Dazed and Confused

“The secret’s in the sauce. And the marinate of course, do you feel the moistness?”, Devon crossed their arms with a small smirk, they were proud of their cooking and seeing a customer enjoy it was always a win. “The hibiscus really brings out the flavor or are you more of a cinnamon guy?”

As Devon explain him the trick to making it so tasteful and amazing he took another bite to actually try to understand what they were mentioning, even if he wasn’t an expert he could feel the magic on the marinate “This is great, I’m serious” He smirked when they refer to him as a cinnamon guy “No actually I would love to try the hibiscus. Tell me something how is it that you are not like a master chef or something like that, you would probably beat everyone in it with this”

“I didn’t say anything, I was actually murmuring along… your headphones are so loud anyone around you could hear it, at least is a good song, but.. maybe that’s the reason why some look quite annoyed around you.” Henry replied, hardly taking the metro, but that day he had been in a hurry and the traffic made him feel completely distaste to use his car.

“Oh, these headphones are very effective with the noise canceling” Even if he wasn’t really ashame of singing out loud such an amazing song, he didn’t wanted to annoy people around him, since it was very likely that most of them were having a lot of stress on their shoulders. The mention of the man saying he thought it was a good song made Asher “Isn’t it great? I love how even when they obviously put some heavy rock on it, you can still feel the blues soul of the original song and the harmonica on it, man, it just guides you to this epic sound that consumes you to almost making it impossible not to sing along... If only I was born in a different time where I could have gone the '75 Zepp tour and watching them play live.”

There is was again, those words, he wasn’t sure if it was just something about him but he figure he wasn’t important enough to actually believe that the lack of activity that wasn’t sex-related felt like a waste of time, but Asher figure if that was her wish who was him to say or do anything to contradict her. That afternoon was about her and having the honor to pleasure her, after all, she could have picked anyone else for it but she picked him and he wasn’t really into letting her down or making her regret her choice. 

At the close of the song, Ryder’s wide stare (fixed nowhere in particular) gave him something of an otherworldly appearance, the small performance seeming to have mentally transported him elsewhere for the brief moment. Asher’s voice was the thing to jar him out of his self-induced trance, nearly alarming him as if he’d forgotten the other male was there with him. Immediately, the insecurities rushed back; Was it horrible? It was horrible, wasn’t it? You never should have wasted your time on it… Ryder couldn’t keep from beating himself up, and he was surprised to find that Asher’s reaction was nothing like that all.

“I—” The musician first started, quite obviously taken aback by the positive response. With a disbelieving shake of his head, he added in, “—I mean, it still needs like, some work…” While he spoke, he rubbed at the back of his neck in an awkward fashion, the guitar still tucked beneath his arm in his lap. “I wrote a bit for The Reef way back, but never anything like this, really. I’m not really —y'know— a singer…”

When Asher broke Ryder’s trance he couldn’t help to feel bad, he had been there and even when he never got mad about it but kind of ashamed, he still felt as he should have given time for the guy to slowly come back to reality, yet Asher couldn’t contain the excitement after hearing Ryder’s song, he could feel so much potential and had so many ideas for the song, that waiting to for Ryder’s landing back to earth felt too much. 

“Of course it needs work, but all songs do, my friend, just like a great design, you can always make a song better, but that is not the point, the point is that you have an amazing song in your hands” Asher smiled at Ryder’s comment, rolling his eyes playfully “Well The Reef could have been better if it was you doing most of the writing, and don’t worry about the singing, even if your voice might not be perfect, I love how many souls you put on it, so we’ll have to find someone who feels it just as much, but really man this is great, I think it can even be the single of an EP if you have other. But okay now let’s get to business, you want to keep it this folky beat or would you be willing to put more rock’n’roll on it.”