For a minute I just sat there staring at Gilpatrick, trying to figure out if he was flirting with me or not, and if he was, trying to figure out if he was serious or not.

"Yes, and maybe."

I chuckled, reminded that, despite his repeated claim of no mental powers, he'd predicted their actions pretty well most of the time. Not much of a stretch to guess at perfectly normal conversational next steps. "Here I thought you were straight."

He shrugged, smile never dimming. "For quite a while I did too, although honestly I didn't really think about it a lot." His smile dimmed. "I guess I first thought about it when I was passing through Greece"

"That's a little bit stereotyped, don't you think?"

That brightened his smile a bit, but only for a moment. "I mean, if the shoe fits, is it really a stereotype? Then again, maybe I was just looking for something and found it where I expected it. It was while I was on walkabout after my family died."

"Oh. Oh, hell, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to bring that up."

He shook his head, a few more watts coming into his smile. "You didn't. You were asking about my sexual orientation, and I thought about it my family while I answered. Totally different."

He took a bit to snag a couple things from his appetizer tray while I jotted down some notes and ate an onion ring myself. "So, are you bi?"

Gilpatrick, who'd been right in the middle of putting a blue cheese coated 'boneless hot wing' in his mouth, chewed and swallowed while looking thoughtful. "I guess some people would call me that, and I wouldn't mind. I generally don't think about it much, and if someone asks, 'what are you', I generally answer, 'me', but if I had to pick one of the current crop of choices, I'd go with pan. What about you?"

I almost choked on my onion ring, because I certainly hadn't expected that question out of him. After I'd taken a drink to clear my throat, I answered, "I'm gay."

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"You seemed to handle Denise being attracted to you pretty well for that."

I shrugged. "I mean, what am I supposed to do? Hold up a Cats Playbill and say 'back, foul hetero' or something like that?" That got a laugh out of him.

When he'd finished a bit more of his sampler, he said, "believe it or not, I've had some gay friends who would do stuff almost exactly like that. I mean, not the Playbill thing. The whole 'gay guys and only gay guys like musical theater' isn't really as universal as you'd think, and there are places in the world where they don't hand out Playbills like they do in the States. Programs yes, Playbills no. So you're really outing yourself as American when you say that."

I snorted. "I'm surprised a veteran would use the term 'outing' in reference to being from America."

He did that gallic one shoulder shrug thing. "I've had a bit of a checkered past. Also, I wasn't actually born in America, for whatever that's worth. I've got citizenship and all, but I don't consider myself 'American' so much as 'a guy who has lived in and fought for America a bunch'."

"So why would you fight for it if you didn't consider yourself part of it?"

Despite his smile staying on, his brow furrowed a little. "That's complicated. Part of it is because I'm good at it. Fighting, that is. I've trained in just about every type of weapon I've ever heard of, and I've been pretty good with just about all of them. Another part would be that despite America never really living up to it, the American Dream is worth fighting for. Not the 'be super wealthy and have loads of peons to do my bidding' new dream. The older, simpler one of being able to prosper, to own land of your own, to enjoy the fruits of your labor without having some overlord come along and steal them away. Another part is that after my family died, I became a real private sort of person. For a long, long time."

He went quiet, eating the rest of his sampler plate as he sat there in quiet contemplation. I finished up my onion rings and jotted down notes. "What does being private have to do with being in the military?"

He snorted a little. "Other than it being the basic rank in a few of them? I've found that if you're good at fighting and don't make waves, people generally don't ask a lot of questions. So if you don't want people constantly poking at your past, it's not a terrible place to be."

"Don't they do background checks on soldiers?"

"Yeah, they do, but that's all behind the scenes. I guess I'm not really upset about people looking into my past, I'm upset about them asking about my past."

I smirked at him. "Isn't that exactly what I'm doing, though?"

He shook his head, smiling. "Yeah, you kind of are, aren't you. You sure you didn't invite me here just to flirt with me?"

"I didn't, but would you be upset if I had?"

He shrugged. "Depends. But that's not really what I meant."

"Oh?"

"Weren't you supposed to be asking me about history or something?"