Forgiveness for a sin he didn’t commit.
Blake shook his head. “You’re ridiculous.” He reached up and tucked some of Gabriel’s hair behind his ear. “Are you trying to beg forgiveness with a library?”
“It has a rolling ladder.”
“You’re right,” Blake said, leaning in to kiss the corner of Gabriel’s lips. “It’s lovely and incredible and I—” he swallowed dryly, pushing the remnants of any bitterness he’d been feeling down. “You don’t need my forgiveness, Gabriel. I shouldn’t have put all that on you.”
“No.” Gabriel wrapped his arms around Blake’s waist, pulling him flush. “I do. I’m not going to pretend that I can see what you see, but that’s why you need to tell me. I’m just a dumb soldier, remember?”
“I remember,” Blake muttered, burying his head in Gabriel’s strong chest. He could feel the warmth through his layers. “Thank you.”
Gabriel dropped a kiss on the crown of his head. “C’mon, this isn’t the whole date.”
Blake blinked as Gabriel led him away from his library. “Date?”
“Yeah,” Gabriel said with an impish grin, pulling Blake through the kitchen to a breakfast nook with double glass doors. He swung them open to reveal a massive back porch with steps leading down to a heavily treed yard. Their spindly branches were naked, but the great trunks were impressive. Some thick enough Blake wouldn’t be able to wrap his arms around. A winding gravel path meandered through them, leading down a small slope to a narrow dock jutting into the lazy waters of the Potomac.
Gabriel pulled Blake’s back to his chest, holding him as they watched the sky turn pink.
“I’ve never asked you out on a date,” Gabriel admitted, his lips pressed to the shell of Blake’s ear. “Will you have dinner with me?”
He was speechless, eyes flicking from the sun-speckled waters to the scalloped trim on the porch.
“Yeah,” he croaked, realizing Gabriel was waiting for an answer. The taller man pressed a kiss to Blake’s ear before stepping away, pulling out a small charcoal grill that had been nestled against the house. It was dirty, but when Gabriel pulled the lid off, there were some briquettes still under the grate. Swinging off his backpack, Gabriel pulled out a box of matches and some newspaper he’d brought with him.
“I figured you wouldn’t let me burn the books,” he said at the look on Blake’s face.
“You figured right.”
It didn’t take Gabriel long to get the grill going. While it heated up, he pulled out a quilt Blake didn’t recognize. It was thick, the stitching even. The colors had faded, but there were no frayed ends. He could imagine someone putting a lot of time into making it.
Gabriel spread it over the floorboards. He gestured for Blake to sit. “I’ve brought some canned pears, Graham Crackers, chocolate, marshmallows, and best of all…” he waggled his empty fingers. “No candles.”
Blake laughed as he reached for the bag of marshmallows. They were stale, but maybe if they grilled them, they’d get gooey enough not to notice. “How did you manage to get an entire bar of chocolate?” he asked.
Gabriel made a face. “Beaumont. I swear he knows everything. Came up to me and offered a bar he’d been saving for our date. I don’t even know how he found out.”
Because a man with a secret makes it his business to know everyone else’s,but Blake didn’t say that.
Blake hunted for good roasting sticks in the yard while Gabriel heated up the grill. By the time he got back to the porch, it was warm enough to relax as they began assembling their smores.
“I think you can tell a lot about a person by how much they roast their marshmallow,” Blake said conversationally as he gently turned his over the heat, waiting until the rounded edges took on the faintest golden glow before sliding it off the stick with the cracker.
“Is that so?” Gabriel began roasting his marshmallow, keeping it close to the grill.
“Yeah,” Blake gently placed a square of chocolate on top of his marshmallow. “For instance, I heat my marshmallows enough for them to get gooey, and the heat melts the chocolatejustenough that it all mixes together for the perfect bite.”
He demonstrated by hefting his dessert up and biting into it. Flavors exploded in his mouth, sugar hitting his bloodstream faster than a greyhound. It was so good he didn’t even notice the stale graham crackers.
Gabriel watched him out of the corner of his eye as he let his entire marshmallow burst into flames, twisting it until every inch was a smoldering, black ruin.
“And you, are clearly a savage. Why don’t you just eat the charcoal?”
Gabriel took that as a challenge and kept trying to get Blake to taste his desiccated monstrosity, wiggling the smoking marshmallow in front of his lips as if it could somehow tempt him.
They ate the entire bag, chatting as they cooked. Gabriel’s eyes darkened every time Blake licked the gooey mess off his lips. He would stare, unabashedly, until Blake squirmed and told him off. Or flicked crumbs at him.
Just as the sun was beginning to set, and the sugar was sitting low in their stomachs, Gabriel pulled Blake to him. He wrapped his arms around him, settling Blake’s back to his chest as they watched the clear, winter sky change colors.
