A/N: I have been wanting to challenge myself to write a drabble a day for a whole month for quite some time now, and I finally decided to just go for it. The goal is to fill every prompt on this listby@creativepromptsforwriting with a short one shot (500 - 2k words) by the end of June. Can I do it? I do not know. But let’s find out! - Today’s prompt goes to a character who I desperately need to get back to, Pedro Across the Street… or in this case Gabe, because this flashback one shot is related to The Long Con (part one here). Pats talking to Patrick about the “pig blankets” in Calls stuck with me, I guess.
Summary: A flashback to a different job a few years before your current one, when you and Gabe were playing different roles, before either of you had been honest with each other about how you felt, neither of you ready to suggest taking your criminal professional relationship to a more personal level.
No one really knows their neighbors. Not allof them, anyway. And the ones that they think they know? Like Jeff two doors down who mows his lawn every weekend, Charlotte with her political bumper stickers from four election cycles ago or the Hendersons and their picture perfect holiday display that goes up every December? All they really know about those people starts and ends with the superficial basics - the things that they want you to see, that they decide to let you in on or try to fool you into believing.
Jeff could have ties to the deep web. Charlotte might be stealing from the PTA. And who knows what the Hendersons and all their lights, wreaths and tinsel were trying to hide.
Most suburbanites were happy to toss half-hearted waves and nods at one another from their porches and mailboxes. They were satisfied with recognizing the cars that inhabited the driveways on either side of their own, somehow equating knowing what their neighbors drove to knowing anything real about them. The illusion of conversation and camaraderie was far more palatable than actually achieving those things.
