Pictures of You [Completed]

Twenty-four. No Way Out

It had been a while since Luke had touched a piano. Since the last time he was at his parents place. He kept telling Ashton that they need to get one, but he always forgot when the time to buy something like that came around.

The keys were springy. Eager almost. He didn't even know if he was allowed to play this piano. He'd found it in their Singapore hotel lobby. Abandoned. Just like the room around him hours before a night out.

It was gonna be a big one, too. Everyone was off tonight, and everyone was planning on going. Even Ashton.

Even Luke.

Luke didn't mind if Ashton went. He'd forgiven him for the misdemeanor of sticking his nose where it didn't belong last week. But within that time Luke had started to wonder. What if he was right?

And what scared him so much wasn't the fact that the answer could—and probably was—yes. The scary part was the question itself. Luke had prided himself on making good decisions his whole life, and recently he'd seemed to be slipping.

Did a large part of that have to do with the fact that Luke was nearly incapable of accepting when he was wrong?

He thought back to mistakes of the past. How he'd handled them. Nothing immediately came to mind. But he knew that couldn't be true. Luke had made plenty of mistakes. But maybe the fact that he couldn't think of many when under pressure said more about him than he'd like to admit.

He was focusing too much on the lower keys. The simple melody he was playing sounded too bass-y to be melodic—at least for the melody he was trying to create.

He worked in some higher keys and submerged himself again.

There! There! That was a mistake and he'd admitted it to himself. Or maybe that was course correction... he didn't know the difference anymore. Nor did he really care.

Ashton knew Luke had a problem, but he was smart enough not to mention anything else. Luke was a big boy and he could handle himself. So it made sense why Ashton didn't seem to say anything when Luke filled the tiniest spoon and took it.

He didn't seem to react at all. And that was the opposite of what Luke wanted. He wanted Ashton to say something. To tell him off. To explain the dangers of what he was doing. Luke craved that kind of reprimand. But the one Luke got was seeming indifference.

And that made him madder than anything.

Fuck Ashton for saying something and not going through with it. Absolutely fuck him for that. For someone with an addictive personality, he didn't seem to be too keen on letting Luke come to terms with his on his own. Why the fuck was it his issue?

Luke messed up the timing on the finger pattern he was doing. Still crowding the lower keys.

Fuck off. This was why he didn't play anymore.

If he were any good he would have done something with his life  instead of waste away as a drug runner's wife. He was his very own Elvira...

Maybe. He should leave. Get out. Do something else. This was killing him. That was one thing Luke agreed with Ashton on. He was dying. Not a rapid succession, but a slow, agonizing, withering sort of death.

He was sick. He was so fucking sick. But he wasn't sick enough to be worried about. He wasn't sick enough to need help. That's what Ashton didn't understand.

Luke agreed with him, just to an extent. Luke could be worse. He could be thinner. He could have hollowed in eyes, be more of an addict than he really was. Sure he was watching the pounds practically slink off of him, but he wasn't satisfied yet. He wasn't thin enough to be worried about.