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Gabin lied. He had not seen the movie Dune before and so now he was stuck watching the sequel. It was his own fault, but he didn’t really mind. After a long week, he was just happy to lie on the couch, head in Tobias’s lap, humming along to his mumbled commentary, and trying to follow the plot. Although when Tobias began running his fingers through Gabin’s hair, all coherent thought left his brain. He was like a cat, stretched out and content. It was possible he might fall asleep or goddamn purr from the soft attention.
His fingers grew meticulous, separating his hair into sections, turning them this way and that. Gabin suddenly realized Tobias was braiding his hair.
Little glimpses. That’s what dating Tobias was like. You would get little glimpses of fact, of background, little hints into what made him tick, what made him work. In the beginning it was a glimpse of French, but not enough to hold a conversation for more than a minute. Once during a rather explosive rehearsal, he learned Tobias didn’t like the rain, but loved thunderstorms. Another time when they ordered takeout for a night in, he learned Tobias became a vegetarian at age eleven because he didn’t want to eat the meatloaf that his grandmother made. When discussing the no-named goldfish at his apartment, he learned that Tobias always wanted a cat, he had some growing up, but he traveled too often now to keep one. A different, awful time he found a wedding invitation open on Tobias’s laptop and he learned that Tobias had an ex named Kevin who was getting married at the end of June.
Tobias never offered up these truths without thought. He was not one to openly share, not like Gabin, although Gabin maybe shared too much nonsense and too little truth at the same time. Tobias was not hiding anything from Gabin, it was just that none of these things seemed important to him. Gabin found every ounce of detail important.
The way his eyes would squint, or lips would quirk downward, a slight adjustment to his expression and Gabin was desperate to know what did it. It was the same in rehearsal. After rounds and rounds of running through a new sequence, a new step, he would stand there, panting and exhausted, eyes tracking every step in his pacing, every exhale of breath, every flick of his wrist to find out what he could improve on, what he needed to do next.
“Are you–” exhaustion had pulled him under, the nearly three-hour long movie and soft touches had wiped English from his brain for a moment. “Est-ce que tu me tresses les cheveux?”
“What?” His eyes were still glued to the screen, his computer propped up on a stack of books on the coffee table.
Gabin smirked and reached out to lift one of Tobias’s hands from his head. Sure enough, he felt the intricate folds of a braid at his scalp. “I didn’t know you knew how to–”
Tobias glanced down at Gabin and back to the screen. It seemed like he just realized he had been braiding Gabin’s hair, as if the movement was compulsive, reflexive. “I used to braid my sister’s hair all the time.” His voice was dismissive, not in a callous way, in a familiar don’t distract me type of way that Gabin normally got away with. But this was not some small nugget of truth, this was bigger.
“You have a sister?”
They hadn’t talked about family. Obviously. Not something Gabin really wanted to go near, but he was interested in hearing about someone else’s. There was always a twist of shame when he learned of someone else’s happy childhood, supportive parents, and healthy upbringing, but most of all there was just yearning. He did not have that and he had no hope for that to change, it was done now, he moved on, he made a name for himself, he survived it. He assumed either Tobias wasn’t close with his family or he didn’t want to bring them up to make Gabin feel bad, which infuriated him, so he tried not to dwell on it.
But he couldn’t help himself from thinking about what Tobias was like as a child, when he first fell in love with dancing, when he created his first dance. Were his parents dancers? Did they encourage him or think he would fail? Now learning he had a sister, he wondered if Tobias had more siblings and what they did for a living. Did they go to his shows in New York? Did they even live in New York? Did they reach out after his last more-publicized performance? Did they know about him?
Tobias sighed, leaned forward over Gabin and slammed his finger on the space bar to pause the movie. “I thought you wanted to watch the movie.”
Gabin bit the inside of his cheek to stop himself from smiling. It was both thrilling and dangerous to annoy him. One push in the wrong direction and they’d tumble into an argument that would either leave them both alone for the evening or falling back into bed for a few hours tangled in the sheets together. As tempting as that was, information felt more precious.
“I do.”
“I told you the movie is, like, three hours. It’s a commitment. A time commitment and you said you’d watch it.” Tobias looked down at him with a familiar impatience, but his fingers were gentle when they brushed Gabin’s hair from his forehead. “I said I didn’t want to pause it or stop and watch the rest later.”
“Uh-huh.”
“So we’re not even halfway through it. What, why are we talking about my sister?”
“Because I didn’t know you had one. You brought her up.”
“ You brought her up!”
“ Non, you were playing with my hair. I asked a question and you–”
“Gabin.”
Gabin rolled his eyes and laughed, accepting defeat. There was time for questions later. “Okay, okay. Talk later. Carry on with Timothée Chalamet.”
Tobias huffed, but didn’t move to press play. He bit his lip, seeming to mull over his next words carefully. “She’s two years younger. She lives in Bay Ridge. She just got married last year.”
“Bay Ridge is that in–”
“Brooklyn. I don’t see her that often.” There was a pause there that Gabin wanted to poke at, dissect, and discover. Why weren’t they close? Did Tobias go to the wedding? Did he like her partner? Did he give a speech at the wedding? Were they close growing up? Did he wish he saw her more often now?
“Does she have a name?” he teased instead. It was always better to start off slow. They had time. Tobias wasn’t leaving for another six months and Gabin was still trying not to count the days he had left.
“I’m starting up the movie again.” Sure enough, he did. Although as the movie began to play again and Gabin settled in, cheek pressed to his thigh, content and languid, he felt Tobias pick up his braiding again.
Quietly, so quiet he almost missed it, Tobias promised, “You can ask me more later.”