teeth → l.h

chapter twenty-one;

Ashton's fine. He cried, he went to bed, and got up for work the next day. He's fine. He's fine on the drive to work, he's fine during rounds, and he's fine during lunch. He's fine all through the night and into the morning (but then again, the er was slammed for multiple hours), and he's fine up until he lays down in an on-call room; it takes about ten seconds for him to burst into tears and frighten a poor intern that had the great misfortune of walking in on him sobbing into a pillow.

"Doctor Irwin, um-" The Intern clears her throat. "Are you- are you okay?" That's a very loaded question. I should be fine. I should be fine and happy with my job and my boyfriend and my life but I'm experiencing heartbreak from a relationship that ended five years ago. So, no.

"Yeah, yeah." Ashton nods as he sits up, quickly snuffling his tears and wiping them from his face. "What do you need, Addison?"

"There's-there's someone here looking for you at- they're at the nurses station." Addison replies meekly.

Ashton sighs as he stands up. "You're gonna be pushed out before you even finish your intern year if you don't at least act like you belong here." He comments as he walks by Addison. "Act like you belong please- I'd be sad if you didn't make it. You're good at central lines."

Ashton makes his way down the hallway to the nurses station. He turns the corner, sighing and mentally cursing as he sees Calum. "What are you doing here?" He asks softly as he walks up to Calum.

"One of my co-workers fucked himself up at work, I brought him to the er." Calum shrugs. "I just wanted to see you for a second." Ashton loves him so much.

Ashton smiles softly. "Can I buy you coffee? I desperately need coffee." He slowly sways in the direction of the coffee cart, waiting for Calum to follow him.

"You're just exploiting me for free coffee." Calum teases as he watches Ashton practically gulp down his coffee.

"I am a doctor." Ashton comments. "We kind of need this to live."

Calum smiles. "Have you been crying? You seem off." Ashton hates himself when Calum asks that question. He has been crying, he is off, he's very far from fine. However, he doesn't really have a choice in the matter when his job requires him to leave his life at home when he comes to work.

Ashton hates not being able to tell Calum what's going on, and he would if he could, but he knows it's not his place to share intimate details of his sex life with a man that has never indicated his readiness for people to know about his sexuality.

"Yeah, I just-" Ashton rubs his eyes. "I'm exhausted and I'm on a peds rotation and the chief of peds is mean to me and-" He has to stop himself while he's ahead, because he knows if he doesn't, he'll just blurt out everything that's going on with him and he will be so screwed.

"I'm sorry." Calum says softly, taking Ashton's hand in his. "I can't imagine how hard it is, but I know you're strong as shit and given enough coffee, you could do whatever you wanted."

"Thank you." Ashton rubs Calum's hand. "Uh- what exactly happened to your friend?"

Calum chuckles. "He just needed some stitches. The very, very young looking doctor said that it wasn't bad."

"Which doctor?"

"Uh," Calum furrows his brows. "I thought I'd remember because there's a doctor in grey's anatomy with the same name."

Ashton chokes on his coffee. "Hunt? Oh dear god no, we need to rescue your poor friend."

"What if-" Luke laughs, his entire body shaking as he does, and spills a little bit of wine in the bath water. "What if you get through med school and on your first day of residency, you get there- you get-" Luke has to stop himself once more as laughter overtakes him, and Ashton wants to capture the image of it forever. "You get to work and there's a doctor that's named- that has the name of a greys character."

Ashton laughs, honestly expecting more from the amount of buildup Luke had to that sentence, but loving it nonetheless. "Like; I get there and there's a fucking doctor named Sloan, or?"

"Yeah, yeah." Luke nods vigorously. "Or you're on a Doctor Koracicks rotation one day. What would you do?"

"Leave." Ashton scoffs. "I don't want to work at grey-sloan. You know how many of them have died at that hospital?" Luke nods. "A lot. Mark died, Lexie got her organs crushed under a plane!" Ashton enthuses. "George died, Derek just fucking up and died, Owen unfortunately hasn't died-"

"Promise me you won't die?" Luke's face suddenly drops. "Like, no semi-trucks, no planes. You can't die, especially not in some horrible way. You have to do your residency and become an attending and you're not allowed to drop dead until you're old as fuck. It can be in an or like that old dude in Minnesota, but no sooner than that."

Ashton leans in and presses his lips to Luke's softly. "I'm not going anywhere, darling. I'm gonna be a great surgeon and I am not going anywhere."

Ashton drops back on his bed, letting out a long, loud sigh as he grabs a pillow and covers his face with it. His sighing soon turns into yelling. He needs to go to a rage room or something.

"Stop screaming." Helena comments as she leads against the doorframe of Ashton's bedroom. "That's not how you solve your problems." She shuffles slowly into the room and sits down on Ashton's bed. "What's going on?"

"I'm exhausted." Ashton says weakly as he tosses the pillow off the side of the bed. "I'm exhausted and experiencing heartbreak from something that I haven't thought about in almost five years and I got pissed on by three patients and only two of them were babies."

"What?" Helena furrows her brows. "Are you okay?"

"I'm so stupid." Ashton covers his eyes as he continues to cry. "I should- I should be happy but I'm not- I'm not, and I- I literally don't even know why I'm so fucked up about this! I was over it, and I was fine, then it just came back to fucking haunt me and I came to a realization in an on-call room that I don't know how to process my emotions at all."

Helena sighs. "I can't either. Sit up, scoot over." She moves to sit next to Ashton at the head of the bed. "I didn't know you were with anyone before Calum and after-"

"I swear to fuck if you even think about talking to me about Cooper." Ashton scoffs, dropping his head against the wall with a thud. "And I- It's not my place to tell you about it. I can't."

"I walk in to you yelling into your pillow and you can't even tell me why?" Helena scoffs. "Does Luke know? Is that why you scurried out when he was here earlier?"

"Lena, I-" Ashton pokes his head into Helena's room, panic washing over his face as he sees Luke. "Nevermind, sorry." He quickly backs out and shuts the door behind him.

"The fuck was that?" Helena glances over to Luke, and back to the door. "Is he okay? Why did he just look at you like he's your scorned lover?"

Luke shrugs awkwardly. "I don't know. I think I'm gonna go, I have to go to the store, then go home and do all the laundry because Sierra's been too busy to do hers since we got back and it's stressing her out. I'm going to clean the house too because she's upset with me and I know that's- I know I'm sucking up, I just-"

"You're being a good boyfriend." Helena rubs Luke's arm. "Just don't beg or anything, that's really sad."

"Ask him I guess." Ashton sighs sadly. "I don't really care. I'm gonna take a shower then go to bed."

A sick, cold feeling washes over Helena's entire body as soon as Ashton stops speaking. Ask luke? What the fuck am I supposed to ask him? "What the fuck is that supposed to mean?" Helena forces back the lump in her throat as she asks. She really, really doesn't want to know, but the feeling in her gut is already killing her.

"You should ask him." Ashton replies. "It's not my place anymore."

"Fuck." Helena mutters. She's so tired of her life being complicated. Everything was so much easier when she was drawing dicks on tables at school.