speakscanadian | Every breath you take [for Asher]

Current Mood: determined

Entry tags:

asher,
tr

Every breath you take [for Asher]

Ray waved the boar meat with a bit more vigor.

"Come on," he hissed, flapping his other hand to get the dog moving. "You know you want this. Come on now."

And still the damn dog wouldn't get off the boat. It was a rottweiler for God's sake and it was nearly whimpering as it faced the leap between the boat and the dock.

"If you get off in five seconds, I'll give you twenty bucks."

Huh. It seemed dogs and children weren't all that different after all.

Chucking the meat in the opposite direction and making sure Onyx followed it, Ray brushed his hands together and turned back to the boat. He'd seen Asher board it at least half an hour before, if not more, and since then he'd watched it for signs of life. While hiding in the bushes with boar meat.

A steakout, if you will.

Ray wasn't quite sure where the line fell between shadowing in a professional capacity and stalking in a personal capacity but he was fairly sure he was walking that line right about now. Climbing onto the boat with a little more confidence than last time, he untied the ropes and cast them out to sea, quietly creeping over the deck on his toes. The natural creaking of the vessel was eerily familiar.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Even with a bed at the compound and one at Del's, sometimes the boat was still the best place to get any sleep. He didn't have to deal with Stephen being annoying (read: existing) on the other side of the room, or Del pouncing on him unexpectedly. And while some people got seasick over a boat's rocking, Asher actually found it relaxing.

Or at least he did usually.

The choppier surf is what had woke him, but he quickly wrote it off as a possible storm just starting to stir off shore. Not too concerned by that, Asher just rolled over and shut his eyes again. But they didn't stay shut for long.

Shooting upright, he stared wide-eyed out the window beside the bed, out at the island as it moved further away. "Shit," he hissed, scrambling out of bed and making his way out to the deck. Once there, his eyes still not even completely adjusted yet, he was sure that he was still sleeping. "What are-- Huh?"

There was no way this wasn't a nightmare.

When Ray had realized he'd been watching Asher sleep, even if only for a few seconds, he'd made a quick retreat back to the deck and busied himself making sure there weren't any icebergs looming on the horizon.

He heard Asher's approach and turned just in time to see him appear, dazed and squinty-eyed.

"Morning, glory." A beat later and Ray grinned, holding out his arms. "That's me dazzling you, not the sun."

Stepping further out onto the deck, Asher blinked, looked between Ray and the island a few times before turning around and heading back the way he had come from. "This isn't happening," he called over his shoulder.

At least not until he was fully dressed and put together again. If it was happening, Asher couldn't be expected to kick Ray's ass with no shoes on.

"Oh, but it is," Ray called back, a little too chirpily for the situation. He followed automatically and tried not to think about Asher's shadow/dog comment a few days ago. Ray could not follow easily; he just chose not to not follow...

"You don't snore," he commented airily, walking boldly into Asher's room and watching him. "That surprised me." He hadn't snored back when they'd been all-loved up but Ray had figured the spell had broken his ears too. Asher seemed like the type to snore. Loudly and grumpily.

"It's not at all creepy and unsettling that you know that. No,wait..." Shirt buttoned and tie done up again, Asher sat on the edge of the bed to lace up his shoes.

"What the fuck is this?! Are you off your medication or something? What's the matt-- Where's my dog...?" Oh, God, he'd killed his dog and threw him overboard and now Asher was next.

This was just his luck, really.

"Someone's a grouchy-pire," Ray commented, not quite under his breath. He moved over to the bed and dropped down next to Asher, turning to look at him. His strategy was pretty much to ignore the awkwardness in the hope that it just went away. "He's, uh...he's in a better place," Ray deadpanned, playing along. Humor was always the best medicine, right?

"And someone's a fucking psychopath!" He replied, up and out of his seat in a flash, but keeping his eyes on Ray.

"You still want to know why I'm pissed off at you? Okay, you kiss me, knee me in the crotch, kill my dog and steal my boat with me still on it! Those good enough reasons for you? What is your fucking problem?!"

Ray climbed to his feet a split-second after Asher and moved closer, holding his hands up in what he thought was a placating manner. "That vein in your head? Is gonna pop if you don't calm down."

Show he cared. Check.

"And I only did three of those things, so you can relax. Your dog's back on the island planning how to spend my last twenty bucks," he explained, rolling his eyes.

Show he didn't have a fetish for pet-killing. Check.

Asher would believe that when/if he made it back to shore and found Onyx alive. Ray would probably tell him anything to get him to calm down, including lying about his dead dog.

"Oh, well, all better then." Except for the fact that he'd still been abducted by a crazy person. "I'm not going to relax. This isn't a cruise, it's a crime. What the fuck am I supposed to find relaxing about this situation?"

"Me?" Ray asked hopefully, raising his eyebrows slightly. Which was probably the stupidest thing he'd said in the past year because if there was one thing they didn't do together that was relax. "Look, you're perfectly safe. I'm not even packing." He lifted arms up above his head for a pat down. "Feel free to check."

"You wish," Asher replied, nose turned up in disgust as he moved a step away.

Exhaling an exasperated breath, he rubbed a hand over his forehead and back through his hair. "What do you want, Vecchio?" Other than the obvious, which was clearly to give him a heart attack.

Ray dropped his arms slowly, his mouth pressing into a frown. Maybe it was the smell of boar meat that put Asher off.

He took a while to answer the question, caught off guard as he was. He'd been hoping to avoid cutting to the chase and spelling it out for Asher, mostly because he was pretty dyslexic when it came to situations like this. He was more used to flowers, chocolates and groveling. So in the end, he just lifted a shoulder in a shrug and stayed quiet.

"Great... Very informative. Good thing you didn't go through all of this for nothing." Except it wasn't great, not at all informative, and all of it was for nothing.

"Unless your next order of business it to kill me and throw me overboard, I'll be turning us around now," Asher said, making a grab for his jacket. No one was steering and Ray probably didn't have enough sense to drop the anchor, so who knew where the fuck they'd drift off to otherwise.

"No, wait," Ray lurched forward and grabbed Asher's forearm as he reached for his jacket. "Let, let me cook you something," he exclaimed, more babbling tumbling out of his mouth. "In the kitchen. I'll surprise you." Cooking was impressive. His Ma always told him to cook for women if he wanted to find himself a wife.

Not that Asher fitted that description. Though he had yelled at Ray other women had in the past...

"No," he said firmly, forgetting about the jacket and pulling his arm away. "I don't need you to cook for me. I don't want you to cook for me. And I've had enough surprises for one day." Asher hated surprises ordinarily, but today probably made it to the top ten worst.

"Come on," Ray insisted, putting his hand into his pocket to stop it doing that again. There was no way he was hiding in the bushes for half an hour, bargaining with a rottweiler and stealing a boat just to have it turn around again. "It's not like I'm gonna serve up your dog."

"You don't kidnap a person and then make them dinner." At least not in his experience. Kidnapping a person and making dinner out of them was something entirely different.

"Or lunch, or breakfast, of brunch, just in case you decide to be a smart ass."

Smart ass Ray had been planning to be but he snapped his mouth shut when Asher shot him down. Why did he had to make this so difficult? Couldn't he see that Ray was trying here? Kidnapping aside, it wasn't all bad.

"Don't look at me like that." He folded his arms across his chest defensively. "I'm not crazy." Maybe Asher would like him more if he were. The evidence definitely supported that theory. "I could've gagged you and tied you up but did I? No."

"No, you didn't..." Probably because Asher had woken up before he'd gotten around to that part. "I hope you're not expecting me to thank you for that." It would have fit right in with the rest of the weirdness.

"What if I had pulled a stunt like this? You'd be okay with it?"

"Whisking me away for a few hours? A romantic cruise with a little spontaneity?" Ray moved towards the exit, starting to feel claustrophobic and just a bit embarrassed now. He was starting to regret being so far out from the island. He'd done it so Asher couldn't automatically retreat like he had done before but he'd never thought about his own escape plan if things went pear-shaped. "That kind of stunt you mean? What's not to be okay with?"

"What part of our last few encounters made that seem like a good idea? You wanted a change so instead we can argue and knock each other around out on the water?" Technically, they'd even done that already, after Valentine's day.

"And don't give me that BS. If the tables were turned, you'd be reciting my Miranda rights on the way back to shore."

"The part where you-- You're not even listening!" It always pissed Ray off when Asher told him everything he said was bullshit, as if he was arrogant enough to think he knew Ray better than he knew himself.

"Don't bother asking if you think you already know the answer!" He yelled, slamming the door as hard as he could when he stormed back out to the deck.

"What the-- Hey!" It was Asher's turn to follow after a few seconds of trying to get over yet another case of whiplash, complements of the most aggravating human being he'd ever met in his entire life.

"You don't even know the answer!" He shouted back as he pulled open the door. "Or does shrugging and silence mean something different on your home planet?! And where the fuck do you get off storming away and being pissed off at me? In this scenario, that's my job."

"I know the answer! I gave you the answer!" Ray spun around, arms out for a second to keep his balance. The surf was getting choppier the further out they came, an apt mirror image of their conversation.

"Are you blind?" He waved his hands in front of his head, eyebrows raised as much as his voice was. "Are you actually blind? I mean, I keep trying to show you but you're just not getting it. Why the hell do you think I brought you out here?!"

"I can see just fine. Us here, island all the way over there," he said, pointing over the the mass of land. "You obviously haven't brought me out here to kill me because you're whining way too much. Unless that's how you plan to do it." He wasn't sure if that would be better or worse than dying of boredom.

"Oh my God." If Asher seriously thought he was going to kill him, then Ray had clearly been giving out the wrong signals. Or Asher just sucked at reading them. At least it was official - he'd finally found someone more annoying than Fraser but that wasn't exactly a cause for celebration.

"I brought you out here for the same reason you did," he said, exhaling a puff of air. That might have been the island's doing back then but Ray had hoped he would be able to recreate a couple of the memories for real.

That explanation didn't seem to clear things up any and Asher just stared at him as if Ray had been speaking in a foreign language. Eventually, though, it clicked. It was easier to remember the aftermath, the waking up and being pissed off and arguing. For the most part, he'd nearly repressed all memory of what came before that. Especially the parts that involved cupcakes. That he baked.

"Are you possessed by the island again...?"

When Ray realized Asher might have finally cottoned on, all he could do was stare. He'd done his best to resist any and all impulses he'd had since February and sometimes it was pretty easy. Convincing himself Asher was a criminal, a really bad person to the core, had been the perfect way to ignore the attraction he felt but lately it hadn't been doing the trick. Now Ray found their heated arguments as compelling as they were downright aggravating.

He started to shake his head. "No..."

"Huh..." It wasn't the most eloquent response, but at least it wasn't more yelling, which seemed like a step in the right direction.

"You might want to skip the abduction part next time," he suggested, rubbing the back of his neck. And watching him sleep and pretending to have killed his dog... "And add cupcakes." Asher didn't think he was the only one who should have to suffer that sort of embarrassment.

Standing stiffly and rooted to the spot, Ray tried to judge how genuine Asher was being. It was hard considering his radar was kind of frazzled at the moment.

"Okay..." Ray could take direction, even if it was the weirdest direction he'd heard in a long time. The cupcake comment earned a hint of an ironic smile though. "Cooking, no. Baking, yes. I'll try to remember that."

"Abduction, no." That was a lot more crucial than cooking or baking.

"And that still doesn't explain me getting kneed in the junk." And as long as there was no answer for that, Asher would continue to feel most comfortable with Ray at least an arm's length away whenever possible.

"Blind panic," Ray admitted, slipping his hands into his pockets to stop the nervous twitching of his fingers. "Thought I'd get in there first."

There actually hadn't been much thinking at all but he had figured that making a pass at Asher would earn him at least two broken bones. He hadn't expected the kiss, let alone have it reciprocated. "Survival instinct. Sorry about that."

"Yeah, well, I'm not sorry about punching you in the face." Asher rarely made apologies, and he certainly wasn't going to waste one in a situation where he fully believed that a punch in the face was not only well deserved, but it was downright generous of him. He could have caused a lot more damage, buzzed or not.

"That's okay." He gave the tip of his nose a scratch with his thumb and wandered a few steps closer. "You probably did me a favor. It looks smaller now, huh?"

"Not from where I'm standing. But if where I was standing was over there?" Asher said, hitching his thumb over in the direction of the island. "Then yeah. Maybe."

"Yeah, thanks." Ray flicked his gaze to the island, surprised to see how far they'd come.

"I guess we should turn around," he admitted, tipping his head back to peer up at the sail. "I promised your parents I'd have you home by...wow..." Double rainbow. "Look."

Asher followed Ray's gaze upward, squinting back against the sun. He wasn't too impressed by the display above, but the was no denying that it was pretty apt, in a way. "Mazel tov," he drawled. He didn't actually think the rainbow appeared just for Ray's coming out, but he'd take any ammunition for future jabs wherever he could get them.

It was a sign, Ray was convinced of it. It was a little bit obvious if he really thought about it but that was the thing about signs. You weren't meant to think about them; you were just meant to see and know. Maybe it wasn't only women who gave you signs to let you know they're the right one for you.

It was all about signs.

Ray dropped his gaze with a thoughtful expression and let it meander back to Asher. "Hey... How do you eat cheesecake?"

"...how do you eat pizza that's as thick as a phone book?" Asher countered defensively, brow arched in confusion. Being from New York didn't mean he had to eat cheesecake. Especially since he wasn't even from there originally. "I don't. I don't like the Knicks, either."

"I didn't mean 'cause of the whole New York thing," Ray insisted, stepping carefully back over towards the living quarters. "I mean...cheesecake." Not that Asher was anything like his Ma but he still wanted to know. "If you had to eat it. Fingers? Fork? ...Knife and fork?"

"I'd use a fork to stab the person trying to make me eat cheesecake," Asher answered, shrugging it off like it was a perfectly reasonable response to the question. Which it was. To him. "Assuming the knife was a butter knife and therefore useless."

Ray let out a puff of laughter and patted Asher on the arm as he passed. "You're seriously weird." And most definitely shouldn't be left alone with sharp objects.

He ducked back inside the boat, trying unsuccessfully to suppress a yawn around his words. "You can get us back, right? I'm gonna take a nap."

"Says the kidnapper who... smells like a butcher counter." He wasn't even going to ask about that.

Asher grumbled as he looked at the helm. It was Ray's fault they were all the way out there to begin with. He honestly had half a mind to strap a rope to him and make him swim the boat back. It would have saved him the trouble and it would have gotten rid of the smell. It was win-win.

Asher had a point. Shower first, then a nap. And if Ray happened to choose the bed Asher had been in, that was only because he didn't want to lumber the ex-vampire with two sets of sheets to wash.

"Oh, and uh..." He popped his head back outside, swallowing before he asked as casually as he could: "There's a party tonight for Tabula Rasa Day or something. I was wondering if...I'd see you there?"

"Probably." Though Asher would likely consider not drinking and wearing a cup this time around. Just in case. "If I haven't smothered you in your sleep for stinking up the inside of my damn boat."

Ray smiled slowly to himself as he withdrew his head back inside and started undoing the buttons on his shirt.

"Cool," he called out, stripping it off his shoulders before getting a whiff of himself. "Not cool," he added quietly, wrinkling his nose. "...Ow."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Every breath you take [for Asher]

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject