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It was honestly too much to ask of someone to do all of this time conversion. When Tobias first went to Paris, he figured it would take him about a week or so to adjust to the new time. He’d been to Japan before and that took about a week, but he had a good pillow, Crest toothpaste, and his own familiar brand of soap then. In reality it took maybe a month to fully adjust to French time, at least then he wasn’t yawning repeatedly and up all night.
When he went back to New York he thought he would adapt quicker. It was the time zone he was used to afterall. His flight landed in New York in the evening or even later Paris time, so he pretty much got back to his apartment and fell asleep right away. But then he forgot to set an alarm to wake himself up, so after a fourteen hour snooze, his sleep cycle was fucked all over again.
Then there was obviously the complication of still needing to keep track of Parisian time. If he started his morning at 6, what time was that there? That was noon there, okay so he could call or text first, maybe he should text first just to make sure rehearsal didn’t run over, and then if he got a text back, he could wait a respectable two minutes before hitting the call button. He didn’t want to seem too eager. When he got home late from his own rehearsals, he needed to remember that it was too late to call—he kept forgetting that, so used to talking before falling asleep—and sometimes too late to text.
Worst case scenario was Gabin would think Tobias forgot about him and move on. He knew and could finally acknowledge he had a problem where he got too involved in his work and forgot about other things that were important to him. Clearly Kevin called that out in London, and shittily reiterated it at his wedding that Tobias and Gabin attended, for some fucking reason, although it had been good to see his old friends from Fire Island days.
It was brief, but when Gabin and Kevin’s husband, what’s-his-name, were talking, Kevin leaned over and told Tobias he looked happy.
“What the hell does that mean?” Tobias shot back, on the defensive.
Kevin laughed, cheeks red from their signature wedding cocktail. His cheeks always got red after the first sip of alcohol hit his tongue. “It means you look happy,” he leaned forward and lowered his voice to deliver his final blow. “Don’t forget this time.”
Was it infuriating? Yes. Was he wrong? No. Tobias got the subtext immediately, which was always impossible with Kevin and him, like they always spoke different languages. Gabin and Tobias never had that problem and they did speak different languages.
He forgets things, people, important stuff. He shouldn’t do that anymore. Gabin was still important to him even though there was an ocean between them and a pain in his chest and a glooming dread that everything probably wouldn’t work out in the end because how could it, but he was determined not to be the cause if they ever fell apart.
It was difficult.
Tobias didn’t like texting. Gabin was better at it. They both preferred phone calls, everything was always lost in textual translation. But with limited hours in the day to communicate synchronously, it was difficult.
Once upon a time, Tobias refused to even look at his phone, forgot where he put it constantly, and never had it charged. Now it was always within reach. They talked about everything and nothing. Sometimes Tobias just sent pictures or videos when words escaped him—a picture of his bodega order, a video of the fountain outside, an accidental photo of his hand. Gabin interpreted all of his messages as if he understood Tobias on a molecular level. His bodega order was a subtle way of asking if Gabin had been back to that boulangerie close to his old apartment and if he had, did he get the beignets he used to like. The fountain was to show he was just getting to the studio. The accidental photo of his hand was an I’m thinking of you as clear as day.
It seemed like things were going well. On weekdays he kept to his modified schedule, as haphazard as it was, it was at least now clearly documented in his notes app. On weekends, they would watch movies together or talk more freely, not held to such a strict, disjointed schedule. Gabin would ask about his next piece, Tobias would try to explain it with his vocabulary of grunts and groans and occasionally the correct ballet verbiage. Sometimes the conversation ended with other grunts and groans, whispered praise, bitten off moans, and shaky gasps that fizzled out to one of them falling asleep and the other staying on the line to listen to the other breathing for a while before inevitably, regrettably, hanging up.
In the gaps between their communication, Tobias was miserable, he was sad, he never really wanted something to work out so badly before. It was odd to walk through his former life in New York without the person who knew him so well, who, from a glance or a sniff or a blink, could tell what Tobias was thinking. Loneliness was never something he had to deal with, it was a constant but never a burden. Now, it felt suffocating. But as soon as they spoke on the phone, he felt soothed, more certain, at ease. It felt dangerous for one person, one point of contact, to hold that much power.
Headphones on, in the big rehearsal studio with the risers pushed back against those floor to ceiling windows, Tobias sat buried in his phone. The previous night Gabin had confessed that his ankle had been acting up and he was going to check back in with Leo for more regular physical therapy, something he shouldn’t have stopped doing, but had at some point and now was paying the price. Tobias called him when he woke up, but rehearsal ran over and they missed each other, so he was now attempting to check-in with him at his afternoon break, when Tobias started his day.
He was too busy thinking about Gabin’s fucking ankle, but he could multitask. Between texts to Gabin, he shouted out instructions to his dancers, Cody and Maddie. No, maybe Larry and… Julie? He had to get better at names. He paced the room, circled the pair, tilting his head to the side, ducking low, standing straight, repeating No. No. No. No. and in-between these nos he kept glancing at his phone waiting for an update on Gabin’s goddamned ankle.
He could multitask, but he felt a little shaky. A little panicky. He told everyone to take five and huddled on the risers, turned up the music blaring from his headphones and tried to focus on the words on the screen. His own words. Maybe if he stared long enough he could summon Gabin’s reply to appear.
He was seeing Leo. Leo was good with ankles. He’d be fine, probably just needed to take it easy for a while. He was prone to overdoing it, everyone knew that, they would force him to sit out. Meanwhile, Tobias needed to figure out the lift and transition of the middle bit. Maybe he didn’t need a lift, maybe he needed something else. Maybe the beginning wasn’t working either. And the end was pretty rough. Maybe it was the costumes he said yes to yesterday. Maybe it was the music. Yeah, maybe he should look up new music. He had a playlist of maybes that he pulled from, but more often than not he removed from the playlist not knowing what the hell he had been thinking at the time he added them. But now, maybe it would be different.
He pulled up the playlist and started to scroll when his phone was ripped out of his hands. He pushed off his headphones and looked up at Jack.
“I need to talk to you,” Jack said, abruptly pocketing his cell phone and walking out to the hall. Tobias looked at the dancers sitting on the floor or huddled around talking, all purposefully not looking at him. He grimaced, got up, and followed Jack out into the hall.
“How are you doing?” Jack started and oh, did Tobias still hate small talk.
“Just cut to the chase and tell me why you pulled me out of rehearsal.” Tobias crossed his arms over his chest and itched to check his phone again. He felt like he was just onto something, figuring out what he was looking for and if he just–
“I’ve been hearing that you seem a little distracted.”
Tobias rubbed at his cheek, already agitated. “Who said that? Jenny?”
“Who’s Jenny?”
“Jenny,” Tobias said again slowly, sounding out every syllable. Jack continued to stare at him like he didn’t understand. How could he not know his own dancers? “Jenny. Jenny! You know the one who doesn’t know what a downbeat is? Can’t count her pirouettes, always does an extra? Or one less?”
“Oh, you mean Annie? Wait, that’s not the point.”
“Then what is the point? I have to figure out if I’m changing the music or not and if I am, I need to find something soon so—”
“Changing the music?! The show is next weekend, you’re starting over?”
“I might have to,” Tobias sighed, rolling his eyes. It’s not like Jack had to choreograph it again. He wasn’t sure why he was upset. “I’ll let you know beforehand so you can get clearance or whatever. I always let everyone know what music I choose, it’s not my fault if you don’t get clearance in time for the–”
“Okay now you’re distracting me.” Jack rubbed a hand over his face. “Tobias, I’ve heard you’ve been preoccupied. Always on your phone, not paying attention in rehearsals—”
“What?”
“—and I’m seeing it, too. Look, I know you’re seeing someone you met in Paris and–”
“What.”
Jack blinked, wide eyed, like he misstepped. “Oh, are you not… um, seeing him?”
Tobias blinked, deadpanned, like he was about to walk away. He might, but he really needed that stupid phone back. “What the hell is going on?”
“Okay, taking a step back.” Jack huffed out a weighty sigh, eyes raised to the ceiling. “You can’t be on your phone all the time.”
“I’m going to be on my phone. That’s a non-negotiable. In fact, I’d like it back now.” Tobias held out his open palm expectantly.
“Tobias.”
“Jack.”
They stared at one another stubbornly, silently for a moment. Other dancers passed by in the hall, glancing their way and quickly away, shuffling past, laughter muffled, words hushed. The tension in the hall only grew until Tobias broke first.
"I wake up at 6, that’s noon in Paris. Then we start rehearsal at 8 and that's 2pm break time over there. When we come back from lunch at 1, that's their 7pm and then I'm not home until 6, sometimes 7 or even later and that's already one in the morning." He paused to take a breath. “So you get it.”
Jack huffed a laugh. “I understand timezones, yes.”
“So I have to shift my time to make it work.”
Jack paused for a moment, jaw clenching and unclenching, lips pursing, as if he was weighing his next words carefully. “I understand,” he began, “but you can’t be on your phone all the time. At least not during rehearsal.”
“I can multitask.”
“I’m sure you can, but I have to put my foot down on this. This is my non-negotiable. When you’re here you have to focus on your work.”
Tobias winced. “What if–”
“If you need to check your phone, take a break.”
“I never take breaks.”
“Breaks are mandatory and anyway it sounds like you have the perfect reason to want to take one.” Jack sighed, expression softening and he laughed. “Look, I think it’s great that you–”
“Can I have my phone back?” Tobias held out his hand again, looking past Jack down the hall. “Now? I have to get back to rehearsal.”
Jack hesitated, but eventually handed him his phone back. Before he could finish whatever mundane speech or justification he queued up, Tobias went back into the studio and the door slammed behind him. He put his phone in his pocket, even though his heart ached, and he got back to work.
He didn’t get home until late that evening. It was eleven when he managed to get in the door, take a shower, toss his clothes from the day over his desk chair, and fall back on his bed, lazily fighting with blankets to get under the covers. He didn’t actually change the music and the whole dance. The lift in the bridge was still a mystery, but the beginning and end felt a bit more solid. The dancers hadn’t stayed as late as he did. Tobias spent the evening in a studio sketching different shapes and combinations trying to figure it out, but he gave up around ten-thirty and headed home.
His pant leg was vibrating. Not the pant leg he was wearing, the one hanging over the chair. A dull buzz against the wooden frame.
Gabin .
He forgot about his ankle. He scrambled to grab his phone in time and answered it before even checking who it was, but he already knew.
“Hey.” He was breathless and feeling horribly guilty and fuck he was doing it again.
“Allô.” He didn’t sound upset. Why wasn’t he upset? Wait, what time was it there?
“It’s five in the morning.”
“No, it’s eleven in the evening,” Gabin replied, voice rough with sleep, but still teasing him. He could hear his smile.
“Why are you calling me at five in the morning?”
“Cause I woke up and missed you,” he said simply. He still didn’t sound angry or upset. Why wasn’t he mad? “Did I wake you?”
“No, I–I just got home.”
Gabin tsked. “Still can’t figure out the middle bit?”
“Your ankle–”
“Ah, changing the subject.” Gabin laughed. “So that’s a yes. Tell me about it, but please don’t tell me you started over.”
“No, shit, I–” Tobias swallowed the lump in his throat and hugged a pillow to his chest. “I meant to call and text and–it’s just Jack took my phone and then banned only me from using mine during rehearsals even though everyone is using them all the time and he made breaks mandatory, but I can’t take breaks so I tried to remember to check my phone when everyone left, but I finally decided it’s not the costumes or the music, and the beginning and end are actually pretty solid now, but then the timezones and your ankle.”
“My ankle, yeah.” There was a rustle on the other end and Gabin’s voice softened. “Hey, can you take a breath for me?”
“What?”
“Breathing. It helps, can you try it?”
“I am breathing. Of course, I’m breathing.”
Gabin exhaled, a rush of crackling air bristled through the speaker on the other end. “Slowly. Please.”
Tobias did, although he definitely rolled his eyes about the whole thing. He matched Gabin’s exhales, inhales, hypnotically in sync until his chest expanded, his shoulders lifted, and he felt a little less queasy.
“Better?”
“I meant to check my phone. I did, really.”
“I believe you. I’m not upset, but you sound upset. Why are you upset?”
Tobias grimaced, hugged the pillow tighter against his chest. “I didn’t forget.”
“Forget your phone? Or– oh .”
To be known, truly known, by someone was both a nightmare and a dream. When the words didn’t quite work right, Gabin could still untangle their meaning.
“You think that I thought that you forgot about me?” Gabin huffed a laugh. “How could you ever forget about me, ma moitié? I’m wonderful.”
Tobias snorted a laugh, but held the phone a little closer against his ear. “I didn’t forget.”
“I know that,” Gabin sighed. “Look, I get busy, you get busy, just so long as we still talk at some point in the day so I know you’re okay. That’s all I want.” When Tobias didn’t answer right away, he added, “do you believe me?”
“Yes.” Because of course he did. It was easy. “It’s just hard when I don’t see you.”
Gabin laughed. “That’s why I send you those photos of–”
“Jesus, stop,” Tobias deadpanned, but his cheeks flushed at the memory. “You know what I mean.”
His phone chirped and buzzed in his hand. Gabin was switching to a Facetime call. Tobias accepted it, but didn’t really move from his pillow embrace under the covers. His heart swelled, relief. Gabin was also in bed, head propped up by his arm folded behind it, leaning against the bedframe, bare chest, hair a mess, tired eyes. He missed him.
“ Your ankle ,” Tobias reminded him, although his heart was still doing leaps and bounds.
“Weird way to start phone sex, but okay–” He started to shift the camera down.
Tobias groaned and when the camera shot back up, he leveled him with a look.
“If looks could murder,” Gabin whispered with feigned fear.
“It’s ‘as if looks could kill.’”
“Are murder and killing not the same thing?”
Tobias sighed heavily. He was not going to get derailed by debating English idioms.
“Okay, okay!” Gabin laughed, rubbed a hand over his face, through his hair, pushing it back. His expression sobered up a bit and he exhaled hard and fast before he broke the news. “A week off. No jumps or lifts, no dancing, no funny business. But can you believe, Geneviève still wants me to sit in during rehearsal? No vacation.”
“Yeah, so you can keep up when you get back. Wait, just a week? So it’s not a sprain?”
“No sprain, Leo thinks I just landed wrong.”
Tobias hummed, weighing his next words carefully. He didn’t want to fight, but he was never great at keeping his thoughts to himself. He was blunt. So was Gabin. Something they liked about each other. Something that got both of them in trouble more often than not. “You’ve been skipping PT.”
Gabin sighed. “Yes.”
“You shouldn’t do that.” Blunt. Direct. It came from kindness, the underlying message was hopefully clear. He wanted Gabin to be safe.
“Yes, well I can’t now, can I?” Gabin’s reply was predictably a little snappy, but then they both could always get that way. He softened a bit with a sigh and another hand through his hair, tired eyes drifting away from the screen guiltily. “I’ll be better, okay?”
He could handle another nudge. “You’ve been pushing yourself too much.”
“Me? Never.” Gabin’s grin was sharp and pure confidence.
Tobias rolled his eyes. “You’re lucky it’s only a week.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know.” Gabin paused. “It sounds like you’ve been doing the same.”
“What?” Nope. Not fair. Don’t turn the tables on me.
“Pushing yourself too much.”
Tobias huffed a breathless laugh, but slid further under the covers. “Oh, me? Never.”
Gabin laughed humorlessly. “Ha-ha. Very funny.”
Tobias bit his lip, worried it between his teeth. “Maybe a little.”
“Ma moitié,” Gabin repeated fondly. “Tell me about the middle bit.”
So he did. He told Gabin about the middle bit. They both eventually left their beds—Tobias to make some peppermint tea, Gabin to make some coffee—and he talked through the more solid beginning and end bits too. The time passed easily, both grateful it was just bleeding into Saturday when they had no plans outside of a few errands, a stop at the gym, a long winding conversation with each other.
It was nearing one in the morning in New York, seven in Paris, and an ocean apart, both Tobias and Gabin were lying on their couches, still on Facetime, determined not to fall asleep. They went through long pauses where one started to drift off, before the other would speak again and they’d fall right back into conversation. A juvenile no-you-hang-up-first dance that Tobias never really wanted to stop.
“I didn’t forget,” Tobias reiterated after a while, phone propped up on the coffee table, face half buried in a pillow. He watched Gabin blink, rub his tired eyes, and frown.
“We’re back on this again? So what if you did forget, hm?” Gabin pressed, fighting back a yawn. “You forget to text or check your phone. It happens. You’re human.”
“I didn’t forget you .”
“Tobias.”
“I just want to make sure you know that I–”
“Hush. Let me speak.” Gabin paused to sit up, leaning forward over his lap, resting his elbows on his knees, phone now propped up on the coffee table to match. “I wouldn’t let you.”
“But I–”
“No. My turn.” He smiled, kind, soft, all the hard edges seemed to melt away when they were alone like this. “I wouldn’t let you. Even if you did forget to call or text or whatever, I’d–I don’t know, if it was long enough, I’d hop on a plane and show up at your door. I’d fight for you, yes? Because I love you.”
Tobias swallowed the lump in his throat. That last tight coil in his chest seemed to unwind. He just stared and stared and stared, not believing this was real, not believing he deserved this, not believing he was this lucky.
“And I know you’d do the same for me.” Gabin sounded sure of it. “And I also know that you wouldn’t forget anyway, so we’re talking about fake stuff. It’s not real.”
“Hypotheticals,” Tobias croaked out, not sure if he really trusted his own voice, but unable to stop the correction.
“Quoi?”
“Hypotheticals. Fake stuff.” Tobias cleared his throat, settled deeper into the couch.
“Right,” Gabin sighed, seemingly unsure his promise was heard.
“I would. Too.” Tobias quickly said to try and ease some of that miscommunication. “Me too. I would hop on a flight and… you know.”
Gabin smiled. “Yeah, I know.”
“And I love you, too. Have I said that today yet?”
“You haven’t.”
“Well I do.”
“Noted.”
Tobias hummed, eyes drifting shut. Feeling a bit more at ease. He wouldn’t forget.
“Get some sleep,” Gabin murmured, grabbing his phone off the coffee table. “Call me later. It’s been too long since I’ve seen you, I want to. Soon.”
“You fly here or–” He’d never been to New York. His heart raced. The anticipation of seeing him again, in person. How long has it been? If he had gotten any sleep he would know down to the second.
“Either or, I’m not picky. I just want to see you.” Gabin winked. “Dream of me.”
Tobias rolled his eyes. Although he only ever seemed to do just that.