Matt frowned. “I’m mostly positive you’ve never been nearly killed by a vampire before.” He wasn’t sure why the idea bothered him so much, but he’d felt the same way when Asher joked about having a werewolf living in his apartment complex. “I might not be there next time, so try not to do it again, if you can help it.” He tugged at his sleeve a little, feeling uncomfortable. Again. “There’s a lot of, um, paperwork involved, you know? So just don’t get messed up in that.” Not that there weren’t other hunters who could deal with the clean up, and most of the town seemed to be in the know these days, so there wouldn’t be much of a cover-up. But maybe Matt was overthinking it, he was pretty good at that. Asher should just…not die. Yeah, they could agree on that. “What? No, I didn’t mean it like…” Except maybe he kind of did, because he’d already said he wasn’t going to go, and then he’d changed that when Asher asked. How else was the other boy supposed to take it? “Okay, I guess it did kinda sound like that. Would you stop it with the bad boy card? I’m not trying to be a rebel.” He’d found that he minded less and less, though, his complaint more out of a sense of obligation to argue it than anything else. “What would going all out even look like for us?” Aware of how that sounded, he pressed on hastily, cheeks tinged red. “I mean, you know, we started this with a surprise ask while walking through town, you can’t really go more underkill than that.” It took him a moment to move his feet again, lagging behind Asher for a moment. “Is that what you’re going to do this year?” It wasn’t real concern he was feeling, it wasn’t. He didn’t want to be ditched halfway through to spend the rest of the night on his own. That was understandable. “Right, but then you wouldn’t be a Wendigo. You’d be a google image version of some drawing someone did that’s mostly werewolf with a little of the monster from Stranger Things thrown in. What–I–no…I wasn’t–No. I-I didn’t mean it like that.” Somehow Asher always managed to get him stammering over one thing or another. “Well–yeah. But you don’t have to say anything. I know what you think about it.”
Asher shrugged, like whatever made up scene they were talking about was ultimately no big deal. “That’s because I’m too smart to get tied up with vampires.” Except Matt was getting a little sentimental and... It was getting increasingly harder and harder not to read his mind. How long had he gone? Sure, sometimes it just happened (he blamed his 10th grade self for spending far too much time in that headspace), but he hadn’t intentionally read Matt’s mind since he came back. He was trying to be respectful. “I’ll try, just so you can avoid that paperwork.” It was a little coy shot at the other, but it was playful. It was weird (but kind of nice) being playful with Matt. “Getting soft on me already, huh?” He wasn’t going to push any of Matt’s buttons, he wasn’t going to push any of Matt’s buttons- he had already said he’d give Matt some time to think- He wasn’t going to push any of Matt’s buttons. “Maybe this crush thing has been the other way around this entire time.” Okay, maybe he was. “You’re definitely rebelling. Fortunately for you I just think it’s that awkward teenage rebelling that every kid goes through.” That was a lie, but it was times like this that Asher was grateful nobody else could read his mind. “You’d probably know better than I do. But going all out would probably be a mixture of a couple things. Stupid matching tuxedos, a limousine, dancing at least more than once-- even if your dancing is sucky. And-” Ho, don’t do it. “It’ll end with us sneaking off to some one night motel where we’ll dot dot dot. Which is the only reason why I won’t ditch you halfway through, because I know you’ll eventually do the Running Man with Peter and ugh, no thank you.” There, that should cover that up pretty smoothly. “Then I’ll ask... The Winchester’s. I’m sure I could get an in with them, pretty easily. But since you’re insisting, maybe I’ll have to go this sexy cat route.” This was one of those times, when he didn’t even have to try to read Matt’s thoughts to catch little tidbits. He wasn’t planning on actually dressing up? “What, are you lame enough to do Spiderman? I bet you are, aren’t you.” Why didn’t Matt want to dress up?