PEPPER P. (saltedand) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-08-17 22:55:00 |
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Entry tags: | pepper potts, sam winchester |
Who: Russ & Ford Campbell
What: Part three. In which Ford and Russ are completely ridiculous.
When: Recently
Where: Russ's place
Warnings: Russ
Ford got laid by being innocent. He survived by the exact opposite. He stopped posing and he stopped really attempting to be irritating. He took his chin off his arms and his headphones slid over his shoulder and the weight of the earcups took them down onto his collarbone again. The phrasing of Russell’s final comment put a wary look on Ford’s face, a squint to his blue eyes. He didn’t like that phrasing, and Russell’s soapy hands didn’t do anything to take back the type of thing that immediately called up. He wasn’t scared because he didn’t actually believe Russell would actually do anything really awful, but then again, he hadn’t seen Russell around women before. He had seen those kind of men before. He frowned. “C-c-caught?” Doing what as the unspoken question, and Ford frowned at Russell, annoyed that he had said something to make him worry in this way. So maybe Ford’s sex ed had been lacking; he still knew what kind of things people could do to hurt each other.
“Pants down,” Russ affirmed, and he was thinking of blood-tests and of clinics just then, not the kind of bruises and shut-down looks of relationships a little more violent, and he looked at Ford’s face where the innocence had abruptly scrubbed itself clean away and saw not just clarity but also suspicion. There were many things Russ could do (and would do, temper too liable to go off and readiness to get himself into trouble for fun) but what he seemed to see in all that doubt pulled at his mouth and drew the eyebrows forward and solid in a hard, flat scowl. “What the fuck are you thinking I do, slap them the fuck around?” It didn’t sound like a would-be threat this time. It sounded like doubt and it sounded a little like disappointment layered in with a great deal of anger, dampened down by the flat resentment at being judged without reservations as to character.
“I know better than to fuck someone without a fucking condom is all,” and it sounded less like lashing out and more like lashing back, all grit-teeth and poison laid on from stung pride.
The two words took Ford’s suspicion away like it had never been, like the warm soapy water kept Russell’s hands entirely clean and always would. He relaxed into his chair, and the curls somehow went floppy again as his head rocked on the top of his spine. Russell had been talking about getting caught emotionally, like getting taken advantage of, and this neatly fitted Ford’s growing perception of the man’s personality. He thought that was great, the man vs. the world thing, even if he’d never managed such an attitude himself. He bestowed a smile up at his brother that was not daunted by the angry (profane) question, and he simply shook his head no, that wasn’t what he had been thinking. He’d been thinking worse, actually, but not actually thinking worse of Russell, since he’d never connected the two. He just asked, instead. Ford tended to reserve judgment wherever possible, like with Blake, like with March.
Naturally, the sharp jibe about condoms wiped the smile off his face fairly quickly. He sobered and his eyes became darker and more guarded. He did not offer a rebuttal, did not fight back. He lifted one shoulder ever so slightly, the round of his bare skin around the loop of his cotton shirt coming up a millimeter and no more. An acknowledgment. Okay.
Gently, Ford lifted his weight off the chair and found his footing again. He didn’t actually move to leave, but it was a precursor. He eyed Russell’s dripping hands again, and the tentative, approving curve touched his mouth again, not wanting to assume too much in case Russell decided to pursue the barbed topic again.
Russ did not, as a rule, feel badly. He started fights and he needled people when they shoved too far and too abruptly into the small area he had carved off for himself but he watched the way the smile slid sideways and disappeared into nothing and he refused absolutely to feel badly even when regret pressed down heavily on the back of his neck and shame tasted bitter on his tongue. He pinned Ford still with a baleful glare and he backed up against the sink, hips leaned back against the counter’s edge and he folded one soapy wet hand into each armpit, arms tight across his chest. He did not apologize, he refused to think of it but the one, fleeting moment of realizing perhaps he should, swiftly chased off by a swell of self-pride and irritation that he should when Ford had so clearly (to Russ’s own stung sense of self-worth) questioned one of the few boundaries that remained solidly present, a rigidity of honor that had avoided corrosion.
“You going?” he said roughly, and it did not sound like satisfaction but rather expectation being fulfilled, the understanding that this was as Russ had not intended but anticipated would be the effect of any significant portion of time spent in his brother’s company. When Ford had the hackles-raised look of a coyote about him, it meant there was none of the uncomfortable respect and admiration apparent and if the one was uncomfortable, the latter was infinitely worse. Russ felt both better and awful in equal measure and he shoved abruptly away from the sink and toward the fridge for more of the ground coffee with an apparent lack of care as to whether Ford stayed or went - beyond a quick, backward glance.
Ford watched his brother, his wary confusion apparent. This reaction was not one easily read, and Ford obviously didn’t have an easy time interpreting it. The position seemed to imply disappointment, but the expression didn’t, and Ford wasn’t sure whether the newly crossed arms meant annoyance or some strange defensiveness. Nobody had ever needed to defend themselves against something like Ford and he barely recognized it when he saw it. Only March had ever been so quick to establish boundaries, and it was only later Ford knew how or why. Ford was a lot better at knowing when somebody was going to hit him than any other action.
Ford circled the table, waited long enough to intercept the strange look past the coffee, and then paused, blinking. He waited for a moment, indecisive, not sure whether he was supposed to go or stay. Then he shrugged as if it didn’t matter (furtive look to see the effect). He wandered over to the sink and started looking for something to wipe off the dripping plates on the clean side of the sink.
At the clink of plates, the door to the fridge abruptly closed and Russ stood with the packet of coffee in his hands looking both confused and momentarily pleased and then scowled as though neither reaction had actually happened at all and everything was exactly as expected. He hadn’t anticipated Ford would stay, but he hadn’t anticipated Ford staying longer than the five minutes it took to yell or throw a punch and he was entirely unsure what to do with him moving around the kitchen more comfortably than sitting in one place and being deliberately annoying had made him unsure.
There was a necessity of closeness given the proximity of the coffee maker to the sink and Russ visibly considered it with some degree of trepidation before exasperation at the confusion itself won out and he pushed in at Ford’s side long enough to refill the contraption. It was battered and old, but it worked which was true of most of the things in Russ’s kitchen (if not Russ himself) but Russ was tall, broad presence at Ford’s side for the shortest time he could, and then he backed up like Ford might bite.
“You going to fit in there, all that fancy shit?” And it wasn’t deliberately hurtful, the question, it came out as carefully as something chewed over for a minute or two before it was said, with some doubt, as if Russ were possibly concerned, and then snapped his jaw shut on anything like concern at all.
Ford was concentrating on the plate he was holding, carefully wiping it in gentle circles, with the kind of concentration required when one did not possess any dishes and once got slapped for dropping one. He didn’t look up or take deliberate notice of Russell until the remnant scents of Russell’s previous night washed over him and the big man nudged him aside, plate and all. Ford got a good grip on it and then looked up with another of his vulpine grins, but he didn’t immediately comment.
Carefully, he stacked that plate on the counter next to the stove, then reached for the second one, holding it like it was glass. Ford eyed Russell’s retreat out of the corner of a sky blue iris, and his smile faded away naturally, comfortably. His chin came up when Russell actually spoke again, but Ford’s expression wasn’t hurt. He looked vaguely worried himself, and acknowledging his own discomfort, he gave Russell a faintly sour expression and a shrug that said, plain as day, I don’t know. It’s awkward. Then he touched the dirty towel to the surface of the plate and looked up once more.
He had an expression on that was inevitably tied with an attempt to speak, a determined look feathered by flustered embarrassment and heated effort. “The g-g-g-g-guards are...” He took a breath here, as if to recharge. “Lookatyou h-hu-hfunny.” He shot Russell a look from under his brow, to see if the other man understood what he meant. He didn’t necessarily mean that they looked at Russell funny, though undoubtedly they would, just in a different way. Given as many words as he liked, Ford might have elaborated about how awkward it was when somebody who looked like he did rode a private elevator up to the roof to visit single men of acknowledged tastes. Ford was aware that he (well, his body, really) was, to put it nicely, potentially profitable. There had been no few offers of a deliberate nature, and payment implied.
Ford decided to keep that behind his teeth.
Russ didn’t much care about his plates nor care with them, as the chips indicated - they were cheap and they were functional and they would, no doubt, be left behind the next time he moved on. Russ thought of most things in these simple terms, of what could be easily left behind when it came time to hit the next city along. He watched Ford with them now, careful as if he were trying real hard, as if they were expensive instead of pieces of shit he’d picked up in a package deal and if he smirked, just a little (just to himself) it slid sideways into pieces the minute Ford looked up like that. He took the dry plates and he opened a cupboard absently, as if he weren’t thinking too hard about the domesticity implied, and the clatter as they slid home said Russ didn’t care a damn about breaking plates at all.
The brows knit themselves together into a tight, lowered expression, bristling but the angle of Russ’s shoulders and the solidity of his back was not exclusive. It was they-in-the-room together as Russ rankled at the idea, however brief, of the guards in a building for rich fuckers, looking sideways at anyone, least of all the kid who managed to say embarrassment just fine without a fucking word to say it right out-loud. “They look at you funny, you just flip em off,” he said, hard and encouraging in equal measure, like Russ planned on ripping out spines rather than flipping anyone off. Russ figured he hated March more right then, March who lived in that fancy fucking place like it was home and didn’t know nothing about the park, dust that coated you from the minute you stepped outside and the kind of comfortable that was living without a single person looking over your damn shoulder. He didn’t know why the richer you got the more you wanted to be looked at and he didn’t think it mattered except Ford stood there like he was squaring up for a fight against something March wouldn’t have a damn of seeing.
Ford was now working on drying the forks, spreading the two like a hand of cards and wiping off each tine in turn as he thought. He didn’t have so much self-awareness as to realize whether or not the Turnberry Security actually disapproved of him or whether it was his own practical inadequacy that came into play that time he moved across the marble and was forced to request access. March had said that he would “put his name down” but Ford wasn’t sure what that meant. Did that mean he had to get a nametag? Ford had a brief mental image of doe-eyed calf wandering around with a cattle ear tag, and winced. No, he reassured himself, March wouldn’t do that. The name must be a list, yes. So that he was allowed to go up in the special elevator.
Ford glanced up at Russell’s obvious irritation that anyone would disapprove of him and gave a delighted ripple of a laugh, brief but honest. He nodded readily, as if in full agreement that he could do exactly that. Ford was not so well-bred as to be above rude hand gestures, and he probably would be happy to sink that low if he was angry enough. Embarrassed didn’t quite cut it. He beamed up at his brother, handed him the forks, and then said, “Mmm...March says I’m, I’m, I’m on a... list.” That was not precisely what March said but it was now what Ford assumed March said.
Russ didn’t know a bunch about how rich folks lived beyond the snatch of Turnberry he’d seen on the way past a whole lot of angry people in stupid uniforms who looked like they sat down all day a whole lot more than they ever hit someone. He knew the elevators in Turnberry were shinier than an elevator had any right to be and they didn’t smell of piss and disorder, and he knew that March had left the door open like the only people who would wander in would be expected. He knew nothing about lists and he looked both alarmed and annoyed by the prospect of one, because the only list he could think of meant more than one like Ford and Russ was still firmly convinced March was trying to get his brother into bed if he hadn’t already. Russ remembered near-twenty fine, and he remembered hard-ons that hurt and the interest that flared shiny-bright like a new penny the minute you came right close to anything that looked attractive. He didn’t think it was so different when you liked men instead of women, and he didn’t hold out much expectation Ford was any different to him underneath.
“What list?” he demanded now, suspicion very evident as he took the forks in one hand, and shoved them into a drawer without looking. (It happened to be the wrong drawer). “What kind of damn list? He don’t get to put you on lists,” he was beginning to work himself now, the shoulders were going tight, tense once again, and he was scowling past Ford, at an imaginary March he wanted very much to hit. The laugh had done nothing to settle him, notable only in that Russ had absolutely not noticed it at all, which was acknowledgment enough of growing ease with the kid wandering around his space.
Ford looked down with interest and craned his head to get a look at what was in the drawer before the forks were shoved in and left in the dark. He wanted to know what kind of things Russell kept hidden, and also the kinds of things he used often. He was curious about Russell, and the things that made him up, which so far listed as follows: engine oil, anger, fists, blood, lust, yelling, embarrassment, straw hair, smarts, cards, bravery and snarls. The only thing Russell had not yet achieved was sainthood, and that was probably because Ford wouldn’t want his brother’s head to start glowing like a spotlight while he was trying to pick up women.
Ford smiled into Russell’s face, all lips and calm. And perhaps a hickey or two slowly starting to purple at the base of his neck. Just the thing for Russell’s mood. “For the d-d-d-door. S...so you’re allowed-loud in.” Ford made a gesture to his chest to indicate himself. The list was so that he was going to be allowed in. He lifted the same hand and gave Russell a shove, his right arm against Russell’s right arm, a cross of palm that would do no more than nudge Russell a little backward against the sink. Ford was grinning outright now, and he only shoved at him to stop him from prickling up like a porcupine. “S’okay,” he reassured the other man.
The kinds of things thrust into drawers all over the small house were paper fliers from fast food places that did delivery cheaply enough that getting on a bike still lit up from the night seemed like a good idea, balls of twine, broken things Russ shoved away with the intention of repairing them rather than tossing them. He had lived long enough without the ability to replace what broke easily that the inclination to keep things - even if he discarded them when they were in perfect working condition when he wished to leave - burned irritably strong. In the drawer with the forks were clean rags, t-shirts torn into strips and folded until he had need of them either at the work garage or the lean-to at the side of the house, where a garden had intended to be.
If he’d been asked Russ would have thought he was simple; he was poorly-kept promises and the veneer scratched off, the chrome scraped from being dropped too many times. He liked women and he liked beer, both a little too much and he liked cards the way some men liked to marry, only Russ thought cards were less permanent and less risky. Thus far Ford was difficult to understand, and he was looking at him now, hard-eyed as if he might push through by looking the right way and find the answer. He was still unhappy about the notion of any list that March had put his brother on (he had swung the other way, toward an assumption that there should be nothing before Ford on the list, that lists should not be necessary but that Ford should be there at the top in the same way nothing should come after, it being entirely replete) and he was certain that he disliked any building so aware of itself that it required lists to get in the damn door if you lived there.
He rocked back on his hip, a sway of his body like a boat caught on a wave at that little push, but his eyes slid down from the laughing-blue of Ford’s eyes past that smile (that was so new as to be discomforting) and caught a little on the blooming colors on Ford’s neck. Russ folded his arms, “I thought you weren’t fucking him,” he began, annoyed, and then irritated that he was annoyed which signified giving a damn at all.
Ford would not have been so ready with an answer of what he was made; he was not so easily assembled, and not very good at looking in a mirror and seeing what other people saw. He would have assumed nothing much at all, except a stubborn insistence that life would not crush him into nothing. Ford was more likely to think of himself as a pebble that would not crack than anything so durable as chrome. It would not even occur to him to list his likes, the things he favored, because he wouldn’t think of those things as part of who he was. Ford was not internal.
Ford’s upper lip pressed down over the curve of his lower as Russell’s blue gaze became focused and critical. He looked worried, and dropped his gaze down the white front of his shirt, all he could see. It seemed unmarked, the smooth machine weave of white-ish cotton in decent enough shape, just a touch of wear taking some of the hem to holes. He glanced back up, and stubborn lines were beginning to form along the corner of his mouth, creasing under pressure.
The first syllable of March’s name caused Ford so much difficulty that he stood there humming it for about ten seconds, trying to force out the whole thing while blinking rapidly and visibly becoming more agitated by the moment. “M...mm....m...March?! I didn’t--we’re n...not?” He couldn’t imagine why Russell thought so. Then his brows darkened. It wasn’t Russell’s business! He shot him a look that said as much.
Russ’s eyebrows drew themselves into flat, sandy line above his eyes as he followed the up-down assessment of Ford’s own self along with it, all terse blue annoyance at the idea he’d been lied to by the kid. He looked at the crown of Ford’s head, as Ford examined the length of his shirt, and the floppy dark curls, and his shoulders pulled a little tighter, the muscle definition along the cords of his forearms going tauter. “Yeah March,” Russ said and he wasn’t paying attention to the skipping-record of Ford’s speech now, it was background static, neither endured nor noticed when the focus was on the substance of the words, “So who’s leaving marks all over you, the fucking Easter bunny?”
He gave the purpling bruises a long, hard stare. Ford was pale, in a way that made those marks more livid than anything Russ had seen on his own skin, but the dislike of the very fact of them coupled with how dark they looked, added to the sweltering disapproval that was beginning to coalesce around Russ once again like thunderclouds drawing in for a storm. “You look like a fucking fifteen year old girl’s been at you,” he said, having sizeable knowledge of all ages of girl and their predilections, when it came to sucking face.
Ford blushed so hotly that it looked like an extremely painful sunburn. He tried to put on the stubborn expression again, but since he couldn’t look and see where the marks were without doing a comical dance like a dog chasing its tail, he just had to stand there with his chin sort of tucked in and his shoulders frozen so he wouldn’t do any wincing. He didn’t want to be embarrassed, and the unmistakable look of self-important determination now colored the tropical water blue of his eyes. He tried desperately not to think about the previous night, and was moderately successful. “That-that wasn’t him.” He looked younger than ever, and he knew it. He just barely stopped his lower lip from sticking out. “S...somebody else.”
Another glare at his brother was interrupted by the idea that a fifteen year old girl would be at all involved, and Ford abruptly tried not to laugh. He bit on it before it got away from him, and then, with the smirk still dancing on the muscle of one cheek, he turned around slowly on one heel to refill his coffee cup. It was strange having somebody ask after him in such detail. He supposed it was because that stupid clinic visit thing. Ford had the grace to feel bad about that, and stopped laughing. He found a chair again and sat heavily. “I was c-c-c-careful,” he said, evasively.
The clinic visit, the acridity of antiseptic in the back of his nose and measuring the wait with the open-close rhythmic noise of the sliding doors, that wasn’t up front in Russ’s mind. Ford was not small; he was thin as men reaching full height or just closing in on it were and he was thin in a fashion that was not-enough-food or not enough of the right kind, but he was not small nor was he delicate. He was big enough and he was solid enough that there wasn’t a damn lot to protect him from, but Russ found he didn’t like the idea of any of the men he’d come to know in Vegas, fucking with him. There was something of the plaintive lack of knowledge that had been before that clinic visit and there was something of being part of the trailer park and that woman’s brand of bile that made him malleable in ways no man passing twenty ought to be. Russ didn’t want to think about why the anger was mostly worry, and so he didn’t, he thought instead about who that someone else was and why Ford’s voice slid over them with a look that was all kid and nothing adult about it.
Russ glared down all that would-be laughter at the misfortunate mention of girls and his own coffee cup hung empty in his hand despite all the trouble to brew more. The smell of it was thick in the kitchen, laid itself over the traces of booze and old sweat and the fading salt of the bacon and was pleasantly homelike in a way the house was not.
He didn’t much like embarrassment but he shouldered past it, same way he’d shove past someone else with purpose, rough without intentional harm. “Yeah? Who?” He was a dog after a bone, pushy and relentless and he let all that youth and laughter slide right past him as Ford sagged down into a chair once again.
Ford didn’t pause for thought. He was relatively comfortable in his kitchen chair with the coffee, fairly well fed, safe for the moment, and a roof in his immediate future. Last night had gone so well that his faith in his own appeal was restored (in some question after the general horrors of the plain-front clinic, March’s general behavior, and the emotionally mutilating hotel party). He liked that Russell was standing in his kitchen and firing questions at him, because it made him feel important. No one else had asked Ford what he was up to or how he was behaving, because no one else much cared. Russell was pissed at him, so this was not just morbid interest. Ford tried not to glow in the attention, and he obviously decided to be deliberately obtuse about this. His eyes narrowed slightly, more creases against a smooth lack of years, and he effectively obscured another coming smile with the entirety of his coffee cup as he lifted it to cover his mouth. “W-wuh-w-why? You g-ah-g-gonna go hit him?”
Russ snarled something that was both obscene and pithy and not particularly audible, and his coffee cup slammed down on the side as he refilled it, the oily black splashing over the sides and puddling on the countertop. There were few who bothered much with Russ, with allowing him to make trouble and who then, in their turn, made trouble right back, pressed every one of those buttons. There was the prospect of violence that Russ carried with him like a poorly fitting coat, like a threat that didn’t quite leave the room. Pressing buttons assumed a confidence, an assumption that that threat would never be levied and there was no one (or there ought to have been no one) who was ready to square that decision. There was Sam, and Russ didn’t think much of that, Sam who didn’t have a damn reason to want attention that came with the sour, unimpressed look that drew down over his face now like a door shutting.
He didn’t have one clue why the kid was grinning behind the mug like he’d learned a secret or found a hundred dollar bill when he was looking for a single (and that smile pulled at Ford’s eyes, lit him up like a tree at Christmas instead of anything as simple as lingering at the mouth). He didn’t know why the slack crept back into Ford’s shoulders and he sat there on his chair like he’d handed him a present but he glowered from his corner and he backed right up like something uncomfortable was staring him down.
“Yeah,” he said it hard and quick, like maybe he’d mean it, like maybe he’d do it and he was already thinking about collaring whoever it was and giving them a quick rundown on exactly what would happen if they did the wrong thing, “Maybe.” He glared defensively back at Ford’s calm blue, prickling over with discomfort at the calm he couldn’t understand.
Russell’s violence didn’t frighten Ford outright. They’d already done plenty of violence to each other, and it hurt, but a bunch of scrapes healed up pretty quick. If asked, Ford probably wouldn’t be able to remember what it was they’d fought about or even what words were said before fists started flying. It was the unexpected burst into violence that made Ford wary, because it was in the situations where he couldn’t see the fist coming that he could really get hurt. Ford was confident that if Russell was going to hit him, he would do it head on, so there was always the opportunity to run if he really got scared. At this point Ford thought that was unlikely. If Russell wanted to start a fight then he’d get one.
Ford sipped his coffee again, straightened his face, and hooked both hands around it. The chair creaked as he pushed back onto two legs once more, flexing his knees where they felt creaky. He gave Russell an arrogant view of the underside of his chin. “Then I ain’t t-t-t-tell-telling you.” Ford was never going to get anywhere with anybody if Russell kept popping up like a huge weasel and smashed their faces in. Blake, in particular, would probably drop him like a hot potato just to avoid dealing with more complications. Ford figured Blake could have whoever he wanted, so if a return visit was even possible, Russell would need to remain out of the equation.
There was also the slightly disturbing fact that he was pretty sure Blake and Russell already had some dealings.
Russ had not been as bothered by Blake’s incessant flirting as Blake would seemingly have liked him to be. He had endured it, the cock-eyed look and the pained air of bearing under the colossal burden of being attractive enough to warrant it as well as annoyance at the sheer arrogance of anyone who could be so out and out obvious in a town that was a monument to obvious. He had liked Blake fine - as an owner of a car he had loved like a baby. As a fucking idiot he could laugh at, comfortably aware of his own solid-footed heterosexuality. Sucking on his little brother’s neck like a would-be vampire, that was not fine and had Russ known, smashing his face in would have been swiftly followed by smashing his knee into Blake’s junk until Blake couldn’t go waving it around any longer.
He had no intention of doing violence to the kid in the chair. Russ’s temper flared in short blasts of static, hot and quick and done with shortly after. He had the memory of Ford’s fists and the surprising solidity behind all that wiry canine look to him, and having seen Ford cut up with tears once already, he had a strong aversion to seeing it again. But he prickled at the notion that Ford would believe that lack of intention and that it made no sense at all that Russ neither wished to be thought of as violent and also non-violent simultaneously did not matter whatsoever to Russ who was thinking darkly about what he wished to do to whoever had left marks all over Ford’s neck.
He glowered now and he took the two steps across the kitchen to push the flat of his hand down against the ridged back of the chair, until all legs were forced flat on the floor. “He sticks around, I’ll find him,” he promised now, confident in his own ability to outsmart the kid and also to identify whatever predator-threat had not outgrown leaving hickeys like a teenager.
Ford found it very unlikely Russell was going to “find” anyone, as Blake was not too far away from March’s place, and Russell wasn’t ever going to come there. His doubt made it into the quirk of both brow and mouth in the same direction toward his temple. If he’d had a decent mother, it was the kind of expression that would have got him a stern warning for impertinence. Ford’s mother hadn’t recognized impertinence when she’d seen it, and her ‘stern warnings’ were either a slap or a useless drunken scream. Ford’s smirks were therefore uniquely innocent and devilish at the same time.
Ford made a juvenile sound of protest as Russell knocked his chair back onto four legs with a screeching thud and a household impact that he felt in his molars (no doubt assisted by what felt like a growing cavity, it wasn’t like he had ever been to a dentist). Maybe Russell’s age and size (and Ford’s estimation of his brother’s wealth, smarts, and nerve) might always win him admiration, but Ford wasn’t about to let superiority go so easy. Surviving school had depended on Ford’s ability to disrupt the male order of domination if he wasn’t able to stay out of a group entirely, and he did the same at any place he managed to find a job. Ford was young, alert, and possessed of decent reflexes, and he caught his balance quickly, quickly enough to stick out a booted foot as Russell got near enough to either be tripped or kicked around the edge of the chair.
It was something a five year old would do.
Doubt was not something Russ saw a lot of when he made threats. He didn’t think the kid looked innocent just then, he thought the kid looked like he’d won an argument without saying a goddamn word about it and Russ decided he didn’t like that in much the same way Russ didn’t like anyone winning arguments that he did not understand. He was abruptly satisfied at that protest as the chair solidly came to rest the way chairs were goddamn made to be, instead of rocked back and forth like Ford planned on breaking his stuff. He looked it too, pleased and an attempt (however thin) to conceal the pleasure that was poor. He had not had a younger brother growing up and his sister had been so young his role had been paternal rather than any facetious one-over of an older and thus much more knowledgeable brother so he had no experience whatsoever in trying to make the satisfaction look any different.
He was about to sit down but his own reflexes (quick, but not young) were sodden through with beer and a late night follow up drowning in Scotch and Russ’s shin caught on the tip of Ford’s boot, grazed against Russ’s jeans and knocked him just enough off balance that he fell into the chair rather than sat, more heavily than intended and the coffee spilled, splashing in a stingingly hot puddle in his lap. Russ did not look pained so much as surprised, and then angry, and then he was up and out of the chair faster than any man had a right to move, swearing all the way.
Ford let out a delighted bellow of laughter as Russell tipped forward toward his chair, and his mirth changed to deliciously frightened surprise when the impact was enough to stain the man with coffee. He started laughing again, this time in great peals that were not inhibited in the least by the stutter. Russell’s great flat face went blank for a second until he was eeling up out of the chair, and Ford threw himself out of his own, still breathless with laughter.
Ford kicked the chair toward Russell to prevent immediate pursuit, a trick he had learned in elementary school with Timmy Shutters’s gang had come after him, and then he pelted around the table to keep a good piece of furniture between the two of them, boots sliding and making great black welts along the cheap linoleum surface. He was laughing like a maniac and kept snorting as he dodged around the edge of the table, just out of reach. Ford snatched up the dishtowel as he passed the sink and it went flying toward Russell’s face, since he obviously needed to mop up.
Russ was not as schooled in running from people nor in throwing up immediate obstacles to prevent their pursuit. He had not been a gang but he had been easily provoked and there had been too many derogatory things said about his mother, what she did and who she did them with for him not to be familiar with the forcible fling of his body out of whatever resting position it was in and the immediate speed with which he threw himself at whoever had said it, generally followed by being hauled before a principal if he was unlucky, and cleaning the blood off his knuckles if he got away cleanly.
It took a minute for the blood to stop pounding in his ears long enough to hear Ford’s spill of laughter, laughter that didn’t stop and then he was mad, mad enough that he reached with long arms to grab at the kid, but Ford dodged as cleanly as a fucking thief on a building site, maddeningly out of reach and Russ roared something that didn’t require words to make sense, and swiped once again. The coffee spread and whilst it was extremely painful whilst warm, it was unpleasant as it cooled, sticky and disgusting. The dishtowel caught him near enough that it flopped across his face, damp and blinding, and he clawed it away from his face with one hand, and cursed out Ford’s parentage in the next breath with all the imagination of a sailor on a long leave.
People had made a habit of insulting Ford and Ford’s mother regularly throughout his life, probably even more so if they actually knew the woman. He had no dedication to defend her honor, nor was he ever going to win a fight he decided to enter on her behalf. He had learned not to bother, and insults simply rolled right off him, because he had heard almost all of them before. He had no idea who his father was, but considering mom’s taste in men he was probably a real jackass, so there wasn’t a great need to know him. Ford had grown up somewhere straddling the line between raging jealousy and seething envy for the gospel according to Russell. He had not yet discovered that most of that was manipulative bullshit, but that was because he still had a good deal of stars in his eyes, and the glare obscured many of Russell’s faults.
Ford leaned against the refridgerator, the table still firmly positioned between the two of them, holding his ribs as he laughed. He hadn’t laughed that long in a while, but then nobody as big and red-faced as Russell had got a towel in the face while they dripped coffee. He wasn’t even slightly sorry and his mouth was open wide with undiminished hilarity. “Your m...mom too,” he said, grinning at Russell’s insults.
Russ had been far more prone to being insulted than Ford, possibly because he was bigger and he was determined to win every fight he waded into, let alone the fights he began. He had heard most of the insults and then some, but he took offense to all of them and then turned right around and called them all himself. Perhaps it was the process of disillusionment; there was no older sibling to show him that this was not how things ought to be nor that he was not what was expected. Most of his youth had been exactly that, manipulative bullshit, and he had ducked out whilst still angry enough at the insults for it to be formative.
He glowered at Ford stood there and it was the dull-edged anger of annoyance fading in favor of noticing the sticky way the denim now clung to his thighs, using the dishrag he’d pulled from where it had flopped across his face to dab at it, gingerly. The kid didn’t look like he was shitting his pants from being chased around the kitchen, he didn’t even look fucking apologetic. He was heaving with the breaths between laughter, his shoulders shaking and even the fucking curls dancing with full body ‘laugh at Russ’ movement. The eyebrows knitted together sunk lower, the glare set in.
“I don’t have one,” Russ said as if that were the answer to it.
Ford’s mouth thinned slightly, but he didn’t rise to the obvious parry. He could always fight that battle with Russell, but he wasn’t in the mood to do it right now.
Ford now knew from personal experience that Russell was as easy to taunt as a raging rhinoceros, and he imagined everyone who knew him was the same. It was easy to hit his buttons, one of which was now blinking a bright red as they spoke. Ford’s mirth slowly drained away, leaving flash flickers of untraceable amusement in his vibrant blue eyes. He stretched both arms in the air as if working his body back to normal after all the convulsions, wincing a few times in a leisurely way as the pleasant exertion pulled some (newly) sore muscles. He pushed both of his hands through his dark curls, scratching hard at his scalp with his fingers. Afterward he let out a self-satisfied sigh, like a dog giving himself an all-over shake.
“Thanks for the...” he gestured at the stove, encompassing the entirety of the scratched together breakfast. It was an earnest gratitude and his face gleamed with it temporarily. “G-gonna g-ah-get a job soon,” he informed Russell, apropos of nothing, looking around for his bag.
Russ was riled easily, wind feathering through grass made it dance, but as soon as the wind stopped, the dancing stopped and his temper began to slide away, sand through clutched hands. His eyes were mistrustful blue on all that wriggling around and stretching and he thought Ford was making some kind of point, even if he couldn’t tell what it was, but he smirked small and brief at the last little sigh like some half-dead feral dog flopping over on its side. “Yeah?” Russ was now familiar with the length and breadth of the stutter and whilst it registered only in the most obtuse of ways, when the strangulation prevented understanding, he was well aware of how all that skipping about would sound to employers. Vegas had a host of people passing through, looking for work, and Ford looked like trouble at the best of times.
“Don’t go showing up there with that shit on your neck,” he flicked his fingers toward the row of hickeys, purpling evidence that Ford was trouble. “Or they ain’t going to hire you.” It was sage advice but he couldn’t quite put into words the wish that Ford could be prevented from another round of ‘no thanks’ based on the way he opened his mouth. It was stubborn, that wanting, and he was uncomfortable with the idea of wanting, and that discomfort stretched itself over his shoulders, snapping briefly into place like elastic.
Ford was nodding like he knew what he was talking about before Russell even got past the first questioning syllable. He seemed to both expect and accept that Russell’s anger would be short-lived, and he had no real worry as he moved around the table and back toward the hallway he’d come in, still turning his head to and fro for his bag, which was lying in a ragged heap just before the entrance to the kitchen.
Ford stopped halfway through a reach down to sweep his possessions up and yanked his head around just in time to catch Russell’s gesture toward his upper body, which for the first time he realized was his neck. It explained why he couldn’t see what Russell had been referring to a little earlier, and Ford pulled up a hand to slap it against the side of his neck, coloring up like a radish right on cue.
He had not actually had any opportunities immediately lined up. The reassurance had been more so that Russell didn’t think that all he was doing was sitting around, and instead Ford’s confidence that he was going to get a job “soon” was more a certainty that he had to find something eventually, and that he was going to keep looking until he did. He was young enough not to be too concerned about starving after he just ate, and he was pleased to have something that might serve as a less dire backup if everything fucking fell through. Russell had a house. Ford swept up his bag and planted it on his shoulder, clearing his throat and forcing the head under his face to die down through pure determination. He nodded acknowledgment of the advice with a characteristic sheepish grin.
Russ had begun to think, abstractedly and without serious purpose, of places that would not mind a kid that could not do a whole lot of talking. He thought briefly, of the library, it being a place given to whispering and quiet but he knew no one at a library and he thought maybe they required you to have a real education at a library which meant that was right out. He was beginning to formulate a list of names, of people who worked at different spots over Vegas and the wider Nevada state, and he looked up from all that thought, rubbing the stubble of his chin against the web between thumb and forefinger of his left hand distractedly, when he saw the kid turn the brightest red possible.
Yeah. He was all grown, that one.
“You heading out?” Last realisation that this was the production of the bag, the throat clearing, all that was meant. The kid, going back to that rich fucker’s place like he was some kind of project, work in progress for bored men with large bank accounts. Russ disliked it, and the dislike was very evident.
The people that hired Ford were looking for physical labor, a pair of hands and enough strength to move things from one place to another. It was generally assumed that he had poor understanding as he made little effort to communicate beyond nods and the odd single word phrase to demonstrate that he acknowledged basic instruction. Since he was bad with numbers and could provide no paper evidence of any education at all, Ford was also the kind of labor that could be hired for cash, and that made most of his jobs somewhere between dangerous and menial. Roofwork, for example. Landscaping for rich people willing to look the other way. A library was absolutely out of the question.
Ford nodded and grinned at the question. He could pick up some newspapers for want ads and then ride the bus until he spotted a hardware store, always good places to lurk around and try to pick up a day’s worth of something. He gave Russell another of his little waves, most gratitude without words, and headed for the door, knowing exactly what the dislike was for and grinning all the more for it.