Eli Pride is Elizabeth Bennet (hybristic) wrote in musingslogs, @ 2010-12-27 03:04:00 |
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Entry tags: | elizabeth bennet, viola |
Who: Eli and Preston
What: Christmas drinks
Where: A pub, a cab, a hallway
When: Christmas Eve, immediately after this.
Warnings: Drunken smooching which they will pretend never happened come morning, because Eli is Very. Very. Straight.
Eli found a gift.
Something to do with a car that turned into something entirely different, and he'd had to fight off a desperate woman to get it to the cashier in his possession. He thought, briefly, that Ash better appreciate the lengths he'd gone to. In truth, he was glad of the distraction. He couldn't examine his dislike of Blake when he had a battle on his hands. And, after all, he’d disliked Blake before he had any notion of the man’s connection with Ash.
He intentionally killed time, waiting until the last moment to make his way back to the food court and the toy drive. Even from half he court away, and in the midst of volunteers, he could pick Ash out in the crowd. Tall, blond, broad, and he almost turned around and heeded the gut instinct to leave it all as it was. In he end, he didn't heed the internal warning, blaming it all on an old confusion, on memories of greedy hands and mouths, and by the time he put the toy on the table in front of a pretty volunteer in a Santa hat, he had a cocky smile on his lips for the girl receiving it.
“You just made it,” the girl told him, flashing him a white-toothed smile back as she took the toy and passed him a donation slip in return. Indeed, it was true, as Preston was moving in and out of the crowd, directing people with big boxes of newly-wrapped presents and sometimes lending a hand himself. The mall was emptying out and the volunteers were still scurrying around for a good while after, all eager to get back to their yule logs themselves.
Eventually, sweaty santa hats were clapped back on heads, coats were shrugged on, and the delivery trucks roared off, leaving Preston with the damned clipboard but a slight smile. He was again struck by Eli’s appearance when he materialized out of the evaporating crowd, a ghost from Christmas past straight out of fuzzy memory. “Decided to stick with it, did you?” he asked, looking down at his donation slip as he shook the tan double-breasted overcoat on.
“It was quite dangerous, I’ll have you know. Might be the most taxing thing I’ve done all year,” Eli assured him. He’d been watching him direct the crowd of volunteers for the last hurrah of the drive. In fact, he’d spent most of it arms crossed, toy hanging loose in one hand, and making no attempt to hide what he was doing. Now, close, he gave one look to that overcoat, double-breasted and oh, so well behaved, and he rolled his eyes and closed his hand around the bell around Ash’s neck. “Come now, Santa. Time to have some enjoyment that has nothing to do with humanitarian works, and everything to do in losing oneself for an hour or so. Do you have a car we need to leave somewhere?” Eli asked, as he tugged on the bell in what he felt was a very mascule-friend-show-of-affection.
Preston, who didn’t look anything like Santa right at that moment, but rather a particularly bemused passerby, blinked several times and tried to surreptitiously free himself from the bells. “My car is actually at the hospital,” he said, referring to the toy drive base of ops. “I was hoping you could give me a ride back there after...” He waved farewell at the last volunteer, and they moved through the now empty mall, footsteps echoing.
"Of course," Eli said, surprised that Ash would go from not wanting to spend time to wanting to rely on him for transportation. The surprise was wisely kept off his features, though, and he motioned toward the area of the lot his car was parked in. Even with the lateness, the lot was not empty, and cars dotted the parking spaces. Still, anyone who knew anything about Eli could spot the pristine, vintage Charger as his. He dug his keys out if his pockets, giving Ash a diddling glance that was only intended to verify he wasn't going to run, a look that had nothing to do with wanting to see him, even in the snowy dark. "Have you had your fulfill of charity these evening?" he asked. "We could always find a bell to ring on a corner somewhere," he added with a smile and a glance at the bell around Ash's neck.
It was Eli, the volunteer, or (honestly) a cab. Preston was willing to take the cab and right now he had discovered that the best plan for dealing with Eli was focusing on knowing him as Eli and not as Elijah. It just made the whole thing simpler. For a simple acquaintance, however, Preston was of the opinion that Eli was excessively handsy. Hiding his discomfort, he looked the Charger over and was amused enough to smile at such a blatantly... masculine car. “And average about fifteen to twenty dollars an hour on a good day? I think not.”
Eli caught the smile, though he did not know why there was a smile, and it was an easy enough conclusion to think it had to do with the limited earning potential of ringing a bell on a corner. “Your faith in humanity does not seem particularly impressive,” he said, moving ahead of Eli to open the passenger side door, and then going around to the driver’s door and opening it as well. He looked at Ash over the top of the car, and he quirked a brow before climbing in and immediately turning over the engine. The car was cold, having sat undisturbed for so long in the light snow fall, and the heater came to life slowly with age.
“It’s not faith,” he said easily, eying the door and wondering why it was not possible for him to open it himself, “it’s fact. In fact, it seems likely, given what people put in as they’re passing: the change from their coat pocket, maybe, no more than two dollars, and probably a lot less. Figure twenty people an hour, half of those with an average of a dollar, you’ll be lucky if you get over twenty--maybe thirty if you’re in a busy spot, and if people have change, which they don’t, since everyone owns a credit card these days.” He slid into the seat, collar still turned up, and shut the door behind him. His eyes swept over the dash.
The car was leather inside, and the dash gleamed under the parking lot lights as Eli pulled the car out, his hand casually resting on the shoulder-rest of Ash’s seat out of habit as he craned his head to look back. The motor, however, sounded unimpressive. The car had been worked on from an aesthetic standpoint, and not in the way a mechanic or a lover of cars would do it. “Perhaps the fine men and women of the Salvation Army should come equipped with credit card swiping machines,” Eli suggested, relenting almost immediately after. “No one uses cash anymore. It’s a challenge for merchants, as it is for charitable organizations.”
“Yes,” Preston agreed, “they would. Convenience rules.” The world of finance held few things that Preston wasn’t familiar with, and usually more than in a passing way. Preston didn’t know much about cars either; when he bought a car he consulted Consumer Reports and other advice columns, and his purchase was generally ruled by the impression he sought at a certain price range and reliability. “Some small merchants offer a small percentage discount if their customers pay in cash to even the cost of credit card vendors.”
“I’ve tried that. It doesn’t work. Most people simply don’t carry cash. It’s a sign of the way our society is evolving. We spend more time talking to people across a screen than we do talking to our neighbors or families. Everything has become about convenience, old rituals, the things that ensured we actually connected with those around us, those things are gone now.” He went abruptly, as if he realized he had just jumped on his favorite bandwagon without meaning to. “Charity, and the people who ring bells on corners, are largely funded by spur of the moment decisions of unselfishness. Now, people look at the bell ringers and think later. Later never happens in our society. Later equals forgetting.”
“Wise charity, like everything else, involves planning,” Preston said, patting his breast coat pocket as if there was a cigarette pack there without thinking. He didn’t have any, of course, not since college, but he still did it as he settled into the heat. “The connections are different now.” Preston turned his head to look out his passenger window even though they had not yet defrosted. “Don’t give up on them yet.”
“Am I meant to believe you have many connections? Because the impression I received was just the opposite,” Eli said, noticing the patting and reaching into the glove compartment for a pack of cigarettes, unfiltered, and handing them over. “I wouldn’t have taken you for a smoker, either,” he said, fishing a Zippo out of his coat and holding it in his hand as he stopped at a red light and waited.
“I’m not,” he said, unwillingly putting it back into the glove compartment with the air of someone passing on the chocolate cake at the end of a meal. “...Anymore. And you’re a bastard for rolling it out to me,” he added, laughing. He didn’t answer the question about connections, because he didn’t believe it was any of Eli’s business, even if it was relevant. Instead he said, “Do I seem like the type that has time to make connections? I just moved here.”
Eli made a sound of protest, and he motioned with the hand holding the Zippo, wanting the pack of cigarettes for himself. “You seem like the type to evade questions,” he replied. “Honestly, Ash. It’s conversation. I have no ulterior motives, no dire intentions. I simply want to get to know you, to talk.” He grinned then, a shit-eating sort of smile that he hadn’t had at fifteen. “I’d rather not get you wasted off your arse to do it, but if you leave me no choice...” He grinned, and he looked back out at the road.
“You’re going to make me breathe it without smoking it? You are a bastard.” Preston grinned back though and handed the pack over. He turned his head to look out the window again, though there was nothing to see. “I think I asked you not to use that name.” His voice was different than the direct accusations now, a soft, even tone he must use when he was giving orders to people who didn’t like following them. Maybe they teach that in business school.
Eli, who only smoked when he drove or when he drank, smacked the back of the pack on the dash, setting the Zippo on his thigh precariously, the silver glinting distractingly in the light from the street light. He lit the cigarette a moment later, the short, stubby thing glowing between his fingers as opened the window a crash to ash outside it. The car did, however, smell like smoke almost immediately, and he grinned over at Eli as the car started moving again. “I’ll take the name calling, as it’s Christmas Eve. Explain to me why you need a new name, and perhaps I’ll listen,” he said, even as he pulled into the parking lot of something that claimed to be The Pub in red neon letters.
“Because I don’t like the old one. The people who know it and use it, by and large, are not people I ever want to think about again.” Preston stared intently out of the front windshield, the lights flickering green and red on his stony expression. The grins were gone now, and if he took a deep (pathetic) breath or two, well, he could blame it on Eli.
Eli took a long drag off his cigarette as he turned off the car, and he gave Ash one long, long look, before opening his door. “Come on. You need to get so pissed you can’t see straight,” he said, tossing the cigarette as he stepped out into the cold, but grabbing the pack and the lighter and pulling his coat tighter around him. He waited for Ash, looked at him across the roof of the car. “You know, I don’t say it to annoy you. You’ll always be Ash to me.” It was almost apologetic, and then he was cocking his head toward the door.
Preston didn’t really think it was wise to get really drunk around Eli, but he told himself that he didn’t have to get that drunk. He got out as instructed, looking around at where they’d ended up rather than directly at Eli and his damned blue eyes. “That’s just because you don’t know me yet. As Preston.” It was a poor correction. He slammed the door (not angrily), and put his hands in his coat pockets as he joined Eli on the threshold.
“Preston is not an entirely different person,” Eli insisted, pushing open the heavy door to the pub. Inside, it was warm, golden-red lit and loud. The entire establishment was wood floors and the smell of beer and cigarettes, and Eli began to shuck his coat as soon as he was in the door, the environment entirely comfortable for him. It wasn’t a bar; it was too cozy for that, but it was loud and crowded, and Eli wove his way through the crowd like he knew the place. A booth in the back corner caught his eye, and the waitress that intercepted them on the way there knew him by name. “A pint, love, of your best on tap this evening,” he told her, giving her a blue-eyed smile that made her cheeks color. He reached back, then, unseeing, and tugged on the lapel of Ash’s coat. “Come along, then.”
Preston didn’t bother arguing. Maybe if Eli called him Ash again he’d just punch him and blame it on the booze. Which meant he needed to get booze. It took Preston twice as long to get out of his coat, because he was definitely not as comfortable here as Eli, and he had to watch where he was going. He was amused (and surprised to be amused) at Eli’s waitress, because the British accent probably got him laid on a regular basis. Preston caught hold of Eli’s arm against his chest and accelerated so he wasn’t being dragged along. “Will you stop that,” he said, though not annoyed. “I’m not a lost puppy.”
“No, you’re not at that,” Eli said, but he let go, and he slid into the booth, his coat beside him on the wooden bench. It was circular bench, one that gave a clear view of the pub beyond, while still offering some privacy. The pint came moments later, along with complimentary chips, and Eli gave the waitress a grin and asked her to keep the beer coming as they got low. He tapped a cigarette on the table, lit it, and then he turned the full force of his blue gaze on Ash. “Tell me how Preston’s so very different from Ash,” he coaxed, taking a swallow of his beer.
Preston waited until the waitress went away and pulled his beer toward him. He would have preferred a red, maybe pinot noir, but he’d take this. He slumped down in the seat, coat crumpled to one side, and undid the button in the hollow of his throat before he got rid of the bell necklace and tossed that aside too. “Twenty years, two degrees, a near death experience and a substantial lack of family members,” he said bluntly.
“Those things all belong to Ash as well,” Eli said, casual tone, but intensity in his gaze. “A name doesn’t change who you are,” he said, taking another drink. “Nor should it.” He sat back, and he took a long drag from the cigarette, the end burning bright red and lighting his face in the dim of the booth. “What near death experience?” he asked, the question delayed by a momentary realization that he wasn’t going to like whatever the response to the question was.
“No, I was different already, and I changed my damn name so people wouldn’t remind me of everything I lost, thanks very much.” Only Eli managed to make Preston angry enough to forget the careful educated manner, and the Boston got thicker after the false gratitude. “...Car jacking.” He waved a hand, as if brushing the incident, and all the nightmares and complications following, aside.
The answer wasn’t what Eli had been expecting, and he stopped with the beer mug halfway to his lips. “Car jacking?” he asked, as if he wasn’t certain he’d heard correctly. “When?” was followed immediately by, “and don’t give me shit about telling me.” Eli seldom cursed, at least in Americanisms. The intensity of his words was matched by the intensity in his gaze as he put down the beer. He thought better of it as soon as the mug touched the table, though, and he tossed it back. “Drink that first,” he ordered, motioning to Ash’s drink. “I don’t want you stonewalling me on this one.”
Resentment colored Preston’s gaze. “You tell me one of your deep dark secrets, then,” he said, ignoring the order and continuing drinking at precisely the same pace he had before, a swallow every sentence or so.
“And if I tell you that I have none?” Eli asked, stubbing the cigarette out, and then following the statement with a sigh. “I ran away from home, from Musings, when I was fifteen. I’d only been in humanity two weeks when I met you,” he admitted, looking over Ash as he told it, not looking away, no matter how much he hated the tale now, after all that time had passed. “I was ashamed of my family, you see, and I didn’t handle people thinking ill of me very well at that age.” The words were telling, of course, and well he knew it. “Popularity was quite important to me.” A pause. “Now, the car jacking, if you would?” He lit another cigarette and he pulled the fresh pint closer to himself.
That revelation surprised him quite a lot. It took two swallows for him to process it completely, and then he said, “You never said you ran away. Who are the Gardens, then?” He was... unsurprised by Eli’s need for acceptance. Several years distance and some recent reflection on the matter had revealed that without any great revelations or visits to a therapist. He withheld the car-jacking matter in his bid for more information.
“My maternal aunt and her husband. Family, but not immediate family.” There was a difference. The Gardens cared about him, and he cared about them, but it was never exactly the same as his family in Musings. “One of my siblings ran off with someone, and we lived in a very small town at the time. We’d moved there because of some unpleasantness with the law in the States that had cost us our respect and our fortune. I wanted a fresh, wealthy beginning.” There was regret in his voice, but pride too, still, and anger at his sibling, at his father for starting all their problems in the first place. “The car jacking,” he repeated, and his gaze was hard and demanding. He’d given, his gaze said, and now he expected honesty in return.
That explained a great deal of what he could remember regarding Elijah Garden. His younger self had been so impressed by the loft, an abode more suited to an adult than a child--of course, such a place was better apt to handle a relative coming to stay. Preston took his time digesting that, and absently pulled his second beer toward himself as he did so.
"Almost five years ago," Preston said suddenly. "Very mundane. 'Get out of the car or I'll shoot you,' that kind of thing."
"And did you hand over the keys?" Eli asked, assuming the answer was no. For all that he was now a grown man, Ash still made Eli feel protective, which was entirely ridiculous given what he'd left him to face alone all those years ago.
"I would have, but he decided it wasn't quick enough. He was high on something."
“And?” Eli pushed. Just that, one word, and his eyes went dark with anger.
"And," Preston said, reluctantly, "Anton's machine showed up." The official story on that one was that Iron Man was an automated machine, and since there hadn't been any photographic evidence to the contrary, as far as Preston knew that was accepted as fact. It was also almost impossible to conceive that someone could actually be in that thing, it was so dangerous to fly and operate. Preston rubbed his forehead.
“Anton’s machine showed up?” He’d heard about Iron Man, everyone who lived on the East Coast for more than five seconds knew all about the Sparke family and their history, including their remote control machine. “It just happened to show up, did it?” he asked. The thing about Eli was that he doubted every little thing Creations did, and Anton Sparke and his little machine was no different.
"No, at the time the prototype was programmed to protect Sparke Industries personnel. And I wasn't that far away from the research facility." All the official story, yes. When the waitress came around again, Preston ordered fried zucchini.
“And how did it do that?” Eli asked, all practicality and intention, like a dog on a scent. “Were you targeted with GPS?” he asked, doubting Preston would allow such a thing. “Or was it your car that was targeted?” He doubted that, too, and it was in his voice. EIT had been in his blood too long to take things at face value, and official stories, he found, always smelled like official stories.
Coolly. You don't get very far in this job if you can't lie like a champ. "Probably in my badge. Anton does things like that."
“Hmmm,” was Eli’s response, entirely noncommittal, entirely disbelieving. He let it go, though, because he could tell Ash wasn’t going to give him on Anton, the paragon saint of manhood, and so he would just have to find out himself. Shame it had happened in the open, the car jacking, or he’d be right over there with his ability. “And once the suit came?” he asked, reaching again for his beer, cigarette forgotten between his fingers.
Preston smiled. "That was it for the car. And the car jacker, too. If it hadn't been for the fact he was just about to shoot me, I would almost say it would have been easier just to let him have it." Tipping the beer up toward the ceiling to finish it.
"No, Ash, I meant what happened to you? " Eli clarified.
"Ah." He looked up to recall, and paused again to phrase it. "I fell down. I don't remember all that well. The prototype was... overzealous."
“You know,” Eli said, tapping the box of cigarettes on the table and motioning over the waitress and requesting a double round of shots, Kentucky bourbon, “you need to work on your believability. There is no way that you don’t know precisely what happened. Also, you’re even more infuriating about answering questions than you were as a teenager. Drink.” This last order came with the shots that were placed on the table.
Preston looked down at the glasses with an expression of distaste. "Why are you trying to get me drunk?" This asked as he was actually picking up the glass. "And I don't know. I hit my head. There was a possibility the car was on top of me at one point, but I am hoping that is just the concussion talking." Yeah, he knocked that back very well. Ah, college.
“Because you’re infuriatingly not forthcoming when sober,” Eli explained, knocking back his own shot and licking the bourbon off his lips after. He liked to drink, but only when he liked what he was drinking, and good bourbon was a favorite. He’d been through three mugs of beer and a shot, but he was just starting to feel the warmth of the buzz, and he motioned the waitress over for refills. “I mean emotionally. I’m not interested in the wonderful antics of Anton’s toy,” and maybe there was some jealously there, maybe.
“You want to know what happened to me,” Preston repeated with some difficulty, squinting through beer-before-liquor, “emotionally. I don’t know. It scared the hell out of me. What else?” The zucchini showed up, and Preston took one to pieces before eating it. This was technically a splurge, but so was this much liquor.
“I want to know what happened to you,” Eli assured, giving himself a chance to taste the new shot of bourbon before tipping it back. He watched Ash demolish the zucchini, his gaze lingering too long on elegant, masculine fingers. He cleared his throat, blamed the drink and the past, and put an elbow on the table. His eyes were starting to go a touch unfocused, and he tugged a beer closer. “Were you injured?” That seemed important, and then, unexpectedly, “tell me about Thorne.”
Preston, who was enjoying the ranch sauce by sucking it off his fingers, didn’t notice. They were on shot two, after all, and beer three. ...Four. He laughed. “No, definitely not. Tell me why you’re not out hunting for lonely women like you said the other day.” He smiled across the table at him.
The combination of licked fingers, followed by that smile, an easier thing than the sober ones that had come before, made Eli forget to respond a moment. When he did, it was with a curse, and a lit cigarette held between unsteady fingers. “I can take the waitress home once we’re done, if you like,” he said, and to prove it, he held up his empty shot glass and winked at her across the pub. She was watching, waiting, and she started over almost immediately, a blush in her cheeks. He looked back at Ash. “Thorne.” Repetition, he hoped, would get him what he wanted.
Preston laughed again. “I’ll stuff a pillow into the vent. If I’m still upright at that point.” There went the second shot, and a muzzy smile because he assumed the curse was because he ate all the zucchini. “Order more. Just not the chicken stuff. Or...” he squinted at the menu. “Anything else, I guess. Zucchini again it is.” He gave the waitress an entirely different smile, and it was probably not one he showed around the office. “Not that drunk,” he said in response to the Thorne repetition.
Ah, the vent. Eli had forgotten about the vent. In his rapidly increasing drunken state, the vent suddenly became an important thing to remember. He didn’t even notice the waitress making it to the table until she was writing down an order for more zucchini, and Eli didn’t even care for zucchini. “Another round,” he told the waitress, sitting back with his cigarette and thighs spread wider as he settled back comfortably in an almost-slouch. “My friend here is disinclined to tell me about his sex life without liquid courage, it seems.” He gave her another lazy wink, and he looked back at Ash.
Unlike Eli, Preston had a lot of practice being attracted to people who he didn’t think were at all interested in him, and he could successfully ignore the things he most wanted to see and pretend he wasn’t thinking the things he was thinking. Preston rolled his eyes at the comment in proper view of the waitress, smiling clearly and pushing the menu away. “Find me something else back there that’s vegetarian?” he asked her, going for the help-me-I’m-surrounded-by-carnivores look. It usually worked.
“You’ve got to be kidding me? You’ve decided to pair the California good looks with being a vegetarian? How much time did you spend in LA?” Eli asked, and just like that, the waitress turned on her heel and walked away with a murmur of agreement. Eli was, of course, too drunk by this point to understand why. “Shall I tell you what Thorne and I discussed, before I knew that he was one of your lovers?”
A wide grin that sank all the way into his cheeks. “What the hell do California good looks look like?” He was just going to ignore the comment about being vegetarian. There was nothing he hadn’t already heard. His eyes swept up toward the ceiling. “Something inflammatory, I’m sure. Blake likes punch.” Some slurring there. Ignore it.
Eli motioned, in order, to Ash’s blond hair, his broad shoulders, and then the whole package of him, as if that explained ‘California good looks’ in their entirety. “Yes, I believe he was asking to see my cock,” he deadpanned.
Preston coughed into his beer, sputtered, and then started to laugh. He laughed so hard he almost fell off his seat. He held his ribs because it felt like they might split if he didn’t, and in between, he gasped for breath.
Eli stubbed out his cigarette, and he watched Ash’s reaction with a sort of drunk, bemused fondness. “Are you of the opinion I should acquiesce?” he asked, still straight faced.
“If you’re in the mood,” Preston managed, and then he burst out laughing again, coughing in spurts, eyes watering.
Oh, this just wouldn’t do. Even drunk, Eli recognized he hadn’t gotten the reaction he was looking for, even without recognizing the reaction he was looking for. “Hand over your phone, then,” he said. The fact that operation of a phone would be a challenge was unimportant just then. A point, it must be made. Drunkenly.
“Fuck you, no,” Preston said, recovering from the gales of laughter with two hands on the table and the napkin. “I think I might pay to see Blake come on to you, Eli, especially with that look on your face.” Cough, smile, swallow of the beer.
“I was intending to take a picture of my cock, if you must know,” Eli said, with false sobriety. “I assume you have his number to send it to him.” He leaned forward, and he reached for Ash’s pants pocket, the one closest to him, in drunken search of phone.
Preston almost spewed beer all over both of them. “What?” he said, totally disbelieving. “You wouldn’t.” The phone was still not in appearance.
Eli’s fingers slid over Ash’s hip, his thigh, and then he leaned over him and patted the opposite side. He was warm, and he smelled of smoke and eucalyptus and dust and coffee, and he started reaching for Ash’s discarded coat next. “I would so.”
Preston swallowed. Hard. The phone was in his coat pocket--well, one of his phones. There were two, one in the left pocket and one in the right. “Gerroff,” he said gruffly, shouldering Eli back onto his side. This just-friends thing was only going to work if Eli kept his hands to himself. And the risque pictures off Preston’s phone.
“And here I thought you were encouraging me,” Eli said, sitting back slowly, much more slowly than he had to, really. He reached for his own phone, held it up and shook it slightly. “Speak now, or forever hold your peace, Ash.”
"You sure you grew up? And it's Preston, damn you," he added drunkenly, turning his head the other way to avoid pressing closer. Basic survival tactics learned long ago.
“You don’t think I’ve grown up?” and maybe there was something that drunken in the question that wanted to know what Ash thought of him, now, all those years later. Unfocused blue eyes met hazel ones.
“Not if you’re going to send cock pictures to some guy on the internet,” Preston said, smiling regardless. He hadn’t meant the criticism in any seriousness.
“Might I remind you that you dated the person who requested said pictures?” Eli asked, and he sounded none-to-pleased about the fact altogether. The waitress brought the zucchini, though she was nowhere near as friendly as before, and Eli ignored her entirely. He was sitting sideways in the booth now, looking at Ash at his side. “What did you see in him?”
Preston had a smile to spare for the waitress but she wasn’t interested in seeing it. “Blake is charming, rich, and it was a shit time. If I remember correctly I was also very drunk the night we met.”
Eli quirked a brow, because that was unexpected. He slouched back again, taking a drag off his cigarette and then turning it and holding the end out to Ash, almost as if it was a joint. “You’re going tor require minding, I see. It’s a wonder you’ve managed so long without my assistance.”
The nearness and the alcohol had successfully eroded away Preston’s resistance to the siren call of nicotine, and he finally gave in and took it. He snorted. “Nobody’s minded me since I was seventeen. Save the effort, I’m fine. Blake is a perfectly good man, once you ignore all the rough edges.” Deep inhale. Damn cancer.
“Thorne is not what I would call a good man, Ash,” Eli insisted, because he knew the type. He’d been the type for a few months in his twenties, if memory served. “How did it it end?” And, yes, he was assuming it ended. He didn’t like the thought that it might not had ended, and he was too drunk to examine why. Instead, he just watched Ash suck on that cigarette a little too closely. He had said he was single, hadn’t he? Yes, Thorne was the past, and he gave Ash a satisfied grin.
“It wasn’t that serious to begin with,” Preston replied, honestly enough, as he was drunk enough that the excess of questions wasn’t strange, and he didn’t have to hide that particular aspect of his personal life from Eli. It was a change, to be honest. Preston didn’t have that many friends privy to his personal life. “Sort of... a several-month fling, I guess you could say.” Then, as if to himself, he said, “I don’t think Blake does anything other than flings.”
“You don’t seem the fling type, Ash,” Eli said, and there was no joking to it. The person he remembered Ash to be, he would have been too insecure for flings. And the person he’d assumed Preston to be, in the few weeks of their communications, wouldn’t become involved in anything that wasn’t serious. It didn’t fit either impression Eli had of the man across from him, drunk or not, and he reached forward and took the cigarette from between Ash’s lips and then took a drag off it himself, the intimacy of the action lost on him in his drunken state.
There had been quite a lot of touching up until this point, and Preston couldn’t help but think it was intentional, and the booze made him a bit testy. He lifted one hand and on the second swipe, caught Eli’s arm in his hand. “Stop calling me that, or we’re going to have a problem. And if you don’t keep your hands to yourself, we’re going to have a different problem.”
Eli glanced down at the hand on his arm, a casual, drunken drop of blue eyes and a glance back up to meet Ash’s hazel one. “When did you get so assertive?” he asked. He remembered Ash’s temper, but only vaguely, his tendency to grab and shove when pushed, but he didn’t really associate it with the scared boy he’d known. More importantly, in his drunken state, the hand on his arm didn’t make him jerk back, as it normally would. “Ash,” he said, and he followed it up with a shit-eating grin.
Preston thought that was bullshit. He’d been the CEO of an international multi-billion dollar corporation, however briefly, and he wasn’t going to let someone use a name that caused him so much ridiculous pain. Very old, very pointless pain. He rolled his weight onto the seat and shoved Eli off the edge of the booth. He was angry for a split-second, but when Eli fell off, he laughed in his slump as he tried to pull back up into sitting.
Eli, for his part, had never been the CEO of an international anything, but he lumbered to his feet drunkenly, and he grabbed what was left of the pint of beer, and he poured it on Ash’s head as he laughed. It was, he thought, very well done. Indicated by the fact that he leaned one elbow on the back of the booth and grinned toothily.
Bastard. The anger came back, the harmless kind, quick to burn and quick to extinguish. He hauled off the bar and punched Eli in the face. It was a half-ass punch, but he did it anyway, because it felt good to be doing something. The beer stung his eyes and he fell over on the floor. The waitress yelled something in the background somewhere.
Half-ass punched or not, it caught Eli in the jaw, and it knocked him off his drunken balance. He was about to get up, intending to give Ash a matching bruise come morning for no reason that he could really put his finger on, but then Ash was falling over in a sticky, beer-drunk mess, and he found himself leaning over him, face close to his. “You learned how to throw a punch,” was the only thing that came to mind, and then he was being hauled back and to his feet by the bartender, and one of the patrons was helping Ash stand.
There was a lot of pushing and shuffling around after that, as Preston wasn’t real good at standing up straight, and Eli wasn’t either. Preston shoved a credit card at someone, and they wouldn’t let them retire to a car, so somebody called them a cab. He shook his knuckles.
Eli waved off the entire notion of a cab, and he closed his hand in the lapel of Ash’s coat, as if he knew best, and he hauled him toward the door. “There’s a Days Inn across the road,” he said, as if he was the authority on trucker motels, and (amazingly for Eli) he didn’t much care who was watching them or what those people thought. “Which is important, because you chose to bathe in beer.” Which was not, at all, Eli’s fault.
Oh no. Oh hell no. No. Preston dug his heels in and turns his shoulders to try to break the grip. “No. Absolutely not. No. We’re waiting for a cab and I am going home.” Because he wasn’t going to get a damn hotel room with Eli, because he knew exactly where his mind was going and it was a bad, bad idea all around.
Eli’s mind was, blissfully, on autopilot. No deep thoughts, no exploration of why and how. None of that, and he just rolled his eyes and tugged Ash out into the cold, snowy evening. “Don’t be a tit,” he said, feeling very proud of how sober he sounded (the cold night air helped, at least to a spectator), and he looked both ways before tugging Ash toward the road and the harmless motel sign across the way.
Preston was never on autopilot. Not ever. They both almost fell in the middle of the road, but finally on the street in front of the motel Preston got his balance back and the world stopped tilting for long enough for him to put a coherent phrase together. “Eli, stop it. No!”
The tone stopped, Eli, more than the words themselves. “You don’t trust me?” he asked, and there was a little bit of kicked puppy dog in the question. He groaned then, drunkenly, and he grabbed Ash’s jacket sleeve. “I’ll stay outside. You’re perfectly safe with me, you realize? I am entirely heterosexual.” He was. Really.
Preston gave Eli a look that, if he'd been able to focus, probably would have been far more impressive. "I'm not, and whatever that has to do with anything. I want to go home." He realized that it made him sound like a homesick kid, but he didn't care. He didn't think Eli was particularly safe around him, and he didn't want to come on to Eli and end up being the one that took advantage of the situation. He pulled his sleeve free.
Eli just stared when the sleeve was pulled free of his grip, and it was the stare of someone who was trying to find out what had just happened. He was, in that moment, the personification of confusion, and he turned blue-eyes that went from fuzzy and unfocused, to understanding and embarrassed, to Ash. “I see, of course, yes,” he said, and he stepped back onto the sidewalk, his sway still uneven. The cab, the one that had been called that Eli refused, rounded the corner, and Eli stared at Ash in the headlights.
Preston, like most intelligent and drunk men, assumed that his conclusions were shared by everyone around him, and he was embarrassed too. So embarrassed, in fact that when he met Eli's look his head was down and his collar was already up against the damp. "I don't just go into motels and jump people who would rather not, regardless of what you think of Blake." He staggered across the street toward the cab.
That was enough to make it through the alcohol fog that was Eli’s mind, and he turned so fast he almost walked straight into Ash. He knew that demeanor, the looking down and collar up against the world. It brought memory crashing back so fast that Eli was almost bowled over by it, and when he spoke there was a clarity through the booze that had not been there a moment earlier. “I never even implied such a thing,” he said in an angry hiss, angry at Ash for still being down on himself the way he had been all those years ago. “If memory serves, I came on to you.”
Preston caught his weight on the cab. "That's right," Preston said, smiling sadly. "You were experimenting."
Eli almost grabbed for Ash’s sleeve, but he let his hand hang between them as the cab driver honked impatiently. “Don’t-” he said. “Don’t do that.”
"Do what?" Preston got the cab door open after two tries. "Better get in," he muttered in Eli's general direction.
“Label it,” Eli said, with a candor that he would not exhibit if he was sober. He shook his head. “Get in,” he said, opening the door for Ash.
Preston felt like his lean was more of a pour against the side of the cab. He told the complaining cabbie to start the meter and then he looked back at Eli. “I didn’t... you did.” Confusion. “We’re going to the same place. Get in.”
Eli still didn’t budge, grumbling cabbie or no. “It sounds like something it wasn’t when you say it,” he said, and he looked back at the motel and then at Ash’s eyes. “I didn’t think you’d do anything to me in there, you realize?” he asked, as if he hadn’t moved on in the conversation at all.
Preston was to the point where he assumed he would never understand what was going on in Eli’s head about a couple weeks in high school a long time ago. Perhaps he was supposed to pretend it didn’t matter... more. Somehow. “Right,” he said, finally sitting though his legs were still sprawled outside the car. “I’d rather not...” Maybe it was a test to see if he would play it out again? A messed up game? “...test it.”
Eli rolled his eyes, that comment enough to make him forget the fact that he didn’t want to get in the cab a moment earlier, and he shoved at Ash’s arm. “I’m freezing,” he said, as if Ash had been the one keeping him outside in the cold, which he had. “And since you won’t agree to go into a warm motel room, the least you could do is get in the cab.”
Preston, clueless, just moved over. Impossible man. Who the hell knew what he was saying? The beer smelled and the cabbie complained and Preston was trying not to think about how much this coat had cost.
Eli climbed into the cab, but he didn’t talk once he was inside. He propped his chin on his hand, and he looked out the window at the dark and the falling snow, and he only glanced back at Ash once or twice (maybe three times). The cabbie was playing Christmas songs, something old by Bing Crosby, and he thought drunkenly driving away from a pub on Christmas Eve in silence might not be what Bing had in mind. He chuckled, and it was a sound that was all sobering regret, and he rubbed at his jaw as the cab stopped, and he threw money over the seat at the cabbie as he climbed out.
He held the cab door open for Ash, and he leaned against the doorframe, still too drunk to stand on his own too feet for very long.
Preston stayed long enough to make sure the cabbie was adequately paid and then he stumbled out onto the sidewalk, squinting against the streetlights. He was going to need a lot of water to avoid a hangover in the morning. He felt comfortable enough to take Eli’s shoulder for balance, which was better than nothing if not the most stable thing to hold onto. “You took me out and got me drunk on purpose,” he accused, halfway seriously.
“When I take someone out and get them drunk on purpose, love, I generally get laid at the end of the evening,” Eli said, glancing over at the hand on his shoulder, and then moving a hand to Ash’s hip for balance.
“I got that feeling, yes,” Preston replied, leaning heavily in a cloud of beer. “Partly why I’m so confused by you and your (hiccup) mixed messages.” Preston hadn’t done much thinking in the cab, but he’d had more time for his blood alcohol content to go up.
“I do not send mixed messages,” Eli insisted, mashing the elevator button five times too many. He turned his head to insist again, but he got lost in the sticky-sweet smell of beer on Ash’s temple and in his hair. “You need a shower,” he insisted, his voice dropping at the words, completely unintentional.
“Eli,” Preston said, with the too-careful words of someone completely and utterly smashed, “if we were dating, I would call you ‘handsy.’” In fact, he had, in his head, and he wouldn’t have said it out loud if he was any more sober than he was.
“Women say I’m not affectionate enough,” Eli confessed, which he definitely wouldn’t have done if he was sober. “So I am not handsy.” The word handsy was entirely prim and British when he said, completely opposite of Ash’s Boston. The elevator doors opened, and Eli practically dragged Ash in, quick, so quick that the elevator wall ended up against Eli’s back and Ash was warm and solid in front of him. “If we were dating, you’d say the same thing.” Except both of his hands were on Ash’s hips at the present moment.
Preston smiled. “I somehow doubt that. You have been loving and leaving too much and you are reluctant to commit,” he said, trying to imitate the voice of a grave therapist without much success. He decided to blame the booze for his lean against Eli’s chest.
Eli snorted at the therapist impersonation. “Reluctance to commit doesn’t naturally equate affection,” he said, and he might have continued on about the fact that he was not, in fact, handsy, but then Ash was leaning against him, and he forgot whatever he was going to say. He felt, he was sure, every inch of his skin right then, felt every pinpoint of pressure of Ash’s weight against himself, and instead of pushing him away, the fingers on Ash’s hips tightened on fabric and tugged him closer.
Preston took in Eli’s breath and made a quiet sound that he immediately strangled, a low, contented sound that he had definitely not meant to let escape. “This,” he said, endeavoring to be honest, “Is what I meant.”
Eli caught the start of that strangled sound, and he was either too drunk, or he didn’t want to hear the words that followed it. Deep, unfocused blue eyes met Ash’s green ones. “Do you ever take what you want, Ash?” he asked instead, intense and oh-so drunk.
Preston didn’t look away. “Sometimes it costs too much. Don’t call me that.”
“I take what I want,” Eli assured him, and even drunk the words were imbued with determination. He closed a hand at the shirt at Ash’s neck, and he used it to haul himself the short space left between their mouths, and he kissed him, sloppy-drunk and tasting of beer and cigarettes, but not uncertain, and not reluctant. That would come later.
Regardless of what Preston said, and often of what he did, there was always something underneath. Even seeping him in that much alcohol still didn’t make those hidden depths shallow, but there was no question a second later that he definitely wanted to be kissed. Maybe Eli’s was sloppy but Preston’s wasn’t, and even drunk he knew exactly what he was doing when he turned his head and opened his mouth.
Eli had, quite honestly, not been with a man since Ash. And even with Ash, it had only been a few fumbled kisses and hands under shirts. He felt different than a woman, and he felt different than Eli remembered, even through the drunken haze that didn’t allow for thoughts of repercussions. He tilted his head to follow Ash’s lead, but he wasn’t hesitant about demanding entrance into Ash’s mouth in a way that was definitively masculine. His hands started grabbing for the ends of Ash’s shirt, the memory of that scramble of fingers still vivid, and he yanked.
It was a hard kiss while still being welcoming, and it felt, strangely enough, less like a burn and more of a warm, wheaty, beerish sort of reassurance. Preston’s tongue pressed against Eli’s in a curling tantalizing sweep, and the still-damp buttondown shirt yielded a flat, breathing stomach and fine hair. The elevator chimed cheerfully.
Eli made a strangled, pleasured sound when his fingers dragged through that fine hair, and it was that, and not the kiss itself, that shocked him into reality and made him pull back, eyes unfocused-wide and wanting as he looked down at the expanse of very male stomach his fingers had uncovered.
Preston, caught up in a swirl of thoughts that might have explained the mixed signals he was picking up off of Eli whenever he got near him, digitally or otherwise, only sighed quietly, not a regretful sigh but just a long breath of confusion. “We’re drunk,” he said in a quiet slur, touching a spot beneath Eli’s ear. “Sleep it off.” He gently pushed him back, toward the door.
The touch sent shivers along Eli’s spine, and he pushed back a moment, but then he grumbled, and something inside him understood the rational there, it did. It didn’t keep him from testing his fingers through that fine hair and stomach just one more time, though. It didn’t keep him from trying to kiss Ash again, either, and missing and kissing an evening-roughened jaw instead. The longer he stood, the more he swayed, however, and he took a step away and just looked at the other man. Looked and looked, before turning with grumble as the elevator doors opened.
Preston looked up at Eli through lowered lids, but he said nothing. He was trying not to be cynical about the evening, but he thought it likely Eli might prefer to pretend it never happened. The alcohol made his veins heat at the back of his neck and in the pit of his stomach, so he swayed out of the elevator, shoving back on the doors as they tried to close on both of them. He started searching his pockets for his keys.
Eli’s door was before Ash’s, and he leaned against it heavily, keys in his hand as he watched Ash fish for his. His stare was a heated one, undeniably so, though he wouldn’t admit as much in the morning. But in that moment, drunk and unguarded, it was what it was - blue heat and little room for doubt.
It took some fumbling, but Preston got his keys out and hung his weight on his open door. He turned his head to look at Eli, and anger momentarily clouded his vision. “Don’t look at me like that.” He pushed forward, and half-stumbled and half-fell into his apartment. He kicked the door shut a second later.