no_voice | Wanna get a little lost in the noise, in the lights.

School has started and Jason isn't in school.

It's an odd feeling; a mixture of relief and bittersweet sadness. He would like to be in school; even though Darrow only has a limited option of schools to choose from, the fact that he could attend another school besides Notre Dame proves exciting enough. Peter, he knows, is in college. The prospect of running into him in classes and hallways makes Jason ache even as much as the image warms him.

For the time being, he's content to focus on work, he supposes. He might take some preliminary courses at the community college before applying for Barton's spring semester, though. He can't decide if he has the courage to go through with it or not; it's a big deal for him, no matter what he decides.

Tonight, Jason is looking for a chance to simply relax outside of work. He doesn't have homework to worry about, which is another plus side to being out of school, he supposes.

So he winds up at a local pub, nursing a beer at the bar as he watches the kaoroke night unfold. He's seen some interesting performances so far, many downright terrible, but he's entertained. Secretly, he wishes Peter were here to egg him on into attempting a song himself. As it is, he's too sober and too reserved to make an attempt himself.

So Jason sits back, watches, and drinks.

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"The four of us, plus our parents, and for a while my aunt and uncle, all under the same roof." Gabriel shook his head. For a while it had been a cramped house, but at least after his aunt and uncle left they all had a bit more breathing room.

"Yeah, well-- I was an alter boy." Gabriel hid his blushing behind a long drink from his pint glass. "I've thought on it... Might see if there's anything to be done at the university."

"Wow. Must have been chaotic," Jason says, unable to help feeling quietly glad that he'd always had his own room to escape to back home. Then again, Gabriel's family sounds much more like a close-knit family, with a house full of kids and other relatives. He can't help but envy him a bit for that.

"Yeah?" Jason again ignores the pangs in his side at the mention of alter boys, trying not to think of the church, nor Peter. "Barton should have a chorus program, I would think. Or an acapella group? That could be cool, too."

"I imagine it does. I want to get involved in their theater program but I thought it might be too much for my first semester there," he admitted. Gabriel thought he should get used to college, to being in a university, before he went and tried adding extra things on.

He grinned shyly. "Besides, for now it's just a bit of fun, yeah? I need a beer or two just to get up there as it is."

At the mention of the theater program, Jason feels another pang deep in his chest; his mind drifts back to that night, the opening of the play, and how quickly things had spiraled down in a matter of moments, really. Still, his past is his own past. He won't let his own troubled history with plays get in the way of encouraging this young man to pursue the art.

"You should," he says with a nod after a few moments spent in contemplation. "It might be a bit much, but it'd be a good way to meet people and make friends."

He chuckles a bit at the young man's last comment. "That's better than me. I need to get trashed before I'll even think about getting up there."

"I'm Jason, by the way," he adds, realizing he hasn't introduced himself yet.

"Gabriel Harkin," he answers with his own name. It's taken him a long time to get used to the fact that his last name means almost nothing here - no one hears it and thinks Catholic; no one really cares. It's a relief, but it's also taken some getting used to.

"Have you uhm. You're not from here, from Darrow, are you?"

Jason doesn't sound like he is, but he asks anyway because he has met true locals before. They're a bit... odd.

"It's nice to meet you, Gabriel," Jason says with a smile. If he hadn't guessed it from the other man's accent, his name would have given him away as Irish, he thinks.

"No, I'm not," he says, shaking his head. "I'm from New England, actually."

"I take it you're not from around here either?" He asks, smiling curving further in amusement.

"Ireland, the north part that still belongs to England." He always felt the need to explain, because he'd learned by now that most Americans didn't seem to notice a difference in the accent.

"Where in New England?" He thought of Neil, and of Vermont. He'd only recently looked at a map of that part of the United States, just to see where it was. Near enough to New York, but he understood the distance was greater than he thought it was. America was such a vast bloody country.

"Ah," Jason says, nodding as though he understands. He, of course, being American and knowing only a little of Ireland from his World History classes, assumes all Irish accents to be the same. Or, he did, at least, until Gabriel just clarified for him.

"Connecticut, but I went to school in New York," Jason says. "Upper state New York," he clarifies. "Though I wish it could have been the city itself."

It's much easier, he's found, to lose oneself in among crowds of people and bright lights.

"I've a friend that was going to a school in Vermont, I think." He thinks that's close to upstate New York, but he can't remember, he can't quite picture the map of the eastern seaboard in his head at the moment.

"I used to think about going to America, to New York or California." He grins a little. "Those are really the only places I knew before recently."

"Vermont's nice," Jason nods. "I've been there for family vacations." Typically, the scenery had been better than the vacations themselves, but. "The foliage is really beautiful in fall."

"Yeah, they're typically the places most people want to go," he says, smiling. "I can't speak for California but New York is pretty great."

"That's what Neil's told me," he says. How beautiful it could be, despite the nature of living in a boarding school. Gabriel is always rather grateful that the school he attended, though private, had not been a boarding school. He'd gone home every day.

"My uncle went to California." Gabriel leans a bit more on the bar as he thinks of Brendon. Should he continue calling the man his uncle, now that he knows the truth? But it feels like something begging an explanation if he changes it now.

"Spent most of my life in Africa, then came home a while, then it was off to California. I always wondered what was so terrible about where we were that he had to be as far away as he could."

It's funny, Jason thinks, listening to Gabriel describe his uncle, long absent from his life, apparently, how much he wishes he could say the same for his own father. His father traveled for work, of course. But any lengthy amount of time away from home turned into family vacations, most of which Jason would have rather avoided, considering how they all ended.

"I'm sorry he wasn't around as often as you wanted him to be," he says. "That sounds tough, not being able to see someone for always being so far away."

"It's a weird thing to miss. Not knowing what you're missing, I mean, other than what everyone tells you. Everyone saying how much you're like this person that you know so little about."

Gabriel shrugs and he feels a little odd saying all that out loud, but he's down to the end of his pint and he slides his glass across the table to ask for another.

Wanna get a little lost in the noise, in the lights.

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