Pain & Insanity *ON HOLD* (ASHTON IRWIN AU)

Chapter 11: Ashton

"Oh, look! Lover boy's back!"

I huffed and rolled my eyes at Calum. He ran up to me and basically jumped onto my back. I groaned at the sudden weight of him and tried to pull him off my back. "What do you want, Calum?"

"Where were you last night?" He asked with a coy smirk. Calum wrapped his arms tightly around my shoulders and put his full weight on me. "Were you with Gen?"

"No." I groaned. "Well, only for a little bit. I took a walk."

"With her, right?" He giggled while ripping my grey beanie off and forcefully rubbing his fist into my hair. "You were walking with Gen, alone. Did anything interesting happen?"

With a lot of force, I was able to push Calum off of me. "Leave me alone, Calum." I groaned while walking away. I heard him trip over his own feet while trying to catch up with my long strides.

"Dude, you were out all night! You can't tell me that nothing happened! You at least kissed her, right?"

"I'm not interested in Gen!" I grumbled while picking up my pace. I was making my way back to camp.

"Of corse you're not." Calum rolled his eyes while running to walk in front of me. Ungracefully, he spun around and began to walk backwards. I saw that his eyes were completely bloodshot, and a strange oder came from his clothes. "Gen is a total babe. You totally had to have at least thought about her being attractive."

"You're high again." I remarked while pushing past him.

"When am I not?" Calum chuckled at his own side comment while running back after me. "Hey, I love Gen like a sister, but she's gorgeous."

"Who's gorgeous?" Someone spoke from behind us. I saw Calum's face pale slightly. Without even turning around, I knew who it was.

"It's none of your business, Luke." I hissed.

Luke chuckled while taking slow steps towards us. "It kind of is. You see, if there is a new babe in town, I would have known about her long before your dirty head left your pillow when you woke up." He smirked. I grew hot with anger when he referred to Gen that way. "Fine, since you won't tell me, I'll just ask Calum. Calum, who's the new babe that you're talking about?"

Calum gave me a nervous look, like he was asking for my permission to speak with Luke. "Look here, asian, I don't have all day. Do you want to tell me who this chick is, or am I just going to have to find her myself?"

Before I could yell at him, Calum raised his voice and spoke. "Her name's Genevieve. Brown wavy hair, pretty greenish eyes."

Luke chuckled. "Slow down there! I can't understand what you're saying when you speak so fast. Your accent's too heavy." He laughed. Then, he stoked a finger along his stubbly chin. "I don't think I've met her yet." He spoke slowly, almost as if every word that came out of his lips needed to be planned and thought out. "But she won't be a stranger for too long."

"Leave her alone." I growled as Luke began to take a few steps away from us. "Gen doesn't need to be harassed by you. You've been with almost every girl in this neighbourhood; why are you so caught up in her?"

"Because, Ashton." Luke smirked while patting me on the shoulder. I flinched away from his touch and threw him a disgusted glance. "She's fresh meat."

Without thinking, I planted the heels of my palms to Luke's chest and gave him a firm shove. "Don't talk about her like that!" I shouted while shoving him again.

Calum grabbed me by the shoulders and pulled me off. "What, so you're defending her now?" Luke chuckled while puffing out his chest. "You two must be awfully close, Ash! I thought you shut everyone out for good after what happened to your siblings and all."

In an instant, I was out of Calum's grip and right in Luke's face. "How dare you talk about them!"

"Ashton." Calum warned while wrapping his long fingers around my jacket collar. "Don't start anything. He's not worth your time."

"Don't touch me!" Luke spat, disgusted. He brought his arms up to push me off, but I grabbed his arms and pulled them down. With force, I pushed him down to the ground.

"Don't you ever bring them up again." I spat while swiftly getting off of him Luke stood up slowly. Hesitantly, he brought his hands up to his face, and winced when he saw blood trickle down from open cuts along his palms. Calum swiftly grabbed me and dragged me away from him.

"I didn't know that you started pushing people around, Ashton! What ever happened to not being like your dad?" Luke called out. I roared with anger and tried to push Calum off again, but his grip on me was much firmer then it was before.

"Just ignore him." Calum sighed. Small tears burned at my eyes, but I wiped them away before Calum could notice. Quickly, I ripped him off of me and began to stalk off down the street. I heard Calum sigh heavily before his heavy footsteps pounding against the concrete of the street was heard from behind. "How could Luke set you off so fast?"

Calum grabbed at me again, but I shrugged Calum's hands off of me and fixed my jacket. "Stop touching me." I spat, but then sighed in regret as I saw Calum's face fall. "A long time ago, we used to be friends. Best friends, actually."

Calum stopped walking and grabbed onto my arm. "What happened?"

I sighed. "We grew up; and life's unfortunate events snowballed out of control."

Calum stood with a questioning look on his face. "What do you mean?"

I sighed while walking out of the middle of the empty street and plopped down on the grungy curb. Calum sat beside me. "Well, I'm certainly not telling you the whole story, but when I was small, my parent's would beat me. Every school day, they would kick me out of the house at three in the morning and not let me back inside until ten at night. Luke was my next door neighbour, and also my best friend in school. I don't know how he did it, but he would sneak me in the house every morning at exactly 3:05 and let me sleep in his attic until it was time to go to school. His parents never knew that I was there.

"One day, I decided to tell Luke why I needed to stay at his house. I told him the whole gory story from beginning to end. A couple of weeks later, his parent's passed away. They were crossing the street late at night and a drunk driver hit them both. He left them on the street."

I gulped and paused, waiting for Calum to ask more questions about what I had just said. My father had been the one to kill Luke's parents. He had been drinking heavily that day. It was the day that he found out that my mother was pregnant with my little sister.

Calum just stared at me with a waiting expression. I sighed in relief, grateful that I didn't have to share that fact with him. "With nowhere to go, and since my house was extremely unsafe, Luke was taken away to go into the Foster Care system. He'a hated me ever since then, because I was never there for him when he really needed it." I had finished off.

Calum sat with wide eyes. "Wow." He breathed. "No wonder why he's such a jerk to everyone. He's had it rough."

"Yeah, well..." I shrugged while pushing my dirty hair out of my face. "Just because that's his story, it doesn't give him a right to treat others like garbage."

Calum nodded. "So," he dragged on the 'o', "you never told me that you have siblings. What happened to them?"

I closed my eyes and bit my lip. Flashes of our childhood together filled my mind. I remember how my brother Harry would smile, even though life was so unfortunate. I remembered how Lauren always used to tease Harry for smiling and tell me to smile more.

I really do miss them.

"It really isn't any of your business." I snapped at him.

"Dude, I'm just asking a question!" Calum tried to defend himself. I rolled my eyes.

"It doesn't matter. It's a question that you don't have any business in knowing!" I argued. Without apologizing, I turned on my heel and stomped away. I could hear Calum sigh in frustration.

Unconsciously, a small tear slipped from my eye.