Into the Dark {l.h. + a.i.} || lashton || BoyxBoy

| s e v e n t h |

| s e v e n t h |

•••

"With so much left to do
You'll be missing out
And we'll be missing you."
-All Time Low, 'Missing You'

•••

"I have something to tell you." Luke said quietly as we strolled along the darkened streets of my neighborhood. The air smelled like cold nighttime, with just the barest tinge of brine brought inland by the breeze coasting over the ocean.

"Yeah?"

"You have 11 hours." Luke said quietly, and he wouldn't look at me, which was something I was rather unfamiliar with.

"For what?"

"You have 11 hours left. You only get 24, you know, after you kill yourself. And 13 of yours have already passed. You're already starting to forget stuff. By the time it's time for you to go, you'll have forgotten most everything about your life. That way it hurts less." Luke told me.

Luke was right about the forgetting; things were already starting to get fuzzy around the edges, even the really important things about my friends and family. I struggled recall my mother's name, but I could remember the day my dad died like crystal. I could remember when Harry was born very clearly; not the day specifically, but the events that had transpired. I could also remember every detail of the day Carter had....the day Carter had....

"Why is the bad stuff the most clear? Why is that what I remember?" I asked as I felt pain constrict my vocal cords because now that I was thinking about it, I couldn't get Carter out of my mind. It happened sometimes--even so long after and after so much therapy--and I would sometimes just shut myself up in my room for days, only coming out to eat, and not even that, mostly. Lauren and Harry didn't know about what had happened--in fact, my mother was the only living person outside of the police department or my therapists that knew. I hated talking about it. It felt dirty to even acknowledge.

"It's not just the bad stuff--it's points of high emotion, usually. Those stick around the longest." Luke explained. "Like...I bet you remember that one
time Michael stayed the night at your house and you woke up with him wrapped around you. Do you remember that?"

"Yes." I answered, maybe too quickly because I could have sworn Luke winced a bit with the impact of my words.

"Yeah..." He said after a bit, and again he just wouldn't wouldn't wouldn't look at me. "There's...your proof."

I didn't quite know what to say.

"Um." I said awkwardly into the incoming dawn. "Um. The sun's going to come up soon."

"I've never watched a sunrise." Luke mused softly as air floated around us and tinged with the suggestion of purple light.

"Why's that?"

"For whatever reason, people mostly kill themselves between the hours of 10 pm and 3 am, and usually that puts the sunrise around the time that they'll be observing family." Luke explained, and when I shot him a questioning look, he just shrugged back at me.

"We have a schedule we follow. I didn't take you to see Lauren because I get pleasure from watching mortals sob."

"Yeah, I caught that," I said to him, and for a second I thought the resolute mask he'd erected might've cracked a little bit, but he stitched his face back up and smirked at me.

"You're a weirdo. Suicide at 4 in the afternoon."

I just shrugged, because Luke was being callous, but I was pretty sure he didn't mean to be cruel.

"Do you wanna watch a sunrise, then?" I asked him with a tiny smile. "I'm told they're best when seen over mountains."

"I thought they were best over the ocean." Luke frowned.

"Good luck getting the sun to rise over the ocean on the west coast. I know you don't live on Earth, but that's not how orbit works, man." I told him, and then motioned for him to follow me.

"C'mon. When I was little, my dad and I always used to watch from this tree up the road." I told Luke as we walked down my street, which quickly turned into a gravel single-lane road as it wound up a hill. There was a gate that said No Trespassing on it, but it was pointless since everyone knew the owners of the property lived in Southern California and by extension knew they wouldn't get in trouble for trespassing.

About twenty feet up the road, a gnarled oak tree jutted from the remains of a small avalanche that had occurred before I could remember. The topsoil had been stripped away from the side of the slope, and had taken the the tree partially with it, causing it to stick out at a ninety degree angle. It was the perfect place to sit and gaze down at the small town of Harbor, if the weather was clear, since whole residential section of the town was for the most part situated on a hill while the businesses and beachfront properties were nestled in a strip of land that leveled out and eventually turned to sea. However, as Luke and I shuffled our way into the tree, we faced in, toward the mountains, which rose up from the ground in a way that was too abrupt to be majestic, but too gradual to be jagged. I'd always liked that about our hill-mountains: they weren't quite anything, really--something I could relate to a lot.

"You used to come here with your dad." Luke said as we settled onto the flat surface of the trunk of the tree. He was sitting close to me--just near enough that I could feel his body heat on my skin, but just far enough that we weren't touching.

"Yeah." I replied softly, having to actively restrain myself from leaning into the soft curve of his side. His wings were relaxed so they lay perfectly flush with his back, tinged pink by the flushing air. Luke seemed to absorb the colors around him in a way that turned his body into a walking work of art, and he was beautiful.

I took a breath of the crisp morning air that felt like the taste of apples, and the first sliver of liquid gold finally crested the horizon. When I finished catching the breath I didn't have, I glanced at Luke, who was staring at the coming day with undiluted awe in his flaming eyes that reflected the sun like some heavenly mirror.

"Eight-hundred and eighteen years--," Luke breathed out in a voice made of crystal. "And I've never seen a sunrise before."

"And what do you think?" I asked him, never taking my gaze off of his face.

Luke paused for a moment, seeming to gather up the words he wanted to say before he said them.

"You know, I've always been worried that if I were a human, I would be an atheist. I don't know exactly why, but it's just a feeling I've had." Luke began haltingly. He gazed at the sunrise for a long moment before he redirected his gaze at me, and our faces were sososo close.

"But now I know I wouldn't be." He whispered. "Not with something like this that happens every single day."

I drew a short breath.

"I--really?"

"Ash." He whispered, and I swallowed and wanted desperately to kiss him.

"Yes." I asked, but it wasn't a question.

"How could you want to leave this behind?" Luke asked me, and his eyes looked impossibly light and sad.

"Just because sunrises are lovely doesn't mean everything else isn't painful." I told him, but there wasn't really any weight behind my words because I was just focusing on not collapsing.

"Bad doesn't cancel out good. They both still exist."

"Yeah. That's the problem." I told him, and we were still breathing the same air.

Luke look at me, looked at my eyes.

"I would exist for this moment. Right now. I would go through it all, all the bad and the good. I think this is worth existing for."

I closed my eyes then, because I couldn't bear to face the honesty in Luke's.

"So would I." I quietly admitted.

And when I opened them back up, Luke was still look at me, looking at my eyes, looking at my lips.

"God," he said after a forever. "I wish I could feel."

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