PEPPER P. (saltedand) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-03-23 14:51:00 |
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Entry tags: | robin hood, sam winchester |
Who: Russ and Ford Campbell
What: Angry, angry, angry!
Where: The garage
When: Recently
Warnings: Swears, violence
He’d got the sulky kind of drunk the night before, the kind where you wanted to blot out whatever it was you were thinking about, pin the world down to the end of your glass and the rhythm of your swing and you fight like you mean it, blood and heat and intent all blending until the insides of it are done and out, until you’re clean the way you can be when you’re left with the pounding in your ears and the threat of your imminent self recedes. Russ picked fights like he meant them, brief and blinding and furious, when you went in swinging for the pleasure and he’d slept sprawled out over the too-short couch until he woke in the bleak cold of the morning with a hangover to ring his ears and a mean shortness to his temper like the fight hadn’t been enough.
The garage weren’t popular of a weekend morning; no one wanted to haul themselves out of their hangovers to talk about oil changes and rattling sounds and it looked it, abandoned and empty with the morning light finding all the worn places on the tarmac out front and an old newspaper flapping some, in the yard. It was the thick smell of burned coffee from the office layered over petrol that meant ‘morning’ in this place, the same yammer from the radio in the corner that was something to tune out to, a flitter of quiet Spanish from the guys in the back but they didn’t bother him none and that was fine. Russ carried his temper with him like he was wearing a coat; it was thin and it settled around him in a swelter until he could work it off with the intricacies of the car’s innards.
Until a client came in, call came through on the cracked plastic phone out front that no one listened for, his time was how he liked it and his temper coiled itself down beneath furious concentration as he unknit the damage of the car having sat still for so long, she didn’t start. He wanted the money for the buy in from the mad billionaire, but he wanted her to work more. It was like working with a puzzle half the pieces gone, and the rest of the guys they circled round him like his temper was a taste in the air, like wariness would keep it gone until he’d worked it off some. He was dirty denim legs sprawled out under the car and cracked boots, and a mug of the bitter-black coffee sat cooling beside a heap of tools and unpredictability hung in the air, like right before a storm.
It cost Ford a great deal to find out where his brother had gone. Oh, not in money (he didn’t have any of that), but in pride and time. He had no intention of actually turning down two whole weeks of solid work; Ford’s various hang-ups prevented him from getting jobs that were anything more than picking things up and putting them down, and no matter how proud or angry he was, he wasn’t turning his back on any opportunity to keep from starving. The bums in Las Vegas all had weird or charming quirks, like singing stupid songs about crack to pop tunes or dressing up in stupid cartoon costumes, and Ford didn’t have any of those, either. No, the opportunity to make a few dollars was not to be put aside in any circumstance.
To find out where Russell had stomped off to, Ford had to buckle down and ask the foreman. It had taken him five minutes just to get the guy to understand what he was trying to ask, and then another ten minutes to try to explain that they were related and it wasn’t some hot crush thing, because he knew the look on the guy’s face. The man spoke at halfspeed and very loudly at him ever since, as if he discovered that Ford was very stupid and not to be trusted with anything too complex. So Russell wasn’t the only one in a nasty mood that morning.
Ford explored the dusty garage when he approached, finding nothing unexpected and yet fairly impressed that Russell had acquired a relatively marketable skillset. The bike must have been tucked away somewhere, so Ford penetrated the outer lounge and moved into the shadowed inner chambers where the real surgery was done. He thought he recognized the arm just barely visible out under the side of one of the cars, and he went around the hood to find a chair and make himself seen, balancing easy on his worn-out boots and trailing plaster dust from the work site.
Ford perched on a stool with a screech of steel on oiled concrete, and perfunctorily stole the coffee.
Boots on concrete was a constant percussion and Russ paid it no mind at all, even if it faltered some. The guys who wandered, they were looking for parts or a tool moved from where it had been put and there was usually some chatter, some backtalk and laughter that meant they were ribbing each other. Russ spoke little enough Spanish but there was enough of it that was body-language and men together that he could join in on a good day but it was a bad day and there were few enough of them that the ribaldry was quiet if it was there. He heard the shuffle of feet across the floor and he focused harder, like if he tried he could blot out everyone there til someone called ‘hello?’ or ‘hi there?’ in that way that was almost a question, customer wandered right on in to the bellows of the place instead of taking a seat in the dirty plastic chair and waiting awhile.
The car was old. It was beautiful, in the way the bones of them could be, beneath the rust and the age. It was out of the sixties, some old lady had it locked up before she died and he’d stood in line at auction same as everyone else, four am start and everything. He had it in mind to make it beautiful again in the way other people could see, where it didn’t take knowing how the engineering was to make it pretty. He’d had a hope, somewhere, before Robin gave out his carefully accumulated - no more, no less - stake that maybe he could hold onto it, but selling her to someone who might appreciate her was almost as good. It was like working a knot out of muscles, the way working on the car felt, and it didn’t matter that his head pounded still, and it didn’t matter that he’d woken up like a side of beef in a butcher’s window, so long as customers stayed away til he’d had enough coffee and he’d worked on her enough to break his temper, he’d be fine.
The shriek of stool on hard, unforgiving floor hammered through his head. Russ slid out from beneath the car, boots first and then long legs in denim and oil-stained shirt. He looked for the stool first and he looked for the coffee second and the minute he saw Ford, his face narrowed down to steel-hard lines.
“Get the fuck out.”
Ford set his ass against the edge of the stool and propped himself up with the heels of his boots. They weren’t good boots for much of anything except yard work. No steel toes, nothing like non-slip, but the Goodwill price couldn’t be beat and they fit him. Well, nearly. Couple extra socks, and there you go.
Ford felt his gut contract against his spine as he looked down into Russell’s scowl, but he refused to show it. He didn’t move at all except to give his brother a bright smile that, in some cultures, might have been the precursor to all-out bloody war. It communicated very well that Ford wasn’t going anywhere unless Russell made him, and that was the whole point of this encounter.
Ford lifted a pale round shoulder beaten by the gray desert sun and shook his head. “Hey,” he said instead, lifting the coffee cup in a vague greeting before drinking about half of it. It was very black and Ford preferred some sugar sometimes, if he could find it. He made a face.
When Russ was mad, most often he just looked stoic. Like maybe if you hit him, you’d encounter stone, or steel or something that was so damn unyielding you might as well just not bother. Right now, he was staring at Ford with the mutinous, bloody glare of a man who was stirred to violence and the last straw being the coffee sucked down by a skinny whelp of a kid who called himself related. The fight had left an imprint; Russ wasn’t a pretty guy, and his good looks weren’t showing right then. The busted cheek had knitted with a shiny red line, and his right eye was the kind of purple-dark that said it would take about a week or so to go away for good. The expression on his face said that he was thinking about rearranging Ford along the same lines and he sat up, arms around his knees, and he watched the last of the brewed coffee disappear in a very long gulp.
“You asking for trouble?” Russ said, and it was a little like curiosity, a kid that small and a kid that slight, walking in where he wasn’t wanted as deliberate as you pleased, and it was a little like a threat. “Or you just plain fucking stupid?” His hand had gone tight around the wrench he’d been working with, the lines of it red against his palm. He let it drop, with a tonal little clatter, and it skittered on concrete.
Russ didn’t pick a whole lot of fights. You wanted to fight, you walked where you knew you could find trouble and you let the other guy start it and you finished it sometimes and other times, you walked away. He didn’t pick fights with men who looked half-grown, like maybe they’d not eaten in three days and he deliberately didn’t think about how that added up back to Lou.
Ford wasn’t stupid. It was an extremely common mistake, because it was easy to interpret the misplaced pride and stubborn determination as a foolish luxury for someone who couldn’t afford it. That aside from the stuttering and the numbers and the blindness thing. (Or not blindness, but whatever it was that kept him from gauging how close or far something was.) Ford blamed something off in his brain, seemed to make sense, and he let it go at that. He was willing to accept that other people were smarter and got along easier, but he was never the kind to let people walk on him.
He didn’t recognize the look on Russell’s face--he didn’t know him all that well--but the way he was gripping the wrench set off some of the cautionary alarms that had been laid down by a little kid trapped in a close space a long time ago. Ford stood up off the stood and backed up so he had a little bit of room that wasn’t closed in by car and table. He didn’t go far, just enough so he was on his feet. He watched the wrench hit the ground, not afraid, just watching, and then the sharp blue eyes settled again on Russell’s battered face.
After a couple seconds he wet his lips and decided to fight through a question. “Somebody hit-hit you?” He flashed a daring fox smile. “We k-k-ki-can... go g-get him.” He put his mouth behind the coffee cup and lost the smile after the work on all those words. Why didn’t people use sign language. Could he go learn sign language? Even if he did, nobody knew it.
The stutter weren’t much but another curiosity. Russ had drifted for a while, a long while before he had enough cash and enough disinterest in shitty motels to put down anything like roots, pay a downpayment and sign a lease and call it a place to live even if it still looked like he’d moved in a week before. You moved around enough you came across all kinds of guys, the kinds who were running from and the kinds who were running to, and if you worked side by side with a guy who told you about the plate in his head, conversational like it was something for the dinner table at the end of the day and you learned who picked fights about their differences, you learned to keep your eyes low and your ears to yourself and you didn’t give a damn what was wrong with the guy so long as he held up his end of the line.
Russ’s disgust rose to the surface like cream on milk; it was a visible thing, and a taste in the back of his mouth, iron and below that the acid of something like fear. He’d run long, and he’d run hard until he’d circled back like Nevada’s dry air and desert sun was home but far enough to put hours between him and where home had once been. In the beginning, when he’d gotten dial-tones and he’d sent the cheap kind of postcard that crumpled, nothing written (when he’d been young enough that he hadn’t listened yet to the stories of other guys who did the same thing and the heartache that came with it) he’d thought about being found but the same, cold-acrid taste at the back of his mouth and the feeling of being shut in somewhere small until he couldn’t move had kept him from sending anything, calling anywhere.
“Who the hell is going to take you along in a fight?” Russ looked at the coffee cup like maybe he’d been counting on it and he thought about the over-jammed office and whether there was enough in there to make more coffee. Resentment boiled down, ugly, bitter like stale coffee grounds. “Ain’t you got the message yet, kid?”
Ford stood still and watched Russell’s face for a little while longer. He had an uncanny way of doing that, just standing for a second and assessing with all kinds of thoughts churning behind the bright blue eyes. Ford thought a lot of things he didn’t say, because saying things was such a bitch that it wasn’t worth it. People sometimes didn’t like all that thinking, and if they thought he was stupid they liked it even less. Ford wasn’t machinating enough to know that, he just did what he did and made sure that Russell wasn’t getting up to come after him any time soon.
Finally, Ford said, in a rough voice, “I do-do-d... I do okay.” He worked his fingers somewhat possessively over the coffee cup and tried not to smile at Russell’s sour look. He was alright with the possibility that Russell might come after him, because he was pretty sure he could get away before it got too serious, so he was willing to pull on the tiger tail a little while longer. “Do-do B-b-bet-better than you alone.” Again, a quick flash of fox fangs. “How me-many were there?” Because if there was just one then Ford figured two of them could probably take the guy; he was quite serious about offering his assistance, because in his mind that was generally what siblings did. They beat the shit out of you if you came after one of them. That Russell didn’t like him didn’t bother him that much. Almost nobody did.
If somebody hit his sister Ford would have gone after them with a sharpened butter knife or something equally ridiculous and deadly.
There was something to the whipped-wolf slant of the kid’s smile that was fucking familiar. He’d seen it slant itself out of the corner of the lone recliner in the trailer - meaner, sharper. It was a faded echo, like a photo taken several years on and left in the sun to fade until what was there softened, mellowed. Russ didn’t trust it the same way he didn’t trust smiles on anyone - good moods, Russ knew, were changeable. With a bad mood, sour disposition you knew what you were getting into and you knew the wall you were crouched up against, could turn your back to it without waiting for the next thing to slide down the line. Wariness wrote itself into blue eyes; Russ hadn’t noticed the way they mirrored one another. Mistrust, and aggravation that had forced itself up and had no place to go, riled tiger with no one to bite, and he would have given the kid a little respect, for dignity even if he was the kind to get the floor wiped with, if the kid hadn’t opened his damn mouth and slid on into rude despite the stutter.
Russ’s eyebrows knitted together and the scowl was ugly, even before all the bruising. “Yeah, I bet you do just fine,” he said, damning, and he looked Ford deliberately and slow, up and down like he was lingering on all the places that Ford had shortcomings, like someone assessing produce or maybe one of those puppies in cages at a store. “What the hell is it to you?”
Confusion flickered over Ford’s face at that first comment. He knew for sure it wasn’t a compliment, but he didn’t know what it was meant to be if not that. All he knew was that he didn’t like the way Russell had just looked at him; he’d never measured him before, not in any other way, not even when he’d thought he was a nobody with too long of a stare. Unthinking, Ford shifted his weight backward a little bit, shoring his strength up against the cut of some kind of insult he couldn’t quite name. His mouth worked off to one side, and the amusement fell away.
The question wasn’t worth struggling through a word, so Ford just let his eyes say that he was lost and he tipped his head in a sudden rockslide of dark curls and unexpected youth. What? Ford lowered the coffee cup so it balanced on the flat of one palm at the level of his chest, balancing it there while the inch of remnant grew stone cold.
Russ didn’t like the kickback of confusion; the kid was blue eyes and a too-familiar smile and that starved-persistence that he wanted to shut up or shut away, with the edgy prickle of something like doubt down his spine he struggled to shrug off. Wasn’t much to that look that you could take out and hit, which he was itching to do, Russ’s problems being real easy to handle (you hit them, or you left them behind, and sometimes you mixed the two). Leaving the kid alone hadn’t worked, here the kid was, and he took a kind of pleasure in seeing that smile gone at the same time as he felt like he’d hit someone who couldn’t stand to it.
There was no more of the half-stutter smile and the bravado (Russ didn’t like bravado from guys too small to carry it out, it was like being bothered by one of those dogs, too small to place a kick to without risking half-killing it) and it was just plain wrong, the scratched up mess of feeling in its place. Russ gathered himself up, hands with reddened knuckles placed palm-flat on slick concrete and he gave a grunt of something like disgust and something like irritation and he stalked the five or so long strides to the sliding door to the office, and shoved it open, leaving the kid and his curls and his - his - empty coffee mug to the stool and the car.
Ford had no idea what to make of that. He’d watched Russell’s expression and typically he was pretty good at reading people and their expressions. It had done Ford a lot of good to know if there was good or bad heading his way when he was a kid, and he paid a lot of attention to people’s faces when they were near enough to hit him. As a result, not a lot of people had managed to get close enough to do it, and Ford rarely reacted to people with fear. Caution wasn’t the same thing.
As he watched Russell stalk away, Ford ran the conversation back in his head. He’d showed up mostly to piss the guy off (mission accomplished), and had the delicious timing to come across the guy when he had a hangover and had obviously come out the losing end of a fight. Ford wasn’t insulted that Russell didn’t think he could hold his own in a fight, because the man would either see it and change his mind or he wouldn’t. Ford had been in a few fights and he found that not being afraid of getting into one helped get you out of it.
Ford came to the conclusion there was shit going on in Russell’s head that wasn’t affected by what he, Ford, did or didn’t do.
He decided to wait on it, setting down the coffee cup onto the stool with a click and circling the car again. Russell was going to have to come out some time, and Ford’s current strategy was simply to force the guy to act while satisfying his own curiosity about who and what he was. Ford didn’t have Russell’s knowledge for cars or appreciation for their old bones, so he just saw a junker and wondered why it was worth working on. Toeing the creeper out from under the hood of the car, Ford brought up his long knees to his chest and sat down on it, lying sideways to peer underneath and see what Russell had been doing. He just saw a lot of dirty metal at first, but he kept at it.
Russ kicked the door closed because he felt like it, and because the door was old and it gave a satisfying sort of shake on its hinges like it might rattle off. The office was cluttered and it was warm, sunshine through windows and musty warm and the coffee pot was empty, same as it had been when he’d gotten the last mug out of it and felt smug about doing so. It took five minutes, of fucking around with the ground coffee, and of swearing roundly at spilling it, until when Russ wove back out to the garage with a new, full mug that steamed pleasantly. He had convinced himself that Ford would vacate, would scram same way anyone with a mind to self-preservation might and that he could, once he’d made sense of it again and the garage had become his once again, drink his coffee and go back to working on his car in peace, the kind of peace that would make idiot customers bearable by the afternoon.
If the kid was still there, perched on the damn stool like a carrion bird waiting for something, he’d just carry on drinking his coffee and he’d get back to work and eventually, the kid would get bored enough that he’d buzz off where he came from. He’d inhaled the first mouthful of coffee, bitter-black across his tongue when Russ got within sighting distance of the car, his buy-in and his project for eighteen months. He saw skinny legs poked out from between the wheels and the coffee cup got dropped, black liquid seeping across oily concrete as fury slid up the back of his neck and made itself comfortable slung across his shoulders. There was a pounding in his head, his own pulse yammering there as Russ took two steps and he slid the creeper back out from under the car with the toe of his boot and he hauled the kid up by the front of his shirt.
“What the fuck do you think you are doing,” work stopped. The clatter of metal and the hum of the radio dialed down to the static hum of people who are watching something they realize is going to be a show. Russ was tall; the kid was not. Up-close, Russ was the solid set of murderous fury, the very knife-edge of where a man can be pushed before he is rattled.
Under the car, Ford had been getting a feel for what was going on. He discovered the bolts that must have held a long broad sort of cover in place, and where before he’d only seen a twist of tubing he was now noting a circular device that must churn the wheels. He figured the wrench had been for the bolts, and he thought there were probably more of them, so he was peering up to see what it was Russ had been taking apart with a curiosity to know why it needed to be fixed--before he was unceremoniously rolled out into the ugly gray sunlight. Ford almost rolled off the creeper, the wheels easily sliding out from under his shoulder, and he narrowly missed slamming his head on the bumper when he was hauled upright.
It had been some time since anybody had been strong enough to literally lift Ford up wholesale. While he wasn’t as big as Russell nor nearly as tall, Ford was made of a lot of angry muscle and dense bone, and people typically tried to pound him down rather than lift him up in a fight. It was more than surprise and not quite fear that widened up Ford’s blue eyes when he was close enough to smell last night on Russell’s breath, and it was the familiarity of that feeling, the angry smell of alcohol on someone bigger, that turned the playful fox feral in two seconds.
Ford showed his teeth as his eyes went narrow and he tried to get enough of a leverage to work himself free. “The fuck off,” he said, going for volume and yanking on Russell’s wrists.
Russ wasn’t in the habit of hauling people plumb off the ground. He was a big guy and it meant that the littler guys, the ones who could be hauled with brute strength built by hauling around heavy beams and working in the shop, tended to avoid getting into it - it was rare that someone picked a fight they didn’t think they stood half a chance of winning. Ford was heavier than he’d thought he would be, he might look like someone could blow him over if he missed more than a couple more meals but he was dense. Russ managed, because Russ was good and mad and he had a grip on Ford’s shirt like holding on was the difference between being found and dragged back to a double-wide in a dusty trailer park and being left the fuck alone to the life he liked just fine.
He expected the kid to holler and he’d got that right, full force of Ford’s rage right back at him and close and that was good, that was clean, that unleashed the full brunt of the snarled-up cogs and whirls that was Ford sauntering on up to his table in a diner and laying down history like it was reasonable to pick it back up again. Russ shook, both hands and he yelled right back, a low down kind of sound that didn’t have words, but was roar of rage all the same. Had it been earlier, had it not been spilled coffee and an empty mug and Ford squirming around underneath the car like he wanted all the pieces Russ had to himself and he thought it reasonable to just pick them up and take them, maybe he would have said something about the car and how it wasn’t to be touched, or maybe he would have said something about the coffee. But Ford’s yell and Ford’s squirming and Ford’s grip on his wrists - strong, like he knew how to fight - meant that it was okay, and with a relief that felt like something uncoiling inside, Russ did two things. He dropped Ford, without preamble, and he threw a punch.
Ford was nothing like superhuman. He wasn’t even especially good at fighting, or at being in a fight. He was physical because he was not shy, and people who didn’t have words and wanted to say something were either physical or walked around with sandwich boards. The fights he’d been in were the schoolyard kind with four or five guys and the teacher looking the other way, a drunk at the bar who liked his seat, a hot guy who gave him the eye but decided in a last panic that he was definitely straight. Ford was typically at a disadvantage in those fights because he just wanted to leave.
This fight made Ford mad. He was mad to begin with, which is why he kept showing up. He was pissed that Russell had made off and got away clean, and he always had some vague idea that mom had done more missing of the strong and capable Russell than she had ever felt taking care of his scrawny ass. (Not that she’d done either.) Now on top of that, Russell had tried to scare him off like a rabid stray, and Ford had decided he wouldn’t be ignored.
He just barely caught his weight before Russell’s fist caught him on the side of his head and he went flat in an explosion of black stars. The hood of the car caught Ford before he could drop entirely, and with his head ringing he oriented himself with an unexpected speed and went straight for Russell in a growling tackle that was flailing fists and raw anger. Ford never stood off in fights, he went straight for tackle and ground because he couldn’t judge how far away people were, so if he was right on top of him he had better chance of winning.
Russ had planned - in as much as he could plan, fueled by anger and by annoyance and by feeling backed up in a corner and fenced in there - to leave it at one. Throw a punch, watch Ford go down with the merciless satisfaction of having taught a lesson and then, where exactly he had planned it to go he didn’t know but it had largely involved a fresh cup of coffee and going back to work. He was more concerned about the hood of the car than he was Ford and he paid little attention other than to be more pissed that Ford was doing damage to the car the same way he had expected him to.
He was caught off his guard and Russ went down the way big men do when they haven’t adjusted weight to square themselves. There was a lot of him, and he was angry, and he was surprised and he was pissed that he was surprised, and his ass came down on concrete before the rest of him, and the stool rattled as it went over and the tinkle of shattering pottery said the mug was gone, too. He wasn’t done with the bruises of the previous night, his gut ached and bitched its misery and Ford’s weight - hard, and heavy and contained - hit him full square and a fist caught him on the cheekbone and another in the shoulder, and Russ started hitting back because Ford, on top of him and mad like he hadn’t done the cornering, hadn’t backed him up against a wall and then started in on his stuff - clearly wasn’t going anywhere, wasn’t going to slink out like he’d been shaken.
Ford stopped trying to win early. He stopped trying to think. He was just pissed and he felt better if he hit something. He wasn’t trying to make a point, nothing like showing he wouldn’t go away and he wouldn’t be intimidating. That was all higher thinking and it was for a different day. Ford wasn’t really trying to hurt Russell, either. He’d felt like that once, some bully that had his days and his months and his years, one Ford had wanted to hurt good so he’d scare off permanently. No, this was just anger and a lot of hurt. Not just his face, the other kind too. The reminder that he wasn’t wanted. That was what he was hitting for.
Ford’s generally wild blows landed a couple times, and that was about it. As soon as Russell regrouped enough to hit back, the fight was pretty much done. A thick fist that had Ford bone for bone and pound for pound got him on the same place as the first time and knocked him sideways about three feet. Ford landed on his shoulder, rolled, and ended up on his back, spitting blood through his teeth and cussing a blue streak that didn’t have one stutter in the way.
Russ hurt like old bruises and like a split lip that wasn’t done stinging but he looked over, blond hair and wild anger draining off like it was something that could fold itself up and parcel itself back until he was ready to poke at it again. He wasn’t fighting because he wanted to hurt the kid and he wasn’t fighting like being in some back-alley, working off a bad day but like the bad taste in the back of his mouth, like Ford dragging in things that he didn’t think about anymore, and propping them up against the things he liked, and daring him to get rid of them. He levered himself up with his elbows, and he looked across at Ford, and he watched his progress with something like reluctant interest.
His jeans were soaked through with warm coffee, and he got to his feet, palms on concrete and hefting himself up with more of the same disgust for the fight that wasn’t half way to fair (and thus a little of the satisfaction of seeing Ford roll around and swearing like he’d gotten taught a lesson Russ really wanted to teach, went too) and for the coffee and for the fact the guys he worked with had seen it go down; the cacophony of working noise starting up in tune so deliberately it meant they were giving him back a little dignity, which stung worse than the split lip.
“Don’t stutter when you curse,” he said, like it was something he didn’t give a damn about but he could point it out all the same, and he squatted to begin picking up pieces of broken mug, wiping his bleeding lip on the back of his sleeve. Russ wasn’t a man who carried around grudges out in the open; if he had them, they worried themselves deep and they splintered there. The fight had smoothed out some of the rough worked-up temper that had been in the air, fractured it some until it was easier to breathe but it wasn’t done.
Ford rolled up off a scraped raw elbow and found his feet. He was fine on balance even with his ears ringing, and while he figured Russell had given him a set of colors to match the ones the bigger man was wearing, Ford wasn’t seriously hurt--not physically. He was hurt somewhere else though, somewhere much closer to the surface than Russell’s splinters of old pain, and he wore it on his face, reddened and twisted into a black scowl of his own. Ford backed away from man and car.
“Fuck you,” he spat, still angry enough that his vision pulsed around the edges and he was shaking with adrenaline that might be as much flight as fight. His shirt was fucked up with oil, blood and coffee, and it was a set of three that he owned that had just became two. his hands were out and down and he looked like he was ready to start it over again if Russell got anywhere in striking distance. Drops of cold black coffee slid down over his forearm and off his knuckles.
Ford dragged the back of his hand over his mouth. “I d-d-di-did-didn’t come so you c-c-could hit me,” he hissed, smaller in his anger than he had been relaxed. He didn’t care how his words formed, too intent on baring his teeth at anything that dared think he was showing up for punishment, that he was an easy mark for it.
Russ straightened up, and his jeans had been oil-spattered before but now they were done, and blood was sluggishly making a path down the stained white of his tee-shirt. He wasn’t all that bothered about the clothes but he was annoyed by the barely-healed nose being busted again but none of it had the same set to it that was Ford’s shaking fury. Russ took a look, handful of pottery shards and all, and he felt a little relief that Ford was further away from the car now he was certain just how heavy the kid was and he felt guilt that the kid was backed up like he’d take a swing at him without reason and madder than anything that Ford had shoved him into guilt when he had none at all he wanted to feel. He was mad because this was Ford’s shit-show, rolling on into the garage like he wasn’t unwanted and because Ford was glaring at him like he’d started the whole mess.
“What the hell did you come for, then?” Russ bellowed right back, and he didn’t give a damn whether the kid struggled with his words, he communicated just fine with his fists, and he swiped at the bloody nose with the back of his hand, to rid himself some of the sticky irritation of the drip-drip-drip. “You keep showing up like you don’t understand English.” He didn’t give a damn that the rest of the crew was listening now without a lick of pretence that they weren’t, he cared that his coffee was all over the floor, and he cared that Ford might have fucked up the car just from being under there and it wasn’t adrenaline that stoked Russ to fight, it was being shoved at and pushed at and needled until he was mad enough to feel it.
Ford’s expression said Russell could go fuck himself and he fully meant it. From Ford’s point of view it was Russell that had showed up out of nowhere, Russell that was the shadow from the past. Ford was looking for connection, not a fucking parent, not a therapist, he didn’t even need a friend. But Russell wasn’t going to pretend like he was nothing, because he would not be nothing. That was all this world tried to do, was make him worthless, and Ford fought it with every cell in his body.
Hands curled into angry fists, Ford got the door at his back and ignored the vague watching presence of grease-streaked faces. He knew these kinds of places, and peeling, rotting places that didn’t like him. No place liked Ford, and he didn’t know the difference. “I’m n-n-n-n-n-not-NOT going away!” Ford shouted in his turn, winding up like a bad stereo and spitting the words out with blood and hard-won edge. “You d-don-don’t have t-t-t-to-to like me, but FUCK YOU if you think I k-k-keh-care. I KNOW YOU.” It sounded like an insult, an accusation.
Vegas didn’t give a goddamn whether it liked you or it didn’t, it threw sticky-sinful arms around you and ordered you to pucker up whilst it shafted you in neon lit splendor. But it was anonymous as month to month leases and Russ hadn’t come to Vegas looking for a single connection. He’d come in search of a good hand of cards and maybe a place to put his head at night and his scowl said exactly that and something fouler besides. He didn’t want to parent (again) and he hadn’t planned on being anyone’s therapist; if asked, Russ would tell you he didn’t think therapy worth a shit, that getting over it was balls and blood and moving the hell away. He didn’t care who Ford was and what Ford wanted - Ford could party like a princess in tail-feathers and blow a grand at Caesar’s, if he liked, so long as Ford didn’t think being spat out by a sad, scared old drunk in a double-wide gave them something Russ had never wanted.
“You don’t know a goddamn,” Russ said and the words curled like acid on iron, acerbic and short. “You don’t know me. You know her,” it wasn’t a sigh and it wasn’t a plosive he could fit behind his teeth and spit satisfyingly but it was said with very bad grace, and feeling. He hated the audience and he hated the drama of it; a fight was one thing, fists and fury and soon cleared but words hung in the air long after they were said. They ghosted back when you didn’t want them and they shadowed your heels until you ran.
“What did you come for?” He was angry, but it came out sullen, someone cornered who hates every second of it. Ford was in between him and the door, and the cadre of co workers stood at his back ready to give him shit the second Ford was done.
Ford wanted to kick Russell, really kick him so he’d feel it in his teeth. Failing that he was thinking about kicking the car, but he wasn’t sure if he could get there without Russell catching him and murdering him. Ford was blind angry but he could calculate the odds of survival. He wanted to make Russell hurt bad enough to remember him, but not really hurt him. Angry enough to feel reckless, Ford drew forward, leading with a hip and walking with the kind of care that panthers do when they’re on soft ground. He kept his eyes forward and he was pissed enough to spit nails.
“Tha-that-that’s all YOU n-n-nu-n...” he was so angry and frustrated he gave up on know and kept going. “I’m n-n-not-not her either!” For the first time Ford glanced furiously around the garage, and his glower might not have had the height and imposition Russell’s did, but it was piercing and ready for more. The lighter fluid blue burned, daring anyone in the room to take their best shot. Nobody laughed. Ford looked back at Russell and poked a finger in the air at him. He’d drawn a few more inches closer, and he wasn’t within striking distance but he could jab at nothing pretty good. “I’m-ma make you remember.” He said it with angry triumph. Because Russell couldn’t stop that from happening.
Russ wanted Ford away from the car and the co-workers and he wanted him out of the garage badly enough to grit his teeth and taste iron on the back of his tongue. He hated the scene, hated it enough to want to hit Ford hard enough to make him run, and maybe he didn’t care if the kid wound up choking on his own spit for a while after so long as he stayed away. Ford didn’t look like Lou but nobody did; Russ was mad that he remembered Ford’s name and he didn’t want to remember any more. He watched Ford’s progress with the edgy attention a predator paid to the invasion of the border of his own territory, and his eyes narrowed. They were a paler blue than Ford’s own but like water stirred into ink; the anger in them was the same, exactly.
“Remember what?” Russ’s voice licked venom, the sort of poison that was a threat and a warning both at once. “I don’t know you, kid. Never did. You want me to remember that?” He gave a hard, harsh laugh, bitter as salt. “I’m not going to remember a goddamn, no matter how much you fucking want it. Go find someone else.”
Ford’s eyes narrowed, and the dark curl foremost against his temple trembled with repressed rage. He was angry enough that he could feel it pulsing in his veins. How dare this asshole claim that the only thing about him was his mother? When you couldn’t find a bottle blonde less suited to be a parent this side of child abuse? (Some people would argue with Ford what exactly constituted child abuse, but he didn’t know those people.)
A dangerous glint caught one eyetooth as Ford sneered as Russell’s casual dismissal of his entire existence. He shifted his weight on his back hip, careful to be out of reach but not really all that calculating as he could have been. He brought up one heel, bending his knee, and rotated suddenly to have just enough room to smack the front bumper of Russell’s precious car. He put some effort into it but not so much that he could do anything but rock the big hunk of metal on its axles. Ford didn’t even have steel toes, and it was like kicking a wall.
Then, quick, before Russell could catch him, he landed, rotated and stormed for the door.
Russ didn’t know if Ford had liked mashed banana when he was two as much as his sister had, and he didn’t know if he’d gotten into fights in third grade because he’d worn the same sneakers til they split across the toe like Russ had. He didn’t know and he didn’t care if he’d gone on a streak of eating nothing but white food when he was four and anyone - his sister, their mom - had had to eek out the spare change on finding white stuff that you could buy for under a dollar that would still feed a damn kid for a week.
He didn’t know anything except that Ford had the same livid-blue eyes as his mom, that his smile was the same kind as hers when she was feeling generous or was drunk, mostly the latter and that the crooked tooth reminded him of the little sister he’d left behind before she was old enough for him to fret over orthodontistry and that Ford got mad and it crackled in the air like unearthed wires, like the heavy air before a storm, that Ford was unpredictable as a big cat riled up and that he didn’t know which way all that spitting anger was going to go. (Russ did not consider that that too was a similarity and he would’ve been mad about that, too) Wariness skidded up and down his spine but he planted his feet like an adult and not a scared kid waiting for where the blows would go; there was no one to defend except himself and he was big enough that Russ knew he’d win.
Russ shifted so his weight was even, the flexed knees that meant if Ford tried throwing himself at him again, he’d be ready. He was expecting Ford to do something to him, and by the time he’d caught the preparation for what it was, the car was juddering on its wheels and Russ was murderous-angry all over again and fearful for the crazy billionaire’s pay-out for the car if it had gotten damaged and he moved to the car instead of after the kid, because the car was the stake in the game and no time left to find another way to raise the buy-in.
“Get your ass back here you little shit,” Russ roared, some of it relief that nothing much was done, but mostly no longer giving a damn who heard him. He wanted to beat Ford bloody, and he wanted to beat sense into him and he wanted to take all that spiked adrenaline and fear out on someone before it strangled him. But Ford was gone, and the music had started up and the workers drifted, like the show was done.