speakscanadian | [truth plot] Asher

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[truth plot] Asher

In all his time on the island, this was the first that Ray had stood within the orchard overlooking the garden. He'd needed a quiet place to think, where he wouldn't risk questions coming at him left, right and centre. After badgering Danica for twenty minutes in the morning, he'd made the nasty discovery that he too was a pawn in the island's antics today. The trees provided the kind of cover he needed.

Not that he was hiding. He wasn't the one that had been hiding anything.

Groaning when he realised he was still thinking about it, Ray tipped his head back and took a deep breath. Overhanging leaves filled his vision, all fresh and bursting with color. It was pretty depressing, considering how he was feeling inside.

Asher had bitten Stephen and he'd shot a bear. The words had come out of his own mouth. And still he'd lied about Rorshach, despite those confessions. Granted, Ray and he hadn't been on the best of terms back then, but he had had every opportunity to come clean since.

Maybe he shouldn't have been surprised. Maybe deep down he'd known all along and had decided it wasn't a big enough deal to stop him getting closer to Asher. If that was the case, then it was all on Ray.

Dropping his head, he walked aimlessly amongst the trees towards the pathway. He'd spent most of his life relying on his hunches but it had only taken one man, this man, to stop him doing what he did best. Instinct was key to avoiding mistakes but Ray had stopped listening to his. He'd thought he'd been following it when he'd brushed aside his uncertainties and let himself fall for Asher but perhaps he'd hadn't. Maybe he'd been wrong. Maybe.

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"Whoa, whoa." Asher hands were up around Ray's wrists quickly, gently tugging him away from his jacket.

"What are you doing? Broad daylight, public place, sand." The first two Asher might have been able to square away with, but the idea of sand in unwanted placed was and always would be the deal breaker.

"Not that," Ray told him. Moving his hand over Asher's jacket, he flicked his finger against the barely noticeable bulge. It hit the gun. "I wanna see that."

"What the hell for?" Asher asked, redoing up his buttons. "It's just like yours... but different." A gun was a gun, and outside of his own, he was sure Ray had seen plenty of them on the job back in Chicago.

"I need to check it." Ray had seen it before, briefly, when clothes were flying off or being hastily tugged back on; but he needed to see it now. Asher couldn't possibly have been walking around all this time wearing the weapon right under Ray's nose. "I need to see if that's the gun you used."

"Used for what?" He had no intention of just handing it over to Ray no matter what the reason behind this sudden nonsense was, but he figured he'd ask anyway.

Ray covered his face with his hands and turned his back with a groan. "Don't ask me that," he got out, before the rest followed. "Used to shoot Rorshach. The man that attacked your sister."

"Oh, you have got to be shittin' me...," Asher said with a sneer. "You're serious? You're really on that again, after all this time?" Truth be told, Asher wouldn't have been surprised if Ray had never actually been off it.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?"

"I don't like lies, Asher," Ray replied, his back still to the man. He dropped his hands to his waist, a heavy sigh escaping. "You made me feel like an idiot back then, like I was incapable of putting the pieces together."

He understood why Asher did it and Ray would be a hypocrite if he said he wouldn't have done the same for his own sister. That wasn't the problem though.

Turning, he gave Asher a side-long glance. "But I was right, wasn't I?"

"Of course you were," Asher replied with a shrug. His eyes went wide a second later, once he realized what he'd just said, and why he had just said it.

"Fuck me," he said on a harsh breath, head tilted up to the heavens. He couldn't take his frustrations out on the island, but Ray was available, and Asher was willing to bet he'd been well aware of what he'd been doing.

"You knew this was happening, didn't you? Thanks for the head's up."

"Oh, the little truth thing? Yeah. Found out while I was talking to Danica this morning. It wasn't the only thing I discovered."

Ray shook his head down at the ground and pinched the end of his nose between a thumb and finger. He could hardly believe Asher sometimes.

"Don't you dare have a go at me about hiding something from you."

"I didn't owe you a damn thing then, so get over it. Not only did the guy walk away from it," - walk, limp, same thing - "but he's not even here anymore. Hasn't been for a while. So stop beating a dead horse."

"I don't care about him," Ray retorted, an incredulous look on his face. "I care about us. I admit," he continued, lifting a hand and returning to Asher, "that I'm a suspicious guy. I know that's hard to live with. But if you had just..."

There was one good thing about only being able to tell the truth. It meant Ray couldn't lie to himself either. He'd known all along what Asher had done, even without the evidence. It really was all on his own conscience. He couldn't pretend that lashing out at Asher would change that.

"You have no idea how badly I want to ask you whether there is anything else you've kept from me." Ray was suddenly pretty sure that that would be the most damaging question of all. Even he knew that a relationship didn't work without some degree of trust, and testing that trust when the other person couldn't lie would be fatal. "But I'm not going to."

"If I had just what? You would've pinned me for breathing wrong back then if you could have." And he didn't even think that was an exaggeration. "Why the fuck would I have told you anything? He was long gone by the time anything happened between us, so why bring it up?"

"No reason. I wouldn't have either." Snapping his eyes shut as soon as he'd answered, Ray held up his palms. "That's not what I meant to say. Except it was. That was a lie. No, that was a lie. No-fuck--" His hands clenched into balls. "I don't trust easily, okay? I have problems with it and you have been one of my biggest. But that's only because I have feelings for you."

"Well, then, I frankly don't care what your problems are, not when you just admitted you would've done the same as me." It meant the core of the argument didn't actually exist, and if Ray kept pushing it, that just made him a hypocrite.

"And you should probably consider not talking anymore."

"How do I always end up being the bad guy?!" Ray asked in a fit of frustration, the balled fists crashing straight down to his sides. "I hate it when you do that, when you tell me to stop talking, like what I got to say isn't worthy of your ears. I'll talk if I want to."

"I'm not making you out to be the bad guy, but you're not gonna make me feel like one because I was looking out for my sister and didn't parade myself down to the IPD office after I did it." Luckily, he hadn't been affected by any forced honesty mojo at the time.

"And I'm not telling you to stop talking for my benefit, I'm telling you to do it for yours. Obviously everything you're saying isn't coming out because you want it to."

"Some of it is coming out willingly just fine." Ray thought there was a difference between looking out for his sister and seeking vengeance, but he felt no compulsion to point that out right now. "I'd like to forget that I asked."

"So don't ask questions you don't really want the answer to." It seemed like a simple enough solution to him. "Or don't be a pussy when you get answers you don't like."

"I think you should be quiet now," Ray replied sullenly, folding his arms and dropping his gaze back down to the ground. The entire conversation would have been a lot easier had he really just been looking for a contact.

"Pussy," Asher said, mimicking Ray's stance and crossing his arms over his chest. "Exactly how long do you plan on staying mad about this? If it's going to be a while then I may as well go shoot someone else, that way I'm actually being persecuted for something."

"I don't plan on staying mad, but I was thinking about pretending to be so that I don't seem like such a pushover," Ray answered, pressing his thumb and fingers into his eyes halfway through his reply. It looked like a padlock on his tongue would be the only way to stop the truth coming out.

"Great." For him, not so much for Ray, but that worked out just fine by Asher. "Save myself the bullet."

A crease formed between Ray's eyes. "I hope you're joking." Otherwise his opinion of Asher only using the gun when provoked was completely wrong.

"I hope you're joking." Unlike Ray, Asher didn't seemed compelled to just start spouting the truth randomly, and he wasn't going to dignify that with a proper answer unless forced to. Ray could believe what he wanted until then.

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