speakscanadian | for Asher

Entry tags:

amnesia plot,
asher

for Asher

The clothes he had dragged on didn't fit right. The shirt pulled over his shoulders, trousers were a little tight around the waist, but they were quality, slick and sharp, so he figured they had to be his.

The room was a mess. Mattress tossed off the bed base, drawers hanging open, side tables upturned. He was searching, frantically. He didn't know what he was looking for; clues, he guessed. When he'd woken up in a strange bed, in a strange wooden house, his first thought was that he'd been drugged. He always went on hunches, so he had run with the idea. Now he had a thousand and one questions and no answers, so he had to fill the blanks in himself. Just until the drugs wore off. Just until his brain kicked into gear.

A utility bill, an address book, something that would jog his memory, give him a name, at least. It felt like panic was his automatic go-to, so he was letting nature take its course, right until the frustration overwhelmed him and he held his head, trying to breath deeply.

There was a scratching at the door. A whine.

He tried to ignore it.

The clothes were definitely his. There were nothing but male clothes in the room, after all. A coupla nice watches. He had slipped one on to complete the look. The chain around his neck felt weird, as did the ring on his finger. Was this his place?

Scanning the room, he huffed out a heavy sigh, bending down to scoop up a suit jacket that had got caught in the cross-fire. He felt the material between his fingers. When he slipped it on, tried to make it comfortable across his too-broad shoulders, it felt familiar all of a sudden. It was a feeling he tried to hold onto. All of this had to be his, right?

Slipping unsteady hands into his pockets, he leaned against the nearest wall, tipping his head back and letting his eyes slide shut.

He cracked one open, just slightly. His hand slowly reappeared, a scrap of paper caught between thumb and forefinger. He brought it up to his face, studying it carefully. American Thread. Dry cleaners. A date stamp. A pick-up time. A name.

A Talos.

He got the same wash of feeling he'd gotten from the jacket. Familiarity. Something he was craving right now. This was him. A Talos.

The whining outside the door got louder, a faint annoyed growl ending each one. His mouth flattened into a line. There wasn't much he was sure of, but he did know A Talos wasn't a fan of stray dogs.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Vecchio?" Asher called, bending slightly to set a chair back upright again. It suddenly dawned on him that maybe a robbery wasn't to blame for this. Maybe Ray had been turned into a rampaging dinosaur with no sense of how destructive a tail could be.

It wasn't completely unheard of.

"Vecchio, you here?"

Had he not found the ticket in his jacket pocket, he might have been tempted to yell back then. Convinced, however, that the name being called out wasn't his own, he stayed quiet, shifting only to peek around the wall to see who was on the other side.

It was faint - or maybe it wasn't there at all, just his mind playing tricks on him - but the instant Asher thought he'd heard something coming from the other room he had his gun drawn and the safety off.

Aiming dead ahead, the barrel of the gun lead the way as he made his way toward the bedroom. He suddenly regretted not letting the dog in ahead of him.

It was the quickest of glimpses but it was enough to make him fly into a whole new panic, mouthing expletives at the ceiling.

The man had a gun! How had his life turned from...something he couldn't remember right now into this?

He backed away as fast and as quietly as possible but the floorboards were disloyal, creaking beneath his weight with each step he took. At a loss for where to go, he crouched down behind the mattress that was half upright and held his breath.

A sharp turn in the direction of the creaking that was most definitely not in his head and Asher zeroed in. His finger was poised and ready on the trigger as he moved around the mattress, and even when he realizes who the figure balled up behind it was, he didn't immediately let it go or drop his hand.

"Vecchio?" he asked. "Why the hell didn't you answer me!?" He finally re-holstered his gun, only because having it in hand now made the idea of clubbing Ray with the butt of it too tempting. "I could have shot you!."

The confusion was too great to hide from his face but at least the other guy couldn't see it, not with both arms covering his head like he was expecting a bomb attack from the sky any second now.

Who the hell was this Vecchio? There was nothing familiar about that name, so he dismissed it right away.

"Don't shoot," he replied, voice muffled. "I'm unarmed. Back away, please. Or I'll be forced to...do something I really don't want to do." Nor did he know what that was, but if it came to it, he figured he could wing something and get the hell out of there.

"Yeah, so am I, you moron," Asher replied, holding up his empty hands, not that Ray could tell they were empty while he was busy assuming the fetal position.

"Whoever ransacked the place is gone, so you can come out now." What kind of cop cowered in the corner while their home was broken in to?

Something inside told him not to admit that he'd been the one to cause all the mess. Standing up slowly, with an expression filled with wariness, he moved a foot back so that his stance was a little wider. Who knew if he'd need to make a run for it again?

He shifted uncomfortably in his clothes, everything still pinching in one place or another. ".....thank you for saving me?" He guessed, unsure what the man wanted from him.

"...you're welcome?" Brow arched, Asher studied Ray for a moment. He'd known Ray long enough to be able to tell when things were off with him, and things were most definitely off. In more ways than just the obvious.

"Why are you wearing my clothes?"

A head to toe sweep of the other man gave him nothing to go on, other than the fact that he, too, preferred luxury over comfort when it came to his clothes.

"I don't think..." He looked down at himself, then up at blue eyes. The last thing he needed right now was more confusion. "Listen, thanks, man." He took the guy's hand to shake it and slapped him against the arm. "Appreciate the help, really," he added as he side-stepped around him. "It was nice meeting you, nearly being shot aside."

"Thanks, man?" He echoed. His own confusion getting the better of him was the only reason Ray made it as far as he did, but even that was just a couple of steps before he caught him by the wrist.

"Nice meeting me? What the fuck are you talking about?"

Instinct cut in when his wrist was caught and he pulled it away roughly, stepping straight into the other guy's personal space, chest out.

"Hey, back off," he warned through gritted teeth. "I was lying. It wasn't nice meeting you. Let's not do this again, shall we?"

"What is the matter with you?" Asher asked, pushing Ray backward. He hadn't clocked him over the head with his gun, but maybe someone else had.

"If you think you're just going to leave me here with mess then you're out of your fucking mind."

Running a hand over his head, he glanced around the room as if seeing what he'd done for the first time.

"Can we start again?" With less yelling and gun-waving, if possible. "Hi." He held out his hand, offering the man a weak smile. "I'm... People call me Talos. I didn't catch your name, sorry."

"...you're shittin' me, right?" Of course he wasn't, but Asher had to ask.

He glanced down at the hand, then back up at Ray before he wandered off, only stopping once he came to the chair he had set upright when he first got home.

He sat, because he figured he was going to need it. "I didn't throw it. Wanna run yours by me again?"

"My name?" He checked, gaze following the man as he sat. "It's uh," he hand dove back into his pocket, checking that the slip was still there. It was comforting. "Talos. I go by my last name. You gonna tell me yours or what?"

"Asher," he said, going on after a beat. "Talos... So, I think you mean to say that you go by my last name." Which, on an average day, would be a whole lot more gay than Asher would have been prepared to deal with, but this clearly wasn't one of those.

A Talos.

Asher Talos?

Why wasn't he feeling any urge to argue with him, to tell him he was wrong, that that name was his? Suddenly, the slip of paper felt like nothing at all and he let go of it, arm dropping down to his side.

"What a coincidence..." he eventually said, for lack of anything helpful to say. He figured it was too much to ask that they were brothers.

"What a crock," Asher countered, scrubbing a hand over his face in frustration.

"What's the last thing you remember? Before I got here."

"You know you have fangs, right?" He asked, feeling stupid for checking. But the other guy clearly wasn't going to bring it up and there was only so much ignoring he could do before the elephant in the room got too big.

"And I remember plenty," he lied, his distrust evident on his face. "You're not in any of it."

"Yeah, I know. And this morning you knew that, too." Just like he knew his own name and hadn't been trying to pass someone else's off as his own.

"Is the Mountie in any of it?"

"Mountie?" He echoed, wondering if it wasn't this guy that actually had the screw loose.

"Listen, pal, clearly there's something going on here that I wasn't privy to. So whatever you did to me, just undo it and we'll say no more. I don't want any trouble." He held out his hand again but not close enough for A Talos to reach it from other there. "What d'you say, huh? Shake on it? Yeah?"

"I didn't do this to you, so I can't be expected to undo it. It's this place..." It had to be. Unless Ray had been clocked in the head somehow and that was the reason for the memory loss. But if something had happened to him while on patrol, there was no way Fraser would have left him by himself. So it had to have happened all of a sudden, and recently, too.

"Your name's Ray Vecchio. You live here. The Mountie is Benton Fraser, your best friend. And amnesia or not, you're not leaving this place looking like this."

Well, that explained a lot. Not. He might have been hungry for information but it was a bit too much to take in all at once. So he focused on the important parts.

His lip quirked up in disbelief, shifting his weight onto one leg and resting his hands on his waist. It was a stance Asher would have seen many a time before.

"I'm Italian?"

"And how," Asher replied with a nod. "That's what you choose to focus on? Your nationality?"

"I find it hard to believe you're telling the truth when I clearly don't have an Italian accent," he pointed out, as he passed Asher and disappeared into the other room. It was clear he wasn't going to find any answers here. "I can't even speak it. And as for having a friend called Benton?" He huffed with amusement. "Don't make me laugh."

"...you're Italian American, you moron. You're from Chicago, so that's where you get your accent. And you can speak it, you just can't remember. Just like you couldn't even remember your own name."

Asher stayed put, assuming Ray was going to start with the clean up in the other room. He'd only be in the way.

"His name's not the funny part. You should see the uniform." It wasn't the uniform itself, really, since Asher actually found it strangely appealing. It was the fact that he still insisted on wearing it, even though he couldn't be further from Canada if he tried.

Ray, for lack of any better name to call him, tuned the guy out as soon as he left the room. Striding straight over to the door, he pushed it open without a second's thought and was met with two paws diving for his stomach.

With a yelp, he stumbled back, batting the dog away, heart thundering in his ears from the shock. It barked playfully, tail wagging so manically Ray thought it might fly right off.

"Jesus Christ, get off me," he warned, trying to pass, only to have the dog get in his way each time. "This isn't fun anymore!"

Asher rolled his eyes once he heard the commotion. He none too happily got to his feet and walked to the other room, even when all he really wanted to day was set his mattress back in its rightful spot and go to bed, hopping this would all just fix itself over night. He didn't have that kind of luck, though.

"That's yours," he said, moving over to the pair and forcing the dog back outside and the door shut again. "It stays outside for a reason. And did you think I was joking about the mess? Because I wasn't. I refuse to wake up and have all of this still looking like a disaster area. What the hell were you looking for? Your marbles?"

"Ha ha, that's funny. Back up a second." Ray made no move to start helping with the clean up. As far as he was concerned, this guy had no proof he was even the one to have caused the mess. "You said I live here. Why the hell would you be waking up here too?"

"...roommates?" Asher offered, not particularly concerned with even trying to sell the response as fact.

"Any other questions?" Probably only about a million.

"Which bed do you sleep in?" He ground out when he heard Asher's tone. Ray knew which bed he'd woken up in and as far as he could see, there was only one mattress.

"The one with the upturned mattress." It might have been Ray's hut, but that bed was his, and he'd be damned if he'd let Ray believe otherwise.

Ray studied him for a moment, then tipped his head and narrowed his eyes. He had no interest in encouraging whatever stunt this Asher guy was trying to pull.

"Is that so," he commented noncommittally, giving Asher a once over that wasn't particularly appreciative.

Throwing up his palms, he backed away again towards the door. "Whatever sick game this is, I don't wanna play. I'll take my chances out there with the dog."

"Whatever. Just don't wander into dino territory." If he didn't want to believe him, that was his problem. He'd come back when his memory and senses did. "Like I said, though, you are wearing my clothes. So wrap your head around that one while you wander around aimlessly."

With that, he opened the door for him himself. "Take that with you," he said, just as the dog rushed in and pounced on Ray again.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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