scrumwithblake-blog

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Blake hadn’t been expecting to see Cassiopeia as he went on his regular jogging route, and he certainly did not expect to see the man following her grab her by the waist. His body tensed, unsure if he should run away or toward her to help, but Cassiopeia seemed to have everything under control. At least, it seemed like she knew how to throw a punch.

Blake slowed down, keeping his distance as he approached Cassiopeia; he did not want to alarm her and then get his own fist to the face. “Oi. You okay?”

Cassiopeia was just walking her way back to her apartment when a man started trekking beside her. After mistaking the familiar face with a friend of her neighbor’s, him snapping an unsolicited photo of her caught her attention. Her Adrenaline spiked up the moment an arm, out of nowhere, circled around her waist. She wriggled out of his grasp and when the man with the photo of her tried to reach towards her, she swung her fist towards his face and watched as he toppled over with a bloody nose. Then, she ran away as fast as her legs could towards the other direction. Finally, turning around a corner, she checked if they were following, but after some time when no one came she caved in.

“Ah, God!” she gasped, frustrated. “Can’t a person take a short-cut without anybody try mobbing her here?”

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His ears hurt. At first, Blake had hardly noticed the ringing in his ears, as he was more concerned about what felt like a large earthquake. Only it wasn’t an earthquake. Earthquakes did not hit London. Earthquakes did not come with a muffled boom, like a movie explosion. Earthquakes did not cause fires.

His ears hurt. Blake couldn’t hear, not anything more than a muffled roar, but he knew that people around him had to be screaming, that sirens were wailing. Just from looking around, he could see the woman who had been in line next to him in the coffee shop had her mouth contorted, like she was screaming, but he couldn’t hear it.

Dazed, he stumbled out into the street, past the blown-out front window of the shop, past the glass and dust and torn pavement. Suddenly, he stopped. There was a person crumpled in front of him, bleeding. Unsure of what to do, Blake squatted down. “Are you alright?” It came out a hoarse cry more than question, and although Blake could barely hear his own voice, he was sure he was shouting.

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graceshepardtw

It wasn’t often that Grace indulged herself, but she’d just finished up a job this morning and accepted a new one, the sun was shining, and she hadn’t heard from the organisation in a while. All in all, she was in a great mood, so spending far too much money on lunch at a local sushi place had seemed like a great idea. She’d walked to the park, claimed a nice little spot in the sun and was just opening her lunch when something hit her in the back.

Grace hadn’t realised someone’d sat down behind her and jumped in surprise, losing her grip on the box of sushi and watching with unconcealed horror as it landed upside down in the grass. “Yeah, no, that’s- that’s okay. Don’t worry about it.” she answered, with some difficulty.

Blake scrambled, or at least he tried to without knocking her sushi over or dropping his own lunch or hitting anyone else. He was largely successful on the latter two counts, but he felt his stomach turn as soon as he saw the sushi hit the grass with a wet thud.

“Christ! I’m so sorry.” Blake scrambled, trying to put the sushi back in the box without getting it even more covered in grass. “Please, let me buy you a new lunch.”

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donovan-clarke

There was a faint glimmer of recognition from deep within Donovan, the almost invisible feeling that he had seen the other’s face before. He quickly dismissed it, however. If he did not instantly recall the man’s face and name instantly, then it probably wasn’t worth recalling at all.

“Cold.” Donovan completed. To be honest, he was already finding it strangely refreshing to talk to someone who didn’t want something from him, or vice versa. He reminded himself that he really should get out and about a little more, away from hundred year old offices and equally decrepit people. “You have to get out of there any time you can.” Donovan gestured to the sliver of Westminster Palace that was visible through the trees. In truth, his office was actually on Downing Street, but he got the feeling that the other would get the idea. “Otherwise, you’ll go mad.”

Blake almost blurted out that he knew Donovan’s entire political history, or at least what was available to the public, but he bit his lip. Hell, someone once told him that he was lucky to be so quiet, so introverted, because it meant people were more likely to talk to him and less likely to get suspicious. Blake always used that to his advantage, and not just when out in the field.

He nodded along instead. “Yeah. It’s nice to finally have decent weather and not need a scarf or rain coat.” The sun felt nice on his upturned face, and for a moment, Blake considered stretching out. Then, he remembered the man sitting next to him. “Never been there, you know.” It was a lie; Blake had toured as a schoolboy, like every other child in London. “It nice?”

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donovan-clarke

Donovan didn’t know how it had happened. It seemed that one moment he was eating an early lunch in a virtually deserted park and then the next, there were hordes of people all around, swarming to and fro like bloated flies. He had tried to move from the patch of grass, but there was nowhere to move to. He was trapped with the unwashed masses, a nightmare for any politician, and he was attempting to eat his lunch as quickly as possible in order to escape this endless torture.

Donovan turned to glare at the personal space invader behind him and just about managed to hold himself back from caving his head in with his bare hands right then and there. “Not at all. It’s very crowded today.”

It was nice, to be low enough on the journalism totem pole that you knew everybody by name and face so you wouldn’t get fired when sending off snarky posts but nobody recognized you. Blake was pretty sure that if Donovan fucking Clarke had recognized him as that overly eager kid who once tried to take a stealth Snapchat of him, he would have died of shame on the spot.

Blake rearranged himself as gracefully as possible, tucking his knees up to his chest, arms wrapped around them like armor. “Yeah. Must be because of the weather, because normally i don’t eat lunch outside because it’s so damp and...” God, he was rambling, wasn’t he. Blake took a quick bite of sandwich to shut up.

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In his head, it was supposed to be a bit smoother. Just grab a bench, eat the sandwich he’d bought in the shop just down the way, enjoy a bit of sunshine during his lunch break. Blake rarely got to eat lunch outside his office, so he was going to make the most of it. Except nearly everyone in London had the same idea, and the tiny park was packed. Sighing, Blake searched for an empty patch of ground and settled down, hoping that the mostly dry grass wouldn’t stain his khakis.

Empty was a bit of an understatement. As he opened his bag, Blake’s elbow bumped someone’s back. “Oh! Sorry about that. Not a ton of room.”

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BLAKE COX is 22 and is portrayed by JOHN BOYEGA.

Designation: civilian

Occupation: Social media staffer for The Independent; Informant for the police

BIOGRAPHY

The first time Blake flew on an airplane, across the long stretch of the Atlantic Ocean, he was just over fifteen weeks old, snuggly strapped onto his father’s chest as he trekked through JFK to reunite with his mother. She was late, and she would be late every time after that. In fact, by the age of six, Blake knew that was what he had to expect when he flew to New York on holiday, to spend a few days or weeks with the woman who gave birth to him but who he barely could pick out of a crowd.

So it was just Blake and his dad, which felt right somehow, but maybe it was because Blake never knew differently. Well, he knew that his little two-person family was different, because all of his friends who had mums lived in the same country as them, but then again, none of his friends got to wear their muddy trainers in the house and eat bacon sandwiches for every meal if they wanted to. And nobody else got to spend the weekends in The Independent’s offices, scribbling on the huge white boards that lined the conference rooms or watching rugby on a giant flat screen TV. And sometimes, when Blake’s dad came home far later than he promised or had to skip his rugby games at the very last minute, leaving Blake to scramble to find a ride home since he wasn’t allowed to take the Tube by himself since it was too dangerous, Blake had to bite back that little voice inside of him that wondered if maybe life would be easier if he just went to America for university.

Of course, Blake did not go, although he secretly applied to NYU without his father finding out, hiding the acceptance letter under his pillow until the deadline had passed and his A-Levels landed him a place at Bath. It was only two hours or so by car, he told his dad as consolation, neglecting to mention, of course, that two hours was nothing compared to a transatlantic flight. And they didn’t have rugby, not properly at least, in the States.

Despite the distance, Blake still found himself in London seemingly more often than he would have guessed. At first, he told himself it was because the food in Bath proper was bland and boring and that the cinema near the university was always a week or two behind. And then it became an excuse to hang around the office and beg out a summer internship that kept getting renewed. And what was supposed to be a summer gig turned into driving back in his tiny car Thursday nights and working through until Sunday afternoon for a travel stipend and a bit of what his dad described as “spending money” that Blake spent far too often on tickets to attend local rugby clinics and pay for expensive gym passes.

And then, his knee blew out in a bad tackle, meniscus tearing as Blake fought to stay on his feet. Somehow, he managed to get rid of the ball, to win the scrimmage, not that it mattered after nearly six months of physical therapy still left his leg aching after a hard run or sharp turn. And even if his knee did heal completely, his dad made it clear: no more rugby beyond a touch game here or there.

Blake knew the job at The Independent, straight after graduation without even having to give an interview, was because of his dad, a way of cheering him up. It was supposed to be a gift, and Blake tried to treat it that way. After all, he even had his own desk, albeit a small one that barely could fit a spare chair, and he was the only one of his mates who could sort of balance the cost of a non-shitty apartment and paying off student debts. It was a good job, they said, perfect for a bright young guy who was quick-witted and up for a pun. They all wished they could get paid to muck about on social media all day, instead of working as receptionists or bank tellers. Blake didn’t want to hurt their feelings, so he would nod along, telling himself, and almost believing it, that soon he would really come into his own.

There was a touch rugby league in the park, mostly cops who played to let off energy, and Blake found himself joining them, grabbing a pint and a burger on the weekends, relaxing enough after one pint became two became three, to mention the juicy gossip he’d heard at work. It was accidental at first, just a slip of the tongue or two, but at a certain point, it became habitual. Friends were allowed to chat about work, after all. So what if sometimes he’d let information about a source or a breaking news story slip? It’s not like helping the police out a bit would hurt anyone.

PERSONALITY

+ ambitious, funny, introverted, inquisitive, optimistic - reckless, stubborn, snarky, disloyal, indecisive

Blake Cox is played by Catherine at EST.