Catharsis || Lashton AU - boyxboy

13. julkaisu

***Be wary of a trigger warning later in the chapter.

"I've been upside down,
I don't wanna be the right way round,
Can't find paradise on the ground."
Oh Wonder, All We Do ☯

 

l.h.

The morning after was a rough morning. I woke up feeling very empty and cold, mostly because I couldn't stop thinking about Ben, and partly because the bed next to me was abandoned.

I was worried for Ben, and I could only hope and pray that he was alright wherever he was, but I also hoped that he knew how much I loved him, and I hoped very dearly that he knew he would never be a burden to me.

And, though Ashton's absence could've been much simpler, I worried for him too, because I knew he'd have to be returning home soon and I hated that the one place whose doors were supposed to always be open and warm and welcoming were slammed in his face and had locked him out in the cold.

This was another one of those mornings.

I'd had my fair share of these mornings; of waking up and just missing people and moments and things so much it felt like allowing myself to fall apart would be so much easier than the constant mending I had to do.

But I think that sometimes we spend so much time trying to move on from these feelings that we forget that it's okay to be sad. Sometimes things like this just are, and you have to let them be. Or they may never play themselves out.

"You'd think that for a man who works in a coffee shop, you'd have more than a week expired milk and a bottle of whiskey. I don't know, coffee, perhaps?" a voice rang out, filling the cold room with a bit of unconventional sunshine.

I smiled quite inevitably, finally allowing my eyes to flutter open and land on the curly-haired boy, who was still dressed in my clothes but wearing my jacket and his boots, with bright red features, presumably from the harsh advances from the cold weather.

"Anyways, I hope you don't mind Starbucks, because I was definitely not going to go to the store and make you coffee on my own." he grinned, slipping off his shoes and my jacket, walking over to me and setting a coffee on the nightstand by my head.

I groaned lightly, forcing myself up into a moderately uncomfortable sitting position, faulted only by my impeccably terrible posture, before I grabbed the cup from the nightstand and just melted against the warmth for a moment.

"I'm liking you more and more everyday, Irwin." I mumbled, smiling very crookedly, because I was feeling very crooked today and I was not in the manner of suppressing it.

He smiled at me, pulling a maroon scarf from his neck and draping it over the back of a chair, before waltzing over to the bed and placing himself back in the spot that had already begun showing signs of his impression.

"Unless you were wasted out of your mind last night totally forgot," he started, wrapping his hands around his coffee, "I believe we agreed to talk in the morning about a certain something that happened last night."

I huffed a breath that felt a lot like Niagara Falls in my lungs, very wet and dense and I thought it alone could've drowned me.

If it were up to me, I'd never speak a word of my problems to the world.

"I know it's probably something you don't want to talk about." Ashton said very gently, but not patronizingly, simply knowingly. "But I think it's important for you to understand that you can't evade pain forever. It will find you no matter where you hide, and it will tear you apart from the inside out if you don't allow it to just live."