Revolution || Lashton AU - boyxboy

f o r t y - t w o

hello yes there is a man at the end of this chapter who says some very rude and disgusting things to luke and if that is triggering at all i'm going to put a little underscore before it so don't read past that please because i love you and i don't want to trigger you or anything!!

Luke

At the start, I tried to rescue Nate from the fingertips of oblivion trying to drag him away by the ankles. I was trying to keep my feet on the ground and do whatever I could to help the people who'd known Ashton so much longer, but you can only stretch the rubber-band so much until it breaks, right?

And even after I'd discovered through Nate's meltdown that Ashton had disconnected his number, it didn't stop me from trying. I guess I just couldn't admit to myself that he was gone.

I worked so fucking hard to get him in the first place and now he's just gone.

And so everything was this horrible, off-kilter blue color and I couldn't see straight and my whole being seemed to made up of pins and needles. There was just this bittersweet residue I could taste on my tongue, and I craved the smell of cheap cologne and cigarette smoke, even though I'd always complained that it hurt my nose. I could deal with a sore nose so long as the hole in my chest was all closed up.

But once I'd realized that everything I was doing was completely and utterly pointless (I guess you can't really help people who don't want to be helped), I eventually found myself seated on the floor in the corner of my room with that stupid flannel grasped between my finger tips, crying so hard I was on the verge of bursting a blood vessel.

It all felt like dangling off the edge of a cliff for hours on end. Just hanging there, hopelessly, slipping down one finger at a time, and I was on the last finger with someone stomping directly on it. And I didn't want to let go, and everything in me was hanging to the edge of the cliff for dear life, but there was a part of me, deep down, that knew I wouldn't last.

So I let go.

I released the last finger on the cliff because I knew the extra pain wasn't worth it; it's not like it'd change the outcome.

So here I was, sitting alone in my dorm, with that stupid flannel grasped in my hands while I alternated between drinking whiskey straight from the bottle and crying into it.

And, in most cases, when I was crying and Owen walked into the room, I would've tried my hardest to avoid him, because I knew it'd only worry him. But this time, when he walked into the room for the first time in a week, he didn't avoid my gaze like he'd been doing in classes and in the hallway. He looked straight up at me, stopping in his tracks, and his eyebrows and his shoulder and his lips all simultaneously slumped in that pity-manner.

"L-Luke? Are you-- Are you okay?" He asked shakily, his hands still behind his back on the door.

And I couldn't even feel enough to stop myself from scoffing all lifelessly at him. "What the fuck do you think, you dick?"

He didn't respond. I was almost glad of that, actually, but the feeling was very quickly countered by the fact that I was absolutely dying to hear what his reason was for avoiding me for a whole week straight.

Especially when I had been needing him most.

"Well? Are you just gonna stand there or are you gonna tell me where the fuck you've been?" I snapped, still curled up in the corner. "Because, really, I'd fucking love to know."

"Luke..." He trailed off, taking a step closer and lifting a hand towards me, very quickly letting it fall to his side.

"I have been losing my fucking mind over the past week, and you just up and disappear? Why? What the fuck could I have possibly done to you to deserve that?" I started strong, my voice cracking and falling to a whispering soon after.