2019-11-19 - Backyard Banter

It is November in Gray Harbor which means that the flowers are not Gabriel's work right now. Instead, he is doing tree work in his yard and has invited Sparrow over ... To help? To watch him do his thing? Whatever. He is in jeans and a flannel check shirt and with heavy work boots as he uses the clippers on the literal low hanging branches. Upon Sparrow's arrival, he holds up a hand.

"Chica! Back here! There's some coco on the stove." He prepared for her arrival.

Sparrow skips the cocoa on her way through, certain it'll still be there later, leaving her hands free just in case there is any helping for her to do. She's skipped the seemingly ubiquitous white dress shirt today, maybe for fear of getting it dirty, wearing her Gryffindor hoodie instead with jeans and sneaks, today's laces a dark red. They're definitely not different shoes, scuff marks in all the same places, which means that she goes through the trouble of relacing them to match her outfit on the regular. "Heya, sexy," comes with a warm smile as she draws closer, keeping some distance while he's working those clippers. Looking about, she wonders, "Any of these fruit?"

"Hm? Oh, no. Everyone keeps asking if I have things to eat. Either veggies or fruit or whatever. These are just oaks that have been here long before I bought the place. I mean, houses around here date back to the World Wars, so." So do the trees. Gabriel sets the clippers to the side for the moment as he comes over and kisses her on the lips, soft and slow for a moment. "Beautiful, as always." He winks. "How are you?"

Sparrow's arms slink around Gabriel as she presses to her toes to deepen that kiss, left smiling so very happily when it breaks. That hint of white musk and citrus, of that more masculine scent she was wearing the other day, is brightened by her own perfume, hints of apple and apple blossoms well-suited to autumn mixed with dragon's blood and hyacinth. "Wonderful," she tells him, that low-lidded look suggesting that kiss might have at least a little something to do with her good mood. With some reluctance, she tacks on, "Tired," bottom lip pushing out in a brief pout. With a glance toward the tree he'd been working on, she notes, "My grandparents have a pair of apple trees in their yard that I used to climb all the time. You'd think I'd be able to tell the difference." But someone hasn't paid all that much mind to distinguishing one big deciduous tree from the next. Looking back to Gabe, she follows up, "How're you?"

"Good!" says Gabriel, brightly, as he reluctantly pulls away from Sparrow in order to return to his work with the clippers. "We've got some forward motion on the Kruger investigation, which is always nice. A plan, at least. And I'm working in my backyard. And I've got my best girl here. So. What's not to be good about?" He looks over his shoulder and winks at her.

"Mostly, I'm just working on getting rid of the dead branches." He reaches up and does a hard CLIP to prove his point. "That way rot doesn't spread." He gestures. "I've got some ivy on the bottom, but ran into this pro the other day that said I don't need to worry about it until it gets further up, so that's good."

"I mean, it's kinda cold," Sparrow teases, not sounding the least bit actually bothered by the temperature. Her hands do shove into hoodie pockets, though, aiming to keep warm as she paces lazily while he works. "Kinda hot," she tells him after he drops one of the thicker branches. She makes a snarly face as her shoulders draw up and together to very poorly mimic the force needed to draw the clippers together. It's ridiculous, really, but she's probably commenting on how big and strong he is. "Which reminds me. For our trip. Gonna wanna dress for the weather. Fancy dinner, sure, but not all of our night's gonna be inside." A clue!

A clue! Indeed! And Gabriel is quite big and strong, thank you very much. His eyebrow arches at that particular clue, however. "Interesting. So something outside then. Apple picking? Or ..." He seems to be trying to think of things. "Hay ride? No. Not Halloween anymore. Lovely weather for a sleigh ride together with you?" He talk-sings that one. Just throwing out ideas here.

Sparrow gives nothing more away, but oh, she is profoundly pleased with Gabriel's reaction, happily watching him work through it. She creeps closer, a hand slipping from warm pockets to brush along his back as she leans in and murmurs, "Can't wait," while staying out of his way as best she can. The contact then breaks, fingers tucked away again, as she stills nearby. "What're you doing for the holidays?" All of 'em, nonspecific.

"I don't know. Even if this case goes down in the next few days, we're not going to be done with all the paperwork in time for Thanksgiving, and a last-minute ticket to San Francisco is going to be insanely expensive so ..." Gabriel's mind seems to be on Thanksgiving, even as he turns to steal a kiss from Sparrow's lips behind him. "What about you? What are you doing for Turkey Day?" A pause. "Maybe I'll offer to cover shift. They usually bring in Thanksgiving dinner for those on duty."

Sparrow's smile brightens for that affectionate theft, momentarily delaying her curiosity. "Is that where family is? Aaaaand is paperwork gonna keep you from escaping for a couple days?" Just so she can adjust her own mental window of when this mystery trip might happen. "Corey's cooking. We're hosting at our place. First time in our own place and all that. Family over and everything. Well, immediate family, anyway. Not sure anyone else is gonna be able to make it out," which sounds like it's got her a little bit bummed, but it is what it is. "Then gonna try to drop in on the Kellys for a bit, share some of our bounty."

"Oh yeah?" asks Gabriel, curious. "I mean, if you don't mind me dropping by ..." says the detective, angling shamelessly for an invitation, it seems. "And no. I mean, paperwork won't tie me up endlessly. But it's just hard to book a nonrefundable ticket when you don't know when you're going to bring the bad guy in." He then moves over to the tree, looking up at it.
%"But yeah. Mom, Dad, and the siblings are still in the Bay Area. At least until some developer offers them money they can't refuse for the house."

"I'm sorry," seems entirely sincere, like Sparrow is just now noticing a ball she dropped. "I totally meant that as an invitation. Shoulda been explicit." Her hand reaches out to brush along his back in echo of that apology, fingers sinking to his hip where she squeezes when she croons, "And I meant escaping with me for a couple of days, sexy. I'm selfish like that. I don't need as much notice as an airline." He gets a wink before that contact breaks, before her eyes follow his up along the tree. What's he looking at? "Gotta be hard. Being so far away."

"Yeah. Sort of." Gabriel tilts his head, this way and that, as he considers being away from home. "I mean, I'd love to see my family more. But they don't get it. They don't get my drive or why I'm a detective or a homicide detective or -- certainly don't get my knacks. Not that I've told them about it." His knacks being what Gabriel calls his glimmer. "They clock in. They clock out. It makes for some distance, you know?"

What Gabriel seems to be staring at, for what it is worth, is a branch, as if deciding whether it needs to be trimmed or not. "And yeah. I'll let you know when my days are free. Promise."

"I know," Sparrow chirps in quiet reply to that promise, impatient bird playing at patience. Not like wherever they're going is gonna disappear overnight. She's not looking at that might-be-salvageable branch anymore, the talk of family tugging her attention down to Gabe, to watch him instead. "I've never talked to my parents about it," she admits. "Just C, and..." With a shrug. "Not all that much at that." Cuz it is not easy to talk about. Not even a little bit. Note how her energy level has dropped considerably. "But given that we both--" She huffs a heavy sigh. "Definitely worried about Zelie. I don't want her having to deal with any of this shit." But how can she possibly stop it?

"Yeah. I hadn't talked to anyone about it, really, until recently. Until you. And a few others. With the Dreams, and all, I guess it's easier to figure out who might be more receptive to it." Gabriel frowns a little bit, reaching out to grab her hand. "I don't know, honestly, Sparrow. I know it helps me with my cases. So I like it for that. Beyond that ..."

"The dreams can get bad," Sparrow murmurs as she takes Gabe's hand, slipping a little closer, interrupting his work. "Real bad. And the, uh. Theory I've heard? More you do stuff with your... knacks, I guess? More susceptible you are to all that. And I know how tempting it is to play with it, how easy it is to--" Her cheer dims further as that thought just cuts off, stopping there. A second later, she squeezes his hand and musters a smile. "I've been trying not to use mine much. Just, ya know, picked up some habits over the last couple years."

"Yeah, no. I try not to use it unless I have to. Particularly because I don't know." Don't know how it all works. Gabriel frowns a little bit and then turns more fully to brush a hand by her cheek. "Still. I kind of think about how nice it is to be able to reach out and touch your mind if I want. To be in your head." It's intimate. In a different way. "But I don't want to abuse the privilege either."

Sparrow tilts into that touch, eyes drifting shut. As long as those clippers aren't in her way, she steps in nearer still, hand slipping to his waist. "Yeah?" She looks up at Gabe after that question is asked, holding eye contact curiously. "What would you do in there?" she wonders. "What can you do in there?"

"Mmm? Just talk to you. Share my feelings. Make you feel what I feel." Gabriel brushes a hand through Sparrow's very-red hair, leaning down to brush his lips against hers. The clippers are forgotten for the moment. "I don't know, really. Never done it before. But it feels like it would be intense."

"You can't like..." Sparrow's thought is put on pause as lips brush lips, as her nose nudges against his. With a breath of laughter, she nods, "Yeah," for the intensity of emotion-sharing, like maybe she's got some idea of what that might be like, either first hand of, ya know, ecstasy. Kids these days. "But you can't, I dunno, route around in there or anything?"

Gabriel shakes his head slightly. "No. It's not the power to read minds or anything like that. Just to send thoughts and feelings and --" He shrugs. "What helps is sometimes I can read the emotional -- like, fingerprints on something. And even replay the events that created them. So if I have a gun from a scene, I might be able to see the shooter. That kind of thing."

Sparrow's free hand fusses along the front of his shirt, idle occupation while she keeps her eyes on him, trees and their trimming forgotten for the time being. "You mentioned, yeah," she says of the emotional reading. With a delicate furrow of her brow, she wonders, "Would you ever use that on me?" Definitely not an accusation from her tone, sounding entirely philosophical about it. "Without asking?"

Gabriel considers this for a moment. "No. Not unless I had to. Like, one time, with Erin, she had some thing inside her, some evil force, and she lashed out at me, like she wanted to kill me or something. I used my powers to calm her down." His hand brushes in return, over the hoodie. "That make sense?"

Sparrow frowns deeply, damned near grimacing, at the mention of ... something that doesn't sound natural being inside someone. Like something out of a movie. Skeptical scientist brain really, really wants to disbelieve that, but after the things she's seen around here? The implausible is growing increasingly plausible, that background weird she grew up with no longer keeping to the background. "Yeah," comes quietly. "That sounds... intense."

"Yeah. I guess it's been resolved now. Some sort of exorcism took care of it. She got cut off from her family fortune because of it." Gabriel says he works like he's heard them but hasn't entirely understood them. It's all secondhand. Not disbelief. More like -- confusion?

"I don't know. I'm just trying to keep things as normal as I can." As impossible as that is getting.

Sparrow lets out a little, "Oh," as she tries to process some things. Without nearly enough information. 'Exorcism' certainly does bring certain ideas to mind, though. "Yeah," follows for the aim of normality, hand squeezing at his hip. "Sorry. I didn't mean to steer us into weird places. I'mma have to have this whole conversation with someone else soon, and it's just... there. Waiting." Which earns a flash of sourness. "You look into the Charlie thing yet? Haven't had a weird dream in more than a week, so." Maybe they're in the clear?

"Haven't had a chance yet. But it's on my list. Promise." Gabriel leans down and pecks Sparrow on the lips once more. "Maybe the dreams are ending? I mean, maybe there's a limited video library and ..." He has no idea how this works, honestly. But a man can hope?

Sparrow's head starts shaking for the promise, not needing quite that much here, but she stills at the kiss. The laughs for the suggestion of a limited library. "Oh, honey. If there is a pattern to these film picks, I haven't found it yet." Which is to say that she has no idea how limited that library might be and would, instead, err on the worryingly vast side. With a little tug to his shirt, she murmurs, "Least it brought us together, yeah?" With a tip of her head toward the tree, she wonders, "You need me to leave ya be or, uh, steer the conversation elsewhere so you can get stuff done?"

"Nah. This tree is good. And I can work on the rest later." Gabriel grabs up the clippers once more to put them back in the garage. "How about you come inside and we can watch some Netflix and coco?" And probably make out. But there you go.

Whatever that other something is that Sparrow's got on her mind, she lets it go without question, nodding for the invitation. "Sounds good. But I get to pick the movie this time." Poor, poor Gabriel. It's gonna be something annoyingly adorable. Like Ralph Breaks the Internet or Thor: Ragnarok, which might not be quite as adorable as anything with Ant-Man or Spider-Man in it, but it's close.