Being Human || Lashton AU - boyxboy

chapter five.

a.i.

                 

I decide to scratch another tally into the dash when the kid decides he's going to speak again.

He didn't say anything when I'd gotten him back to the car, and he didn't eat anything all day, and he didn't speak to me for hours while I sat in the front seat and tried to draw him out of his trance. Eventually I'd given up and passed out for an hour or so, but when I woke up, he was still laying on his back, staring wide-eyed at the ceiling. He was starting to scare me--I don't remember if he even blinked the entire time.

So I add another tally to the collection when he asks, "What's your name?"

According to the watch poking out of his sweatshirt sleeve, he asks me that at 7:26pm. Before I wonder why it's important to him, I wonder why that's the first thing he says after his vow of silence. Is that really what he was thinking about? A rotter almost rips his throat out today and  he spends the past twelve hours completely and cripplingly taciturn, deciding now that he's going to ask me my name? No, I don't buy it. Maybe he just doesn't know how else to break the silence. Maybe he's been trying to think of something to say but he just didn't know what, so he decided to ask me this.

Regardless, I don't want to tell him my name. Telling him my name means he'll tell me his name, and I don't want to know his name, because once we know each other's names, it's real. And he'll know about me. And I don't want him to know about me, and I don't want him to know me, and I don't want him to care about me, because I don't ever want to care about him. I like to think that our personalities clash so violently that that isn't a worry I should worry about, but I worry anyways, because my name is Ashton Fletcher Irwin and I am a worrier.

There is a lot to worry about these days. It's not my fault.

I catch his eyes in the rearview mirror. He seems to be waiting for an answer I am not keen on giving.

I hesitate for a moment before saying anything. He raises his eyebrows, the rest of his face vacant--etched in stone and unmoving.

"Jamie." I say after a moment. If I can lie about my name, surely I can assume he might do the same. It took me weeks until I told Ruby my real name.

I feel my throat tighten as I wonder if Ruby was even her real name. I try not to think about it.

He squints his eyes at me and scoffs. His demeanor has 180'd, and the dorky rich kid is gone and replaced by a stone cold shell of a boy. Instead of his name, I wonder his age. Is he even eighteen? It's hard to tell.

"Don't fucking lie to me." he says, and I can't help my wide eyes. I definitely didn't take the kid for the smart type (I did, however, take him for the quippy type, and he was going to have to tone that down or I was going to kick his knees in, probably).

I squint my eyes to match his. "Alright, alright. You caught me." I reply, my hands raised in defense. "My name's Tyler. Didn't think you'd catch on."

"Oh, fuck off," he says quickly. "You're not a Tyler."

"Andy?" I ask mockingly. His desperation for my name is starting to piss me off. And since when is he the fucking king? He gets attacked by one rotter and all of a sudden he gets to decide whose name is whose? What the fuck is this? He glares at me, but I ignore it. "Kenny? Cameron? Charlie? Adam? Zack? Ooo, what about Alejandro? Take your pick, Barbie, I don't give a shit."

His expression softens then--as soft as his stone-cold face gets, I suppose--and he closes his eyes. He folds his hands over his stomach and he doesn't speak again. Doesn't open his eyes to shoot me daggers or to grimace that ugly grimace; doesn't open his mouth to retort something sour or to demand my name; doesn't move a muscle, like he's sculpted in a milky white marble.