Who: March and Ford What: Ford moves in Where: Turnberry Place When: Recently Warnings/Rating: Squeaky clean
March's place was whites and blacks. It was high on the top floor of Turnberry Place, behind gates where nothing bad could ever get, and he was living proof that money couldn't fix any damn thing that really mattered. The place was a big old thing, six bedrooms, pianos and guitars and banjos strewn all over, with walls high with folk music that was going dusty recent.
Just then, March was sitting on the couch in a pair of work scrubs and a white t-shirt, and he was dragging his fingers through his messy black hair. His momma was on the phone, jabbering about some mare gone to foal, and he was making the right sounds to keep her from realizing he wasn't paying a damn bit of attention to the horse talk. He still hadn't made it around to telling his people he was ailing, and they were still working plenty hard to get him to come on home and take an interest in thoroughbreds. His momma kept sending emails with pictures of pretty jockeys, thinking that would get him revving up his engine like it had a few years back, but he wasn't interested in the boys or the horses. Truth was, March wasn't interested in a whole lot of anything these days. It was a change for him, and he would have liked to go changing it back, but he didn't had a damn clue how to manage it.
So, March made all the right sounds, and he cut her off after a few minutes longer, claiming he had someone coming over. It wasn't lying, and it made her go all curious in the way mommas do. But he shushed her, and he disconnected the call and set the cell on his stomach. He stayed there a spell, wondering if Russ was right, and if it would be better to just let Ford go on and leave him be. He knew there were risks, but the house was damn big, and March did mean to stay clear of the boy as much as possible. And there were things he agreed with Russ about. Ford was young - real young - and March could make sure he was safe and well fed beneath his own roof. He wasn't sure Ford would be any better off in strange motels shacking up with the likes of Blake. But it was still something that needed weighing, because March didn't give a damn about most things, but he liked that boy more than he ought, damn him.
March closed his eyes, and he rubbed them with his fingers. He'd get up once he heard the door, he decided. He'd left Ford's name and key with the doorman, so he knew Ford wouldn't need to go knocking. He suspected Ford might anyway, though, at least this first time, and that made him smile some.
Ford had tried calling home a few times over the last few weeks. He didn’t actually have anything to talk to his mother about, but he did it on principle, because he had promised her he would while she was in one of her drunken depressions. The first few times he’d been relieved when she didn’t pick up the phone, but now he was wondering (idly, when he had spare time) why she wasn’t ever home. He might have theorized she stopped paying the phone bill, but it rang through successfully without the assurances of an uncaring robotic voice to inform him no one was home. He didn’t dare mention it to Russell, who probably called home as often as penguins flew south for the winter.
Ford counted himself fortunate to have something so mundane as his mother’s phone bill to think about on the way up to March’s apartment in the shiny bronze box the rich people used instead of stairs. Otherwise it was just going over all the mortifying things that had been scribbled about him, his various body parts, and his sexual activity on stupid Russell’s public post in the journal. Ford stared at his reflection. Working in the sun for most of the day had caused a sunburn stain along the ridges of his cheeks and his nose, and when he brushed at one shoulder with the flats of his fingertips, he felt a growing rawness there, too. His skin and clothing were flecked with paint, casting uneven splatters of eggshell white over his jeans and the toes of his boots, which were starting to pull away from the soles in the growing heat. Ford brushed the flat of his sweaty palm down the front of his shirt and tried to straighten it, but it didn’t do anything about the paint, the mess of his hair, and the burned red of his eyes. He looked like a kid hippie that got stuck in a bird sanctuary.
Ford sighed, and then the doors were opening, and he didn’t have time to think about it. He bent down and picked up his old thready gym bag with his belongings in it and edged out into the hallway. Nobody was around, so he crossed the floor, got a firmer grip on the bag, and knocked. While he waited, he pulled at his corkscrew curls and wished there was such a thing as a personal air conditioning bubble. Even walking in the hallways of this place was delicious.
March grinned from his spot on the couch, and he called out, instead of standing. "Come on. You don't need to knock at your own door, sugar," he called out. And not moving didn't mean he didn't haul himself up straighter on that couch, because he did. He set the phone on the coffee table, and he leaned forward, elbows on his knees so he could look on over toward the entry foyer and see Ford when he walked through the door.
Nervous wasn't precisely what March was feeling, but there was something like it in his belly. He'd been real careful about hiding away his cocktail of pills in his bathroom, taking them off the counter where they normally lived, but he glanced over quick, making sure he hadn't missed any. He couldn't actually see the kitchen from where he was sitting, but there was something soothing about glancing on over and, alright, so maybe he was nervous some.
Ford stared at the door for a second after the voice assured him it was his. The wood was carved and the fixtures were brass; Ford had done a lot of under-the-table home improvement and he knew that such a door’s cost could probably set him up for two or three months, four if he stretched it. He didn’t have a real number in his head, it was just that it seemed like the whole of reality was ready to revolt at the very idea he would own such a thing. He shook himself out of the temporary daydream and threw the gym bag over his shoulder and pushed inside.
At first, Ford didn’t see March watching him from the couch in the next room. He took a confident step inside and then stopped on the threshold to look around, his expression relaxing when he didn’t see someone right away. He pivoted his head left and right, faintly impressed at how clean everything was, and essentially matching the apartment to what ended up as a mirror image to Blake’s. The blue eyes slid soundlessly from wall to ceiling to wall, and then fell down to see March looking over from the couch.
Ford’s expression relaxed even further into a smile of faintly embarrassed recognition. He lifted his left hand (his right had the bag over his shoulder, fingers curved to keep it from sliding down his back) and gave March a little wave of greeting that was uniquely Ford, the invisible lines made by the tips of his fingers drawing a curve from his left to his right.
March watched as Ford looked the place up and down, and he enjoyed having those few seconds all to himself, watching like that and not being seen. March was good at slipping quiet and unnoticed these days, which was something new for the boy who'd always been brash as could be when it came to being seen. He was something pale and blue eyed, with dark hair that his momma had always compared to Elvis, and being noticed was something that came real natural. Or that had come real natural, before illness and his own mind locking him away quiet. So he liked those few seconds of watching on Ford without being seen, because Ford still looked on him like he'd been back then. Ford still saw him, and it was something real heady most days, and just as sad on other days. But then, then it didn't matter none, and he smiled at that innocent glance all over, like Ford thought he'd walked himself on into Heaven or something.
But, there, in Ford's gaze, March saw something like recognition. He understood, right off, that it was on account of Blake. It stung some, but March had never been the type of man to think he was losing something because someone else shared it. He was too sure of himself for that, and he always had been. He wasn't that kind of jealous, and the sting came from not being able to have Ford for himself at all, rather than being put out on account of Blake having him.
And then Ford noticed him, and March returned that smile with a grin that was dimples and more sunshine than he went giving to nearly anyone these days. "Think you can handle it without too much hardship?" he asked about the place, as he pushed himself to standing and nodded toward the hall. "You come on. You can have your pick of rooms. I got the one with the piano in, but I don't go playing all hours, so it shouldn't bother none."
Ford stepped onward onto the carpet from the hardwood, glancing down once at the strange cushion under his filthy boots, but making no move to change his tread or remove his shoes. He thought of Blake’s apartment once more, and then took a closer look at the furniture and the instruments on the walls. It was not the same apartment, after all. It felt warmer; March wore more of his heart inside his home, and Blake’s exotic apartment didn’t feel like a home at all. It had taken Ford a little while to find out what that place had felt like, and he’d just realized it: it was like a very expensive rental car. All leather, all clean, but nothing really inside except space to rent.
Ford being who he was, it now made him wish Blake would move, but it was a passing thought.
The (metaphorically, not atmospherically) warm apartment and March’s relaxed puff of brown hair and matching drawl turned completed Ford’s relaxation in a way that neither Russell’s house nor Blake’s had managed. He actually came closer to March immediately, as if in the cool of the air conditioning he was suddenly seeking heat. The gym bag fell off his strong shoulder and bounced at the extent of his fingers once more as March came up to standing, testing the limits of the duct tape holding it together. Ford forgot, for the moment, that March was sick at all, that anything had happened since he’d last seen the other man. He stopped about an arm’s length away so March could clear the couch and make the hallway.
Ford’s eyebrows jumped in surprise at the mention of a room. Rooms, plural. He hadn’t thought he was going to get a room, as evidenced by his expression. The crystal blue eyes flicked sideways toward the couch, which was more what he was expecting, and then back to March’s face. It appeared that the man was serious, and Ford’s surprise slid down off his forehead and relaxed one side of his mouth into a bemused smile. After a faint intake of breath, he made a low sound of mingled gratitude and agreement, turning to indicate his readiness for a tour.
March grinned wider. "Son, I'm not making you sleep on the couch. I spend half my damn nights on that thing," which was true enough. Bed, for whatever reason, meant thinking. March would lie in the dark, his thoughts pinging off his skull like a pinball machine, and he'd eventually get up and pad into the living room and crawl himself onto the couch. Sometimes, he'd strum until he got tired, but he didn't have much of a muse for music recent. Lately, it was bad infomercials and cartoons until sleep came, and the flickering of the television lights against the living room walls always made things seem safer, like death couldn't come on and steal him if something was playing kaleidoscope in the room. It made no real sense, and sleeping on a couch wasn't going to make him wake up feeling whole each morning, but it was mental, something he'd started using for coping along the way, and he let himself have the pretty little lie.
The tour wasn't real long, and it started with a vee on over to the kitchen. "Most important thing's the coffee maker," March said with a point, and then a subsequent rub to his belly through his thin shirt. "I don't do breakfast most days, but I'm a real grump before I get some caffeine in me." Truth was, he was trying to cook healthy and eat all the immune-boosting foods the doctors wanted him to, but cooking turned his stomach something awful with all the drugs he was on, and the fridge was packed full of protein drinks. Real food came from ordering out, and there was a stack of menus on the edge of the counter, all real worn at the corners, and all with his card saved on file, despite how unhealthy it was. He was trying, but March had never been real good about being careful, as indicated by the books on healthy eating that sat atop the fridge, dusty from disuse.
The bedrooms, those were easy as could be. One, as promised, held the baby grand and nothing else, but the other four were in varying states of emptiness. A couple had beds, but not a whole lot as far as decorating, and the other two had nothing in them at all, save boxes that had never been unpacked. March's childhood all boxed in cardboard and stacked in corners. The master bedroom was at the end of the hall, with its tall windows, and March lingered in that doorway and looked over his shoulder at Ford. "This one's mine," he said unnecessarily, because it was the only damn room that looked lived in, and even that was up to interpretation some.
After March’s comment about his nights, Ford looked over his shoulder at the couch and easily imagined March stretched out upon it in his casual thin shirt with the toes of his socks pointed at the ceiling. It puzzled Ford (after a brief, fairly predictable derailment of thought) that March would spend his nights on the couch when in such a large, nice place he must surely have a comfortable bed. Ford had imagined this invitation into March’s house might give him a better idea of who the man was, not make him more of a mystery. Ford little thought about the reverse, as he did not think of himself as particularly difficult to understand, and also, as time went on, unlikely to impress as well. Maybe the couch was more comfortable than the bed, or he liked the television on.
Turning back, Ford easily caught up with March, looking into the kitchen with all the appropriate appreciation. The coffee maker made him think of Russell, which dampened his smile a little bit, but he recovered quickly as it was a much nicer, cleaner coffee maker than Russell’s, and Ford hoped the bigger man drank bad coffee the rest of his life. Hmph. Ford edged around March, brushing shoulders with him as he moved into the kitchen and folded his boots in half over his toes to take his eyeline up onto the top of the fridge to read the spines of the cookbooks. Ford had only seen the Betty Crocker kind that came with grocery store pans, more like pamphlets really, not like these thick things. They were dusty, and Ford didn’t touch, he just shifted his weight and then his gaze to glance down at the menus. He didn’t comment except to smile, and moved on without protest.
It was a large number of bedrooms, in Ford’s opinion. It was not so much a house, but more like a miniature hotel in one. He couldn’t imagine having so much space, much less being alone in it. It seemed to him to be altogether too quiet, and his theory about the couch and television was stronger after he saw the master bedroom. There certainly could not be any other reason not to like it. The windows themselves were massive, and all the Vegas sunshine filtered in without any of the heat. The television had to be the only reason not to like this room.
Standing close behind March in the doorway, Ford nodded his head up and down to acknowledge the former’s ownership, assuming the attached comment was meant to underline the ‘mine not yours’ thing. Ford knew March didn’t want him in his bed, and therefore made assumptions.
March didn't know Ford was making assumptions. It wasn't that March wasn't prone to thinking, but he wasn't prone to thinking about things like words and nuance. Heck, when he'd been young, he hadn't been prone to thinking about anything at all, and it was only recent that his mind wandered to all kinds of philosophical things that had nothing to do with wanting someone in his bed. It wasn't a good thing, March knew, all that thinking, because it meant he did a whole lot less talking than he used to. He was hoping that might change with Ford come to live, but there was easily silence with the boy at his side, and he wondered if it all might go quieter then. He wasn't worried about it, not like something really worth fretting over, but he considered it, blue eyes settling on Ford for a second, before he backed on into the hall.
"You got a preference?" March asked as he walked, meaning the rooms and nothing deeper. "We can order some things for whichever one you choose. I had big old plans for turning each one into a different kind of music room, but that didn't go nowhere," he admitted. "My momma always said I liked planning, but hated doing." He smiled at the memory, and he stopped in the kitchen, bypassing the living room entirely and setting some coffee on without pausing.
March pulled out two mugs, assuming Ford drank the stuff, because most folks did, and he set some organic creamer and raw sugar on the table with spoons from two separate drawers. He nodded at the drawers then, and pointed out that one had an orange sticker on, a circular thing. "That's mine," he said, and there was something like nervousness in his gaze when he motioned at it. He'd read up, and he knew that it wasn't necessary, separating everything they used, but he was still worried some over it, and he had Russ' yelling looming, even if he pretended he didn't care what the man said. Now that it was pointed out, the little orange circles became evident on the cabinets, too.
Ford had absolutely no idea what the considering stare meant. He knew different kinds of stares, some meant to entice, others to frighten, but not that one. Ford had only met March a couple times, and his trust in the man went far deeper than logic really dictated, but the stare, a short but unblinking look that was neither angry or unhappy, made Ford uncomfortable. He backed away too, giving March room to leave his bedroom and not re-entering it again, making yet another assumption that March wished to have his space, and was being very polite about the desire. Ford didn’t know all that many polite people, but there had been a handful. He was anxious not to step on March’s toes, as he might have burned bridges with Russell and he was too angry with his brother to mend them.
As to the many options, Ford was temporarily overwhelmed at the idea. It made more sense that March would prefer to have him out of the way in a certain place, and he took a moment to adjust to the idea that he could choose for himself. He took the opportunity to look again in all the rooms as they retraced their steps, and since he had his choice, he dithered over the two rooms that contained beds, hesitating in front of each and looking back and forth. Ford took a step toward one and glanced at March to see if March was hiding a preference for Ford’s room, but March wasn’t looking back, already progressing into the kitchen. Feeling still that he was trespassing meant that Ford had a little trouble letting go of the gym bag, which held everything he owned, but he set it carefully inside the room nearest to the living room so that its end was just barely visible from the hallway.
He showed up in the kitchen just as March was putting out the cream and sugar, looking a little nervous himself. Ford kept getting his fingers stuck in his hair because there were just enough specks of paint in it to make the corkscrew curls permanent. He obediently leaned forward to inspect the little orange circles, and his blue eyes moved from spot to spot, around the kitchen. The nervousness accelerated into prickly worry, and he turned his head to look into March’s face, trying to do a better job of reading it. After this split-second stare of his own, he looked down again so he wasn’t seeing March while trying to talk at the same time. “I… w-wuh-w-w-won’t t-t-touch-touch your stuff,” he said, as if talking around a mouthful of honey, while being reassuring at the same time. He backed away from the counter entirely to demonstrate and his gaze jumped back up as soon as the last syllable died off.
March didn't understand how looking made Ford uncomfortable, and he'd turned and started walking too quick to catch that thing in Ford's eyes that would have let him know something wasn't real right. It was nerves, too, because he was plain nervous about this going wrong. He wanted Ford to like it there, and he wanted Ford to stay, and that was just plain as the nose on his face. He didn't even go pretending to himself that he didn't care, because he wasn't so good at lying to his ownself. So he just watched as Ford tried to decide which room was best, and he tried to keep his smiling at a minimum, because he thought it was adorable in a real young way. He tended to forget Ford was as young as he was, despite how many times (and how loudly) Russ had tried to go on and remind him of it.
March watched Ford put that bag down, and he lingered long enough to pay attention to how it was sitting out there, half in the hall. There was a moment - nothing real long - for a good push of his foot against the bag, making sure the thing was full in the room, and then he closed that door and grinned as he walked into the kitchen, thinking it would make Ford feel like it was his private space, what with the door closed and all.
Now, in the kitchen, things went wrong. March realized it this time, and he realized it before that stammer even went starting. He sat himself down with the two coffee cups, which were now filled with a sweet smelling southern pecan roast that him grandmomma always sent his way. "You sit on down," he told Ford, trying to think through words in his head as he slid the coffee cup toward the chair he'd motioned to. "You can touch anything you please, Ford. I want this place to be yours as much as mine. Living with someone, it's not about you crashing with me. It's about you living here, same as me," he said, wondering if Ford had ever had a roommate, then deciding the answer to that was probably a big old no. "The dots are so you can avoid things I put my mouth on," he explained. "The books and doctors say there's nothing to worry about, because you can't get sick from my spit, but your brother gets real protective, and I worry, so I figure it's better to be safe." He was talking quick by the end. He never talked about being sick with anyone else, and it showed. His fingers tapped against the side of the coffee cup in a fast bap, bap, bap, and the liquid inside threatened to go sloshing.
The enclosing of his bag in the room was extremely reassuring to Ford. He had not had a roommate before, and living in the trailer with his mother had meant that privacy was something lost to both of them. If Ford wanted privacy he left home entirely and found somewhere it wouldn’t rain on him, usually abandoned buildings or places too cheap to buy security guards and too poor to buy good locks. Ford was pleased that his bag was not considered communal property and that the room was not either; the bed also looked disused but mold and dust free. He was looking forward to stretching out, curling up, and then stretching out again as soon as he was alone. It made the scene in the kitchen a little easier to manage.
After a moment Ford sat down too, settling down with his knees spread much like he had done in Russell’s kitchen. He put his palm out to cradle his coffee cup, automatically looking at it now for the orange spot and trying to avoid thinking of it like a plague.
One of the rare positives of Ford’s aversion to speech was that he always let the other person say their piece before attempting to craft a response of his own. It got him more in the way of information he might otherwise have had, given his temperament, and by the time March got to the end of his speech Ford was looking more confused and concerned than apologetic. There was a short pause, obviously inserted so that March could add something if he wanted, and then yet another pause as Ford carefully assembled what he wanted to say before he attempted sound. “If it d-d-d-do-does-doesn’t-doesn’t,” he had to take a breath here-- “m...m-make me sick, then…?”
Ford looked up in time to see the nervous fingers impact hard on the coffee and he automatically put a paint-speckled hand out to still March’s wrist before he scalded himself.
Right off, March took to shaking his head, wanting Ford to know that he'd done plenty of research, even though he hadn't needed to. It was so easy to go forgetting he even had a medical degree these days, when all he used it for was Morphine and catheters. He was looking down at Ford's hand on his wrist a second later, and he couldn't remember how to use words. It had been a real, real long time since anyone had touched him that wasn't dying or a doctor. Once, March had been randy enough to roll in the hay with anything that looked pretty, and touching was a given, something that happened often enough to be taken for granted like there was nothing to it. But these days, that hand on his wrist had him stammering, and he tried to find words, but nothing did come out.
March licked his lips, and he turned his wrist and tugged it back from the mug, but it was a slow thing, real obviously reluctant.
"Nothing will happen to you, long as I don't bleed on an open wound. Even sex ain't for sure about transmission," March said. "We got a lot of AIDS patients at work, and we don't have orange dots," he promised, glancing toward the dots in question and feeling a little foolish. "But I just don't want to take risks. I want you feeling safe," he explained, though he knew Ford didn't know enough about the disease to feel anything unless he was told he should. It made March rub his face, both hands in a long sweep and the coffee cup ignored for the moment. "There's no real chance of anything happening to you here," he admitted, and a real heavy sigh came after the words. "I just worry about every damn thing these days," he fessed, which was more than he told anyone else, and he was aware enough to realize it.
March's fingers reached for the coffee again, and his gaze skimmed over to Ford's hand real quick, lingering, before he took up the cup and brought it to his lips.
Unlike his speech, Ford’s touch was confident and his hand was steady. His fingers curled gently around March’s considerably thinner wrist and his palm was rough, the pressure he applied more downward against the table than any kind of grip. It was a steadying movement, a flat point of contact that was, in one singular press of muscle and skin, meant to ground March to the floor, to life, to reality itself. Ford himself was not philosophical or reflective, he simply acted. Instead of allowing his fingers to relax immediately into the release, Ford watched March’s face as the other man’s hand started to pull away, and he let the pressure of his grip slide along the back of March’s hand.
Instead of pursuing, Ford cupped his hand around the edge of March’s orange cup, as if thinking to push it a little farther from the edge of the table, and then he reconsidered. He paused, thinking on it, and then slowly pulled his hand back to his own cup, his heavy muscle and roughened elbow making a faint hiss on the raw surface of the kitchen table. The inside of his arm had blue veins running up under the thin, heat-freckled skin.
Ford nodded. “Orange is… ehf-f...f-fine. What m...m-makes you…” His blue eyes rolled a little desperately, trying to come up with the right adjective that wouldn’t be horrifically butchered in the offing. “Relax.” He took in a long coffee-scented breath through his nose. The stuff smelled amazing, sort of smooth, and not gasoline harsh at all. He took a long gulp and then shot a glance down at it with some surprise. Then, as if forgetting he was putting even more words into the air, he added, “I’m okay.” This last he was very sure of, it seemed.
March thought it was real unjust, that someone quiet and young as Ford should have such a strong grip. Talking to Russ on the journals, he'd gotten used to thinking of Ford as something small that could break easy, but it was hard to think that now, sitting across from the boy with his curls and that grip like he wasn't scared of nothing. He thought maybe Russ didn't see his brother like other folks did, and maybe that just came from being siblings, because March was pretty damn sure, sitting there, that he was at more risk than Ford was just then. Boy had always been about touching in a way that was dangerous, and March had liked that just fine once. Heck, he liked it just fine now, even if it did remind him of all the things he never could have again.
The cupping of the cup was something for March to fix on. It was something that wasn't nerve endings and how different simple contact felt like coming from someone else that was living - really living - and he wanted to drag the touch on back almost as soon as it had gone, but he didn't. He listened to Ford talking, and there wasn't any indication of impatience. He'd never felt bothered by the stuttering, and it wasn't like he had anywhere to be or hurry onto. Ford could take his own damn time saying whatever it was that needed saying, and he'd be content to listen. Truth was, he'd be content to listen to nearly anything that came out of the boy's mouth, but he'd be keeping that to himself for the rest of his short life.
March laughed some when Ford told him to relax, and he shook his head and took another sip of his coffee. "What makes you fret?" he asked, curious, because he wanted to know, and his shift didn't start for awhile yet. He knew he should give Ford time alone in the place, and he'd be going off to a long shift for that reason alone, but he was selfish enough to stretch it on out, and he sipped his coffee slow on account of it.
Ford was free with many things, physicality being one of them. It was not such a great thing, being so close you could punch or kiss. In the end the difference of contact was not so great, and Ford spent his favors as freely as he returned violence offered, and with approximately the same amount of thought. Russell’s perception of Ford’s fragility came out of one shaky afternoon painted with yellow sunshine and a lot of fear, and Ford’s perception of an eternity of life had been permanently cracked. Ford was aware he’d shown Russell a lot of things that could, and had, been used to hurt him, but he accepted this as the cost of having a brother. Family was meant to be hurtful.
Leaning back in the chair so that the close-cut jean didn’t dig into his leg, Ford brought his cup with him and held it so close that it was practically balancing on his sternum. The movement belonged in a lawn chair, not in a kitchen like this, but he seemed not to notice. He might have liked a beer, but he would not say it. A deep blue eye glanced again into the surface of the cup, this time checking to be sure that there were no paint flecks escaping from his hair into the liquid. It danced rapidly back up as March laughed at his comment about relaxing, and it was evident from his expression that Ford had not been sure, until the second he saw March’s face, that the laughter was not mocking in some way. Ford’s words were never funny to him, it cost him too much to find them.
After a long silence while he chewed on the question and decided how to respond, Ford shrugged one shoulder in an eloquent explanation of the usual. “M...m…muh-money.”
March had been born laughing, his momma said, and while March knew that wasn't actually possible, he understood what she meant by it. He'd been real happy until the day his daddy died, and even that hadn't lingered so long, not when his brothers were real close by and ready with hugs and grins. After the incident with the car and the lake, it had taken some time to get back to grinning, but it had come eventually. His grandmomma's land had been grasses that were long and green enough that bluegrass that became something more than words, and he'd spent an entire summer lying in that grass, watching the skies overhead and healing himself up. And then he'd gone grinning and joking again, and he knew he'd managed to put himself back together better than Jan and Toby had, all on account of that. So that look on Ford's face, the one that said he'd thought there was mocking happening, it surprised March.
A second passed, during which March tried to decide to whether or not to go explaining that he hadn't been mocking, but he didn't say in the end. Quiet as could be for a second longer, he decided to let Ford figure it out his ownself. After all, he hadn't known the boy across from him outside of bed a few years back, and magic books didn't exactly get nuance across real clear. March just grinned some, and he watched Ford's expression change to something like asking.
Money, March knew, was what most people fretted over. He never had, but it was the normal thing. His own worries were something most folks wouldn't need to even think on until they were getting on seventy, if they were lucky. It almost made him smile, because March viewed money as something so damn insignificant. Money was fixable. Money didn't kill a person off, not when he was around, and it made him kind of glad that was as deep as Ford's big concerns went. He wasn't simple enough to think there wasn't stuff deeper, but this was something he could help with, at least. "I been living off horses since I can remember," he admitted. "I never worried about nothing like money. Even this place," he said, motioning, "some horse won a race somewhere and paid it full for me."
Ford stared. It was a long, blank stare of total incomprehension. Like most people brought up in on the edge of cities roaming paved roads, Ford’s coyote existence didn’t allow much for the concept of big grass-eating creatures that carried people before there were cars. Ford immediately thought of black and white spaghetti westerns from free motel cable, and once March said that a horse had won a race, he thought of blue ribbons and Mary Poppins. Ford’s surprise wore off enough that he managed to raise his eyebrows and twitch his mouth in a perfect expression that was meant to perfectly communicate his confusion without a word being said.
Ford sat for a second. He shifted his thick boots on the kitchen floor, not noticing as he dragged a smear of dried paint from one old heel on the floor. Slowly, he lifted his mug as if to take a drink, then lowered it back down onto his chest again. Finally, he ventured, carefully: “You r-uh-ride horses?” He kept it short and soft and managed through most of the softer consonants without trouble. He tried to keep some of the skepticism off his face but it didn’t work very well. He still had trouble imagining how horses could pay for a palace like this--unless you had a lot of money to gamble.
March shook his head. "I don't ride. Never did much care for it. I got a horse outside town in a stable that I visit daily, but I don't ride him. He don't much care for riding, so it ain't a bad thing. My people raise horses for the Derby," he said, assuming everyone in the country knew about the Kentucky Derby. Racing families were big down South, and he'd been born into an old one that had taken to breeding some years before he came along. "My grandmomma's parents raced thoroughbreds, and their parents did too. My grandmomma decided there was steadier money in studding than racing, so we do more of one than the other these days, and we do some boarding alongside, but it's a big old money business. There's a lot of money in racing horses where I come from."
The skepticism on Ford's face made March grin. "They been itching for me to visit. You could come along, take some of the heat off me and see the bluegrass for yourself," he suggested. And it would be a lie to say he didn't miss home. This place in the desert, it felt nothing like the sticky-sweet south. Couldn't be a place more removed from that sweet tea and drawl, and there were days he missed it so hard his bones ached with it. He wasn't sick these days. It wouldn't be so bad to go on home. As long as he didn't pick up something on the plane, he could get in and out without anyone knowing there was a thing wrong. It would take hiding some pills, but his momma wasn't curious enough to go rifling in his things, and his grandmomma was more about asking direct, than she was about nosying, though he didn't put paying the servants to do it beyond her. But he missed his family something awful, and he wouldn't mind visiting, especially after all the frustrating conversations with Toby recent.
Ford didn’t know people kept horses that they didn’t ride. Ford assumed that the people who had horses either pulled carriages around at fairs or were being unnecessarily visible, like the cops you saw in tv shows about New York, trotting around and looking down at people. He supposed that March must think of this horse outside of town as… as a very expensive cat that nobody wanted. He pondered that for a little while, not understanding what March got out of the situation. In the end he came up with nothing and shelved away as a peculiarity of rich accented people from Kentucky.
Ford tipped his head to one side to listen about the place March came from. It was much as he had envision, though he didn’t know what bluegrass looked like and assumed it was a lot like the green kind except the tips went turquoise for some reason when it grew high. He enjoyed hearing about other people’s families the way some people liked hearing about the way astronauts lived in outer space: from a great distance. He could easily imagine March belonging somewhere with a lot of space and (his mind scrambled for a moment to find suitable imagery for this country setting) a very big cabin.
Ford pressed all five fingers down on the rim of his coffee cup, keeping it steady with his other hand and making a great show of concentration while he spoke. “You wuh-wu-w-w-want ta-t-t-t-take m...m-me-me home?” He did not have to do much more to communicate his general disbelief at the idea.
March grinned at Ford's disbelief. When he'd lived out in Vegas, with Toby and Jan, taking people home wasn't something he'd done much of. Explaining a hanged daddy and a stepmomma that was real nuts wasn't something pleasant to think on doing, after all. But in Kentucky, once he'd gotten home to his momma's people, he'd had friends over all the damn time. He'd just been that kind of social, once his head calmed from the water rushing. Heck, he'd done more entertaining after that. There'd been boys running in and out of the house at all hours, and there'd been some girls too, and his grandmomma had just shook her head fond and pretended she minded, when she didn't mind worth a lick. And his momma? Well, she was busy shopping and falling herself in love, just like she'd always done.
But March let the silence sit for a spell, because Ford's expression was something just that side of adorable. He sipped at his coffee, and his voice was morning gravel when he spoke, something old and coffee-husky, despite the late hour. "When I was in high school, I took friends home all hours. When I was in college, I took half the dorm home for holidays. You come on home with me. You'll see fussing and food like you never have seen, and my grandmomma likes knowing I'm not friendless out here in the desert." Which wasn't a lie. His grandmomma worried about him something awful, and maybe he'd finally work up the gumption to tell her about being sick if he wasn't there alone, looking at her face and not having anyone to wring his hands at beforehand.
Ford was obviously unable to envision such a situation. He would never have brought anyone under his mother’s influence even if they were bleeding out their last breath. Family was something to be endured or sought out, but not shared. He didn’t want to be rude so he did not attempt to share any of these feelings aloud, and they were too complex to do so anyway. The very idea of trying to get the word ‘family’ out more than once without making it sound like it was painful (which it was)...
Eventually Ford stood up, his cup still swinging from the tips of his fingers, and moved over to the coffee maker again. He glanced over his shoulder at Ford so he could pick up any warning signs before he actually touched it, but nothing happened, so he helped himself. Carefully working the heavy, sloshing pot back where it belonged, Ford turned around and propped his ass against the counter, all the rest of his weight on his heels and the resulting lean both long and comfortable despite the speech that followed.
“S...seems st-st-st… funny. J-dj-ju-just showing up.” Ford stared down at the toes of his boots, the coffee now sending tiny drifts of pale steam up toward his contemplative blue eyes, almost exactly the color of sunny blue jean. “They n-n-n-h-n-nuh-n-never heard’ve me.” He swallowed and looked again at March’s face to see the reaction to his tentative refusal of the invitation. March had invited him to his house and then given him a room, and now he wanted to involve Ford with his family. It seemed an impossible leap to Ford, whose personal space could not have been farther than his own home unless he had owned a plane.
March watched Ford refill his coffee, and he watched the boy go leaning against that counter like he was on display. And it was hard not to let his gaze travel on down, and he had his first taste of how living with Ford was going to be a real damn challenge sometimes. He sat up in his chair, feet planted real firm on the floor, and he finished off his coffee before looking back at the boy taking up the space in front of the counter with those long legs. It was probably showing on his face, that he thought Ford looked plenty nice in his kitchen, but he didn't do a damn thing but look. Even his fingers didn't twitch.
"I always showed up with folks," March said with an easy shrug. He knew this was Ford saying no, but he didn't show if it bothered him any. He'd already had a long talk with himself about the fact that Ford was staying here as a roommate, and there wasn't any expectations of nothing with the boy. Heck, he barely knew Ford, and he couldn't even be sure the boy was going to want friendship out of him. Plenty of roommates didn't like each other much, and March knew that companionship was something he was hoping would come out of this, but Ford might be just fine being acquaintances, and that was his right. March wasn't intending to go pushing.
Or, March hadn't been intending on it, but maybe he'd just done it some without thinking it through?
March smiled easy, intentionally light. "I always show up with folks," he corrected. "I'm real social, son. My family's used to me dragging folks in without even knowing their last names." Which had been true enough once, and maybe it wasn't a real lie on account of it. "It was just me rambling. I do that," he said, slouching back again.
Ford looked upon the arrangement much differently. He assumed he was in March’s space because March wanted him there, not because he had any sort of right to be there, and he would go on knocking even though he had a key for a good while yet. At best, the gesture was a charity, and Ford was aware of that, and not too proud to turn it down just for that. He liked March and saw no problem staying with him in his house as long as it did not bring with it any particular obligation or danger. Ford thought in the short-term and did not try to search out his reasoning any farther. He assumed the people around him were the same, and he was always surprised by those machinating souls with dark ulterior motives.
Ford looked up in time to catch the look on March’s face as he shifted against the counter edge with his coffee cup, and as it hadn’t been so long ago that a counter like this one had gotten very interesting, Ford’s mouth immediately opened in a gaping grin full of white teeth and implications. It was a harmless smile, despite its clear meaning, and he obviously put not one iota of thought into it before, during or after.
Staying on the topic as if it had never gone distant, Ford asked, “W-wuh-w-what k-k-kuh-kind of… f-f-folks?”
"Put that away," March said of Ford's grin, his own grin entertained and tormented, by turns. "I promised your brother I wouldn't even go looking at you sideways while you were here." Which was a bit of an exaggeration, but not much of one. And it didn't change that all of Russ' threatening wasn't going to change the fact that he was attracted to those long legs taking up space in his kitchen. But looking wasn't the same as touching and, near as he could tell, Ford didn't actually mind him looking none.
"What kind of folks?" March asked a second later, pushing at his coffee cup until it took up residence near the center of the table. "All kinds? There were folks at the club that Jan and I got close with, but I don't go there anymore, and Jan just went and lost his job." He frowned then, the topic of his brother weighing heavy for a second, a real obvious thing that distracted him long enough to make him forget the conversation for a second. He picked it back up a few minutes later, a grin of dimpled apology coming along with the words. "Sorry. Jan's got me worried some. I'd drag him home too, if I thought he'd come, but he's hiding hisself away from the world." Which didn't do a damn bit of good, March knew, hypocritical as it was.
March pushed the chair back, and he took a deep breath. "I don't see many people recent," he finally admitted.
Ford was completely unrepentant about his grin. He stared into March’s face with a hint of curiosity and the faint glimmering remnants of his natural response to obvious admiration still twinkling at the edges of his mouth and deep into his paint-spackled cheek. The look was as if he couldn’t imagine what was wrong with grinning at someone. Ford didn’t grin at people he thought might be angry, or might get him into trouble. March was not one of those. Ford’s eyes made a dark angle at the mention of his brother, but he wouldn’t pursue it. He gave a little questioning shrug in March’s direction. What was a look going to do?
Ford was interested at the mention of March’s siblings, visibly so. He tipped his head as he listened, the coffee hovering near his chest again, a little high, and just far enough that he could smell it when he wasn’t drinking it. The movement was a little possessive and childish. It spoke of someone who was used to paper cups--and conserving them. The delicate motion was unlike the grasp on March’s arm a little while ago.
“Y-yuh-y-y-you k-ku-kuh-could-could ask him to s...stay. Jan.” He pressed his teeth up into his upper lip, thoughtful. March seemed to thrive on company. It was a natural order that could be restored. Brightly, Ford added, “He-could be… green.” Ford turned his wrist and pointed at the spot on his mug.
All that twinkling was dangerous, and March knew it was dangerous. "You're a whole mess of trouble, you know that?" he asked, all old man's voice and dimpled grin in a face that was too youthful for his years. No one would know, looking at him, that he was dying, but he sure felt it just then, because being sick was the only thing keeping him from pushing his chair back and wiping that grin off Ford's face.
But then there was that hugging of the mug again, and March was lulled back into thinking Ford was adorable and young and everything he should stay away from. It made him calm some, and he held his mug out to see if Ford would fill it up for him, since he was lounging over there across the counter and looking too many kinds of pretty doing it. "I asked him to stay," he said of Jan, that frown coming on back to his features, despite a momentary quirk of lips at the idea of Jan getting himself a green dot. "He said he needed to be alone some. Jan never wants to be alone, and Toby's always minded him. I don't know how to watch out for anyone, not even my damnself, and Toby's turned into someone I don't know these days," he said. And that was too much seriousness, and he knew it right off, so he shook his head. "I think he's more fond of blue," he added, trying to backtrack it, but knowing it wouldn't work so well.
Ford didn’t know anyone with a voice like that, and it did wonderful things to the bottom of his spine. He could see why March was so good at music, why the pure notes of the piano must sound so good against the funny rumble-gravel thing he did at the end of his vowels. It wasn’t like the choppy mess Ford heard come out of his own mouth. The glittering smile was gone now, replaced by a considering, bright-eyed look. Curious. Hungry.
Blue, March said. Ford repeated it, but the word had no sound, just a shape of his lips as he said it in his mind. Ford lifted his big shoulders again, taking this burden of family up and down as if it weighed nothing. “Ask’im again.” Ford pushed away from the counter to stand on his feet, and thought about saying something else, but he forgot about it right in the moment because he was overtaken by a massive yawn. He put his fists behind his hips and stretched his lower back as he pulled the kinks out of a day reaching up to reach flat walls and spreading out foul-smelling paint on cheap bristles. Maybe a nap. Maybe a shower. Maybe a nap… then maybe a shower.
March laughed, and he should his head. "Don't you go looking at me like that," he said, but his voice was even more gravel than normal, and he didn't like that considering look, not worth a lick. Or, maybe, he liked it too damn much, which was just as bad. Asking again wasn't a bad idea, and March nodded, even as he watched all that yawning and stretching with eyes gone deeper blue, and that was definitely his sign to get on. He stood, and he tucked his cup in the sink and nodded toward the work bag that was taking up the corner of the couch. "It'll be sun-up before I'm back, and I'll sleep most the day," he said, wanting to let Ford know that the house would be his for a real long spell, so that he could get settled and comfortable. "Place is yours, same as mine. Do what you like," he said, and he fished the keys to his car out of the drawer nearest the fridge and tossed them on the table. "You take the keys down, and they'll bring the car around if you need it. I got a driver taking me tonight," he said, knowing the man would already be down waiting, courtesy of the building. He shifted from one foot to the other, and then he turned for the living room. "You have yourself a good sleep, son." And maybe his voice went just a little rougher with that one word - sleep.
Ford had absolutely no trouble putting on an innocent look at this chastisement, mostly because two seconds later he forgot about the thoughts he had been putting through his eyes entirely. It didn’t mean anything, just that he did it all the time without much thinking. March was safe, he’d been with March before. (Now that was irony.) March being sick was a logical fact. Ford would think of it when he was not so tired, or when he got close enough to touch and remember he shouldn’t be touching.
That didn’t happen just then, though.
Ford let his shoulders relax as much as he was able and detoured immediately to the table. He stared at the key with an entirely different kind of wonder, like it was a diamond the size of a fist. Ford did not reach out to take it, he just looked down. It occurred to him to say that he couldn’t drive, that he hadn’t learned and didn’t have a card, but he wasn’t going to say that out loud with the key on the table. Maybe he could just go look at it. When he woke up.
Ford’s grin was huge as he beamed at March. Like Christmas. Ford reached out and pressed a palm to March’s upper arm, a friendly sort of gesture that had no implications at all except a friendly, speechless gratitude. Then he left for the hallway, leaving his spotted mug behind.