PEPPER P. (saltedand) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-09-21 19:22:00 |
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Entry tags: | pepper potts, sam winchester |
Who: Russ & Ford Campbell
What: Somebody's in trouble. (Surprise: it is not Russ)
When: After this
Where: The side of the road & then the shop.
Warnings: Let us all mourn for March's poor 'stang.
She had been a long smile over cheap liquor and Russ liked that kind a whole lot. It was uncomplicated, simple in a short skirt and end of the night way and Andi-Candi-Mandi- whatever her fucking name was, she was hair blond as California sunshine and breasts half-spilling out of her shirt. She looked nothing like leggy, intimidatingly lean good looks and black hair that came right before cussing, Andi smiled like she’d never spoken a damn word of Spanish in her life - which meant she was damn fine. She’d sat at the end of the bar looking, and Russ thought that women who made that looking nice and obvious, let you all know that they were trying to find something easy, weren’t appreciated enough. He had a beer or two in his system and Ford’s capital-letters petulance sharp in his mind (he was ignoring Marina the only way he knew how) and he’d skipped the club for something a little more basic, grounding. Russ was missing the little book. The little book had fallen apart in his back pocket and the little book had turned up right when he wanted it good and fucking lost, but the little book didn’t bleep and glow with blue light every fucking five seconds someone decided to take to the journals like they were fucking Hamlet with something on their damn chest. Candi was ass up on the sheets, and that blond hair mussed against his pillow, and half-way to asleep as Russ plinked at the slim piece of technology that had been picked out for a woman who was extremely comfortable with Stark products and had not thought about irritable men at all. He didn’t kick her out. He thought about it, the rattle of his loose belt in his jeans as he hauled them up his hips, but the protest and the carry-on would take too damn long and now he had Sam Winchester’s analysis of the car on the side of a highway in his head too. He left her there, sprawled out in bedsheets and the sticky heat and Russ took the bike to the garage until he could pick up the tow. There was no one at the garage at four in the morning, no one who gave a damn about the ancient truck with faded branding stamped along the side. The roads were clear, and the sky thin blue, and Russ drove until he saw a car that was so beautiful it was fucking heartbreaking and the kid alongside, recognizable with all that dark hair. And then Russ remembered right then what exactly Ford had left off with saying, and the bloodshot blue eyes were wary as Russ slid down from the cab, all last-night’s shirt and early-morning gold sprawling over his jaw and an eye for the car. “You didn’t fucking say she was a classic,” Russ said, because it made a difference. Four hours could take out dings and replace generic bulbs or grills if you had a goddamn chance of swapping them out for what was in stock. A classic car took time, same way a lady took to get into bed. Ford, on the other hand, stood up from his dejected lean against the gleaming red fender of March’s 1965 Ford Mustang and looked at Russell in the big bouncing old tow truck like he was the second coming on whispy clouds, and the angels were about to give him the clean hug he sorely needed. Ford was steady on his feet and a little dirty from the road but apparently without permanent damage from his misadventure. Under the glowing approach of the new sunrise, his clean white shirt and thick curls gave him an innocent look that probably drew the wrong kind of men like flies to honey, but the height and muscle were what got him past the bouncers and bartenders. The car was at an angle in a wide, weed-speckled ditch, one tail light higher than the roof, black burnt rubber lines and disturbed dust making it obvious where it had skidded across the road in a tight curve. Inexperienced, Ford had simply panicked when the other car, an uppity white BMW with custom rims, had clipped too quickly on the lane behind and to the right. He had overcompensated as the car had fishtailed and yanked the wheel, and since the passing cars were rare (though growing more common as the morning wore on), the old classic had skewed around and stopped hard in the ditch at the center of the road, where a low divider prevented just this sort of thing from becoming a head-on collision. There was a nasty dent and a shattered tail-light where the BMW had clipped the back of the Mustang, but the worst of the damage was probably in the axle of the lowest tire and the front end where one headlight had smashed soundly into the divider and stopped the car short. As Ford approached, a misshapen lump at one end of his forehead indicated where he’d “bounced back.” He’d had time to come off the shock, but he was clutching Sam’s notebook tightly in one fist and his expression was all anxiety, tense on the generous mouth and pleading in the large blue eyes. He shot Russell a panicked look at his mention of classic cars, his gaze bouncing from the car and back to Russell’s face, desperate. His mouth opened and closed like a goldfish’s, but he seemed unable to speak. The ever-present headphones were still dangling off of his neck, impossibly intact. Russ said nothing. It was clear from both the bristle and the bloodshot that he had either the remnants of a headache from drinking or blue balls, either being reason enough for being up so early in the morning. He looked past white shirt and the cherub curls because Ford looked like it was about to be sick by the side of the damn road again and Russ held his tongue against his lower teeth, all the words to say about driving without a license blindsided by the car leaning drunkenly against the divider. He saw the knot on the kid’s forehead first, and Russ’s blue eyes narrowed - he took the three strides between being close enough to see and close enough to really look, and his hands, not uncareful, settled the left on Ford’s shoulder and the right on the side of Ford’s chin, tipping up forehead to look properly. “Maybe you need to see a doc,” his voice was roadside gravel and early-morning rough, because there were cars and then there were head-injuries and Russ knew plenty about those, sick to his stomach and stupid with it until he rode them out. He let go of Ford and looked past him to the car. She was a goddamn beauty - Russ ran a hand along the dent, that would come right out with a little time and some attention, and the tail-light was jagged glass and some asshole’s calling card. The front end was, Russ guessed, worse. It looked like the kind of damage that came into the garage when people got jumpy or stupid or both, and one look at the kid said which. “Get in,” Russ turned back to the truck, and hauled himself back into the cab. The radio had been blaring, something tinny and loud and dated and he put his hand over the gear-shift, ready to back up toward the car. He did not look back, waiting. Both Ford and the headphones askew about his neck were silent, and the only sound was the punching sound of the air beating on the highway in advance of the rare car as it zipped angrily past. At first Ford wasn’t sure why Russell was coming in his direction, as he anticipated no anger or violence given Russell’s willingness to show up in the book. He still took a step back as Russell came close enough to put his hands out and touch him, his expression transparently confused. He didn’t see anger or flinch at nothing, but he didn’t know concern when it came his way, and it took him ten seconds to even understand that was what was happening. Automatically, Ford lifted one hand toward the place on his head that Russell was looking at, not knowing what the matching set of blue eyes was seeing and curious about it. Fortunately, Russell’s arm prevented Ford from actually hitting himself again where the lump pounded at him, and Ford quickly discovered that his forehead was tender by the resulting brush of fingers alone. Hastily, he dropped his hands and gave the universal sign for no, no doctor, which consisted of compressed lips and a very slight shake of his head along the horizontal line of the highway, the dark curls moving in thick chaos stripes across his forehead. (Ford was thinking: Do they have free clinics for car crashes too? I can’t go to a car crash clinic, that shit isn’t free, and he needs to fix March’s car like right now! Much of this was baldly clear on his face.) Ford turned as Russell approached the car, shadowing his every move with breathless, agonized anticipation, hoping that Russell would drop some new nuance of information on how likely it was the machine would go back to the way it was supposed to be within the next ten minutes. Russell was striding back to his truck before Ford knew what was happening, and Ford opened the passenger door, but not to get in, embarking instead upon a rather frantic pantomime that used both hands to indicate the red car and its sad, abandoned state. Ford was still thinking about the doctor, the things Russell had said about classics, and he didn’t know that Russell planned on backing up and not driving away. His fist on the tow truck’s doorframe was tight and panicked, as if he thought he might be able to drag Russell back if the man put the truck in drive and pulled away again. Ford still couldn’t get a word out. He was making sounds, but he couldn’t get them past his throat and gave up rapidly, shorting out like a shredded wire. Russ was planning on arguing plenty with the kid about the knot on his forehead; he’d spent time enough lying on a couch stupid-sick and dizzy but it was something that could be argued over later when there was time. (Russ knew the haziest of details about head injuries and the necessary, he knew you showed up in the emergency room and you waited until someone shone a light in your eyes and lectured you about fighting whilst they glared patent disapproval in their white coat that you were taking up space in their ER and bleeding on their squeak-clean floor. He did not think of concussions or of the implications of waiting, that it would happen was enough.) Car wasn’t going nowhere by itself, parked up against the barrier like a sad girl standing around the edges of a party. He ignored much of the frenetic mime of hands, the energy of it irritated him like an old dog bounded around by a very small puppy. “You want me to get it back to the shop,” he said roughly, leaning across the passenger seat in a stretch of worn, dirty cotton and bare brown skin, “Or not? Get the fuck in, kid.” Russ did not think generally of Ford’s lack of words, it was as intrinisically part of Ford as everything else (Ford rarely being relaxed enough for the problem to be absent when Russ was present) and he did not think of it then but bluntly ignored the lack of explanation. Ford hesitated, his hand on the frame of the door. Russell’s words seemed to imply that the car would be taken care of, but not how soon. Ford wasn’t sure that his brother understood the impending doom of the situation. March would be very angry that Ford had crashed his precious car, he would yell or be disappointed or maybe (far worse) be sensitively hurt about it, and then Ford would have to leave and his current savings amounted to thirty dollars and forty-seven cents. The forty-seven cents might be all over the inside of the Mustang right now, too, given how much Ford had rattled around in there. Ford looked up as Russell leaned over, and the crystal blue of his eyes managed to layer doubt over a great deal of shame-faced trust. Finally the doubt submerged under the raw surface, and Ford put one boot sole on the filthy passenger-side floor and hauled himself in. Ford yanked at the passenger door to slam it, pressed his back down against the ignored seat belt, and dropped his head onto his chest in a perfect picture of total dejection. His head hurt and he kept thinking about how it wasn’t his car and how many horse races was a red car worth? Russ didn’t know how many horse races that car was worth but it looked like a couple hands of cards in a real high stakes kind of game, and he revised his opinion of March to something marginally more respectful (this made itself less plain than the obvious longing that the car engendered that Russ wore the way a man who was both tired and played out but still capable of lusting after something that walked under his nose). The minute the door slammed shut in a squeal of metal, sending a shower of rusting paint flakes sprinkling over Ford’s knees, Russ’s hand came down hard on the gear-stick and the truck made a grinding, sour kind of noise as it moved backward, rather than forward. He ignored the doubt and he ignored the way the kid slid down the plastic seat-cover like ice-cream melting into a puddle, and the tinny radio was loud in the space over the rough noise of the truck. Russ reached over Ford’s knees for a lever, which when pulled, made a sharp, scraping metal sound that came to an abrupt and heavy stop. Russ swung open his door, and slid out and he let the rock music fan out, fading on early morning air. It slid into the heavy rush of air that was passing cars, sliding together like beads on a piece of wire, faster and faster. It was clear, both from the way Russ eyed the car and the ramp of the truck, now lowered and edged with some kind of sticky tape, presumably to make it more visible, that he was both used to doing this and also considerably wary of harming the Mustang. Most people who smashed their cars up good on the side of the road, they needed fixing up so bad there was nothing to harm, but the Mustang could have been fine. “You got the keys?” Now, apparently, Ford was required. Ford had to pull his knees out of the way of all of these mechanical adjustments, and he made no move to brush the chips of age off of his close-cut jeans. He had to move his head a little gingerly, but he stirred himself enough to look in the rearview and watch Russell maneuver the complaining truck into place. He was a little too rattled by the situation to be suitably impressed, sitting up a little more in his seat the closer it got, and then pressing the undamaged side of his forehead to the cool window to watch the edge of the tow with trepidation as it moved ever closer. The question seemed to unnerve him, as if the location of the keys was somehow one more thing he had screwed up, and he automatically touched one hip, thinking maybe they were in his pocket, but no, that wasn’t right. Ford let out a breath, easing the panic back down again. His nerves were fucking done. Ford made a gesture at the steering column of the tow truck, and then back over his shoulder at the red mustang. He twisted his fingers to indicate keys turning in the ignition, then another gesture back. “S...s...s-there. There.” Frantic sweep of his fingers back at the mustang. A passing car rocked the truck on its axles, and Ford slumped back into his seat. Of course the kid had left the keys in the fucking ignition. Russ made a sound that was neither annoyed nor amused but was the click of tongue against teeth; something that marked observation in the same tired way he palmed his jaw and nodded, abruptly and he turned back toward the Mustang. The air rushed in where the door had been left ajar in Russ’s absence. The engine ticked over, too quiet and too smooth for an old engine but maybe one that had care and attention in the downtime between other cars. It played beneath the radio, and it was easy to see how in all that sound, loneliness might get dampened down, covered up with bad music and listening to the traffic. In the rear-view, Russ had bent over the car and another engine kicked up briefly, a raspy kind of purr. It took minutes, but by the time it was done, the Mustang had been strapped up to the top of the flatbed. Russ’s weight bounced against the poor springs of the truck seat, and he slammed the door behind him with another judder of metal. The kid looked about as dejected as you could get but Russ wore something approximating cheerful beneath the scrub of beard. Up close, it wasn’t fucked ten ways, the way it could have been and he flipped the ignition with a plan pushing itself lazily together in the back of his mind, the layout of the garage very clear in his head. It was only after, as the engine skipped beneath the hood, into action, that Russ turned his head to look at Ford. “It ain’t completely fucked,” he assured him, and feeling he had divested Ford of a little of his misery, he pulled back out onto the highway. Ford seemed unwilling to actually look Russell in the face when the older man returned to the cabin. The slam of the door rocked the truck gently back and forth, and Ford didn’t want to look back toward the bed of the truck because he couldn’t stand to see March’s pretty red car all smashed in the front, hauled off the side of the road because he, Ford, couldn’t fucking drive. It hadn’t seemed all that hard when he’d started. Ford propped his elbow on the cushion above the passenger window that probably didn’t work with a button. Threading four fingers through the proliferation of curls at the crown of his head, he started pulling on them with idle intensity, doing no damage and obviously thinking about what a fuck up he was. After a torturous ten minutes down the road, he dropped his elbow down to his ribs, sat up, and obviously decided to say something. He kept his eyes down for the duration, and it still took him a full thirty seconds to get two words out. The verbal shattering probably couldn’t be reproduced even on purpose, and the resultant meaning mostly had to be guessed: How much? Russ saw plenty of real nice cars fucked on the side of the road by kids who thought they could drive but didn’t. It didn’t lend a whole lot of weight to Ford’s protestations he was older and also self-sufficient, because the kind of kids dragged in, trailing guilt, dejection and resentment, to look at what went in to putting them roadside again, were younger. Usually they held a permit, but Russ (sliding a look across the wheel and over the music at Ford) didn’t think Ford had ever held a permit. He didn’t have a house to put on the application. March’s car (and March was rising in Russ’s estimation in direct proportion to the amount of pain Russ was in at the sight of that car strapped down in the rear view, as men who had good taste in cars were forgiven a whole raft of other sins) was nicer than those and it was also old, the kind of classic that his hands would have itched for even if his brother hadn’t tried to drive it into the wrong lane. “Don’t know until I get started,” Russ was guessing exactly what it was Ford would want to know, what he himself would want to know, as the sounds didn’t make a lick of sense without something to turn them from the strangled knots of syllables in the kid’s throat into words. But Russ sounded confident, even if he didn’t feel certain that the car would resemble the no doubt waxed and polished baby that had slid into traffic that morning like a knife through butter. “But I got time. Weren’t supposed to be working this morning.” There was no comment alongside this, nor was it pointed; Russ had made no accusation, simply stated his own truth. This was clearly not the answer that Ford had been looking for. His girlishly long dark lashes drooped sadly down onto the sharp ridge of his cheekbones, and in perfect parallel, Ford’s whole body slid down the seat again, folding under the weight of fickle fate. He took Sam’s notebook, a three-hole thing that had to have been held together out of magic, out of his pocket, and set it on his lap to fiddle with it. The rough taper of his fingers drew ripples on the corner of the notebook and flicked through the time-smoothed paper, and Ford directed his eyes out the passenger side window, trying to decide whether or not he should say something to March, and if he did, whether it would be a stall for time or just the truth and some pathetic groveling. Ford had left his bag at March’s house in a kind of gesture of goodwill, and now he was regretting it, because he knew he would have to go back and get it regardless of the situation. Maybe March would be so mad he would call security and have one of the angry guys behind the desk in the lobby throw it into Ford’s chest and then kick him out with their dumb shiny shoes. Russell’s second sentence took some time to sink in. Ford breathed in and out a couple times and then stirred himself out of his woes enough to look sideways over at his brother. He was grateful that Russell had left whoever “she” was and come to his aid, and even more grateful that through some miracle of chance his erstwhile half-brother knew how to fix cars. He would have said so, but speech was totally beyond him just then and he knew it. Ford settled with looking apologetic. As much as possible. Russ never left a damn thing anywhere, mostly because if he did, the chances were that whatever it was would be pitched back at him, usually at his head. But Russ rarely required gestures of goodwill, and when he made them they were both cranky and ill-humored as if to make it clear that they were not forthcoming often. He was neither overly sympathetic in manner at the wheel, nor unduly forbidding. Russ was not usually sympathetic-looking at all, which was perhaps indication that he felt something in that line. He watched the kid slide slowly down the seat, like melted sorrow puddling on cracked leather, and he managed (with difficulty) not to crack a smile at so much visible dejection held up on display, mostly because he feared March’s reaction at the state of the car. Classics took time, they took loving and they took special-order parts. Russ knew March as soft-South voice and willing rag-doll and a sense of humor Russ disliked intensely, but he knew Ford liked him a great deal for reasons Russ wilfully refused to comprehend. Thus March’s displeasure became something Russ eyed balefully, as if it dared to challenge Ford’s happiness, which was, if not paramount, then at least important. “Don’t worry about it,” he said, uncomfortable under the gaze from the side-seat, because Russ remembered, even if Ford did not, angry capital letters and the equivalent of door-slamming, the finality of being young and stupid and confronted with old and stubborn. He wrapped his fingers around the wheel with a crick of knuckles, slunk a little lower in his own seat, because what happened if he couldn’t fix the damn car? Ford would hate him, and March would hate him more. Russ reminded himself that he didn’t care about either of these things, and flicked the radio up louder, as if doubt could be drowned out by static-laden country. Ford was in the depths of the worst-case scenario. By this point it was practically a given. He was wondering if writing a note beforehand would be better than after, because he couldn’t fucking get a word out, and when people got angry he generally didn’t get the chance to argue the situation. Angry people were impatient, and they didn’t stand there and wait for you to argue back. When his mother got angry at him Ford just dodged whatever slaps or odd crockery were aimed his way and tried to escape the trailer in one piece. When one of the long string of temporary employers got angry enough to shout he just stood there until they finished, and when everyone else did it he usually just ran for it before things got physical. Ford was pretty damn sure that March wasn’t going to be able to hurt him physically even if he wanted to, which wasn’t likely. The angry disappointment would be worse. The thought made Ford think of the last time he’d been angry, which immediately reminded him of the last words he exchanged with Russell. Ford had been hurt more than angry, not that he was going to write any of that, and it still made his whole chest and face burn thinking about how Russell had just turned his business with Blake out for the whole world to see. This new crisis put some things in perspective, though. Ford had written at Russell and Russell had written back. Fast too. With the truck. Ford had now been staring at Russell for at least ten miles, thinking this recent string of thoughts, looking embarrassed and grateful and hesitant all at the same time. Russ was used to both impatience and being impatient, having the temper that had thrown things back instead of ducking and then bailed when the flurry of objects became enraged boyfriends. Russ had rarely (he had sometimes, and he thought of it little but enough that memory remained) angered those that he cared much about their disappointment, and it was itchy on the back of his neck like a tag in a shirt that wouldn’t quit. He looked across, quick - as the phut-phut-phut of traffic passing the truck had begun to increase - and caught that bright-blue impossibility and turned back to the road, quick as he damn could because the stare notched under skin and yanked, fish-hook and a line. He didn’t have long to wonder over Ford and Ford’s visible discomfort - Russ attributed it largely to Ford being stuck in a truck with him, when Ford had made it quite clear that he never wanted to talk to him. Whilst much of that was being twenty, and embarrassed, Russ was used to people yelling they never wanted to talk to him again (mostly women) and then following through, so when the truck came to a rattling, gasping sigh of a stop in the garage, he clambered out without backward glance, lowering the ramp and busying himself with getting the car off and under the less forgiving clinical clarity of the fluorescent lights. Ford didn’t know what to make of the look quick and back, but he suspected that maybe Russell remembered the fight on the journal just like Ford did, and he wasn’t bringing it up. Now would have been the perfect time; he had Ford in the cab of that tow truck and Ford sure as hell wasn’t going to go anywhere, not when Russell had March’s car and the ability to fix it. But Russell didn’t get to yelling again, and he didn’t look ready to rage, or even smug about being able to do it when he wanted. Ford appreciated that, recognized it as a good thing Russell had in him that Ford probably didn’t deserve. Ford turned his eyes back out the windshield, and he was slow to exit the cab as the tow truck came to a halt. Having no idea how to help, Ford watched carefully, anxiously, as Russell started taking the pretty red car off the truck bed. It made Ford feel like crying to see it, so he turned his head away and moved back into the shadows of the empty shop, gently touching his fingertips to his forehead as he went. About fifteen minutes later he returned with a steaming mug of coffee and, standing from a safe distance, held it out in Russell’s direction--much the way lion tamers held out meat. In the fifteen minutes it had taken to make coffee, a great deal had happened. The car was winched up, high enough that the underside was clear of the concrete, and the siding had been taken off, the electric whine of a vacuum high-powered enough for Ford to have heard from the office and the coffee-maker’s vicinity having un-dented the majority of the lighter dings in the shiny, cherry-colored paint. Russ was presently sitting on the concrete and examining the ding around the smashed light. Most of it was real cosmetic, the car hadn’t crumpled none when it had hit the center and Russ figured the ding in Ford’s head was probably harder and more hurting than the rest of the car, but for the axle. He had gotten far enough that he figured most of it would come out with some work, and he had eyed the main dent, enough that he knew how to get that out along with the rest. The axle was something else; the shop kept plenty of parts around but nothing from ‘65 and nothing for a Mustang from then. It was special-order and Russ looked up from the car as the coffee caught his nose, and reached for it with an absent stretch of arm that took the solemn expression he was giving the axle up to Ford’s face. “Thanks,” he said, sounding surprised and gruff, an embarrassed mix of being both pleased by the coffee and also distinctly wary of the look on Ford that seemed to think he, Russ, would bite. Russ thought he deserved it, maybe, from all that arguing out loud in front of people, but he didn’t like it anymore than he had then, and he wrapped his hand around the coffee cup and then his other fingers over that, until they locked together, and he studied the broken light a little longer as if a fix might work itself out. “I can fix it up some,” he said, carefully not-looking at Ford but the axle, “And I can try and straighten it out. But if it needs a new one,” Russ lowered the coffee, and he sounded as sympathetic as the guys did when one of their wives got real mad and stormed down to the garage and a lot of yelling came from the office, “I’m gonna have to order it special. It ain’t gonna go, without it.” Ford took his hand back after Russell took his coffee, not hasty, just because it was heavy holding it out there in nothing. The back of Ford’s hand was comparatively pale and the stress of the night was starting to show in blue-veined rings under his eyes. He twisted his fingers together and the reached them up again to spread back through his hair in a universal oh-fuck gesture that might have come straight out of an unspoken dictionary. Ford stared blankly at the broken light, not understanding the extent of the damage, not even really understanding what he’d done except break it. After a moment, Ford found he didn’t feel as bad as he had on the side of the road a little while ago. Maybe it was the smell of the oil and the coffee, or maybe it was Russell standing there by the car and being respectful about March’s red metal on wheels and not angry about the stupid shit Ford got up to in other people’s bedrooms. Ford turned to look at his brother. He’d wrapped his arms around his torso like he was cold, and he kept blinking too long, faintly owlish. “Gh-h-kh-kay,” Ford said, nodding his understanding. He shifted his long legs from boot to boot, directing his gaze now firmly toward the floor. “Ahkin p-puh-pp-p-pay.” A flop of one hand toward Russell. “You.” The same hand flew out to the car. For the car. This was total bullshit, of course. Ford didn’t have any money. He hadn’t even lined up where he planned on making any. Yet he was confident that he could and he would, so he added, “S...soon.” The car wasn’t getting fixed fast, that was for damn sure. Russ figured if he got the wheels off, he could straighten out the axle some, and maybe that would be good enough - hell, it was good enough for most of the cars that came on through, but he hesitated just a little. The Mustang looked like it had been tucked up in blankets and loved on long, it was exactly the kind of car that had his hands itching to touch and it was pretty, like a woman who walked in all curves and the kind of come-on that made you shiver. No, the axle wasn’t getting fixed right off, and Russ drank half the cup of coffee in a gulp, a working of tanned throat and he set the coffee cup down beside him. He eyed the kid from where he sat, and he hitched his jeans at the knees and clambered to his feet. Russ had gotten in enough fights where that long, slow sort of blinking was maybe something to worry on, and he ignored the garbled statement of payment, because they both knew that was bullshit, right off. Ford didn’t have a fucking cent, or he’d be wearing something that didn’t look like it would fall to pieces if you sneezed at him hard, but if Russ said a damn thing the kid would go snapping like a fucking feral dog. He had pride, and Russ didn’t think much on it beyond grudging respect that it was there, tattered at the edges and trailer-park in origin, but the kid weren’t asking for nothing for nothing. “Yeah,” he said finally, evasively - payment wasn’t coming soon, but Russ could throw something on over the car, do it when he was clocked out. There were websites, you could load ‘em up on the shitty computer in the office and you could order parts special, buy them by decade and brand rather than in bulk. Russ figured March could owe him, or maybe it would go to fixing up some of the guilt that came with blood on his knuckles and with that settled and squared away behind the blue eyes (only a flicker of it up-top, where it could be seen) he set on looking at Ford. “How’s your head?” Ford was pleased that Russell seemed to accept the state of the situation between them, like acknowledging the debt would keep things smooth. Russell would help him out with the car, and Ford would owe him. He had been in worse straights, maybe not with debt but sans money, for sure. Easy money generally came by way of sex, either in the flesh or something like photos for the internet or something. There had been a few offers that had been tempting on an empty stomach, but Ford had always managed to find a way around it. Ford figured he had to find a job pretty soon. He didn’t know about the way jobs dried up when winter (tourist off-season) came to America’s desert playground. Ford let his fingers flutter up over his forehead, automatic and unthinking. He winced, but was unable to stop, investigating the strange new morphology of his skull. The bump wasn’t big, just red and sore, and Ford felt a little sleepy, but not sick. He lit his hand fall under the veil of dark curls and turned the heavy stare on Russell. “S...okay.” He lifted both shoulders in a shrug, and then waddled a little, heels in, on exactly the same spot of grease. One more agonized look at the car. “I… shhhh…should t-t-t-t-te-te-tell-tell him. M….march?” It was a question because Ford could help but hope maybe, somehow, magically, Russell would say, No, kid I totally got his and it will be like new in an hour, go get me another coffee. That kid wasn’t going to come into any kind of money quick, Russ figured but he watched how the worry lit on out of Ford’s eyes, like owing was something fine all by itself. Russ had once held debts all over Vegas when he’d been young, same way as Ford, and he’d paid them off with the kind of pride and dogged fear that came from growing up with someone who held owing over your head like you gave away pieces along with dollar bills. But it didn’t matter, debt wasn’t going to stack up between brothers. Russ eyed the car, speculatively. With that kind of car driving on around, March had money, same way as living up there in that fancy building said so. He worried for a brief moment, as he smoothed a hand over the dents, careful as a woman, that maybe March would start paying debts off for Ford and then March would be good and owed, in ways Ford wouldn’t know. “I guess so,” Russ said heavily, and he took a mouthful of coffee like a doctor pronouncing a patient near-dying and then turning back to his shift. “It ain’t going to get done in three hours, kid. I can fix it up good, but he’s gonna go missing it.” And didn’t that feel like kicking a puppy, all that bruised hope stood square on a puddle of oil? Ford hadn’t known anyone long enough to get in deep in debt. His lovers ranged from drunk partiers who didn’t ask his name to sleek people like Blake that didn’t need him to stick around. Construction work was of relatively low value and therefore he’d never needed to owe anyone anything for a job, not since Russell put in a good word for him. So far, Ford had done a good job avoiding addictions, having watched his mother spiral here and there like a windchime in a gale for most of his life. Ford’s pride didn’t extend so far as to refuse help, but he didn’t want people to think he was the kind of person who didn’t pay debts. People didn’t like you if you took their money. Ford’s curly head bobbed slowly up and down, dropping very low and then coming back very far, working on the hinge at the top of his spine until by the end of it he was staring up into the exhaust-stained innards of the ceiling. He nodded again. Okay. He’d go tell March. He hesitated a moment more, not sure what to say to Russell, if maybe some sort of thank you or apology was appropriate, but he had no idea how to say it, so he just shrugged again, confused, and then drifted away back into the innards of the shop. He’d talk to March, and then see what to do next. |