blake thorne doesn't believe in (anatkh) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-01-19 01:07:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | quasimodo, sam winchester |
Who: Blake and March
What: A visit to buy a totally legal perscription.
Where: Turnberry
When: Recently
Warnings/Rating: Swears
Blake was outside March’s apartment in a lot less than an hour, but he took his time walking down the hall. No need to rush.
The address of his new script writing best friend was a genuine surprise. Blake knew one dealer who lived in the building, but he was a rich old bastard, a fop who did a little dealing in the corners to supplement his investment income - not the vibe he got from Mr. March, not at all. Color him curious to see what sort of kind, unscrupulous medical professional or forger he was sharing a floor with.
Blake, admittedly, was not an enormous fan of March’s insistent, sharp picking into his motives, and that might have motivated the deal a little, sure. He hadn’t been intending to buy today, and he didn’t buy that often. But there was a point to prove now. Whatever March thought he knew about him, whatever he thought he could prove from a few rounds of casual conversation, straight from a comfy chair in his luxury apartment, he was dead wrong. His insistence, though, did make Blake curious enough to buy a few months of Roxies he didn’t really need just to get a good hard look at the guy.
He rapped once on the door, hard, and then waited with his hands in his pockets. The lack of a buzz would signal immediately that March’s newest patron was from within the building, but Blake didn’t really care. The tight jeans and loose black military jacket were casualwear from the night before that he picked up off the bedroom floor in the early afternoon, and it showed in the wrinkles. He did shave, though, just for his new bestie, even if his long hair was a bit everywhere. “Housekeeping.”
March didn't deal. Least that's what he told himself to make himself feel better. He handed out pieces of paper to folks who had to wait thirty days for each new batch of candy, and that was a sight better than what dealers did. Too, any decent pharmacist knew better than to fill a script for someone itching. March figured he was just making a living, same as all doctors that wrote scripts without thinking real hard on if their patients really had anxiety. It helped him sleep nights, and sleeping nights was more important to March than nearly anything else was.
And March wasn't real surprised that the doorman didn't go calling up. Seemed like most of the money on the damn journals lived close to home, which went explaining all the gunshots clear in the middle of the night. He didn't mind none if folks knew what he did. After all, writing a script wasn't illegal, long as he didn't hand it out without a doctor's visit. And, seeing as he was a doctor, it all worked out real fine for him. Didn't matter that he looked like he was clean into college, and it didn't matter that he'd never done his residency. Sure, no place decent would hire the likes of him. But March had managed to find a place for himself regardless.
Truth was, and the apartment did the telling here, March wasn't hurting for cash. Sure, the place was a one-bedroom tucked in the corner of the penthouse floor, but it was still plenty big, plenty sweet, and riddled with guitars and violins and fiddles all over. Definitely not hurting for money none.
March padded to the door, bare feet and skinny jeans with a brown a sash at his hip, a snug orange shirt and hair gone all mussed from his hands. He wasn't real worried about what was on the other side. (If the doorman had called, March woulda gone down, but he had Blake's address, which meant there wasn't any killing going to happen). He was a little under the weather, and he covered his mouth as he yanked the door open, coughing against his sleeve and his olive green eyes going all watered for a quick spell.
"Go on. My bed needs making then," March said, an easy grin and a voice was that was older and deeper than anything that belonged on the man-boy.
Blake was pleased by the sight that awaited him when the door swung open. If he was going to walk all the way over here for an impulse buy, he should at least get to look at someone pretty while he did it, even if they were coughing all over the place. That was what his life was, these past few years - watch the shiny ball, don't look anywhere else. It was an act of self-control in being out of control, and he did it very, very well. "We're moving to the bed already? Slow down, tiger, I’m not that kind of girl. I need a little romancing first." His smile came with genuine enough creases. What was behind the eyes, though, was a little harder to read. He liked that too-deep voice, and the messy hair, and it was easy enough to tell that he was already thinking about how much work it would take to get March into that bed.
He stepped inside and looked around, tugging lightly on the sash at March’s waist before turning to observe the apartment. "Nice," he said, hands back in his pockets, making a show of turning to look above the door, at the skull on the wall, and the shelves, at the couch. "White carpet, tch, no wonder you need a maid. Like the black and white, though. Just an aesthetic, I’m guessing."
March knew all kinds of boys like the one standing in his doorway and stepping 'round him, all hands on that sash and a whole lot of entitlement in his step. March hadn't ever paid a lick of attention to his momma's horses, and being part of an old family that had claim to a good half dozen Derbys didn't mean nothing to him. But the jockeys? March had been real fond of the jockeys, and they were all smug, vain things like the dark haired boy standing on his white carpet.
"Don't go getting handsy. You're only paying for a piece of paper," March cautioned, and he managed to make it sound flirty, even if it was a verbal smack to Blake's hand. "As for the bed, I'll let you go folding my blankets, but I won't be in it at the time," he added, all easy grin and a bit of crinkle at the edge of his olive eyes. The dark-haired thing was pretty, but March had sworn off trouble years ago.
March padded right past Blake, all the way into the kitchen, where he pulled a script pad from the top drawer and filled it out. He leaned heavy on his elbows, and he coughed a few times throughout, and then he handed the script back to Blake, who he was automatically assuming had followed him into the kitchen. "I like black and white lately. It's a phase," he said honestly of the decor. He hadn't really thought about it, but his apartment back home had looked real different. All browns and greens, Kentucky had felt more like something growing wild in a wood, but this place, it was cold, and March liked it plenty fine for how he was feeling these days.
Blake's interest was suitably piqued, and March's friendly rebuttal of his grab at the sash was an excellent sign. If he'd actually slapped his hand down, he would have known to either redouble his efforts or find easier prey, but the sick little doctor didn't behave disagreeably. He knew what March saw, and knew it factored into that reaction. Nobody took the rich, callous playboy seriously. There was no reason for them to. "I know what I paid for," Blake said, throwing him a look with a smile that said 'here's the palm of my hand, feel free to eat'. He wandered into the bedroom without the least compunction, looking over the rows of shoes, more black and white, the daylight through the windows. "Your phases must be expensive, if you redecorate your fucking apartment every time. No wonder you got into this line of work."
Blake appeared in the kitchen again as March was busy finishing his coughing and handing off the script. He plucked it from his hand, and produced a neatly folded wad of cash from his pocket. 700, instead of the agreed-upon 5. "Thanks," he said. "It's not every day somebody offers you prescription medication on a talking fucking journal, I have to tell you. I couldn’t resist." He offered the bills to March between his fingers, curious to see how he took it - junkie quick and desperate, or slow and casual. He was guessing the latter, since March obviously wasn't hard up. "What's the extra buy me?" he asked. The daylight caught his eyes with a clear glow, the windows reflected back on the canvas of those dark irises. His smile widened. “Goodwill?”
March laughed outright at that smile. "You born with that grin, or that something you learned along the way?" he asked easily, not caring a whole lot that Blake was wandering off toward his bedroom. Wasn't anything hiding that way, and all his meds were locked up tight and had been since he'd told Blake to come on over. "I just got here recent," he added. "No way to know how long the phase is going to last before it runs itself out." And he wasn't hurting for money, which was real evident. The only reason he did the business on the side was on account of his momma expecting him to pay for his own entertainment, but the apartment was paid for out of a trust fund without him ever touching the thing. His pills now, that was another story, and it explained a whole lot that he wasn't going to get into just then.
March took the offered wad of bills real slow, counted them, and then he handed back the excess two hundred. "I don't need tipping. Pretty sure I could lose my license for that," he said, eyes tease-warm. March wasn't inclined to be serious. Heck, he'd had enough serious to last him clear into next year thanks to that Christmas scene in the woods. "The extra doesn't buy you a damn thing, because I don't take it. Now, you need a doctor, I'll come fix you up for a price," he explained, smiling throughout, no hard feelings. March dealt with a whole lot of shady folks, and he didn't take extra from any of them; he knew better. "I can make us a pot of brew, if you feel like talking and telling me why you came all the way down the hall for a piece of paper, when I'm betting you got plenty of your own stash without that," he added, nodding toward the script and already turning for the coffee pot.
"Born grinning," Blake said. He didn't catch sight of the pills, obviously, or he would have asked about those, since he was nothing if not a curious person. Particularly about people he wanted to have sex with, for obvious reasons.
Blake frowned, pressing his lips sideways, but took the money back. It was a petulant little expression, mostly a joke. Still, he wasn't used to having anyone return money to him. March clearly didn't need it, he supposed, but it was still weird. He flattened the bills on the table under his palm, and left them there.
"You've got a license?" Blake asked, with a return of that cheeky smile and unfeigned surprise. He assumed he was getting something carefully forged. "You’re making this no fun. It’s almost...legitimate." He said the word like a dirty thing, and shuddered for effect. The smirk was back like it had never gone. “How boring.” He had been curious to see how March reacted to the money if he got indignant at the subtext, or took him up on the offer, or kept the money without any promises of a return. March had taken door number four, the one Blake hadn't sketched out. It fixed his interest. Had he just taken the cash or gotten indignant, that intrigue might have disappeared, but March kept doing weird little things, making unexpected little turns. Blake liked the new, the different. There was so much sameness in his life, such a parade of shimmering bauble after tower of liquor after pile of controlled substances after pretty thing after shiny casino. He craved any variation on the theme, even though he knew precisely how bad it could be for him. That was kind of the point, wasn’t it?
"Trying to climb inside my head again?" Blake asked, leaning across the table, watching the small of March’s back as he made his way over to the coffee pot. March trying to pry wasn't a threat, and he wasn't ruffled by the idea, because he refused to let it be, and he refused to be unnerved. March could go off script all he liked, but some things Blake would keep outside his reach. He was confident in his ability to play keep away with all that was important, and, dread it all, serious. "Who says I didn't just want a supplement to my stash? You're right here, and convenient, and I was fucking bored. Don't get your feelings hurt, sweetness, but I get bored pretty easy. You’ve got money, though, I’m guessing. You know how it is.”
There wasn't a pill in sight for Blake to catch sight of, because March kept those locked up real tight. He wasn't in the habit of telling anyone 'bout his problems. Truth was, he'd never told anyone about anything like that, and he planned on keeping it that way. Just like he didn't plan on taking any of that money back, no matter how Blake went on pouting about it.
The comment about this being almost legitimate was met with a shrug of March's orange clad shoulders. "I would offer to be more illegal for you, but I don't think I'm cut out for jailing." And, truth was, nothing March did was entirely illegal. Never having been accused of a damn thing before, he'd likely get a slap on the wrist if he got caught doing anything now, and that was just fine by him. He needed money for his meds, but he had no interest in ending up in jail. Sick folks like him didn't do well in prison, and he wasn't real interested in his HIV status changing. Anyway, he had a license, plain and simple, and treating folks that weren't criminals didn't make him, even if was pretty sure those burns he'd treated recent belong to members of some old school mob.
March laughed when Blake asked after him wanting to climb into his head. "Sugar, I'm sure whatever's in there is more than I can take," he teased, a playful joking, because he wasn't stupid; Blake was trouble, plain and simple. Pretty trouble, but trouble all the same. "You don't need to supplement a damn thing," he said as he turned, fresh pot on and the small of his back against the counter while it brewed, so he could keep an eye on his guest. "Now being bored, that's something worth believing." As for his own money, that earned Blake another shrug of those thin-boy shoulders. "I don't get bored. Money doesn't do that to all of us. There you go generalizing." And it was true, what he was saying. Even the apartment showed signs of comfort without frenzy, hobbies that weren't just to keep him busy. No one had music all over like he did without loving it, too much of it all over, strewn in all the living spots.
"Me neither," Blake agreed. "They like to fucking try, but I keep turning down the ride to the prison. Poor guys are always so crushed." He watched March while he was busy putting the pot on, and wondered why a guy with so much money would sell scripts. He wasn't paying for a place like this with scraps of paper, that was for sure, not even expensive ones. Well, he might as well ask. “Why’d you get into the medicine prescribing business?” Blake asked. “Trust fund not sending you enough allowance money for all the things a growing boy needs?”
Blake liked March's laugh, and decided, after hearing it, that he definitely wanted to hear it again. "You bet," he said, smile sweet and dark as sugar in coffee, there one moment and gone a second later. He held up a hand. "My mistake. I didn't mean to put baby in a corner." He'd noticed the musical bits and bobs everywhere, the books, the signals that March had a life outside of peddling prescriptions to people who didn't really need them, but they didn't necessarily mean anything. Blake knew plenty of people who had fifty hobbies precisely because they were bored out of their skulls and nothing really did the trick. He kept his eye on March right back, still leaning comfortably on the table. “So, you’re a music man on top of being my new favorite M.D?” And any sort of real answer to the question of why he’d come down there to buy from March disappeared in the bend of the conversation, out of sight. It was a pretty good magic trick, and Blake was expert at it. Enough charm, enough interest, enough questions, and everybody forgot what the hell they were talking about. Nobody would prefer to talk about other people more than they wanted to tell someone with a pretty smile about themselves.
"Man like you," March said knowingly, "they'll get you eventually. You keep on pushing the envelope until it can't be pushed no more. Get bored, and push. Get bored, and push. Like a junkie that way, but not escaping with drugs. Not even with that," he said, motioning to the script, the armchair psychologist. He'd considered it for a split second, going into that branch of medicine, but he still had nightmares about his stepmother, even now, and working with folks like that wouldn't have been any kind of life for him, even before things went wrong.
March chuckled at the quote from the movie. He liked him some Dirty Dancing, and Swayze had some arms on him. Or he had, 'fore he died. "I'm a music man first," he said turning around and pulling the pot of coffee off, and setting it on a trivet in the middle of the table, adding two cups and some cream and sugar down next. He doctored his coffee like they did in the South, sweet and white, and he took a sip with closed eyes and a look of genuine pleasure on his face, before going on. "Doctoring was just something to study when my grandmomma decided I couldn't keep hanging around the estate and playing my fiddle," he admitted. No point lying about that. Not like Blake couldn't go smelling the money on him. But it didn't answer why he was selling scripts, but then Blake didn't ask straight, and March had a thing about making folks ask for what they wanted. "Am I entertaining enough to go throwing away five hundred dollars for?" he asked, just before taking a fresh sip, olive eyes warm and laugh-knowing.
Blake listened to March, his talk of pushing. He'd gotten it in one when he'd observed that March liked to pry - he ought to have been a shrink, the way he analyzed and poked. "You remind me of a shrink I know," he said, bemused, not confirming anything he'd said and not denying it. There was no doubt that March and Jack would get along swimmingly, picking his brain apart for a group project. "For somebody who doesn't want to get into my fucking head, you sure like to try anyway."
Blake poured himself a cup of coffee, adding a little cream and a little sugar, enough to bring out the bitterness rather than smother it. "Look at you," he said, chuckling over the rim of his mug. "You're a fucking romantic comedy in the making. Grandma wouldn't let you follow your music dreams, so you run off to the big city, become a doctor, and sell prescriptions to ne'er-do-wells." He set the mug down again, mock thoughtful. "Now we just need somebody to come in and convince you to chase those fiddle-playing dreams again. There could even be a concert at the end where you win grandma's respect back, and the ne'er-do-well magically reforms into a goodie-two-shoes who won't sleep around. Then you run off and get married. Happily ever after."
Blake shrugged. He wasn't going to make it that easy for March, either. "You caught my interest," he said, the smile a challenge. "Figured it couldn't hurt to come get some pills and take a face to face look at you."
"Never said I was trying to get anywhere," March argued, but it was a smiling argument that didn't have even a spit of fire to it. "And don't compare me to shrinks. I got real close association with one, and he's maddening some," he explained, though there was plenty of fondness in his voice, indicating he liked the shrink in question just fine, despite his complaining. And he did like his brother fine. He teased Toby about being Freud all the time, and he was closer to Jan by far, but Toby had always been more daddy than sibling, once everything was said and done.
"Look at you," March countered after Blake poured his coffee, "making my life out to be a whole lot more dramatic than it is. Grandmomma wanted me to go to college, and I made my own choice for studying. As for running off to the big city, this place isn't all that big. I was in New York before, Chicago before that, and this is just a tourist trap gone sweltering," he explained, taking a sip of his own South-sweet coffee. "I was born here, though, and my siblings are here. So it's home for a spell." A spell, because March wasn't committing to staying anywhere. Commitments were for folks without expiration dates. "I play everything I feel like playing, whenever I feel like playing it. Sorry, sugar, but I'm not a sob story," he said, and it was true for the most part. If he hadn't gotten sick, March would have been the type to never quit smiling.
March laughed at Blake's shrug and non-response. "Uh huh. You go pretending everything you do don't matter a lick to you?" he asked, finishing off his coffee and quirking a bushy brown brow.
"True," Blake said, about Las Vegas being not much more than a jumped up small town with delusions of grandeur. It wasn't much in comparison to New York, he'd really just been embellishing for the sake of the thought. March at least had the looks and the money and the sweet disposition to pretend at being the pretty thing in a romance, but the script writing on the side did hurt the squeaky perfection of it all. Not for Blake, of course. He was fond of a little corruption. "Give it some time," he said. March could be a sob story, if something came crashing. And something could always come crashing.
"Who's pretending?" Blake asked, with a glimmer of amusement. "Let things matter too much to you and you're bound to get boring and old really fucking fast. I'm in the business of doing what seems good at that particular second. But I'm more interested in enjoying everything being young and rich, and attractive, and disgustingly privileged has to offer than giving a shit about anything happening with anyone else." A dazzling smile. "Worrying would be a waste of what I’ve got."
March just gave Blake an olive-eyed look, one that said he didn't believe a damn thing the man was saying, but he didn't fuss over it. He just finished his coffee all the way down to the bottom, even though his grandmomma would have said it wasn't polite to do that in company, and then he laughed at Blake's speech about the things he was interested in. His expression was one of pure entertainment, and he really did think it was on the endearing side, the talk this boy talked. He wondered if Blake actually believed it, if he'd gone and convinced himself of it.
March stood, and he pushed his chair in. Then he grabbed his coffee cup and set the empty in the sink, running water and all before he turned back to look at the dark haired thing at his table. "You're so full of shit," he finally said, all grin and dimples and a nose that was too long and too large to be attractive. He mussed his own mussy hair even worse than it already was, and then he nodded toward the door. "You go on and fetch your meds. Doctor's orders." And that was real intentional; it wouldn't do to go getting close to folks out here.
Blake's grin didn't falter for a second, because everybody thought the same thing. People tended to react to him like he was the most honest person they'd ever met, or the biggest bullshitter, and it didn't much matter to him either way, so long as they occupied themselves with studying the presentation and nothing else. "I don't remember paying you to order me around," he pointed out, still smiling, but took a quick swallow of his coffee and pushed away from the table. "Let me know if you change your mind about the gay for pay thing. I promise to be gentle."
He was out the door shortly thereafter, script shoved into his pocket and already almost entirely forgotten.