Double-Sided

0.2

Ashton was still asleep when Luke walked in that morning. Everything seemed a lot clearer now, as if the jar bell had been broken, releasing him from its grip. But now Luke was stuck with the snowflakes and the strange, most likely toxic, fluid that was dripping from the broken glass, namely the homeless boy on his couch.

The room didn’t look any different, apart from the fact that the table only had four legs now. All that was left from last night’s shots was a pounding head ache and a feeling in the pit of his stomach that warned him to stay close enough to the bathroom.

He poured himself a glass of water, wisely skipping breakfast and grabbing an aspirin instead. He wondered if he should get some for Ashton as well, seeing as the boy had obviously been drunk too. After hesitating for a few moments, he decided against it.

His eyes drifted towards the boy on his couch, curiosity taking the better of him. With the alcohol gone, his fear for homeless people had returned, but he was asleep and Luke hadn’t had the chance to take a decent look at him the previous night. Besides, he had shown him nothing but generosity. He had given him a place to sleep and a much needed opportunity to clean up. This was the least he could ask for in return, right?

He tiptoed across the room, careful to avoid any broken glass he might have missed in his drunken haze, and dropped to his knees in front of the couch. It was stained all over, the colours varying from a sticky white to sickening dark red. It was the only reason Luke had allowed Ashton to sleep on it.

The first thing Luke noticed was Ashton’s smell. The street life’s odour still lingered, a nauseating mix of alcohol and dirty alleys and rotting food and rotting skin and rotting everything that must have seeped into his skin after an undetermined time of sleeping on carton boxes. It had faded a little though, now slightly outshined by the familiar smell of Dove soap and strawberry, leading Luke to the realisation Ashton had used their strawberry shampoo, not the AXE one Luke had handed him. Ashton had used Michael’s shampoo.

Luke had trouble willing down the anger that gnawed at his stomach, but did so anyway in favour of continuing his inspection.

Ashton was wrapped tightly in the blue blanket, despite it not being particularly cold in the flat. His long curls were falling in front of his eyes, and they bothered Luke because they weren’t blond and they weren’t brown and fell somewhere in between. Luke didn’t like in-betweens. He liked blond and brown and surely even fire-engine-red was a more natural hair colour than Ashton’s.

Luke decided to let it slide and moved on to the next thing that caught his eye: his skin. Even after the shower it was still blotchy, with dry patches here and there where the dead skin peeled off. It looked like it could be tanned, but something had robbed it of its colour and now Ashton was stuck with that.

Then came his lips, the only thing Luke was slightly familiar with, after seeing them somehow in the dark alley and hearing them crack when Ashton spoke. They were chapped and bleeding and his upper lip had split.

Luke couldn’t deny how addicting it was, inspecting Ashton’s body, trying to gauge what life was like out there. His fingers trailed down Ashton’s neck, discovering small bumps on his skin. He pulled his hand back in shock, his tips of his fingers tingling where he’d touched the boy. With his hand now clasped to his chest, as if he were the one who was wounded, he discovered more on Ashton’s skin.

Scales, blister and sores, all over his neck.

His eyes fleeted down Ashton’s body, until his gaze gets stuck on the spot where the affected skin disappears underneath Luke’s blue blanket. He ripped it off. This revealed Ashton’s hands, identical bumps and scales hidden in between his fingers. Luke shivered. He would have mistaken it for bad acne, had it not been for the infected sores. Despite how gruesome it looked, it awoke his curiosity. He leaned a little closer, his index finger ghosting over one of the little bumps, before moving to the skin surrounding the sores. The hand moved.