Blake Thorne can't be undone by (beausang) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-11-15 00:21:00 |
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Entry tags: | ra's al ghul, ravenna |
Who: Jack R and Blake
What: First visit
Where: Jack's office
When: Recently
Warnings/Rating:
Jack had read over the file Blake's previous therapist had sent over several times. He understood what was going on, the difficulties that had gone on during their sessions. Even the one time they had spoken on the journals had been vaguely over familiar but it was not enough to put him off. Leading spot under his desk in his private office, he read over the file one last time, jotting down a series of notes in his own shorthand on a small pad of paper.
He was still writing notes when Shelly buzzed him that his patient was here. He gave Spot a pat on the head before walking out through the plain, frosted glass door that he'd replaced. The office itself was small, but he'd done his share of work on it. He'd had the flooring pulled up and a lightly stained hardwood to match the cabinets and door put in. The pinks and purples had been covered with a fresh coat of paint in shades of blue and green. The fishtank had remained, as had the glass table from the previous owners, but now it was topped with a single bonsai tree instead of the flowers that they'd preferred.
"Blake?"
Blake was leaning against the front desk when Jack came into the lobby. He was well-dressed, clothes that screamed money and Status with a capital S. A comfortable black suit, the lapels marked with subtle red accents, his long dark hair mussed just right. He didn't spend a lot of time putting himself together, but hey, his bitter little inner voice screeched, when you looked this good and it was this easy to pick up everyone from the truck stop waitress to the twinky socialite, who gave a fuck?
That wasn't the order of the day, of course. Well, it was, but not right now. There was little doubt in his mind that he'd want to wash off the feeling of being pried into with some top shelf ass later, but that was later. He had an obligation to fulfill first.
When Blake had moved to Las Vegas and quit his job with his father's company, there had been just one stipulation from his father - go to therapy. And because he felt guilty enough about the whole thing, and just wanted to get on with not feeling anything at all, he'd accepted. It was an hour of making a fool out of someone well-educated and well-paid. It should have been no problem. And it hadn't been, until the last therapist had concluded she could be of no help to him, and had cut him off, refusing her giant paycheck on the altruistic grounds of not actually being able to do him any good. Motherfucker.
That left him here, in the office of a brand new, highly recommended guy who would keep his dad from freaking out when Blake showed up in the tabloids. No reason to give dad a heart attack. He still had to run the company, and shoulder all that responsibility Blake had run from.
Blake winked at Shelly, because in his experience, the receptionist at a shrink's saw enough crazy people every day to deserve something to cheer them up, right? He turned to the good doctor and smiled, biting dramatically at his lower lip. "I'm on time, right? Figured it would be good to be on time for something."
Status was one of those things that Jack was aware of, but only peripherally. His own father was a gifted neurosurgeon and Jack himself had been raised around all manner of doctors. Men and women that worked hard, some that were at the top of their respective fields. Shows of wealth and status didn't bother him, but he was more than acutely aware of how it could impact others.
Perception was everything. Which was why he'd changed his office the way he had, why he wore jeans sometimes to work but never a white lab coat. It would have marked him as the doctor, yes, but it was also frequently and subconsciously a stressor. Today he was dressed in a comfortable blue polo and a pair of khaki's, obviously relaxed but not completely informal and very obviously not screaming of money nor status.
"You're on time," Jack confirmed with an easy smile as he held out his hand. Whatever Blake's previous therapist thought, at the very least he would give the young man the gift of an open mind. He'd make his own decisions based on how Blake behaved and what he saw. It was the very least he could do.
"If you'll follow me." He left the door open and turned right down the hallway, in the opposite direction of his private office. There was only one room on this side, the door made of plain wood in the same light stain as the rest of his office. The room itself was decorated in all neutrals, though Jack had taken out the massage table and replaced it with a cream colored couch. The bookshelves were filled with books, but the only other thing of note in the room was his chair. There was no desk to separate him from his patients and he wanted it that way. "If you'll have a seat."
Blake took Jack's hand with a decisive grip and a good, solid shake. He'd learned that particular skill well during his childhood, when his father's friends expected a limp-wristed shake from their colleagues flamboyant son. Blake always did like to disavow people of their impressions and assumptions, even then.
Blake followed Jack through the various hallways, casting a critical eye over everything. Yep, the room for the therapizing definitely met his expectations and then some - comfortable furniture, soothing wallpaper. All it was missing was the crayons. He had so loved fucking with the children's therapy materials at the other place. It was a lot easier to draw than to talk to the woman behind the desk, or listen to her droning.
Of course, Blake being Blake, he took the big, white, comfy grown-ups chair that was clearly meant for Jack. It looked like the best piece of furniture in the room, and he wanted to see the look on Jack's face, whether he would contain his anger or coolly not react. He wanted to throw the other man off. The faster he could rocket Jack’s expectations of to the bottom of the barrel, the better. “Thanks.”
As determined as he was to give Blake a clean slate, he wasn't the least bit surprised when the man took up his seat. It wouldn't be the first time, wouldn't be the last. He'd had his share of unruly patients (and downright murderous ones) and though he'd only been practicing for a few years on his own, he wasn't going to lose his cool over a chair.
Instead he sat down on one end of the couch comfortably so he could face Blake. "So, why don't we start out with the basics. How are you doing today? Anything interesting going on in your life?"
Blake grinned at him. That was a good reaction. Cool, collected, sitting on the couch like nothing was wrong. Poor guy. He was in for it.
"I'm doing great," Blake said, breaking from the smile and leaning back in his chair. He folded his hands onto his lap, slumping comfortably. "Really. Sunny day, chasing the clouds away, all that shit. Now, as for anything interesting..." He narrowed one eye, playing at serious contemplation. "Good question. I have a date lined up for tonight. Well. I say 'date.'" Air quotes. "It's more a mutual agreement to show up somewhere with good champagne and fuck, but those are my favorite kind of dates. And there's a party on Tuesday...somewhere. The Wynn? I don't remember, the guy who's throwing it told me three drinks in last week and I can't be expected to remember everything everybody says." He picked at the lint on his pants. "I've got a full. Schedule. What about you? Got a lot of shrinky dink type things to do this weekend?" He glanced up, and his eyes glittered, hard, knowing, and with a flicker of bitter hate - for himself, because he knew exactly what kind of asshole he was being, for the situation, for the woman who had dumped him off, childish resentment for the father that was even making him do this, trying to get him to confront that which there was no point in confronting. "Lots of long hours to read all the notes from the last doc, I bet. What did she send over, like a ten story stack of 'patient will not cooperate', just typed over and over on sheets of paper? You know, like in The Shining - ‘All work and no patient cooperation make the shrink go just as nuts as the patients’?"
"Full social schedule," Jack remarked, off handed. "Not a lot of 'shrinky dink type things' to do this weekend." The words could have been bitter, but they weren't, they were said calmly and with a smile.
"And I've already read your file. Several times in fact." If he decided to give up any information that had been found within, that was a different story, but reviewing the file prior to seeing a patient was fairly standard for Jack. "However, I like to form my own opinions of my patients and their diagnosis." Not that other therapists were wrong, but a persons experiences could color their interpretations of a patient, even if they were trained not to. "So. I'd like to hear from you why you're here." He'd seen it in the file already, but Jack wasn't only looking for the words, ke was looking for the tone, the body language that accompanied Blake's answer.
"Ooh. Can't wait to get a diagnosis again." Blake had heard it from the previous woman, and from the doctors at the hospital when they checked up on him just after the incident with the kidnappers, with Eric. The doctor had warned he might go into shock, or have post-traumatic stress, and require long-term therapy for the trauma. The therapist had informed him he was in full-time avoidance and denial mode. Blake had informed her, just like he'd informed everyone else from the day of the funeral to today, that he was doing just. Fine.
"I'm here...because my father says I have to see a shrink," Blake said, flatly. There was no need for that to merely be subtext. They might as well have it out in the open. "The old man has enough on his plate without fretting his white head about me, so here I am, to keep him from worrying by telling you once a week that I'm fine." His eyes darted to the opposite wall, scanning the book titles. "Get ready to get paid really well to be pissed off or bored stiff for an hour a week," he said, picking at the seam of his pants, fingers tugging at an errant thread. For an unshielded moment, Blake didn't look smug, self-satisfied, or pleased with himself one bit. He just looked tired.
Blake turned his gaze back to Jack, and the smirk was back, better than ever. "What's a shrink's social life like?" he asked. "You analyze everybody you meet? Climb inside your buddy's heads and tell them when they're secretly denying their inner urge to suck some cock?"
For that one brief moment, Jack thought he might actually have a glimpse at the real Blake, without all the proverbial armor that the young man was using. And then it was back up, walls raised, a cocky young man trying to rattle him again.
He'd never say how close to the mark it was that Jack fought against analyzing everyone he met. It was what he wanted to do all his life, what he'd taught himself to do before he'd even had any formal schooling on it. That didn't mean it was all true and he offered Blake another one of those small, amused smiles.
"I think it's a lot like most people's, actually." He grinned. "It looks like dinner tonight and I'm attending the Grand Opening of that new dojo this weekend. And if my buddies were secretly denying their inner urge to suck some cock, I'd wait until they came to that realization themselves." Jack said, once again using Blake's words. If Blake was attempting to shock him through them, he was going to be disappointed. "But you know we're not here to talk about me. If we're going to have this time together, might as well make use of it."
Blake smiled back at Jack. He liked that he gave back what he got, that he didn't shy away from rough language, even if it was distasteful to him. Not easily startled, upset, or shocked, that was for sure. "That's nice of you," Blake said, approving. "Gentle. I tend to help them along by letting them dive on mine, so. I've never been to a dojo. This event open to the public?" His eyes gleamed with amusement. That would be fun, crashing the shrink's party. And it was true - he only had a vague idea of what a dojo even was. Some kind of karate place? Where you fought cobra kai? Or something.
Blake shifted in the chair, throwing his legs over the arm and laying crosswise on the seat. He turned to look at Jack. "Who says we have to make use of it?" Blake asked. His smile was crooked, and he assessed Jack again. "Too bad about that doctor-patient no sex thing," he observed, wistfully. "I don't know if you get told this by guys who like guys very often, but you're severely hot. Maybe its the whole sexy doctor thing. If you don't get into a lot of severe doctor roleplaying in the bedroom I'm disappointed in your sex life."
Blake rolled his shoulders. There had been a question in there somewhere. A boring question, about things in his past he’d already forgotten about, already left way behind, thanks. "Okay, much more of this and you're going to accuse me of avoiding the question, I'm guessing. We're supposed to talk about the stuff I'm supposed to be upset about, right?" His casual expression didn't falter. The kidnapping, Eric's murder, and the subsequent scandal where Blake was placed as primary suspect, it had all been in the tabloids and the newspapers. His father was one of the ultimate magnates in entertainment - it would have been shocking if no one had seized on so juicy a scandal. "Did you read about it? Or is sex and death gossip not your thing?"
"It is," Jack confirmed, ignoring the comment about how Blake tended to help his friends. "That's how I found out about it." It normally wasn't his type of thing, but as a doctor, it could offer a great many things if he liked the place. Somewhere to work out, but it was also possible that he could send his patients there. Physical exercise was a great thing, but learning karate or a martial art could help boost their self esteem as well. That wasn't something that Blake particularly needed, at least not at first glance, but there were certain patients of his that could definitely use it.
"I do," he remarked blandly, unflappable. It wasn't the money -- though that definitely helped keep the doors open -- but Jack genuinely liked to help people. If there was a chance he could, he'd take it. "My sex life is not something we're going to discuss," he said, smiling again. It wasn't because his sex life was something he was uncomfortable with, or the fact that it was nearly non-existent at the moment, but it simply wasn't appropriate to speak about with any of his patients. And he had a feeling that if said anything to this particular patient, they'd never stop talking about it.
"I read what your previous therapist had to say about it, but I'm afraid that's all." Tabloids were not his thing and Jack tended to get his news from CNN rather than print and paper. "And we can talk about anything you like, but that's usually a good place to start. What's upsetting you. Or, why your father wants you to be here."
Blake's brow spiked. "Must be good then," he said, with a curling grin. Being denied an answer gave him a foothold - being unwilling to bend somewhere meant he'd found a place that made the other man uncomfortable, or at least somewhere he didn't want to go. He'd remember it, if he needed to press the doctor somewhere to wriggle out of something.
Jack's reaction to invoking the scandal, though, was not what Blake expected at all, and he was momentarily unsure what to do with that. He hadn't expected actually needing to explain it step by step. He didn't really want to. At all. "My father wants me here because he's worried I'm nuts," Blake said, instead of addressing that. "That much should be pretty obvious, I guess. Something happened, I picked myself up and got on with my life, so I'm crazy." Dangerous territory, and Blake didn't like it one bit. He hadn't talked nearly this much to the other woman. It was his own stupid fault - he'd gotten sucked in by how fun it was to poke at the good doctor and see if he flinched, and he'd started running his mouth. He shrugged, eyes on the ceiling. "He's a worrier, what can I say? He runs an entertainment conglomerate, and he's been running it since he was my age. When things don't go the way he expects, he gets tetchy and freaked. Unpredictability isn't super useful when you're trying to keep an organization together. Tends to do that in his private life too. Likes things to follow set tracks."
The avoidance of the 'something that happened' was noted even as Jack listened patiently to what Blake had to say about his father. Deflection might work well with others, but it was something that Jack would come back to. And given the way that he glossed over it, moving rapidly from one subject to the next with only a few clipped sentences, Jack suspected that Blake wasn't as far moved on as he liked to pretend he was.
"He sounds like a very capable man," Jack remarked as he stretched his legs out in front of him. "What about you? Would you prefer things to follow a set track or simply let the wind carry you?" Jack suspected what the answer might be already.
"The wind," Blake said, and seeing that knowing look, added, "But I bet you guessed that. I know I don't exactly come across like a guy who wants to lay down track for life one day at a time. Plans, man, there's no point in making them." Plans fell apart, or were crushed. You couldn't count on something working out just because you'd planned it a certain way, so there was no reason to set up expectations, or to try to anticipate the future. No one could know the kind of horrors it might hold.
"My father is more than capable," Blake said, shifting back a little, sitting a little higher against the arm of the chair, legs still dangling over the other side. "He's the king of the fucking castle, and he happens to be pretty decent on top of it. That's not easy when you're running a multi-billion dollar organization." There was no real animosity between Blake and his father, though the thought of him sent a spike of self-loathing through Blake - all those expectations, let down. He could still call up, with the clarity of pain, the image of his father's crestfallen face when Blake told him he'd be pulling out of the company and moving across the country. He knew his father had been just as disappointed in the nasty way things had worked out for Blake as much as he was sad to see him not fulfill the role he had been groomed for. The man wasn't a robot, after all. He was a father, and he grieved for his son.
Blake bristled against that thought. There was nothing to worry about, or grieve over. The old man was a worrier, that was all. "Anyway, I didn't see any reason to give him one more thing to fret over when he's got enough on his plate." He waved to himself. "So. Here I sit."
Watching his expressions, the changes in his body language when he was speaking about certain things, the change of subjects, even down to the concern of Blake for his father --- it was all noted and it would all be written down later.
"Did he want you to follow in his footsteps?" Jack asked, curious. There was a slight bitterness when Blake had mentioned plans and Jack wondered if it had something to do with the man's business or if they were more personal plans that had gotten derailed. Either way, he would have to find out, but he wouldn't push hard. No, that would likely earn Blake's wrath instead of his cooperation.
There were a few more things he needed to have answered as they danced around the real reason why Blake was here. "You sound as though you care for him a lot. Do you have a good relationship with him?"
"Yeah, pretty much." Blake looked down at his hands, flicking his index nail across the pad of his thumb. "Seemed like a good idea when I was a kid, but then I grew up and realized that kind of life wasn't really for me." It was dismissive, as if the whole thing had been arbitrary, and there had been no weight in or consequences for his decision. "Got a job with the company, and it wasn't really my bag. Taught me how to invest my money the right way, though. No sense buying up all the hookers in town unless I can keep on doing it, after all." That wry smile had returned, and he directed it at Jack.
“We've got a 'good relationship', yeah. No need to go digging for child abuse or crazy Oedipus shit with me. My father and I are fine." The rest of Blake's language was as colloquial as it got, but he returned to 'father' with consistency - never 'dad'. "He was a busy guy when I was growing up, but he made time for me so he could spoil me rotten and raise a kid who blew all his money on booze and easy ass.” Blake chuckled, tilting his head back, and breezed along into the next, chopped off, rougher sentence, again like it was nothing. “Mom died when I was born. You getting all this shit down?" He looked over at him again. "I'm surprised you don't have one of those shrink notepads. Now would be the time to write down observations on how I'm all fucked up because there was no mom around to breastfeed me."
Honesty and then that seemingly casual remark about how and why he decided against following in his father's footsteps. It was followed by that same language from earlier, crass and provocative. He wanted a response. Jack didn't give him one as he looked over to catch that second look.
He'd gotten somewhere, Jack was sure of it. Why else the return to this sort of behavior? "I'm getting it. Once we're done I'll right down all my notes, including that you have no crazy Oedipus complex with your father." It was his turn to smile at the other man. "There are some researchers that believe that body language accounts for up to 80 percent of non verbal communication. I can't be watching you and write at the same time," Jack pointed out. "Do you think of yourself as fucked up?" He asked, almost deceptively casual.
Blake's brow bounced. "You're watching my body?" An easy smile. "Be my guest, Doc." He hadn't been kidding earlier - the good doctor was a definite looker. It also meant he was going to have to keep a closer eye on how he moved around him, if he was going to watch for tics so closely. No need for the shrink to think there was something actually wrong with him, right?
"Isn't it your job to tell me if I'm fucked up or not?" Blake shot back. "I think I'm fine." He shrugged. "I'm an after school special. I'm cool with it. 'Don't do drugs or drink or have sex with lots of people, kids, or you'll end up like the bad man in the tabloids.'"
Jack was watching everything. "Language. Body language," he corrected absently. Blake was a patient and that was all that Jack would ever see him as so long as that one thing remained true.
"Fucked up isn't specific. You could be fucked up on drugs or fucked up in general or fucked up and having delusions of grandeur. It's not my job to tell you if you are, but how you are and to be as specific as possible." He offered up another one of those small smiles, before he moved onto the next question. "How did your mom pass, Blake?"
Blake was actually a little impressed with Jack's mini-diatribe on the varieties of fucked-uppedness. If he wasn't careful, the other man might actually earn his respect, and that just wouldn't do. "I'd bet on delusions of grandeur on black," he said. "Fucked up on drugs is a given. All you need is a grocery store tabloid stand to put that one together, no degree necessary. And I'm not a junkie, if you're curious. That shit just isn't attractive. I generally confine my fun substance use to drinking and the occasional other stuff that floats my way. Nothing on a regular basis, though." A wicked grin. "I take what the lord gives me."
When Jack asked how Blake's mother had died, he didn't flinch. "Giving birth to me," he said, and shrugged. "Shit happens." He rolled the stiffness from his neck. "Tore my dad up for a long time, but he kept on going." From what he'd been told, his father hadn't even taken time off from the company. Maybe he'd wanted work to distract him. Blake could understand that. "She'd already had my sisters before me, but they were all pretty much out of the house by the time I was about four. It was just me, dad, and the nannies for a while there." A faint smile, something a little rarer. It had that quality that had flashed across his face earlier, something underneath the flashing grins and the wry smirks - exhaustion. But real pleasure, at the memory. No, his childhood had been a good one, on the whole.
Choppy sentences again, but there was no flinching, only the roll of his head seemingly to loosen the muscles in his neck, his shoulders. Then there were the longer sentences and that faint smile, a glimpse behind the mask that Blake obviously spent so much time and energy into maintain. A small smile of his own crossed his lips to hear something positive out of the other man, but Jack didn't mention anything about what Blake took, drugs or otherwise. Not for the moment at least.
"Are you close with your sisters?" As far as Jack knew, he was an only child. There had been times growing up when he'd wanted a sibling, but later, as an adult, he was glad that he hadn't. What would his mother have done with both of them? Though his father had provided him with the best care and he grew into who he was, it wasn't something Jack would ever wish upon anyone. Somewhere, sometimes, he almost felt a little jealous of people that had positive childhoods. Now was not one of those times, as he sat across from Blake, his legs stretched out and ankles crossed.
"Close enough," said Blake. "We get along just fine, but they weren't around a ton when I was growing up. No reason for them to be." He slid up a little in the chair, further upright against the arm of the chair. It was really starting to hit home that Jack was pretty good at his job. Facts about his life, though - those couldn't hurt, right? How much could he possibly get from those? Better to make him think he was getting something and then withhold the rest than just get shuffled off to another shrink. He'd already gotten one alarmed call from his father after some busybody friend of his contacted Blake's old therapist and found out he wasn't a patient there anymore. "What about you, doc? Any siblings running around?"
"No, only child," Jack answered easily. It wasn't his job to talk about himself though and it wasn't professional to talk to a patient about his personal, private life. "How about school? Did you go to college?" All of this was dancing around the thing that Blake had glossed over earlier, but a thorough history was just as important. Perhaps more important to deal with things that weren't causing Blake any trauma to build up trust between them and then see if he would open up about the incident on his own.
College was dangerous ground. College was where Blake had met Eric. Sophomore year, english class. He could remember every detail of it, crisp and clear, but did he want to? Of course not. "I went to Harvard," Blake said, and smirked, brow raising. "You know, like you do. I did my time, did some partying, got my business degree. Thought about going back to Harvard Business, changed my mind." He bit his lower lip. "And...that's the story of my thrilling college experience." It was nice, that version of it. If he tried hard enough, he could wipe Eric out of his own history completely, like he'd never been there at all, and only feel a short burst of guilt and self-loathing over it before the new reality presented itself to him, shiny, painless, and shallow. “I don’t know, man, it was a pretty typical rich kid Ivy experience, from what people tell me. I was in a Finals Club basically because I could get in, but it turned out to be seriously overrated."
Short, sweet, and to the point. But there was that smirking, the lip bite -- Jack was going to give himself a headache watching all the nuisances of Blake's body language. "None of the controversy or too much controversy that didn't appeal?" Jack asked, smiling once more. He'd heard about the Finals clubs, yes, during the news that he occasionally watched but he didn't pay them much attention. Political drama around schools and the clubs within weren't really his focus. "So, what happened after graduation?"
"Too much bad testosterone," Blake said. "Lots of pissed off straight boys who would be in a frat at a state school, if they just had a little less money and a few less IQ points. Even when you're the richest, most privileged boy in all the land, girls sometimes piss you off, I guess, enough to want to bring them into the club for parties and then kick them out after and go back to being the all-boys locker room. They weren't all that fond of queers, either." He smiled. "I managed to limbo in just under the 'straight enough' rule stick because they'd seen me around campus with a few of the legendary hotties. Imagine their shock when they discovered a vaguely bisexual queen in their midst. Quelle fucking surprise."
"After graduation I worked for my father's company," Blake said. He glanced up at Jack. His gaze was flat, inimitable, and, for a moment, almost hostile, before he checked himself and reeled that in. In this Blake’s life, the version of himself he spun for people who hadn’t heard about the scandal, nothing important had occurred after he graduated. He was just another fuck up, just another spoiled rich boy gone bad, flunked out of daddy’s company and wasting his inheritance. "Did it for a couple years, before I decided, fuck it, the corporate life isn't for me. Too many suits, too much responsibility, not enough payoff. So I moved out here and decided to take some time off, until I figured out whether there was something I wanted to do that wasn't fucking everything on two legs and sampling everything Vegas had to offer." A tight smile. "So far, I haven't found anything."
Coarse language again, designed to shock, but Jack didn't look anything more than mildly amused. The vaguely part must have been referencing Blake's sexuality -- he'd made it clear that he preferred men.
What wasn't known and wasn't expected was that sudden rise in hostility, the anger that was there and then tamed, forced back behind closed doors. Jack's expression didn't change, but he was sure that the something that happened that Blake had mentioned earlier happened then, after graduation while Blake was working for his father. The words after, that tight smile, that was what Blake wanted him to believe. "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas," Jack said lightly, offering the man across from a warm, genuine smile. "So what happened while you were working for your father? What did you do for him?"
"So they tell me," Blake replied. That brief flash of rankling feeling had been neatly smoothed over, pin straight, and all was as it should be. His father and the work he'd done at the company was a safe enough subject, so he relaxed a little, almost imperceptibly. To the untrained eye, everything Blake did carried the same ease of attitude, the same confidence without flaw, blackly amused and reflecting light back with precision. A little closer, and the cracks began to emerge, like crazing on old porcelain. "He had me start out at the bottom rung of the company. Junior sales stuff. In about six months, I started working my way up through the ranks. After about a year, I was into the nitty gritty of managing the business. Worked in marketing for a while, then settled into management. The idea was to give me a feel for everything, I guess. My sisters never had any interest in working for the company, or running it, and after dad died I was supposed to be the new king of the dunghill." Blake pushed himself up, finally swinging his legs off the arm of the chair, sitting up straight in the chair again. "I worked management for a while, got bored to tears, and I quit."
"Sounds like you've got a good head on your shoulders," Jack said easily. It was different as a doctor to work your way up and in a setting like this, Jack was already at the top. In a hospital, or even a multi-doctor practice, it was different and working in a laboratory was just as different from the other two. He preferred where he was to be honest, to not be fighting within the ranks to move up, to be the head of this department or that one as his father had done. "What about your personal life during that time?" Blake was not the type, as far as Jack had seen, to skimp out on the joys of life and while he knew what he read in the previous therapists reports, he wanted to hear it from Blake.
Blake chuckled. "That's not one I get a lot," he said. "My father encouraged me to get a taste for different parts of the business, in case I liked running one bit more than the other bit. I can't take all the credit for that plan."
Blake's personal life during that period had gone from private, to company gossip, to explosive news headlines to the words spat from police officer's mouths like ticker tape. For a second, he was nowhere, and the pause was palpable - he could still remember the sensation of having his head shoved down sharply, without warning, by an officer who stood behind him, asking him about his relationship in the suspect interrogation room. His head had snapped down toward the cup of coffee they'd given him. It had been sickeningly quick, like the feeling of falling, his forehead just missing crushing down against the styrofoam rim of the cup.
He snapped away from the memory. See, this was why he didn't bother with this fucking bullshit. This was exactly why he shouldn't fucking be here. He shut down like a steel door. "I fucked around, got into some trouble with the law for a second. It all blew over, though. What can I say? I'm the male Lindsay Lohan. Somebody's got to do it."
For a moment, Jack was silent, watching, seeing the change as Blake paused and then that rapid shut down, the flit away. There were times when someone had to talk about something, but in general, it was nearly always better if they told him without him having to revisit it time and time again. "The male Lindsay Lohan. Sex. Death. Tabloids," Jack said, remembering what Blake had said earlier.
"You haven't mentioned the death part yet," he added, quietly. As much as Blake was going to try and get out of it, Jack wasn't going to give him a get out of jail free card. And he wasn't going to tell the other man that the more Blake refused to talk about it, the more it showed a chink in that armor he cloaked himself in. Jack was sure that he'd come to that conclusion on his own.
Blake had thought about that. If he continued to avoid it, it would just make it seem more important. "Oh, that," Blake said, as if he'd simply forgotten. "It was ugly, but everyone made much more of a fuss about it than they ought to have. This guy I was fucking, he got himself kidnapped and he died.”
It was almost, almost flawless, so very close. Blake was used to talking about what had happened by now, since everyone in the circles he ran in here seemed to know about it. The celebutantes and trust fund boys followed gossip news with the same fervor as anybody else, after all. It did help, though, to say that version of events out loud. Every time he did it, he felt the wall get shored up. He settled, felt a little more stable. If he said it that way, that was how it had happened. Clean and shiny and without flaw. “Everybody thought I did it for a while. But they dropped the charges, and I moved out here, so that was the end of that." He glanced up at Jack, checking his face. Bile was rising in the back of his throat, but he shoved it down, made himself pretend he didn't know why. He crossed his legs at the ankle, leaning against the arm of the chair. "In case you haven't guessed, that's what my father thinks I should be fucked up over.” He smiled, condescending, conspiratorial. An ‘I know, isn’t it silly’ smile. “I don't know what I'm going to have to do to get him to stop sending me to shrinks, but I'm sure he'll figure out that I’m not losing my shit eventually. I mean, yeah, it was fucked up, but it got me on the cover of People. Beggars can’t be choosers.”
Blake made a very good act out of pretending that it didn't matter, that it was nothing more than getting on the cover of People and having his father worry about him in that way that father's did. Jack knew better. He didn't ask if Blake did do it -- people that killed others wore it differently on their skin. Violence was an undercurrent in their veins once they took that step and Blake didn't have it.
"Did he have a name? This guy you were fucking?" Jack asked, almost gently as he watched Blake. The end of that didn't sound like much of an end, not the way that he suspected that Blake wanted it to be. Something like that stayed with someone, hung on like cigarette stink on clothes and no one knew that better than Jack. To this day, he still couldn't eat McDonald's without remembering being in the back of one car or another, buckled in, toy taken out of the happy meal and drink up front with his mother. Every french fry had to be eaten individual and no dropping, no leaving them on the floor for her to pick up later. Today, just the smell of those fries could have him dry heaving. Things like that, trauma, no matter how many skilled therapists there were -- it stayed.
A flicker of memory projected across Blake's consciousness - the edge of a pair of dark glasses, mussed blonde hair, and a serious expression that cracked into a small, embarrassed smile. He lifted a hand, distractedly, like he could disperse the memories, just so much smoke. Then he dropped his hand again. "Eric," he said, blandly as he could manage, even as his stomach turned over. "He was alright in bed...but apparently not good enough to fuck his way out of trouble." Toward the end of the statement, Blake started to laugh, harsh, almost incredulous at the words coming out of his mouth, no longer so convincing, and oh god, he fucking hated himself, he could hardly stand to hear himself talk. But it was better. Being a callous asshole about it meant it hadn't meant anything. They equated. He took a breath. Steady now. "I'm just glad the police wised up and didn't decide to pin it on the queer just because," Blake said. "Prison would seriously have cramped my social schedule."
He felt sick. God, he could use a drink. When he got out of here, he'd just go find a really good club and get totally fucking smashed, take some cute little nothing home and fuck the shit out him. "Are we at an hour yet?" Blake asked, bored as bored could be on the surface. The end of the hour meant escape from this conversation, and he was starting to care less and less how suspicious it seemed that he was avoiding the topic. He wasn't talking about it. No one could make him. He could bury it under concrete. And if there wasn't documentation, news articles and police reports and bank statements, he could even have wiped it from history. By not talking about it, he could make a world where it hadn't happened at all.
And there was another glimpse of the man beneath the armor, the one that Blake was so desperate to cover up. Jack nodded and glanced down at his watch -- the only clock in the room. "Prison tends to do that," he said mildly. Jack's first internship had been at the state pen -- it hadn't been a good time. It had been hard but it had taught him a lot, not just about his patients, but also about his chosen field. There was so much he could do, but only when this patient wanted help. If they didn't want it, there was nothing he could do.
As much as Blake liked to insist that it was because of his father that he was here, it was still up to him to make it through the door. As long as that was true, Jack would use their visits to the best of his ability. If they had more time, he would have asked about Eric in this session, but they only had about five minutes left before it was over. Then Blake could do what it was that he did and Jack would write down his notes before seeing his next patient. "We'll talk more about Eric next time."
Blake pushed himself up from the chair. "If you want," he said, nonplussed. Thank christ. He could get the fuck out of here and wash the it all out of his head with some really good whiskey. He eyed Jack critically for a moment, then smiled, faintly. So he didn't want to be there, and he didn't want to talk about any of it. But as much as he wanted to despise Jack for being good at what he did - hell, he'd gotten further in an hour than the other woman had in almost a year - it was difficult. He seemed like a decent person. The good kind, the kind Blake wasn't. There weren't a lot of them around. "You're alright, doc. For a shrink, anyway." But the steel in his eyes said that didn't mean he wouldn't hold his secrets tight.
"I'll take that as a compliment." There was something about the way Blake said it, maybe it was his general persona that made Jack believe that few people got a good word out of the other man. The hard look in his eyes didn't even make him flinch, he only smiled in response as he stood and went to open the door. He'd get past the armor again and maybe, just maybe, he might be able to help Blake out. "Have a good day, Blake. I'll see you next week."