RORY (betmylife) wrote in shadows_rpg, @ 2020-05-19 19:16:00 |
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Entry tags: | #january 2018, rory, rory x wes, wes |
Who: Rory and Wes
Where: Their house on Ludlow
When: Early evening, Tuesday, Jan 23
Status: Complete
Things had felt off when Rory showed up at work on Monday, but not in a way he could pinpoint the source of. It had been quieter than usual and those he ran into seemed either dazed or cranky. But it was Monday, so he wrote it off as people just being hungover from the weekend. When he rolled in Tuesday morning and half the office was out, he began to grow concerned. No one had answers for where anyone was and no one seemed to care. In his past life this would have been a sign to skip out early, but he needed the money and couldn’t afford to be docked pay if someone called him on it, so he stuck around. As the hours wore on, the quiet in the office became unsettling and he was itching to leave before it even hit four o’clock. At four-thirty he said fuck it, packed up his things and headed for the door.
As he headed out to the parking lot, Rory pulled out his phone and sent Wes a quick text, letting him know he’d left a few minutes early and would stop by the store to pick up something for dinner. It felt so domestic, which was weird, but he told himself he was just being courteous. When he stopped by the grocery store, the unsettling feeling returned and Rory hurried through the store, eager to get home and away from people. He’d thought the coast was clear as he exited the shop and pulled out his phone to send another text, when a black Tahoe sped through the parking lot crosswalk and hit his cart so hard it rolled a good twenty feet away. Rory didn’t think he had that bad a temper, that never blew up unless it was called for, but that wasn’t the kind of thing he could just let slide. Had it been five seconds later, it would’ve been him laid out on the concrete, not his cart. “What the fuck?!” he yelled, banging hard on the window of the Tahoe. Then the owner hopped out of the car and decked Rory instead of apologizing.
By the time Rory made it home, he had a black eye, bloody knuckles, and a couple of bruised ribs. He also had a fresh bottle of whiskey that he decided he couldn’t live without after the altercation. He was half an hour later than he’d expected and wasn’t exactly sure where all the time had gone. All he knew was that he needed that drink now and he headed inside, hoping to leave the crazy behind.
Wes wasn’t supposed to work that day, but he’d gotten a strange call from his boss that morning. It had been weird and mumbly, and then abruptly disconnected. When Wes had tried to call it back, he’d gotten no answer. The day before had felt kind of off at the office too, but Wes had plenty of outside work to do and hadn’t talked to very many people, so he hadn’t thought much of it. But the call was concerning. Wes debated for a little while, then he’d gone into the office to try and see what was going on, only to find nobody there. Wes had waited around for a while, he’d called the few numbers of coworkers he had and gotten no answers, and eventually he’d gone back home.
His stomach was kind of unsettled for the rest of the day, a nervous feeling hovering around him like something was about to go wrong. At least Rory sounded normal with his texts, and Wes was relieved to hear from him after every one. Not that he knew how to tell Rory that. Wes was watching TV in the den when he heard the front door open, and he immediately stood up and headed that way. He told himself it was to help with the groceries, but he knew it was just to see that Rory was okay with his own two eyes.
... which he wasn’t. “What the fuck happened?” Wes blurted out as soon as he spotted Rory. He’d been in a fight, that much was obvious, but in his experience, that was so un-Rory-like that it was a shock to see. Wes’s mind immediately jumped to the people they were running from, but he didn’t think Rory would be walking through the door at all if they’d been found.
“Some asshole almost hit me in the grocery store parking lot,” Rory said as he set the bags on the counter. “And when I jumped on him for it, he fuckin’ hit me, like it was my fault for being in the way. He just wouldn’t stop!” Rory could hold his own in a fight, but the whole thing had shaken him up. The guy had come at him with a vengeance and he’d probably be lying dead in the parking lot if he hadn’t gotten the upper hand and turned it around on him. If Rory hadn’t reined himself in, he might have killed the guy in retaliation, but that was the opposite of laying low.
It took Wes a second to realize that the first ‘hit’ that almost happened had been with a vehicle. Then it had turned into fists, apparently. Wes gaped at Rory for a second before his face hardened into anger. “What’d he look like?” he asked. “What’d his car look like?” Wes stepped in closer and put a couple of fingers under Rory’s chin to lift his face so he could see it better. He definitely had a shiner growing on one eye. His gaze ticked down to the bloody knuckles and he moved away toward the fridge. “Lemme get you some ice,” he muttered. The thought of somebody trying to run over Rory -- his Rory, was how it ran through his head -- made his blood boil. That asshole was lucky Wes hadn’t been shopping with him.
“Black Tahoe,” Rory answered, a little wave of pleasure rolling through him at the way Wes touched his face. It was unexpectedly intimate. Gentle. Not what he’d have previously expected for Wes. “I might’ve beat the shit outta him, so… he doesn’t look great at this point.” He could’ve described the guy if he needed to, and he had his plates as well, but they didn’t need Wes hunting him down to give him another beating. Plus, it was a bit embarrassing. The guy wasn’t huge, he should’ve never had the upper hand, but he’d caught Rory by surprise and kicked him when he was down. Rory still couldn’t get a handle on why it had spiraled out of control so quickly. If anyone had a right to be mad, it was him, not the other way around. “It was just so fuckin’ weird. The whole day was, but this… it was like he’d lost his mind.”
A black Tahoe with a beat-up dude behind the wheel ... if Wes saw him? He would be fucking sorry. And Wes saw a lot of people around town during the course of his job. Working for the town as a garbage-and-general-cleanup man made him practically invisible to everyone. Wes liked that part of it. And now he had someone specific in the back of his mind to look for. He pulled out a kitchen towel and opened the freezer to grab ice to put into it, a little frown line appearing between his eyebrows. “My day was kinda weird too,” he said as he turned back to Rory. Wes was tempted to put the ice on Rory’s face himself, but that was probably a little Too Much, so he just offered the cold bundle over. “I got this weird, kinda nonsense phone call from my boss. He wouldn’t pick up again when I tried to call him back. So I went to the office and nobody was there, which like, never happens. It was really strange.”
Rory took the ice pack and held it up to his eye, hoping that would curb the worst of the bruising. His ribs were a different issue, but at least that could be hidden under his shirt. No one had to know about it… except Wes would probably see it later. Maybe it wasn’t as bad as it felt. “Yeah, half the office was out today and I couldn’t get a straight answer for anyone as to why. It was so quiet, I kept thinking I could skip out early, but didn’t want to risk pissing someone off.” Now he wished he hadn’t gone in at all. He wasn’t entirely sure anyone had even noticed he was there today. “So did you ever get ahold of him?” Rory frowned. “Is it some kind of weird town holiday? Or flu season?” He was grasping at straws, but couldn’t understand why so many people seemed to be MIA.
Wes shook his head in answer. “I didn’t get a hold of anybody at all,” he said. “I mean, I don’t got all their numbers, but enough for it to be weird that nobody answered. It was all makin’ me feel hinky, so I just came home. I dunno what the fuck’s going on.” All of the absent people were one thing, but the asshole in the Tahoe getting all aggressive with Rory was pretty bizarre too. Were they connected somehow? “Does this town have a purge holiday or something?” He huffed an amused sound, but there was something uneasy about it too. Wes had gotten the heebie jeebies more than once in certain places around Point Pleasant, but he kept telling himself he was just on edge because of their situation. It couldn’t be anything else, right? “Glad you’re alright though,” he added in a murmur. “Mostly, anyway.”
“If this town has an annual purge, we’re under-armed,” Rory said with a little snort of amusement. It felt like something out of a movie, but they both knew nothing like that would ever happen and joking about it made him feel a little better. They were both just paranoid, jumping at shadows because they expected the boogeyman to be there. Point Pleasant was just a quaint little town, quiet compared to the big city they’d come from, and neither of them were used to it yet. “Mostly,” he agreed, then paused to take the ice away from his face for a second. “How bad is it? I dunno what I’m gonna tell ‘em at the office tomorrow. Maybe I lost at cards.” They didn’t know him, but felt a lot more likely than the truth.
He smirked a bit himself at the ridiculousness of the idea of a purge, then moved in closer again to peer at Rory’s face. Looking closely at the swelling and bruising rising around his eye just made his aggravation flare up again. “That fuckin’ guy,” he muttered, jaw clenching briefly. “He’s lucky I wasn’t with you.” Rory seemed to have held his own okay though, so Wes told himself to let it go. He wasn’t always a damsel in distress, not everything was life-threatening. Still, it pissed him off. He gingerly touched a couple of spots on Rory’s face, then focused on his eyes again and gave a faint smile. “I think you’ll live, is the good news. You’ll just be rainbow-colored for a couple weeks.” Wes let his hand settle on the side of Rory’s neck and he gave it a little squeeze. “You want some aspirin or a drink or somethin’?”
“No, we’re lucky you weren’t,” Rory said with a soft snort and a smile. “We’re trying to lay low, remember? If I almost killed him, you probably would have.” Why did he find that endearing? He knew it was part of the mentality he’d been brought up with, but also recognized there was something a little extreme about it. Wes beating some guy to death for him wouldn’t really be a turn on, but the threat that he might was. The way Wes touched him made him want to pull away and stop him from babying him, as if that would prove he didn’t need it, but it also felt good. Being touched by Wes always felt good, even when he was poking at bruises. “Aspirin would be good. Bought a bottle of whiskey for the rest.”
Rory had a point about laying low, and Wes tried to tell that to the part of him that wanted to smash the guy’s face into the concrete. It was probably slightly fucked up of him to wish he’d at least been able to see Rory kick the dude’s ass, but the desire still flared up for a moment. Maybe someday. He smiled faintly at the news about having whiskey. “Good call,” he murmured, and turned away to head into the bathroom to go find the aspirin. He came back a minute later and set the bottle down in front of Rory, then went to have a look at the groceries he’d gotten to start putting them away.
While Wes retrieved the aspirin, Rory opened the whiskey and poured them both a drink. Wes hadn’t asked for one specifically, but it sounded like they both needed one after the day they’d had. When Wes returned, he opened the bottle of aspirin and popped two, then looked over at Wes as he began to unpack the groceries. “I didn’t get anything fancy, but I thought about actually cooking. We keep eating takeout and I’ll swell up like a balloon. Plus, it’s more expensive.” He’d been eating worse than he ever had lately and not working out and he had Wes in his life. Normally he might not care about putting on a few pounds, but he was much more aware when he was in a relationship with someone. Not that they’d called it that, but it was something. “Got a favorite food?” he asked with a touch of amusement.
Wes wasn’t a great cook, but he could make a few things to survive on. His physique was mostly due to good genes and lots of physical work in his life, and it amused him a little bit that Rory was concerned about his own. Eating out all the time was definitely more expensive though, he couldn’t argue with that. “Steak,” he answered, glancing around at Rory with a smirk as he put the cold stuff away in the fridge. “What about you?” It was kind of funny that they’d waited this long to ask each other those kinds of questions. Running for one’s life tended to take precedence over chit-chat, he guessed. Plus he didn’t like to talk a whole lot in general. “I didn’t know you could cook ... but I guess we haven’t really had a kitchen anywhere else.”
“Can’t go wrong with steak,” Rory said with a little laugh. “That’s probably one of my favorites. With potatoes and red wine. Which makes me sound fancy, but I’m not.” He was normally more of a beer guy, but red wine with steak really was a thing he could get into. “My grandma made a homemade lasagna that was to die for. I can’t make it, but she did teach me spaghetti. Used to say you can’t claim Italian if you can’t make a good sauce. And pasta’s easy enough.” Most of what he’d gotten was meat and vegetables though, since he could grill just about anything and it required the least number of kitchen utensils. If they were really going to settle in for a while, they’d need some of the basics in the kitchen, but it still felt weird to think they needed to buy something more than plastic silverware and paper plates.
Wes nodded along with the potatoes and wine additions, because those definitely made steak better. He preferred a dark beer himself most of the time, but he could appreciate a glass of red wine too. And whiskey, so Wes took another warm swallow of it in between tucking away groceries. “Aw man, you almost got me excited about lasagna,” he murmured with a little grin. “I’ll take spaghetti though.” Wes couldn’t really cook unless it was over a grill. He could microwave things and dump canned vegetables into a pot to warm up, but creating something edible from scratch just wasn’t his bag. At least not so far in his life. Maybe he ought to start learning, now that he was in the situation he was in. Wes got done with what he was doing and moved closer to Rory to lean against the counter, a little smirk toying with his lips. “So ... you wantin’ to cook tonight? Or should I take pity on you ‘cause you got beat up?”
Basic cooking wasn’t too hard, in Rory’s opinion, so long as he didn’t try to get too fancy. The lasagna shouldn’t be too difficult; he’d just never wanted to put the time into it. Now, things were a bit different. “I mean, I know the basic recipe, and vast amounts of time. Maybe I’ll get bored enough to try it,” Rory grinned. It wouldn’t be perfect. Hell, it’d be an experiment, but he found himself needing to develop new hobbies now that they’d settled in a tiny ass town with no real night life. It was probably a better idea than tracking down the local poker game. “I could cook tonight,” Rory said, leaning back against the counter as he took a sip of his whiskey. “I got pork chops, asparagus, and rice. Stuff for gravy. Unless you want to pamper me?”
He huffed a little chuckle and squinted one eye slightly at Rory. “Hate to say it, but me trying to cook pork chops and good shit is prob’ly the opposite of pampering,” he said. Wes supposed he could look up basic instructions on Google and spend the whole time trying to follow a recipe and probably fuck it up ... but that didn’t sound very satisfying after a long shitty day. “So I can make you a mean-ass sandwich, or I can order us a pizza and you can get back on the wagon of good eating tomorrow? ... or if you wanna cook, I can pamper you some other way later.” Wes gave him a smirk. Maybe it was the blossoming black eye or the whiskey or the promise of food, but Rory looked pretty sexy to him at the moment.
As much as Rory liked home-cooked meals, he wasn’t dying to spend the evening in the kitchen, especially when he had Wes’s undivided attention. He could think of a lot of ways for Wes to spoil him that had nothing to do with cooking, so why put them both through the pain of Wes figuring out dinner? “Why don’t we order a pizza tonight,” he said, returning the smirk. “I didn’t get anything that can’t wait till tomorrow. And it’d be nice to sit back and relax after a weird ass day.” If he went in tomorrow and things still felt off, he was going to come right back home, no stopping for anything, not even gas.
“I’ll drink to that,” Wes murmured and clinked his whiskey glass against Rory’s before knocking the rest of it back. He fished his phone out of his pocket and started going through the contacts to find the one or two he’d labeled ‘pizza.’ That was always important information to find and save whenever they ended up somewhere new. Once they’d sorted out what they wanted, Wes called the number, tucking the phone against his shoulder. He frowned absently when the phone rang and rang with no answer. It was only a Tuesday, they couldn’t be that busy, right? After another five rings, Wes took the phone away from his ear to check the screen. He hung up and tried again, but still nobody picked up. “Huh ... must be closed,” he muttered, tapping the screen with his thumb to try another pizza place.
Rory finished off his drink, then poured them both a second while Wes called up the pizza place. Normally one drink was enough for a Tuesday evening, but he felt like he’d earned the right to get a little drunk tonight. It wouldn’t be the first time he went to work with a hangover, so he knew he could handle it if he drank a bit too much. “The pizza place?” he asked, brows drawing together as he looked over at Wes. “I mean, it’s no Waffle House, but I’ve never heard of a pizza place being closed on a weeknight. Is there another?” In this tiny ass town, probably not, but they could always have Chinese take-out instead. Or he could go for one of Wes’s sandwiches.
“Yeah, there’s one more I think ...” Wes said softly as he listened to the line ring and ring. Was it some holiday they’d forgotten about or something? Some special night in the town? “Maybe they’re closed for the purge,” he added, but his chuckle came out uneasy. No one picked up there either. Wes had a creepy feeling between his shoulder blades as he hung up the phone again, and he put it down on the counter for a moment, sipping on the fresh drink Rory had put in front of him. “Looks like pizza’s out,” he said. Somehow that was more disturbing than Rory coming home with a black eye and bloody knuckles. At least fist fights made sense. “I can scramble eggs too, I forgot to mention ... or we could just get drunk.”
The lack of available take-out was disturbing in a way that Rory couldn’t explain and it made him itch to go check all the doors and make sure they were locked. It was just a feeling, one any rational person should ignore, yet they’d survived this long on their instincts and Rory struggled to stop now, even when there was no visible threat. “I’m good with whiskey for dinner,” Rory said with a small smile. “If I get hungry, I might take you up on that sandwich offer. And there’s always cereal. But I’m not starving or anything.” In fact, he didn’t have much of an appetite now that his mind was spinning with all kinds of bizarre reasons why the town was shut down for the night. Drinking seemed like as good a solution as any.
On his end, Wes’s stomach had shifted away from being interested in food. It was unsettled and nervous now. His own instincts were saying something was off, he just didn’t know what. But between the weird call from his boss, nobody answering their phone even when he wanted to give them money, and the guy attacking Rory out of the blue, things definitely felt wrong. That was too much weirdness in one day to be coincidence. “Me either,” he muttered, and lifted his glass again. Wes didn’t want to let it ruin the rest of the night though. He and Rory could just drink and spend time together and shut it all out. They’d gotten pretty good at that kind of shit recently. “I’m gonna just ... check the doors,” he added, giving Rory a glance before he headed toward the little mud room and the back door beyond it. Better safe than sorry, right?
Rory nodded, then grabbed a few necessities to move to the bedroom. There was something comforting in knowing he wasn’t alone in his paranoia, but it also confirmed in his mind that something really was wrong. He wanted to get his hand on his gun, just in case someone showed up at their door. He wanted to make sure the windows were locked and covered. They didn’t have a lot of furniture, otherwise he’d move it in front of the windows, just in case. That sounded a little crazy though, so it was probably a good thing he couldn’t follow through on that instinct. He did retrieve his gun though, and confirmed it was loaded, before settling down on the mattress. The desire to eat had completely passed, but he continued to sip at his whiskey, willing the unsettling feelings away.
A certain level of paranoia was why they were still alive, Wes was pretty sure. No matter what was going on in Point Pleasant at the moment, there were still people out there who wanted to kill them, so he felt pretty justified in being paranoid. Wes walked quickly but quietly as he ensured all the doors were locked and the porch lights were on. It might not make much difference if people were fighting each other in the streets, but it made him feel a tiny bit better, so whatever. He followed Rory to the bedroom, drink in hand, and set it down on the dresser as he pulled his own pistol out of the drawer and made sure it was loaded. Wes didn’t even notice that Rory had done the same until he turned around and spotted it on the bed. It made him huff and shake his head a little as he moved to sit down next to him. “Great minds think alike, I guess,” he murmured, then lifted his glass to clink it against Rory’s. “Here’s to the fucking end of a weird day.”
“I don’t know what it says about my day when I feel better with a loaded gun next to the bed, but that’s where we are,” Rory said with a little huff. If they’d still been on the road, Rory would’ve said they should go ahead and move on, but they’d settled enough that uprooting now would’ve been a hassle. They both had jobs, a sort of routine, and up till now Rory had been feeling somewhat safe. Now he wondered if they’d made the right decision to settle here, but had no real basis for why he was so freaked out. “It’s kinda weird. I always felt safe back home, even though everyone I knew carried. And at least half the people I dealt with weren’t afraid to use it. And then we come here, where there’s all these normal people around, and I’m worried someone’s gonna barge through the door at night,” he said with a little laugh. It probably wasn’t that weird considering their situation, but he hadn’t even been thinking about someone finding them. He’d been thinking of something else… something darker and without a face.
Wes hadn’t been feeling safe to sleep without a gun within reach for more or less the entire time they’d been on the run. Though he’d started to settle down a bit in Point Pleasant. It was so out of the way and isolated, hardly on any maps, he was sure no one would think to look for them there. He was still pretty sure of that, but this didn’t feel like that kind of threat. It was still unsettling and weird, so he wanted to sleep with both of them armed tonight. Not for the first time, he was glad that Rory wasn’t the type of spoiled rich boy who didn’t know how to handle a firearm. “That used to be your world ... our world, I guess,” he said, giving a slight shrug of one shoulder. “You get comfortable with things you know. We don’t know this place yet, and it’s ... been a strange day.” Wes sipped from his drink.
“Yeah, I guess,” Rory nodded. He didn’t know how to explain that, while he didn’t feel entirely safe in Point Pleasant, he’d never thought someone from the town was a threat. It was always his expectation that someone from home would find them, though with each day that went by he knew the chances grew less and less likely. At some point they’d give up the search, but neither he nor Wes could ever go home. The world they were used to was gone to them. “Why’d you do it?” he asked softly. “You’d have moved up if you’d shot me. It’d still be your world.” He knew he meant something to Wes now, but at the time they’d been strangers. Even if Wes had been tailing him, he didn’t know Rory and it seemed like a lot to give up for someone that was trying to get in. Rory had never known anything different. He’d been born into that chaos. Some days he still missed it.
There were days that Wes missed it too. There were definitely frustrating days when he thought he couldn’t make a living doing anything else, he’d been a petty criminal for so long. The life they’d transitioned into had shots of adrenaline sometimes, but largely it was more boring than their old lives, and that had been an adjustment too. Rory’s question didn’t surprise Wes, per se, but the timing did catch him a little off guard. He huffed a little laugh and glanced over at him. “I dunno man ... I’ve wondered the same thing myself,” he admitted quietly. “It just didn’t feel right, to let it happen. I’ve seen dudes get shot before, wasn’t like I was squeamish about it. I wasn’t thinkin’ a lot at the time, I just ... couldn’t let him kill you. You didn’t deserve it.” Maybe that had been a weird time to grow a conscience or have an attack of empathy, Wes didn’t know exactly what had happened in his brain. He’d just gone with his gut, and now he was glad that he had. In spite of everything, he was glad Rory was alive.
“I’m not complaining,” Rory smiled softly as he nudged Wes with his shoulder. “Just curious.” He’d thought about it a lot since that night, but it had never seemed like the right time to bring it up. He doubted Wes would’ve answered him early on and then later it just felt awkward to ask. But something about his train of thought brought it up again and he’d had just enough to drink not to care how out of left field it was. The thing that still surprised him, and apparently Wes too, was how unlike Wes it was. They both knew Wes should’ve killed him, yet he’d gone with his gut and now they were hiding out in a tiny little town, jumping at shadows. But he was alive, so he was forever thankful at the snap decision Wes had made that night. “Thanks,” he murmured. “In case I didn’t say it before. That night’s kinda… one big blur in my brain.”
Wes had wondered more than once if he’d made a mistake, of course. Less often the longer time went on and the more he started to feel for Rory, but it still crossed his mind occasionally. It was less questioning if he’d done the right thing and more if he’d done the smart thing. Had he really saved both of them, or had he only prolonged the inevitable? He told himself that even if they got found and murdered eventually, at least he’d bought them some time. It was often pretty shitty time, being on the run, but there’d been moments he was intensely glad he hadn’t missed out on. “You’re welcome,” he murmured back, looking over at Rory with a tiny half-smile. “Sorry it’s been such a pain in the ass, but ... I’m glad you’re alive, for whatever that’s worth.” Wes gave a faint chuckle.
“Yeah, me too,” Rory laughed softly. “It’s not that bad now. I mean, I think we’ll always be lookin’ over our shoulders, but… I was kinda doing that before and this isn’t horrible. Just a little boring.” It was a lot boring, but Rory would take that over the stress of the past few weeks. Months. God, he couldn’t believe how much time had passed. He’d call his life almost normal now if he wasn't on the run from two different crime families, one of them his own. It was just a bizarre turn of events that he was okay with the boring for the moment. He just hoped he could handle it going forward. He sometimes worried it was just a matter of time before he started seeking out some kind of adrenaline rush and they really didn’t have the spare cash for him to start gambling again… unless he won. That would make things so much easier.
If their circumstances had been different and not so life-threatening, Wes would’ve thought they had a pretty comfy little life starting to grow here. Point Pleasant had its oddities, but every town did, he supposed. It had been pretty good to them so far. And it was so quiet and isolated, Wes had been starting to feel safe here. After tonight, he didn’t know, but maybe it was a fluke of some kind. Nobody was beating down their doors to kill them or anything yet, so maybe they were just being overly paranoid. “Yeah,” he agreed with Rory’s assessment, shrugging a shoulder. “I can deal with boring. ... Besides, not all of it is.” His lips curled a little suggestively at Rory. Whatever one wanted to call it -- a relationship, an affair, desperation -- the thing that was growing between them had made everything more tolerable. Wes was pretty sure he wasn’t alone in feeling that way, either.
“No, not all of it,” Rory grinned over at Wes. He’d eventually get used to this kind of life, but having Wes there with him made it a hell of a lot easier. He was fine not putting a label on whatever it was that they had going on, so long as it kept on going. Rory finished off his drink and set his glass aside for the moment, not quite ready for another, and picked up the deck of cards sitting on the floor beside his side of the bed. “Can I talk you into playing a few rounds with me?” he asked as he began shuffling the cards. “I can think of a few things that’d be fun to wager.” He needed a distraction from the rest of the day and what better one than fooling around with Wes? He knew the cards weren’t necessary to get there; in fact, they’d probably slow them down, but it might be fun to see how long they held out.
As soon as Rory picked up the cards, Wes knew he was going to ask. It didn’t bother him -- playing cards was a way to pass the time without having to talk a bunch, something he wasn’t good at, and it seemed to scratch Rory’s itch to gamble a bit. Better to wager sexual favors than lose all of their money, right? Wes gave him a grin and tossed back the rest of his own drink so he could set the empty aside and shift his position on the bed. He made room between them for cards and crossed his legs. “I’m feelin’ pretty lucky tonight, hope you’re up for it,” he said, smirking again. It wasn’t exactly true, it had been a fucked up day, but getting distracted fooling around with his quasi-boyfriend sounded like the perfect sort of distraction. Wes was ready to think about something else. Or not think at all.