Chapter Text
It’s 1959. Gabe is getting dumped again.
“I don’t think I want to be with you anymore,” Pete says. Gabe grimaces. He always hates this part. So, so much.
Gabe sighs.
“Ok,” he says. Pete’s eyes widen. Somehow, he looks taken aback. It makes Gabe’s chest ache.
“That’s all you have to say?” There’s pure heartbreak in Pete’s eyes and, yeah. Gabe really, really hates this.
Gabe shifts in his seat, tenses all his muscles and then untenses, before speaking again.
“Pete, you should've…” Gabe stops. He doesn’t want to say what he’s about to say. He doesn’t want to see Pete's reaction to it. He doesn’t want it to be true. He hurts.
“You should have known we couldn’t stay together,” Gabe finishes. He forces himself to meet Pete’s eyes — he deserves at least this. Pete deserves Gabe’s full attention, he always has.
What Gabe sees tears him apart even more, if that’s even possible. Pete looks so, so fucking hurt. His beautiful brown eyes are filled with unfallen tears and his lips are trembling. Gabe wants to fucking sob.
Pete looks down.
“You were supposed to say ‘we can make this work.’” Pete says, barely audible. Pete squeezes his legs together, hugs himself. He looks a second away from breaking. Gabe can’t fucking take it anymore. He reaches a hand out, knows he shouldn’t. He cups Pete’s face, so, so gently. Pete, still trying not to let his tears fall, stays completely still.
“I love you,” Gabe says. He means it. He means it so much that it pumps through his blood and lives in the oxygen he breathes. He has never, ever, meant anything as much as he means this.
Pete breaks. His wet tears soak Gabe’s hand and his sobs tear through Gabe’s heart.
*
“You should go home,” Pete says after a while. “You can’t stay here.”
*
Gabe needs to cry. Emotions are spinning inside of him like a sickening tornado, ready to destroy an entire town.
He wanders to a bar; he can't handle everything he's feeling. He gets fucking drunk and corners some poor girl. He feels bad. She’s into him and probably wants to go on a date or something but he can’t stomach the thought, so he tells her all he wants is her, tonight. They go to her house and he fingers her, thinking of other things the entire time, and then drinks her blood as she finishes. She falls asleep soon after. Gabe doesn’t. He lies awake, consumed with ache and misery and abhorrence for his life. He still does not cry.
Gabe goes on a bit of a bender. Drinks too much — alcohol and blood — and has a lot of almost-sex with nameless girls. He doesn’t cry until he realizes it's probably time for him to leave England. It’s a fucking shame, he actually liked it here. After spending too long in the United States, London was a nice change of pace. But he’s looked the same for too long and store owners look at him with curious expressions wondering how he's looked the same for so long and the girls are starting to realize that they all can’t remember what happens after they go home with the mysterious tall man from the bar.
Maybe he’ll stay in Europe, Gabe thinks. Maybe he’ll go north. Maybe he’ll visit Travie. He knows Pete told him to go home, but he can’t; won’t.
*
Gabe is alone in the woods, half a mile from any civilization. It’s one of the only places he has right now where he can guarantee he won’t be bothered by any humans. And he cries. He lets out heart-wrenching sobs, the kind that take over his entire body and leave him shaking and heaving after. He’s loud, he doesn’t care. He screams, yells, hits a tree, none of it helps. He's fucking sad. He doesn't want to leave England, and he doesn't want to leave Pete. He's fucking sick of everything ending except him. He’s met two Petes before, but neither of those encounters were even slightly comparable to this time. Gabe loved Pete so intensely that he felt swallowed by it at times. He knew Pete felt the same. The two fit together so fucking well, it was sickening. Pete had taken Gabe’s ‘I’m a vampire’ confession fairly well (he only dumped Gabe for two weeks) and once Gabe’s secret was out, the two only grew closer. Gabe thinks of the times the pair spent together walking through the countryside, how Pete showed Gabe the wonders of a bustling city. How fucking excited Pete would be while talking about things he loved. How his entire face moved when he smiled and you could see the fucking joy in his eyes, how sweet his laugh was. How he made Gabe feel like, for once, maybe spending nearly two hundred years on this godforsaken planet wasn’t so bad, because all of those years had led up to this...to Pete.
And now Gabe had lost him.
~~~
It's 1966 and Gabe’s found his Bilvy again. Gabe’s in Ireland, renting a room from a sweet family who don’t ask too many questions.
This time, Bilvy's just a teenager; she came to babysit the family’s children.
It’s around 11:30 pm and Gabe tiptoes up the creaky stairway to the house and turns the key to let himself in. As he opens the door, he smells a human. A scent so, so familiar hits his nose. His brain registers what he’s about to see, but his body doesn’t, so he keeps moving and fully enters the house. Sitting there on the couch, sound asleep, is Bilvy. Gabe’s heart clenches. God, it’s been so long. A thousand memories flash across his mind, Gabe almost physically staggers with the weight of them. He catches himself and takes a deep, quiet breath. He silently steps closer to Billy. She looks so innocent, so youthful. He’s never seen her this young; she can’t be older than seventeen. Her shoulder-length mousy brown hair is splayed out on the couch behind her and it frames her soft face in a way that makes Gabe want to paint it.
Bilvy stirs, waking. Gabe takes a step back, trying not to look like a fucking creep. It’s not like he can just say ‘Hey, sorry for staring but I’ve fallen in love with three versions of you before.’ He settles for a meek, awkward ‘Hello.’
She smiles.
“Hello! You must be Gabe, right?” she says, bright and high-pitched. Though Bilvy is always kinda feminine, sometimes she’s born female, other times male. The last Bilvy that Gabe fell in love with, back in the 1910s, was a man. Gabe had forgotten how sweet her voice can be when she’s a girl. He smiles.
“Yeah,” he replies easily. He can feel something clicking into place; this is right. It’s so right to have her back in his life.
“Sorry about falling asleep on the job,” she says, anxiousness in her tone. Gabe shrugs, letting her know he doesn’t really care. The kids are asleep anyways. And they're alsoi not his kids, he just lives here. Bilvy cocks her head, looking at Gabe curiously.
“Do I know you?” she asks. She always asks this. It’s cute, Gabe thinks. He shakes his head.
“No, I don’t think I’ve seen you before,” he replies, suppressing a smirk. Bilvy leans back into the couch, perplexed.
“Hmm, I guess you just have a familiar face,” she says, her face scrunching up.
*
Eight years later, in 1974, after years of an awkward casual friendship, Gabe and Bilvy are finally dating. Gabe’s not sure this one is going to last very long; this Bilvy is really driven and respects herself a lot. Not that the others don't — really, she's always like this — but he feels like they’re only dating because Billy knows he’s hiding something and wants to know what it is, the nosey fuck. She asks where he goes at night, why he doesn’t like to be outside during the day. He never answers. He loves her, and she loves him a bit, but he thinks that this time, they’re just a chance encounter, just two souls who had to brush past each other. And, late at night, when he's honest with himself, he knows it's because there's a part of him that's still in love with Pete.
*
Gabe is right. Billy dumps him after eleven months of lie-ridden dating. She tells him he's closed-off and doesn't trust her. Through tears, she accuses him of cheating on her with some other girl. She says their dynamic has always been fucked up — that they were never right for each other — and that she wishes she never met him. This one doesn’t hurt as badly, Gabe tells himself. He's a little jaded, anyways. He still has nights where he wakes up covered in sweat, seeing Pete’s face in his dreams. * He moves on again, like he's so destined to do. He drinks too fucking much, swallows his emotions in bottles and death, and moves to another country for the millionth time. One night, in 1977, the Pete dreams stop. Gabe knows what this means, gets properly upset about it. No more Pete dreams means no more Pete. It’s too early, Gabe thinks. Pete shouldn’t have died this early.
~~~
In 1991, Gabe decides to move back to the United States. Europe has been nice, but he wants to go home. He’s been aching. He’s fucking lonely and none of his people have been around since Billy. He knows he’s grown cold and numb, but how could he not? He lives a life of repeated love and heartbreak, knowing he can never finally settle down. He’s doomed to a life of nomadism and temporaries. He has Travie, the only other vampire he can stand, but they’ve done enough commiserating over the years. There isn’t really much left that they can say to each other, it’s all already been said.
Gabe settles on moving to New Jersey, where he was born in 1784. It’s strange to be back after so long, yet it also feels kind of right. Like somehow it was the right step. A small voice in his head tells him it’s because Pete told him all those years ago that he needed to come back. He ignores it.
*
A year later, Gabe meets one of his people. He wonders how Pete knew.
A twelve-year-old named Mikey is at Gabe’s doorstep, asking to use his phone to call his mom. Gabe smiles and lets the boy in. After letting the kid use the phone, Gabe gives him two pieces of chocolate (because what else do you give a kid that has been your best friend five times?) and sends him off. Gabe smiles to himself. Even if Mikey is just a fucking kid right now, it’s nice to have one of his soulmates back in his life. Gabe thinks he might stay in Jersey for a while.