Blake Thorne ; Sirius Black (ex_toujours322) wrote in musingslogs, @ 2011-02-17 14:45:00 |
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Entry tags: | elizabeth bennet, highwayman |
Who: Eli and Blake
What: Blake gets his nose broken.
Where: A bar, then the police station.
When: Last night.
Warnings: Swearing, mild violence.
Blake had gone out looking to pick someone up and hopefully get drunk. The last couple of weeks had been miserable. First he’d managed to talk himself into joining EIT, and then he’d become relationship consultant to the world. He missed two weeks ago, when the most complicated decision he had to make was which gender he felt like spending the night with that evening, and then what hair color he preferred.
Blake wasn’t in any kind of a rush, however, so when he ducked into a slick, modern bar downtown he went to the bar without bothering to approach anyone right away. He didn’t mind drinking on his own, since someone often ended up approaching him of their own volition anyway.
Eli was drunk by the time he trailed Blake out of Aubade. Six whiskeys and he’d found the teapot Preston had left for him two drinks in. He was angry, so fucking angry, and when they called from Reliquary to tell him the boys who had kicked dirt on him that morning had returned to throw a red-painted brick through the front window, well, that just made him finish the bloody bottle.
Blake was easy to follow. The cabbie had no trouble dropping Eli off outside the bar, and Eli had no trouble getting in, even drunk as he was. Blake was taller than many of the men there, and Eli walked right up to him, tapped him on the shoulder and waited for him to turn before swinging.
The blow hit home, but Blake barely even registered the crunch of cartilage in his nose because he was already up away from the bar and swinging. Someone behind him was trying to pull him away from the indistinct blur that had just broken his nose, but that was not going to happen. He was aiming to knock some teeth loose, and he didn't pull his punch.
There was enough blood in Eli’s mouth the moment the punch landed that it was pretty bloody likely a tooth was involved. He was too drunk to maintain his balance with the hit, so he just threw himself at Blake, arms going around the other man’s neck as someone called 911 in the background.
Blake broke the arms away from his neck from the inside with a quick shove, pushing him hard into the metal bar. He was fully ready to hit Eli again when someone grabbed him from behind. That didn't go well, so someone else chose to help, and dragged him outside and onto the curb while he shouted a variety of epithets involving Eli's mother. He'd recognized Eli when Eli had started trying to strangle him, and the security with a firm grip on both of his arms was probably the only thing preventing him from fulfilling his desire to beat the shit out of him.
Eli shouted right back. “You did this!” and “I told you what would bloody happen!” and “Preston won’t talk to me now, you bastard!” Luckily for him, most of the words were lost in the bloody mess that was his mouth, and the arms that shoved him to the ground and pinned him a moment later belonged to Seattle’s men in blue. They seem disinclined to listen to anything Eli said, and they shoved both of them in the back of separate police cars, cuffs in place and rights read to them.
Perfect. Just fucking great. Blake's foul mood stopped just short of telling the police officer reading him his rights to go fuck himself, but it did not stop him from memorizing the face of a member of the paparazzi who appeared out of nowhere with a camera and developing complex plans to find out where he lived and worked and make his life a living hell. He rode in silence to the station, where he was hustled out of the car and past a collection of people with cameras. He was in no fucking mood for this bullshit, so instead of calmly weathering the storm, he spit on one of the cameramen instead, and got the pleasure of watching him have an attack of neuroses trying to rub blood from his shirt.
Blake was taken to a paramedic, who made quick work of applying a local and then setting his nose, which was just as unpleasant as it had been the first two times it was broken. Once all this was over, he was going to give Eli a sucker punch he would remember for the rest of his pathetic, chickenshit life.
The police pulled him from the paramedic and led Blake away to be booked, then into a cell. If he knew his lawyer, he was already on his way across town to post bail. Hopefully.
Eli had never been arrested, hated the flashing lights of the camera, and had two teeth knocked out n the right side of his mouth. He was still drunk, but the entire process was sobering him fairly quickly, and by the time he was fingerprinted and had his picture taken, he realized just how screwed he was. He could call Drake, but he wasn’t sure how much bail cost or if Drake would be able to pay it. As far as he knew, the check Eli paid off Reliquary’s profit was the only check Drake collected, and it wasn’t impressive. He could call Preston, who would then need to explain to the world why he was bailing a fag out of jail in the middle of the night.
By the time they shoved Eli in the cell adjacent to Blake’s, his mouth had stopped bleeding and his head was pounding, and he could see Blake through the bars.
Blake took one look through the bars into the next cell over and got up and moved as far from him as he could in the small space. He sat in the opposite corner with his head back against the wall, feeling the slow drip of blood in his nostrils. He wasn't a praying man, but if his lawyer didn't get here soon he was going to start throwing out hail marys.
“Did you use your phone call to call Preston?” Eli asked, calling across the bars loudly, in a slur.
"What the fuck do you think?" Blake snapped back, without turning his head to look.
Eli thought he had, and he crossed his arms over his chest and looked away from Blake.
Blake rolled his eyes. "Why the fuck would I call Preston, Eli? Aside from the fact that you're fucking drunk, so you're not at the top of your game. Think hard. Why the fuck would I subject myself to getting told off by Preston for provoking you, because I'm sure that's what he'd think, when I could call my goddamn lawyer and get him to post bail?"
Eli closed his eyes, and he rested his head against the cool bars. “Good. He’d just be put out with me if you called him,” he said, slur-drunk. “They broke my window - did you know? Just like your nose, but nowhere near as satisfying.”
Blake put his fingers at his temples. "Who broke your window, Eli?"
“The students that kicked dirt on me,” Eli said, sounding muffled and sufficiently outraged, which earned a guffaw from his cellmate, a rough looking biker.
“Well this is news,” Blake said, staring at the ceiling. “And did you call the police?”
“No, I broke your nose instead,” Eli admitted, groaning at the pain in his head. “And things with Preston are a bloody mess that I don’t know how to fix. I don’t think he’d take kindly to my first impulse when it comes to resolution, which is to lock him away somewhere he can’t flee or evade me for a week.”
Blake’s cellmate, who was laying on a bed at the back of the cell, rolled over to lie on his stomach with his face planted into the mattress. “Good move,” Blake said, combing a hand through his hair. “Yeah, I don’t think he’s going to let you do that. So how do you feel after breaking my fucking nose? You feel better about yourself? World seem like a better place?”
“I feel drunk and incarcerated,” Eli admitted, scooting closer to the bars and further away from the biker. “And if you move even one inch closer to me, I will break your nose as well,” he promised, voice rolling into an angry growl when the other man moved. To Blake, he said, “you think it’s a bad idea, then?”
Blake finally looked over at him. "Surprisingly yeah, I do." He sighed, head hitting the wall he was sitting up against. "I told him he should call you and fix this before you did something stupid. Surprise surprise, he didn't and I was right."
“Then what do you suggest I do, Blake? Do tell me,” Eli said, glancing up as the duty officer approached Blake’s cell. “Before you leave here and return to your wealthy life, where you can lament your nose in the company of multiple hookers?”
"I seriously hope they let you out before me, because you know not what you do, since you're drunk, and I might kill you if I can get my hands on you," Blake said. "I 'suggest' you fucking talk to him, and if that doesn't work you find someone who's got dysfunctions that match yours better."
Eli grabbed the bars, pressing his blood stained face to them. “I have tried to talk, you bloody git. Do you think I haven’t?” he demanded, with some ire, but too drunk to really put much into it beyond that. He sighed, kicking at the bars in anger, and then settling down on the flimsy cot. “You think this is so bloody easy. It isn’t. Do you realize that brick could have hit a client? Or Georgie? What if it hadn’t just been a window?” He scoffed, sounding unimpressed. “Is it so very easy to be dismissive of the problems of others?”
"Eli, I told him to talk to you. If you can't fucking work it out, if it really is as complicated as you both keep saying, then I don't know what you want me to do to fix it for you. I'm not your fucking fairy godmother."
Blake ran a hand over his face. "They're assholes, Eli, I didn't say they weren't. Doesn't give you license to come break my nose. I didn't throw the fucking brick."
Blake straightened, suddenly, at Eli's last comment, and he looked over at him sharply. "Yeah, I'm dismissive as hell. I'm so fucking dismissive I spent hours of my goddamn time this week trying to help you out."
“You feel that we should all be like you. Stand brave and tall and not care what others say,” Eli said, eyes closed and not bothering sitting up. “That, Blake, is you. It is not me, and it is not Preston. It is you.”
Blake watched Eli's bloody face through the spaces between the bars, expression inscrutable. "Maybe you're right," he said, after a second. He went suddenly quiet, glancing up as the officer walked past.
Eli didn’t see the officer, but he did hear the moving footsteps and the voice that followed the man’s return with a jangle of keys. He did look at Blake then, looking worried when the other cell was opened, even through the alcohol. The officer called Blake’s name, and Eli sat up and scooted against the wall. “Well, it would seem money buys something more than confidence. I’ll send you a bill for my teeth,” he told the other man.
Blake got up from his corner of the cell and walked out with the officer. "Have fun sobering up," he called.
After being officially released to his lawyer, who informed him that there was very little chance anyone was going to be pressing charges unless it was him - there had been a lot of witnesses who would testify that Blake had his nose broken without provocation - he told his lawyer that he wanted him to bail out the guy in the other cell, yes, the guy who broke his nose, and no, he didn't want to argue about it. He walked out and took a cab, leaving his flustered lawyer in the police station lobby to post Eli's bail.
Eli, who was in for drunk and disorderly in addition to the assault, had to stay the night, it seemed. The lawyer came and told him as much after he’d posted the bail, and Eli was more put out about Blake paying for the bloody bail than he was about having to sleep behind bars. Or, rather, not sleep. He was too drunk to worry about who would open the shop in the morning or who would cover the window in case it rained. He just banged his head back against the jail cell wall, the movement causing pain to radiate in his jaw, and he groaned. The biker chuckled for nearby, and it was going to be a long bloody night.