Re: log: blake and graham, thorne house
Yeah, none of it was really Blake's business. He'd been grasping at straws, and, for a moment, he'd had an utterly selfish flash of recognition to go with all the shit he'd seen. Here was someone out the other side of that and still alive. Maybe Graham's general state should have been answer enough, but he hadn't wanted to believe that. Blake had wanted Graham to act as a neat surrogate for the future he could expect, a future where thinking about dead people felt different than it did now. It had been stupid as hell.
Despite that, despite knowing that he'd made a mistake, despite offering to let Graham take a swing, he was still surprised when Graham actually stood up, laughing. He looked at him for a moment, genuinely surprised. Oh. Then he pushed up to his feet, less than fluidly. He was steady enough standing still, but there was no way he was ducking a punch.
He looked at Graham. He didn't wince or flinch. Maybe he was too stupid to leave the room, or maybe it was something worse, something more despicably self-indulgent. He would have wanted to punch himself in the face right about now. It only seemed fair. He didn't look like much, but he did seem strangely confident in his decision to make the offer and accept Graham's answer. That conviction hadn't changed any at all in the last few years, the confidence in following through. Skinny and dark-eyed and a little shorter than Graham, flushed in the face and coasting toward pretty twisted, and maybe set to lose a couple pretty teeth, but he didn't look frightened.
He turned his head an inch to the left. "Get on with it, then. I'll even hold still." He sneered, staring at the door, for no one at all.