Into the Dark {l.h. + a.i.} || lashton || BoyxBoy

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| s i x t h |

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"A thousand stars burning in the sky up overhead
How could it get more beautiful than this?
And it made me think of when, when in my life have I ever felt more infinite?"
-Sleeping With Sirens, 'Fly'

•••

"You have now officially been dead for 12 hours." Luke announced a while after our conversation about touching had died down to the quiet whisper of the feeling his fingers had left on my face. I couldn't really see if he could tell how much of an effect he'd had on me--he hadn't looked at me since our eyes had broken contact and he'd made a package of sour straws appear out of thin air. The crunchy wrapper had well and truly ruined whatever kind of moment may or may not have been brewing. I wasn't sure if there had been a moment, really. I felt like there had been. Maybe there hadn't. Maybe it was just a totally emotionless, one side, angel-to-soul touch that had meant nothing and I was just reading way too far into it. Maybe I had hallucinate the whole thing. Maybe the feeling of a thousand lightning bugs in the pit of my ghostly stomach when Luke cast his simultaneously blue and gold eyes at me was just the death finally catching up with me.

"That was the longest 12 hours of my life." I said thoughtlessly.

"Death." Luke corrected immediately. "The longest 12 hours of your death. The only 12 hours of your death, actually."

I pressed my lips together and nodded. It was a strange thing, remembering that I was somehow still alive but I was also dead. Luke was doing an adequate job reminding me that I was, in fact, no longer in existence. I wasn't sure I liked his constant reminders, but I liked when he talked to me, so I dealt with it.

"I thought we might do something special to celebrate this little anniversary, in fact." Luke said, and I could feel apprehension creeping up in my chest, hot and cold at the same time because I knew, I knew what he wanted and I was dreadingdreadingterrified of--

"Let's go check on your family."

"No." I told him desperately on the crack of my voice, but it was already too late because my eyes were blurring and blinking an suddenly I was on my front lawn and it was 5 in the morning and Lauren was sitting on her windowsill sobbing and oh, God, I--

"Ashton." She choked out, and somehow I was standing across the lawn from her but I was also right next to her and I could hear her tangled breaths and feel her hands clutching mine even though they weren't. "Ashton, I know you can't hear me--,"

"I can." I whispered.

"But--but I just wish I understood." Lauren said in the most heartbreaking version of her sweet voice I'd ever heard. She was always so sunshiney, but not tonight when the moon was out. Not tonight, when she wasn't even bothering to wipe her face of tears because they were coming so quickly. "I wish you'd just--you just--you never--why didn't you just tell us you were so--sad--oh, God, Ashton, I miss you and it feels like a knife."

"Lauren--,"I choked.

"I don't even know how to tell Harry." Lauren whispered at the sky in a quavering way after a while. She had her arms tightly crossed around herself in an apparent attempt to hold her chest together, and I suddenly realized that it was Luke who was gripping my hand. "He knows you're gone, but Mom didn't know how to say--how to--you--that--,"

"Harry." I said in the same way I'd struggled out Lauren's name, all throat and shatteredness.

"Why?" Lauren asked the stars again, because she didn't know that that wasn't where I was, and I felt like I might shake apart.

I watched her cry for a minute more, feeling like I was obligated to stay and watch what I'd done, what I'd created by departing--but then, oddly enough, I felt Luke tug at my hand.

"Ash," he murmured, looking down at me and touching my cheek for the second time in however long, "Ash, you're crying."

"I know." I said in a painful way.

"Stop it." Luke ordered, but not very forcefully. He looked kind of caught off guard and very confused, his eyelashes painted black by the nighttime.

"That's not how it works, Luke." I chucked, a little bitter and little glad for the distraction. "I can't just make myself stop feeling something. If you didn't want me to cry, you shouldn't have shown me this."

"I don't want you to cry, but I have to show you this." Luke said, and then cast a searching look up at the sky. "It's what I'm suppose to do. I'm supposed to show you all the people and all the things you're leaving behind. I'm not..."

"You're not what?"

"I'm not supposed to not want you to cry." Luke frowned, touching my face again and inspecting the shininess of the tears on his fingertips. "But I don't. This feels terrible."

I'd wiped off most of my tears and was following Luke as he retreated away from my house by the time I realized the gravity of what he'd said.

"Wait--you're...feeling?" I called out. He cast a look back at me, the hint of the smirk he'd worn earlier splayed on his features.

"I'm not sure. It's kind of new territory for me, too." He said. I caught up to him on the edge of my old lawn, the scruffy grass meeting the concrete like some sort of poetic statement I didn't have the time or inclination to decode.

"But you said--,"

"Yeah." Luke shrugged, looking nearly abashed as he briefly glanced at the ground. "Well--yeah.. I don't have the....words for it, really."

"For feeling?"

"Yeah."

"Describe to me...um, I guess...." I started, searching for the right question to ask. "Um...what made you...feel, do you think?"

"When you were crying." Luke answered, and his eyes were beautiful and it seemed so unfair that he got to reflect the whole solar system in their depths. It wasn't right, because how was I supposed to not kind of fall in love with eyes like that?

"You didn't like that? It didn't feel...good?"

"No." Luke shook his head. "Not at all. No...it felt bad. Terrible. I didn't like it at all."

"How would you describe it?"I asked curiously, and Luke's eyes bore straight in to mine when he answered.

"You know when your sister said missing you felt like a knife in her chest?" I nodded, and Luke continued. "Yeah. Like that. Like looking at your pain made my heart bleed."

I swallowed.

"I didn't know angels had hearts."

"You'll find, Ashton," Luke said around the barest breadth of a smile, "That everything has a heart in some form or another. Just try not to know what you're looking for and you'll find it eventually."

My hand moved in an almost involuntary way to the center of Luke's chest and I felt the rhythmic jostling of his pulse there, steady and very alive. I didn't have one of those anymore--a pulse. It was comforting have what I once took for granted under my hand.

"Do you still feel like there's a knife there?" I couldn't help but ask, because my face was dry and Luke was looking at me with something I wasn't used to seeing in his eyes--something soft and dark blue. "Does it still hurt?"

"Yeah." He said, biting his lip and looking a bit apprehensive as he gently put his hand on top of mine. "It hurts. But in a good way, like maybe I might not mind my heart bleeding a little."

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