Gavin doesn't often order mixed drinks. He's heard of Sex on the Beach, but Sex on the Driveway is new to him. It is, nevertheless, apparently something on offer, for the bartender nods affirmation.

Glancing over at the question, Gavin's golden gaze sparkles with mischief as Ashley cuts himself off.

"A date, hm?" It's teasing, but he holds up his left hand to show his wedding ring with the Luvdisc seeking its other half. "I'm married, no need to be embarrassed. If your date is Rocket, they'll be allowed up." But Ashley had been a traitor until recently, and Gavin keeps that in mind. "If not, the main bar is open to everyone. Same drinks, just not a good idea to talk business where someone from the League might hear."

The bartender returns with their drinks, and Gavin marvels at what he understands is a 'Sex on the Driveway'.

"Looks radioactive. What's in it?"

He sounds curious, not judgemental.

Ash seems nervous. Stilted speech, fingers drumming against the bar, the way he's averted his gaze. Gavin doesn't challenge him on it, though, merely listens as the younger man gushes about his crush. It's sweet.

Mention of Isaac does catch his attention. "Merlo?" They were acquainted. Gavin was a mentor for Isaac Merlo, in a way. "One of ours, if you didn't know."

Building his network of Rocket friends and acquaintances after being gone for so many years would be an important step in Ashley's assimilation into his new-old life.

He eyes the crystal blue drink as Ash describes it.

"Always been more of a straight liquor man, myself, but I don't mind a cocktail once and a while."

He's thinking about booze, so it takes a moment to process the shift in subject back to relationships. He doesn't mind, though, the ghost of a smile playing along the edges of his lips.

"Only a couple of months. End of the world put a bit of a rush on things, but I don't mind." It had seemed important to solidify their status as soulmates in the eyes of Tempest Quinn's religion and culture. For Gavin, it had been about moving on. From Emma, from Theo, from the part of himself that hadn't felt good enough. "We've been together about a year, but I can't imagine being with anyone else."

Not any more.

"No," he agrees of Isaac's heart, solemn.

Had he been destined to Rocket? It had not been an easy road. He had not taken to it with fervour as others did. Yet he had taken to it, in the end, and his guilt lay mostly in the stolen lives of innocents. And he'd chosen it. Stepped into the lion's mouth and let jaws close around him.

Gavin thinks Ashley might be a little drunk, but he doesn't point it out.

Instead, he says, "Walsh seems to trust that there will be an after." A pause. "The Boss." He says the word with weight, in a way that means my boss. Ashley had left before Blackwell's death, had missed Cadis altogether. "There was a meeting, just before you came back."

It had stirred up a lot of conflicting feelings, but at the end of the day it had given him something: direction. Horizon.

A soft laugh bubbles in his throat. "It was a rebound, until it wasn't. He told me he loved me. Guess I knew then."

"Mm. It was more like... several hook-ups."

They'd been sweet with one another even then, because Gavin had struggled to deny his need for affection and attention. And, seeing as Temp was in love with him, the other hadn't exactly discouraged the domestic behaviours.

Attention returns to liquor, and Gavin turns the bottle to display the label. It's aged Scotch, Galarian, expensive.

"Scotch. Want a glass?"

He signals for the bartender; even if Ashley were to pick a different poison, they'd need him.

"Your date know you're one of us?"

It was dangerous, getting involved with someone on the outside. But as long as they were civilian, and not an officer actively campaigning against Rocket's goals, it wasn't strictly forbidden.

Kep...? He mulls the name over.

"jayden cross?" He sounds surprised. "Damn."

Ash had said that Jayden tried to kill him. Arceus, that must've been awkward. Yet there's a part of him that knows he'd do the same. Perhaps not to Tempest Quinn, at least not easily, but...

A quiet laugh distracts him as Ashley tips back the Scotch, reminding him of how he had once reacted with cigarettes. And now he was addicted, go figure.

"Kep," he repeats, frowning. "Well. If it's short for something, we do have a Kepler in our science division. Dark hair, green eyes. A physicist, I believe, though I don't often overlap with science these days." Perhaps Ash would recall that Gavin Merlino had once worked under Pryde. He'd given up his scientific studies to become what Rocket wanted of him.

He won't voice it, but Gavin knows relief as Ashley confirms kepler brueshaber as his crush. Who cares? The sentiment expressed by his fellow Rocket is not shared. Perhaps it didn't seem to matter, but it could. Rocket were about to go to war. Civilians once indifferent to their cause might change their minds soon enough.

He chuckles at the expression Ash pulls as he downs the glass of Scotch, and doesn't resist the change of subject.

"I can only tell you what I did," he says, shrugging. "Whatever they asked."

It had been much the same in Kanto, but there had been fear crippling his ambitions in those darker days. In Hoenn, without the oppression of Blackwell to keep him quiet, he'd grown bold in his willingness.

"I became what they needed."

They had wanted an enforcer. He'd given them one.