ibaaaa hi! prompt 37: "Lie to me. I don't care what you say, just lie to me. Make me feel okay again" with whatever pairing your heart feels đź’•
hi amanda!! thank u so much for the prompt and sorry it took me a bit to get to it. here, enjoy my first attempt at angst (that is completely unedited so please ignore any errors lmao):
warnings: mentions of alcohol and implied suicidal thoughts
The stupid alarm clock in the guest bedroom has something wrong with it. It’s only got two buttons, and somehow, neither of them turn it off, so, every day at 1:30 in the afternoon, the alarm blares its irritating jingle and draws Luke out of his catatonic, tequila-induced haze and back into the world for a few moments of breathless, awful pain.Â
It’s fine, though, really, Michael, he’s fine and Michael should focus on spending time with Calum and their families while he’s back home in Australia instead of spending time worrying about Luke. And come on, Cal, there’s no reason to change their flight back to LA to a week earlier, Luke’s sadness is completely manageable.Â
They don’t need to know how Luke had tried to forget it all, under neon lights and the wandering hands of a nameless, faceless person, the tears tracking through the glitter on his cheeks played off as those of happiness. He’d hoped that the blaring music would drown out the voices in his head, at first just his own whispers to himself, wondering why Ashton was never around anymore, never told him he loved him any more, refused to write with him, and then later, the screaming fight that had finally ended it once and for all, Ashton screaming, “I can’t create anything if I’m giving all of myself to you!” and disappearing out the front door, taking ten years and Luke’s whole heart with him as he left, leaving Luke gasping for breath and crashing, falling to the ground and out of this world.Â
They also don’t need to know how Luke had clung onto a new person every night since, whispering the same thing in the ear of everyone who tried to tug him towards the exit, “Please, lie to me. I really don’t care what you say, just lie to me. Just, make me feel okay again.” No takers yet, the number of pitying looks accounted for with an equal number of shots, only ever tequila, because Ashton hates tequila and Ashton hates Luke, so why not combine the two, right?Â
Really, he wants to ask it of everyone he has any interaction with, wishes he could ask Michael or Calum for the small comfort of being told a lie, almost like a bedtime story. Don’t worry Luke, everything will work out in time. Ashton will come back, and he’ll love you again.Â
Most of all, he wishes that that was all he’d asked of Ashton that night, maybe not in so many words, just offered him a simple “I love you”. Maybe Ashton would have taken the bait and mindlessly said it back, and Luke could have continued living in that bright little pocket of time called “Before”.Â
Michael and Calum and everyone else really don’t need to know that Luke had only switched to drinking at home after nearly killing someone (and himself, but that doesn’t really matter) while trying to drive himself home from some club deep in the Hills, hidden but so completely conspicuous in the way that everything in LA always is.Â
The only reason Luke even knows how long it’s been since the end of the Before is because of that godforsaken alarm clock that rings at the same time every day and doesn’t seem to understand how desperately Luke needs everything to lie to him. He needs to hear that he hasn’t spent a whole month wallowing, that he’s better than that, that he can’t be broken this easily. He needs to hear that he has time to clean himself and their, no, his, house up before Michael and Calum get back.Â
He needs the guitars scattered throughout their, no, his house to say that he hasn’t been ignoring them for the past month, that he’s done something beyond sit on the floor and stare at them, wondering if the value of a few new chords is interchangeable with his own.Â
When the doorbell of the house rings a few days later, he needs that to be a lie too. He needs the figure he sees through the peephole to be Ashton, not some delivery driver or confused neighbor or concerned fri— oh. It is. It’s Ashton, and Luke doesn’t know whether he should ask him for a lie.Â
