blake thorne thinks (deathisboring) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-06-04 00:10:00 |
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Entry tags: | damon salvatore, tyrion lannister |
Who: Blake and Hunter
What: A post-hotel madness chat.
Where: Blake's apartment.
When: Immediately following the hotel event.
Warnings/Rating: None.
Hunter returned to Blake’s apartment feeling like lead all around, cold on the inside, limbs heavy, mind numb. He still thought of it as Blake’s apartment even as he stepped out of the still-working elevator (miracle), thunked heavily across the hall carpet in his dusty boots, and pushed open the door once he fished a key out of the jeans wrapped close around his hips. Hunter’s clothes tended to be too tailored to be quite cowboy-work style, and triangles of white skin showed above his hem as he lifted his arms and started working his plaid overshirt off even before he kicked the door all the way closed. He didn’t look around to see if anyone was there because he was accustomed to being in the apartment alone because he and Blake kept very different hours.
The white collie puppy, who left trails of white fluff everywhere, had passed the nightmare of the last day or so in Hunter’s room and barked gleefully. He took a detour from his path to the kitchen to let her out. He threw the plaid shirt into his room and bent down in a stained old-white sleeveless to greet her enthusiastic jumps and yips. The other dogs were not with him, and he put a thin scraped arm around this one and rubbed behind her ears. “You stink up the place?” From the smell issuing from his room, she had, but being locked up for over a day and a half, not exactly a surprise. Hunter sighed, stood, and wandered back into the main room with the puppy at his heels.
Blake was in the main room himself, sitting in a chair with a glass of scotch sitting beside him, lazily smoking a cigarette. All told, it hadn’t been too awful the past week, despite the fact that he hadn’t really been around to appreciate it. Honestly, what did he have to be around for these days anyway? It was difficult for him to summon the energy to care overmuch about anything, and the catastrophe was no different. People he liked were still alive, and he hadn’t been injured. Wins all around.
He watched Hunter come in and kick his shoes off. The chair was turned toward the windows, so he went unnoticed until Hunter came back into the room. “Safe and sound?” he asked, picking up the glass from the table. Yes, it was morning. But he’d been awake all night in an insane hotel and spent a week as a midget - it was drink o clock. “The dog’s cute, but I’m not getting anywhere fucking near whatever the hell is going on in your room. Maid’s number is in the kitchen someplace if you want help.”
Hunter jumped visibly at the sound of Blake’s voice. He had not expected him to be in the room, but the collie happily tripped over to sniff at his shoes. “I left her locked in. Didn’t know I was gonna be so long,” he said, defensively. Hunter was feeling very defensive at the moment, so defensive that all it took was the sight of the smoke curling over Blake’s head to make his fingers twitch, and he came over to take one out of the other man’s pack. He didn’t get a drink, he just sat down on a neighboring couch, bare arms and all, and took a hard drag on the cigarette. “I’ll clean it.” So far Hunter had been fairly good about that. He cleaned up after the dogs and himself on a fairly regular basis, even if he wasn’t spotless or neurotic about it. The maid got about half of it before he had a chance.
“Relax,” Blake said, turning in the chair, swinging his feet to the floor and leaning over them to tap his cigarette into the ashtray. “I don’t give a shit. Just saying it’s not my job to deal with.” He watched Hunter stride over to him and take a cigarette with zero protest. It wasn’t like they were precious, or he wouldn’t smoke as much as he did. “No rush.” He polished off his scotch, and set the empty glass aside.
Blake planted his cigarette between his lips, leaning along the chair on his side. He was wearing some loose-fitting red lounge pants and no shirt. For a guy who lived mostly on a diet of cigarettes, coffee, and alcohol, he was fit, all clean, well-defined lines, virtue of having a lot of time on his hands and only so many things to fill it with. “So, how was your week, touchy? Were you around?” Dark eyes made a brief, slightly fuzzy assessment of the man across from him as he took another drag. There wasn’t so much as a fleck of ash on his chest, betraying years of practice with directing unruly cigarette flecks and avoiding the novice’s mistake of getting burned.
“I’m relaxed.” Hunter wasn’t relaxed. He wasn’t going to be able to relax for a while. Just a little while ago the hotel had been like... like somebody slipped him something when he wasn’t paying attention. He eyes his hands to see if they were still shaking, and somehow managed to push the collie back down onto the floor between his knees rather than letting her curl up on his chest as if she was still three months old. He ran his big hand over the top of her head and watched her blink blue eyes up at him adoringly. You could always depend on dogs to love you even if you were an asshole. “I was around. I was just trying to get through the fucking horror movie that was outside.” Hunter put the cigarette in his mouth and lit it in only two attempts. “You?”
Blake shook his head, watching the dog's obvious devotion to her master. He ought to get his own dog. If only it was likely that he'd remember to take care of the thing. "Nope. My other half ran around staying out of trouble, mostly, which is fine as fuck by me. I didn't get eaten or turned into a blue sock monkey zombie or whatever the fuck. Pretty much a win win as far as the eye can see." He reached out and brushed the dog's back with his fingertips. "You go to the hotel?" Of course he had, everybody seemed to have gone, whether they wanted to or not. Blake took a drag from his worn cigarette, watching what appeared to be a faint tremor in Hunter’s hands. “Have a good time?”
The collie turned in half to give Blake a similarly adoring grin, all pink tongue and dandelion fluff. Hunter paused to hiss in a breath and then sigh out smoke, dropping back into his chair. The collie inched in Blake’s direction with her nose outstretched. “Yeah, I was there. Near as I could be without being myself,” he said, bitterly. “If I was myself, maybe I would of had a good time.” He ran a palm over one jean thigh, stretching out first one heel, and then another, contemplating the floor. “What’s your ‘other half’ like?”
Blake ran his hand with rough affection over the dog's head. Dogs were alright by him. Anything that was blindly loving was hard not to like, even if you were a jaded bastard. He scratched between her ears. "I wasn't myself either, so join the club," he said. Of course, Tyrion had been at the hotel, but whatever had come over so many had not affected him, for whatever reason. Blake took a long drag off the cigarette, blowing smoke through his nose. "My other half?" He huffed a faint laugh, and the smoke finished off in a burst. "He's short and fucking too smart for his own good, and he's into drinking and women. So we get along alright." He rolled his shoulders, leaning back against the chair. "I let him have his time when he feels like it, so that’s not a problem. I’m not crazy about having a voice in my head, but as far as voices go, he’s not awful. You?"
In Hunter’s opinion, the collie was a little too friendly. Good dogs knew who the master was and viewed everyone else with wary respect, not questionless adoration. But she was young yet, and Hunter had as much of a soft spot for fuzz and big eyes as anyone else. He missed his Daisy, and abruptly shifted, away from Blake, his back to the window and his heels up on the couch. He answered a little late to be really involved in the conversation. “Don’t know for sure. Someone’s there, but he doesn’t say anything.” It made Hunter uneasy, but he couldn’t quite pin his dislike, so he’d let it resolve. It would, inevitably. He had other things on his mind. “What’s your smart other half think happened in the hotel?” Hunter knew he wasn’t smart, and he thought maybe someone else could explain what happened to him.
“That’s weird,” Blake pointed out helpfully, as Hunter shifted away from him. He marked the sudden disengaging from the conversation. He took a last pull, then crushed the cigarette out, leaving it standing jaggedly up from the ashtray. He smirked at the prospect of his ‘smart other half’ explaining the situation, but he paused, and his eyes darted briefly, jaggedly around. It looked like he was lost in thought, when really he was busily listening to the erudite voice in his head. Not weird at all. One of these days he was going to wake up in a straitjacket and find out he’d been in a nuthouse this whole time and they’d only just got the antipsychotics working. He straightened a little, cracking his knuckles. “He says he doesn’t believe in fucking magic, but that weird shit happens around here, and considering there were monsters on the strip, it might have been sorcery.” Blake shrugged. “I don’t know, something like that, but more British.”
“British,” Hunter repeated, blankly. “Like King Arthur...?” He looked over in time to see the uncharacteristic expression of consideration on Blake’s face, and allowed his eyes to narrow just slightly in an expression musing wariness. He didn’t trust any of the alters, even if they were King Arthur.
Blake chuckled. "Like, but not much like. Doesn't actually come from England, just a place where people talk kind of the same." He wondered, not for the first time, where Hunter had come from that nobody had given a shit about questions like that.
Hunter let his palms spread down his thighs again, bringing his heels up to dig into the couch. The puppy jumped onto his stomach. He let her. Letting his head fall back, chin up, he bridged the distance between between standing and lying with a long, blandly amber stare. “What would you have done if I didn’t come back?” It was a mildly curious question.
The question that followed was a surprise, because Blake hadn't really considered that was a possibility. His expression didn't really change, but something a little more thoughtful flickered behind the casual amusement. "Gone looking for you until I fucking found you," he said, and a moment later, offered a shrug, like that ought to be obvious enough. "Why, was that likely?" It was a more probing question than it seemed. He'd seen the murmurings on the journals that someone might have died during the mess at the hotel, and people had definitely bit it on the streets. He'd assumed Hunter capable enough that he hadn't worried about him. He'd figured his alter was around, and he was out on his own, same as Blake. Besides, Blake didn't give a shit what happened to anybody anymore, right? Wasn't that the whole fucking point? He was letting Hunter live there, but that didn't mean anything. If he'd disappeared, he would have gone after him because it was the not shitty thing to do, sure, making sure your roommate wasn't dead, but that didn't mean he cared.
Hunter’s expression tightened in shock and then relaxed into confusion. He liked to think of himself as bitter, cynical, and hard, but Hunter was always a very easy read. Up until this point, Blake had always been honest with him, and it was obvious now Hunter wasn’t sure whether to believe him. He put a rough hand over the puppy so she didn’t go tumbling as he sat up a few inches on the edge of the couch, eyes still directed at Blake’s face, trying to figure him out. “You would of?” His tone was not hopeful, just wary. “Why?”
Blake watched that careful hand on the dog to keep her stable. Whatever else Hunter claimed to be, or tried to present himself is, there was definitely a softie in there. The idea that everybody was good to animals was, of course, a myth, and it took an extra bit of care to think about things like carefully nestling a dog in your lap.
For a moment Blake met that gaze, flat amusement and a wall as tall as the one in China. Trying to figure him out, in his opinion, was a losing battle. He’d made that mistake too often already. People were best kept at arm’s length, guessing. “Dunno,” he said, lazily. He kind of wanted another cigarette, but he didn’t know where he’d thrown the pack. He wanted another glass of scotch, but the bottle was way over there, on the other side of the room. “You’re supposed to make sure roommates aren’t dead, I thought. That’s a thing, right?”
The dog tried to lick his face, and Hunter picked her up by the scruff of her neck and set her on the ground. She frolicked off to chew on somebody’s shoes. Hunter set his bare feet on the ground, pushing them deep into the expensive carpet. “No, it’s not.” Hunter got up, his body suddenly infused with restless energy, and he prowled around Blake, weaving through the furniture in his way. He snatched up the bottle of scotch and looked down blankly at the label. “What is with this roommate thing, anyway? Why am I here? You must want me for something, what is it?” He lifted one hand and shoved it through his messy hair, betraying the nervous gesture with a flick of his tongue.
At Hunter's response to Blake's halfway joking assumption, he shrugged his shoulders. Well, whatever. "You think everybody's got ulterior motives, huh?" he asked. "I thought we went through that already. Still not convinced I'm not planning to go into your room and sneak attack you for a fuck some night?" He picked up his glass and extended it out, eyes on Hunter, expectant. Hey, he'd picked up the bottle of expensive scotch. "We're both in the same fucked up situation, you were going to be sleeping on your sister's couch, and I've got too much fucking money and too much space in this house. So here you are." He raked his gaze over him, a very masculine, easy assessment of all Hunter's physical attributes in one brief drag of his eyes. "Now, you're hot, so if this is about you feeling bad that I haven't fucked you yet, don't. Anyway, there's a hundred thousand guys in this city who would be happy to pound you absolutely speechless, so you hardly need me for that." His head lolled to the side. "I don't get you," he confessed. "I can't tell if you're suspicious because I haven't done anything, or because you're scared I'll do something. Tell me which one it is."
For once, the blatant physical assessment didn’t make Hunter feel better. In the last few years he’d felt comforted by the idea that whoever he was with didn’t care who or what was in his head, and it didn’t matter in the slightest what he said or didn’t say. That certainly wasn’t the case right now, and it made him more than uneasy. He knew his emotions were a little rollercoaster, and he felt especially angry, though the anger about losing Daisy had no real focus. Blake was just lucky. He refused to conform to his demand and instead tipped the bottle up and took an unsanitary gulp out of it. It made his eyes water, and only then did he notice the glass. He gave Blake an eyebrow at the suggestion, but then swung the bottle up to pour some in. Not like the guy could feel it, anyway. “So you’re just lonely, you want a body around?” he asked, baldly.
Blake smiled faintly, inscrutable again. "Yeah," he said, bemused, into the glass of scotch. "That's it." He downed it in one long swallow, but he spared Hunter pouring him another glass, setting it firmly aside. The subject was officially not going to be about him, now. "Something eating you, Hunter? You're asking a lot of philosophical fucking questions considering all the shit people just went through. I'm not a fucking shrink, but you seem like you've got a twitch over something, and I don't think it's me. So, what?"
Hunter leveled Blake a look that didn’t scald or betray any of his usual distinctly transparent emotions. He took another pull from the bottle, a longer one, and the bottle sloshed as he dropped his arm. The skittish puppy danced away from the movement, occupying herself while the humans babbled on far above her head. Maybe Blake didn’t want anything from him but a presence and somebody to yap at, and maybe he shouldn’t be hurt by it, but just then Hunter was feeling like everybody from the freak in the hotel to the amused presence in the back of his mind was leaving him out to dry. He was feeling fucking needy, and he didn’t like it. It was what it was, but he wasn’t going to ask Blake to fix it, not when he was clear enough about Hunter’s role in his world.
“Fuck it,” Hunter said, almost solemnly, and he turned for his bedroom. He kept the bottle, already bringing it up for another gulp, and the puppy looked back and forth between one set of shoes and another before finally choosing to frolic after Hunter.
The reaction surprised him, but not by much. Blake had considered it a stretch to try to read Hunter's mind and figure out what was going on with him, and if Hunter wasn't into that, then fine. The less he knew about him was probably better, anyway.
Truth be told, Blake wasn't entirely sure himself why he'd asked Hunter to come live with him, so no explanation he could offer would be entirely truthful. He wasn't sure if he'd just been feeling lonely (which came with the immediate mental insistence that he didn't, ever, that was a thing of the past) or if he'd been in a generous mood. He didn't know why he bothered doing much of anything, anymore - any effort at all was a break from the norm.
He didn't get up to follow Hunter, or call for him to come back. Asking someone to stay was always one of the first warning signs, and lit up red on his list of risks he couldn't afford to run.