InsaneJournal

Who: Ashleigh and Aiden
What: Book shopping.
Where: Aiden's bookstore
When: Recently!
Warnings/Rating: None



Days passed in a strange sort of silence on both sides. Nobody called or said much, and there’d been nothing in his head - nothing from a door. Aiden knew there was something going on somewhere else in that hotel, but it had nothing to do with him. So he stayed quiet, and out of it, and didn’t try to pretend he was free from the burdens of the place because every time he did there was a pointed reminder that he wasn’t.

Other than that - nothing.

So summer picked up and Aiden turned the fans back on in the shop.

He’d never noticed a strongly-defined tourist season - it seemed like it was always a good time to go to Vegas, because everywhere else was worse - but summer did see a minor pickup in sales for him. People wandering along the back roads during the day, looking for hidden pockets of culture or alcohol, tended to stumble across his place. Books were the same the world over but somehow grabbing one in another city or state or country was more interesting than getting one at home. He picked up a tidy profit in the summer, which didn’t do much to carry him through the winter.

Fucking tourists, he thought idly, crouching under the desk at the front to dig out old boxes or paper or - as tended to get lost under there - pens.

One thing that Ashleigh Donovan enjoyed doing more than anything else was making a place hers. At home, which was what the Aria was becoming to her bit by bit, even if she didn't mean for it to be, it meant making her room her own, bits and pieces of her scattered around on the flat surfaces, her bag of skate gear in the closet by the door, her shoes kicked off in the entranceway. At the rink, it meant making her name known among the other girls, getting to know them, going out for a drink or two after practices. And in the city proper, it meant prowling the streets and getting to know the place she was calling home.

There was something about the bookstore that called to her, something old and dusty that screamed her name, and that was what had her stepping into its arms that afternoon, the bell ringing over her head in a manner that was almost too cheerful to be legal. She was dressed for the warm weather, smart khaki capris that contrasted nicely against her darker-toned skin, a strappy red tank, dark hair done up in a long ponytail that brushed between her shoulderblades. The door closed behind her with a quiet thunk, and then her footsteps were the only sounds as she ventured towards the stacks to explore, looking for some treasure to jump out to her.

The bell, still one of his longest-lived enemies - as far as inanimate objects went, anyway - almost made him hit his head on the underside of the desk. Avoiding it narrowly, Aiden grabbed the last dust-crusted pen out from a corner and pulled himself up, one arm braced against the top. It was too hot for a jacket, indoors or not, fans running or not, so it was only a t-shirt on for the first time in probably months.

He glanced at the door and then at the woman heading toward the shelves and boxes near the back. She was dressed for the weather, but he couldn’t tell if she was a local or not. No backpack, no hat or sunglasses - could be either. Didn’t do to pass judgment on that front until he knew for sure.

It was easy enough to judge that she was probably actually here to browse rather than steal, though. Nowhere to hide a handful of uselessly shitty books. So Aiden reached down under the desk again, still partially braced against the top so he could keep an eye on her, and grabbed hold of a handful of dust instead of the other pen he’d seen there a moment ago.

At the sound of someone shifting and moving about, Ash cast a glance back towards the front desk, a brow raising as the man there continued to keep an eye on her even as he fished beneath the desk for whatever it was he had lost. It was almost amusing, enough so that she turned away with a smile pulling at the corners of her mouth, attention drawn back to the books and everything there was to browse through.

It wasn't arranged in the traditional sense, at least not the way that Ashleigh was used to bookstores being arranged, but there was some order to it all, if you squinted and tilted your head to the side. Fingers trailed along the exposed spines, peering down this stack and then another before she finally stuck her head out, looking over towards the man at the desk. "Excuse me," she started, her voice thick with the Scottish accent, "might I get some help?"

She startled him a little in the middle of him trying to scrape the dust off his hand, and her accent made him look up at her directly. Definitely a tourist, then - and where her accent might have been almost indecipherable to the usual Vegas resident, Aiden had grown up with his parents and their relatives. More than a few had been very English. It wasn’t the same as a Scottish brogue but it only took him a second to realize what she’d said.

“Depends on what you’re looking for. I don’t have any maps that are in date.” He didn’t actually have any maps, period. Or travel guides, at least for the area. There were a handful for ‘general Europe’ somewhere in the bottom of a box. “Things are grouped by genre, but that’s about as detailed as I can get for the most part.”

He finally just dragged his palm across the leg of his jeans to get the last of the old dust off it and reached behind him for the shoebox of notebooks containing the ten thousand plus books that might or might not have been somewhere in the store. A real inventory system would have been nice, but it was an expensive dream for him. Sort of like a penthouse suite in a city that wasn’t Vegas.

His comment about maps had her tilting her head to the side, an amused expression chasing its way across her face as she emerged from the stacks of books and approached him, arms folded over her chest. "Why would you assume that I'm looking for maps?" she asked, her tone light, but there was an air of something dangerous to it, of a girl who wasn't afraid to speak up for herself. "Is there something about me that screams 'lost'? Because I wasn't aware I had written that on my face when I left home this morning."

Oh, good. It was going to be that kind of day. He should have known from the way the heat had crammed itself into the upstairs room that morning.

“You’re not local,” Aiden said dryly, matching her stare for stare, “and most tourists on the back roads tend to be lost, yes. Generally they’re looking for something to show them where all the better shops are. Or were. These days I probably shouldn’t assume. I’m sure you’ve got a smartphone.” It was far less sharp and sarcastic than it might have been even six months ago. It was almost frightening to him how quickly the situation had sobered his caustic side - but that was probably more to his advantage than he wanted to admit. “And it’s more in your voice than on your face. Scotland to Vegas? I would have thought you’d go somewhere less ... dry.”

And the supposed proprietor of this lovely establishment just served to dig himself deeper and deeper into the hole he was standing in. "No, I'm not local," Ash countered, her shoulders squared up as she faced off against him. "But if I was lost, you can assume that I would come in and immediately ask for a map. Or help finding something. But I didn't. And just because I've a Scottish accent also means little more than the fact that I call the highlands home." Ash paused again, taking a step closer towards him, refusing to back down and more than a little amused at all the assumptions he was throwing around. "I happen to have family in the area, which is why I came here, and which is why I'm now calling the city home. So no. I do not need a map, though I now know not to ask you for one. I was, in fact, looking for cookbooks. I prefer used ones instead of new ones from the larger establishments, or I wouldn't even bother. So." Ash tilted her head to the side, ponytail swinging over her shoulder. "Are you able to help me, or should I assume something about you?"

A comment about the family here making poor choices in living arrangements lined itself up on his tongue, but Aiden let it dissolve, giving the woman a half-shrug when she finished talking.

“You wouldn’t be the first, or the last,” he said idly, ignoring the low current of humor digging at the base of his skull. “Sorry. My parents never quite managed to get rid of their imperialist roots and unfortunately, that kind of thing tends to be genetic. Despite my best attempts otherwise.”

Good excuse.

“As for cookbooks,” he continued, ignoring the little jab, and letting go of the box behind him, “I can’t say I have that many since they tend to run garage sale circuits over used bookstores, but there’s a pile somewhere in here. Follow me.” He moved out into the store proper and maneuvered an aisle of boxes to find a few low shelves speckled with wide spines and too many JOY-OF-’s. “Down here. There might be a few up higher if someone’s already been at them.”

"Ah," Ash said by way of understanding, giving a nod as though that were the case. "I thought it was simply a case of being an asshole. My apologies for my assumption." It was said with a crooked curve of her lips as she followed him down the aisle of dusty books and old, yellowed pages, dropping down into a crouch in front of the shelves that he indicated to her. "Thank you," she said after a moment, already digging in to pull out a couple of the ones that were there, tugging them out with one index finger. The earlier acid forgotten, she was warm in her speech as she continued. "My brother has nothing in his kitchen, and I'm trying to cook a few things as I'm able. Men. I swear." Ash gave a shake of her head, humming softly as she tugged out a single volume, something from a church, oil and flour-stained. "Do you cook? Or do you subsist on take out like every other man I've met here?"

“Oh, you weren’t wrong,” Aiden said wryly, pulling back to try and pick his way toward the front of the shop again. “I’m the worst of both worlds. My own special kind of asshole.” He only half meant it. It was one thing to admit and accept you were a jerk; self-depreciation was another entirely, and something he avoided. At least in public.

He stopped and turned back toward her when she started talking again, glancing toward the front for a second before deciding there was nothing up there that absolutely had to get done. Instead he sat down on a box of books - after making sure none were going to wind up bent or crushed if he did so - and watched the dust swirl in the breeze of the fans and the dim light of the not-even-fluorescent bulbs in the ceiling lights.

“I’m one step down. Or up, I suppose, depending. Constant takeout’s too expensive for me. I subsist entirely on frozen foods I buy in bulk and off-brand drinks. You’d be surprised what gets ripped off and sold for ten cents a can.”

"Well, at least you can admit it," she commented as she sat down on the dusty floor, pulling a book out and into her lap, flipping through the old pages and running a finger down the words, looking through the collection of recipes from people who were likely long gone. "The worst kind of assholes, actually, are the ones who don't believe they are. They're the ones that you hate on principle." The cookbook was closed and sat to the side, another pulled out to repeat the process with. "And you do realise that cooking is cheaper than frozen foods, right?" Ash glanced over towards him, brows lifted. "It's not hard to buy a few staples and make your own food, and it's certainly cheaper in the long run." Ash closed the book and sat it to the side, rubbing her hands on the knees of her capris before she turned towards him fully, extending a hand in his direction. "Ash," she offered by way of greeting, callused hands with far too many scars littering the pale brown skin to make anyone believe she lived an easy, privileged life.

“Living month to month puts things in perspective,” Aiden said, more to himself than to the woman, and almost snorted when she brought up home cooking. “In the long run, maybe, but unfortunately this place doesn’t quite provide enough for me to think that far in the future. If it’s a choice between ten bucks in shit that lasts a week and thirty for things that have the potential to go bad, even if I could make them last, I’ll take the immediate savings. Besides, it’s like you said. Men can’t cook.”

True enough for the moment. He couldn’t.

Her extended hand gave him pause - most people didn’t introduce themselves so outwardly, usually he was getting names off credit cards if necessary - but after a moment he took it with a brief, dry shake. Her hands were calloused; his were too, though somewhat less so than hers.

“Aiden.”

"Most of the staples don't go bad, you realise. Dry goods. But to each their own." Ash closed hands with him for just a moment, giving a nod of her head as she pulled her hand back, fingers coming to lace together between her bent knees. "A pleasure, Aiden," Ash said a moment later before she turned back to the shelf of books, pulling another from the shelf to look through, the the two she had already found were probably more than enough. "Have you been in town for a long while?"

Part of him wanted to comment on her having never read about how dry goods could go bad, with just the wrong combination of water or, say, time and bugs, but those were somewhat out of date, he supposed, and in any case shooting down perfectly normal advice that wasn’t being rammed down his throat was a dumb, alienating move.

(Some days it was very clear that Nadir had left more of an impression on his mind than he would have liked.)

“A while. Not that long, but longer than I expected. Seven years, I think?” Much longer than he’d expected, actually. Aiden scowled at thin air and rubbed his hand on the leg of his jeans again. “Can’t say it’s been all fun and dazzling night lights. There’s not a lot to recommend here for a permanent stay.”

"Then why do you stay around?" Ash asked a moment later, her gaze on the book in her lap as she paged through the recipes, licking her finger to catch another page to flip. "I just got here last month. My brothers are in town, so I'm staying with one of them for the moment. Most of the people here seem to have a love/hate relationship with the town, which I do not understand. Why stay somewhere that you don't love?" One shoulder shrugged up and she glanced up towards him and the scowl on his face. "And you ought to be careful. It's going to stick that way."

“Hasn’t yet,” Aiden said, a little more dryly than he’d intended, and then, “Generally, because there aren’t a lot of other options. This place may be generally terrible and full of assholes, like most places, but when you’ve got something you stick with it. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for this store, which I can’t say I love, but it’s as close as I can get.”

He didn’t mention that while going back home was an option, it wasn’t one he could manage yet. Unless his entire life went to hell - something he was finding more and more likely as his brain was pulled at by a psychopath - there was no way he could leave. And anyway, even if he try going somewhere else, what would be out there for him? This wasn’t a fun life but it was a steady one, and the bills did get paid eventually.

Ashleigh didn't say anything for a long while, humming over his words as she slid the cookbook back into its home on the shelf, drawing the two she had chosen into her lap with her hands resting atop them. "So you stay, not because you want to, but because there's nothing to go elsewhere for?" It seemed as sound as anything, because even Ashleigh knew that she wouldn't have left Edinburgh had it not been for the journal, for the something else that lurked out there, but the difference between her and Aiden was that she had loved home. Time would tell with whether or not she would fall in love with Vegas, but Ash found it hard to imagine a life here in the glitz and glitter of Sin City. "Well, Aiden," Ash started as she pushed herself up to her feet, dusting her rear off from the dust that had clung there. "At least you can say that this city has at least one person that isn't an asshole, I hope." It was said with a smile, and there might have been a flirtatious pull to her lips with it.

“Better than staying because I have no other choice.” Though it might have been considered the same thing, he supposed, watching the woman stand and dust herself off.

The smile went, as usual, right past him. Aiden shrugged and stood up, ignoring any dust on his own person (it was always there anyway).

“Oh, there’s plenty of people here who aren’t assholes. They’re just hard to find among the general shit everywhere else. And you weren’t exactly flawless when pointing out what an asshole I was being,” he pointed out, eyebrows slightly raised, his voice casual rather than accusatory. She’d been decent, after all. Probably a bad idea to alienate her when she was actually holding books, intending to buy them. “That all you were after?”

"I never claimed to be flawless," Ash started, hugging the two books to her chest. "But I do claim to be honest, and that's all I was being, Aiden. But yes, this is all I'm after at the moment. You should come over for dinner sometime. As thank you for helping me find the books, I mean." She edged past him, glancing over her shoulder towards him for a moment before making her way up to the front desk, laying the two books down on its surface. "My brother doesn't mind guests too much. Neil's rather easy going like that."

Aiden made his way back to the counter, eying the tags on the books that hold him the price (coded by color and tag shape, rather than actually being priced; made it more difficult for everyone except him) so he could get her set to go. He flipped open the day’s notebook and wrote down the titles, holding back a comment (yet again) about honesty.

To be invited to dinner for doing what was generally considered his job was out of left field, and Aiden raised his eyebrows, surprised. It was when she said her brother’s name was Neil that he looked up, a little startled, silent for a moment before asking a wary question.

“Your surname’s not Donovan, is it?”

She was digging her wallet out of the bag she had slung over one shoulder when he spoke again, her brows raising in question. "It is, in fact," Ashleigh responded, hands stilling, fingers curled around the black leather wallet as she studied him for a long moment. "Do you know Neil?" she asked, stepping carefully. It really wasn't that much of a surprise, given that her brother had been here for much longer than she had, but the city was large, and it seemed too much of a coincidence to run into someone who knew him here, at a bookstore that she was quite certain Neil would never step into.

How to explain to her how he knew her brother? There was no way he would tell her the truth. She was probably here for a change of scenery, visiting for a while to see what the fuss was all about, and undoubtedly Neil wouldn’t tell her about the hellish bullshit he had to put up with in relation to that hotel. And of course there was no way the other man would be down here on his own time, even with what little Aiden knew of him. Excuses scrambled in the back of his head, and fortunately, one of them had half a scrap of honesty to it.

“Yeah,” Aiden managed after a moment, shutting the notebook and pulling the cookbooks closer to him. “Met through a mutual friend. Can’t say I know him very well, but every so often we talk.” Rarely now, which was probably for the best. It meant Otto and the Goblin were keeping their distance from each other. “I’m sure it seems unlikely, given the difference in cost of living, but stranger things have happened here.”

"Sorry. I didn't mean to be rude about it. It's just surprising that I've run into people that know my brother in a city this large. I actually ran into his girlfriend at the skating rink of all places, so it just seems strange to meet yet another elsewhere." Ash didn't even think to bring up the journals, the hotel, everything that was wrapped up with them, because that was not the kind of thing one brought up to near strangers. Instead, she opened her wallet and pulled out a couple of bills, looking back towards Aiden for the total. "How much do I owe you, Aiden?" Ash asked, her smile an easy thing now. She'd have to ask her brother about him, see what maybe wasn't being said.

Now that was unusual. Almost too coincidental. But Aiden didn’t say anything more about it; he just made a noise of surprised disbelief at that and took the books, putting them in a plastic grocery bag and making sure it would hold the weight. Part of him wanted to get hold of Neil as soon as she was gone and ask him some very pointed questions, but on the other hand - no. The guy was probably busy enough with her here. If the opportunity came up, sure, he’d do it. For now, it would be chalked up to bizarre circumstance, and possibly that fucking hotel.

“Thirteen bucks.” Technically it was more, but one of the books was looking grungier than he remembered. Plus, if she had a favorable opinion of him going back home, maybe she’d mention him to Neil and then the conversation would come to him without having to expend much effort. “The bigger the book, the more I can charge.”

Ashleigh peeled off a twenty and handed it over to him, lifting a hand at any offer of change. "That's a good business model to have. I'll try to shop for tiny books then." It was said with a laugh as she took the bag from him, hooking it over one wrist and tucking her wallet back into the depths of her own shoulder bag. "Given that you know my brother, you should come over for dinner sometime. I know he won't mind, especially if he knows you. Then his baby sister isn't bringing strangers home like I might otherwise."

“I’m sure he’d prefer semi-strangers over out and out strangers, true,” Aiden agreed, putting away the money and leaving the change in the box when she refused it. “But ask him first. It’s not that we don’t get along, I’d just hate to appear out of nowhere.” And it wasn’t that he didn’t like Neil. He judged him, sure. Though there was a lot of room to improve, even for a guy that rich. But considering their door halves, he was wary of even going near the guy sometimes, on the off chance that both of them lost control again.

Still, this wasn’t the same sort of circumstances. And turning down free food was a terrible crime. And it had been a while since he’d actually gone more than five blocks for anything.

“I’ll give him a call, when I get a chance. Did you need a receipt with those?”

"I'll run it by him, but I really don't think he'll mind." One hand twined around the loose spill of her ponytail over her shoulder, giving it a tug before releasing it with a shake of her head. "And no receipt. I don't think I'll be returning them or anything. Cookbooks are rarely that bad, at least in my experience." Ashleigh gave Aiden another look, long and lingering, and then she nodded her head as though making her decision about him. "Thanks for your help with these," she added, lifting the bag with the two cookbooks before she paused, her eyes widening for a moment. "Dinner. What's your number? So I can call you?" She was digging out her phone, the sleek thing that served as her journal and phone, calling up her address book.

Well, no way to get out of this one. Aiden automatically grabbed at the phone that doubled as his journal, but moved his hand away and went for his real, actual, personal phone that doubled as everything he did for his business. The other one, as far as he was concerned, was Otto’s. He was just borrowing it for occasional contact with people in the same sort of shitty situation as he was.

“It’s, ah … here.” He pulled up the number and flipped the screen to face her, still trying to decide whether or not to ask Neil if his sister was just here for a while because of reasons, or if she was stuck here for one particular reason. It didn’t seem like it - she seemed plenty well-adjusted. “And it’s not a problem. Selling shitty books is what I do.”

It took only a moment to plug Aiden's number into her phone, and then she was grabbing his from him without permission, quickly sliding her own number into his address book with a few pushes of the buttons. "I'll keep you in mind when I need more shitty books, Aiden," Ash said as she returned the phone to him and tucked her own back in her bag, backing away from the counter with a wave of her fingers. "Take care of yourself. I'll call you soon." And then the girl was out, the bell over the door ringing quietly in her wake.