Template:Featured Articles/21-2023
 "Please stop talking to me like this is any other business," Gabriel responded without even taking a beat. "I know it is for you. I know it mostly is. I know it's legal here and regulated, and I don't know you from Adam, but I am sure you're an ethical madam and everything is above board and everybody is treated perfectly well. But don't say clients or professionals or talent, not to me." He flicked ash on the ground. "I know sex work is work. I'm a good millennial. I'm online, I read all the viral tweets. But this is... this is just..." He stared at the cigarette in his right hand. "And you, at the top of it all." She paused for a long moment, her look searching. "The difference between the world you remember and the one I've created here is that I don't make the decisions for other people. I'm not pretending this place is some kind of altruistic endeavor. I make my money. But I use terms like professionals and talent because that is what they have chosen to be before I ever got involved." She gave him a slight, knowing smile. "But I also don't expect to change your mind over a cigarette. But I'm happy to answer any questions any time you have them. So would most of the people here." It was his turn to pause and consider that. "I don't want to ask," he finally said. "I can't imagine — I don't even..." He couldn't vocalize what he wanted to say. He wasn't even sure what he was thinking or feeling; he'd lost his ability to think straight when they'd gotten here. Too many memories — well, impressions, more like, they weren't specific, but they were flooding his brain, and he loathed how little control he had over that. For years, he'd kept a part of himself locked up, and then a demon ripped open the lockbox and preyed upon the weaker parts of his soul. And now he was sitting here next to a woman who had, apparently, had a similar journey and turned it into wealth and status and something good, when all it had brought him was darkness and pain. He looked up, surprised by a choking noise that he'd heard, and it was only after a moment that he realized his face was wet and the noise was in fact his own guttural sob, a violent sound that, if he were a more poetic person, he'd imagine had been working its way out of his lungs for years. She touched him carefully, gingerly. Just his shoulders to start, light enough that he could break away with a twitch and looked into his eyes. "I know. I know. But, if nothing else, you're safe here." Stacy said. "If nothing else, believe that from me." Gabriel had flinched at her touch. Her words made him want to crawl into a hole. The whole thing was absolutely mortifying. Had he felt this exposed when his mind had leaked his fear and shame and recollections to Quentin? He couldn't remember, but it felt different; he remembered being more stoic, more matter-of-fact. Certainly he hadn't reacted like this. He sat there for a bit, no longer making noise, trying to stay calm, not wanting to look at her or say anything or acknowledge how his body and brain were betraying him. He knew she understood on some level, and that made it easier, but it also made him hate the way he was now acting. And yet at the same time, even though she got the contours, she didn't know him, and maybe that made the whole thing less meaningful, because there were no stakes. "They don't know," he said, his voice shaky but mostly under control. "Not even Sydney." There was an implicit warning there that he suspected she'd understand. "Never got caught. No trouble with the law, no paper trail." "Makes things a little easier." As he'd struggled, she had pulled back, leaving him back in his own space. "Can't vouch for the rest of them, but if you ever decided, I know it won't make a difference to Syd. You know, that's what I remember most the first time I met him? Half a dozen feds in the room and he was the only one that looked at me like a person as opposed to just some whore." "Well, that's you." Gabriel said. "But I don't need him to know." He didn't doubt her account, but it wasn't a conversation he wanted to have, ever, and he begrudged her for pushing him into it, even if it was clear that he was willing to be open with her because there was no fear of reproof. And because she'd seen something that he felt he needed to acknowledge, even if he resented her for that too. |
