InsaneJournal

Who: Ashleigh and Aiden
What: So they went out drinking and then ... (also including an alter switch.)
Where: Arcadia Unbound
When: Recentlyish
Warnings/Rating: Sads. Some shirtlessness. More sads. So much awkwardness.



Having long since given up on the idea that his life might get better, Aiden was more than a little surprised by recent developments, and for however cautiously he was about any optimism, it was still actual optimism. For once. A second source of income, thin and sporadic as it was, and an easier time sleeping some nights, and … he wasn’t about to say a girlfriend because that meant he had to consider himself socially acceptable, but a decent friend and drinking companion. Ashleigh had stuck around despite his generally prickly exterior, and when things hadn’t exploded into flames in the first two weeks, he’d lowered his guard a little. He did have some friends, in the world. And despite what he might have suggested, new ones weren’t a bad thing.

So maybe she was a girlfriend, even if they hadn’t officially stated they were dating. Maybe. For the moment, she was his competition in a shot contest, which he had handily lost (because drinking to try and black out the insomnia did not necessarily build up a higher tolerance). And the person he had to forcibly steer away from the bike before she dragged them both on it and got them killed, because god help him if he was going to die in a motorcycle wreck before he got alcohol poisoning. So drunk, swearing, and more than a little unstable, Aiden and Ash hailed a cab and made his back to his place in what could probably safely be called one piece.

“Fucking cheap,” Aiden managed, having drunk less and therefore being a little steadier on his feet as he leaned away from handing over the cab fare. “You only got more in because you cheated.” How wasn’t clear. But that wouldn’t stop him even if he was sober.

How she had managed to convince Aiden to go out was one thing. The bigger question was how she had convinced him to go out and attempt to drink against her. He had lost, of course, as most people did, because if there was anything that owning a pub had taught her was how to drink and how to handle her alcohol better than most. So they had drank, and Ash had won, and she was three sheets to the wind by the time he hauled her Scottish ass away from her bike and to a cab.

The one thing someone had to learn about Ash was that alcohol brought down the walls. She wasn't normally incredibly affectionate or touchy-feely, but after a few drinks all those inhibitions were out the window. The ride back to Aiden's place was filled with a hand here, her lips there, at least until she gave in to the inebriation and spent the last ten minutes with her head pillowed on Aiden's shoulder, half-asleep in her alcohol-daze.

She didn't rouse again until the cab was stopped and he was hauling her out of the cab and onto the sidewalk where she promptly sat down on her rear, hardly feeling the impact as she settled with a drunken grin in his direction. "And how exactly did I cheat?" Ashleigh asked, her words strung together like the fairy lights on holiday decorations. She was red-cheeked and full of grins, watching him as he swayed near the curb as the cab finally pulled away. "You just can't hold your liquor against this lass," she taunted, giving him a flash of white teeth before she held her hands out to him. "Help me up, Aiden?"

The physical contact Aiden had just assumed to be the alcohol. People threw common sense out the window to get drunk in the first place, so why keep it around once the booze had settled in? He’d mostly ignored the casual touches and leaned away whenever her mouth got a little close and anyway she pretty much passed out for most of the cab ride. That she couldn’t manage to stand up straight didn’t surprise him all that much. Considering the number of shots she’d beaten him by …

“Couldn’t say,” he said, words only a little slurred but slower to come out as he focused on making sure he didn’t sound drunk. Walking into a wall was preferable to being completely misunderstood whenever he spoke. “But you did. Spiked mine. With … something. Windex.” No, that was poisonous. He blinked and tried to clear his head to get to his thought more accurately. “Gasoline. I don’t fucking know.” Far be it from him to admit defeat. Carefully, but still a little overzealously, Aiden took Ash’s hands when she held them up and pulled her to her feet, nearly dropping them both back into the street. Fortunately balance prevailed, and he reached into his pocket to try and find his keys. “Should’ve … nevermind. Come on. Don’t trip.” He headed for the door and unlocked it, helping Ash balance as they went.

"I did not spike your shots with anything. You just can't hold your liquor!" It was said in as singsong of a tone as she could manage with as drunk as she was, the grin never faltering as he helped her up to her feet. There was a stumble and a laugh and she fell against him for a moment. But with Aiden's desire to avoid physical contact, it didn't last for long, leaving her swaying until he was moving towards the door, close beside him as he unlocked it with only a small amount of fumbling. "If you wouldn't treat me as though I've the plague, I wouldn't be in danger of tripping," Ashleigh declared, a little too loudly, a little drunkenly, her Scottish brogue heavier than normal.

But she managed to stumble her way inside, sitting down promptly in the chair by the counter, the world swaying a little too much for her to be comfortable staying on her feet. Maybe drinking the amount they had had been a bad idea, but by that time had come, she was far past the ability to make those sort of logical decisions. And she wasn't drinking to drown her sorrows or anything like that, no. People drank when they went out, and that's what her and Aiden were doing. Going out. Dating. Something. Was he a boyfriend or just a friend she wanted to have a tumble in the sheets with? She wasn't entirely sure other than the fact that she liked his eyes, his hair, and that wrinkle between his eyebrows when he was particularly annoyed.

Leaning against the counter, Ash watched Aiden as he closed the door, her gaze following him, albeit unsteady. "I like you," she finally said, the words formed slowly and carefully. "I really like you, Aiden." Her head tilted to the side, pressing against the counter, a small smile pulling at her lips that was wholly unlike the drunken grins from the cab. "I haven't liked anyone like this since Matthew. That's been a long time, you know. A long time. And I like you. You're cute. And your ass is amazing." She let out a laugh then, something incredibly free in nature.

Of course he could hold his liquor. He wasn’t dead yet, was he? Aiden ignored the singsong insult and got Ash through the door with a minimum of trouble, though locking it again proved more difficult as his fingers decided that once they were in a relatively safe place it was just fine to stop working altogether. He heard Ash make her way to the chair behind the counter and squinted in the semidarkness at the lock. Did he need the key on this side? No. That was the whole point of a deadbolt. Easy to lock, hard to unlock. Fucking pain in the ass that his eyes didn’t work correctly.

He managed to get the door locked just in time to hear her careful words move across the room. They dropped into his brain slowly, like featherweight anvils, the slow realization of what they meant as they came together making him frown at the door and then blink a few times to try and rationalize what he was hearing. Very rarely had mention of her dead husband ever come up, and when it did, it was generally a low-key, quiet thing. Not in conjunction with any mentions of his ass. Even with his long-standing avoidance of romance and sexual interest, warning bells lit up in the back of his head, ringing muted alarms through the alcohol haze.

“It’s not impressive,” he snorted, all those realizations not having quite gotten out to skin level yet and so not leaving him with anything more than a confused frown as he turned around and made his careful way toward the counter. “Don’t imagine it’s anything all that interesting, considering I sit on it almost exclusively.” Besides, how would she have an accurate judgment of it? She’d never seen him with his pants off.

"Trust me, it's interesting," Ash said in her most convincing voice, the smile not quite leaving her face as she hauled herself up to lean against the counter towards him, forearms braced against it. She didn't say anything for a long while, eyes focused on that confused frown, the furrow between his brows that happened at the same time. "It looks good in those dark pants you've worn. I like those. I quite like those a lot." There was another smile and she reached out towards him, fingers ghosting over his arm in a light touch that was hardly there, just fingertips over skin, teasing and testing his reaction. "You know," Ash began a moment later. "Most people, when told by someone that they like them, say something in response." She looked up then, searching out his gaze, questions laying there. It wasn't that she needed or wanted declarations, but something there would be nice. Something that might fill up that hole inside her that had been hollowed out when Matthew left and took her heart with him.

Aiden would have liked to say it was the alcohol slowing down his reaction time, but in reality he probably would have paused for way too long even stone cold sober. Compliments were rare things for him, mostly because he ensured his personality was too volatile for them to ever arrive, and so a handful all at once like this (directed primarily at one area) actually put him ill at ease. Some people didn’t know how to take a compliment and Aiden was probably their king.

“ … right. Thank you?” It was more a confused question than anything else. Her fingertips against his arm were like static shocks, making him twitch slightly and raising bumps on his skin. “Sorry. It’s been my entire life since someone I wasn’t related to said that.” Those alarms weren’t getting much clearer but they were persisting anyway. “And they’re just jeans.” And that set of compliments was something no one had ever said to him, ever.

"Not just jeans, Aiden," Ashleigh clarified, fingers coming to lay against his arm now, a point of connection between them. "They are jeans that make your ass look quite nice. Not every pair will do that, you realise." There was another lazy smile, and then Ash was hauling herself up further, leaning across the counter to grab at the front of his shirt with her free hand, and then she was kissing him, drunken and more than a little sloppy, but a kiss nonetheless. Brown eyes were closed, her hand tightening on his arm just a little bit, tasting heavily of the scotch she favoured at the bar.

As far as he was concerned, they were just jeans, like every pair he’d ever owned. But there wasn’t much time to respond, because Ash had leaned over the counter to grab him by the front of the shirt and kiss him, which made the tingling shocks against his arm seem like absolutely nothing in comparison.

It was probably in both their favors that he was drunk enough to keep his immediate instincts too sluggish to respond; otherwise, he would have jerked back out of surprise. As it was the shock stilled him for a few long seconds. But while he was staring at thirty years and still a virgin, he’d had one not-really-a-girlfriend in high school who’d at least given him a crash course in making out. (The relationship had lasted a week before his poisonous attitude destroyed it, but he placed half the blame squarely on her.) So instead of inexpertly trying to extricate himself and burn with embarrassment, and despite the ringing still ricocheting off the back of his skull, Aiden tried to return the favor. Scotch and whisky burns against them both and he was nothing like an expert and had more reservations now than he ever had before in his life but he was trying because it wasn’t as bad as he’d been expecting.

No one would ever say that Ashleigh was an expert in kissing. She had gone to an all-girl's school up until university, and it was there that she met Matthew, and other than that heated encounter with Sam in the alley before she knew who Sam was, Ash didn't have a lot of experience other than her husband and the girl. She wasn't the sort to go throwing kisses around like they meant nothing, and even if she would never admit it, these kind of things were important to her. It was that romantic side she didn't like to profess to, so when Aiden made an effort to return the kiss, Ashleigh found herself relaxing against the counter and into him.

It wasn't long, it wasn't drawn out, but when she finally pulled back, cheeks flushed and her eyes dark, there was definitely something in her eyes that hadn't been there before. "Really like you," she mumbled again before she leaned in for another kiss, this one a little more earnest, going so far as to push herself up on her tiptoes to get a little closer, half laying on the counter with the effort.

Unusual and more than a little sloppy but when Ash broke off and Aiden tried to catch his breath he didn’t feel overwhelmed. It was … strange, yes. But not a bad thing. He’d never had an inclination toward this before, so a small part of him was wondering why now? Maybe because there’d never been anybody in his life interesting enough to warrant interest. Maybe because he was smashed. A little of both, he blithely assumed, still startled enough to not manage to get another word in before Ash was kissing him again.

This time he was the one to pull back after trying to support her so she didn’t fall off the counter.

“Kind of awkward, isn’t that?” he said, one hand on the upper arm gripping his shirt in an almost-stranglehold. “Should probably … uh. Move a little. Less likely to slip off. It’s an old counter.”

The kiss broken again, leaving her floundering for a moment before her eyes opened once more to steady on him, dark brown and full of warmth. "Didn't notice," she murmured, trying for another kiss before she gave up, biting on her lower lip for a moment, searching over his face for a long while. "Upstairs?" Ash asked, and there was hope there, both in her voice and in those dark eyes, one hand still resting on his forearm, fingers curled there lightly, a hold she wasn't going to give up on easily.

The kiss attempt grazed him, but as the seconds dragged on and she stayed leaning toward him, hesitation started to inch its way into Aiden’s skull - hesitation and doubt. Should he be doing this, some part of him asked - should he be doing something that she was probably way more into than he was, when his entire life had been spent avoiding it out of disinterest? But he was interested now, wasn’t he?

He thought so. Or had thought so. Her one-word question stopped him and the doubts seized their chance. Drinking, fine. Making out? Okay. That hadn’t gone so bad. But while upstairs would definitely be more comfortable than trying to kiss standing up or on the old counter, there was something in the question and the way she was looking at him that even he knew implied making out was only going to be the first step of something.

“Er … ” Aiden blinked and tried to pull back against himself, the withdrawal almost visible as it sluggishly pulled at the muscles in his shoulders. “It’s fine down here, I think?”

Maybe if she had known the thoughts that were going around in his head, she wouldn't have pushed, wouldn't have pursued this any further than that. But as it was, her thoughts were going in only one direction, something kindled inside of her that hadn't been this warm in a long while. "Right here?" she asked, not on the same page as him in the slightest. The thought that he might be that daring brought a grin to her face, and that was all that was needed as she came around the counter to him, keeping some measure of contact with him at all times until she was standing in front of him, head tilted up towards him with the difference in their heights.

For a long while, Ash simply looked at him. Dark hair and dark eyebrows. Eyes that were slightly guarded in a way she was becoming accustomed to. And as she looked at him, slowly, oh so slowly, she lifted her arms to twine them around his neck, a lazy hold on him. "Just fine down here," she murmured, fingers tangling in the hair at the back of his neck, gently playing with it. And then she rose up on her tiptoes, pressing her mouth against his once more with no amount of hesitation.

Her grin put him even less at ease. But she just came around the counter and wrapped her arms around his neck, kissed him again, fingers against his neck and - she was just there, something he hadn’t experienced before and for once since getting to Vegas, it wasn’t in an outright bad way. Possession and arguing through sentient books or phones and getting killed and playing host to a psychopath - nothing good there. This wasn’t any of that. Didn’t have anything to do with it. It was just … normal, like he was living a normal life as a normal person and that was why he let his wary hands come up to rest on her hips for lack of being sure of where else to put them.

He kissed back again, less beholden to inebriation than he’d been just a few minutes ago and so a little less sloppy in his own attempts. Against her forward confidence, his hesitation was probably tangible.

It was easy to chalk that hesitation up to Aiden just being Aiden, and Ash didn't mind it at all. She was a girl who wasn't afraid to take charge of things, to tell someone what she wanted and how they could go about getting there. So when Aiden kissed back, his hands coming to rest against her hips, a very pleased little noise rumbled against his lips. And for once, for once, she wasn't thinking about Matthew. Her thoughts were all on Aiden, the taste of whiskey and scotch, and his very real presence in front of him.

A shuffle of steps brought them closer and as she broke the kiss, Ash let out a quiet sigh against his lips, lingering for a moment before she simply rested her head against his shoulder, arms still wound round his shoulders. Nothing was said, but her breath was warm against his neck with how she was turned in towards him, and there was energy in her that could almost be felt. This wasn't just a drunken kiss, something that could and would be passed off when the sun rose again. There was something more here, and she wanted more.

Another quiet sigh and Ash leaned in, pressing her lips against the side of Aiden's neck in a tentative kiss, just over his pulsepoint.

Evidently he was doing something right, so Aiden left his hands where they were and let the kiss break off when Ash came closer. It almost felt like an actual … relationship, he supposed. Two people just sort of holding onto each other, in the dark, warm and present and more than a little drunk. He shut his eyes and felt her breathing, felt her mouth against his neck - and Ash would undoubtedly feel his pulse jump a little when she kissed his neck.

A little less common, but it wasn’t anything bad. He let his hands relax against her hips, resting a little lower than he’d intended. The tension in his shoulders eased. Paranoia had taken too much of a toll, and he let his brain drift a little in the seas of being not quite smashed.

When he didn't resist, didn't voice a protest, Ash took it as permission to continue. Another kiss, feeling the beat of his heart beneath her lips, steady and just this side of racing, and she couldn't help the smile that tugged at her. Her lips blazed a trail up towards his ear, a graze of teeth before those gentle lips once more, her breath warm against his ear before she pulled back.

There was a lick of her lips as she looked up at him, arms unwinding from around his neck, hands smoothing down his chest. Scotch hazed her thoughts, slowed her down, but it didn't do anything to put out the fire that was licking at her from somewhere deep inside. One hand, braver than the other, slipped down to the hem of his shirt and then slipped up, fingers trailing over the skin of his stomach, tentative and questing. And through all of this, she never released his gaze, holding onto it with a possessive demand.

He didn’t mind when she moved up to his ear, though the graze of teeth did ground him a little and make him open his eyes - just in time for her gaze to grab his and refuse to let go. There was a moment of almost mesmerization at the intensity there, burning like he’d never seen or felt before, which kept him still when her hands moved down his shirt. There was a tiny, involuntary shiver at that, and then one of her hands ventured under the edge of his shirt, fingertips pressed against his stomach.

Aiden inhaled through his teeth, sucking his stomach in almost without realizing he’d done it. His hands went from relaxed to stiff in an instant, rigid against her hips but not gripping tight. He was startled enough to blink and break the demanding gaze, suddenly veering his sight off to the right and toward the dusty rows of books instead of Ashleigh. The tension was back and the hesitation was palpable and there was a looming sense of doubt crawling back into his mind again.

But he didn’t say anything. Not just yet. The words were slow in coming and he figured he’d probably fuck them up if he tried to get them out now.

She liked that shiver, the response beneath her hands, but when he tensed, when all of that ease bled out of him like she had cut him, she felt that too, and Ash didn't like that near as much. A swipe of her tongue over her lips to wet them and she drew her fingers back, letting the hem of his shirt fall back to where it had been moments earlier. There wasn't an apology offered, no words, instead drawing her hands and arms back up, looping around his neck once more. She wanted that ease in him back, that relaxation that she was fairly sure he didn't feel often enough, so she kissed him again, mouth pliant against his, tongue questing, opening up: an offering.

But the moment had fled, it seemed, or at least it had for Aiden. He was still tense and feeling ill at ease, even when her hand pulled away and she went back to kissing him. Suddenly there was relatively little comfort in the way she was leaning against him, in the softness of the kiss itself. But he tried to shake himself out of it. He was overreacting, he told himself; she wasn’t going to gut him. Hell, it probably just meant she had intentions he hadn’t quite realized were on the table yet.

So why the deep-seated hesitation?

He kissed back but it wasn’t what it had been before. And even then he probably wouldn’t have gone to the extent she was offering him, because Aiden and french kissing were polar opposites. But he tried to shed the unease from his shoulders and stay close, because this was approaching normalcy, and that was something he’d started to treasure.

Even with the haze of alcohol, Ash could feel that something wasn't quite right with Aiden. And as he kissed back, as he remained close, she finally dropped back down from her tiptoes to look up at him. It was time for her brows to furrow down in concern, hands coming to rest on either side of his face, cupping his cheeks in her palms. "Aiden," she said softly, almost seriously, "What is wrong?" Thumbs brushed over his cheeks, an affectionate gesture that carried warmth behind him. "You tensed up suddenly. Did I do something that you didn't enjoy?"

What was wrong? Good question. Aiden clenched his jaw briefly, trying to find a good answer, started to speak - stopped. What was wrong was the fact that he wasn’t sure if this was real affection or something similar thrown up by his hindbrain in a desperate attempt to have something to hold on to again. What was wrong was the fact that he had a sneaking suspicion that Ashleigh wanted more out of this than he did and that he wasn’t going to be willing to agree to it and had no idea how to turn her down. What was wrong was that his life was an endless stream of mistakes, and just as things had started to turn around for him, here he was, realizing how many more were poised and ready to be made.

“I … don’t know,” he managed, feeling less drunk than he had five or ten minutes ago, like the situation itself had been more sobering than anything he’d run into before. “Look, I think that - I think before … I don’t think so.” But still drunk enough to not have any idea how to speak anymore. “I don’t usually … touch. At all.” Hell of a wretched confession, he thought moodily. And vague as hell.

The answer didn't clarify the situation any more than she had felt seconds prior, and it showed on her flushed face. But that didn't mean she wasn't going to at least try to make sense of it. If he didn't usually touch, that was fine, she could handle that. She could give some direction to the moment so he might be able to move past that. "You don't have to be scared of me, Aiden," Ashleigh said softly, and slowly, she dropped her hands down to the hem of her own shirt, and in one smooth move, it was pulled up and over her head, hair swinging for a moment as it settled back down against her now-bare back.

The act left her in just her bra and pants, the former being a black number with lace around the edges, just girly enough for someone like her. Her shirt was dropped to the ground at her feet, fingers taking one of the hands that rested on her hip to move it up, over her chest, gaze meeting his. "I'm not going to bite you if you touch me, love," she murmured, pressing his hand there, letting him feel the slight lift of her breasts with every breath she took.

Somehow he’d hoped she could read his mind and pick up on what he was unable to actually get out in words. But she couldn’t, because she was human and normal and had an actual normal life and sex drive and he was a goddamned frigid robot, apparently. The sweep of her shirt froze him and his eyes followed it as it hit the floor, then up to where her hand took hold of his. Her words barely got through his skull as she put his hand over her chest, fingertips briefly on the thin edges of lace and her skin before his stomach clenched and he realized this wasn’t going to work.

He moved away - too fast, probably - hand pulling free from hers and clenching into a fist close to his own chest, almost tripping over his own feet as he stepped back to put space between them. In an instant Aiden felt terrible and stupid and like some dumbfuck fifteen year old with a first girlfriend (who was to say that wasn’t actually the case?). He was sober faster than a bucket of ice water dumped over the head and stared at the ground somewhere between them, mortified at his own reaction but unwilling to try and push past it.

“I - Ash, I’m sorry, I can’t - “ It’s not you it’s me? Oldest excuse in the book. If he said that he’d probably just as well shoot himself. “It’s not - I like you, but I can’t … do this.” It wasn’t fear, it wasn’t disgust, it wasn’t anything he could rationalize - nothing but the idea that it was too good to be true, that it would all have to be paid for, companionably running alongside the last thirty years of solitude in this particular department.

There were a lot of possible reactions to her putting his hand upon her chest, and Ash would have been pleased with most of them. But the one reaction she hadn't been expecting was the way he pulled away from her as though he had been burnt. It went straight through that comfortable fog of the whiskey from the bar, clarifying the world around her into sharp edges and high contrast, and for a long while, she simply stared at him as she warred between confusion and hurt.

"You can't do this?" she asked softly, echoing his words as she closed the gap between them with a couple of small steps, careful in the way she moved, hoping that perhaps she was reading the worst into his words. "You can't do this, as in, not being able to mess around on the shop floor? Or you can't do this?" Ash gestured between them, and fuck her but her voice cracked on the word 'this', the hurt starting to bleed through the confusion, not quite understanding what had gone wrong so quickly.

He could hear the hurt, the perfectly understandable and rational hurt, in her voice and it made him want to find a hole to crawl in and never come out of. Was it going to matter what he said next? Was there any reason to try and backpedal and cover up the mess, the line he’d drawn around himself? May as well try, he figured, someone else’s courtesy leaving horrible guilty tracks in his mind.

“I don’t know. The first one, no, I’ve … never even considered it, never wanted to, and I don’t know if I even fucking can,” Aiden admitted. “But I don’t want that to … to fuck this up, because I like you and you’re a friend but if this is what you want and something that’s going to be part of this then - “

The floor was old and worn and scuffed with age and in the half-dark, as his brain tried frantically to distance itself from the situation, he noticed patterns in the wood he’d never seen before.

There were a lot of words that Ash could have focused on right then, but her alcohol-soaked brain went right to 'friend' and held onto it. "Then you don't want me that way," she finished for him, and it was all she could do to take those couple of steps back to where she had been moments prior, leaning down to pick up her shirt from the floor. "It's quite alright, Aiden," she answered, and by some miracle she kept her voice steady even if it felt like someone had wrapped a metal band round her chest and squeezed it tight. "We're still friends. Promise." Her hands were shaking as she shook out her shirt, fumbling to try and get it right side out once more so she could pull it on, so she could stop feeling silly standing there in her bra when he didn't even want her that way. It just made things hurt worse, and her thoughts drifted back towards Matthew, back towards what had been perfect, and before she knew it, the tears were rolling down her cheeks.

The shirt was pulled to her chest, covering her as she swipe at her eyes with the heel of her hand. "Sorry," Ash mumbled, her voice tight. "Sorry. I'm not cryin' because-" But she was. At least a little.

She finished his sentence in a way he hadn’t been planning to finish it, but it summed up the situation far better than he would have managed. He probably would have made it worse, made it something to regret for the rest of his life even after he was dead. Not that he wasn’t going to regret all of this. A steady stream of mistakes, he thought dully: a mistake to go out drinking, a mistake to bring her back to his place rather than getting her home, a mistake to kiss her back when he’d known from the start he wasn’t that kind of person …

It could be worse, a traitorous part of him thought. Yeah. Sure. Maybe it could have been. Didn’t stop this from being godawful or making him feel like the scum of the universe.

She was crying and he saw her swipe at her eyes.

“It’s - sorry.” It was clearly his fault and all he could do was mumble out a half-audible apology even as she was apologizing to him. For what?

Ashleigh gave a shake of her head at his apology, swiping at her eyes again before she finally managed to pull her shirt on over her head, studiously not meeting his gaze as she put herself together once more. Her heart was pounding a furious rhythm that left her light-headed and dizzy, but all of that was pushed aside as she pushed her hair back from her face, fingers giving it a tug as though the pain might help her regain some of her clarity.

And then, with her gaze fixed on the ground, hands falling to her side limply, she spoke again. "I'm heading back to Scotland on Monday," she said softly, her voice barely above a whisper. "Some issues back home. I've got to take care of because the pub's in my name and-" Ashleigh broke off with a short laugh. "You probably don't want to hear about that. So. I think I should just- just go. Save us both further embarrassment, yes?" Finally, she looked up, brown eyes wet with tears, the little eye makeup she wore smudged beyond recovery. "I'm quite sorry, Aiden. That it- that it went like this."

She answered the metaphorical question ‘how could this possibly get worse’ without him ever having to ask the heavens for it, and that just made him feel even more worthless. Leaving in a few days and this had probably been her idea of a good way to head out and he’d fucked it up by being incompetent, just like everything else he’d ever done. Aiden felt light-headed too, but probably for a different reason.

“It’s not your fault,” he said, almost too quiet in the vacuum of the shop floor, still not looking up from the unfamiliar patterns in the otherwise familiar floor. “It … it’s mine. I’m sorry.” Maybe if he kept apologizing it wouldn’t be so bad. His fingers curled so tight against his palm his knuckles were white, nails digging into the skin. He wanted to wish her a safe trip back but at this point it would sound dismissive and shitty.

"It is what it is, right? So no more apologies." The words came out with more confidence than she was actually feeling, especially with the way he refused to even lift his eyes from the ground. Ashleigh studied him for a long moment, wanting to do something to get back the evening they had had that had been full of laughter and fun and just a good time with someone she did like, but it was beyond repair at this point. "I'm going to be back, once I figure things out," she added a few moments later, and as she retrieved her purse from the counter, she fiddled with it, unzipping it to slide a hand inside, hesitating. "I know- I know you don't like me like that, but. I'm hoping you can do me a favour. If you don't, that's fine, and I'll figure something else out but." Look up. Look at me, she silently urged him, her stomach rolling over on itself.

Aiden almost laughed a little at that, the corners of his mouth turning up very briefly but no sound coming out, not really smiling. It was what it was. She sounded like she’d come to terms with it, and that made him feel marginally (read: barely any) better. And she’d be back. So this wasn’t like an end-all-be-all situation. It could get better. Could. Might. Possibly. Not terribly likely.

“Sure,” he said, “anything.” His eyes moved from the floor to her hands where they were fiddling with her purse, as if eye contact would kill him.

She withdrew her hand from her purse with a familiar set of keys on a simple metal keychain, something from home, from Scotland. And without explaining or giving him any chance to reconsider, she moved over towards him to take his hand in her own, the keys laid into it as she curled his fingers over them before pulling her own away. "Take care of that for me?" Ash asked, though there was little room for him to refuse in the loaded question. "Please."

The bike.

“Yeah,” he said after a second, not pulling his hand away from hers this time around but only closing his fingers over the keys carefully. “Yeah. I’ll … find a garage space for it. There’s plenty around here.” Cost didn’t factor into the equation. Turning her down like this, he had to make sure nobody destroyed it. “I’ll keep it for you.”

Sorry, he didn’t say again, because there was no point. It would just be repetition now. Over and over again, and eventually it would lose all meaning, and he stared at the keys in his hand rather than looking up.

"Take care of yourself," Ash said softly, once he had promised to take care of it for her. There was more that she wanted to say right then, more that she felt she should say to leave on a better note, but the words just wouldn't come. Her chest was too tight and she felt ready to start crying at the drop of a hat. So instead she moved towards him again, rising up on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek, lingering for only a moment before she pulled away and moved past him. Deft fingers unlocked the door with little sound, and then she disappeared into the night, closing the door shut behind her.

In the silence following Ash leaving Aiden heard a ringing in his ears. She shut the door quietly, which was probably worse than if she’d slammed it. He felt … hollow, now, feeling nothing in his head but the buzz of what alcohol hadn’t burned away under his embarrassment and stupidity. There wasn’t any mockery or judgment. No feelings of being worth any less than he was able to put on himself. With her departure he was alone, well and truly, and as everything echoed in him and reflected back worse with every bound he realized he couldn’t deal with this shit as half-sober as he was.

By the time he dug out the hard liquor from where he’d put it away some months ago and had two thirds of a bottle in him again, he didn’t realize the dull buzz in his head was coming from two directions.