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There's Ashley, leaning between the seats like always and shaking like a fucking leaf in the aftermath of a family party or whatever that was back in the church, and here's Stuart, restless and steadily wanting to punch his trainee in the mouth more and more. He doesn't have many friends, but when it comes to the few he does, he's got one rule: you don't fuck with them and if you do, you're a twat who deserves whatever's coming to you. It's that simple. Of course it is. And even more so in this case because hell, this is Ashley.
(for what it's worth, ashley doesn't give a damn. or, well, he does, but he's got it trained into him to just take what's coming to him and does little more than say "stop."
this is the secret: they never stop)
What really pisses Stuart off, though - really, genuinely, digs him deep under his skin - is that it takes literal hours and an accident before he can knock Rachid down a peg enough to drag him into the first empty room he can find and tell him, "Lay off."
Rachid blinks, looks like a confused owl doing it and the adrenaline hasn't stopped his brain from firing up yet, which means Stuart still wants to punch him for being such an idiot back there. "I said I would," he says, defensive. "I gave you back the wheel."
"That's not what I meant. Lay the fuck off Ashley."
For once, for once, Rachid doesn't open his mouth with something there at the ready. 'Course, Ashley does it too, and yeah, same with Stuart himself, but they've got a synchronization going on, some sort of understanding about what they can talk about and what they can't talk about and when they can push it. That was, under no stretch of the imagination, a good time to push it.
Stuart's always had this theories. He just knows better than to ask about it.
A few minutes later they split, but not before he gets in a good death threat - "say anything else, and I know how to kill you and make it look like an accident" - because no matter how much he likes Rachid, all his suspicions went on high, high alert back there. Ashley's outside when he finds him, alone and just out of the rain with a cigarette stuck between his lips that makes him look more like a movie star than a paramedic. He always looks like that, though, s'long as he doesn't open his mouth and start spewing out the world's bullshit because then he just becomes any normal bloke trying to pass off as something he's not, except he sucks at it. There, movie star image ruined in wake of his shitty as fuck acting skills.
(ashley thinks he must be a pretty damn good actor if no one's actually asked yet)
When he sees him, Ashley's face splits into a smile, taking the cigarette from his lips, and it doesn't quite reach his eyes, leaving it more an open wound made of perfect teeth instead of an expression of amusement. "So what did you use this time? Impending threat of a rusty, dull scalpel to the throat?" - (it's a good throwback to last year, he thinks, when those two blokes were hassling him in a bar when he was that place between sober and tipsy and stuart went all overprotective and fuck if ashley doesn't find that the hottest thing he's seen in years)
Quirking a brow, Stuart answers, "What makes you think I made an impending threat of anything?"
"Because you've got the biggest white knight complex I've ever seen," Ashley answers, motioning with the hand with the cigarette so the smoke curls up, disappears in the rain. Sometimes he wishes his friend would stop, and sometimes he can't figure out if it's out of worry for his well-being or because Stuart has a serious problem of thinking he looks like he belongs in Hollywood. "See, it makes sense when you're working the job and all, saving people and doing what we do, but you seem to get particularly violent when it comes to me. Does that make me special?"
It's hitting closer to a real conversation than they've gotten in a while, but the whole day's been like that. And Stuart places the blame firmly on Rachid, that fucker, and tries not to think about how he's always had his theories. "If we've got a hierarchy, and I'm the leader, that makes you my subordinate," he answers, which is probably the wrong thing to say. "'Course I'm going to get protective." Then he pauses before adding, "I told him I could make it look like an accident if I wanted."
Ashley's laugh is a single note distinctly lacking humor. "You're really something else, Stu," he says. "I'm not your, what? Subordinate."
But he is, and there's nothing Stuart can do about it because unlike Rachid, Ashley's never so much as protested. Maybe that's a good thing, maybe that's a bad thing, but hey, it's a thing, and at least Stuart knows that. He goes to say something not very nice, because that's his way, after all (ashley's expecting "well, that is your type" or something of the like, and is surprised when it doesn't come), but changes tactic last minute, decides he's got too many damn theories in his head and under the movie star facade, his friend still looks like a kicked puppy. Maxine says he's got it bad. He calls bullshit on that too, no matter how blue Ashley's eyes are.
"So what did he really do to you?" he asks instead of stating the obvious by making some biting remark that makes sense but shouldn't. "And don't say bullied, that was a full on freeze-it-up-good, going-to-Kirsty reaction back there."
(maybe he isn't as good at pretending as he thought. fine. everyone's got their flaws. he came to grips with his a long time ago)
"I told you I'm fine," Ashley snaps. "Is it really that surprising that the pretty boy who ignored all the girls got bullied in the first place?"
Yeah, he's pretty all right, and if he is at twenty-four with a scruffy beard, Stuart can only imagine the shit he heard in high school when he couldn't grow a hair on his face. Still. He knows when his friend is lying and his friend is keeping something from him, and he might be bad at paper tests, but he's the brains of the crew and a pretty good guesser. "No," he says. "Whoever that Dan guy was, he did more than rough you up a bit, or call you a few names. Don't bother to deny it."
To his surprise, Ashley's eyes dart around like he's afraid someone's listening before he says, "Is this really the time and place?" as he stubs out his cigarette on the brick wall and throws it in the trash. "Actually, what the fuck am I still doing here anyway? Shift's over."
"Ash, look, maybe -"
"I -"
"But -"
(they argue for five minutes and ashley agrees to have him over because they started raising their voices. he seethes the whole way home and jumps when his friend accidentally brushes up against his elbow. and it doesn't make sense because he's over it, he tells himself.
another little voice tells him, yeah, and stuart doesn't have any issues at all, and ashley has been remarkably good at lying to himself, if not to others)
Stuart's always had his theories. So it doesn't come as much of a surprise when his friend suddenly blurts out, "It was a fucking school bathroom, all right? I was fourteen, he was seventeen. Laid me out on the ground like I was a twig - I was back then - and covered my mouth his hand while two of his friends manned the door and said he'd kill me if I ever told anyone. Did it more than once, too. Didn't seem to think he was into men, too, all because he wasn't the one taking it. There. You satisfied?"
(fourteen, small and skinny, and there's this kid with other kids watching him take that to his advantage. so ashley has a type. if it was really tied to get raped in the middle of the school day at age fourteen, then logic says his type should be the opposite, which means he's right and he got over it. of course he got over it. it's not like he had a choice)
For a moment, Stuart doesn't do anything. Then he says, "Well, fuck," and thinks that sums up the situation well enough. "Does anyone else -?" Ashley shakes his head. If he wouldn't come across as such a hypocrite, he'd tell him to go see a counselor because that's ten years of no one knowing. That Dan should in prison right now, locked up with the rest of his species, not out wandering into church parties that Ashley could obviously show up at any minute. "Fuckers really thought it wasn't gay?"
Ashley isn't looking at him now, fiddling with the corner of the paper label on his glass bottle, and he doesn't look so Hollywood now, more like a kid who just got his bloody heart ripped open and moments like this are stark reminders they've actually got an eight year age difference. When he was fourteen, laid out on the floor in some fucking school bathroom, Stuart was graduating uni and in the process of breaking up with Sally Parker. "Yeah, they really did," Ashley answers, and downs the rest of the beer in one gulp. "You think I would've learned to fight my way out of it after at least the tenth time when I stopped counting, but having a death threat over my head was a pretty good way to get me to keep my mouth shut. He never would've done it, though. Didn't realize that until years later."
This is sick. Actually, genuinely, really sick, but all paramedics have a harder time getting around rape or domestic abuse than, say, a suicide or some sort of death. Years later or not, it still gets to him because this is Ashley. "Realized it and, what?" Stuart says. "You were just never going to tell anyone, take it to the grave or whatever the hell it is that people say?"
"Yeah, that was the plan, yeah." The other man is scowling now, arms crossed, and he's still looking like a kid, which is messing Stuart up more than it should. "Didn't exactly expect anyone to come barging into my personal life, if that's what you mean."
"You do realize that's playing exactly into what he wanted even years later, don't you?"
"Fuck off, Stuart. I don't need this right now." (and he never will, not if he can help it because it doesn't matter if people like to say he's practically a girl, into other men and all pretty, whatnot; he's as emotionally repressed as every other man he knows. life's just easier that way)
Even though he wants to say that he does, Stuart decides the best he can do right now is shut down, maybe spring it on him later, because it all makes sense. No shit he can't get into a real relationship if he doesn't want to tell anyone his Deep Dark Secret. No wonder his ICE is someone he doesn't want to fuck. This is just even more of a reason to never make the move he wasn't planning on making in the first place (now that his friend's found out, ashley figures he ruined his chance even further to risk making a move he once upon a time considered before deciding he didn't want to put this friendship at stake).
When Stuart says, "I'm going to go," Ashley doesn't look surprised, and he isn't sure if that pisses him off or comes as a relief. No disappointment this way and all. "See you in ten hours."
Ashley doesn't stand to let him out, makes him do it alone, stays curled into himself even as he watches Stuart go and his eyes say "if you tell anyone, I'll cut your balls off," still playing right into that...Dan's hands even ten years later. So much for realizing it. He hasn't realized anything at all. And damn the hypocrisy, but when his dad skipped, Stuart had Maxine blabbering on about her stupid "I'm so sorrys" like he needed her pity when he didn't, but his friend definitely needed something outside the occasional fuck and unsaved number in his phone.
He closes the door with a click behind him, waves to the neighbor after she waves to him and Ashley doesn't have her number either. His friend's ICE contact better not be his mother because fuck her for not noticing something was wrong for an entire school year. People carry their baggage on their backs, and it's got to be a real talent that he doesn't slouch. Stuart walks home alone, debates calling Maxine to talk in hypothetical on how to help someone in this situation, and decides that's a bad idea.
(long after he's gone, ashley sits by the window and hopes they can pretend this never happened.
for a while, they do)