Re: log: blake and graham, thorne house
Blake didn't much feel like a master of anything. When he'd graduated from college, there had been certain expectations for his life. A degree from Harvard business school and a father who was one of the richest men in the western hemisphere was bound to settle on one's shoulders, slink around the collar. He hadn't minded it so much at the time. It was what he'd been preparing to do for most of his life, after all. He wondered now how things might have been different if his father had lost everything when he was eighteen, what might have happened if he had ever really needed to think about what his life should mean. It had all crumbled so fast when the linchpin fell out of his life. Without the one thing he was certain about, the rest had blown away quicker than he could snatch handfuls of it.
The coffee mug smelled strongly enough of whiskey that it was obvious Blake wasn't just trying to stay awake a little longer. He caught the look to the mug, and nodded his head to the bar cart in the study next door. "Want a drink?" he asked. He didn't for a moment think Graham might have wanted coffee. They were both standing in a dark library in the middle of the night, weren't they?
He slipped by Graham and into the study. It was similarly decorated, matching the library, heavy leather club chairs and dark hardwoods. More echoes - it was very like his father's study in the old house. The servants here swore up and down that his father had renovated this place. They knew his name, how he liked his martinis, and what his laugh sounded like. Hearing them talk made him feel like the man's ghost had followed him here from a world away, and it made his shoulders tighten. He pulled the whiskey from the bottom shelf without asking what Graham wanted, or waiting for him to agree. It gave him something to do with his hands.
"Have too good a time at the party?" he asked, with a small smile and a glance up, actually meeting his eyes. If he had seen what Blake had seen...well. He pulled the stopper from the decanter and flashed through what memories of his own might have been bottled there. Maybe some asshole would make a forum post for him tomorrow morning. Wouldn't there be poetry in that? "You don't have to answer," he said, pouring out the whiskey into a crystal tumbler in generous portion. It smelled expensive and peaty, even from halfway across the room. "Nobody fucking did." A pause, and then he topped off his mug for good measure, ensuring that it basically now consisted of coffee flavored whiskey. He put the stopper back in the decanter with a definitive rattle, then turned to Graham, proffering the glass.
"So I hear you helped kept my sister and the kid from dying," he said. Just making conversation. He had a long look that belied the casual tone. That's nice. "I'm grateful." Not just words, and they came with a flash of guilt. They were too earnest, and he didn't do earnest, or didn't know how to anymore.