Who: March and Ford What: Patching Ford up Where: Hotel Ford When: Let's say recently, k? Warnings/Rating: Nope
Things had been real different for March since that lunch with Blake.
March had never been a boy prone to deep thinking, and he'd grown into the same kind of man. He took life easy, even the hard things, when they came, and he tried to put a good face on the whole damn affair. But no, that wasn't right either. He didn't have to try to put a good face on it, because it just came natural to do so. Growing up with October and January, he'd been the one that went on and did his own thing, while January hid from truth, and while October tried to protect them all from it. March had always seen things for how they were, and he'd managed to find a reason to smile in spite of it.
But ever since finding out he was sick, March had gone into a waiting room, one that he'd spent a whole lot of time unable to come out of. He'd got angry, which wasn't real surprising. For all his smiling, March got angry just as fine as other people. He hated his stepmother, still felt plenty put out at his momma and poppa, and he could hate the world for handing him this challenge. It didn't make him morose, but he'd gone and stopped living, and maybe he'd needed that for a spell. Selling scripts and a few years patching up folks that might not deserve patching, that had been what he'd needed. And now what March needed, that had gone and changed.
The Hospice was a quiet place at night, eerie still with weeping around corners. It was different during the day, because sunlight made everything more tolerable for folks, even dying. March took up the job because he figured they wouldn't go poking into his own medical history. After all, who gave a damn what was going on around dying folks? And, anyway, he was only doing a residency there. Universal Precautions were something all folks working in the medical field knew about, but it was doubly important for someone with a positive status. But, once it was all said and done, he was the one at the greatest risk of getting sick in a Hospice. Folks didn't come here bleeding and with open wounds, but pneumonia was real easy to catch, and a cold could turn into something a whole lot worse.
So, after a week and a sniffle that wouldn't quit, March went clean with his boss. He didn't get fired, like he'd thought he might. He did get a lecture about his rights, a real doctor, and a real regimen to help his immune system fight back anything it might go picking up at work, all paid with real health insurance. And he got the man's word to keep hush about it all. It meant he didn't need to go doing anything illegal if he didn't want to and, despite still being angry at the world, he found he didn't mind leaving those things behind.
Now, telling folks, that was a step March wasn't ready for. He was still waiting for his T-count, to learn about his strain, to see how things would be for him. There was no point fussing about until that was all done, and it would take months. Better set it all aside.
But that didn't keep March from making his way to Ford's motel room, even knowing he didn't intend to go making any grand declarations. He made that decision on the cab ride over, and it made it a whole lot easier to knock on Ford's door, knowing nothing terrible unpleasant would be coming. March was still in scrubs, dark blue and clean, with a long sleeved grey shirt beneath. There were white and blue sneakers on his feet, and a hint of stubble at his jaw. He smelled like bleach and clean, with a layer of the black tea he'd been trying to get himself used to on his breath. And he looked tired, hazel-green eyes a little droopy. He held a small whiteboard in his hand, and there was a backpack with supplies and a small fiddle slung over his shoulder. He leaned heavy against the wall beside the door, shoulder pressed to the cheap plaster and paper, and he knocked again.
The motel wasn’t the kind of place Ford was happy sharing with friends. He didn’t have all that many friends, of course, but if he had more, he wouldn’t be all that eager to be hosting. The sign boasting cable and hot showers not only lied, it couldn’t even stay lit, and the general befoulment of time tinged the cracked cement walkways and the old plaster walls. Paper walls made the sounds from every individual room clear to anyone walking by or hiding in neighboring rooms, and the place sagged under the weight of general poverty and a quick hour with a short skirt. Ford was more pragmatic than proud, though. He’d brought his partners to places like this, without actually making it much clear he put up temporary residence there. March had been with him in such a room, and if it bothered him, Ford figured he would just head out again where he’d come from. He hoped not, but it didn’t weigh heavy on his mind.
A creak of bedsprings from within, a shadow on dingy curtains, and Ford opened up the door. It took him a moment to reorient slightly to the side, and the yellow light played over his long, pale face. The dark curls were still heavy over his ears and forehead, but the carved look of his face was battered by hardening blues and ugly blacks, and his mouth was oddly shaped on a swell of a thick dark cut. It had only been one or two good punches, and he was still standing upright, but the white sleeveless was stained with oil, dirt, and the long trails of blood from his mouth. It was obvious he’d put his face in a sink of water, but that was about it.
He gave March a look of twinkling admiration and surprise, general unmistakable welcome in his expression. The murmur of Richard Dean Anderson in some foreign jungle on the battered set on one side of the single room filled the silence in Ford’s absence of verbal welcome. He stepped back to give March the space to enter. The bed was stripped of the (undoubtedly filthy) coverlet, but was otherwise made. There was a chair but it looked broken, and also a lamp that was barely hanging on by a socket. The bathroom light provided the most clarity to the room, and the motel room smelled of mildew but, thank God, nothing worse.
March wasn't the sort to go questioning where folks stayed, permanent or not. He'd been in places richer than home, patching up people so high up in bad business that he didn't even want to go thinking on it. He'd been in places crawling with roaches, all to do the same. He knew Ford wasn't made of money. That hadn't ever mattered to him any, and it didn't matter now. He was rich as thieves himself, or he would be, come twenty-five, but he'd grown up simple with his momma in Vegas, and even simpler with January and October. He didn't even go batting an eyelash when Ford stepped aside.
Ford's injuries didn't faze March none either. He'd been expecting worse, but he was glad to see they just looked like scrapping. These days, fighting came with knives and guns, and it wasn't like the rough tumbling of his childhood, not in hard parts of the city. He'd already figured out that Ford and Russ had both grown up hard. It was all over Russ' speech, even if he didn't get the same thing from Ford's writing. Ford, on the page, was charming as a cur, the damn man. But Russ sounded like greasy places and growing up hard. March didn't go pushing, but he paid attention, even if it seemed like he was smiling too wide to notice much.
And that twinkling admiration in Ford's eyes didn't go helping a lick. March already thought the man was pretty as a picture, and even that beatdown face didn't go changing that. He pushed past Ford into the room, and he headed toward the bathroom, expecting to be real unimpressed once he got there. He handed the whiteboard to Ford as he went. "You come on, and quit that grinning. You can write down what hurts," he added, pulling a marker out of the pocket of his scrubs, then holding that out too.
Ford looked down at the whiteboard and took the marker automatically rather than putting arm and hand out with any real intent. Battered knuckles flushed angry red under torn skin flexed as he wrapped his first two fingers and thumb around the barrel the marker without any enthusiasm. Ford was an easy read, and he looked at the whiteboard with a mixture of regret and distaste. Regret that March knew enough to think it necessary, distaste because the idea of holding up a sign like some delayed billboard made him feel impaired and stupid. He might be both those things, but he didn’t like feeling it.
The grin vanished on cue, but Ford gave March a look under thick lashes that passed flirtatious and went right into overdramatic bedroom eyes. “M’p-p-p-p-pride.” Ford turned and tossed the whiteboard down on the end of the bed, but he was talking about what hurt, the glossy white and black marker. “Y-y-you got a bu-bandaid fr’that?” Ford flashed a white grin meant to charm birds out of the sky. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe March when the man said he didn’t want to have anything to do with Ford or his bed, it was just that Ford liked to make abstinence difficult on principle.
Ford took one step forward and essentially followed March to the bathroom with that single movement. It was yellow, not white, laminate and not tile. It was almost clean, in a way, if you only looked at certain places. Ford’s second set of clothes was hanging on the bath rail, drying in the desert air that pushed in through the tiny high window no bigger than a book cover. Ford had a disposable razor and a disposable toothbrush on the counter, both dull and blue. Nothing else was in sight. Ford tipped his head and gave March an inquiring look and a faint smile. (Sort of, his mouth didn’t move much at the moment.) Satisfied?
"Oh, you hush up," March said, noticing Ford's expression when he took the marker and the whiteboard. "I don't give a damn if you stammer your way through every damn conversation we have, but I'm not going to have you bleeding to death because you don't want to," he said, acknowledging that he'd noticed Ford's reluctance to talk. He didn't think anything of the board, because it was a real common fixture in medicine. Folks couldn't talk for all kinds of reasons, anything from injury, to language barriers, to stammers. March didn't look at it as anything bothersome, though he understood it was to Ford. But minimizing was March's way of dealing with near everything, and this wasn't any exception. "If you keep on, I'll start writing on the damn thing. If you talk, the thing can burn." Simple.
But those bedroom eyes, those earned Ford a scoff, a grin, and a twinkle of hazel-green. "You're a damn menace," March said, real fond, too much liking in it. "Your damn pride's just fine," he insisted, glancing Ford over. "I bet the other guy looks a whole lot worse than you do," he said, refusing to acknowledge the whiteboard as any kind of pride buster. Especially not from a man that could grin all charming like that, like he was Cinderella and some birds were going to come perching on his head at any minute.
But a second later, March was already looking the bathroom over, concerned about hygiene. A pair of gloves came out of the bag he set on the counter, and he pointed to the edge of the tub, even as he shook the extra powder off the inside of the gloves. "Sit yourself down and pull that shirt off, and don't you go sassing about me wanting to see you naked."
Ford took turns being uneasy and pleased as March seemed to transform from angry doctor to pretty hazel eyes, sliding from one to the other in the space of seconds with apparent ease. He made a faint scoffing sound at the top of his throat at the idea of bleeding to death and he lifted one hand and drew a circle in the air with his fingers as if to say, what, this? this is nothing. Ford didn’t look back at the board, having absolutely no desire to scribble his way through things while March waited for him to catch up to the conversation like a normal person. He had never been hospitalized, never even been in a hospital, and he had never met anybody that had the kind of problem talking he had. He had no perception of how common it was or was not, and he had adapted in his own way. March would like it or he would not.
“Oh-only c-c-cuz somebody got-got to him first,” Ford conceded. He was annoyed about that, annoyed that Russell had refused to confide in him even as a stranger in a shop. He shook it off with a hard toss of curls and breathed in a long breath to push the nasty thoughts off. Russell. Asshole.
Somewhat bemused instead of begrudging, Ford stretched out dirty jean legs at an angle across the bathroom floor, pretty much dividing the tiny cube in two. He perched uncomfortably on the edge of the tub, because his ass didn’t balance that well on a hard chunk of fiberglass, and gave March’s gloves a concerned look. Gloves looked ominous. “I d-d-don’t got c-can-cancer,” he said, grinning at the bag of supplies. He was a little taken aback by the situation, but he wasn’t worried, either.
Ford sat innocently on the edge of the tub until March looked over at him, probably to say something stern, and then Ford gave an angelic smile before spreading a well-shaped arm over the top of his head and peeling off the stained cotton sleeveless. It made the bedroom eyes seem downright chaste, even with the scrapes and bruising one the opposite arm. Ford flashed his teeth again and offered the shirt to March as a silent sacrifice.
March had no cause for understanding why Ford was being stubborn, other than chalking it up to the same kind of stubbornness Guthrie showed over things. He chuckled to himself, wondering how Ford would take to being compared to a horse. But that thought wandered off real quick, and he found himself wondering if Ford would be the kind to like to ride - Horses, not folks. Ford's stammering words pulled him out of his thinking a second later, and he gave him a look that was questioning. "Who got to him first? Your brother sounds like a real piece of work, son," he said, speaking true. Russ C was a bastard on the journals, and no mistake.
"Cancer don't catch," March said with a grin that was all lazy and unconcerned. If he was worrying about anything with those gloves, it didn't show a lick. "And we both know you've ridden things more uncomfortable than that bath ledge," he added, teasing as he crouched in front of Ford, scrubs pulled tight along his thighs and expression turning to serious things. He tossed the shirt aside when Ford offered it, and he worked damn hard not to look up at that angelic expression. He was good at being a doctor, though, and a few seconds in he was touching and prodding along Ford's ribcage and higher, looking for wincing or anything troublesome, and not a hint of seduction in the touch of those latex-covered fingers. "You ever get on right with that man?" he asked of Ford's brother.
Ford shrugged, first with his bruised arm, which made him flinch in irritation because he’d fallen and slid a good few inches on it, and then with his good one, which worked just fine as it rolled in thick muscle up toward his ear. He didn’t know who hit Russell first, and he was torn between wanting to shake the guy’s hand and kick his ass. Maybe both. Not that Russell welcomed any interference. Ford didn’t like thinking that someone that came from the same place as him had suddenly turned into a dangerous enemy with fists. While he had not expected Russell to welcome him with open arms, maybe a handshake or something... Ford’s disappointment took some of the delight out of his face, and deepened the lines around his eyes.
Fortunately, March took that right out of him by surprising him into sudden laughter. Ford rocked his hips back and forth, theatrically balancing his weight on the bathtub rim with exaggerated difficulty. His last belt had given out six months ago so the wiggling did fine things with stomach and hips under the line of the jeans. Good mood restored, Ford lifted both elbows and looked down to watch the foreign gloved fingers prodding at him. His abused mouth twisted as the bruises were prodded, but they were just bruises, after all. The two men had wailed on each other, but that was about it.
“Only m-m-m-met’im t-t-t-twice,” Ford said, sliding his tongue under his teeth and looking up toward the ceiling to concentrate on the words and not who was listening. “S-s-sssso... n-n-no?”
March almost missed those hard lines going deep around Ford's eyes. Almost. He didn't go poking, though, not yet. Not like he was doing with his fingers. By then, he was stretching to cup Ford's jaw real light, looking for dislocation, though he knew by that laughing that it was unlikely. "Quit your wiggling," he said, his old-man voice making it sound like a grumpy thing, but it was said smiling, and nothing ornery in it.
March rocked back onto his heels a second later, and he reached for the counter and grabbed for some of the stingless cleaner and swabs in his bag. Wasn't much needed swabbing, but he dampened the thing, and handed it over. "Corner of your mouth, son," he said, shying away from anything that looked open. He wasn't bleeding anywhere himself, and maybe he was bordering on paranoid cautiousness, but he didn't want to tempt fate where Ford was concerned. It seemed doubly wrong somehow, since he hadn't managed to find the balls to talk to the man about his status yet.
"You could do with a belt," March said, less than a second into the silence, and making it plain that he'd noticed what all that squirming had put on display. But his expression turned curious a second later, as he tugged the gloves off, wishing there was a way to cover that lip cut with a bandage. "Only met him twice. That sounds like there's a story come with it," he said, not in any rush to move. It had been a long night and a hard shift, and March had always been the type that didn't need to running from his skin. Sitting there, close-in and chatting, it didn't fuss him any.
March did rock back off his heels, back against the cheap cabinet and his rump on the linoleum. He wasn't tall, but his legs were plenty long, and he had to keep them half cocked in the space between cabinet and tub. His sneakers squeaked on the tub's rim, one on either side of Ford, pinning him in. He grinned. His bag was yanked down a second later, and he pulled a rolled-up grey medical scrub from inside, and tossed it at Ford's head. "Cleaner than that other one."
Ford sat still as March’s hands came up to his jaw, and he settled his palms flat on the cool fiberglass edge on either side of his thighs to avoid leaning from either side. He had to stop smiling since the swelling and the bruises were too deep and wide to manage it while March’s fingers were pressing into his flesh. Ford had a strong jaw and a weak chin, but he was naturally expressive to make up for what he lacked in voice, and his eyebrows and even his cheeks flexed under the press of fingertips. The blue eyes stared steadily into March’s, examining the peculiar mossy mix of hazel with interest. It had been too dark to examine them in their previous meetings, and the nearness meant he could look his fill without any comment. Ford made a thick humming sound of disappointment when the hands fell away, giving March a twinkling eye once more that it was meant as much a tease as anything else.
Ford looked down toward his crotch (okay, waist) in search of the belt that wasn’t there, and then he shrugged his shoulder again. Belt, who needs a belt? “Mm-m-m’pants stay up. When they s’-p-posed to.” He wiggled his hips in a manner he obviously thought was hilarious. It came off somewhat childish, as it was meant to. He wasn’t seducing March, he was just trying to make the man’s night interesting.
Ford tore open the antiseptic packet and half-rose from the bathtub to get a look in the scrubby mirror. He didn’t look a treat and he winced at the sight of himself in the mirror. Good thing he wasn’t actually attempting any seducing. Obedient, he dabbed cautiously at his mouth, but when nothing sent a stab of pain through him, he did a better job cleaning the blood than he’d managed with hot water. He folded the cloth over and worked on the swell of his eye next, displaying a frugal nature he’d picked up early.
Ford caught the bundle of cloth before it hit him, and pulled it open, trying to figure out if it was top or bottoms. “Ehl-el-looks like Chanel,” he commented, smiling to himself as he eyed the seams. He didn’t actually make a move to cover his chest up again, procrastinating when it came to stretching out those bruises again. He leaned over to recover his bloody shirt. Maybe he could soak it in a Tide packet and hope for the best. “N-no-no story,” Ford added. “Man t-t-t-t-took-took off. Years ago. We nev-n-never met.”
"You're a mess of trouble," March said at all that twinkling in Ford's eyes. Personally, he thought it was a damn good thing that the man couldn't talk near as well as he could do everything else. It would be real dangerous if Ford could get his seduction on with words. If the way the man flirted was any indication, he'd be a damn charmer. March wasn't the jealous kind, and he'd never been even a hint of possessive, but he knew Ford would be trouble for folks that were. He thought about introducing the man to Blake. Blake tried so damn hard, and Blake could learn a thing or two from Ford; Ford made it all look easy.
March laughed at the comment about the pants staying put, and he laughed harder at that ridiculous wiggle of hips. March's laugh was like his voice, too old for his face, too deep for his age. It was like old scratch on sandpaper, deep and booming. He didn't hide it none; he never had. And his smile was wide enough to crack, lines already run deep from so much grinning, even at twenty-four. He rubbed his hand over his mussed hair, shaking his head when Ford stood to do his ministrations. March didn't move. He tipped his head back, watching with hazel eyes gone all doctor-fied, but he didn't move.
When Ford caught the shirt, March smacked his leg. "Damn man. Just put the thing on. You feeding me?" he asked. "Least I deserve, seeing as I made a house call after working all night." And he was hungry; tired too. But he wasn't in any hurry to get himself gone. He wouldn't be making any deep admissions here, and guilt didn't go eclipsing his relief about it. Had Ford been worse off, bad enough to need an ER, March would have done different; he liked to believe that.
"How'd you meet up now?" March asked of Russ, lumbering to his feet with a tired sway.
Ford folded up long limbs and distributed his weight into standing without a hint of awkward. He had shed his heavy boots and he was standing on suspiciously gray and fraying socks, but for someone who looked quite so battered and blue, he appeared to be in a decent mood. Sometimes his eyes would stop snapping so quickly and go distant and cloudy when he thought about Russell or (even cloudier) his mother, but for the most part he was bright and paid more attention to March than he did the cuts and aches and pains. He nudged around March’s hip and filled up the sink to soak his shirt, letting the clean scrubs hang from his right palm for a while longer. Other than a slight tan from the sleeveless he usually wore to work, his back was unmarked, cut lean against his spine.
“M-m-m-m-ostly b-bu-by chance,” Ford said, calmly, looking up to watch March’s profile in the mirror and then glancing down again to swish the cold water and shirt together in the cracked yellow bowl of the sink. Turning, he set his ass against the counter and picked at the clean scrubs to unfold the shirt into a position he could slide over his head. “W--w-wuh-works at the site. Con-con-c-” he stopped, gave up on that word, and found another: “Building.” Sideways glance to see if March got it, but not too long, because he didn’t really want to see it if he didn’t, it would making speaking worse.
As for food, Ford had to rub at the thick curls at the back of his neck and frown in rueful apology. “N-n-no-nothin’ere.” Unless March wanted a granola bar from Ford’s stash, but he was using those to get him through halfdays at work. Ford thought about saying that, but decided against fighting for it. A slip and everything started to get worse, like an avalanche. Ford swallowed at the lump at the top of his throat and made a bitter, annoyed face.
March watched all that washing with his head back against the cabinet, knowing he'd get a crick if he didn't get off his ass soon. It wasn't even that the cold, hard floor was comfortable. But not moving felt like a blessing, and he didn't much feel like standing until he had to. He hadn't felt like this since he'd interned in the ER. The feeling of moving so much, so fast, that everything only caught up later, and it knocked you raw without you even seeing it coming. He liked it. His grandmomma had made him go to medical school, but he'd found he liked it, liked being tired at the end of the day doing something useful. He hadn't felt that way in a good, long while.
"Figures you're a construction worker," March said, understanding what Ford was getting at just fine. "Bet you get sweaty and whistle at folks," he teased, watching Ford unfold that shirt. He was damn sure the man was intentionally making a meal out of it, but March didn't mind. Some men might get themselves all angry about things they couldn't go having. March just stared, all kinds of appreciation in his hazel eyes, and held onto the memory for later on, when he was all by his lonesome. "Order us a pizza," he suggested, reaching into his pocket for a coupon and a twenty, which he held out to Ford. "If I head home before putting something in my stomach, I'll just go fall on my bed hungry." He didn't think about the stammer, didn't go considering that calling for food might be challenging. He just didn't think of Ford as someone with a problem, strange enough as that might seem to some folks.
Ford had all kinds of problems. He thought of them as problems because they got in his fucking way when he wanted to do things like get a job or flirt with shockingly well-spoken boys that knew too much. He was used to them in a way that many people could not understand, however; nothing was new, and every challenge was an old challenge to be circumvented in some creative way or addressed at a cost that had to be weighed against the goal. Was a pizza worth trying to figure out how to order it and still be understood? Typically he just went into the place to save on the delivery fee, and he could just point at something on the menu and skip the complicated parts.
“Ef-f-f-phone down the hall,” Ford agreed, after a short consideration and envisioning the scarred plastic phone in the metal box barely hanging on to the wall outside. He grinned at March and set his lower lip against his teeth and made a perfectly tuned whistle in two long notes. Helll-llo, the two notes said. It was the extent of Ford’s musical talent.
Ford dropped the shirt over his head and shoulders where it hung loosely over his chest. It did a good job of covering up all those lines and muscles, and it looked like an oversize smock. Ford looked down at it with amusement. He wasn’t all that vain, Ford, just comfortable in his skin and obviously expectant that everyone else should be too, when they were happy and relaxed. He took the coupon and the bill, glancing at the face in the center (and not the numbers) before winding both up in one palm. He reached the other one down to take March’s elbow and help him upright. There was a bit of a loom and a smile, but no advance toward more.
March laughed when Ford whistled, an old man laugh that belonged to someone who'd seen too much of the damn world, and who laughed because of it, not in spite of it. He didn't think anything of the phone in the hall, didn't go making judgements without meeting it. Instead, he tugged his journal out of the front pocket of his scrubs, holding the damn useless thing up. It fit in his palm, and it was a red stone, an obelisk in his hand. "Used to be I could at least call for takeout with River's damn journal. This new one? It's too damn advanced to be good for much." To prove it, he slid his fingers along the smooth surface, letting the holograph light up the bathroom above them. It looked like a computer screen just right, though none of the damn words were English - they weren't even words. "It's me," he told the thing, sounding slightly put-upon, like a fond parent fussing at a child. The glyphs shifted themselves to words, and he grinned up at Ford, before sliding his fingers against the stone again, and shoving the damn thing away.
"Damn shame," March teased, when all that skin tucked out of sight, but leave it to the fool to look attractive in a potato sack. He chuckled at that, a real easy chuckle, and he snapped off the gloves he was wearing, giving no trouble when Ford reached for his elbow. That made him grin some too, because he wondered if Ford was secretly thinking that he was some tired old grandpa. "How young are you?" he asked, because he'd already figured Ford as being younger than him. March looked like he had fewer years on him than he actually did, and he knew that too. When he'd first started selling himself as a doctor, he'd been met with a whole lot of laughter.
March didn't lean forward even a hint, thank you real kindly, even with that loom and smile. He turned, shoved the gloves in the trash and zipped up his bag, and he moved on past Ford, hip brushing against hip, and he left the bathroom. The bed beckoned like heaven, though March wasn't daring enough to crawl onto the thing. Instead, he took up the fiddle case that he'd set aside, and he plucked at the strings of the sleek, brown fiddle. "Tacos sound good too," he said, grin and bossing. There was a stand nearby. Might be quicker than pizza. His stomach grumbled, and he laughed.
Ford was disappointed when March didn’t lean closer into the assistance as he might an embrace, because after his brother’s rejection he was feeling a little abandoned and a little hated, and a nice hug--or lots of nice kissing--might have fixed that feeling up a little bit. He decided not to push it, however, not even annoyed at the little twinge the brush of skin afforded him as March sailed past. It felt petty and selfish to wish for more than a little sympathy and antiseptic, but there it was. Ford wasn’t the kind of person to just stare and never touch, and he didn’t take to pining all that well either.
Temporarily confounded, he spread out arms and mind again into the central room, shaking off the disappointment as he flexed his fingers. His knuckles made a short symphony of snapping sounds, and Ford rolled his poor bruised shoulder a little bit later in the hope it would feel as good. It didn’t. The ‘how young’ question was put to him a little differently than Ford was used to, and the open sky blue of his eyes rolled upward in a display of studied innocence. “Legal,” he replied, firmly, as if this answered all questions. With his physique Ford could get away with buying a drink--but only if the light was bad and the bartender lazy.
Ford held up the coupon, logo side out, waving it gently in the air and then tipping his head back toward the front office and pay phone. Pizza it would be. Pizza, perhaps the most evil word in the culinary English language other than spaghetti, designed only to be a torment. Ford was planning on ordering something like “a large” and avoiding anything like “pepperoni” by saying “everything.” Approaching the door, he pushed a black duffel bag that held his worldly possessions out of the way with the outside of one foot before going through it a second later. The trip to the phone and back only took him about five minutes.
At first, March didn't know he was causing problems. Maybe he was just less hot-blooded than Ford or Blake. Maybe all that thinking about the trouble his dick had gone causing, maybe all that obsessing on it, had made him less inclined to want to do anything with it. He thought Ford was mighty pretty, but he was willing to think it from a safe distance. But even he couldn't ignore that shaking off of disappointment that came with Ford's flexed fingers. He didn't even comment on that firmly vague legal. Instead, he just sat himself down on the edge of the bed, after setting the fiddle back in the case, once Ford went to call for the food.
March was still there, on the edge of that bed, bag and case by his hip, when Ford came on back. His elbows were on his knees, and his head was down, and anyone who'd known March going on five minutes knew that wasn't normal for him. He looked up at the dark-curls and doe eyes, and his expression was hazel-serious. He was playing a real dangerous game here, and he knew it. "I'm more tired than I reckoned," he said, though his expression said there was more to it than that. "You go on and eat the pizza. I best be going to sleep." It wasn't real strongly said, and it wasn't real sure. There was something about the line of his shoulders, the droop, that said he'd be real easy to talk into saying more about what was troubling him, intentions not nearly as firm as they'd been when he'd arrived.
When Ford came back in he was in a pretty decent mood. The person on the other end of the phone had understood him without getting all that grouchy, and with the twenty bucks plus coupon the pizza wasn’t going to cost him anything. Ford was always hungry, not exactly starving, just hungry, and short of sex, nothing put him in quite as good of a mood as food. Hot, cheesy food. Ford’s stride was long as he walked back in, bringing with him a rush of cool, dry air, the sky behind him so deeply purple it was black in the way only a desert could cultivate.
He gave the door a backward kick with his heel, all emphasis and ease, and for March he had an immediate smile that said he was glad to see him, a simple and yet bright expression that came to him without effort. The cheap door rattled in the frame and then Ford caught March’s curve of fatigue and dejection silhouetted on the end of his bed. The smile wiped away with a mixture of curiosity and light concern; Ford knew most people had cellphones and he thought perhaps March had received bad news in the intervening minutes.
Ford moved closer and sat down. He had a clean, even scent, a natural dark musk without spice that would suit a man darker and heavier than he. The bed sank inward at his weight, pathetic thing that it was. Ford tipped his head so he could catch March’s eyes with his own sad blue ones. Ford was good at inviting confidence in this way; he rarely expended the energy with strangers, but he was capable. “Y-you c-c-c-can-can stay’ere,” Ford said, pushing some of the syllables together to save time but lowering his voice so the suggestion was earnest. A quick smile. “I w-w-wuh-won’t hurt you w-w-while you’re ah-ahs-sleepin’.”
March chuckled, and it might have been intended to be something real bitter and self-hating, but he just wasn't made for those kinds of noises. He looked over at the boy beside him - boy now, since March was guessing he was damn close to eighteen - and he kept a steady stare on him for a few seconds. He sighed then, hands gripped between his knees and something heavy weighing him down. "The kind of hurting you might do while I sleep is nothing I frown on, and that's why I should go, son," she said, more honest than he normally was. There was no arguing about celibacy, about changing and going this way or that. Ford had bought that line, and it wasn't a real lie, but it wasn't near the truth, not as near as it should be.
Standing on tired legs, March paced this way and that, back and forth. His gait was slow, knees feeling the strain of a real long shift, and he looked over at the bed mid-pace. "I like you," he admitted, stopping and stilling to say it. It was true; no point lying about it. He looked at him, the pretty thing on the bed, all dark curls and something like an angel's face that was made for sinning. He should just say it. He should just blurt it out, get it over and done, and take the punch he was due. But looking on Ford's face, he just couldn't do it. He couldn't get the words out right. March never had trouble with words, but he did then. Part of him wished he could just reach for his fiddle, let it do the talking, but life didn't work that way; he knew that plenty fine.
March stepped forward instead, and he touched his fingers to Ford's cheek right quick. It was a nothing kind of touch, there and gone in a flash, and he leaned over for his fiddle and bag a second later. The bags slid over his shoulder, and he was close enough that he could go imagining he felt the heat coming off Ford's body. He almost wanted to ask Ford why he'd come back, shown up and made this disease all about a person, instead of about numbers and things that didn't feel human. But he didn't ask, because asking that question would require telling; March wasn't doing so good with telling.
Ford was fairly clear about not hurting anyone, but about halfway through March’s sentence he figured he meant some kind of good hurt--which honestly Ford only imagined with March very awake and doing interesting things while the hurt got good. He spread his knees a little in his loose jeans and sat deeper on his weak bed, but the drowsy contentment changed as a short silent stare followed, and Ford detected a sobriety that meant the comment hadn’t been a compliment. Ford’s expression smoothed again into confusion, and loose, ragged knuckles scraped back across the sheets and settled again on his knees.
Ford watched in obvious astonishment as March got up, and he made a movement to stand as well in unthinking pursuit of a retreat that didn’t come. March was acting as if someone had died, but Ford didn’t understand why the man was being so cagey about it. What would be the harm in telling him? He was practically a stranger, or near enough. Maybe it had something to do with this no-touching thing he had going on. Ford’s eyes went wide and then narrow as the thought occurred that maybe someone had hurt March and that was why he didn’t want to touch anyone. It vanished into nothing, steam on a cool day, a second later, because March came closer.
Ford’s face lit up. He liked being liked. He didn’t search for it or die over it, but he liked it, and when he got it sometimes he felt like he was starved for it. Ford put up one hand to catch the one that reached for him, but it was gone too quick, moth fluttering away in the glare of a cheap light. The disappointment shadowed his face once more, the dark brows falling and rising again. “Hey. M-M-Mar... wait. wait.” He stood up and made a grab for the man’s arm.
March wished the damn man's face wasn't so expressive. He figured he could make out every last thing Ford was thinking, if he just watched him long enough, and that was too dangerous to ponder. Friendships couldn't be built on lying, and that was precisely what was going on here. It would come bite him in the ass eventually, and March wasn't real keen on hurting; he didn't set himself up for it, if he could help it. It was the same reason he'd never dated serious, because he'd end up feeling bad when someone expected him to get jealous over something, or to get worked up over something else. March was too damn easy going for that, and he had a fair dose of confidence to him; he wasn't that man, and folks always wanted him to be that man.
But Ford didn't want a damn thing like that, and March knew it. He knew, too, that if he was going to keep talking to this man, then he needed to tell him what was happening clear and loud. He shook his head, and he pulled his arm back before Ford could go catching it. "I'm going," he said, plain and straight and strong. He'd already done this boy wrong. He wasn't going to keep on doing it. Either he worked up the balls to tell him, or he let him be. The latter was a chicken's out, and the former seemed too hard to face. It came with facing it himself, facing his own damn mortality, and that seemed daunting as hell in the dingy hotel room, that blood still shadowing the corner of Ford's mouth.
March gave Ford a sorry smile, something like shame and guilt, rather than apology. "Don't go getting in any scrapes, son," he said, scuffing the floor with a rubber sole. It was goodbye, without being goodbye. March was shit at being brave about things, and he was only now coming to realize it. Maybe all that smiling and funning was just like January, same as his baby brother's way of dealing.
Now hold on a minute. It was as clear as if Ford had said it, spelling out over his skin and under the scrapes on his chin and the ugly purpling of his face. Dark brows tilted inward, and what remained mobile of his mouth flexed against the curve of his cheek. On his feet, Ford was the quick young coyote that was always reflected in Russell’s eyes, built long and rangy with new muscle. He stretched out and took himself into the center of the room with the single movement, not light on his feet but deliberate and shifting as ligament extended hard against the boundary of his bones.
He did not attempt to grab March again, because Ford knew some people didn’t like being grabbed at, and he didn’t want to scare March off. It was a new thing, this caution, and it surfaced only in that single restraint. He crowded March, not blocking his way to the door but preventing him from leaving without protest. Ford was very good at such rapid physical expressions, and with a step and a huff of breath he said, clearly, that he did not want March to leave but he also wasn’t going to physically prevent it.
“B-b-but... wuh-w-w-why?” It was harder to purchase words when he was agitated and he paid twice as much. Ford just spit out what he could in the hope that he’d manage it before all he had to talk to was March’s back.
March hadn't know Ford well enough to know if he was the kind of man to chase something out the door.
March hadn't know much about Ford at all, not until recent. He knew basic things, like the taste of the other man's skin, and the way he looked after coming. Basic things. Folks wrapped sex up in a bow and called it love, but March knew it weren't like that. He knew that plenty of folks would see Ford all wound up in bed, in coming, in pleasure. But few folks would see what lived beneath that. Sex was a pretty diversion, something sweet, a way to pass the time. It was feeling that mattered. People got themselves all worked up, being jealous of cheating. Talking was a whole lot more dangerous than sliding your mouth over someone else's. Before this, Ford had just been a boy in a bed, one March might have gotten sick. Now, now Ford was close enough to eighteen to still have a boy's look to him. Ford was a stammer that impressed March, because the boy was still confident and strong, even with it hindering. Ford was a bad family, and he was a brother that was one hell of an asshole. And Ford was a shitty motel room and not enough money to go buying anything to eat. All that made Ford real in a way slipping between sheets hadn't done.
March wished he could go back to not knowing.
"I got something I need to say to you," March to Ford, buying a bit of honesty with a real deep breath. "Not tonight. I'll call," he promised. He meant it. He needed to figure some things out first, but he'd said it now, and there wasn't no going back.
March gave Ford one more look, long and steady, olive and hazel and shadows in his eyes. Then he hiked his bags higher on his shoulder, and he took to the hallway.