#thats literally sending me my masters degree...put to use for 5sos fic...

[calumcest]

even when the night changes it will never change me and you

okay yes i know i have literally just dropped off the face of the planet and i show up a month later with almost 2k of nonsense pseudoangst but you know what. sometimes life just be like that i have a lot going on right now so i can’t promise i’ll be back here often but i will try i’m adjusting to a new (and INSANELY busy) routine but hopefully once i’m more settled in that i’ll have more time to be back here and also time to write more britpop i MISS writing britpop

Grief isn’t new to Ashton. 

He’s grieved relationships, grieved lost relatives, grieved phases of his life, grieved friends that have come and gone. He’s mourned endings of tours and album cycles and futures that could have been but weren’t, cried for himself and for others and for nothing in particular. Ashton’s life has been full of grief from the moment his father had scooped out a part of his heart and run off with it, leaving a clumsy, too-young Ashton to try and learn how to grow the rest of it back again. 

But he’s never grieved someone who’s still there. 

Grief is marked by a sense of loss, and until now, it’s made sense to Ashton. People flit in and out of his life, marking his days with laughter and a heart fit to burst and then a stomach so hollow it feels like when they’d left, they’d taken yet another part of him with them. He must be scattered at the four corners of the world by now, a bit of his heart here and a piece of his soul there and maybe even a part of his lungs somewhere too, the breath stolen from him by a face he can barely remember but still makes his newly-stitched-up stomach ache. And the more abstract things have made sense too; endings, that ring of finality, that gut-wrenching moment in which the world stands still and he stands still with it and nobody else does and he realises that’s it, it’s over, and I’m the only one who’s noticed. Grief is loss, he thinks, and maybe solitude, that crushing awareness that whoever said he was born alone and he’ll die alone was right, that even though he’s got everybody else alongside him they can’t ever be with him. 

And there is a loss with this grief, too, but he can’t put his finger on what it is, because Luke’s still here. 

He’s still smiling brightly at Ashton when they wake up in the mornings, blue eyes a little hazy as the remnants of sleep drain out of Luke’s irises, seeping through his bones and into the mattress they should probably replace by now. He’s still yelling for Ashton when there’s a spider on the wall, the same note of panic in his voice as there always has been, the same escalation in pitch when Ashton doesn’t defy the laws of physics to get from the upstairs bedroom to the downstairs bathroom in the space of three milliseconds. He still turns his face to Ashton when they’re watching TV, blinking slow and breathing even and lips already curved up in a soft smile because he knows Ashton’s going to kiss him before even Ashton does. 

So why is Ashton grieving him? 

Or, not Luke, specifically. Luke’s still Luke, always has been Luke, and there have been times Ashton has found himself on his knees in a pew praying to a God that he doesn’t believe in that he always will be Luke, too. No, Luke hasn’t changed, and Ashton hasn’t changed either, but they’ve changed. Or, no, that’s not quite right either. Nothing has changed, but something has shifted. Something’s moved, and Ashton doesn’t think it’s a bad thing, but it’s not a good thing either. It’s just- it’s just a thing. Nothing’s grown, nothing’s shrunk, but something’s been shuffled around, and Ashton’s still reaching for it in its old place, knuckles knocking against the edge of it rather than fingers curling around it. 

But it’s unnerving, because he doesn’t know what it is.

He finds himself picking up letters from the doormat addressed to Luke, and he falters, stares at Luke’s name for a moment, something curling uncomfortably in his stomach. He finds himself drinking in all of Luke across the table as Luke tells some animated story about one time in Year Nine, right, when me and Michael hated each other, and the words wash over him because there’s no room left in Ashton for them to sink in, not when he’s so full of an unsettled feeling at the sight of Luke’s bright blue eyes and pretty pink lips, the same as ever, but a few millimetres to the left of where they used to be in his heart. Most of all, though, he finds himself aching, finds every cell in his body turning itself over and over, left to right, right to left, up and down, trying to discern whether it’s here that things have changed, whether it’s here that he can find that old comfort and safety hiding away. 

And it’s confusing, because he hasn’t lost anything. His way, maybe, or his mind, but somehow it feels like something more than that, something bigger and extrinsic. Or maybe it’s intrinsic, and that’s the whole fucking problem. His fingers are scrabbling at the worn fabric of himself, at the soft fabric of Luke, at the well-known fabric of the two of them, tough and sturdy thread weaving in and out of glinting silk, but it all feels the same. Maybe it’s his fingertips that have changed. Maybe he’s got new fingerprints, leaving brand new stains all over himself and over Luke, marking him up as his all over again. 

He doesn’t tell Luke. What would he say? Something’s changed, but it hasn’t. Nothing’s changed, but it has. He doesn’t need frog-marching to the doctor. He needs to find where things have moved, needs to follow the spotlight as it crosses the stage, not stay three feet behind it, unable to guess where it’s going to move next. But he doesn’t know how, because he doesn’t know what’s moved, and until he knows what’s moved he won’t know where it’s moved, and until he knows where it’s moved he won’t know where - or whether - it’s going to move after that. 

He does tell Calum, though. 

He’s only planning on saying one carefully constructed sentence, one throwaway line that he’s neatly built up with sharp new bricks, but it seems like he might have forgotten the cement, because it all comes tumbling out, tongue twisting in on itself as the words try and form themselves before Ashton can see their shapes and stop them in their tracks. Calum just listens, though, nods, doesn’t interrupt or stop him or frown or even look like he’s thinking about it, like he’s already formulating a response in his mind. He just listens, and then when Ashton’s finished, he looks at him, dead in the eye in that way that Ashton hates because Calum’s the only person besides Luke who’s found the direct line between Ashton’s eyes and his soul.

“That makes sense,” he says. 

“No it doesn’t.” How the fuck can it make sense to Calum, when it doesn’t even make sense to Ashton?

“It does,” Calum presses, unbothered by Ashton’s resistance. “It’s not grieving the loss of a person or loss of a stage of life, but the loss of your old perception of how things are. It’s just adjusting to a shift.” 

“Why would it change?” Ashton wants to know, like Calum’s the keeper of the keys to Ashton’s own mind. 

“Just happens,” Calum says, with a shrug. “You change, so your perception changes. Would be a bit weird if you still saw the world like a nine-year-old, wouldn’t it?” 

“I don’t feel like I’ve changed.” Ashton knows he’s being stubborn, but he can’t leave with a half-thought, needs Calum to lead him right up to the water and cup his hands in it and then bring them to his lips for him. Or maybe Ashton’s already in the river; maybe that’s why he can’t seem to find anything to drink, because how is he supposed to know to drink what appears to be his ground? 

“Change doesn’t always have to come in eureka moments,” Calum says. “Things can change you without you noticing. And you can change you without you noticing.” Ashton steeps himself in those words for a moment, lets them bleed into his core and half-expects them to burn at him like acid, but they just surround him, soothe him like coolant on an overworked engine. 

And suddenly, Ashton finds the spotlight. It’s not three feet away. It’s right next to him, waiting patiently for him to step into it. Nothing has changed, he was right about that, and something did shift; he was right about that too. It’s just his perception - he’s the same, Luke’s the same, and they’re the same, but Ashton’s perception of them has changed. 

“Oh,” Ashton says, and Calum doesn’t say anything else, because he’s brought the water to Ashton’s lips now, and it’s up to Ashton to learn to clumsily do it on his own. 

It takes him a while. 

It’d be nice if it were a simple process, if change did all come in eureka moments, so he could simply turn his back on the smiles that make it all the way from his heart into his lungs and up his trachea but falter just before his lips, so he could look at Luke without his stomach flipping uncomfortably, but it isn’t. The smiles stay forced, and his stomach tries its best to earn a spot in the Gymnastics Australia Olympics squad, but it gets easier. It’s not permanent, now, and it gets less and less, until instead of feeling thick in his mouth Ashton’s tongue is curled around laughter and I love yous that he means almost more than he’s ever meant them before. And it’s not like he ever didn’t mean them - nothing changed, after all; he always loved Luke as much as he always has - but he’s starting to feel his way into his place again, finding the taped X on the stage right in the middle of the spotlight that he’d managed to miss somehow. 

And then, before he’s even realised it, he’s stood right in said middle of the spotlight, feet placed perfectly on the X, watching the little particles of dust as they float around him, disturbed by his steady inhales and even exhales. And when he looks out, tries to make out something other than the column of light he’s bathed in, he sees a figure in the front row, beaming at him, like he’s the entire show they’d come to see. 

Luke. It’s always been Luke. 

(And when he picks up the post one morning and sees Mr L. R. Hemmings, he falters again. To smile at the envelope, to feel that familiar warm glow in his heart, to feel the way his fingers curl around that inscrutable thing rather than bumping against it.

Loss doesn’t always have to mean grief. Sometimes it can be hope.)