Who: Russ and March What: A 'fight'. When: Immediately after this Where: Turnberry Warnings: Violence.
March was being a damn fool, and he knew he was being a damn fool. He was angry, too, which he hadn't been expecting. Russ had every right to be fussed with him. It was like he'd told Toby, someday Russ might need to look back on that punch to make him feel better about things. Someday, when Ford was twenty-five or thirty and dying somewhere. March understood. Heck, there was still a real good chance Ford was fine. They'd only been together once, after all, and the odds were in his favor. But still; March understood.
Understanding didn't tamper that anger that March hadn't been expecting, though. Who was angry for him? Why the heck didn't anyone get that it wasn't intentional? Someone, somewhere, had done the same damn thing to him, hadn't they? Why'd he lose being a victim? He didn't know he was sick when he'd gone and slept with Ford. Heck, neither of them had used a condom. It was just damn numbers that said March had been sick first. It wasn't intentional. He hadn't been the bastard that knew his status and didn't say a damn thing to anyone. He hadn't been with one damn person since he'd found out, not even the safe way. So, why was he the damn bastard? And who was finding whoever'd smacked him with a death sentence and breaking his knees?
No one.
March had no damn clue who'd gotten him sick. He wasn't safe back then. He'd been like a ton of other kids, thinking nothing could kill them. Indestructible, that's how he'd felt. Heck, he'd lived through his daddy hanging himself, and he'd lived through his stepmomma driving him into a damn lake. He'd looked at death, and he'd felt his lungs filling with water, and he'd walked away. He wasn't scared of a damn thing after that.
March wondered, spiteful for a second, if Russ would hold Ford responsible for every boy he'd slept with between March and now. Damn hypocrites, and yeah, he was riled up good. He was hurt, and he was riled, and he was even jealous of Ford some. Ford still had a chance that he'd be just fine. No death sentence, no cocktail of pills, no godawful and miserable future to look forward to. Ford might still have a damn life to look forward to.
March wanted that for Ford real fucking bad, but he was jealous some too.
True to his word, March had left the door unlocked to his apartment on the top floor of Turnberry, where he lived rich as Croesus. But money couldn't fix a damn thing, could it? He'd told the doorman he was expecting folks, and then he'd got his favorite guitar, and he'd sat his ass on the windowsill. He got to playing seconds later. Quiet first, then louder some.
He calmed himself as he strummed. He wouldn't say a damn thing when Russ showed, he decided. It would give him something to focus on, not saying anything. And March couldn't throw any damn punch. At twenty-four, he looked younger than he was, and he was a skinny little nothing. 5'10. and khakis low on slim hips. His shirt was something snug and white, boy's department and nothing like a real grown ass man would wear. He was barefoot, just pure white socks on his feet, and his hair was hipster mussed.
Maybe he'd feel better about this whole mess after a punch or two, because talking to Ford sure hadn't made him feel better. Boy didn't seem to understand a damn thing that March was saying, and March knew what that was like. He remembered locking himself in the bathroom after his test had come back positive, and he'd lost his damn lunch and cried all over himself. He knew what it felt like.
But, he reminded himself, Ford might be just fine. This all might be for nothing. He hoped it was all for nothing. He hoped harder than he'd ever hoped for a damn thing. HIs own visit to the doctor, the one he'd put off for over a year, it hadn't gone real well. He hoped Ford was plenty fine.
And when March heard the door, he just lifted his head, and he smiled. Wealth, and carefree dimples and a nose too big for his face. He smiled
Russ never knew what to do with anything you couldn’t size on up and knock down.
There’d been plenty of that way on back in the trailer-park. There’d been the men Lou had dragged on home, leery and smelling like cheap cigarettes and cheaper beer and the trailer creaking under their weight - and the first time he’d been too small but he’d been violent, furious fists whaling on the back of the man hitting his mama until they both laughed themselves sick at him and his kid-pride, and the next time (when she’d yelped, when she’d shouted some for him, he’d gone then, and the next and the next) came until he got sick of putting his back in between the woman who brought them all home to hit at him and the men who did it.
There was plenty of that now. Russ picked fights same way he chose to get laid; he got an itch and he cleaned up well or he didn’t and he went down and he picked em, same as he ordered a drink. He washed up after and he hurt a little bit it felt good, it felt raw, it felt like pulling at a scab until it healed clean. And if it couldn’t be hit? If it was money tucked under the mattress, enough to be lost, enough to make a problem, enough to mean if he sat at a table and tossed all of it down on a hand of cards, fucked himself hard and good that he had a problem (even if it was cards, even if it wasn’t glass bottles rolling under the table, under the couch, if it wasn’t sick-sweet on his breath) or it was shifts cut down to nothing when it got lean enough to make the card games work instead of pleasure - he found something hard and ready and hauled it on up to get angry about and went out and hit that, instead.
There wasn’t nothing to fight, if Ford was sick.
Russ had slept with enough to know tests fine. He’d walked away nonchalant the first couple, and once he’d fucked up enough to know it burned when he pissed, and he’d been clean since, only test he’d shit himself over had been one that ended with a fight; he’d come away clean and she hadn’t, least ways if ‘clean’ meant that as much as it did anything else. He knew walking in to antiseptic in the air and the snap of rubber gloves, knew paper print-outs in an envelope same as anyone. But he’d never read that in an envelope. He’d walked away clean, fucked around as much as before and he’d walked away fine and the kid might not. Kid who hadn’t been there when he walked away but Russ was cursing it same way he’d done in sick-sweat dreams, dreaming up ways Lex had gotten into trouble - knocked up, hit by one of the men Lou kept on bringing home, started jamming needles in her veins same as half the bored kids in the park, lit on out and living rough or the rest of it, shadows that came and laughed at him in his sleep. Ford wasn’t nothing but after, but it wasn’t Ford’s damn fault because of it.
He lit on out to the bike, and he drove like a bat out of hell down Vegas roads because faster meant not thinking a bit about whether it would’ve been the same had he stuck on home til Lex was gone and grown, done the same for the kid that came after. Faster meant not thinking about getting real familiar with antiseptic and needles, talking a kid brother through what happened after. What happened when family didn’t bind itself around you and stand back to back to lay it all on out.
Russ never knew what to do with anything you couldn’t hit and you couldn’t hit anything, explaining tests and sickness. Wasn’t nothing to hit but something looming in the distance, blackly terrifying.
He drove and the grandiose building pissed him off until the bitter-sour taste in his mouth went to bile, steadied out the sick roiling of his stomach and made him plenty mad at whoever had handed down a life-sentence, commuted it on over to bringing someone else along with him. No one stopped him and no one called him back and he threw on open a door on a man younger than he’d imagined (as much as Russ imagined: he imagined him taller and older and maybe more knowing about it all, maybe meaner-looking) but who smiled like he didn’t have a damn care about it. And he threw the first hit with his weight full on behind it until his knuckles split on cheekbone, and the second, that was follow-up. Third came right before he realized March weren’t going to hit back and the fourth, that was bile when he realized he didn’t care this time and sirens in the air said he didn’t have to, that he didn’t give a damn about skinny boys who smiled like they thought death was something to smile on about.
Russ never knew what to do with anything you couldn’t hit, even as the air flared blue againt the glass, and his arms were wrenched behind his back. You just made it something you hit, and you hit it hard as you could and hoped it just didn’t get up again.