[takes place the day after this]

He’d found the keys -- attached to the dumbest keychain he’d ever seen, no less -- in the pocket of his suit jacket when he got dressed that morning, and a small slip of paper accompanying it that simply read ‘Dock’. It’d taken a few hours before he eventually bit (figuratively) and followed what barely qualified as a clue down to the docks with Onyx in tow. When he got there, he found a boat - he found a lot of boats, actually, what with it being a dock and all, but only one had a symbol he recognized, painted on the side of it. It was the same symbol he had tattooed on his wrist.

While he’d been hesitant of boarding, Onyx had darted on ahead, up the stairs and straight onto the deck before vanishing into the interior of the boat. A few minutes later, he reemerged, excited barks muffled by whatever the hell he’d found and was now carrying in his mouth. Asher couldn’t make out what it was, but when he heard ‘I want to suck your blood’ coming from the thing, in a bad Romanian accent, he decided he didn’t want a better look at it.

Onyx continued bounding around the deck, running laps when Asher finally joined him. The dog left for one more lap, but he never rounded the other corner again. Instead, Asher had heard a splash before he moved into the saloon area of the boat, but he wasn’t concerned. Onyx knew how to swim.

He was seated at the table within the boat now, his head resting against it, staring at the stupid keychain as it sat too close to his nose, forcing his eyes to cross slightly. He saw double for the second time that week. He’d be seeing it a hell of a lot more a few months from now, assuming all went well and Del gave birth to twins.

That word still scared the shit out of him.

A boat didn’t need to be fed or walked, but more importantly, it didn’t dance. Asher could certainly appreciate that much.

While Asher was still adjusting to the idea of Del being pregnant with his hell spawn, it was a lot harder to do whenever he was back in that dorm room. It was one of those two tiny steps forward, one giant step back kind of deals and, in all honesty, he wondered if he’d just be better off rooming elsewhere. What he didn’t need was a constant reminder of how badly this could all end, but it was hard to shake the feeling when this place thought it would have been fun to leave dead bodies in his bed last Halloween.

Of all the corpses he’d dealt with over the span of five-hundred years, the Island sure knew how to pick the pair that would pack the most punch. Going for the heart; it was something he probably would have found commendable, under normal circumstances. When it wasn’t his heart.

If they could just skip right over October this year, that would’ve been great.

Perched on top of the dresser with an apple clamped between his fangs, Asher just stared at his bed. He’d gotten back into the habit of avoided sitting or lying on it unless he knew he’d fall asleep as soon as his head hit his pillow. And, frankly, he just wasn’t that tired yet.

[Dated to July 14]


Three days and they were still there. They didn’t feel as foreign as they had when he’d first woken up with them; he’d stopped accidentally clamping down on his bottom lip and tongue, forgetting they were there. They almost felt as normal as ever; natural. Right.

Asher decided it was probably best not to think about how right, though. They were just teeth. Everything that had come with them before didn’t seem to affect him now. No allergic reaction to the sun, no superhuman senses, he’d even checked out as ‘normal’ according to the whitecoats at the clinic: normal temperature, normal pulse, all vitals were decidedly human.

Everything else was just in his head... but he was still afraid of snapping, genuinely worried that he'd cross paths with the wrong person who'd say or do something and flip some switch, setting him off. He didn't want to kill anyone, at least he didn't think he did. Maybe a maiming at the most... Or maybe he just didn't want to deal with the consequences of killing someone. There really wasn't much in the way of consequences back home.

This wasn't home, though.

He'd avoided staying in the Compound for too long for the past few days, but he'd begun to miss his bed. He might have even missed waking up with Chloe's nose in his ear, not that he'd admit it.

After showering and braving the clothing box (which seemed to have taken pity on him today), Asher made his way to the dorm room, buttoning up his shirt then sitting down heavily on his bed. Ruffling his damp hair, he flopped back on the mattress, then grabbed a pillow, placing it over his face.

[continued from here]

"Doubt it thinks the same," Asher said, and it's still a little odd to consider a godforsaken spit of land capable of thought, but not doing so would likely just enrage it...

He watched as Stephen continued to sulk -- was that what he looked like when he did it? -- drowning his sorrows. He's been there long enough to know it didn't help. Nothing really did. It did dumb it down a bit, though, and that was enough incentive to do it. Unfortunately, he was tapped out.

Adjusting his cap, Asher presumed to crawl his way on top of Stephen, straddling him at the waist and helping himself to the man's drink, downing what was left and simply tossing the cup over his shoulder once he'd finished. "I don't have a mat either," he said, managing to sound completely casual despite the situation.

[dated to March 16th]

All Asher had really wanted to do was curl up and die that morning, but, as it turned out, his luck had only proven shitty enough to make him wish he were dead, and not actually bad enough to grant that wish.

That just fucking figured.

He had every intention of staying in bed that day -- how bad could things go if he didn’t move? -- but that hadn’t gone as planned. His bed frame had collapsed, which only got him out of his own bed and into the empty one on the far end of the room, that fucking tiki thing grinning at him from the nightstand.

That bed had collapsed in on itself, too.

For some reason or another, he hadn’t wanted to risk anyone else’s bed -- even if Jamie was a dick and deserved a broken bed, but Asher didn’t want to hear any shit from him -- and instead risked leaving the confines of the dorm room.

The clothing box had still insisted on giving him jeans for the second day in the row, much to his disdain, and the shirt it gave him hadn’t helped either. But a blazer hid a multitude of sins, such as that shirt, even if it made it completely likely that he’d suffer a heat stroke out in the humidity of the day. Of course, that hadn’t sound too terrible to him. Being unconscious was the next best thing to being dead.

After stumbling over Onyx, being whacked in the face by a door and tripping down the stairs out of the Compound, Asher made his way… well, he wasn’t sure where the fuck he was going, but when he found it, he’d know.

And he had.

It wasn’t any place special, just beneath a (harmless enough looking) tree. He just hoped the tree wasn’t intent on falling over on him while he sat or something. Pulling out a cigarette and his lighter, he tried to light the thing over and over again, but didn’t even manage so much as a spark. Asher kept at it for a bit, gritting his teeth and growling quietly before he threw the lighter with an aggravated grunt, only to have it ricochet off another tree trunk and hit him in the head.

"Mother fuck--" And there it was again, that same taunting grin, the fucking tiki idol nestled in the grass by the roots of the tree beside him as he reached for his lighter. But rather than yell or kick and scream or set the thing on fucking fire (again), Asher just sat there beside it quietly, looking thoroughly defeated.

Why was this his fucking life?