The doors had parted of their own volition as he stood upon their threshold, a splinter of light at their lips, a figure in its precipice. Even as he’d acknowledged the presence, the percussion that was to occur of their sudden meeting, it was too late to stop it, to amend such fate. The two forces quickly collided into an unfortunate mess, with the assassin barely having time to take so much as a step back to keep flesh from bashing together. There was the sputtering of a silver tray as victim, its warm and sticky and multitudinous contents tossed rather extravagantly on its fall, a porcelain bowl and plate and metal utensils mutedly clattering on the thin carpet beneath them. Gabriel grasped the edge of the martyred tray between two fingers upon its fall, an unconscious afterthought in his reaction. It was heavy there, the edge of it pressing into his palm. The situation took but a breath more to register, the frail incident that had put a soft hitch in his journey. At the notion, he checked his left hand, confirming that the little black envelope had stayed in its place, eschewing any shreds of sabotage.<br/><br/>The offender had appeared to take the brunt of the fallout, though he seemed less concerned with any spillage to himself and more with picking at the disaster. The clothes that he bore were not those of any servants that were apt to serve Mr. Stirling, and he lacked any official attire that would bespoke a high ranking member or affiliate of the Dreamers. He was a relatively thin man with a noticeably torn shirt, pinched together in attempts to hide the fabric’s maiming. Though the glances of it were brief, he was handsome of face, youthful, despite that his emerald eyes whispered of a hollow torment. Time kissed the edges of them, hiding amidst his lashes. The lens of Gabriel’s apparatus flipped and scanned in silence, encoding what visual biological information it could process from his image, plucking at every cue from minute freckles to a comprehensive heat reading. It was highly intriguing, then, that he was not in the provided Dreamer’s database when crossed with the archives given to the highest of agents. Still, he spoke with a certain familiarity when he said the boss’s name, mentioned him waiting on him. There was speculation then, impregnated hardly moments later with recognition.<br/><br/>Kneeling on the floor, Gabriel put down the tray on a dry spot that hadn’t been splattered with refuse and moved to replace an upended bowl. A soft curse garnered his attention and his visor roved downwards to view the source of the young man’s dismay. A viscous stripe of syrup marred the outline of the left side of his chest, spiderwebbing across the smooth material and dipping down as if to travel. His lips quirked with a sheer, thin line of amusement, which boiled into sharp disdain, even difficult as it was to read such expression when most of his face was hidden by metal. “This is an expensive material. I would hope you hadn’t ruined it with your clumsiness,” he beleaguered with a grim tone, the exposed pieces of his face stern and solid. He reached out, slowly, and clasped a folded piece of cloth that had collapsed during the accident, only its corner marred in the process, and he brushed it against the aggrieved syrup. It swiped away without effort, leaving the slick, dark surface as clean as it had been before. He had known that it would, designed as it was to clean easily - mostly for the accumulation of sanguine gore across its surface and not breakfast spills. He had been struck by an instinctual shard of grave humor anyway, visor watching the face of the man before him, drinking his details.<br/><br/>“Well, look at that. I’d think you’re off the hook. No harm done,” he assured, folding the cloth so that the syrup stain no longer faced the outside. He offered it then to the other man. “I would worry more about your own clothes,” he noted, gaze steady on the mottled stains, the haphazard attempt to fix a keenly ripped shirt. It was then that he went back to placing the rest of the fallen pieces on the tray, not mentioning that he was viewing a full meal beneath him. From what foods were intact, he saw not a single bite, no teeth marks to blight the assorted things. Immediately, it didn’t seem farfetched for Mr. Stirling to send back a perfectly fine tray of food, for the rich Dreamers and their equals had forgotten what viable worth meant beyond a hefty credit. Banishing the wretches from his mind, he took the other napkin, that must have been folded and fanned for symmetry with the first, blanketed and pressed it into a shallow milk lake until it was sopping and the carpet had been freed of its mess. The majority of the mayhem seemed abated, and what was left would undoubtedly be thoroughly cleaned by the exalted maids - who knew better than most on how to lift even the darkest, oldest blood from the carpets.<br/><br/>Gabriel lifted a rogue apple that had rolled towards him, its red skin dappled with burnt marigold, and he stood, gaze brushing once more over his brief companion in cleaning. He had made his guesses all the while, in every little fragment of quiet that he exuded, and now he sought to confirm them. “You are Mathieu, aren’t you?” He asked, the flesh of the apple crunching as he bit into it, freeing from it a rather large piece. He had heard of the boss’s ‘pet’ human, the name whispered with jealousy or hatred or stiff indifference, as though all of the lower Dreamers feared to discuss him in any other way. As though if speaking from a place of sympathy would gut them faster than betrayal. It was difficult for himself to have an opinion. He’d always thought that it had perhaps been a thing of choice - people groveled and griped to be Mr. Stirling’s plaything, hoping to incur favors or money. His side was also simultaneously the safest and the most dangerous place on the planet of Wesperion III. Who didn’t want a dash of thrill amidst their security?<br/><br/>But looking upon him now, the torn shirt, the thin disposition, the gleam in his averted gaze, Gabriel thought perhaps that that initial idea was not true. He was not any more cautious for it. He was not afraid to look upon or speak frankly to Mr. Stirling’s seeming possession. “He’ll be distractedly happy by my visit today,” he admitted, fingers pressing into the black envelope, feeling the small cartridge within. “You’ll probably have enough time to change your shirt, but you should hurry still,” he offered, nodding back towards the way that he had come and biting back into the succulent fruit.