Who: Aiden & Ashleigh What: A reunion of sorts Where: Aiden's book shop When: Backdated to Ash's return to Vegas Warnings/Rating: Awkward. And friend-zoning.
Ashleigh wasn’t entirely sure that Aiden would want to see her after their last, horribly disastrous, meeting, but she had to at least try. The words of her in-laws spurred her on, reminded her that she couldn’t run away if things got tough, and the last thing she should ever be running from was happiness. She wasn’t entirely sure if Aiden was ‘the one’ or whatever passed for that when you lost the person you thought you were going to spend the rest of your life with, but there was no discounting the fact that she was quite fond of him in a way that she hadn’t felt in some time. So after she had dropped her things off at the Aria, not wanting to drag her luggage with her all over the city, Ash grabbed a cab to take her over to Aiden’s bookstore.
It was just after nine in the evening when she knocked on the front door of Arcadia Unbound, bouncing up on her toes in the hopes that Aiden hadn’t already closed up shop. She knew his hours were erratic, sometimes open early, sometimes open late, but the last thing she wanted to do was to interrupt him or pull him out of bed. Stepping back, she toed at the ground with one converse-clad foot, waiting and hoping that this didn’t go as spectacularly bad as the last meeting had.
It would be a rare night that Aiden was unconscious by nine. Busy, maybe, yes, but never actually asleep. Blackout drunk was a possibility. Fortunately for them both that wasn’t the case tonight; he was still downstairs, at the counter, the door unlocked and a pile of books on his lap looking less and less like something to do and more like the chore they actually were. Normally he’d have expected some sort of commentary, but ever since … well, ever since he realized it was possible for a guy to friendzone a girl at the worst possible moment, there’d been nothing from whoever was residing in his head now. With Nadir he almost had conversations; even with Octavius, there’d been at least some condescension, mockery, and unbelievably, dating advice. Now all he got was occasional vague presses of something, like there was a wall of static between them. No voices, no disdain. Just muffled silence and a world eerily familiar in its unfamiliarity when he crossed through the door. Didn’t seem like his voice was getting through over there, either.
The books had been on his lap for ten minutes and he was getting the urge to just toss them on the floor when someone knocked on the door, rather than just walking in. That alone was unusual enough for a carefully suspicious glance toward the door. The lights inside just barely illuminated the figure against the last of the sunset and the lights off the strip. A woman? Well, it probably wouldn’t hurt …
But he recognized her as he came closer, after dumping the books on the counter and making his way to the door. He paused, hesitating halfway between the familiar safety of his own upstairs room and the front door. Ashleigh didn’t look upset, didn’t look angry … but for her to be back so soon surprised him, and he was still stinging from that last spectacular fuckup of an encounter they’d had. Stinging from his own idiocy, his own inadequacy, his own irrationality that had been left for him and him alone. Aiden felt the urge to turn and run just seeing her there, but he swallowed it and finally opened the door.
“Er … hi.” Awkward as ever. Even he realized it. There was an even more awkward pause as he tried to figure out what to say next. I wasn’t expecting you back so soon just sounded … dismissive. “Back in Vegas?” No shit.
There was something about seeing him again, the awkward expressions, the familiar voice, it all made the decision to come here so soon right in Ash's book. "Hi, yourself," she gave with a small smile, stepping back a step so that she wasn't crowding towards him in a way that he probably wasn't interested in, if their last meeting was anything to go by. Her hands were shoved in her pockets, something to keep them occupied from simply swinging to and fro as they talked. "Yeah, got back a few hours ago. Emergency back home, had to go help some family out for a little bit. Nothing too complicated." Matthew's parents might not have been her own by blood relation, but they were still hers, even with him gone, people that she would continue to care for like a daughter no matter what happened. "I hope that I didn't catch you at a bad time. I wasn't sure if you'd be closing soon, but I wanted to come and see you in person and-" She trailed off, glancing towards the ground with a half smile pulling at her lips. "Yeah."
“Oh. That’s good, then. I guess I assumed it was … more life threatening, or something like that.” Apparently nothing too serious if she was back and in a decent mood. No deaths, no funerals. No … everything that came with that. He stepped back, holding open the door. “You can come in if you want. I wasn’t planning on closing up for a little while yet.” He wasn’t sure what that meant in the face of her coming back, but it at least implied he wasn’t planning on doing anything else for a while. The chances of someone coming in at this hour were fairly slim.
The store hadn’t changed much. Not at all, actually. It was still a mess, which was fine for him. Nonetheless he glanced around like it wasn’t up to scratch as Ash came in, his own hands in his pockets, fingers curled tight against anything else that might demonstrate the inherent awkwardness his guilt and inner punishment center had left him with in the wake of their last meeting. He hadn’t even realized it was a thing until just that second.
“It’s … nice to see you again.” It sounded sincere enough. He relaxed a little. “Still crashing with Neil? How’s he been doing?”
"Nothing that bad," Ash assured him, and as he stepped back to hold the door open, she met his gaze for just a moment before she gave a nod, stepping in alongside him and then to the side, giving him some room. It was still awkward, not entirely sure what it was he wanted, or hell, what it was she wanted out of this. But she needed to see him, needed to at least do what she wanted without overthinking it.
Turning towards him as he spoke again, Ash gave another nod of her head, backing up until her back rested against the edge of the counter, something to lean against that would hopefully ease some of those butterflies in her stomach. "Yeah, I am. I think he likes having someone around. And he's… okay, I guess. I haven't spoken much to him since I got back, though I'm sure that will change shortly. And you? You're okay?"
It was awkward. Aiden was staring at the wall to her left again when she stepped inside and he let the door shut behind her, like meeting her eyes was going to cause his spine to dissolve again. He settled against the wall nearest the counter and looked over the store again. It never changed, and in the brighter lights it was a comforting familiarity. He didn’t change, either. The question was if that was a good thing.
“Good to hear. On both accounts.” Only okay? But if she wasn’t going to elaborate, he wasn’t going to ask. “I’m fine. Nothing really changes around here. Books do that, I think. Steal time.” Slowed it down to a crawl, or at least that was a good-sounding excuse. Funny, too, which meant he didn’t have to find a real reason. Aiden shrugged, looking no different than he had a month or two ago. “You, uh … still have a key?” Probably the best way to parse it, he thought; key meant door meant somewhere in Passages meant still stuck. He hoped the answer was no. Hell, he hoped his own key would just up and disappear, but it was still in his pocket, busted iron and all.
"But that's the nice thing about books, isn't it?" Ash asked after a moment, wondering why he would barely meet her eyes, the way he held himself, his back pressed to the wall. "They exist outside of time in a way. Separate. Different." Or maybe she was just tired from the flight and babbling; yeah, that was likely a better explanation to her mood. Ash was quiet for a moment, just relishing in the silence of Aiden's shop, at least until the next question came, the one she had been waiting for. Everything in Las Vegas, at least for them, revolved around those damnable keys.
Ash shifted, pulling the small brass key out of her hip pocket, displaying it to him from its home in the palm of her hand. "Different one," she said a moment later, chewing on her bottom lip for a moment. "Someone new. Someone bad." Her gaze settled on the floor as she put the key back away, bringing her arms up around herself, shoulders hunched. "Gotta love it, don't you?"
Aiden half-smiled at her rambling about books. Part of him thought: she’s tired and it’s a hell of a long flight, no wonder she’s babbling. Another part of him offered up that she was feeling as awkward as he was and that he was doing fuck all to fix that, and was possibly making things worse by his steadfast refusal to acknowledge much beyond her words and the fact that she was there. But actually being a socially competent person wasn’t part of his everyday schedule, and so Aiden continued on as he was until she pulled the key out of her pocket, at which point he was back on familiar ground.
“Bad? How bad are we talking?” He didn’t remember her ever mentioning whoever she’d been stuck with before she left, so this was evidently a change for the worse. He knew the feeling. And so long as they were on the subject of who she had, they could stay away from his new static wall. “No way you can ignore them? Are they just obnoxious, or are we talking serial killers, here?” So charming, he was, jumping straight to the worst possible scenario.
The key was slipped back into her pocket a moment later as she looked at him, the worst case scenarios he played out like they might be entertaining. Ash knew he didn't mean anything by it; it was just the way that Aiden spoke, the way that his thoughts were formed into words. "It's Scarecrow," she finally said, the word feeling funny on her lips as it came out. "Jonathan Crane, if you're familiar at all with him." Her lips pursed together, gaze coming to fix on the ceiling. "I feel like I heard about him before. People with him end up dead, Aiden. I don't want that to happen to me." It might be easy to simply ignore it, to put the key away, to stash the journal somewhere she wouldn't be tempted, and to pretend that there was no one else through the doors in that hotel, but she could still feel him there in her thoughts, quietly demanding and pressing against her. "I'm already trying to ignore him. It works - but only somewhat."
Something about the name was horribly familiar. It was one that showed up on that network often, again and again, always with some sort of obnoxious taunt, threat, or significant pause promise to deliver. He wasn’t a pleasant person, as Aiden recalled, and what little he knew of the history of the comics the bastard was from was even more unpleasant. And - what she said. They ended up dead. Didn’t that kill the other half? Wasn’t it a shared horror?
Fanfuckingtastic.
“ … then stay away from the hotel,” he said, his voice lower and darker than it normally was. “Don’t give him a chance to get you. If he throws a fit … I don’t know. Drown him out. There has to be a way to do that.” He’d been about to suggest getting drunk, until recalling how little that actually worked. In the past it had actively made things worse.
Ash didn't say anything for a long while, watching the way Aiden's expression changed, and when he finally spoke again, those darker tones and the demands in his voice, Ash couldn't help but stare. She didn't say anything for a long while, edging closer to him until they were standing close to one another. "You're worried," she said simply. "You're worried about something happening to me." There was something about that concern, the response that came so quickly, without calculating how the words might affect her, that warmed her through. Maybe there was something there. Maybe there was something there between the two of them that was worth fighting for.
For once, even though Aiden blinked and realized that Ash was getting closer, that she was giving him a stare he wasn’t entirely sure how to translate, he didn’t step back. He just shrugged, still looking like thunder because he’d heard about and seen enough of the chaos caused by that particular brand of crazy to know that it was a bad person to have, and that the door she had access to was almost worse.
“Of course I’m worried. I know what it’s like to have to put up with a psychopath, and ‘unpleasant’ doesn’t even start to describe it. And yours is … worse.” Worse but not worst? He didn’t really know. “You don’t deserve whatever shit he tries to pile on you.”
He knew what he wasn’t acknowledging here, and knew that the kind of shit he was prone to piling on people was something she didn’t deserve, either. Not when he couldn’t trust himself to keep it internal.
They were the words she needed to hear, something to alleviate the worry that was pricking at her bit by bit, wearing down the confidence she usually wore so easily. Ashleigh didn't say anything further, just stepped closer, and without pausing, she leaned in to hug him. It was a particularly chaste hug, a tight squeeze of her arms around him, but it lasted far longer than most hugs did. It was good to know, Ash thought, that she had someone else on her side, someone who worried. "I expected you to brush me off," Ash said after a moment, head resting against his shoulder. "After last time."
The hug was unexpected. Aiden had imagined she’d keep a few feet of distance from him at all times after that last disastrous encounter. Date. Thing. He froze slightly at first, but his muscles loosened in seconds, leaving him to give her a slightly-less-awkward than was his normal standard pat on the arm, fingers resting just above her elbow.
“I sort of expected the same,” he said, almost sounding embarrassed. “But it was my fault, so I’d be a hell of a hypocrite if I did that. Besides, this is important. I’d like to think I’m not as big an asshole as I used to be.” Serious shit. The hotel was not to be trusted under any circumstances, especially when it saddled you with a lunatic.
Even though she wanted to hold on for a bit longer, to just stay there for as long as she wanted, Ash pulled away, self-consciously tucking a bit of hair behind her ear, even as Aiden started to explain his side of things. As he did so, she looked up, head tilted to the side, a bit surprised by his response. But she didn't push him on the answer, accepting it as it was. "You're a better man than you give yourself credit for as well, Aiden," Ash commented, and then she shifted, hauling herself up to sit on the counter, long legs dangling down in front of her, hands clasped between them. "So. You still have my bike, yes?" On to something less emotional, less likely to cripple them both in the first half hour of their reunion.
There was a brief second of a haunted half-smile at her words before Aiden’s face set itself back into the permanent almost-grimace everyone who knew him was familiar with. A better man? Maybe. More likely not. But it was at least a little nice to hear it, especially from someone he was certain he’d hurt enough to never see again.
“Huh? Oh. Yeah. It’s in a storage garage.” He hadn’t really visited it frequently, just stopped by from time to time to make sure it matched the pictures on his phone. A sizable majority of him was still paranoid and untrusting and hadn’t been sure that the place’s security was as secure as the owner had insisted. Nothing had really happened, though. Other than dust accumulation. “The key’s upstairs if you want me to get it. If you’re back for a while yet, you’ll probably want it back … ” To get around the city again without having to use cabs and buses, anyway.
Ash gave a shake of her head at his offer to get the key, kicking her feet for a moment before she held her hands out towards him. "I don't need it quite yet. I came here to see you, not just to get my bike. Come here. Please." A half-smile pulled at her lips, her head tilted to the side. "I'll have you know that I haven't even see my brothers yet. I wanted to see you first." And Ash hoped that Aiden could get some of the unspoken meaning out of those words. The fact that he had let her in, had returned the hug in his own Aiden-esque manner, it was a positive point towards what she had in mind, but it wasn't everything. She wasn't asking for something serious, but she needed to know that there was something there worth trying for. If it was just friendship, then that was fine. But she needed to know.
Aiden hesitated when she held out her hands. Come here. Please. He didn’t know how to take her words, exactly; he’d been her first stop, which meant she didn’t completely despise him for what he’d wound up doing last time, but … well, that last time had happened. And yet she was here, like she was waiting for him to think what he’d done was another man’s actions. Lord, if only they were …
But he did eventually reach out, letting his hands, dry and a little scarred, drift against hers.
“Listen, Ash … I’m sorry about last time.” That was a good start. Decent, compared to what he usually managed, so it bolstered him into continuing. “I’d say I was drunk but that didn’t have a lot to do with it. I don’t … really have much interest in dating, I guess, or in sex, and I panicked. I don’t know if I ever really will. They’re … ” Not part of his life? Excised cleanly ten years ago? Something like that. “ … if that means you don’t want to stick around, I’ll get it.”
Much better than he would have expected out of himself, though the last part seemed wobbly. Still, for someone as socially inept as he was, it was almost trophy-worthy.
Ash curled her hands in with Aiden's, listening as he spoke, and when it came down to it, the words he offered up weren't all that surprising. Truth be told, there were days when she didn't think she was interested in dating either, but then there were nights when things just got so lonely, so cold, that she missed the feeling of someone to turn to, to wind their arms around her and hold her tight. It was a selfish thing to want, Ash knew this, but that didn't stop her from wanting it.
"It's alright," Ash said once he had finished, the corners of her lips rising in a small smile, fingers giving his a squeeze. "Just friends then, alright? And I won't try to ambush you with a surprise snogging. Not unless you want it. But I'm going to leave that up to you." Maybe it was better this way, she thought to herself, running her thumbs over the back of his hands, eventually twining her fingers with his, staring down at their joined hands. Cafe au lait against that pale white, the differences between them seemed larger then. Maybe it was just hopeful thinking.
She glanced back up to him after a moment, her head tilted to the side slightly. "Should I go? Leave you be?" she asked, worrying at her bottom lip lightly with her teeth, her brow slightly furrowed.
Aiden caught himself staring at their hands - at the way hers were moving on his and the way his were just there, almost completely still except for when she moved them. It probably didn’t mean much of anything, just that he wasn’t much of a close-contact sort of person, but it seemed displaced at the moment. Like instead of not much it meant a thousand things, or everything. It made him blink a few times to try and pull himself back together.
“Friends. Works for me.” There was more calm assurance and confidence in his voice than was in his head, which brought him back to the fore more quickly than any amount of mental lassoing. Aiden half-smiled again. “Probably a better end solution than guys like me usually get, huh?” Considering he’d expected to spend the rest of his life sulking in his own guilt, it was the luckiest thing that had ever happened to him. “If you just got here, you should probably let Neil and the rest know you’ve arrived safe and all. And haven’t been kidnapped or anything. Once you’re settled in again we can go get your bike.”
There was another tight squeeze of his hands before she released him, fingers curling around the edge of the counter, gaze dropping towards the floor before she edged to the side and slipped back down to her feet. "Yeah, that sounds like a good plan," she said by way of agreement, even though she had already called Neil to let him know she was in town. "I'll give you a ring later on and we can see about the bike, yes?" Soft steps carried her back towards the door, and she was feeling a little silly right then at having come over so quickly, as though any of what had happened had meant something. One hand raised in a wave, the other resting on the door knob. "It was good seeing you, Aiden," Ash said after a moment, and then she was turning and leaving quickly, arms around around her middle in something that might have been a protective gesture. It felt good to be back in Vegas, but it hurt fiercely in a way she wasn't quite ready for.