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Oh, I’d do so many things for you, Ash.
How is he supposed to just forget that? How is anyone supposed to forget that?
To forget that Reddoons, the cold-hearted, ruthless, and most of all, unloving businessman, who has ruined lives to grow his fortune, who has lied and schemed and tricked and threatened and killed his way to glory. To forget that he essentially knelt at Ash’s feet and swore unending loyalty. That he opened up his palms and bared his throat and gazed up at Ash, and gave his life away. All for—
All for nothing in return.
Ash had been so completely blindsided, so lost, he had simply stood there. Mind blank, tongue heavy and useless, words caught in his throat. Could only manage a pathetic cough, a stammered mutter of Okay, Red. Could only turn away, hoping the shake in his hands was hidden by his pockets, a casual hunch of his shoulders hiding the utter shock painting his face.
Red had laughed, because of course he had. The smug, victorious laugh of a snake who’s prey had fallen helplessly within reach, a broken leg slowing them down. The laugh of a businessman who knows he’s gotten a hook. And Ash had to look away, because Red can pick out a lost face from a mile away, and Ash had no response but a silent glare, a glare diminished by shock and confusion and some other sickening emotion that leaves his stomach empty and flipping into his throat.
It’s a trick; it has to be. What other reason would prompt the Reddoons to sacrifice everything like that? No, there is no other explanation: Red wants something from Ash. A slip of the tongue, a dropping of his guard, and he will pounce. And Ash would be left as confused and lost as all those before him, defeated by the draconic might that is Red.
Well, then. For all his cunning, Red has forgotten one crucial detail: Ash is no idiot. He is not some naive old fool like others. He’s been in this business nearly as long as Red has. He knows what happens when you drop your guard, and he isn’t about to do that now.
-
“I meant what I said, ya know.”
Ash doesn’t turn to acknowledge Red, simply ducking his head back to the papers strewn across the desk. There’s a snappy response at the tip of his tongue, one that almost slips out— one he decides isn’t necessary, and saves his breath for a better conversation with a better person.
Red doesn’t bother filling the silence left behind. At least, not at first. Content, in the moment, to lounge on Ash’s couch in Ash’s room in Ash’s house. Content to, presumably, watch Ash work in silence rather than to repeat his question.
It seems, with “seems” being a key word, innocent enough. A one-off question regretted by both parties, to be left hanging in the air to stew in awkwardness until the both of them forget.
Ash knows different. Red may be the “licensed” businessman— he was rich enough to afford schooling— but Ash has a bit of his own skills under his belt, similar in nature to the skills taught in stuffy classrooms with prim and proper students and snobby professors. Red is trying to use the awkward atmosphere in his favour. To push a response out. To encourage talking or uncomfortable shifting or anything that will let him pick Ash apart.
Jokes on him, Ash isn’t stupid. He’s not untrained, either. Maybe he hasn’t learned by kissing the boots of those above him, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t know how to counteract these sorts of tactics. Manipulation tactics, that’s what they are. Interrogation.
So he just lets the silence be. Keeps the awkwardness in the air, breathes around it like trying to avoid humidity, and accepts it. Drags his pencil along the paper without stopping, without fiddling with it or doodling shapes in the corner to relieve the stress in his arms. Taps it, occasionally, like he has been over the past hour, tracing the lines he’s already sketched out.
It pays to know your own subconscious habits, to mimic them when you’re more aware.
There’s a rustle, a sound of fabric sliding against itself. Red is pushing himself upright to sit straight on the couch. Ash still doesn’t look, but risks flicking his eyes up to pick out the reflection in the window. One of Red’s arms still remains slung over the back, ever casual. He can’t pick out his expression in the faint image, and turns back to the papers.
“I thought,” Red begins, still ever casual, yet breaking his own self-imposed silence. A small victory for Ash. “That you, of all people, would pounce on the offer I made.” A short pause. He must be tilting his head, as he usually does. “Did you get hit in the head?”
Ash, for a moment, conciders telling him to fuck off. Then he considers punching Red square in the nose, hopefully breaking those stupid shades in the same moment.
He settles, instead, on a different option. Standing and, in the same motion, drawing his sword to whirl to point at Red, he orders, “Get the fuck out of my house.”
Red, sword point digging into his back, laughs the whole way out.
-
Ash does not see Red for a little while after that.
Business trip, his associates— servants, really, bound unless they wish to lose whatever power they have left— say.
A blessing is what it is. A moment of bliss to enjoy to its fullest. No one to interrupt his day, appearing unannounced and unwanted at his doorstep to grin his stupid grin and follow his every move. Stare over his shoulder at his notes, at important and sensitive documents, eavesdropping on phone conversations without shame, without hiding. To breathe easily, knowing Red won’t steal it with smooth words that scream danger.
From where he stands, somewhere in the city he can’t be bothered to remember, Red’s Tower of Pretentious Egotism towers above the rest. Wreathed in morning clouds, all red and black like some fucking supervillain.
The top windows, the penthouse where Red resides, are dark.
He doesn’t feel a stab of anything at the sight.
He especially doesn’t feel disappointment.
-
When Red comes back, eyes dark and missing a body guard, he does not feel relieved.
-
“I meant what I said,” Red says, for the second time. This time, Ash responds:
“So you’ve said. The fuck do you want me to do about it?”
A slow blink, a tilt of the head. “Well, whatever you want, I suppose. That’s what I said.”
Ash has to even his breathing manually. Takes a moment to collect his voice back together before speaking again. “I want you to jump off your stupid penthouse.”
That earns him a laugh, hearty, loud, and genuine. It sends sparks through his veins, butterflies exploding in his stomach. It shouldn't. “I said ‘so many things’, not ‘everything’, Ash.”
“False advertisement,” Ash’s numb lips say, and Red laughs again, tipping his head back towards the sky.
The butterfly wings brush against the walls of his stomach.
-
It’s around one in the morning when a knock rings through Ash’s darkened and empty home.
He’s awake, of course, but the sound still startles him.
It’s enough to make him sit bolt upright, suddenly enough for the glass of alcohol to slip from his numb, half-asleep hand and thump to the carpet below. Any worry of the spirits staining the carpet doesn’t cross his mind, too preoccupied, not with the sound itself, but the nature of it.
The knock— it’s frantic. Sloppy. Too quick. As if done by a shaking, unsure hand.
And it's at his front door.
At one in the morning.
It’s enough of an anomaly to spur him from where he lays on the couch, only half-dressed in a tank top, shorts, and socks, even before the noise starts up again. Still shaky and uneven. In the darkness, only partially lit by two lamps halfway across the room, he stumbles over nothing, barely missing the soaked puddle of alcohol, limping to the hallway with a muffled swear.
In the dark of his house, too lazy to go for any light switches, his phone light works well enough. It barely illuminates the stairs when he reaches, prompting a near slip and forcing his heart into his throat, bloated with ice.
The door is silent when he reaches it, having barely survived the trip down the spiral stairs. He begins to suspect trickster teenagers when the peephole reveals nothing. Then again, there are no lights around his house. Unnecessary, he deemed them, after too many times the automatic ones were triggered by some wayward moth and kept doing by their frantic flapping to the light.
Sliding aside the deadbolt, then undoing the actual lock he does not trust at all, Ash cracks open the door, and peers around the corner, most of his body shielded.
Red, blinking rapidly in the sudden light, raises his arm in greeting. Halfway, because the rest of it is soaked in something dark and thick, dripping from the ends of his fingers. When his lips twitch into a smile, it looks more like a wince than anything.
"What the fuck—" Ash starts, a question Red cuts off before it can finish.
"Got shot," he rasps. Finally manages a grin, strained and fake as it is. "Figured I'd come here, seeing as I've signed my life away to you."
Ash jerks back, more surprised than insulted at the words. How Red's still standing— he doesn't understand. Doesn't understand at all. "I— you—" then, pulling himself up, he snaps, "Flattery will get you nowhere."
"Could I at least come inside?"
"I—" Again, Ash hesitates. Glances behind him, even though nobody's home but himself, then over Red's hunched and, he now realises, shaking shoulders. "Okay. Yeah. Okay."
Red has to be the one to prompt Ash to open the door fully, still in a state of shock. Has to be the one to push past Ash, standing stock-still in the entranceway. He has to be the one to close the door, though it's Ash's fumbling fingers that lock everything back up.
Finally, his brain decides to reboot. "Where are your bodyguards?"
Red gives a shrug. It's stiff. Unnatural. Not himself. "Wasn't really on my mind. Kinda focused on the whole being shot part."
Ash stops. Stares Red down. In the darkness, his glare cannot be as effective, but Red stands there bleeding. Holding one arm tight, shoulders hunched, eyes dead. He's not energetic, or witty, or himself. "I'm taking you to the hospital."
"What?" For the first time since he first appeared on Ash's doorstep, Red shows an emotion other than eerie calmness. "No. Whoever's after me—"
"— Will not be after me," Ash finishes for him. "Unlike you, I don't ride around in a limo with my face plastered onto the side like some cartoon villain. I have taste. Do you want to die?"
"No," Red mutters.
"Then get in my car." He tips his head, even though Red can't see it. "Aren't you doing whatever I want?"
That draws a groan. It's an unnerving mixture of annoyance and pain, a terrible concoction that trails off into a whisper of noise, completed as Red hunches over, grip tightening over his injured arm. It sends a stab of, annoyingly, worry through Ash. Which it shouldn't. He doesn't care. He doesn't care about Red.
It means nothing that he sped nearly the entire way to the hospital, Red laying prone in the backseat.
It means nothing that he stayed there. All night. In a tank top with a purple suit jacket thrown over top, with no shoes.
It means nothing.
-
"I'd do so many things for you, Ash."
It's not startling this time. It still sends the butterflies panicking, though, stirring up his stomach.
It's been five days since Red was shot. The perpetrator hasn't been caught yet. Ash isn't sure if he minds or not. At least Red is alive, is all his stupid, treacherous brain can think about. At least he's alive.
The doctors say he will heal.
It certainly seems so. Now, Ash is no doctor, but in only two days, Red had regained the colour in his cheeks and the sparkle in his eye. In another day, he could walk without growing faint, no longer requiring either Ash or, on days where he could not bribe the nurses, a nurse to assist him around. While movement in the arm is limited, and will remain so for maybe a few more months. I'd expect pain in that arm for years, as the doctor said.
Still. He's alive. He's alive, he's alive, he's alive. Ash's mind can stop conjuring nightmares of Red's body lying broken and bloodied upon the floor of his penthouse, or Ash's house, or the sidewalk, or some abandoned alley no one will ever find him in.
"So you've said," he manages, soft and still filled with tiredness. He stares, unblinking, at the Styrofoam coffee cup in his hands. No longer scalding, as it had been when he paid far too much for it at the hospital cafeteria, but still untouched.
"Are you going to do anything about it?"
Ash almost shrugs.
Almost.
When he glances up, Red is staring up at him. He thinks it's expectant. It could just be curious. It could just be taunting.
"Yeah," he rasps.
Now Red smiles. It's definitely taunting. "Well?"
Ash only hesitates for a single millisecond. Tipping forward in his seat, pushing the cup onto the flimsy, way-too-small table, Ash grabs Red by the uninjured shoulder, pulls him forward, and kisses him.
It probably only lasts for a second at most. Both are them are far too shocked at their own actions to properly reciprocate. Ash finds himself almost jumping backwards, nearly tipping out of his chair, expecting Red to punch him in the face at the very least.
Instead, Red blinks, licks his lips with a slightly confused expression, and asks, "Is that all?"
"No. You're taking me on a date when your arm fixes itself."
And Red actually laughs. Tips his head back, nearly falling out of his chair, and laughs. Draws several disgruntled glares from fellow early risers, mixtures of confusion to disapproval to outright anger. "Is that an order, Ash Swag?"
"Call me that again and I'll shoot your other arm. I think your mystery attacker would like that."