the ham off his, but Travis doesn’t ask questions and instead eats his portion while Gabe settles for bread and butter. Travis figures, Gabe is either vegetarian or Jewish, though truthfully, he’s both.
It turns out that Travis hadn’t noticed how fast time flew, either, because he curses when he looks at the clock a few hours later. It’s getting dark out, so he disappears into his bedroom and comes out a few minutes later in a change of clothes to stay fresh. He slings his hoodie over one shoulder and beckons Gabe out, telling his father he’ll see him another time before they leave the house.
Gabe can’t help but stare on their way back. He watches Travis more than he watches where he’s going, so when he nearly crashes into someone, Travis pulls him out of the way and asks him what’s up. Gabe bites his lip and shrugs, kicking at a stone before pointing lamely at Travis’ arms. “You have cool tats.” He really hadn’t seen them before; he swears Travis has been wearing long sleeves every time they met.
“Oh.” Travis looks down at his arms and nods, smiling dreamily. He runs a hand against his forearm and Gabe then sees the tattoos of letters on his knuckles, too, which is when he feels guilty for not noticing those. “Yeah.” Gabe looks up at him and smiles, but this time he glances forward to make sure he doesn’t crash into anyone. “I wanna get a full sleeve one day,” he says as he takes his hoodie from over his shoulder and begins to tug it on. “Y’know,” he adds when he sees Gabe’s blank look, “a whole arm of tattoos. See, I got gaps?”
He tugs his sleeve up to show where there are patches of skin bare. Gabe thinks that Travis would look good with tattoos all over him, but when he thinks about it in his head, it might sound a little strange out loud so he decides to keep it to himself. “I like them.”
“Thanks.”
Even though Travis has sleeves on now, Gabe can’t help but glance over at him every now and then while they walk. At one point, Travis looks back and catches him, but he just smiles a little shyly and laughs under his breath, then averts his gaze to his shoes.
When they return to the rest of the group, Travis is greeted with a slap to the face. Nicki crosses her arms over her chest and mutters, “Where have you been? You didn’t tell us or nothin’.” Travis doesn’t answer, just shrugs. “Don’t scare me like that,” she grumbles, then leans up to kiss him.
Travis’ face falls for the first time that day and he holds onto her arms, keeping her back. “I don’t feel like you today,” he says honestly, then walks right past her. Nicki stands, dumbfounded for a moment before looking at Gabe with a cold stare, as if he has something to do with it. Gabe holds his hands up in defence, so she rolls her eyes and storms past Travis to sit with the other boys.
Gabe tentatively approaches Travis, sitting on the ground next to him by the wall. His hands are cupped around the end of his cigarette as he tries to light it, only looking to Gabe when he succeeds. “Want one?”
Gabe nods and watches Travis get out another. He lights that with the end of his own, held between his lips, before handing it to Gabe. “What’s up?”
Travis shrugs gently. He knows what Gabe is referring to. “Just not feelin’ like a good boyfriend today,” he admits, tilting his head back and sucking in a hit from the cigarette. “Not feelin’ the commitment.”
“That’s dumb,” Gabe murmurs, leaving his cigarette perched between two fingers and far from his face. “How can you-”
“I just don’t,” Travis mutters. “You’re single, you don’t get it.” He looks at Gabe seriously, unintentionally forcing Gabe to apologise. “Sorry,” he adds in return, “but really. I don’t know. I just don’t feel like her.”
Gabe tries not to question it and instead presses his cancer stick to his mouth, breathing it in. It tastes different than normal and he wonders if they’re another brand, but figures it’s pointless to ask. “I’m gonna go play Bullshit,” he says after a moment, looking at Travis almost apologetically, but when Travis nods, that’s Gabe’s approval to go.
He sits over with Nicki and the boys, with only half of his heart in the game. He watches Travis at the end of the tunnel, spraying something low on the wall with only one colour of paint. He wants to know what he’s working on, wants to know if there are any tips he can give Gabe for it. He suddenly feels a strong obsession with the paint, a desperation to be close to him and to hear his wise words and what he has to say. But he stays put until nightfall, when Travis beckons Nicki over to see. She examines the graffiti he’d been painting for only a second before leaning into his arms and kissing his lips.
Gabe doesn’t recognise his feeling of disappointment when he sees Travis kiss back.
The group sleeps in the tunnel for the second night in a row, Nicki once again sharing a sleeping bag with Travis. The next morning, it’s a little more comforting for Gabe when he finds he’s not the first one awake. He can’t hear rain but he can hear spray cans, and that alone is enough to make him sit up and smile at everyone in the tunnel around him.
Tyga is the only one still in his sleeping bag, but he’s not sleeping. He shuffles closer to Gabe and they talk quietly for a while, although the conversation mainly consists of grunts and grumbles and the occasional breath of laughter. Gabe finally reaches out to mess up the younger McCoy’s hair then sits up, getting himself out of the sleeping bag and walking over to where Travis is playing cards with Disashi.
“Morning, guys,” Gabe greets as he sits down, crossing his legs and looking down at the game of snap between the two opposite him.
“Afternoon, Gabe,” Travis corrects with a grin, making Gabe pull a face and scratch his head. “How’d you sleep?”
“Like a bear,” Disashi fills for him, earning him a punch in the arm from Gabe. They laugh and Travis picks up the cards laying in the middle of the three, then takes Disashi’s hand off him without protest. He begins to shuffle the cards then deals them out to all three of them, without waiting to see if Gabe even wants to play.
“So, Travie. Are you and.. Nicki? Are you okay?” Gabe asks a little hesitantly, earning him a look from the aforementioned.
“We’re fine, G. Don’t wanna talk about it,” Travis shrugs as he deals out the last of the cards then evens out his hand, holding them face down in his palm.
“Don’t wanna talk to me, or don’t wanna talk?” Gabe pesters as he does the same, noticing Disashi shifting uncomfortably from the corner of his eye.
“You’re single, you wouldn’t get it,” Travis laughs quietly, putting the first card down on the floor, the suit facing up. “We’s cool, G. Stop freakin’.”
Gabe reluctantly gives up and focuses on the game instead. He loses the first two snaps, but on the third he only just gets his palm down on the cards before Travis slaps his hand down on top of his. Gabe laughs as Travis slowly pulls his hand away and lets Gabe take the pile.
Despite his breezy start, Disashi gets out first. He throws his last card down on the pile and stands up immediately, claiming something about milkshakes with Matt before he waves lazily and walks away from the two. Travis looks up at Gabe from the card pile, then, as if waiting for him to put the next card, down, but Gabe sets his hand down beside him instead.
“D’you wanna paint? This ‘aint as fun with two people.”
Travis thinks for a moment before he sits back and turns his cards over, spreading out his hand. “Sure,” he says, his pursed lips turning into a smile before he pockets the deck and stands up with his friend.
Gabe follows him to the opposite end of the tunnel, keeping his focus on Travis and his graffiti, so he doesn’t realise how clingy he might seem to the others. He tries to keep a distance, but at the day goes on, his eyes gradually move from the wall, to Travis’ hands, to Travis himself. He’s watching for techniques, he tells himself, but in all honesty, he’s sort of just mesmerised by the concentration on Travis’ face. Like he’s really putting his heart into the paint. He smiles gently to himself when Travis will bite his lip or poke his tongue out, then covers it up with a laugh whenever Travis gets paint on his fingers.
For Gabe, the days pass as a blur like that. Barely going home, staying in the tunnel whenever he can. The Schleproks will leave and he’ll lag behind, giving the impression that he’ll leave too but only ending up falling asleep against the wall of the tunnel with his backpack for a pillow. He traces the pictures on the walls, like cave drawings of their moderns times. He pieces together stories from the tags, smiling every time he finds a faded heart in amongst all the words.
A week of watching Travis paint passes too quickly and they decide to go out again; dropping their spray cans and leaving the tunnel. They head as a pack, as a herd of friends towards the Clandestine skate park with simple intentions to just hang out.
Pete’s crew migrate easily over to the Schleproks once they’ve been spotted. Pete and his girlfriend walk along with Travis and Gabe, where Gabe finds out that the girl’s name is Ashlee. Even after being introduced, she still appears shy and rests her cheek against Pete’s shoulder as they walk with their hands held tightly together. She doesn’t really look like the skater type of girl, but Gabe decides against pestering her with questions.
Gabe would step back into the bigger group of people in order to say hello to Cassadee again, but she’s lingering with Nicki and the red-haired girl, appearing deep in conversation. He’d rather not disturb, plus it means he gets to walk with Travis for a bit. Gabe doesn’t see himself as possessive; he believes he’s just taking this as an opportunity to hang out with Travis more and get to know him better.
The two combined crews stop walking when they reach the ice cream parlour and head inside. Everyone branches off into their own little groups to find booths for themselves, and Gabe is pleased that this time, he gets to sit with Travis, Pete and Ashlee instead of being cooped up with a bunch of people he doesn’t know.
“Who’s buying, this time?” Pete asks with a nod as he takes his fly sunglasses from his face to rest them on top of his head. “I can’t cover this many people again,” he adds with a laugh as he snakes his arm around Ashlee’s shoulders.
Travis just rolls his eyes and taps his fingers against the table, leaning back in his seat as he does. “I will,” he offers, “but just you guys. I’ve only got a bit of cash left over.”
Gabe tucks his feet up onto the seat to let Travis shuffle past him in order to get out of the booth. When he stands over them, he points to Pete and Ashlee and thinks aloud, “Chocolate and strawberry,” jabs a thumb at himself, “chocolate,” and then at Gabe, “vanilla. Okay. I’ll be right back.”
Just before he manages to leave, Gabe reaches out and grabs at his shirt to get his attention. “I’ll pay you back for all this, I really will,” he promises, but Travis just laughs at him and pries his fingers from his hoodie.
“Don’t worry about it.”
Travis returns a matter of minutes later with a small tray of milkshakes, all in parlour shop glasses. He sets them down on the table then sits down, scooting over to Gabe so he’s not sitting on the edge of the seat. They all take their drinks and begin to sip at them, waiting for somebody to start talking.
At first, Ashlee starts talking to her boyfriend, but Gabe instantly zones out. He only caught a few words; something about her girlfriends and what they did on the weekend, and if Pete had fun at the park. Travis finds it easy to throw himself into the conversation with them, but Gabe remains quiet in his corner of the booth with his lips around the straw of his vanilla milkshake.
“Do you think he’s awake?”
“What? No, his eyes are open.”
“He’s zombied-out on us.”
“Fuck off, man, he does that sometimes.”
Gabe feels a hand nudge his arm and he snaps out of his daze to look over at the three staring at him expectantly. Travis questions him, “You a’ight, man?”
Gabe laughs to himself and quickly nods as he taps his finger against the edge of his glass. “Yeah, sorry,” he says sheepishly, “Just zoned out.”
“We noticed,” Pete teases, smirking before letting it disappear as he kisses into Ashlee’s hair.
Pete seems to find it easy to pick up the conversation again, but he speaks quieter to address only Ashlee, leaving Travis and Gabe to converse amongst themselves. “What’chu thinking ‘bout, man?” Travis asks, nudging him again before he leans back and picks up his milkshake to take a sip.
“Nothin’,” Gabe shrugs it off. “Just itchin’ to paint, y’know?” He laughs at himself as he turns his head to look out the shop window, admiring the sunny day outside.
“Gets addictive, don’t it?” Gabe nods and smiles dreamily, then turns back to his friend as he speaks again, “We could always head back to the tunnel, get you some time to practise without the others chillin’ around.”
Gabe only thinks about it for a second before he nods again, adding, “Yeah, sure.” He’d love some private time to work on his graffiti, especially more one-on-one time with Travis so he can learn without distractions, or without Nicki always wandering over to them and stealing Travis’ attention. He’d settle for an afternoon at Travis’ house, watching him paint on his back wall, but he feels he may be too intruding if he asked for them to go there. So he’ll settle for the tunnel.
“Hey, guys,” Travis calls to his Schleproks as he stands up from the booth and picks up his milkshake with him. “Me and Gabe; we’s just going back to paint for a bit. Y’all right to just chill with the Clandies?”
Nicki leans over the back of her booth seat to look at him, giving him a salute and a nod. “I was gonna take us scoutin’ to have a look for some new space. You don’t mind if we take our time, do ya’?”
Travis looks at Gabe for an answer but Gabe only shrugs as he stands up. Travis looks back at Nicki and shrugs as well. “Should be fine,” he says, “I’ll see ya’s all tonight, then.”
He puts his milkshake back down then beckons Gabe with him to head out of the parlour, immediately starting on their way back to the tunnel.
---
clandestine:
done or kept in secret, sometimes to conceal an illicit or improper purpose.
---
It’s still a little nerve-racking for Gabe to paint on their wall. Despite the many assurances and mentions that he’s part of the crew, he still feels like a bit of a burden to paint over what they’d done years ago. It’s worse that Travis isn’t painting with him; just standing beside or behind him (Gabe isn’t sure because he keeps changing positions) and occasionally praising him or suggesting he try something different.
The conversation has died down from graffiti, though, as Travis leans his shoulder against the wall and watches Gabe trying to shade the edge of one of his letters. Travis smiles to himself as he watches, wondering if he has that same look of concentration when he paints as when Gabe does.
“I’m sorry,” Gabe murmurs after a moment, making sure to keep his eyes on the wall and not on Travis. “Still sorry, I mean. About the other week, when Nicki got mad at you. That was my fault for keepin’ you.”
Travis tips his head against the wall and rolls his eyes before he reaches a hand out to nudge Gabe in the shoulder. “You keep frettin’, bro. There’s nothin’ you could’a done, I wanted to go taggin’ anyways. Stop thinkin’ it’s your fault. She ‘aint leavin’ me that easily.”
Gabe smiles just a little at the reassurance as he bends down to pick up a different colour of paint. “You know, you look like a boyfriend kind’a guy,” Travis points out. “D’you like any girls ‘round here?”
At first, Gabe just laughs quietly as he lifts up the black spray can to begin outlining what he’d been painting before. He has to think about it for a moment, because although he had a few crushes at first, he hasn’t been thinking about people as much as he has about paint.
“I guess some are kind’a cute,” he concludes with a thoughtful frown. “Most o’ who I like are, I guess, taken, though.” He forces himself to keep his eyes away from Travis and just keeps painting, chewing his lip while he does. Gabe doesn’t have these sorts of conversation often, so he doesn’t really want to talk eye-to-eye with someone about it.
Travis just laughs, though, quietly to himself and completely not mockingly. “You like Nicki?” he asks immediately, and Gabe can see the grin from the corner of his eye. He chuckles to himself again but Gabe quickly cuts him off with his stammering.
“No - Shit, man, I mean. Yeah, but. No. Not.. like.” He screws his face up as Travis continues to laugh at him until he finally corrects himself, “I liked her a bit at first, but then I saw the whole.. ‘alpha male’ thing that you’ve got goin’ on.”
Travis falls into an eventual silence and looks down as he taps his fingers against the wall. “So, what?” he asks, finally, “Who do you like? I guess Cass is kind’a cute, you guys’d be cool together.”
Gabe’s teeth start to attack his lower lip again as he starts to spray his can higher up. It takes him a moment to finally say it, to finally admit it to himself that he doesn’t really feel the way he first thought he did. “She’s not my type.”
He can feel Travis’ expectant stare boring holes through his head and Gabe braves a glance at him, to which he smiles sheepishly and caves into his thoughts. He does have a crush, but Travis is the last person he wants to talk to about that. Gabe doesn’t want to talk to anyone about it; it’s probably the kind of childish attraction that will go away as long as he ignores it, so telling people will just complicate things. “If I tell you, you’ll rip on me,” he says finally, looking further away and starting to paint a little further away, just for an excuse to keep his head turned in the opposite direction of Travis.
Travis frowns gently at him although Gabe can’t see. He nudges his gently, but Gabe still doesn’t look. “Dude,” he murmurs, “I wouldn’t do that, c’mon. I won’t tell anyone and I won’t rip on ya’.” He pauses as he watches Gabe spray the black paint slowly along the wall to create the bat wings that he first showed Gabe how to paint. “Promise.”
Gabe nervously looks back at Travis just to make sure he appears sincere. His words sound promising enough, so he shuts his eyes for a little longer than a blink then looks away again. “There’s this guy I think I like.”
Travis is glad Gabe isn’t watching him, because he’s sure his reaction would be offensive. He just sort-of gawks for a moment, before quickly composing himself then clearing his throat. He crosses his arms and shifts his weight from foot to foot, then finally just looks back up at his friend. “That’s not - not, like, bad or nothin’. You just.. don’t seem like the type.”
Gabe frowns to himself as he stresses, “I ’aint. I swear to God.”
Travis sighs to himself and leans his back against the wall. “Well?” Gabe still doesn’t look at him. “Is it Pete? Pete’s kind’a cute, I guess. I can’t really tell. He’s. I don’t know, short, but-”
“No,” Gabe quickly interrupts, shaking his head as he bends down to pick up a different can again. He shakes it up as he tries to find his words, then starts to spray again. “He’s a Schleprok.”
Travis hasn’t said anything for a minute or two and Gabe doesn’t want to look at him. He feels like his head is about to explode, like the tunnel has been corked at each end and the pressure of the intense silence is building up to be just too much, so he finally opens his mouth and starts to babble. “He’s amazing, I guess, and he’s like, good at everything he does. And I only known him for a little bit, because I only started hangin’ with you guys a few weeks back, but I think I really do like him even though I didn’t really think about it ‘till you started mentionin’ crushes and shit.” He takes a deep breath and grumbles, more to himself, “he’s fuckin’ great, but of course he’s got a girlfriend.”
Travis turns his head against the wall again, looking up at all the graffiti thoughtfully. He takes a second to mull over what Gabe had said, before finally looking at him and watching him paint. “You know, G,” he says quietly, beginning to chew on his lip as he does, “I’m the, uh. Only Schleprok with a girlfriend.”
And that’s it. He can see Gabe freeze up, he can see his hand begin to shake and make the lines he paints crooked and uneven. But Gabe keeps painting, Travis can tell that he doesn’t want him to see that he’s been found out. Doesn’t want to give in. It makes Travis smile a little bit.
“It’s okay, G,” he finally murmurs, trying to be as reassuring as possible. But the colour still hasn’t returned to Gabe’s face and he finds himself admitting something he hadn’t want to admitted, that he’d kept hidden down just like most of his emotions. “I kind’a think about you too.”
Gabe stares hard at the wall for barely a minute before he drops the can, kicking at the bottom of the wall and making Travis jump. “It can’t be a crush,” he stresses, clenching his fists for a moment as he turns away to slump against a dry section of the wall. “I just see you paintin’ or smokin’ or even just talkin’ and I wanna fuckin’ jump you. It ‘aint right, it’s unfair.”
Travis shoves both hands in his pockets as he walks to where Gabe is leaning, offering lamely, “sexual tension?”
Gabe screws up his face and runs his fingers through his short, curly hair. “Somethin’ like that,” he grumbles.
Travis looks down as he takes a hand from his pocket and reaches out to Gabe’s hoodie. He takes a hold of the zipper at the bottom and just plays with it for a moment as he thinks aloud, “I made out with a guy once.” It catches Gabe off guard at first, but Travis doesn’t say it as any kind of offering. Just mentions it. “Did you know one of my step brother’s is gay?”
Gabe shakes his head and Travis just shrugs, looking up at him before dropping his gaze back to Gabe’s zipper. “He was tryin’ to gross me out; tell me how two dudes did it. It doesn’t sound that bad.”
Gabe chews the inside of his lip and watches Travis innocently playing with his zipper until he finally lets go. He can tell where this is going, he can tell what Travis is saying. But he can’t figure out why he doesn’t stop it. Maybe he’s realised that this might be the only chance to get everything off his chest and to stop feeling so bottled up.
It’s not as if he has much of a chance to talk, though, because Travis has leant in closer and pressed their lips together, innocently enough at first. Gabe figures he should be pulling away, telling Travis that he appreciates it, but Nicki could come back at any time. The Schleproks could come back from their scouting trip and find these two boys kissing. They could get kicked out of the crew.
But this is his first kiss with a boy. He doesn’t want to cut that short or have it be a forgettable moment. Sure, Travis has Nicki and Gabe doesn’t need a relationship right now, but it doesn’t mean he doesn’t want a memorable first kiss.
He quickly leans into it to start kissing back, just as he feels Travis begin to pull away. It can’t be that short, he has to know the extent of what he’d been avoiding for so long. When he kisses back, he can feel Travis smile against his lips and so Gabe finally plucks up the courage to part his lips and reach a hand out to grab Travis’ shirt.
His tentative offer for a deeper kiss is met when Travis opens his mouth as well, immediately diving his tongue past Gabe’s teeth and lips. It catches him off guard but he doesn’t complain, instead taking the time to savour the peculiar touch of another boy’s tongue.
Travis finally pulls his mouth away, but keeps his body close. They catch their breath but Gabe doesn’t want to let go of his shirt and doesn’t want to get rid of the closeness. Just a couple more minutes, he tells himself, just a little longer in order to save this memory in his brain.
And although he does it slowly, it’s still unexpected when Travis reaches both hands up to start pushing Gabe’s hoodie off his shoulders. The whole time he’s watching Gabe with these wide, slightly hopeful eyes, a question of Can we? hiding behind the stare. Gabe swallows the lump in his throat but he can’t bring himself to reply, so he just shrugs his jacket off and tugs Travis’ shirt again as his silent answer.
When he’s got the confirmation, Travis works his hands like magic to run them up Gabe’s stomach under his shirt to send goosebumps breaking out across his skin. The whole time Travis leans against him, touching under his clothes, he can only think how lucky Nicki must be to have a guy so fond of using his hands.
Gabe lets out an unintentional moan in the back of his throat when Travis presses his thigh up against his crotch. He purses his lips and glares at him, making Travis laugh before ducking his head down and kissing gently at Gabe’s collar. Although the touching is all good and fun, Gabe need to touch down there more, needs to know what he’s getting himself into.
Somewhat nervously, he nudges his hands past Travis’ to his low-riding jeans and pushes them down that little bit further. He doesn’t look and instead just undoes his fly and dips a hand down past his boxers, wrapping a hand around his length. He can feel the way Travis presses his blunt nails into Gabe’s skin from the second he’d touched him, and surprisingly, the feel of another guys’ dick isn’t as strange as he first thought it to be.
“We’re both guys,” Travis says after a moment, dropping his head to rest his forehead on Gabe’s shoulder, burying his face into the warm crook of his neck. “And - yeah. We don’t need any protection, you know?” He nips at the skin at the base of Gabe’s neck and kisses it gently. “I mean, you can’t get pregnant.”
Gabe makes a small sound in the back of his throat as he twists his wrist and makes Travis gasp. “S-So, I’m going to be..”
“Under,” Travis mumbles. He lifts his head to look at him, giving him that pleading look again, so reluctantly, Gabe just nods in agreement.
Travis leans back just enough to let Gabe slide his back down the wall, cradled comfortably by the curve of the concrete. He takes Gabe’s hand from his pants before he starts to pull Gabe’s down, kissing him while he does as his own way of reassurance. The kisses do make it better, really, for they take Gabe’s mind off his nerves and his heavily beating heart.
Gabe keeps his eyes closed for as much of it as he can. For the stretch, for the burn, and even for the pleasure. When Travis is inside him, he wraps his arms tightly around his shoulders and grips onto his shirt for dear life, keeping his jaw tightly shut so he won’t make a sound. He feels it humiliating enough to be bottoming, and even though it feels better than he’d ever thought it would, he figures it’ll be less embarrassing in the long run if he isn’t a stuttering, whimpering mess.
Gabe decides against mentioning that as well as being his first time with a boy, Travis was his first time in general. He’s made out with girls before, maybe fooled around, but never to the extent that he and Travis had gone to. They don’t kiss when they finish. Travis helps Gabe clean up, though, and Gabe is relieved to realise that he’s still able to look Travis in the eye. They keep away from each other for a few minutes, allowing Gabe time to pack all the spray cans back into his backpack and for Travis to fetch a few sticks from the park.
By the time the rest of the Schleproks are back, the sun has begin to set and the two boys have a small campfire between them. As soon as they’re close enough, Nicki makes herself comfortable sitting in Travis’ lap and Gabe does whatever he can to avoid watching them.
---
Gabe wakes up the following morning with a cramp in his leg and a sore shoulder from sleeping on the concrete. He can hear rain, again, which makes him want to go back to sleep, but the discomfort of the ground he lays on is enough to convince him to sit up and rub his eyes.
His first instinct is to migrate over to the barely-lit fire where most of the crew are, maybe to talk a little, sit close to the others to get warmer or just have a game of cards. But when he takes a quick glance around, he sees the figures of Travis and Nicki sitting by the far end of the tunnel. He frowns gently and stands up, beginning to approach the couple to see if he can hear what’s going on.
Fear settles in his gut when he sees the slightly distraught look on Travis’ face. He sits by the edge of the tunnel mouth, just sheltered from the rain with Nicki sitting next to him. Her hand is on his knee and both of his hands are on top of her’s, with his head low and his gaze directed at his shoes. Gabe hopes they can’t see him when he leans against the opposing tunnel wall, out of their view.
Nicki suddenly jerks her hands away, and at first, Gabe thinks it’s because she’s spotted him. But she stands immediately and looks down at Travis with a hurt expression, rather than looking over at Gabe. She says something so quietly Gabe can’t hear it, only see her mouth move before she frowns and folds her arms tightly over her chest as she begins to walk away.
Travis calls out to her, catching the attention of the other Schleproks, but he ignores them and rises to his feet.
“Don’t you dare go followin’ me, McCoy,” Nicki calls back after looking over her shoulder at him. She holds herself tighter in the rain and watches, waiting for him to stand completely still before continuing on her walk away from the tunnel.
“Trav?” Gabe tries, almost afraid of what will happen when he does get his friend’s attention. But Travis just shakes his head, not even looking at Gabe as he slumps back down against the wall.
“I had to tell her,” he says, looking out at where she’d walked off to. “She’ll be back,” he adds after a moment, speaking so surely, but so sadly. “Don’t worry. She’ll come back.”
---
breakin’:
short for breakdancing. a style of dance popular in the hip hop era that uses the beat and the pulse of a song to create unique dance moves.
---
It’s alarming and a little frightening when Travis approaches Gabe a matter of days later, catching him off guard from where he’d been doodling graffiti designs with a pen and pad. They hadn’t talked very much over those couple of days, not since Nicki stormed out, and Gabe is legitimately worried that Travis has finally built up the guts to give him the boot. This is Gabe’s fault, after all. Isn’t it?
“You need to go home,” Travis says quietly. Gabe lowers his eyes back down to his pad, tapping the pen against the paper nervously as he tries to hide how disappointed he really is. The Schleproks have been his only home for such a long time, he doesn’t know what he’ll do without them.
“Gabe?” Gabe looks up as Travis squats down next to him, resting a hand on his shoulder. “You really gotta go home, Gabe,” he says again, but his expression has changed. From what Gabe had presumed to be anger is actually a look of concern, though Gabe isn’t sure which he should be more worried about.
He puts the pen down and shoves the pad into the open backpack in front of him as he sits up properly, leaning back against the tunnel wall. “I know you’s having fun here and we love you a real lot.” Gabe shuts his eyes, not wanting to listen to any kind of goodbye speech. If they want him gone, he’ll go. But Travis continues, his hand still on Gabe’s shoulder. “Your dad’ll be worryin’ ‘bout you, y’know? At least go let him know you’re alive, a’ight? And come back as soon as you can, yeah?”
“What?” Gabe’s eyes widen and he tries not to give away how much of a relief it is to hear the words come back. “You want me to stay?”
Travis laughs a little forcefully but at least he’s smiling, and that’s better than the sulking he’s been failing at hiding over the past couple of days. “No, we want you to go check on your pa’. Then we want you to come back. A’ight?”
Gabe takes a deep breath and looks up and around the tunnel that he’s called him home for the past week or so. “Guess that makes sense,” he finally says, glad to see a Travis wearing a proper smile. “I’ll be back tomorrow, okay?”
Travis nods and stands back up, holding a hand out for Gabe to take in order to help him to his feet. Once they’re both standing, Gabe scoops up his backpack and tugs it on, figuring it’ll be nice to have a change of clothes from the few he packed in his bag and a shower with actual soap and warm water.
He resists any cheesy kind of goodbye, especially something like a hug, and instead just holds a fist out for Travis to bump his own against it. He leaves it at that, telling himself he will be back tomorrow, showered and dressed and feeling better. The rest of the crew get a wave from him as he passes and thankfully, they return it.
When he arrives back at his little house in the suburbs, he thinks that he should probably feel relieved in some way to be back, but it dumbfounds him to see how emotionally unattached to the house he really is. The only thing he’s relieved about is a warm bed, a shower and a wardrobe of fresh clothing, but otherwise, he’ll be glad to be back at the tunnel the following day.
He steps inside and takes a deep breath as the door swings shut. He’d honestly been planning on heading straight for his room, but his father is standing in the kitchen giving him a deathly glare, to an extent that Gabe hasn’t received before. “Hey,” he says simply, raising an eyebrow in confusion as he walks towards the breakfast table.
“You reckless, psychotic.. selfish little shit,” his father spits at him, gripping the edge of the table. Gabe frowns and sways backwards, unsure of what’s making his dad speak so fiercely. “What on earth made you think running away like that was a good idea? And you just come waltzing back inside like you own this fucking house, do you?”
Gabe scoffs as he folds his arms tightly over his chest. To be honest, he hadn’t at all been thinking about home, because when he thinks about it more deeply, the tunnel is his home. The Schleproks are his family. Not this dingy unit with three other men who he’d rather leave behind in a burning building.
“I didn’t run away. How the fuck’d you know, anyways? You’s always out, doin’ shit, wastin’ time at school ‘n shit,” he spits back at him. He can see his father’s eyes light up in fury, so Gabe takes it as his opportunity to dash down the hall to his bedroom.
As Gabe drops his bag on his bed and begins to empty everything out of it, he can hear his father calling through the wood of the door, banging on the door itself to try and get it open. Gabe hurries to stuff some clean clothes into his bag, as well as the last of his money hidden under his mattress, before finally turning around to face the door. In the time span of five minutes, his dad has called him a liar, selfish, psychotic and reckless, and it’s starting to get to Gabe’s head.
“Fuck off, old man!” He shouts at him, walking over and kicking the door. The banging stops only for a second before he begins to yell again, more fiercely this time.
From down the hall, Gabe can hear the sounds of his brothers’ yelling, whining in their stupid sing-song voices about how Gabe hasn’t gone to school for years, hasn’t been cooking dinner and hasn’t been cleaning his section of the house. When he hears Ricky say something about Gabe stealing money, he wants to reach through the door and strangle his little brother, but that would take too much time. He needs to get out of the house and away from the yelling as soon as possible.
Gabe takes a risk by putting his bag on and slipping his feet into a fresh pair of socks before tying up his sneakers. He yells to his dad, “I’m opening the door!” and walks over, waiting for the banging to stop before finally unlocking it and swinging it open. He tries his hardest to keep his composure casual as his father glares up at him, and although he’s quiet for now, Gabe can hear the insults resting on the tip of his tongue.
“This family needs you,” his dad finally spits, clenching his fists by his sides. “You can’t just go off for days and weeks at a time without telling us. We worry.”
“Yeah, Gabe’s such a cunt!”
Gabe and his father both turn around to see Ricky standing in the hallway with his arms crossed, looking up at the fight. Gabe grins at him while his father glares hard, then looks back at Gabe. “Look at what you’re teaching your brothers! Rude, vile, stupid fucking child!” He looks as if he’s about to hit him, so Gabe holds his hands up and squeezes past. His father makes a grab for his hoodie but Gabe keeps walking, just out of reach as he heads for the front door.
“Don’t you dare step out of that door,” his father threatens, long finger pointing at him as Gabe’s two brother stand together just behind him, watching the ordeal. “Don’t you dare or you’ll never come back here again. Not for money, not for family, not for anything.”
Gabe folds his arms and watches as Adrian gives him dirty looks from behind his father’s frame. Gabe gives him the finger, which just makes his father snap and growl like an angered dog. “You’re not even paying attention!”
“Look,” Gabe mutters, grabbing onto his backpack straps and tugging on them lightly, mainly for his own amusement. “I’m gonna walk out this door, yea’? I’m gonna walk out and you ‘aint gonna care, ‘cause you never do.” He rolls his eyes and shakes his head, turning around to grab the door handle. “Surprised you noticed I was missin’ in the first place,” he spits.
His father suddenly laugh, loud and sarcastic and sharp enough to cut the tension in the room. Gabe has to stop and look over his shoulder at him, curious enough to see what’s so funny. “So you’re just looking for attention, is that it?” He questions, hands on his hips and glare still fierce.
Gabe’s had enough. He swears one last time, “No, fuckhead. And don’t come lookin’ for me either,” lifts a hand to give them all the middle finger before he steps outside and slams the door shut after him. He keeps his arms crossed tightly as he walks against the afternoon sun, squinting into it until he reaches a spot of shade where he can stop and sit down on a bench outside of a coffee shop.
He runs his fingers through his hair and rests his head in his hands, looking back the way he’d come. Despite his words, he does feel a little disappointed that no one came after him, not even to scold him. His father’s probably in the living room right now, talking to his brothers sternly about how they should never use Gabe as a role model, how they can do so much better than him. Just thinking about it makes Gabe feel sick, but he stands back up to keep on walking anyway. He’d rather get back to the tunnel before it gets dark, and hopefully no one will complain about his being there.
When he reaches the Schleprok’s place, he slows down when he sees a figure slumped against the inside wall. He can see the glow of a cigarette and the fuzzy curls on their head, so he does end up managing a smile when he realises it’s Travis.
“Hey,” he calls to him as he approaches, looking around as he does to try and find everyone else but not succeeding. “Where is everyone? It’s getting dark.”
Travis looks up with tired eyes and smiles at him as Gabe sits down next to him, back slouched against the curved wall. “They went to a rap battle,” he shrugs, taking a puff from his cigarette before holding it out between his fingers, his wrist resting on his knee. “Wanted to do some breakin’, maybe a bit of spittin’. I don’t know; I don’t feel like it today.”
Gabe shrugs his backpack off his shoulders to rest it by his side, looking out at the park as the setting sun stretches the shadows of the trees. “Dad kicked me out,” he says after a moment, not surprised when Travis gives him a shocked look. “Or I ran away. I can’t tell.”
Travis sits back, resting his head against the wall as he breathes in his cigarette. “Shit, man,” he mumbles to himself, then a little louder, “You wanna talk?”
Gabe instantly shakes his head. There’s nothing to say about his home life, he thinks. It’s not fun and that’s why he stays at the tunnel all the time, but he thought that would be obvious by now.
Travis thinks for a moment before he tries again. “Wanna paint?”
Gabe just shakes his head again, though. “Wouldn’t wanna burden the wall with my downer shit.” Travis nudges his arm gently but Gabe just shrugs and looks at him. Maybe this is one of those moments in the movies, Gabe thinks, where silence is better than talking. Where a picture paints a thousand words. He’d suggest it out loud but he thinks that would defeat the purpose, so he just holds a hand out instead. Travis instantly gets the message and reaches into his pocket to pull out his packet of cigarettes.
They smoke through a couple each as the sky outside begins to dim and the sun gradually disappears altogether. As Gabe dubs out his third cigarette, Travis is still puffing on his fourth. He turns to him, wonders aloud, “Maybe you should be going. It’s getting dark,” but Travis just looks at him.
“Maybe,” he says finally, breathing smoke with his words. “I should, yeah.” Gabe prepares to scoot over and give Travis the room to stand up so he can leave, but instead, Travis just leans over. He reaches a hand out to hold onto Gabe’s face, his thumb and fingers pressing to either side of his jaw with his cigarette poised between two fingers. He leans across and kisses him, slow and long enough to allow Gabe time to melt into it before he finally pulls back and stands up. Gabe can taste the nicotine on his breath, just behind Gabe’s own aftertaste, but he doesn’t mind.
He stands, gives the obligatory bro-hug with their hands held together between them before Gabe is waving goodbye. He sits back down in the same spot he was in before once Travis has left, watching the swaying trees in the park across from him and counting the leaves. He can’t remember what happens between yawning and falling asleep, but he’s sure it would be a long and boring story to tell.
---
Gabe is shocked awake by a sudden thwack to the side of his head. He sits up and looks around in alarm, only noticing the bright morning out outside the mouth of the tunnel and a small, wrapped-up sleeping bag sitting on the ground next to him. He feels another thwack and realises that something’s being thrown at him, and when he looks around again, all he sees is Disashi standing over him with as many sleeping bags in his grip as he can take.
“What are-”
“Morning,” Disashi interrupts, rocking on his toes as he drops the bundle of swags on the concrete ground. “Travie said you was having troubles at home,” he adds after a moment, not noticing when Gabe’s face pales. “So we’s gonna sleep out here and keeps you company!”
He grabs one of the sleeping bags and sets it down so he can sit on it, facing Gabe with a big smile on his face. “Travie also said you was a dumb cunt who’d get cold and complain, so we’s all bought you this.” He points at the sleeping bag next to Gabe, giving a little nod as he does.
“Thanks, Disashi,” Gabe murmurs sleepily, smiling just as. He picks up the sleeping bag and rests it in his lap, cuddling it to his chest for something to rest his head on as he looks around. “Where is everyone?”
Disashi thinks for a moment before recounting everyone on his fingers. “We gots one group buying groceries, some out buyin’ cigs, another little group getting their IDs from Wentz, and Nicki’s just in the park.” Gabe’s eyes widen when he hears Nicki’s name and so he leans around the edge of the tunnel wall, looking out to see her sitting on the small brick wall that Gabe and Matt first talked on.
“I’ll be right back,” he murmurs, dropping his sleeping bag and standing up. He walks over to the wall, pausing a few feet away, but before he can chicken out, Nicki looks up at him and tries to force a smile. “Hi,” he calls.
“Hi, Gabe,” she replies, looking down as she swings her legs off the edge of the wall, waiting for Gabe to approach and sit up on it with her. “Feelin’ okay?”
Gabe frowns gently as he leans up against the bricks and looks up at her. Just as pretty, just as fascinating as the day he met her. “You came back.”
Nicki takes a deep breath, closes her eyes and nods. “Yea’, I did,” she says, finally.
Gabe screws up his nose and looks down at his feet. He doesn’t want to pester, but, “Why?”
She gives him a look that makes him feel horribly naive, but it soon relaxes out to a slightly frustrated smile. “Because,” she says, “I just did. I don’t know why I did, ‘cause I’m still mad at that boy.” She pauses and adds, a little lower, “and you; don’t think you’s off the hook.” She shakes her head and swings her feet, sighing as she looks up and bites her lip in thought. “‘Cause we’s a family, yeah? And in families you do shit you don’t have a reason for. What you can’t justify all the time. You know? And I’m mad at my boy but I bet you two had a good reason for that thing you did, and if you got’s a good reason then fine, I guess I don’t got a right to be mad at my brother,” she concludes.
Gabe smiles a little thoughtfully at everything she’s said. Although he’s planning on walking away and leaving her to think, she holds her arms out to him, so he leans in closer to hug around her waist instead. “Don’t you run off any time soon,” she mumbles. “I like havin’ you in my family.”
Gabe closes his eyes as he rests his head on her shoulder, not having any plans to let go of her waist any time soon. “I like it too,” he admits quietly, smiling at the thought. This is the family he needs, he thinks. This is where he belongs.