cherry wine [cashton]

super far from home

Warnings: strong language 

-

When Ashton woke up the next morning, reality hit him like a truck. He wasn't in his own bed. And he wasn't in Jim's either. He sighed, rubbing his eyes a little too harshly. He wondered how it had come to this. But he decided to brush off the thought as Luke stirred next to him.

Luke drove them both to school that day. Ashton had protested, wanting to stay home, but Luke had forced him. He insisted that Ashton needed some kind of normalcy all things considered. But Ashton was petrified. When they left the house, Ashton had hesitated. He had scanned the street, looking for the distinctive black Mercedes Jim drove, but thankfully he had been unable to spot it.

When they arrived at school, Ashton got weird stares. He knew he looked like a mess and a half with all the cuts and bruises in his face. But hopefully they just assumed he had been in a fight. Which wasn't even half a lie.

This was also the day when he had finally faced Calum again. The Maori boy had stared at him the entire morning, making Ashton a bit uneasy. He knew they had to talk about the party, which on this Monday morning felt worlds away to him.

-
When the bell rang, dismissing their first class of the day, Calum had grabbed Ashton's arm without warning and dragged him into the nearest empty class room.

"Stop, you're hurting me," Ashton said.

Calum hadn't realized how strong his grip unintentionally had been and he quickly released it. "Shit, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to," he stammered out.

He would never intentionally hurt Ashton. But he tended to do that a lot lately. Why else would he have ignored him the whole weekend? And sent him away when he showed up at his house? Last night Calum had tried again but left when he noticed the black Mercedes outside the house. If Jim was there, he sure as hell wasn't going to drop by.

"It's fine," Ashton assured him as he rubbed the sore spot on his bicep. He could see the concern in Calum's eyes.

"No, it's not. I hurt you, Ashton. That's far from okay," he said, stepping closer.

But Ashton just shrugged. "I'm used to it," he mumbled under his breath, hoping the other boy wouldn't hear it.

But Calum always heard Ashton. It was like he was wearing hearing-aids that was set to Ashton's channel only and drowned out anything else, when his best friend talked. No matter what was going on around him, he would always zero in on Ashton's voice. It had calmed him down many times. Ashton's voiced had assured him that everything would be fine, when he had crashed his dad's car last year. He had been sure, he would get murdered, but Ashton had talked some sense into him and in the end, after a long period of being grounded, everything had been fine and Calum had lived to tell the tale, just like Ashton had assured him.

When he was on his way to a full-blown panic attack at the beginning of the year, Ashton had simply told him to breathe. And even though Calum had been unable to catch his breath for the following twenty minutes, Ashton had stayed by his side until his breathing finally evened out.

And this is why he heard exactly what Ashton said.

"You shouldn't be," he said, looking at him intently. To him Ashton deserved the world. And Jim wasn't able to give him that.

"Did he find out?" he then asked carefully, afraid of an answer he already knew. He had immediately seen the cuts on Ashton's face and the dark bruises under his eye remained. Of course, Jim had found out. And Ashton had payed the price. Calum wanted to find him and do something he was sure he wouldn't regret.

Ashton looked away, but Calum didn't need a confirmation.

"I'm gonna kill him," he said, and he meant it.

- 

AN: cliff-hanger!! also if you catch my foreshadowing, you're a legend! 

Songs added to the playlist:
Super far  - LANY 
Hesitate - Jonas Brothers (this is totally Calum to Ashton and i'm LOVING their comeback so I had to add a song from them)