Blake Thorne ; Sirius Black (ex_toujours322) wrote in musingslogs, @ 2011-01-24 13:00:00 |
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Entry tags: | elizabeth bennet, highwayman |
Who: Eli and Blake
What: A meet up that miraculously stays civil for all of two minutes before the fists start flying.
Where: Reliquary
When: After this.
Warnings: Bad words.
Blake didn’t know why, precisely, he’d decided to cut Eli some slack. Maybe it was the way he’d seen Preston lash out at him, or maybe it was the fact that the pair of them obviously had feelings for one another, and he felt some sort of emotion he’d thought was long buried. He didn’t plan on analyzing it too closely. Instead, he dressed comfortably but casually and went to Reliquary, shutting out the cold with a long coat. He finished a cigarette just as he approached the shop, grinding it out on the sidewalk before entering.
Eli was about to close up shop, and Reliquary was quiet (for once). He was in the main area of the shop, putting chairs up on tables, dressed in a white tee and jeans, a black apron slung low on his hips. He looked over when he heard the door open, and he tensed immediately (a normal reaction to Blake). He forced himself to relax a moment later, and he motioned to a table that had not yet been bussed for the night. “Do sit down. Might I offer you something?” he asked, giving Blake a look. “Not coffee. Something stronger, perhaps? And I do hope you have extra cigarettes on you.”
“I always have extra cigarettes on me,” Blake noted, bemused, and sat down at the table that Eli indicated. He pulled his arms from his coat, fishing through the pocket for his cigarettes.
Blake couldn’t look at Eli and view him objectively, but his reptile brain had no such qualms, and he was willing to admit that Eli was definitely pretty, for a guy. Delicate but with hard, sharp edges, like broken porcelain. “Yeah, whatever you’ve got. Scotch?” he asked, hopeful.
Eli returned with an old, expensive bottle of scotch, which he set on the table between them with two glasses. “Are we intending to get pissed and share secrets?” he asked, turning the chair around and straddling it, the legs tipping as he popped the stopper on the bottle and poured them both a generous amount. He took a swallow, and he put out his hand for the cigarettes.
Blake stuck a cigarette between Eli's fingers before dragging his glass closer to himself. He paused a moment. There was a sound at the edges of his hearing, growing louder and then fading into quiet again. Conversation, two people. From the vernacular it sounded like it had taken place sometime in the thirties, probably back when the building had been residential. Couples arguing - he got a lot of that these days, but it was better than the alternative.
The phantom pair went back into the next room again, and Blake leaned back. "I think that's usually the idea when you meet up with someone you're normally at odds with and put alcohol on the table," he said, and tossed back a good swallow of the scotch. He lit his own cigarette, then slid the lighter across to Eli. “You’re the one who wanted to meet. Got anything else in mind?”
Eli had spent the first month in Reliquary exhausting all the memories. He’d been certain, for the first two weeks, that he would never be able to open the shop. It was one of the reasons he’d lived there so long, hoping he’d soak everything up the first time around when he was alone. He spent a lot of time upstairs or in the back in those days. Had he known what Blake was hearing, he could have told them it was the couple that had stayed in the back room when the place was a boarding house. They argued a lot, and the woman liked her drink. They had a dead child, and Eli was glad when he’d stopped seeing them walking around.
Taking a drag of the cigarette, Eli crossed his arms on the back of the chair. “I’m the one listening.”
"Listening for what?" Blake asked. "Look, if you're looking for the secret to Preston, I'm not your guy. I hardly know what makes him tick, except that he works too fucking much and takes things a little too serious most of the time, and that you've got to be patient to get just about anything from him or you can watch him shut up tight like a clam." He took another swallow of the scotch, following it with a drag off the cigarette, two different and equally good types of burn. "We were only together a few months, and it wasn't that serious. I don't have the open sesame that's going to make everything candy and roses for you."
“Are you in love with him?” Eli asked, plain, direct and with enough green in the words to leave little doubt how he felt.
Blake looked across the table at him, ashing his cigarette onto an errant saucer. "No," he said, and there was something in that that said a lot with a little. "I don't 'love' anybody. I thought that ought to be obvious. Preston is someone I'm fond of, sure, he’s a friend who happens to be an ex. But love? No." He took a drag, blowing smoke out through his nostrils. "Are you?"
“I considered myself a straight male until last week. I’ve no idea what the hell I feel and what I don’t. So you’re just after him for sex then?” Eli asked, all rushed together like that without appropriate pauses or segues.
The side of Blake's mouth curled into a half-smile. "You do," he said, amused and pleasantly surprised. "Well that's good to hear. If you can make it work, godspeed to you." He couldn't help but hope that Preston felt the same way about Eli. Preston deserved somebody better than Blake, and all he could do was hope he knew that. Eli wasn't the prime candidate, but he cared enough to be jealous, which said a lot. "And you weren't straight until last week, you've been a fag the whole time. But I don't blame you - it's easier to believe with all your heart that you love pussy than own up to being into cock. I consider myself lucky that I'm perfectly happy with either or."
Eli was listening. He really was, until Blake called him a fag. It was as if something snapped, immediate, angry, some sort of old fear welling up, fear that had been shoved deep down since he’d been cornered in a school hallway with a tall, blond boy. He stood so quickly that the chair clattered and fell against Blake’s leg before hitting the floor. And by then his fist was connecting with Blake’s very prominent nose. Eli might be thin, and he might be wiry, but he was all muscle, and there was enough force in the blow to make Blake’s chair teeter and Eli’s knuckles sting.
Blake was by no means expecting to get punched in the face. In fact, he thought he was doing rather well, managing to be civil and let bygones be bygones, until Eli punched him in the face. He got to his feet, thankfully, instead of falling straight backwards in the chair, and grabbed his nose. It wasn't broken, but it was bleeding. "What the fuck!?" So he swung back, because Eli had clearly gone insane and he was going to defend himself. Blake knew how to hold his own in a fistfight - he'd already managed to break his nose twice, and his many vices included getting drunk and picking fights with people who underestimated him. So he could throw a punch, and he did, aiming for roughly the same area of Eli's face to reciprocate.
Blake’s fist connected with Eli’s jaw, thanks to a quick dodge on Eli’s part, and then Eli was throwing another punch, this one aimed at Blake’s cheek. “Don’t you EVER fucking call me that again!” he yelled, voice losing its accent as the volume raised. Another swing followed, this one at Blake’s nose again, because there was something satisfying about punching the bloody bastard’s nose.
Blake grabbed the fist, which hurt, but allowed him to twist it and pull him while he was off balance and try to bring him to the floor and end this quickly. "THAT'S what you just lost your shit about!?"
When Blake grabbed his fist, Eli moved forward instead of back, using Blake’s grip against him, and sending him into the table stacked with chairs behind him. He let go at the last minute, keeping his own balance, and he was breathing hair, blood at the corner of his mouth. “I’m NOT a fag. Get out.”
Blake hit the table but not the ground, catching himself. He checked his nose for blood and found some, but not a copious amount. He pulled his coat off the back of the chair and shrugged it back on. "Forget the other bullshit I said. Get a sense of humor. Buy it, borrow it, whatever the fuck it takes, and stay the fuck away from me until you do." He walked out, and let the door slam into the wall outside.