Who: Blake and March What: Dinner, and an alter switch for March. Where: Blake's apartment When: Recently Warnings/Rating: Just the usual cursing.
Truth of the matter was, Blake didn’t really know how to cook. He knew one or two dishes - that didn’t count as ‘cooking skill’. He knew enough to feed himself, when ordering online from somewhere seemed like too much work, or someone was sitting at the kitchen table with their pants around their ankles and stars in their eyes, looking for a little something to take the edge off a post-coital appetite. Blake had enough skill with cooking under his belt to exist in polite society. Fried eggs? Check. Grilled cheese? Check.
What Blake did not know was how to make anything that could be construed as ‘fancy’. Coq au vin? Nope. Baked Alaska or whatever the fuck, that cake thing with the ice cream? Hell no. He didn’t even know how that was possible, a cold thing in a hot thing. Made no sense. He was operating under the assumption, however, that March, being somebody with a southern accent, probably liked fried green tomatoes and anything Blake served up would be a feast.
Alright, he wasn’t quite that stupid. Still, a boy could dream, because by no one’s standards was this shit going to be impressive. It might taste good, but no one was going to be running through the streets crying to Food Network executives that a new messiah had been born and he was a bitchy bisexual billionaire living in Las Vegas. It was just a remix of good old-fashioned grilled cheese with the unholy addition of grilled avocado and tomato and bacon, a recipe he’d actually had displayed for him by one of the half-naked passers-through of his kitchen, a supremely hot European exchange student to UNLV (Spanish? French?). He’d actually gone to the grocery store. And bought vegetables. This was an accomplishment in his book. And this whole exercise - buying ingredients, cooking, having someone over, it was all a lovely distraction from the mess he’d been through the door for the past few weeks. It felt like shit was getting back to normal.
When Blake heard someone at the door, he was carefully layering avocado slices on the grill. Almost like a chef or something, like someone competent. There was a bottle of vodka on the counter and red wine on the table, and Blake had a glass of the latter in his hand. He was Julia Child. He had this shit down to a science. He turned the heat down on the skillet, left the glass sitting next to the stove, and answered the door in a half run. “Come on in,” he said, flashing a grin. He wore a loose black shirt with the sleeves ripped off that hung loose and empty over his skinny frame, the words ‘FUCK HALL’ emblazoned across the front in white fabric paint. “I’m not becoming a sitcom, so you follow me to the kitchen so this shit doesn’t burn.”
March didn't know why in hell he was bothering with this. He knew, sure as he knew the sun would rise, that Blake wanted to sleep with him. Just like he knew, sure as the sun would rise, that he wasn't going to sleep with nobody. He'd just gotten over a cold that had scared him near to pissing himself, and he was starting to seriously consider going to a real doctor, instead of prescribing his own pills and doing his own bloodwork. He was fretting, but he had good reason. Medical advances meant he could live near twenty years before moving from HIV to AIDS, but that wasn't true for everyone, and he was more concerned than normal about getting short changed on time after the hotel went sending him into a fall-apart spaceship where the air was being recycled a hundred times over.
And, truth be told, twenty years wasn't that long when you were still in the first half of being twenty.
But Blake was entertaining, and there was something below the surface that wanted poking at. March wasn't Toby, who loved rummaging through people's brains like they were boxes full of toys, but he liked figuring folks out, so long as he didn't have to give much back or pry too hard. Blake hadn't reached that stage where he had to pry too hard yet. He was still a puzzle, one that wasn't in any danger of being too complicated, and March was a social thing, even if his experience with River had left him a little out of sorts.
And so March made the hop from his elevator to Blake's, and he waited when the thing came to a stop. He knocked, wondering if folks even knocked on elevator doors around here. See, March wasn't big on visitors, so he didn't rightly know. But he knocked.
March's boots were cherry red, and his jeans were bootcut and designer. He wore a grey t-shirt and a darker grey cardigan over. His hair was mussed, and he smelled like wood cleaner, from where he'd been tending to his cello before coming over. His fingers were still stained with cleaner, and he rubbed them against his jeans at the hip as Blake opened the door between elevator and apartment.
"Who's Hall?" March just asked, all quirk of brow and a smile lingering.
Blake didn't get the question immediately. "Hall?" he asked. He took in the scent of something sharp and warm, nudging a little close to March for a moment to try to identify the smell. His smile was a warm crescent, dark eyes blank. He had a flicker of images in the direction of stripped March of that cardigan, and he made zero effort to hide it from his face. Then he slid away, moving into the apartment. He was halfway to the kitchen before he remembered what they were talking about. "Oh," he said, plucking at the shirt, "No fucking clue. I always thought it was a place. Like 'The Fuck Hall' or something. This guy left it here a while back. Never saw him again, so I adopted it."
Blake liked March. There was no denying that. He liked the playful curve of his lips, that odd nose and funny mussed hair and weirdly attractive thing he had going on. He liked the edge of bitchy southern sass and the smarts of a doctor wrapped up in an unexpected package. Though he shied away from thinking about it too much, bookish boys had always been his type.
The goal of the evening was, without a doubt, sex, but Blake had actually already considered the idea that he might not make it all the way there tonight. March was definitely the hard-to-get type, the kind that it might take more than one night to reel in. Blake could have patience, though. It wasn't like he wasn't getting laid in the meantime, and he liked a challenge. He would have refused to admit it, but there was something about the way March poked back at him that he liked. It was different than the pretty things that circled around him and didn't touch anything except the shell on the outside, the cute ones who didn’t ask questions and weren’t too sharp. Candy wrapper people, shiny and bright, the kind who hung around the clubs and bars and tried auditioning for an ‘entourage’ that didn’t exist, only to be swiftly discarded once used. Those who hung around did it because of his money, or because he was pretty, or because he was fun and threw a good party. March didn't seem all that interested in any of that. Clearly March wasn’t hard up for cash, and he was attractive enough to get someone else if he wanted. That March stuck around apparently for the novelty of prying at Blake's fucked-up-candy-center was weird, and a little disturbing. Inviting him in felt kind of like flirting with potential catastrophe, but Blake did like to swing as close to the fire as he could get. Seriousness between himself and someone else was, of course, off the table. But he kept coming back for more of March's poking. Fuck if he knew why.
The apartment was a mixture of dark blues and warm woods, the old and the new, clean and clearly put together by an interior designer. There were a few things mixed in that Blake had picked up in the couple of years he'd been living in town, but there was very little of his personality in the apartment. One might even say it was intentional. "I really hope you like grilled cheese, because that's the way your chef has decided to go tonight."
March rolled his eyes at that look Blake was giving him, and there wasn't a hint of ire in him when he shoved at the man's shoulder. "I'm not on the menu, sugar," he said, and he just made a sound that was near a laugh when Blake explained that some guy had left the shirt lingering. March always thought folks like Blake got sick, not folks like him. He imagined Blake slept with everything that looked pretty enough and was willing to suck a dick. March had always been a touch more discerning. He'd liked him some wooing before ending up in a person's bed, generally speaking. That didn't mean he hadn't had his share of one-night stands, but he was thinking Blake's whole life was one, long one-night stand. He thought the world wasn't real fair, but he shoved the thought away near as quick as it had come. It wouldn't do any good to go fixing on things just then.
"I don't think the brown floors keep you from being a hypocrite," March said as he walked deeper into the apartment. Wealth was just like breathing, and it didn't faze him any, but Blake had got on him good about all the black and white in his place, and this damn space was close enough to monochrome that he wanted to make Blake eat his words. "A few greys don't either," he added, having no clue about the things going through Blake's mind. Oh, he wouldn't have been surprised to learn that bedding him was on Blake's To Do list, but March was sure he could head that off at the pass. Truth was, he liked Blake. Man was impossible, he was ornery, he hated talking about a damn thing that was real, and March thought Blake'd been real spoiled by everyone willing to sleep with him easy. But he liked him all the same. Blake was like Guthrie, he decided, and he laughed to himself; Blake would love being compared to a horse.
And those weren't blues.
March walked himself into the kitchen, and he dropped himself down in a chair. "I don't eat milk products." It wasn't true. It should be, but it wasn't. Milk didn't do a damn thing but cause inflammation, but March hadn't managed to give it up yet. His expression was pure southern innocence, not a hint of a smile on his expressive mouth.
Blake made a faint noise that might have been agreement, and might have been 'we'll see'. He reached into one of the drawers and pulled out a spatula, and got down to gingerly flipping over the avocado on the skillet.
"Bitch to the chick who decorated this place for me," Blake countered. The apartment smelled faintly of cigarettes, cloves and marlboro reds, but was otherwise spic and span enough to account for a maid. There was no way Blake kept it all tidy on his own. It was much too big for one person, really, but when he'd first come into town that hadn't seemed all that important. He just wanted something big, something stupid and impressive that would accommodate the amount of people he intended to have passing through it as often as possible, something ostentatious and befitting of his 'station' in all the ways he never used to give a shit about. He hadn't thought ahead to the emptiness of it on the rare nights he stayed in or stumbled home drunk on his own. He hadn't thought it could feel like a prison to wake up in.
"Pussy," was his offhand reaction to March's rejection of the cheese element of the food, a bright smile to accompany it. "Just the veggies for you, then. I'm sorry I don't have any tofu on hand to help you out with being anti the good shit in life." Blake gestured to the bottle on the table. "Pour yourself whatever. There's more stuff on the bar cart if red wine isn't good enough for your ass, but scared of milk as you are, I don't know if you'd want any of it."
"I'm bitching on account of you mocking my color scheme," March said real easy, grin going wide. He wasn't sure about grilling avocados, but then he kept putting off the reality of a healthier diet when he woke up every morning, so he didn't actually know a damn about what you did with avocados.
March didn't stop to do a lot of wondering about why Blake's place was so damn huge, because his own was too, and he assumed it was just a wealth thing. He'd considered renting somewhere cheaper and trying to skim part of his rent money for meds after coming to an arrangement where the landlord charged more than he needed to. But it had seemed a whole lot of trouble to keep a secret that would come out eventually. It wasn't like dying could be put off forever, and he'd just let his grandmomma rent the place she thought right. And where his grandmomma thought right was across the hall.
"You were supposed to have yourself one of your fits," March said a moment later of Blake's reaction to his fake vegetarianism. "You only do that when it's me scratching 'neath your skin?" he asked, plain as day.
As for the drink, March got up and poured himself some red. "It's got antioxidants," he said on his way back, taking a sip and making a sound of approval. He didn't get drunk these days, but a glass of red couldn't hurt none. "Milk is real bad for you," he added, feeling the need to become a PSA for some reason.
Blake picked up his own glass of red from the counter. "I was?" he asked, looking over his shoulder, smiling cheekily at the boy at the table. He'd guessed right, then, that March had come over mostly to see how far he could dig. "You didn't tell me. You have to keep me up to date on this shit, man, I can't keep up with all the shit you expect me to do. As for scratching underneath my skin..." He shrugged, and turned back to the stove. "Well, you don't need to warn me before you get into that one."
There was something about Blake that made it seem like every act had an edge of the devious, that everything was bent with wickedness or sexual interest in everything with a heartbeat, even if only in ways hidden to the naked eye. It was practiced, and it was determined, and it was one of those walls that March had mentioned to him when he was still out of his head, a prism refracting the light everywhere but inward. "I fucking love antioxidants," he agreed, as he finished up a long swallow from his own glass. He slid the slices of avocado off onto a plate, and only lost one in the transition, which slid to the floor. "Fuck, it was suicidal!" He picked it up off the floor and tossed it into the sink, then grabbed the tomatoes to give them the skillet treatment. Once he'd dropped them in the pan, he turned around to face March again. "You know, I appreciate that information," he said. "But milk's not exactly my worst habit." He moved over to the table and plucked up the bottle of wine to refill his glass. “What’s yours?”
"You have fits just fine without me saying," March explained, because that was plenty true, and Blake's admission about not needing to warn him before scratching 'neath his skin made him grin, even though he was real sure he was supposed to mind that shrug and turned back. "Don't you get tired tired of always putting on a show? Or have you done it so long now that you don't even need to be thinking about it?" he asked, and the latter made him sadder than the former. He was living his own lie these days, but he was trying to get himself out of it fast as could be; he just wasn't having an easy time of it. But he didn't want to go becoming some fake thing that covered everything real. No real point living like that, was there?
"You don't know what an antioxidant is," March countered, grinning, "not beyond being something popular on labels these days." He didn't think Blake wasn't smart, but he was damn sure the man didn't actually care about waking up and living, so why would he read labels? He watched the vegetable antics with a grin, trying to determine if they were real or just some more of the show. He wasn't sure, he realized. He couldn't tell if Blake started somewhere in the middle of all that funning, or if it was all just layers of fake. "You'd be real surprised how much worse milk is than some of the things you get yourself up to." Not sex, though. He had a feeling that Blake was a condom kind of guy, though he didn't think it would be anything meant to keep him safe himself. "My worst habit? I smoke when I'm nervous," March admitted, plain as day, open as could be, and not hiding behind any walls at all.
Blake set the bottle down again and took a sip from his glass. He'd been drinking a little while before March showed up, so this was glass...three? Three. Over the top of his glass his eyes flickered as March spoke, holding on him for a moment. "It's Vegas," he said. The smile was still on, and so was the charm, but there was bitterness hanging at the corner of his mouth that seemed truer than anything that came out of it. It made him look older, less like an overgrown teenager, and more his age. "Everybody's putting on a fucking show. It's not just the showgirls who put their faces on for the night. And that includes you, sweetheart." Blake didn't know what March was about, really, but he knew there had to be more to him than pretty smiles and a nice apartment. Nobody with that kind of privilege sold scripts for no reason. He had enough hobbies that boredom wasn't doing it, but he had a story like everybody else. Or maybe Blake just tended to assume other people were like him, deep down. But he had a feeling about it.
March's assertion that Blake didn't know what an antioxidant was drew mock offense, and he raised a brow. "It's a thing," Blake said, starting strong, "they put in food to make it healthier." Ha ha, nailed it. He turned triumphantly back to the stove and flipped the tomatoes over with a few brief, somewhat messy smacks, then went back to the table again. No, Blake wasn't as stupid as he made himself look. But who gave a shit about all of that, really? What did it fucking matter? It was a hell of alot easier to make himself look like an idiot. Who gave a fuck who was in politics or how to apply statistical probabilities to stocks? Where the fuck had that ever gotten him? A laissez-faire breeziness, on the other hand, had gotten him a lot of laughter and good nights in bed. If you seemed stupid, nobody asked you hard questions. People left you alone, and assumed you were up for a good time, which he was.
...Or they assumed that unless they were March. But who cared what an antioxidant was when he drank his weight in hard liquor every week? When nothing mattered, it didn't earn you anything to give a shit. "Really?" Blake asked, with a smirk. He pulled a pack of cloves out of his back pocket, tossing it onto the table. The pack rolled end to end for a moment, before settling on its back, half open. "Well, since you're not having any cheese, knock yourself out, man. You earned it.”
"I don't put on a show," March countered, and he seemed easy-going enough when he said it. It wasn't defense, and it wasn't tied up with anger. "I've always been real plain," he admitted, and there wasn't any fibbing in that. Toby had taught himself how to survive by being distant and hiding in responsibility, and Jan had hidden himself from anything serious or real. But March had gone straight down the path of not pretending. He wasn't real serious, and he wasn't interested in dwelling on the bad turns in life. Until recently, he didn't even have anything to keep secret. He liked it better then, when everything was writ real clear in dark ink.
Blake's explanation of antioxidants got a bit of eye rolling from March, but he didn't correct him; he didn't see the point when Blake was full of shit most of the time. Instead, he just took the pack of cloves and slid them on back to the chef. "I won't be needing one, since I'm not nervous," he explained with a smirk of a grin, all dimples and something that still looked sweet on his face, despite it all. "I'm just hungry," he added. It didn't matter if he was or not, and maybe he was just funning, but he took a sip of his wine and gave Blake a straight-on look that said he was dying from not being fed, and make no mistake.
"Sure?" Blake asked, tapping the pack on the table before turning back to the stove. "Nobody's saying you're not plain," he said. "I'm just saying there's a show, too." Well, alright, maybe 'show' was the wrong word. But there was something under the surface, something else. Not that he'd spent much time thinking about it, or anything.
He slid the tomatoes off onto the plate, and tossed the bread onto the skillet, already buttered and ready to go. He glanced over his shoulder, caught that martyred, starved look, and rolled his eyes with a smile. "Yeah yeah," he said, waving him off. March was too cute for his own good, with those baby sweet dimples. Downright devious. "Almost done. Now's your last chance to change your mind about being scared of milk, my friend. Ante up."
"Don't go making me out to be something I'm not," March cautioned. "I'm not a book with some big twist ending, son." And maybe he had secrets under the surface, but who he was, that wasn't hiding anywhere. It was up top, plain as cream, for everyone to see. "I'll tell you what I think on anything, and I put the things I like right out there, plain as the nose on your face," he assured the man at the stove. "You're the one that's filled to the brim with secrets. And if you give me a sandwich without a slice of cheese in it, and you'll find your own lunch stolen from right under your nose," March added, more grin, more dimples, and an empty wine cup that he scooted forward on the table.
Blake smirked, pleased as usual to be right, and slid the nearly done sandwiches onto the skillet to melt the cheese and toast the bread. "I knew it," Blake said. "I had a feeling you were a man of lots of bad habits."
The finished food was 'plated' only in the sense that Blake slid it onto a finished plate, and he set March's down in front of him picking up the bottle of wine to refill his glass. "Too heavy for you?" he asked. He sat down across from him with his own sandwich and half-full glass of wine. He'd already done away with most of it while he finished up cooking.
"If I'm supposed to trust you to tell me what you think about everything, you better be honest about the damn sandwich," Blake said, pointing to it. He still didn’t believe March, justified or not, but he was willing to admit he was biased that way. Everybody had a secret hidden away somewhere. Blake did like the honest, earnest types, and March had that in spades, but he couldn’t believe he put everything on front street. Nobody did that. "I don't have a single secret on me,” Blake said. There were a pair of knives in the center of the table, since he’d assumed those would be the only silverware necessary. He cut the sandwich down the middle to get better access. “Ask anybody. I'm as open a fucking book as they come. Most people bitch because I don't keep myself to myself enough."
"I'm just drowning in bad habits," March assured Blake, all eye roll and a handful of grin. But that teasing, it did get him thinking. He did have bad habits, even if Blake wouldn't think on them that way. It took him right back to thinking on his work situation. Selling prescriptions could be considered a bad habit. After all, he had no idea if anyone had gone and killed themselves with the little piece of paper he'd written out. Las Vegas was all kinds of transience, and nothing ever traced back when things were paid cash. But maybe it was time to go leaving that behind, along with patching up criminal folks.
March took a bite of his sandwich, but he wasn't really there. His mind was far off, something like clarity washing over him along with the wine down his throat. He could do something with his degree, couldn't he? So taking care of well folks wasn't an option, and working an ER wasn't something that could go happening neither, but there were other things. He thought as he ate, going all quiet and almost forgetting Blake was even there.
And then March got an idea, and with that clarity came a peace of mind he hadn't felt since things had gone changing from Sam to River. He didn't notice right off, though, because he was too busy thinking on things. He pulled his phone out of his pocket, and he went clicking real quick, before smiling and setting the phone back in his pocket.
"Huh?" March asked, finally looking up again, belatedly hearing Blake's words filter on through. "You're nothing but secrets layered over some fake person's honesty, son. But the sandwich is real good. You can come on over and cook whenever."
Blake watched as March totally forgot he was in a room with somebody else and whipped out his phone. He leaned his head on his hand, picking up the glass of wine again. "I must be pretty boring," he said, an open invitation to explain what that had all been about. "Well, thank you for the compliment, even if I am a fake." His smile had a little more edge to it, then, but it was still real enough, a tacit acknowledgement that March might be right. He took a bite of the sandwich, finally, and found it not even halfway bad. Nice. "You going to hire me on as your personal chef? Do I get to cook for everybody who comes over for scripts, too?"
"'Fraid you won't be doing much cooking then," March said of Blake cooking for everyone who came over looking for scripts. He put his sandwich down, and he took a fresh sip of his wine, and his gaze turned apologetic some. "Sorry for wandering off, son. I just had a thought's all." He didn't look like he felt much like elaborating on that thought, because he didn't. He just left it at that, and he set his wine glass down and went back to eating. It was good; that much was true, and he wondered if he shoulder pair some other epiphanies with the one about working. Better food, maybe? Cheese aside, all the veggies in the sandwich were a real good change. He chuckled, because he had trouble believing that Blake was functioning as a good influence, all without ever intending it. The man would be so damn disappointed if he knew.
"No? Am I your only customer?" Blake asked, picking up his wine glass again. For all his protestations to being an open book, Blake had a truly difficult time figuring out what the hell March was thinking at any given time. "What was the thought?" he asked, because he sure as hell wasn't going to figure it out by guessing. He was feeling comfortable and warm from the wine, and the food was good. The idea that this whole thing wasn't necessarily going to roll into sex was a little strange. He couldn't remember the last time someone had been in his apartment where that wasn't the identifiable goal. "Texting somebody about what a catch I am? I cook, I buy scripts, I have a giant cock, what's not to love?"
"The thought was about getting out of the business," March said plain. Blake wasn't his only customer, but there wasn't a whole lot of point going into that. "And if I went and texted anyone, it would be about your damn monochrome apartment, after you went and got all huffy about mine," he said, all tease and a dimpled smile tossed in. He took one last bite, and then he reached for his wine glass and washed it down. He felt better than when he'd walked through the door, which wasn't what he'd been figuring on at all. But he was real grateful to Blake for whatever part he'd played in it. He set the glass down, and he stretched his legs out beneath the table and kicked at the inside of Blake's shin. "Thanks for making lunch. Next time, I'm cooking," he said, a shove of chair, but one that wasn't in any kind of hurry. "But you still aren't getting laid, son, so don't go getting your hopes all wild."