Who: Ford, Russ, March and Blake What: Convincing Ford he needs rescuing. Where: Russell's Mechanic Shop When: Recently. Warnings/Rating: Maybe some swears.
Truth was, March didn't give a damn about the car. Sure, he liked it fine, but he could replace it easy. Like real rich folk tended to do, he didn't have strong attachments to material things. He never had given a damn about ruining things, and being sick made it all seem even less important. The only thing that couldn't be replaced with a big enough check was life, and March knew that better than anyone his age should. Living, that was important, and Ford had scared him half to death when he'd admitted there had been an accident. Even still, March would have steered clear if Ford had mentioned blood. Last thing they needed was March around open wounds. But Ford had said he'd just knocked his head, and that was safe enough to go around. And March was pretty damn sure that Russ wasn't going to take his brother to get a damn X-Ray, which March was going to insist on.
As for calling Blake to come for him, March couldn't think of anyone better. Far as he knew, Blake and Ford were seeing each other regular, and Blake had seemed plenty concerned about Ford on the journals. March had figured out early that Blake was all bluster. He wasn't sure why yet, but he'd figure it out eventually. March could be real patient when he needed to be. Hell, truth was that March was always real patient. Pushing wasn't something he'd grown up doing, seeing as he was used to everything coming his way without him doing a damn thing.
March waited outside the hotel, khaki shorts to the knees and a v-neck in plain old white. The sandals on his feet were brown and cost five hundred dollars, and his hands were shoved deep into his pockets as he waited for Blake roaring up, because Blake, he thought making a whole lot of noise meant he had control of what folks thought. March figured he'd outgrown that someday, just like Ford would outgrow being so naive. Right then, March felt real, real old, and Toby's problems were weighing heavy on his shoulders. He coughed, and he freed his hand from his pocket to rub it at his chest. The last thing he needed right now was sickness.
Blake did roar up, and this time, for once, it wasn't all show. March hadn't exactly made him feel positive about the situation when he told him that Ford had gotten in a car accident and hit his head, but it did occur to him that if no one had called the ambulance it probably wasn't crazy serious or anything. Still, it made him feel uneasy, as injury and death and all the serious shit that came with it tended to do. He took the medkit from March's apartment after building security opened the place up, and for a half-second, he hesitated by the door with it, paralyzed. If he was smart, he would put it right back where he found it and pretend he'd been too high when March texted to remember what he was supposed to do.
That was the smart move, but there Blake was, roaring up in a black cadillac twenty minutes later, right on schedule. He was wearing jeans that clung around the hips tucked into a pair of black combat boots, and a mostly intact blue t-shirt on top, cotton soft as velvet and all the wear in it designer-bred. He started talking the second March got in the car, after sliding the medkit to the gap between the front seats. "So does he have a concussion? Amnesia? We going all bad soap opera, here?"
March slid into the car and slammed the door with more force than was necessary, all things considered. "He seemed to be writing fine, but he kept thinking I was talking about the damn car," he said of Ford's confusion, and his frown said he hadn't like that none. No matter what March had said, Ford had thought it was about the car, and March wasn't real sure if that was a result of Ford being young and scared, or if it was a result of that knock to the head. "I can't tell how bad it was. He didn't focus on the damn injury, no matter how I pressed him to, and I don't think Russ knows a whole lot about first aid, do you?" he asked, glancing over and arching a brow in question. As far as March was concerned, Russ was a whole lot of bluster and flying fists, but he didn't think there was a whole lot of schooling there.
"Ford's real young. He might just be fussed about me maybe being angry at him," March added hopefully, soothing some, because Blake's joke about amnesia wasn't even a joke, and that was about as worrisome as Ford banging his head.
Blake didn't waste any time getting out into traffic, not after March started talking about Russ and his general lack of usefulness if Ford really had done some damage to himself. "What even happened with the car, anyway? Did somebody hit him, or what?" It said something of Blake's assessment of Ford's character that he assumed Ford wouldn't have hit someone else. Ford seemed like the type to brake for squirrels. Maybe a stray cat had forced him off the road.
Blake heard the soothing in that and rankled a little. He didn't need to be soothed. He was fine. Ford was just an idiot, and everyone in his general vicinity lately seemed to be crashing their cars or letting him in on the fact that they had chronic diseases. It was all way too...mortal. He didn't like it, didn't like thinking about it or confronting it head on. There was a reason he hadn't brought it up with March again, after all. "So did you give him the car, or did he just take it for a joy ride?"
March tried to remember if Ford had told him what had actually happened to the damn car, but he couldn't remember real clear, and he shrugged his shoulders. "I can't recall," he said, truthful. "He might have said what caused the accident, but I can't recall." Had March known what Blake was thinking about squirrels and cats, he would have agreed without hesitating none. Ford was just that kind of sweet, and he was young enough to value a damn critter over his own hide. "I lent him the car," March said. "I wanted him to feel at home, and I figured it would help," he admitted. "The boy didn't tell me he couldn't drive," he said, because he'd gotten to wondering if Ford even had a license. "He know how to drive?" he asked as the garage came into view, looking over at Blake when he posed the question. He figured Blake would know, seeing as Blake was seeing Ford and, in March's estimation, that made him some kind of expert.
Blake gave March an appraising, vaguely exasperated look when he asked Blake whether or not Ford could drive. "You do know we're not a thing, right?" That didn't seem to have gotten through to March at all, so it was probably best to keep hammering it home. Perhaps it came out a little more harshly than it should have, but whatever. Point made. "I hardly know him. You're the one who's got him living in your house, aren't you?" Blake pulled up next to the garage and parked the car. "Anyway, if he couldn't fucking drive he shouldn't have gotten behind the wheel. Kind of defeats the point of a joy ride if you crash the damn thing four feet from where you started."
Blake climbed out of the car. He shoved his hands into his pockets and fished out a pair of sunglasses. Even he knew it was obvious this whole thing had put him in a foul mood, but he was edgy enough that he couldn't bring himself to care. "Let's go make sure Russ didn't give his head another knock just for fun."
There were no clients this time of the morning. It was early enough that the other guys hadn’t shown and the high, thin whine of something that was metal on metal squeal, cut off abruptly at the sound of the car’s engine, its approach and then the way it cut out which meant people. Russ looked over at the office door, behind which Ford was no doubt wedged and he shoved himself up to his feet, grease stains spreading on the jeans and oil already thick on his hands. March’s car didn’t look all that fucking pretty right now; the cladding was off and he was working at that axle, hoping it wouldn’t need a new one, but it looked more likely each passing minute he worked on the car and that made him damn irritable. Russ didn’t know all what kind of relationship there was between the kid with the too-low, Southern voice and his brother but he figured it was something warm or his brother wouldn’t be sleeping there and he fully expected March to smooth things on over, Ford’s embarrassment over driving without a fucking license and then crashing the thing made little of.
He didn’t expect Blake. Russ had been loping out toward the door, boots heavy on poured concrete, and he stopped on the lip of the garage, where the door had been rolled up just enough to get the truck in, bloodshot blue eyes and the gold scruff of beard and an expression on his face like someone had just pissed all over his morning good and he caught the last little bit and visibly soured.
“The fuck would you know about it?” His chin lifted in Blake’s direction and he looked at March as if the kid had betrayed a confidence. “What the fuck is he doing here?”
March was a cough and one hand deep in those khaki shorts as he walked up to the garage, his gaze skating on over to his car for a short spell. He didn't know a whole lot about fixing things, but he could tell the car looked like it had a real bad morning, and his next immediate action was to go scanning the area for Ford. The hand not hiding deep in brown fabric was holding onto a real expensive looking medkit, something his grandmomma had bought him when he graduated, and he kept it plenty stocked out of habit. He was about to ask Russ where Ford was, but then Russ had to go on and get ornery about Blake, of all things, and March just wasn't keen on dealing with Russ' bad mood just then.
"My damn car is there," March said, pointing at the car in question, "which means I needed a ride here." He pointed the medkit at the floor in front of his feet, as if that needed clarifying too. And, hell, maybe it did. "Plus, they're dating, and Blake was worried some." Because March didn't really give a good damn what Blake said. Blake was all about things he didn't say. And, more importantly, Blake was about the things he said real loud, like he wanted them to believed, because those things were the least true of all.
"Now, quit your noise, and point me at Ford," March said, looking around again, waiting on Russ to point. "You two can insult each other all you want, once you done that."
Seeing Russ roll out of the garage like hell on wheels with terrible fucking priorities got Blake's dander up a little. March's declaration, for the ninetieth time, that he and Ford were seeing each other, that didn't help a whole hell of a lot. "I'm here because you couldn't be trusted to get your brother to a hospital if he chopped his own arm off, let alone got in a fucking car accident." His black shades were opaque as could be, and the cant of his mouth was unkind and smiling. There was no real humor in it, a good sign, as March had noted before, that he was in a bad fucking mood. "So where is he, passed out on the floor bleeding from the head?"
Neither the declaration Blake objected to nor any of what Blake then said, helped at all. Russ’s face darkened at the notion that Blake was anything other than a short-term, entirely temporary, no-opportunity-whatsoever-to-mess-up blip on Ford’s horizon and it soured all the further as Blake cut apart his own character and made it sound like he was too much of a fucking asshole to do anything for Ford at all. There was a ripple of something in the blue eyes that said any further along those lines would be a real bad fucking idea, and he looked at March who carried the kind of fucking bag you would have seen on a TV show.
“He’s in there,” Blake said shortly, jerking his thumb toward the (closed) office door. “Got real upset that you’d get mad for crashing the car.” Behind which, no doubt, Ford was either causing trouble in that notebook of his, or drinking the gut-rot coffee, or looking the particular kind of cherub-miserable that made Russ feel like he’d got a ten year old brother instead of one that was twenty. And then, then he looked at Blake. It was a look from the top of his head down to the bottom of his boots and the expression in Russ’s eyes said he objected to just about everything. “I said I’d take him to a fucking hospital right after we were done. It’s a smack on the fucking head, and he weren’t acting fucking sleepy. I don’t give a shit whether you trust me or not, he didn’t call you on the side of the road at four in the fucking morning. Far as I’m concerned, he called that one there,” Russ pointed at March and was back to glaring at Blake, “You’re in my shop, you open your fucking mouth again and it ain’t real fucking nice, and we’ll have a fucking problem.”
And Russ turned, as if the cavalry (one limping horse and maybe a doubtful-looking soldier) had arrived and he could go on back to work.
The three male voices drew Ford out of a short doze that had somehow snuck up on him as he waited nervously for March to show up. He was a little disoriented and his head really hurt, but no stars were popping and he only felt a little queasy, maybe from consuming nothing but beer and coffee for the last twelve hours. Ford stepped out of the office cubicle in the shadows of the garage, rounding a vehicle stripped in progress and venturing under the roll-up door with obvious trepidation. He saw March first with something in his hand and stopped, turning slightly with one ear against his shoulder and the other cocked toward the ceiling as if listening for the sky falling. His expression was worried to the point of anxiety, but he made no attempt to speak.
Russell’s voice was just dying away from his last threat, and orienting toward the hoisted red car, Ford took one deliberate step--well, a long stride, as Ford was made up of quite a lot of jean leg to go with the muscle and the dust. He gave Russell a faintly scolding look, because he thought that his brother had been threatening March. That was when he saw Blake over Russell’s left shoulder, and he was obviously surprised, and then painfully pleased/embarrassed, the unmistakable look of a kid who just ran into a school crush in science class. He got away with it, even with the hard jaw and bare shoulders, because he didn’t accompany the expression with any gestures or speech. Jamming eight fingers into his back pockets, he stood there, blushed at Blake, and then looked anxiously back at March.
March himself got a faintly cooler blush, as Ford had an easier time keeping his mind on how much he had fucked up and did not attempt to look the other man in the eye. The deep turquoise blue slid down to look at the bag in March’s hand, and Ford blinked confusedly in open question.
March thought, all things considered, that Russ had behaved real well, seeing as Blake had tried hard as he could to get his goat. It made his opinion of Ford's ornery as hell brother soften some, and he just put out a long arm to Blake's chest, one intended to keep the damn man from saying anything else incendiary. Way he saw it, Blake just went setting fires when he was scared, and they didn't need anything sparking in this place.
That back-door opened just then, and March glanced over as Ford walked out. His first look, that was all medical. The medkit in his hand twitched, and he assessed gait (straight), pupils (not blown or pinpoint), skin (no visible lesions or hematomas). All those things put together made his hand stop twitching, and it made the doctor in him fade on out. He noticed other things, then, like how Ford fidgeted and blushed when he saw Blake, like the best thing in the damn world had walked through the door, and all without him expecting it to. And he didn't need a medical license to interpret those vitals any.
March returned the cooler smile that was reserved for him with something fond and knowing, and he glanced over at Blake. "He's stable. You go on and drive him to that hospital round the way, let them know he hit his head. I want to talk to Russ here about my car," he said, and he lifted the medkit, since Ford was staring at it and looking confused. "It was just in case I needed it, son. I don't. Go on with Blake. I got to talk to your brother a spell." Which wasn't actually true, but who was he to get in the way of young love?
Blake had been about to follow after Russ when March's hand struck his chest to hold him back. That was enough of a real surprise that he gave March a long fucking look, then shook his head and walked into the garage. "Stupid fucking asshole," he muttered, to nobody in particularly.
Then Ford appeared in the doorway, looking discombobulated but not blue in the face or dead, and some of the tension unwound in him not quite visibly. He was so busy having half a second feeling grateful Ford wasn't dying in the goddamn garage somewhere that he almost missed that practically full-body blush directed his way. He was very grateful for the sunglasses, then. Well, what the fuck. No wonder March thought they were a thing. There was no way this could possibly end well, not for Ford, not for anybody. Christ. Ford imprinting on him like a baby duckling hadn't been part of the plan.
Blake watched as March made his quick-fire assessment, and then discharged Ford into his care with a little too much obvious glee. Good, no, great, this was going to go so well. "Yeah, alright." Blake jerked his head toward the car, and didn't look at March, not after he paired them up together in a way that made a few too many things way too obvious. "Come on. Let’s just hope you still remember your name by the time we get there, or I’m coming back for your brother.”
Ford did not much care for March’s pronouncement that he was stable. It implied that there was a possibility he was not, and in either the physical or the mental sense, Ford felt completely stable, thank you very much. Maybe not emotionally, but he wasn’t going to lose his grip and start crying, was he? No. Ford’s shoulders went back and his head came up. He peered at March from behind one dark curl that kept dipping into his line of sight, giving him a look that was faintly resentful. March could be mad about the car, March was supposed to be mad about the car, but being injured was something a little beyond fucking up and into incompetence. Ford picked up his left hand and pulled his fingertips down over the front of his scalp, fruitlessly attempting to hide the lump. There wasn’t a mirror around but it felt huge and he didn’t want anybody present thinking he was a bigger idiot than absolutely necessary.
Ford was not going to the hospital. He didn’t need to go, he was fine. Weren’t they going to talk about how much the car repairs cost? He should be there for that. It was his responsibility, Russell was just helping him out a little bit temporarily. Ford took a long look at Blake. This was the first sign Blake had shown any real interest in him since that first day he’d visited, because a few scribbles telling him other people were enjoying themselves in Blake’s apartment didn’t count. Ford wasn’t stupid, he knew that Blake didn’t think he was that important, but he had not yet realized he shouldn’t hope. Blake moved his head toward the car like he was calling a dog, and Ford’s expression crinkled a little like a discarded shirt before firming into an astonishingly Russell-like stubbornness. He deliberately took his weight off his toes, set it down on his heels, and shook his head. He wasn’t going to a hospital.
Instead Ford made a gesture with one hand, moving it from March’s direction to Russell’s, implying that March should move past him and they would talk to the mechanic together. Ford made a hopeful little c’mon gesture with his left hand at Blake, hoping he could come in and wait. Maybe after they worked out the money Blake would drive him back to March’s, March would let him stay (or at least get his bag) and maybe Ford would be back on Blake’s radar in a good way. Everybody just had to cooperate long enough.
Russ had turned his back and was taking the full brunt of his frustration at Blake’s existence out on the nearest piece of metal (suspiciously, it looked a lot like he was pounding it flat rather than doing anything with anything that formed a significant part of the car, bare of its cladding). He turned just long enough when Ford emerged to know that the kid had expected March to show, but he hadn’t expected Blake (which Russ thought was a perfectly justifiable reason to make Blake sit in the car like a dog when visiting stores dogs weren’t called for) and then Russ saw the full implications of a goddamn high school crush wreath itself across his brother’s face and a pantomime that said trouble had walked on into his shop, started throwing around words and wasn’t going to go away real soon.
Russ hadn’t expected March to be telling the truth at all. He’d figured March was the subject of Ford’s affections, even if they weren’t returned, and that sleeping on the man’s couch was a favor or it was an invitation and he hadn’t worked out how he felt about neither, just that he had no fucking choice at all. The kid was standing there with his feelings about Blake written all over his fucking face, and Russ both wanted to leave them to it (high school being so painfully far off and yet easy to remember that he didn’t want to go near it) and also to separate them like dogs in heat, and he looked at March instead, March who was engineering all this shit.
“You still gotta get looked at,” Russ said to Ford finally, his voice rough and his opinion of Blake thin and coloring all those words. “So you can go with him or you can go later with me, but if that one,” he pointed to March, clutching a doctor’s bag, “Has a fucking doctor’s degree and says hospital, you go.” And then he ignored all of them, and turned back to the car, patiently waiting his attempt to straighten out the axle.
"Ford," March said, voice all wound up in plain and simple, fond regret there, along with a good bit of worry, "I didn't come out here for the car. I don't give a good damn about the car. I can buy another one, if this one goes wrong, but I trust Russ to fix it right up, and I ain't got no concerns about what needs paying," he said, unintentionally punctuating the sentence with a cough. "You got to get a quick x-ray. It won't take nothing as far as time, and I'll call ahead and say you're coming," he offered. The worry was still on his features, but not so much as before. If Ford could look at Blake like the sun rose and set on account of him, then March figured the boy wasn't so bad off. And his own feelings about all of that, well, they weren't real pertinent just then.
As for Blake, March shot him a look that was behave and I know about your damn defense mechanisms all wound up in a corner tip of mouth and blue eyes gone knowing. It all just reminded him that he was older than Blake and Ford, both, and he felt it in his bones, just like he was feeling everything else these days.
And March wanted to tell them all that Blake was just scared, because damn if Blake wasn't scared of everything, but he figured that would go real bad. And after how things went with Toby, March wasn't stepping himself near a hospital. Heck, he hadn't even gone to the hospice since, and he'd managed to convince himself that the hospice didn't count as a hospital, though that was only marginally true. But truth was the shade sitting on his shoulder, and March just nodded toward the exit to the garage bay. "You take care of him, Blake, then you come on and fetch me," he said, remembering his excuse a moment later. "Me and Russ, we'll be done talking by then."
No one was doing any cooperating at all. One side of Ford’s lush mouth drew heavily to one side, and the bottom lip somehow got a little fuller as he stood there and looked from one to the other. Initially he took a small step back and to the side, in Russell’s direction, Russell his savior who didn’t like hospitals and bills and people, who surely would side with him. He turned around when Russell finally spoke, and a look of sour betrayal twisted Ford’s features as if Russell had just burnt dinner right in front of him. Useless. Ford wasn’t bleeding and he felt okay. He didn’t need to go to the hospital, he needed to stay here and work shit out with March.
The only variable was Blake. Ford wanted to be with Blake because Blake was the only person present who didn’t really want to be with him, and that kind of thing always caught Ford’s attention. Ford wasn’t the kind of person to look beyond Blake’s surface motives, and he was not vain enough to imagine that Blake might like him enough already. Sustained contact was the best way to keep Blake’s attention, Ford suspected, and here was an opportunity that was hard to pass up. (Though being delivered as a patient didn’t exactly count as sexy, did it?) Without moving, Ford gave Blake a look meant to bring the man further into his corner. Surely Blake and all his drugs and sin didn’t care about hospitals. It was a “can you believe these guys?” kind of look.
The struggle was clear until Ford looked back at March and the Russell-like expression deepened until it was a full on “no mommy I won’t” scowl. He shook his head. He wasn’t going anywhere. He repeated the movement, a scoop of air between him and March meant to draw him in. Ford could feel everyone’s assumptions flying over and past him, and it pissed him off. He wished he could shout at them, but his tongue felt like old glue and he didn’t bother trying to make it move. He was fine. He didn’t have money for a stupid hospital. He needed to save his fucking pennies to pay March, and he needed someone to tell him how many pennies it would be. Ford whipped a hand back in Russell and the car’s direction, then brought his fingers in front of his chest to rub them together in an unmistakable sign of currency. His mutinous, demanding expression combined to unite a clear unspoken phrase: Him, you, the car, how much?
Blake slipped his hands into his pockets. He was swiftly running out of patience for everybody and everything, from March to Ford to the stupid fucking car. Ford's plaintive look didn't soften him any, he was too cranky by then for that. "Don't be an idiot," Blake said. "Your head's worth more than the car if it starts leaking something. Let March talk to your brother about the repairs and I'll call you and tell you what the damage is, alright?" That should be enough to get Ford into the car. Emphasis on should be. Blake wasn't going to let a frown and a head shake from Ford discourage him. This whole situation was getting way more complicated than he had expected, and more complicated than anything he usually got his hands dirty with. All Ford needed to do was get in the car and let him drive him to the hospital and then everybody could go their separate ways.
Russ recognized that expression fine. It was something he’d seen enough times that his own eyebrows drew down and together and his jaw set like one kid having an argument with another kid over a toy, the ‘how much’ going just that little bit deeper toward setting brothers square against one another, across a car and across two men who cared maybe a little fucking more than they should about Ford, if he was going to sulk like a fucking kid. He folded his arms over the worn-thin shirt and he scowled right the hell back.
“Don’t you be starting that,” Russ waved one hand at the ‘currency’ motion, taking in the mutiny as well for good measure. “I fucking told you I’d fix it. So go to the fucking hospital and get that one,” he pointed at Blake, Blake who seemed to think he could tell his brother what to do and Ford would do it (Russ could have told him that that expression said Ford would do nothing except what Ford wanted), “Out of my fucking way.” He glared back at Ford, because there wasn’t a damn reason to talk money, not when he planned on fixing it up fine without. The assumption that it would cost, that he would charge Ford anything at all, set itself into plain, unpleasant lines at the side of Russ’s mouth, “I ain’t going to charge you so get the hell outta here.”
As far as March was concerned, it was all settled. He'd stay and talk to Russ about his car, and Blake would go on and take Ford to the hospital. Without any money to go talking, he didn't see any reason for Ford to keep putting up a fuss, not when going and getting looked at was the real logical thing. And he would have gone, but he couldn't go near a hospital, and it was simple as that. The thought made him cough, and he rubbed a hand at his chest without thinking about it none, after setting the medkit on the floor at his feet. "You go on, and you call on your way back. If me and Russ are done early, I'll call a cab on home. If not, you two come on and get me," he said, and he pulled his phone from the pocket and went looking for the doctor working the hospice that week, knowing he would call on ahead so Blake and Ford didn't have to wait at the hospital. That was how it was in hospice, seeing as no one paid; doctors volunteered by weeks, and March was real friendly with the whole damn bunch. He started talking almost soon as the phone pressed to his ear, giving names and explaining that Ford had hit his head. Some of the talk was real medical, but most of it was plain and simple enough that everyone could understand. Check the boy's head, and, I got the bill covered.
Ford looked away from Blake with an expression of resigned disappointment. He should not have expected that Blake would want to wait for him, and it was clear to Ford that Blake was mostly here for March, because March needed a ride, because March had asked. This made sense to Ford, because he was fine, it was only the car that was damaged. Blake and March, they just didn’t understand about money, about having to pay debts. Ford couldn’t make that their fault, but he was getting angry despite his best efforts. Russell made it worse. Ford cast a glare in his brother’s direction that had the white hot burn of new flames. He was too going to charge, Russell was going to get his pay because he should get paid because Ford fucked up. Why wasn’t anyone getting that?!
Ford took a couple steps forward so that he was close enough to March to breathe his air, and his look of mingled anguish and resentment swirled into one as he put a hand out and shoved at the inside of March’s arm. It wasn’t hard, certainly not enough to make March drop it, it just separated the phone from March’s ear. Ford tried to control his anger but the vowels ended up spitting. “N...n-n-n-no!” Ford’s mouth pressed in and he shoved his tongue up against the back of his teeth where they clenched down. He wasn’t a boy, he would not be covered!
When the kid entered full-scale tantrum, shoving like he was small and frustrated in the school-yard, Russ took two strides - just enough to put him at Ford’s elbow and a rough sort of jerk, hand on his arm that yanked him back from confrontation and the doctor - who, Russ had heard, was planning on covering the cost of hospital, of getting checked out proper. Head-wounds, the kind you worried over, made you sick and stretched you out good, they were better off not at all and there was gratitude curdling around in there along with resentment that it was the kind of gesture March could go making, just because he had money.
“You quit that shit,” Russ said, and his voice was low and it was hard, the same kind of voice used when he was young and their sister had pitched a shit-fit, and he gave a rough shake to that elbow. “You get a free appointment at a hospital and you fucking take it, because that guy there,” a jerky point at March without looking at him at all, all flinty blue stare scowling back at Ford, “Is a fucking doc.” (So much, Russ had surmised with the bag and the medical talk on the phone) “And I ain’t charging a fucking cent unless you go getting stupid because I’m your goddamn brother and if you start talking like I gotta, I’m gonna take that as a fucking insult, kid.” A shove to the shoulder, to bring Ford back into line, “You want to piss on me, you go right a-fucking-head, but you don’t go pissing on your friend when he does something for you.”
Blake weighed his options. He could try knocking Ford over the head to get him to the hospital against his will. He could ditch, which sounded more and more appealing after watching Ford shove at March like a ten-year-old, March, who looked edgier by the second. Or he could leave things up to Russ, which sounded roughly as unappealing as every other choice he was being presented with.
Blake opened the car door. "Look, I'm taking off," he said. "You get in the car and I take you to the hospital or I call the ambulance and you can get embarassed by the siren and the lights. You pick."
March wasn't expecting the shoving to his arm, and he wasn't expecting Russ' shoving at Ford. He wasn't expecting Blake to go issuing ultimatums, and all of it made him cough with nervousness. See, March wasn't no savior. He started out strong, like coming on over here and issuing some orders, but he petered quick, and this was about the point where he walked away and was done. He was a little better off before getting sick, but these days he just didn't have the kind of staying power for even that much, and this all felt real childish to him. Again, he felt older than every damn person around him, and it showed on his face.
"I'm done here," March said, all that tired filtering in and making his too-old voice sound even older. "This don't make a lick of sense. You get hit on the head, and you go on and get it looked at, because living ain't a guarantee, and doctors exist for a reason," he said, glancing from Ford to Russ. "And shoving at people ain't no way to fix things," he added tightly. He didn't have a damn thing to say to Blake, on account of Blake acting better than anyone else present. "You can pay me back with money I don't need, Ford, if you feel real inclined to make a fuss about something that doesn't need fussing over. I'll be long damn dead before I run through what I got," he concluded, and he pulled out his phone and started dialing a cab.
Ford was so angry, all he could do was spit. Which he did, turning away from all three men violently and hawking up something worth spitting off the concrete and into the dirt. Nothing he could have said could have communicated how much he was disgusted with the situation. They thought he couldn’t take care of himself, couldn’t take care of his debts. They wanted to talk about business while he was away, like mom and her boyfriends, and Ford wanted to hit something. He wanted to scream at March for talking about death and assuming things about how weak he was, and he wanted to throw something at Russell’s head for siding with them.
Ford yanked his body around and stormed away toward Blake’s car. He just barely stopped himself from shoving the man as he got in the car, but he shot Blake a searing blue glare too, just so he could tell him how much he did need his fucking pity and his favors. Ford threw himself into the seat and yanked the door shut before Blake had a chance to do any slamming. He refused to look at anyone, directing his gaze out the front of the windshield.
Russ didn’t give a damn how Ford got himself to a hospital, whether he was good and dragged (Russ was starting to think this was necessary and he was starting to think that his brother spent more time in places filled with antiseptic than was accurate) or he walked there. He didn’t much like the lecture from the kid - March became ‘the kid’ the minute he started lecturing - but he scowled something terrible back at Ford, if Ford was going to sulk and the expression sunk deeply into disgusted when Ford turned around and spat on the damn floor. (That it was not the damn floor, but close-to, did not account. Russ figured it was close enough that it looked like the kid had no fucking manners, and that reflected poorly enough on the both of them that his shoulders squared like he wanted to hit something and didn’t). Russ turned on his heel the minute the car door closed, abrupt as anything, and he leaned over the workbench like turning his back was enough to shut them all the hell out. He didn’t need any of them in his garage right now, he didn’t even need to be in the damn garage himself, and the hard lines of his back that he presented to all three of them said effectively, ‘go away, I’m busy.’
Blake watched Ford storm into the car, and March order a cab, and Russ be Russ, and knew he'd gotten in way over his head with this whole mess. Everything about it was above his pay grade. Ford was just young, younger even than he'd thought, and that suddenly clicked and made a lot of things make more sense. He acted like a shy nine-year old who'd been pushed just a little too far, and while it made him a tiny bit sorry, it did make him sit up and take note that Ford was breakable as hell. March was more of a puzzle, exasperated and refusing to look him in the eye after pawning Ford off on him in the first place. What the fuck his problem was, Blake didn't have a damn clue, but he knew the mention of dying before he could spend his fortune made the skin on the back of his neck prickle uncomfortably. Frankly, all of this was too serious, too deadly.
He got in the car with Ford, but he didn't say a thing, not one thing, until they got to the hospital. Too much fucking trouble, all of them.