Erosion.

Ashe lets himself get pulled up to David’s level like a damn rag doll. Demoralizing. Emasculating. “Wrestling? I can fuck with that…and my ego is just fine, thank you very much. Bigger and better than ever.” He bounces a little as he speaks, like a boxer getting ready to through a punch or a bird-of-paradise showing off it’s plumage to a potential mate. One of those. He grabs onto Davids arms and leans into him with all the regular human strength he can muster. Of course, that isn’t much.

“Hate is how I feel. It’s consumin me right now. Runnin though my veins, son. Trust me.” He actually considers it. He genuinely contemplates kicking up and just connecting his foot with David’s junk, but he figures he’ll know some obscure counter attack that’ll end up with that same foot shoved up his own ass, so he passes—hard—and rolls his eyes a little, laughing. “I’m here for a workout. We’re here to train or some shit, right? Try to not be a horny fuckin mess for at least uh…” he glances over at a clock on the wall. “Fifteen more minutes. I dare you.” He extends a hand upward because he’s knows damn well he’s only getting off of this floor if David lets him.

He swats his hand away like it was nothing and Ashe lets out a grumble. He can’t just let him have this? Not even once? Of course. “Oh, you don’t know shit, man.” The whole back hitting the ground thing manages to successfully knock the motherfucking wind out of him, so all he can do is look up as David lets that time pass. He’s only slightly annoyed. “I…” a chuckle “hate you? I hate you.” Breathy and under this guy isn’t that foreign to him unfortunately and he’s not happy about this little predicament. “I’d say I have a pretty clear crotch shot from here, so not nothin. If anything I could kick you in the nuts.” 

He stares down at him with this look in his eyes that is somewhere between glee and just stone cold smugness. Things like this are good for his ego, even if he doesn’t quite have the words to admit it. Of course, it doesn’t help that he has seen Ashe like this a number of times before -- the clothes are generally coming off now though. David considers that for a few fleeting seconds and then tucks it away for later. “Hate is such a strong word, man. I guess I’ve heard you say that before in similar circumstances.”

He replies with a short “hmm” and then focuses himself when David beckons him closer. Okay. He’s got this. He’s in the zone. Eye of The Tiger. Now, does David have any weak spots? Probably not. “Put all your shit on easy mode for me.” He gets into the right stance, trying to map out some sort of plan in his head. “Can I just make you do—” jab with his right, left hand blocking “—a buncha embarrassing ass shit if I actually get a hit in? Anythings on the table?” It’s probably not the best to try to talk and punch when you’re up against someone like David, but fuck it. 

“Oh, dude. Whatever I want? That’s dangerous. The gears are turnin now. Watch out.” So maybe Ashe didn’t have any formal training when it came to fighting, but he did get into his share of altercations in the past. Both in Elswood and out of it. He was young and impulsive with a lot of pent up anger: That young Ignis temperament. Street smarts came in handy with knowing how to dodge, but failed him when it came to knowing when to dodge. He was rusty and kids back home didn’t have superhuman levels of speed. David successfully blocked the first swing and the second that was headed his way managed not so gently brush by his woefully underprepared ass. “Mother f—” He doesn’t move to hold the cheek David hit or anything because that shit’s for the weak, but he does take a few seconds to let that initial pain subside. “We’re starting for real? Damn, give a guy a warning. A heads up, maybe? I’d appreciate it.”

“You have to hit me first.” David doesn’t believe in taking it easy on people and maybe that’s the years of training talking more than it is him. He’d been doing the whole song and dance since he was ten -- almost sixteen years now. Training was something to be taken seriously, to be used as a chance to test your limits and see how far you could go. This isn’t that serious, he thinks, this is just him trying to help Ashe stay in shape and maybe just stare a little while he was working out. Nothing about this had to be what he went through back in boot camp. 

Ten minutes go by, then fifteen, and she’s this close to thinking that Danny Kincaide will stand her up. But when he slides into the seat beside her, she lets out a small sigh of resignation. Life was never really fair. “A deal is a deal. Besides, if I show up for one time, it means that we can call it even and I don’t have to waste my time anymore.” She raises an eyebrow at him. Right? 

“Lonely would imply that I actually want people’s company, which I don’t, especially right now,” she pointed out. And definitely not his, but here she was. Maybe she had isolated herself somewhat since Young’s incident, keeping her circle to only a few. The rest could be called acquaintances, at the very least, and strangers at the most. Why should she socialize with every single person she came across, anyway? She wasn’t her brother.

“Whatever I feel like,” she answers, stirring the ice in her glass. “What about you? Whiskey? Brandy? Something that’ll make you more tolerable?”

“I’ll consider it.” He grabs the drink that the bartender passes over and counter and downs it in one go. The burn is nice -- makes him feel something, makes it all feel more real. Once he has two in his system, his eyes are back on Haneul because despite what he might say out loud, she fascinates him in a strange way. It’s rare that he can see parts of himself in another person and that makes for a good time -- also a dangerous one, but mostly good. 

He snorts at that. “Really? You’re not lonely? Damn, must be nice to play pretend like that and act like your brother disappearing doesn’t bother you.” Another drink and he is starting to find his rhythm, starting to feel the burn deep in his stomach. It’s nice, almost pleasant. 

“All of the above and none of the last part. What you see is what you get and no amount of liquor can change that.” False! If Danny ingested enough liquor, his ego got even more inflated and if anything he was harder to deal with than usual. “So tell me about yourself Haneul, something your file wouldn’t tell me.”

“There must be something about having your head up your own ass that’s making you feel unwell, because I just swore you tried to make me sing about how great you are.” Roman’s family was one that prized patience above all–understanding and compassion were the tenets of theirs, but all that he’d learned always went out the door when Danny opened his big mouth. One of these days, he’s going to deck him in his pretty little face, but Roman would have to settle for glaring at him dirtily.

Maybe today was the day, who knows? The guy’s practically getting on his last fucking nerve.

Looking up at Danny, all the hate in his body practically making him vibrate, it takes all of his concentration not to do anything rash. “If you haven’t noticed, there’s nothing about you that’s… specifically great. I can’t exactly do a song about nothing, unless your ego wants to give me some material I can disregard.”

There it was. The burning hate that popped up in Roman’s eyes that made him feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Danny had always viewed the ability to make people hate him as something special -- as something that deserved to be cherished. It took a lot of pushing, a lot of prodding to make another person experience hate first hand and here he was, barely trying and Roman was already on edge. He couldn’t think of a single thing better than this and maybe that was pathetic -- maybe it was strange that he got so much pleasure in bothering people. Who cared about any of that though? 

He was having fun. 

Blades of grass around his feet were starting to rot, turning black and withering under the pressure of his power. “I’d watch my mouth if I were you, Roman. Unless you want every elemental to know about your escape plans? If you do, keep talking.” He pulls out of his phone and opens up an email he put into his drafts months ago. “All I have to do is hit send and I could end your entire  life -- what little of one you have.” Danny laughs, one cold and calculated. “So what’ll it be? You stripping or what?”

@kingcaide

There was something to be said about being Danny’s unwilling lackey–he wasn’t one to give Roman any boring orders, though it always did demean him to the highest extent. Perhaps it was to be expected, the level of information he has on him was good enough to get him to just about anything, but this time, he’d be right damned if he was going to do this. He still had some shred of dignity, thank you very much.

“I don’t know what your game is, or what you’re trying to prove” he replied coldly, “But you’ve got another thing coming if you’re going to try and get me to do that in the year of our Lord… when the fuck ever. I’ve got limits, Kincaide.”

Danny was so calm in the face of Roman’s cold anger. He had a thong draped over his finger and was spinning around for fun. It was so funny really, just how fucking simple it seemed to make him angry. All he had to do was suggest a couple of things here and there about what he wanted him to do. If anything was to be said of him at his funeral, it could never be that he was boring. After Roman was done talking, the thong decomposed and he let the ashes fall from his hand and onto the ground. 

Well, there went that part of his proposal.

“See, at first, I was just going to make you run around in the thong. The streaking thing was a joke, but since you want to so no and give me attitude?” He walks up so that he is looking down at Roman because he gets off on that sort of thing. “Now I want you to do it while singing about how great I am.”

Isla couldn’t say that she cared about Ashe. She had talked to him a couple of times after he delivered food to her. She didn’t hate him as much as Danny, but she didn’t like him either. For some reason, he seemed incapable of learning her name, which bothered her to no end. The last time she saw him, she had sworn she’d make him fall on his face the next time he called her Isis. Pushing those silly thoughts away, she looked up at Danny. “Well, I am free, so… whenever you want to do this, I’ll be here. Are there other places he frequents? He has  a lot of friend, does he not? We need to make sure all of them see this.”

“His job, his house, and I know he gets his hair cut in the same places my brother. He has that fucking group of friends that like to hang out with him or whatever. I’m sure it wouldn’t be hard to get their information too.” Danny hadn’t even considered targeting his friends -- why not take it a step further? Ashe had a family too, a dad and a little sister? It wouldn’t take much to dig a little further to find out more about them. This could be fun for the entire fucking family. “I’m going to do some more searching to see who else we can target. I’ll get back to you when I have more information.”

“That’s gonna take a lotta punches. Some knockout level punches,” he says squinting, nodding. Admittedly, it’d take about one. Maybe half of once if he flinches and gets scared. He’s left with no comeback for the weight thing. David has gotten his ass off the ground far too many times. “Oh, my PROCESS? Okay. You think I can’t hit you? I can hit you.” He mumbles some more shit talking as he walks over to grab a pair of gloves off the wall and tosses them at him. “But you can also hit me, so you’re wearing these.” It’s a command. No debating here. He’s not coming out of this building with a black eye or a bloody nose because the pro decided to get cocky and school the novice. 

He makes his way to the center of the ring. Under normal circumstances, he’d ask if the other was ready, but David is far from normal. He figures the element of surprise might help a little as he goes for an uppercut.

Could Ashe hit David? Maybe. Probably. He’d done it once or twice before. There was something fun about poking at his ego and something almost cute about the way he looked when it came to accepting a challenge. David caught the gloves without much thought and slipped them on. While he preferred fighting with his bare hand there was no point in risking Ashe getting hurt like that. They both knew what he could do so it seemed better to just take things slow for the moment. This cocky smirk creeps onto his face as Ashe steps into the ring. “You can hit me? I’d love to see that, you do that and I’ll do whatever you want for the rest of the day.”

Danny was such a nerd when it came to digging for dirt, but Isla was in no position to say anything about it. She enjoyed messing with people almost as much as he did. Isla even got off the desk for this. She used her powers to place a chair near the desk, and took a seat while Danny began talking about what he had done. “You don’t say…” Isla almost felt like reading Ashe’s file, but she knew that soon Danny would talk to her about it, and elaborate on his plans.

“Wait, no shit…“ Isla had to take a moment in order to process this new information. Her blue eyes remained on the folder until a smile began tugging on the corners of her lips. “When do you want to do this? Do you have his schedule? Maybe we should do it while he’s working.“

“In a few weeks. I want to keep gathering information and figuring out how else this can hurt him, you know?” If Danny had a single ounce of decency, he’d see that this whole fucking thing was pathetic. Ever since calling Ashe to his house to ruin a pizza for a laugh, he had spent every waking moment trying to uncover something that would give him an edge. He had actually foregone sleeping some nights just for the sake of learning more about the resident matchstick just for the purposes of making himself feel better. His life was so great and that made him better than Ashe. It gave him something to cling onto. “There are records of therapy and shit here. I want this to crush him, to completely destroy him.”

He walks through the back door of the place with a smile, a gym bag and his standard workout attire: a tanktop and a pair of basketball shorts. ( He’s also wearing compression shorts under his gym shorts, but those are for reasons he’d rather not dwell on.) Before letting the bag hit the floor with a gentle thud, He pulls a bandana out of his bag because he’s at the point where he needs a haircut and it’ll be a cold day in hell when he unironically puts that shit into a ponytail. As long as it keeps hair out of his face, he’s all good. He listens to him as he ties it, shakes his head.

“Nah, no. See, you insinuatin that I cannot keep up? That hurts my ego more than any loss to you ever could. I’m not just skin and bone. I’m m—” his lips are forming what he wants to say, but he takes a beat to think it through and decides against it. “Meaty is a bad word, but my point still stands.” He play-shadow boxes for a few punches to show just how totally cool he really is. “Also, my cool points are fuckin maxed out, man. Even if I took a hit, I’d still be in like…the upper echelon of cool. Now what does this trainin shit come with exactly? You gonna weigh me? Put me on a diet of muscle milk and kale?”

David enjoys Ashe in a myriad of ways and he will be the first one to admit that it is sort of a problem. He leaves regularly and it puts enough space between the two of them, but there is something almost electric (how corny is that?) when they finally reconnect. The whole bandana situation is so fascinating that he can’t look away until the process is done. One one hand he imagines that getting a haircut would be pretty easy considering how much time he spends at Natural-E, they are probably just waiting for the change to chop most of it. On the other hand though... there is something nice about being able to pull it anytime he wants. 

“Do the elementals even work?“ Dexter regrets saying that the second those words leave his mouth. He’s old, and he’s been in this cursed town ever since he was a kid. He knows what happens to the people that don’t comply with what the higher ups want, and he doesn’t want that for him. Dex has enough on his plate with the people forcing the idea of having children down his throat.

“What did you say?“

Now, Dexter is hardly even paying attention to the current conversation. He would much rather be somewhere else, but when Danny lets out that thinly-veiled insult, he almost feels like covering him with paint and running off.

“Do you even know how to paint?” He’s hated people like this since he was a kid. The whole timid good boy thing was so boring that it should have been illegal. If there was something the world needed less of, it was more lawful good fuckers who would continue following rules. Danny considered just placing his hand on Dexter’s shoulder and making his entire body decay as slowly as possible. How would he feel about his body becoming nothing but dust and ashes? 

“Why don’t we cut this conversation short, Dax? You’re not that interesting and look like you’re about to piss yourself. You should run along and do... whatever it is losers do in their spare time.”