#the first installment is like. NOTHINGGGG compared to the second and third

[clumsyclifford]

i know that you’re so afraid

and it’s getting late, 'but i'll stay 'til you come down.

Luke lets himself in and is met with wreckage and a scream that is so guttural, so primal, that for a moment he feels truly afraid. (Or, Ashton's never been like this, and he's falling apart.)

TW mostly for lots of angst and crying and such. however also contains ashton yelling for a moment so if men yelling is something that triggers/upsets you then maybe skip this one. title from come down by noah kahan.

part 1 (tumblr) // part 2 (tumblr)

read it on ao3 here

~

Luke lets himself in and is met with wreckage and a scream that is so guttural, so primal, that for a moment he feels truly afraid.

Then there are sobbing sounds, the gut-wrenching kind that only ever happens when you’re home by yourself and everything has gone wrong, and Luke thinks maybe he understands a little better.

Gingerly, he steps over the throw pillows discarded in front of the door, picking them up as he goes. The living room is in a state of total disarray. Every blanket, pillow, and cushion they’ve ever had on any couch has been yanked off and unceremoniously tossed into a different corner; there are shreds of paper like oversized snowflakes littering the ground. In the middle of it all, on his knees, chest heaving and body shaking with his face in his hands, is Ashton.

“Ashton?” Luke says softly, and Ashton doesn’t look up. He makes a noise, though, a groan that sounds helpless and despairing.

“Fuck,” Ashton says, in a trembling voice. He rubs his hands furiously over his face and pulls one through his hair, which is unruly, like he’s been moving around a lot and hasn’t checked his reflection yet. “Fuck, you — you weren’t —”

“We finished early,” Luke says calmly. “What happened here?”

Ashton shakes his head. “Leave and come back, I’ll — I’ll clean up.”

“Don’t worry about cleaning up,” Luke says.

Ashton grunts viciously and pushes himself to his feet. “Go, please go,” he begs, “I’ll — please.”

He sounds scared, and that makes Luke scared. There are tear tracks all down Ashton’s face, glistening over angry red scratch marks, like he’d tried to claw the tears off. “Take a deep breath.”

“Don’t fucking tell me to take a deep breath!” Ashton shouts, and then his face falls into his hands again. “Luke, please, I’m not like this, I don’t want you to see me like this. Please leave. Please.”

“I live here too,” Luke says. “And I’m not leaving you like this.”

Ashton presses the heels of his palms into his eye sockets. “I don’t want this. Please go away.”

Luke moves gently towards Ashton. “You won’t hurt me.”

“Of course I won’t,” Ashton says helplessly, “but look at the fucking state I’m in —”

“Don’t stop on my account,” Luke says. “Keep throwing shit. Scream all you want.”

Ashton shakes his head, and a sob escapes through his lips unbidden. “Luke, I just need to be alone.”

“I don’t think you should,” Luke says carefully, stepping closer and closer. Ashton doesn’t move until Luke is within arm’s reach, until Luke reaches out hesitantly to touch his shoulder, and then he collapses into Luke, crying harder than Luke’s ever heard anyone cry. The sound tears at Luke’s chest, tugs mercilessly at his heartstrings.

“I’m sorry,” Ashton cries into his shoulder, “I’m so sorry, this is the worst of me.”

There’s nothing to say, really. This is the worst of Ashton, and Luke doesn’t love him any less for it. “It’s okay,” he whispers, holding Ashton tightly, like that will keep him from falling apart any more. “It’s okay. I know. I’m here, I’ve got you.”

Ashton won’t stop apologizing, and he also doesn’t stop crying for a good five minutes. Luke scans the living room over Ashton’s shoulder as he gently cards through Ashton’s hair. It looks like a tornado has ripped through the place. Something really, truly upsetting must have happened. More than one thing, maybe. In all the years they’ve known each other, Luke has never known Ashton like this.

“What happened?” Luke says quietly, when the broken sobs have turned into irregular whimpers and Luke feels exceedingly warm from Ashton’s body heat, numb from Ashton’s weight clinging to him. “Is there anything I can do?”

Ashton sniffs. “Mum called,” he says weakly. “Lauren’s in the hospital. Tripped and cut her leg and she had to get stitches.”

“Oh, Ash,” Luke breathes. It hurts Luke to know that Lauren is hurt; he can’t imagine how bad it must feel for Ashton.

“I can’t be there for her,” Ashton says, sounding angry and hopeless and defeated all at once. “I can’t go. I’m stuck here. Even if I left the minute I got the call, by the time I got there she’d be out.” Luke presses a kiss to the junction between Ashton’s shoulder and neck, and the tension seems to drain a bit from Ashton’s body. “I miss her, and I miss Harry and my mum and — and I miss Sydney so much, don’t you miss home, Luke?”

Luke nods. Generally he tries not to think about how much he misses home, tries not to think about how even after all this time, home is still Sydney, not LA. It hurts, all the more because there’s not a lot Luke can do to remedy it. He can visit, sure, but if he wants to sustain this career he has — if he wants to live his dream — the chances of him ever moving back home are slim to none.

“You can still go,” he tells Ashton, rubbing rhythmic circles into his back, over the rough cotton of his shirt. “And she’ll be okay, you know. It’s going to be okay.” Ashton shakes his head and pulls away from Luke, unreadable from all the emotions flitting across his face.

“I know she’ll be fucking okay, Luke, but I can’t be there when she’s not!” he snaps. Luke tries not to flinch. He’s not scared of Ashton, but he can see how someone could be, in a moment like this. Ashton notices anyway, because Ashton always notices, and he squeezes his eyes shut, fresh tears trekking down his face. “Fuck, I’m sorry. I’m — I told you I didn’t want you —”

“Ashton, Ashton, no,” Luke says, bringing a hand up to Ashton’s face and tilting their foreheads together. Ashton’s erratic breath leaves staggered puffs of air against Luke’s face, and Luke thinks he might cry, too, except he can’t, because Ashton is crying. They can’t both fall apart; there’d be no one to pick up the pieces. “No. I’m not scared of you. You’re upset. You’re allowed to be upset. Your sister’s in the hospital.”

“I can’t be like this with you,” Ashton whimpers. “You’re all I have, and I’ll scare you off —”

“I’m not all you have, and you could never scare me off,” Luke interrupts. The tears on Ashton’s face are tracing the outline of Luke’s thumb as they make their way down his cheek; Luke cradles Ashton’s face as delicately as he can and wipes the tears away. “We can both go. Even if you get there after she’s out, she’ll be happy to see you.”

“I’m useless,” Ashton says hoarsely, “can’t do anything, can’t even be there to hold her fucking hand while they stitch her up —”

“They wouldn’t let you be there for that anyway,” Luke says. “Ashton. Ash. I’m — I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry.”

Ashton breaks down again, falling limp against Luke, and Luke lets him cry it out. He doesn’t say anything. There’s nothing that bears saying. This news is poison, and Ashton needs to flush it out.

“Aren’t you scared?” he murmurs brokenly into Luke’s neck. Luke exhales.

“Of you? Never.”

“I am,” Ashton whispers. “I don’t want this to be me, but I think it is.”

“This isn’t you,” Luke says firmly. “If it were, I’d have seen it a lot sooner. You’d have done it a lot sooner.”

“I tore up my songwriting notebook,” Ashton confesses, sounding terrified to say it out loud. “After I hung up with my mum, I tried to write — I thought maybe — if I could put it in words, but — I can’t. I couldn’t. I was so angry I just — I just ripped it in half. Tore up all the pages.”

That’ll be the scraps of paper all over the floor, then. “It sounds like you needed to rip something up.”

“What kind of person am I that I need to break something when I’m upset?” Ashton says, horrified.

“Don’t do this,” Luke says, tracing arbitrary lines and shapes into Ashton’s back as if he’ll unlock the pattern to make Ashton feel better. “You weren’t just upset. You’ve had a bad day. Bad week. And you haven’t done anything about it. It built up. That’s normal.”

“But what if you’d been here?”

Luke doesn’t know. What if he had been here? Would Ashton have kept it to himself, retreated to his room to cry in solitude? Or would he have screamed anyway, filled the house with heart-wrenching cries, demolished the living room as Luke stood by and watched?

Luke wonders which would be worse.

“Don’t do that either,” Luke says. “I wasn’t here. I am now. You went a little crazy. You’re allowed.”

Ashton huffs, and Luke thinks maybe, just maybe, there’s a laugh hidden somewhere in there. “That’s a nice way of putting it.”

Luke leans away and presses a kiss to Ashton’s forehead. “Can you breathe?” Ashton nods. “Want me to look up flights to Sydney?” Ashton nods again, leaning his head heavily against Luke’s, rough hands wrapping around Luke’s neck like a lifeline, like a noose, like both. Luke thinks he would die for Ashton, if it came down to it; not figuratively, but actually trade Ashton’s life for Luke’s own, and of all the scary things of today, that one is the biggest. He takes a deep breath. “Okay. I can do that. We’ll clean this up later. How about we order pizza for dinner, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Ashton mumbles. “I’m so fucking sorry, Luke.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Luke says. “You have nothing to be sorry for. I know this isn’t you, and I know you feel badly, but you don’t have to be sorry, not to me.”

“But I am anyway.”

“I forgive you,” Luke says, even though there’s nothing to forgive. Ashton closes his eyes and breathes out like someone’s just released pressure on his chest. “Please don’t be sorry anymore. You haven’t done anything that bears forgiving. I forgive you for nothing.”

“Thank you anyway,” Ashton says, deathly quiet. “I’m so — I don’t know what I would do without you, Luke. I really don’t.”

“Lucky for you, you never have to find out,” Luke says, pulling Ashton into a hug. “I’ll find a flight and we’ll bring a bunch of ridiculous presents to Lauren, and we can stay for a little bit. You’ll see them soon. It’ll be good for you.”

“As long as you’re there,” Ashton says softly. “You keep me together.”

You keep me together too, Luke doesn’t say, even if they both know it’s true. That’s the deal, I think.

He closes his eyes and listens to Ashton’s breathing, finally steady, counting the seconds between each inhale. It’s more soothing than the ticking of a clock, and it washes over Luke. This should scare Luke, but it doesn’t: if he could, he’d measure his own breaths against Ashton’s, so when they stopped, so would his.