the_vigilante | you are the reason that i am not afraid (rp for fortheportfolio)

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you are the reason that i am not afraid (rp for fortheportfolio)

The clock on the dash reads 3:59am when they cross the state line into Nevada, and save for the grumbling of the engine of Ray's truck, and the occasional jangle of metal from the thing that he and Tobias have been putting together as it lists side to side whenever he manages to catch a pothole just wrong, all is quiet. In the back, just barely visible in the rear view and only if he sits up straight, stretches, Clara is asleep on the floor, one of Aiden's coats draped over her as a makeshift blanket; Frewer, nearby, is unconscious, too, though Aiden suspects that has more to do with whatever pills he downed earlier than anything else. Ray, beside him in the passenger seat, is asleep, too, for all that he knows, their conversation having whittled away to nothingness some half an hour ago, and Aiden glances over him briefly, before returning his attentions to the road.

They've been driving for days, now, up from Oklahoma City and a Blume data center there, then west towards San Francisco, where apparently the Bellweather is alive and well, despite Aiden having given the proverbial dynamite to destroy it to Ray, sometime after Damien. There's a brief stopover planned, somewhere in the desert, for the bones of the beast in the back, but there's still miles to go before and after, both, and if there's anything he's learned in the last several decades of driving for a living, being behind the wheel, no matter how long, gives a man time to think. The whole wee hours of the morning thing doesn't really help -- nor does the fact that, for all that the four of them might be the only living souls for miles, now, the truck has become sort of a liminal space. It lends itself to an emotional review of the last two years, and he glances at Ray again, that in mind.

He wonders, then, if he knows -- if Ray really knows how much their friendship means to him. He knows he's not the best at showing it, for all that he tries to hide behind his little black baseball cap, but it means something to him that Ray calls him brother. It feels like it means something to Ray, now, too, for all that Aiden's half-sure it wasn't anything at all, at the start, just the grown-up version of one guy calling another dude or bro, and even two years later, it still stings in the best way, every time Ray says it. He needs to be someone's brother, and after Nicky and Jacks --

Blowing out a quiet breath, he shakes his head faintly and tries to put the thought out of mind, but they've been driving for days, now, and being behind the wheel at this hour is a black hole that pulls everything back to it. By the time the clock on the dash reads 4:13am, he's given up, given in to it, more, and on a whim but quietly, he starts, "Back in Chicago, with everything going on with Damien, you could've left. You could've slipped out of town while the cops were on me, and sent me the virus to get the ghosts out of your machine when you'd found somewhere to hole up for a little while. So, why'd you come back?" A beat. "Why'd you really come back?"

He suspects he knows the answer, it all floating around in his head along with his feelings on Ray calling him brother. He also suspects Ray won't actually answer, for all that he has to be asleep, right now, but well, maybe he hasn't so much given in, after all. He'd love to thank Ray for having his back, for being family, but he's never really been good with the mushy stuff. That was always more Nicky's thing, and she's more than the thousand and some miles between them away from him, now, so this will have to do. At least, maybe, he can get all this shit off of his chest, even if Ray isn't conscious of any of it.

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Ray's spent most of the night actually asleep, trying to get enough rest that he can take over at the wheel if Aiden needs him to, considering Frewer will be out of it until at least noon, and as much as he likes and trusts Clara, he's not sure he likes or trusts her enough to let her drive the truck, even if he thought she would actually want to.

He's very aware it's not exactly the most fun thing to drive.

He does wake up a little in time to see the stateline pass by, and he's starting to doze off again when Aiden starts talking. For a long moment, he thinks about just pretending he didn't hear that, letting himself go back to sleep - but he knows himself better than to think he actually can do that, considering what the answer to that question actually is.

Ray shifts in his seat a little, huffing out a sigh so he doesn't scare the shit out of Aiden when he starts talking. "Man," he begins lowly, clearing his throat a little when it comes out choked with sleep roughness. "You know I ain't one for the mushy stuff, and I don't know that you actually need me to answer it anyway, but, uh. Well. Nights out on the road like this're good for this kinda thing, I guess."

He shifts in his seat again, turning a little more toward Aiden. "Been a long time since I let myself get close to anyone, you know that. 'S'why I moved out to east jabumblefuck, and 's'why I was an ass to you at first. Nobody came around looking for me 'less they were hoping to put my head on a pike at the city gates, 'f'you know what I mean. And, uh... I still did my best, but... I'd've been back even if your 'friend' hadn't gotten his dirty fingers into my baby. Somebody had to make sure your brains didn't end up on the sidewalk."

"If it makes you feel any better, you were supposed to be asleep," Aiden informs him, one corner of his mouth twitching upwards into a brief, wry smile. When it fades and as Ray continues, he shoots him a brief glance before returning his attentions back towards the road. He waits until Ray's done before, "But yeah. I figured that had something to do with it."

That, at that point, Ray actually gave a fuck about what happened to him.

"I guess I should thank you," he continues after a beat. Never mind the fact that he's pretty sure he would have been fine, without Ray, without Clara, going after Damien. Probably. Maybe. Maybe if Ray had sent him that virus, after the fact, to get him past Damien's defenses and into a position where he could take him, head on. Maybe, but that's beside the point. The point is, "I know I kinda brought the torches and pitchforks with me."

Or at least along behind him, considering Blume and their fixers caught wind of Ray because of him. Not to mention the fact that he didn't really do much to endear himself to Ray at the start, either. Yet even with all that, he still came back, and that matters, much as Aiden seems to be trying to make all this sound superficial.

Ray chuckles a little in response to that. He did absolutely give a fuck about what happened to Aiden. He had for a while if he's being honest - it just took him up until that moment to consider that fact over his own sense of self-preservation.

"I appreciate the thanks," he returns. "And yeah, you did a bit, but you weren't the first one and probably won't be the last. Didn't make it all any less worth it in the end, though."

"No, it didn't," Aiden agrees. A moment of pause follows, that said, as Aiden runs through a hundred more things he wants to say, in his head. All of them seem to stick on his tongue, however, much as he means everything he's considering, and what he ends up with pales in comparison as a result.

"I'm still with you, though. When Blume or whoever gets on your back again, I'm here." He wouldn't have left Chicago, if he didn't care for Ray and fiercely. Chicago is home, always will be, but his heart is here, now.

Ray watches him for a moment before turning his attention back to the road passing them by, thinking Aiden might have a better time putting words together if he's not being stared at. When he doesn't seem to put it all back together, though, Ray looks back at him again.

"'Preciate that, too," he returns. "And you know that's mutual. It might've been about time for me to be somewhere else for a while, after all that bullshit with Defalt, but it doesn't mean I didn't have other reasons for wanting the band to stay together."

"And now we're back to the part where you think I'm too bad at this whole fixer-hacker thing to keep from taking a bullet to the head," Aiden says, his tone light, like it's a joke. But that really is the heart of this, though, isn't it? That they matter enough to each other to stay, even if it meant Ray staying in Chicago for him, even if it meant him leaving Chicago for Ray.

Letting out a breath, oddly without humor, he shakes his head faintly, his humor, however feigned fading. It's another several minutes before he starts again, and again it's a great lengths.

"That matters to me," he tells him, slowly. "The fact that you give a shit. After everything that happened with Nicky, someone else walking out on me would have been ... well, I wouldn't have blamed you. I'm bad news. I almost got her killed. Clara. You. I'm not sure I would have wanted to stick around me, either." He pauses, shaking his head again. "Being alone ... " Might have killed him and for more than whether or not he could have outmaneuvered Damien. Without his family, blood or found, what would there have been to live for? Maybe it would have been better, going the same way as Jordi -- just grabbing Damien and flinging the both of them into Lake Michigan. Damien would have drown for sure, fucked up as his legs were, and he would have let the waves claim him, his job done.

"I think you saved my life, for more than just taking Damien's toys away," he finishes, something rough creeping into his tone.

Ray chuckles lowly. "Well, I mean..." he begins after a moment, though he doesn't actually follow through with the teasing insult that he could.

He knows Aiden well enough to know there's more coming despite the silence. He watches the road through those minutes before he looks back yet again.

When Aiden does speak again, it takes Ray aback, his eyes burning, and he clears his throat quickly against the emotion threatening to choke him. People don't tell him that kind of thing, don't think that kind of thing about him. He knows it's his own fault, considering he does nothing to dissuade people of the notion that he's an asshole with a capital-A and the fact that he holds himself separate and distant from most people, does everything he can to drive them away, in fact. That still doesn't change the fact that he never expected to get close to anyone ever again - just wanted to find his way into Blume to erase himself from the system so he could wander off into the sunset. And now that he has, well. He's a little unsure of what to do with it.

"I, uh..." he begins - and has to clear his throat again. "It's, uh... you know that's a mutual thing, right. I, uh..." He takes a breath and lets it out, reaching up to thumb at the corner of one eye, at the moisture he can feel building there. "I was perfectly happy with the idea of disappearing into a bottle and never coming up again. Or I thought I was. You know I resented the hell out of you for dragging me back out into the world, but... I wasn't happy up there with those bottles. I know that, now, and I've got you to thank for it." He pauses a beat before smirking, faintly. "Or blame, one or the other."

"Yeah," Aiden manages, voice still rough. Never mind the fact that, at least to start, he was using Ray. He dangled a cause in front of him, manipulated him into taking the bait, and then -- well, then something changed. He can pinpoint when this became real for Ray, but he's less sure when it did for him. Maybe about the time Defalt got involved the first time? It doesn't really matter.

Though, speaking of Defalt.

"You know, I thought about saying something, after the shit that went on while I was out of town, visiting Nicky and Jacks, but ... " But he's never been good with words. But he thought Ray just needed to talk, and for someone to listen, to get all that shit off his chest. But he's having trouble making his throat cooperate just as much as Ray seems to be. There's a lot of reasons he doesn't finish that sentence, even if there's a lot of ways he could.

Ray definitely needed to talk, to get the rest of his guilt out of his system, and he's grateful for the fact that Aiden was there to be the one to listen. "But we had enough emotional upheaval going on at the time," he finishes, a lighter take on what Aiden didn't say. "Something like that, yeah."

He pauses a long moment of his own, now. "You know I mean it, right. The 'brother' thing. It's not just a... 'hey man' or whatever like I do for Tobias." He absolutely thinks of Aiden as family.

"And that it started feeling real about the time that I got Nicky out of Chicago?" Aiden asks, the question obviously rhetorical. "Yeah, I kinda -- yeah."

There's another pause, Aiden still struggling, and then on a whim, he angles the van towards the shoulder, pulling off. He really doesn't want to kill the four of them, because he can't keep his shit together, and never mind the fact that, again, there's not another soul around for miles. He also wants to be able to look at Ray, and so he puts the car in park, twisting in his seat to face him a little better.

"And it's nice, being someone's brother again. Nik -- " He pauses, choking, then gives up entirely, with sigh of frustration, the sound bordering on a growl. When he regains himself, he changes tracks and simply tells him, "The feeling's mutual."

Ray glances back toward the road as Aiden pulls them onto the shoulder and then turns back to him, apparently realizing what he's doing. That in mind, he just nods. "Yeah," he echoes.

When Aiden finishes, he reaches out to him. He can't quite reach his shoulder the way he wants to, but his hand lands on Aiden's arm, which works just as well. Once it's there, he squeezes. "Yeah," he says again, because he's not sure what else to say.

In the dim glow of the headlights, Aiden's eyes are bright, wet. The breath of a laugh he lets out at the idea that neither of them can come up with anything better to say than yeah is nearly a sob. Either way (or maybe because of), he reaches to cover Ray's hand with his, the gesture just as awkward but equally important.

"Yeah," he chokes out, squeezing back. He holds on, holds eye contact for several seconds before finally, he starts to pull away, reaching up to thumb at his eyes. "Anyway, uh."

Ray follows suit, sitting back and reaching up to run his index finger and thumb under his eyes, wiping away the unshed tears. "We're real pieces of work. Got no problem telling the man to go fuck itself but can't admit when we give a fuck," he murmurs, chuckling to himself.

"Looking down the barrel of a gun's definitely easier," Aiden agrees on the heel of another breath of a laugh, this one more easily termed a laugh. Dropping his hand back into his lap, he shoots Ray a sideways glance and adds, "At least that usually ends well."

Not that this didn't, but -- well, the last time had tried to have a talk about feelings with someone, it was probably when he and Clara went to see Nicky.

Edited 2020-04-09 22:11 (UTC)

Ray takes his hand back as he snorts, resettling in his seat a little. "Assuming you mean it ends well for you. Not usually so much for the other guy."

Ray's not sure how that's a party, is what he's getting at.

Aiden shrugs. He's had a couple of interesting fights where he had someone at gunpoint, and they managed to slip him, however briefly. There's a different between 'interesting' and 'going off without a hitch', though, and so, after a beat, he continues, "Generally." A beat. "It's still better than ... "

Than talking about how he feels. They really are a couple of hot messes.

He could have told him that a long time before this conversation.

"Yeah, no argument," Ray agrees. "Lotta years of bullshit building up for the both of us. Might be worth it to work on breaking up some of it."

They're already started on it by having this conversation, he figures. He doesn't expect them to be having long, emotional conversations anytime soon, but they can at least make it more clear to each other how important they are to them.

"I think we're making progress," Aiden tells him, something both serious and entirely not in his tone. He leans into the latter a little more as he shifts in his seat, starting to put the car in drive again, and tells him, "It only took us two years to have this conversation. That's something, right?"

Ray resettles, too, adjusting his seat belt across his chest, chuckling a little as he looks back out the front. "Definitely a personal record, anyway," he agrees lightly and still self-deprecatingly. "Took me a lot longer than that to tell Tobias he wasn't the waste of space he thinks he is."

Nevermind that their relationship was a lot more strained at the beginning - and up until recently.

"Pretty sure Frewer still thinks I'm going to kill him in his sleep," Aiden shoots back on the heel of a snort, again somewhere between serious and not.

His relationship with Tobias is strange to say the least. They get along better when he's high as opposed to sober, and barring a brief stint of being clean after all the shit with Defalt, Frewer usually is high, if only because the pills come with a sort of confidence that strips him of most of his fear of Aiden, but it also makes Frewer -- well. Dealing with Frewer when he's stoned is like dealing with a toddler, a little bit of how fucking smart he is slipping with every pill he takes, until the best you can do is speak to him gently and slowly and hope for the best. Dealing with him when he's sober, and they end up having arguments about who had it worst, during their first meeting -- him, who Aiden introduced to his tactical baton, or Aiden himself, who Tobias threw a table on and then shot at a half-dozen times. It's exhausting, either way, but Aiden keeps trying, even so, for some reason. Probably for Ray.

Ray snorts, too, huffing out a laugh. "Half the time, Frewer thinks his pillow's going to kill him in his sleep. Don't worry about Frewer."

Ray knows how strained their relationship is, and he appreciates the effort Aiden puts in to dealing with the crazy little guy. He's known the man long enough that he has most of an idea how to deal with him, but Frewer himself definitely doesn't make it any easier.

"You're not wrong," Aiden tells him. Still, though, despite how strained his relationship with Frewer is, he's almost glad they managed to talk him into coming with them. He knows Tobias wasn't really sold on leaving, but if they'd gone without him, left him, and something happened, he'd feel like shit about it. He knows Ray would, too -- and that that's why it took them so long to get out of town. It took time to convince Frewer.

Hell, it took time to convince him, never mind the fact that they all knew even then, before anyone suggested it that he'd follow the group to the ends of the earth. Still, after a beat and that in mind, he marvels absently, "Never thought I'd see myself out of Chicago, though. Even with all the shit going on." All the fixers. All the zeros after his and Ray's and Clara's names.

"I'm glad you are," Ray returns immediately. "In case I haven't actually said that yet."

He had been more than ready to put Chicago behind him, to find the next place to hole up away from the people looking to cash in on that price on his head - but leaving the others behind had turned into a heavier burden than he had ever expected it to be.

"It might have come up." Or at very least been strongly implied. Even he's not really sure, at this point. Still, though, he doesn't mind the reminder or the repeat, and so he slides Ray a crooked smile, to punctuate that. For once, his thoughts don't go to Nicky and her hesitance, hurt, whatever in being made to leave Chicago behind because of him.

"But yeah," he adds after a beat, the smile fading. He doesn't continue, however, not really sure where they're going, now. Did he mention the part where Ray was supposed to be asleep?

"Yeah," Ray agrees.

Ray's not sure where to go with this now, either, and it's a long moment before he clears his throat. "You still good to man this thing? I can take over a while if you need a break."

"I'm good," Aiden answers, sliding Ray a sideways look with a shake of his head. He's more tired, now, than he was, say, ten minutes ago, for all the emotion let out of its bottle without really being resolved (men aren't supposed to cry), but he'll live. He's done more or less, back in Chicago, and thanks to him, Ray really hasn't had much time to sleep, himself. He'll let Ray sleep until at least sometime after sunrise.

Though, "You might wanna see if you can't get some rest."

"Yeah, might grab some more shut-eye," he agrees, resettling in his seat, getting comfortable again. Before he goes back to sleep entirely, though, he reaches out again to squeeze Aiden's arm once more.

Aiden moves to meet him again, fingers ghosting over the back of Ray's hand as he squeezes his arm. He pulls away only once he does, and softly, tells him, "Sleep well."

And that said, he's going to let Ray get back to sleep. He promises not to try and have any more heavy conversations with him, whether or not he actually manages.

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you are the reason that i am not afraid (rp for fortheportfolio)

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