Catharsis || Lashton AU - boyxboy

2. liberación

"We get high in back seats of cars,
We break into mobile homes,
We go to sleep to shake appeal,
Never wake up on our own,
And that's the way we get by."
Spoon, The Way We Get By ☯

Oh look another horrible chapter wow this'll get better I swear hopefully

l.h.

I wiped my hands on the dirty rag before tossing it on the counter to my right.

"I'm heading out, Van Gogh. See you later." I said with a crooked smile, before lifting my jacket off its hook and shrugging it over my shoulders.

"Later, Luke." He responded, rolling his eyes playfully at his nickname, like he always does.

I think it suits him very well, if I do say so myself. You can't get any more spot on with a nickname than that, honestly. He's a twenty-five year old painter named Sullivan, who was born with a cleft earlobe. I mean, he's practically Van Gogh reincarnated, if you ask me.

I smiled lightly to myself as I pushed open the door to the shop and rung the bell, stepping into the crisp, autumn atmosphere of New York City.

My blood rushed to my cheeks and the tip of my nose, creating blotches all over my skin and honestly, that was probably my favorite thing about this weather. Like, excuse me, but quite frankly, I find it adorable.

I walked home, making sure to take as long as I could manage because God, every single day I'm outside in this city there's something or someone or somewhere new to see, and it's absolutely wondrous.

There were kids skateboarding down the sidewalk around all the people, parents rushing by with their children's hands clasped in theirs, both men and women walking with their hands full of shopping bags, couples of all genders and ages waltzing on by with the universe in their eyes, business-like people dressed head to toe in clothing whose worth had to be pretty damn close to the four-digits.

That was the hardest to see. Dad was the owner of a very big marketing company, so I'd say he fit the business stereotypes quite well. Only ever wore Ralph Lauren suits; I'd bet money he even wore them to bed. Spending a couple grand on a suit was nothing for him.

So seeing people like that, kind of felt like treading over broken glass. It just didn't feel that great.

But I did what I'd taught myself to do and I buried the feeling, set fire to it, hid it away in the deepest pits of my being. Then I kept moving.

I'd finally gotten to my usual spot on the corner, plopping myself down on the edge of the sidewalk and leaning the sign against the light post.

And I waited and waited and waited for someone to come along, someone with that strong appearance to break it all down in front of me. Because the people I adored most in this world were the broken ones. I absolutely cherish the damaged ones.

People who've been beaten and shattered and maliciously attacked time and time again but still trecked forward, still lived for another day, still cherished the air they breathed. Even the people who didn't. Even the people who moved forward each day like they were being dragged by a rope behind a moving car, dreaded each coming day, inhaled smoke over oxygen because at least that took a few painful days off the end of their life.

I cherish broken people, a type of person society's come to isolate them into an estranged group.

Which I will never understand, in a million years.

Because breaking a vase doesn't make it any less of a vase. If you leave the broken vase on the ground and wait for someone to ask what it is, what do you say? You tell them it's a broken vase, right? Because it's still a vase. A broken one at that, but a vase none the less. So why don't we see people like that? Why do we alienate the broken people? A broken vase is still a vase, and a broken person is still a person.

But for every star in the sky there's an insult to be thrown; a harsh word, an undesired judgment, a fresh bruise to a placid complexion.

And quite frankly, nothing in the entirety of the universe as a whole will ever make that acceptable in the eyes of people like me.

We broken, we shattered, we destroyed pieces of people, will never not stick together. Because we're still vases, like all the other vases. Except we're vases with a story to be told. Stories that not only begin, but end, and start again.

People walked past me from every different direction as rush hour jumpstarted, and I smiled rather graciously at the gentle looking woman who took a deep breath and plopped herself down onto the cement in front of me.

"Evening, Ma'am." I smiled widely at her, both due to her bravery and the butterflies in my chest.

"I, um, hi." She said gently, smiling a bit softly still as she tucked a curly blonde hair behind her ear.

"I'm Luke, and I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that your name is Andrea." I said, motioning to the name tag still pinned to the front of a navy blue work vest.

"Andy. For short." She grinned.

"Well, Andy, better get started because you don't get your five bucks till I've heard your story."

And so she grins back at me for the umpteenth time in the last minute or so, before going on to tell her story.

And man, did she have a story to tell.

From the day she was born and adopted, to being eight years old and finding herself left for the first time to care for her siblings while her adoptive father took off for days at a time for drugs, to when she was thirteen and finally took off with her siblings, to when she was fifteen and her adoptive father had managed to track them down and beat her into a coma, to when she was eighteen and became the legal guardians of her three siblings, to the medications and therapy and everything, to where she is now. And it left me breathless.

"I-- Wow. I'm absolutely speechless." I commented gently. "You're amazing."

I smiled very widly at her and put a hand on her shoulder, placing the five in her hand along with a fifty hidden underneath.

"Thank you-- Oh. Oops. You accidentally gave me a fifty." She said sheepishly, offering back the money.

"Keep it. Please. I'm not patronizing you. You're a nineteen year old girl trying to take care of three other kids. Buy groceries or something with it. Please, I have more money than I know what to do with. You deserve it." I said with my eyebrows furrowed, smiling a bit crookedly at her.

"Thank you. Thank you. Bless you." She replied softly, before standing up and stuffing it in her pocket, and scurrying off down the sidewalk.

And so I sat there with the darkest of details of her life seeping into the walls of my brain, smiling admirably at her, or, lack there of, now, I suppose, because I could only ever dream of having her courage.

And it wasn't much longer before a rather tired, sluggish figure sat down in front of me and ran a rough hand through their messy and seemingly dirty hair, and I couldn't even bear to look at their face because of the damage done to it.

So here sat a boy with brown, curly hair and dark purple circles under his eyes, with scabs on his knuckles that I can only assume are from hitting something (or someone) and a busted lip to accompany a black eye and dark blotch that covered a good portion of the left side of his jaw.

"My name's Ashton and fuck, have I got the story to tell today."

BEAR WITH ME, BECAUSE HOPEFULLY THIS WILL GET BETTER SOON BECAUSE MY WRITING IS A TOTAL PILE OF SHIT RN FORGIVE ME THERE'S MORE TO COME.

Also if you haven't figured out the chapter names are just 'release' in different languages. Of course in cases (like this one) where release isn't exactly a word in that language, it'll be the next best thing. Hense the fact that the word for this chapter is liberación, because release doesn't translate directly to Spanish. So yeah. That's a thing.

BYE I LOVE YOU.