"I - Can I talk to you for a second?" Leslie's shaking, looking at Gabriela. Kelly can see it. He thinks he knows what this might be about, but it's not his place to get up in her business.
When the girls return from wherever they went to talk, and Leslie doesn't even look at anybody for the rest of the shift, he knows he's right.
Leslie Shay is painfully in love with Gabriela Dawson, and it shocks Kelly how nobody else has noticed it. It could have something to do with the fact that he lives with the former, and the two can read each other like books, but it's obvious. And it should be to everyone, except it isn't.
Leslie never flat out told him, because that's not something she would do. She's always been protective of her feelings, so the long buried secret would have stayed a secret, had Kelly not asked.
They were on their way home from a strip club when he bit the bullet with, "What's the deal with you and Gabby?"
"What's what deal? We're friends." She's guarded already, and he knows he's right.
"Do you want to be more than that?" They're both drunk, otherwise Kelly would have approached this much more tactfully. There's silence for several long minutes, and he doesn't expect an answer, but he gets one.
"Yes."
It's whispered, and it's dark but Kelly can hear the sadness in her voice and Gabriela's straight. He knows that she's straight but still he goes on and chooses to give her hope, "She might like you back."
More silence follows, and they're walking into their apartment when he swears he hears Leslie breathe maybe, but it's so quiet, he lets it go.
Which brings him back to the present, because Leslie has caught Gabriela's eye more than once, and offered her a tight smile in return to a genuine one. Every time she averted her eyes back to the magazine she was reading (she hasn't changed the page once).
He finds her later that night with a scotch in her hand and tears in her eyes, but when she sees him she turns and pretends that she doesn't, so he doesn't interfere.
It's three days later, when he asks her how things are with Gabriela, that she finally tells him.
"She's straight. She's not into it. It's fine. I'm moving on"
It's all he gets, because she's guarded again, stoic and unmoving, and refusing to say anymore.
It doesn't matter though, because that's all he needed to know.
Months pass, and every once in a while the topic is reproached, and every time Leslie replies the same way, "It's fine. I'm over her."
It's convincing at first but then Kelly starts to notice little things.
Like how, their friendship has gone back to normal, but Leslie's eyes still linger a little too long. Or how she avoids unnecessary affection, not enough for Gabriela to notice, but enough so that it doesn't hurt her. Or how when the conversation in the firehouse turns to significant others, Leslie sends one or two longing glances in Gabriela's direction, turning back when she looks.
He sees all this and it occurs to him; Leslie Shay is still painfully in love with Gabriela Dawson, no matter what she may say.
Even if he hadn't been able to figure it out, she confides in him eventually.
He wishes there was something that could be said, or done - anything at all - which could make this better for Leslie. She told him she'd broken the lesbian code, that falling for a straight girl was an absolute no-no, and still loving her after she rejected you was even worse, so he doesn't know how to help. There is no way to help, and he's been the victim of unreciprocated love before, and if he concentrates he can still feel the pain in his chest and the sinking of his stomach eve time he was around her.
Leslie works with Gabriela, and spends every day with her.
Kelly wonders how she hasn't fallen apart yet, because he sure would have.
She may be holding it together, but Kelly knows it's hurting her every day, the way things like this do. It's wearing her down and he's getting more and more worried about her, about what might happen if she reaches her breaking point.
He finds out soon enough, when he's searching through his locker for something, and Leslie and Gabriela are the only other two in the room. He thinks they might forget that he's there, because Gabriela says something, and before he knows it, Leslie has her pinned up against the wall, kissing her hard. He walks away, trying not to intrude on their moment, but as the door swings shut behind him, he hears, "I told you Leslie, I don't like women like that."
Picking Leslie up off the floor after a failed relationship or a broken hear has always been Gabriela's job. She always knew the right words to say, the ones to reassure Leslie that it was not the end of the world, but this time she's no help.
This time she's the cause, the reason that Leslie left work early, feigning ill. The reason she hasn't smiled once since Kelly got home. The reason he can smell alcohol on her breath at four in the afternoon.
From years of living with Leslie, Kelly's learned that straight girls should be avoided by lesbians, but they never are, because their unattainability makes them that bit more attractive. He's learnt that once you fall too hard for a straight girl, stopping yourself is almost impossible. He's learnt that straight girls are the one's who will virtually always leave them broken and crying on the floor.
Tonight, he's going to have to pick up the pieces.