Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

ONE

Kippa-ring station, Brisbane.

Luke was on his own. He didn’t know when the next train was coming, or what time of night it was. A few other people were on the platform; most of them were completely oblivious to his presence, but a few squinted eyes were being cast his way. He tried to picture how he’d look to them: a frail sixteen-year-old boy with a backpack and a cap low over his eyes, flattening his dirty blond hair. He kept his gaze away and instead focused on the train tracks.

Despite the warmth of the summer night, Luke shivered. His nose was stuffy and his eyes were sore. He curled his hands against his too-big blue jeans and hunched his shoulders.

“Hey, darlin’? You all right, dear?”

A kind-faced woman got Luke’s attention by patting his shoulder. He nodded quickly and tried for a smile that turned out more like a grimace. At least she hadn’t tried his other shoulder.

She raised her heavy brows in a silent question that she was waiting for him to answer. She was taller than him, but not by much, and had dark brown hair framing a tanned but aging face. Luke was relieved at her lack of resemblance to his mother.

“Yeah,” Luke forced out, willing his voice not to crack. “I’m all right.”

“Where you headed? You got someone waitin’ for you?” She was obviously concerned, and Luke felt a surge of appreciation that was instantly clouded with fear. No. There’s nobody waiting for me.

“Uh, yeah. I’m just heading home.”

He hoped she didn’t notice his puffy eyes. He drew his hands into his sleeves and plastered a reassuring grimace onto his face.

“All right, dear. Have a good night.”

She finally left, walking over to sit on one of the vacant benches. Luke thanked god for her not questioning him further. He didn’t think he’d be able to keep it together.

He raised his hands to his face and examined them in the dim streetlights. There was still a bit of blood under the nails. He tried to stop himself from scraping it away because he knew he’d take skin with it. His hands were shaking, nonetheless. 

The sounds and smells of the night were distracting, and Luke found himself breathing in hungrily. It was so real. It was all so much realer than the antiseptic and bitter smells inside the hospital. 

The screeching of brakes startled Luke, and he felt his heart jackhammer before reassuring himself, if somewhat tiredly, that this was his train. He’d seen a few pass over the last half hour, and never got used to the glaring headlights barreling down the tracks towards him. It reminded him too much of screams and bones breaking.

Luke boarded the train. He was a robot and his body was on autopilot, and when he got to his seat he had to fight for consciousness. All he had to do was get on the Trans-Australia, and from there he’d be fine. He squinted down at his phone and set a timer to wake up on. He hoped it would work. Putting his bag between his legs, he rested his head on it and stared out the window into the dark city.

He tried to forget about his family in the hospital. He tried to forget about the bruises lining his right arm and ribcage, a reminder of the car crash. He tried to forget about his week in the hospital, curled on little plastic chairs beside beds in the emergency care wing, the coma wing, and the wing where they put the dying. Take me far away from here .

* * *

Luke awoke to the shrill buzz of his alarm. He hastily quieted it, not wanting to draw attention, and lifted the edge of a curtain to peer outside.

It was just past daybreak, and while his eyes adjusted, he caught glimpses of downtown Brisbane. A few hours had passed since he’d boarded the first train late last night. Or maybe early this morning. 

Roma station came into view, and Luke felt a grim surge of finality. If he got on this train, he wasn’t coming back. He was going straight to the west coast and he’d figure it out once he got there. He couldn’t stop doubts from creeping into his mind, however - he could just get on a train heading back to Redcliffe, or he could take one to Sydney, or he could… 

The brakes screeched again and Luke prepared to disembark. He was going to the west coast. He checked that everything in his bag was secure and pulled his hat down to brave the morning sun.

“All passengers heading to Brisbane Airport. There has been a ten minute delay.”

“Redbank train arrival in seven minutes. Passengers start boarding Redbank in seven minutes.”

Luke was swallowed up by the crowd. He struggled blindly onward, hoping for a convenience store or a map. He found both near an information desk staffed by harried-looking employees who were probably just coming off a night shift.

There was a stack of bills in his pocket, and Luke flicked out a ten to exchange for a bag of chips and a water bottle. He was reluctant to spend any of it, because he was sure to need it in the future, but he hadn’t prepared well enough to not buy food. He had about a thousand dollars saved from a year or so of teaching guitar lessons. The only other items of any wealth that he owned were his new shoes and a necklace that used to be his mother’s. The clothes on his back and the change pair in his backpack were worth next to nothing.

Luke heard the metallic voice over the intercom say, “Six-fifteen Trans-Australia boarding in three minutes.” He slid a map free from a tourist board and followed the directions to the platform.

This was it for Brisbane, Luke told himself. This is it. There was nothing left for him here, and he knew it. He thought about his family’s house on the coast, and about his family. He thought about his dog that died when he was twelve that he never really got over. He bit his lip until it hurt and thought about his oldest brother. About his dad. He’d never get over them either. He thought about his mom and hoped she would call if she ever woke up. 

Birds flitted high above the station, and Luke followed a small crowd towards the train. The map proved to be of no use, and he folded it up into his back pocket. 

He got on the train, found a window seat near the back of the car, and let tears fall down his face in silence.

It really was a lovely day, he thought hazily, as the sun rose higher. The buildings in Brisbane glimmered. The train picked up speed and eventually Luke pulled out his phone and listened to music to drown out his thoughts. The sun was hot on his hand, his throat was burning idly, like it had been for the last ten minutes, and the fabric of the seat was familiar against the back of his neck. 

TWO

A few stops later, Luke noticed the train was getting busier. He pulled his cap down and looked out the window, hoping nobody would occupy the empty seat next to him. He had enough on his mind without worrying about a stranger beside him. 

The curtains on the window had been pulled out of the way when he had boarded, and Luke almost wished someone would untie them so he could sleep again. It seemed to be his only escape from his hopeless future.

Luke’s playlist came to an end, and the dim chatter of train passengers infiltrated his ears. It was almost more relaxing this way, he thought. He watched houses and trees pass by out the window.

Despite Luke’s efforts, a stranger approached. Luke caught a glimpse out of the corner of his eye and tried to blink some life into his face before having to communicate with them.

“Hey man, can I sit here?”

It was a teenager, probably Luke’s age or a bit older. The voice was male and tinged with optimism. Luke’s distaste grew.

He shuffled closer to the window. “Sure,” he grunted, noncommittal.

The stranger swung into the seat next to him and sighed contentedly. Luke stole a glance from under his hat. It was a boy with light-brown messy hair, reminiscent of surfers Luke saw on the beach in Brisbane - he had a t-shirt on and black jeans, and fade-tint round-frame sunglasses propped on his straight nose. Luke was just relieved the stranger wasn’t some creepy dude.

The stranger caught Luke’s eyes when he was about to look away, and his smile upon seeing Luke turned into a frown very quickly. Luke remembered what a wreck he looked like and stared out the window again.

“Hey?” The stranger asked. Shouldn’t have looked at him, Luke thought. Too late. 

He pulled his hat down even farther and said, “What?”

The stranger had set his sunglasses on his head and was peering below Luke’s cap. “Dude. You look terrible. Are you okay?”

Oh, so the stranger was one of those guys. Too friendly and ever-inquisitive. Yes, Luke looked like shit; he’d been crying for an hour at a time, every few hours, and all he’d had to eat in the past two days was some wet broccoli at the hospital and a bag of chips he’d bought that morning in Brisbane, and there were bruises all up and down his right arm from a car crash he wished he’d died in.

Luke didn’t say any of that. He prayed his voice would be steady and said, “Yes. Thanks.” 

The messy-haired boy did not seem convinced. After a pause, he offered, “My name’s Ashton, by the way.”

When Luke was silent, the boy - Ashton - held out his hand to shake. It was an awkward position, because they were sitting next to each other in a crowded train, and Luke probably still had blood under his nails, but he shook Ashton’s hand. It was much bigger than his own.

“Luke,” he offered in return.

“Nice to meet you, Luke. Where are you headed today?”

Luke pressed his lips together and accepted the fact he was having a conversation. At least, he reflected, he was focused on something else for a while. He found difficulty answering Ashton’s first question.

“Uh, Perth.”

It was the biggest city on the west coast. It was a safe bet, given that he didn’t actually know where he would end up.

“Oh, hey, I’m going to Perth, too.” Ashton turned his shoulders a bit to face Luke more. “Man, it’s not even sunny in here. Take your hat off, or something.” 

Luke narrowed his eyes as Ashton gestured to his sunglasses on his head, giving an example for Luke. It was obvious Ashton just wanted another ask at why Luke looked so awful, so he kept his hat on. 

Ashton sighed. “Okay. Why are you going to Perth, then?”

“Don’t know,” Luke responded.

“You’re on the Trans-Australia. We’re going from Brisbane to Perth. And you don’t know why? Did you put yourself on this train or were you just dumped here?”

Luke ignored Ashton’s attempt at a joke. “Talk to someone else.” He heard his mother in his head, telling him off for being rude, and he rubbed his eyes. She wasn’t here, he reminded himself. 

“Sorry, Luke.” Ashton sounded sincere. “Didn’t mean to bother you.”

“It’s okay,” Luke ground out, determinedly staring out the window. He wasn’t even paying attention to the outside world anymore.

“Besides, you’re the only one on the train who knows my name now, and I don’t want to introduce myself again.” 

Luke found it hard to imagine Ashton not wanting to introduce himself again. He’d managed to slip in an introduction sitting with Luke, and that was a feat. Luke rolled his eyes, then a question occurred to him.

“You’re going to Perth alone?”

Ashton threw the ball right back at him. “Aren’t you as well?”

“Well, I guess. Why, though?”

“Why Perth? Well, I have some friends over there that I haven’t seen in a while, first of all. Second - you’ll have to tell me why you’re going if you wanna know.” He said it with a cheeky smile. 

Luke gave a hesitant thin-lipped smile of his own and shook his head. He didn’t have any reasons at the moment. He didn’t even know if he wanted to go to Perth.

The rumble of the train lulled him into a strange sense of calm. He and Ashton fell into an easy silence.

THREE

Ashton yawned and stretched his legs. A moment later, when he stood up, Luke felt a rush of disappointment. He convinced himself it was good that Ashton is leaving. At least he wasn’t going to have to share anything about himself.

“I’m going for a snack,” Ashton announced. “Want anything?”

Luke mentally retracted everything he’d assumed. Then he frowned at Ashton’s question. That something a friend would say. He didn’t know what the train sold, anyways, so there was no point in requesting something, but it made Luke pleased to know Ashton didn’t dislike him.

“Luke?”

Luke realized he hadn’t responded. “No, thanks, I’m good.” 

Ashton sized him up briefly, then nodded and walked away towards the front of the train car without a backwards glance.

Luke let out a sigh and took off his hat once Ashton was out of sight. He kept his head down, though, wary of other passengers, while he scrubbed at his eyes and ran his hands through his hair. Keeping up a sane appearance was going to be a struggle. Even thinking about the last week made Luke’s throat close up, so he picked up his phone instead and scrolled through his weather app for distraction, putting his hat on again.

It was supposed to be sunny in Brisbane for the rest of the week. He set his home city to Perth instead and read the forecast there. Sun, clouds, sun, thunderstorm, sun. Late summer in Australia could bring a lot of variation in forecast, so Luke didn’t bother trying to commit any of it to memory.

Ashton sat down beside him with a tray on his lap. There was a chicken salad, a diet coke, and fries. It looked good, but Luke couldn’t imagine eating much. He took out his water bottle and sipped from it.

“You want some?” 

“Huh?” Luke wasn’t sure he heard Ashton correctly. Ashton swallowed his mouthful of salad, and repeated himself.

“Oh, no, it’s fine,” Luke tried to laugh. He couldn’t manage - it came out as a dry almost-cough, and Ashton furrowed his eyebrows in response. Luke cleared his throat self-consciously and looked out the window.

Oh no, Luke thought. He thinks I’m weird.

“Dead sure, dude? These are good fries.”

Luke didn’t want to eat. He didn’t want to feel sick and have to throw up. He also wanted to act like a normal human being. “Fine, okay.” He took one from Ashton’s tray. Ashton kept eating his salad. 

After a few minutes, Luke had eaten almost half of Ashton’s fries. His appetite had returned, and he was feeling better. At least, feeling more energized. 

“Three at a time?”

Luke stopped mid-bite, then said, “You offered,” before continuing. Ashton was smiling, though, so Luke only felt a bit bad. 

When they finished, Ashton got up to throw away the plates and give the tray back to the train staff. He left his backpack with Luke this time, and Luke caught himself eyeing it. Did it contain the same things Luke had in his? A few clothes, old flip-flops, a phone charger, a toothbrush and toothpaste? Probably a bit more, if Ashton was anything like normal. He probably had a computer and a rain jacket and a hat, too. That’s what Luke’s mom would have made him pack.

“Thank you,” Luke said, when Ashton sat down. Ashton slid his sunglasses onto his face again and grinned from behind them.

“No problem.”

Luke had to remind himself, forcefully, that he was not here to make friends. He was here to go to the west coast and live by himself and make friends once he had forgotten about Brisbane. A small piece of doubt in his head rebutted him, as if to say, good luck forgetting the car crash .

“So, are you from Brisbane?”

Great, Ashton wanted to talk about family history. “Yeah. But I was born in Sydney.” He felt rude leaving it at that, so Luke added, “How about you?”

“Born and raised in Perth.” 

They talked a bit about the cities, and Luke found himself liking the sound of Perth. Maybe he would end up there eventually. The Trans-Australia was a four-day trip, so he had some time to decide. If Luke was being honest with himself, which he was often not, he wanted to end up in Perth. At least he’d know someone there. 

Soon, Luke and Ashton lapsed into silence, and, as always, Luke’s thoughts returned to his family. At some point, Ashton was going to ask, and he was going to be weirded out when Luke won’t answer. How was Luke supposed to explain that his family was gone? That his dad and his brother were dead, and that his mom was in a coma? Luke hated the pity all the hospital nurses offered him when the news came. No, he didn’t want a drink. No, he didn’t want to think about next steps. No, he didn’t want to go to therapy and discuss his feelings. He was angry and wretched and lost and he knew it and he wanted to feel it, because if he didn’t feel his heart seized in the cold hand of circumstance then he would feel nothing.

“What’re you listening to?” Ashton gestured at the phone Luke was gripping in his hand. Luke hurriedly released his iron hold, trying to be discreet.

“Nothing?” It was true; Luke had forgotten to put music on.

Ashton pushed up his glasses and said, “Want some suggestions?”

“Sure, why not.” Luke uttered. He felt stuck in the fog of his memories and struggled to pull himself out of it. 

“Ever heard of The Cure?” 

“Heard, of, yes…”

Ashton lifted his eyebrows and took out his own phone. “Oh, man, get ready for this.”

They talked about music and bands. It was The Cure, then Nirvana (and of course Luke knew them), then The Misfits, then the Sex Pistols, and Luke had to scroll through own music library to show Ashton the Smashing Pumpkins, and they talked about the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Luke felt real smiles creeping onto his face. 

Every time he got excited, however, a chill that stemmed from guilt would rush through him and remind him of everything. Ashton seemed to pick up on this, but never asked, and for that Luke was grateful. Luke didn’t want to explain that he felt guilty for being alive.

FOUR

The sun started to set ahead of the train. Ashton was dozing beside Luke, and even though Luke kind of needed to use the bathroom, he didn’t want to wake him. He looked out the window instead and watched the orange glow on the horizon.

Dead, dead, dead, Luke’s brain chanted. Cold panic had started seeping through his body.

The ice fist had returned and was holding Luke’s airway, just barely letting enough air through. Breathe, he told himself. He started looking around the train, eyes landing on anything, desperate to distract himself. The passengers were all - just - sitting, though, and nothing was happening. Breathe, breathe, breathe. Luke’s hands untangled his headphones, but they were shaking, and it was slow and frustrating and Luke felt the fist close, so he put a hand over his mouth to stop himself from gasping for air, and he started breathing through his nose, but it wasn’t enough air. His eyes were watering and he felt them reddening from his tears again. Breathe, breathe, breathe. Ragged breaths made his throat raw. He pushed on his chest with his other hand and looked to the ceiling. It was passing.

Luke regained control of himself and wiped his eyes with his sleeves. He winced when he moved his right arm too fast. 

Ashton made a soft “hm” next to him, and Luke turned his neck at record speed, hoping to god he wasn’t awake. And he wasn’t - not yet, at least. Ashton’s dozing face looked kind of stupid, but in a funny way, and Luke focused on that instead. Ashton’s lips were pushed forward in a kind of swaggery pout, and the tinted glasses hid his eyes from the front, so only Luke knew his eyes were closed. 

“Hmgh?” Ashton slipped into wakefulness and Luke glanced away, back into the orange sunset. Next to him, Ashton was running his hands through his hair sleepily, and he finished off with a yawn and tucked the sunglasses away in his backpack.

“Good sleep?” Luke asked.

“Yeah,” Ashton said, contentedly. Luke, painfully aware of his post-panic state, stared determinedly out the window. The sunlight was at a terrible angle. It shone into his face.

“Luke, you okay?” 

Oh shit, Ashton had seen his face. Luke opened his mouth and closed it again when his throat burned.

Ashton turned to Luke, giving them more privacy from the rest of the train. His face showed his concern. Luke wished he’d just turn away and forget about him. “Are you okay?” He said it quieter this time.

Ashton shouldn’t have to deal with him like this, Luke thought glumly. He was just a nice dude wondering why his train buddy looked like the last time he slept was last year and on a concrete slab. And, maybe, straight out of a mental breakdown.

“Yeah,” Luke whispered. Ashton shook his head.

“Dude, I’m not kidding. You have massive bags under your eyes. Have you been crying? You look real bad. I don’t mean to get nosy, I swear, I just…” He trailed off. “Sorry.”

Luke swallowed thickly. They sat in silence for a minute, and Luke was doing breathing exercises the entire time, but subtly.

“Okay,” Luke said in his normal voice. “I kinda need to use the bathroom, do you mind standing for a sec?”

Ashton got up almost immediately. “Yeah, no problem.”

Luke really was glad he didn’t have to sit next to some ancient angry guy instead. Of course, it would have been more convenient to not have to sit beside anyone at all.

Before leaving the bathroom, Luke dug through his backpack and got out his toothbrush. Dental hygiene was important, especially now that he had no money for dentists and no insurance. He brushed his teeth for a long time and eyed himself in the mirror.

Luke Hemmings, 16. Blond hair pushed down and onto his forehead, beside his face, just like he was twelve again. His blue eyes were dim and grey in the bathroom lighting, and they were slightly sunken. Luke remembered, growing up, how much he liked his eyes - his mother always said he was lucky to have blue, and he always liked how in pictures, when he was smiling, they just lit up. It made him feel like a burning flame. In a good way. Now, however, he found it hard to meet his gaze in the mirror. 

His lips were pale in this light, too, and his mind recalled how he wanted to get a piercing somewhere on his lip. Oh, how his mother disliked that idea. She always told him to wait until he was old enough. She never said when that would be.

Luke couldn’t think of any more reasons to stay in the bathroom, so he splashed some water on his face and left. He would have to face Ashton at some point, unless he got off the train now. Or, Luke supposed, he could go a compartment over.

Luke banished that thought. He didn’t want to leave Ashton.

“Hey,” Ashton said, standing up to let him in the aisle. Luke nodded at him from the safety under his hat. He sat down and took in a breath. Ashton was still looking at him weird, and it made Luke irritated. 

“Okay, so.” Luke started, hoping to get this over with. Ashton would probably just accept whatever Luke told him if it sounded real enough. He was annoyed that Ashton’s kindhearted concern for a stranger had been inflicted upon Luke.

He turned to Ashton and met his eyes. They were a pretty dark hazel, wide in anxious curiosity but narrowed slightly for whatever reason, and Luke opened his mouth and looked away. 

“I’ve just had a rough couple of days,” Luke blurted out.

Ashton waited a few moments, and said, “That’s it?”

“Yes,” Luke muttered. Too late he realized he couldn’t make up a scenario without falling back into the hospital. He inhaled shakily. Breathe, breathe, breathe.

“Okay.” Ashton said. Luke was immediately grateful there were no more questions. “Cool of you to tell me, I guess. Sorry for prying.”

Luke sniffled and relaxed minutely. He pulled out his phone and realized he didn’t have any of Ashton’s songs on it - he really needed to download some, when he had WiFi again. Luke eyed Ashton’s phone and decided to ask before he lost his nerve.

“Do you wanna, like, switch phones, so I can listen to The Cure?” Luke proposed hesitantly, tacking on: “and you can listen to the Smashing Pumpkins or Blink or whatever?”

Ashton smiled easily. “Good idea!”

They exchanged phones and set each other up with their respective music libraries. This was fun, Luke decided. Ashton was fun to talk to and he had a good taste in music. If Luke fell asleep listening to Ashton's music library, there were worse things that could have happened. 

FIVE

“Luke. Luke.”

Ashton was poking Luke’s shoulder, which ached with each press. Luke hurriedly swatted Ashton’s hand away and held his injured arm tenderly. A buzzing sound infiltrated his ears.

“Luke, sorry, I hate to wake you up, but someone’s calling you-“

Luke’s eyes flew open and he grabbed the phone out of Ashton’s hand. He turned towards the window and picked up. The caller ID said “Redcliffe Hospital.”

“Hi?”

“Is this Luke Hemmings?”

“Yes, it’s me.” Luke’s heart was a racehorse. Had his mom woken up? The doctors said she was in critical condition, and that she probably wouldn’t, but what if-

“Can you tell me where you are?” 

Oh, no. “Is my mom there?”

“Mr Hemmings, I need you to tell me where you are.” Luke made a noise of frustration and pinched his nose. There was no way in hell he was telling anyone where he was - they all wanted to bring him back to the hospital, because he had left without permission and he wasn’t legally allowed to live on his own. He figured this would happen eventually. But… his mother… if she was awake, he could go back.

“If you tell me how my mom is, I’ll tell you where I am.”

There was a brief silence on the end of the line. Then, “She’s still in a coma, I’m afraid.”

Still in a coma.

Luke hung up.

He pressed his fingers into his temples and rubbed his eyes. No change in plans, he thought. Keep going until you’re on the west coast. Keep going and going until you’re on the west coast. Perth, he reminded himself.

It was dark in the cabin, and the landscape outside was invisible. It had to have been around midnight. The train car was quiet but for the whispering of a couple on the other side of the aisle. 

“Luke, you good?” 

“I’m fine.”

“Was that the hospital calling?” So he’d read the caller ID.

Well, there was no point in hiding it now, Luke figured. He was still riding the dreadful high of hearing news about his mother, and his hands were trembling, even when he rested them on his legs. “Yeah.”

“Your mom’s in the hospital?” Ashton cleared his throat. “I mean… sorry, Luke.”

“She’s in a coma,” Luke said bluntly. It felt surprisingly good to get this off his chest and into the air, so he barreled onwards. “Car crash.”

“Oh, man,” Ashton muttered. “Shit.”

Luke swallowed and closed his eyes, feeling a wave of horror sweep over him. Dread filled his gut and his throat squeezed closed, and he forced out the next words.

“My dad and my brother died.”

Dead, dead, dead . Never seeing them again. Luke was drifting in a sea of clouds and he was so, so lost.

“Luke,” he heard Ashton say, as if from a distance. Luke thought vaguely, I don’t want your pity. Leave me alone. I shouldn’t have told you, now I fucked up my chance at forgetting.

Then a hand reached across Luke’s body and pulled his far shoulder in. Another hand went around Luke’s back. Luke felt Ashton hesitate, and Luke didn’t know what he was doing, but he reached out for Ashton too. Ashton gripped him in a tight embrace. Luke felt tears spring to his eyes and he turned his face into the side of Ashton’s head and neck. He breathed heavily, trying to calm down, and inhaled the smell of something that reminded him of sunlight. It distracted him from the sobs rising in his throat and he focused on it. Sunlight. Perth. Ashton.

Ashton started rubbing circles into his back, and Luke felt his shoulders relax. He hadn’t realized how hunched his shoulders were until they started falling. Luke slumped into Ashton’s arms and hugged back until he could breathe right again.

“Sorry,” Luke whispered, pulling back. Ashton let him go and shook his head.

“Don’t be.”

Luke didn’t look at Ashton for the rest of the night on the train. He put his earbuds in, played music off his own phone, and stared unseeingly out the window. The rumble of the train car on the tracks led him into an uneasy sleep.

SIX

Luke woke up to the hazy glow of dawn outside the train. The scenery had changed from the Brisbane countryside: farms, trees, and horses; to a grassland. The sky went on for what seemed like forever. It was peaceful, and Luke allowed himself a moment of tranquility, closing his eyes. Brisbane was long gone, and he was on his way to a new life.

Which reminded him of Ashton. Ashton knew what had happened in Brisbane.

Luke glanced over to find Ashton awake and playing some game on his phone. While Luke was watching, he looked up uneasily.

“Morning,” Luke said. He motioned for Ashton to stand, to let him out of the aisle, and Ashton did.

In the bathroom, Luke regarded himself in the mirror. He had slept relatively well, and the dark bags under his eyes were fading. If he took his hat off, he looked almost normal. He still didn’t want to meet his own gaze, though. Instead, he focused on his hair - he really needed to wash it, and he didn’t know where he could find a shower. Living alone and without money was going to be way harder than he had anticipated. Luke almost thought about going back and taking up the nurses on their offer of a foster home, but he found himself recoiling at that idea. He didn’t think he could go back to having parent figures in his life so soon. They all reminded him of his mom and dad. Hey, he thought, if all this goes to shit and he dies in a ditch or in some restaurant bathroom, there wasn’t much to live for anyways.

Hunger stirred his stomach and Luke resigned himself to getting something to eat. He washed his hands thoroughly and left.

Luke’s seat was en route to the tiny cafe, so when he passed it, he tapped Ashton on the shoulder. It was quiet and the train was empty enough that he wasn’t worried about their seats being taken.

“Wanna get breakfast?” He asked, keeping his voice down. Ashton gave him the thumbs-up and put his sunglasses on to join Luke.

The cafe was in the train car ahead of them, so it wasn’t far. When they were standing in line behind an old woman ordering three coffees, Ashton gestured to Luke’s head and commented, “No hat?”

“No hat,” Luke agreed. 

“What can I get for you two?” The cashier interrupted, politely. Luke redirected the question at Ashton by stepping back while he looked at the menu.

Luke found it was easier to keep his food down than it had been for the last few days. The food wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good, either. The best Luke could say was that it was better than breakfast in the hospital. 

As the world around the train turned to day, Luke felt the air between him and Ashton coalescing. He could tell Ashton wanted to ask about his family - or maybe Ashton just wanted to ask about Luke - but Luke was too deep in regret about sharing what happened to his family last night, and he was in no mood to discuss. Of course, this meant the topic was bound to come up.

“You okay, though?” Ashton finished their idle conversation after breakfast with this question. “I mean, I guess you aren’t…”

Luke sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah, I, sorry for dumping that all on you. I know you didn’t ask for it, really, and I guess we aren’t even friends, so.”

Ashton turned to him, mock-offended. “We aren’t even friends? Luke!”

“What?” Luke felt a smile playing at his lips. 

“We’re officially friends now.”

Ashton was adamant, and Luke was happy. He’d known Ashton for 24 hours, but they’d talked and shared music and slept beside each other - he already trusted Ashton more than he’d trusted a lot of his friends back in Brisbane. And he’d shared his biggest secret.

Oh, right. Oh, fuck. He felt a rattlesnake curl in his stomach. If he wanted to start a new life and forget about Brisbane, he was going to have to leave Ashton behind.

“What is it?” Ashton could somehow sense Luke’s trepidation. I shouldn’t have told you, Luke thought to himself.

“Nothing,” he said.

Perth. Sunlight. Ashton. Oh, how Luke wished he could forget. 

Luke remembered his and Ashton’s hug last night, and he felt a surge of warmth towards the other boy. It must have taken guts to embrace a stranger who was falling apart in the middle of the night. Luke liked to think he would have done the same, but he was too afraid of the fallout and too unwilling to throw himself headfirst into other people’s problems.

Perth, sunlight, and Ashton. He didn’t think about his future any more than he could handle.

Next to him, Ashton started air drumming on his lap. He caught Luke watching and gave him a sidelong look, eyebrows raised.

“Do you play drums?”

“How’d you guess?” Luke rolled his eyes and didn’t respond.

“Yeah, I play drums. I have a drum kit back in Perth, actually. I play a bit of guitar, too, but to be honest I’m kinda mediocre at that.”

“You play guitar?” Luke exclaimed.

“What, you too?”

“Yeah! That’s like, my favourite thing. I taught guitar lessons in Brisbane.” He thought back to his guitar in his empty house. He wished he could have brought it with him. It was a stratocaster, a beautiful classic, and it was baby-blue with a white pickguard. His parents gave him it for his 12th birthday.

“Dude, awesome. We should start a band.”

Luke laughed and shook his head. He allowed himself to imagine that for a moment, and it was good. He’d always wanted to be in a band. 

 “My guitar, though.” He pointed out. “I left it in Brisbane.”

“Aw, right.” They were quiet for a bit, and then Ashton patted Luke’s knee and sent him a knowing look. “When you get one, though. We’re starting a band.”

“Sure,” Luke promised. He wanted to be able to keep it.

SEVEN

The rest of the day passed uneventfully. Luke grew more bored with the train, and he busied himself playing crappy mobile games that made his eyes glaze over. Two more days. He was both dreading the boredom and dreading having to ever leave.

In the late afternoon, about about ten minutes before the train stopped at Adelaide, both boys were fidgeting restlessly. Ashton’s knee was bouncing. Luke was aching to get off the train and run to blow off some steam.

“Do you have a plan?” 

Finally Ashton asked the question that had been weighing on Luke’s mind. “Not really.”

“You said you wanted to come to Perth, right?”

“Well, I just wanted to get onto the west coast, really. I didn’t-” Luke shrugged, somewhat helplessly- “I didn’t think ahead.”

Luke had given Ashton a short rundown on why he had chosen to leave Brisbane instead of join a foster home earlier. It had led him to ask, “wait, how old are you?” and upon finding Luke was 16, saying, “you look 14, dude.” Ashton himself was 18. Instead of being offended, Luke had rolled his eyes and made a vow to himself to change his style sooner or later.

Ashton pursed his lips thoughtfully and said, “Well, I guess you have some time to think about it in the next few days.”

The train pulled up at Adelaide, and Luke looked outside wistfully. Sun streamed in through the windows, and people shouted and chattered outside. Luke’s legs were cramped. Either he was getting taller, or he hadn’t moved in a long time. It might have been both.

Ashton seemed to notice Luke’s restlessness, and he leaned over to take a look out the window too. His hair brushed Luke’s cheek, and Luke smelled the sunlight again. It was relaxing, and Luke sat back farther to allow Ashton more room, acting like he was bothered by Ashton in his space.

“Do you still have your ticket?” Ashton asked, sitting back. He tilted his head to point outside with his chin. “It’s beautiful out. We could spend a few hours here, if you want, and catch the next train.”

Luke raised his eyebrows and dug around in his backpack. If he had a chance to get outside, he’d take it. He found the train ticket, but paused, having second thoughts.

“But…” There were a lot of things on Luke’s mind. What if the hospital had sent someone after him? He was breaking the law, apparently, so that wouldn’t be too wild of an assumption. And Ashton - he probably wanted to get home, to Perth, quickly, so it wouldn’t be fair to him if Luke made them stay in Adelaide. He weighed his options. “When’s the next train?”

Ashton pulled out his phone and checked the time. It was half past 4. “Like, five hours? Last train comes through at 10, if I remember correctly.”

“And you’re - you’d want to, like, stay here with me, until then?”

Ashton’s face broke into a grin. “Dude, yeah. Ever been to Adelaide before?”

“When I was a kid, I think,” Luke mused. 

Ashton stood up and swung his backpack onto his shoulder. He slid his sunglasses onto his face. He looked happy - and it was contagious. Luke was smiling too. “Come on, then. Let’s go see Adelaide.”

* * *

“Anything you wanna do, Luke?” Ashton was bouncing along the sidewalk ahead of him, walking backwards and checking over his shoulder every couple of steps. He seemed to get that Luke wanted to forget about his family. If it were anyone else, they’d probably try and treat Luke like a broken puppy.

Luke made a drawn-out “ummmm” noise to show he was thinking. He couldn’t decide on anything, so he somewhat ironically said, “I wanna take a shower.”

“A shower.”

Before Luke could respond, Ashton’s eyes lit up. “Does the beach count?”

Taking Luke’s hesitance as a sign of agreement, Ashton grabbed his hand and started pulling him along. Luke felt helpless laughter bubbling in his chest. “Ashton! Wait!”

“No time to wait!” The boy called over his shoulder. “Let’s go!”

Luke was dragged along as Ashton led them through crowds of people. They were following a main street, something of a thoroughfare to most of the city, and Luke’s breath burned in his lungs in a good way. It was freeing. 

The amount of people on the sidewalks thinned out the farther they got from the city. It felt like thirty minutes had passed. Ashton eventually slowed down, and Luke let go of his hand to walk beside him. It was then Luke realized his bruises hadn’t healed, and the arm that Ashton had been holding was beginning to ache. Oh, well.

“You’ve been here before, then?” Luke prompted.

“Yeah. I was here last summer with my friends for a week or so. Most of the traveling I’ve done has been in, I don’t know, the last few years, I think, so it’s all pretty fresh in my memory.”

“You never went anywhere as a kid?”

“Not really.”

Luke could tell Ashton was dancing around a topic he didn’t want to talk about. He decided to drop it.

“How long until we get there?”

Ashton turned a corner. Late afternoon sun streamed into Luke’s eyes. Ashton smiled brilliantly. “We’re here.”

It was very similar, Luke thought, to the beaches in Brisbane. Pale sand, parts of it crowded with people and tourists, while other parts were lined with surfboards and signs that indicated rougher waves. The one difference, however, was the sun. In Adelaide, the beach was facing the west, and Luke could tell the sun was going to set right over the water.

Luke was suddenly reminded of his injuries. He wasn’t going to be able to swim and be unnoticed with massive purple and yellow bruises lining his side. He also didn’t have a swimsuit. This was a terrible plan.

“Uh, Ashton?” Luke called to the boy running ahead down the beach. When he got no response, he broke into a sprint to catch up.

“Ashton!”

“Hey Luke!”

Luke stopped to catch his breath when they met again, about ten meters from the water. “I’m, uh. Can’t go swimming right now.”

Ashton’s brow furrowed, and he joked, “On your period?”

“What- No!” Luke laughed. “Just don’t have a swimsuit with me.” And the bruises on his side looked like he’d been kicked in the ribs until he passed out. It was not a tough look, either. It was just a depressing reminder of how lucky he was.

“Ah, well,” Ashton said, faintly disappointed, “there are public showers down that way a bit. I supposed you can jump straight to the chase.”

Luke shaded his eyes and found the building Ashton was pointing at. “Sure. Thanks! See you back here.”

As Luke was leaving, Ashton took his shirt off and waved with it. Luke shook his head at the ridiculousness, but he spared a second to wonder if Ashton really was a surfer, with that body. It didn’t matter all that much, really. Luke continued down the beach and tried to enjoy the warm temperature and the sea breeze.

EIGHT

Luke and Ashton wound up sitting on the beach and watching the tide come in. The sun was still pretty high. He wished he had sunglasses. Maybe he’d buy some when they went back to the train.

Luke had showered in the arguably disgusting public showers and changed into his only other clothes, which also included, thankfully, a long sleeve shirt. His hair was damp and it stuck up when he towel-dried it, so he left it there instead of flattening it into a kind of fringe like he usually did. It was easier to see, to say the least. It also made him look a bit older.

Ashton had changed too, after Luke, and after he had been swimming. Luke was jealous - the water was warm, and it would have been perfect. Ashton was wearing a sleeveless shirt, now, that looked like it used to be a t-shirt, and the same black skinny jeans. The shirt had the Pink Floyd prism on the front. Luke was vaguely envious of his style - even his hipster tinted sunglasses looked cool on him, and his hair was drying into curls that complimented his face. 

Ashton stopped drawing in the sand to take a photo. Then he put his phone away and addressed Luke.

“We have 4 hours left. Anything else you wanna do?” It was accompanied by an award-winning smile. Luke felt a rush of fondness towards him.

So there was actually something Luke wanted to do. He felt kind of strange asking, but that was most likely because of his mother’s influence.

“Do you know any places that do piercings?”

Ashton lifted his eyebrows and considered. “Pretty sure there’s a tattoo parlor on Marina that’ll do them. Why, you thinking of getting one?”

“Yeah, I think so,” Luke said. He sighed. “My mother- well, she always said-“

At the mention of Luke’s mother, Ashton peered at him with a bit more concentration and concern. Luke continued as if he hadn’t noticed. “She always said that I shouldn’t get one until I was older.” He let out a huff of sad laughter. “I wanted a lip ring. She probably thought I was being ridiculous, but, hey, I’m older now, and I haven’t changed my mind.”

Ashton smiled and put his hands behind his head to lie back on the sand. “Such a rebel, Luke. A lip ring and guitar. You’re so punk rock.”

“Shut up,” Luke rolled his eyes. He still wasn’t comfortable talking about his mother. That wasn’t a surprise, at least. He was grateful, though, for Ashton.

“Wanna go now?” Ashton made to stand up, but waited for Luke.

“Sure.”

Ashton stood and offered a hand to Luke to help him up. Luke gripped it and almost made Ashton lose his balance, levering all his weight into it - this resulted in Ashton slipping forward, yelling “fuck!” and laughing uncontrollably, still somehow managing to pull Luke into a standing position.

It was a short walk up the beach to Marina street. Ashton hummed the whole time. It sounded like a Blink-182 song.

Luke felt his nerves come back, but he managed to hold them at bay. The knowledge that he’d already lived through the worst thing that could happen made him see everything else a little differently. To be honest, he was more guilty that he was getting a lip ring without telling his mom.

When they were nearly there, Ashton gave him some background. “There’s a lady who runs it, she’s pretty cool. I met her when I came last year. She almost did my first tattoo. Then she found out I was underage, so.”

Ashton knocked on the door, three times. Luke took a moment to give the building a once-over - it was styled kind of like a bar, with a heavy wooden door and some tinted windows beside it. A red neon sign proclaimed “Free drink with your body mod!”

“You can just walk in, you know,” a woman grumbled upon opening the door. She stepped back to let them in. 

“Wouldn’t want to take you by surprise again.” Ashton said this with a wink. Luke started paying a bit more attention to Ashton and the woman.

“Oh, Ashton! I almost didn’t recognize you!” She clasped his hand in and gave him a pat on the back - a kind of bro hug. Her eyes landed on Luke behind him. “Who’s this?”

Ashton stepped back and joined Luke again. “Charlie, this is Luke. Luke, Charlie.”

Charlie had dyed hair - the tips were red-orange, and most of it was blond except the inch or two of brown roots. She was older, Luke noticed, probably in her late 20s, and she looked friendly enough. Tattoos crawled up either side of her neck, and she had a nose stud. She looked a lot like Luke thought a tattoo artist would.

“Nice to meet you,” she said, shaking Luke’s hand.

“And you,” he returned, maybe too formally.

Charlie looked to Ashton. “So, what can I do for you guys?”

“Nothing for me this time.” Ashton nodded to Luke. “But you do piercings, too, don’t you?”

“What kind?” Charlie asked warily.

Ashton laughed, as if it were some inside joke, so Luke answered instead. “Lip?”

“Oh, yeah. For you? What side are you thinking?”

“Like, left?”

“Let’s get you over here. Come on.” Ashton and Luke followed her into a dark corner in the shop that lit up at the flick of a switch. Luke sat down hesitantly at the chair. It was similar to the ones at dentists, but it was smaller and on wheels. 

“Okay, whereabouts exactly?”

* * *

A short while later, Luke was sitting on the chair holding a tissue over his lip. It had hurt more than he’d expected, and bled more, but he sure felt like he was alive. At this point, he figured that was all he could ask for. 

Ashton had gone across the room to give Luke some privacy, but came back when Luke waved at him. Luke lifted the tissue and raised his eyebrows in question.

Ashton whistled in appreciation. It made Luke’s face warm, and he rolled his eyes, vaguely embarrassed. “Does it make me look cool?” He asked, slightly ironically.

Ashton held his hand out for a high five and grinned. “Yeah, I guess it does. Idiot,” he added, with a hint of fondness. 

Luke started digging in his pocket for money to pay Charlie, but Ashton swatted his hand away and shook his head. “I’ll cover it, Luke. You have, like, a hundred dollars to live on. Save it.”

Luke was about to start arguing - Ashton was being unnecessarily kind at the moment, even though he was probably right, and it was making him feel bad - but Charlie cut him off before he could get started. 

“Drinks, boys?” 

Luke shook his head. “I’m 16. Sorry.”

Ashton made a small indignant noise. “But I’m 18. Give me some.” Ashton made a pity face at Luke before swiping a beer can out of Charlie’s hand. “You call this a drink?”

“You’re barely legal, Ashton,” Charlie said. “Don’t go overboard.”

“You can’t take it from me now.”

Luke checked the time on his phone. He had left his watch in his backpack today, not fond of what it reminded him of. It was just past eight. Him and Ashton had less than two hours left in Adelaide.

“Come on.” Luke jumped out of the chair and tossed the tissue in the garbage. As much as he appreciated Charlie, Luke didn’t want to sit in her parlour while her and Ashton drank. It made him feel left out, in more than one way. 

“Your boy’s leaving,” Charlie teased, and Ashton looked over his shoulder to see Luke heading for the door. Luke idled for politeness’ sake, but his mind latched onto Charlie’s words without meaning to. He cast it away and gave Charlie a grateful smile.

“Thanks for this,” Luke said, waving a hand the piercing. “It’s fantastic.”

“You’re welcome, kid. Come back whenever.”

Ashton put his beer down and joined Luke at the door. He gave a mock salute to Charlie before they both ducked out and went back onto the street.

NINE

“How are you?”

Luke looked to Ashton. Ashton looked back, brow furrowed with concern that Luke didn’t feel he warranted.

“I’m okay, I guess,” he said finally. “I’m glad we got off the train.”

“Yeah. Me too.” Ashton seemed to consider his next words. “I mean also with your… family. Do you think giving yourself, I don’t know, distractions, is helping?”

Luke cleared his throat and felt a stone drop in his stomach. He knew Ashton was coming from a good place, though, so he tried to answer. “Short term? Yeah. I don’t know for the long term. I just don’t want to... “ He inhaled, slowly. “Deal with it yet, fully, I guess.”

Ashton nodded, but he didn’t look much more relaxed. He moved a bit closer to Luke, until they were almost brushing each other with every step, and he lifted his arm to give Luke’s shoulders a squeeze. Luke let himself sink into it. Sunlight, he thought absentmindedly. Ashton.

Ashton released him, and then the grin was back on his face. “By the way, Luke. You should keep your hair like that.” 

Luke had nearly forgotten that he’d left it off his forehead. He smiled at the ground and felt his cheeks warm for the second time that night. 

“You should keep your hair like that, too,” he replied. He was referring to Ashton’s curls. 

Now they were both blushing, Luke thought distantly. 

“Where are we going?” He asked. Luke looked up at the skyline, and caught flashes of the early sunset between buildings. The atmosphere on the street had changed from earlier - there were less families, and more music being played from restaurants and bars. The air smelled like gasoline and concrete instead of sunscreen and ocean breeze. The saltwater was still there, of course, but not as sharp. Luke was getting hungry and tired. This was bad, he reflected, because soon he’d start sinking back into memories that he didn’t want to relive. They still had two hours left.

“I don’t know. Wherever. There’s a place on the beach that has takeout.”

“Let’s go there.” Luke spoke for his stomach. The darkness that was starting to fill the street was pretty, and it made the lights on the shopfronts glow nicely, but Luke was not feeling the aesthetic at the moment. He wanted to see the sun and he wanted to stay on the ground. Every fairytale aspect of his surroundings made him drift, and not in a good way.

Down on the beach again, Luke stopped at a cart to buy cheap sunglasses. They were black, and it matched his lip ring (somewhat unintentionally, but the coordination was nice). He and Ashton got fish and chips and sat down on the beach, just above the tide line.

It was a while before either of them spoke, but Luke started. “Thanks.”

Ashton glanced over, surprised. “For what?”

Luke gestured in the air. “Just… this all. Thanks for sitting next to me on the train. For talking to me, I guess. And for staying here with me.”

And for being a friend, he added mentally. For the security of having someone to trust. For sharing Adelaide with him. 

“Hey, Luke?” Ashton propped himself up on his arm. The sea breeze pushed his curls back a bit, and the sun glimmered in the reflection of his glasses. 

“Yeah?”

Ashton smiled, a little lopsided, and said, “Anytime.”

Luke felt a surge of contentment, and put his plate down beside him. The urge to hug Ashton was overwhelming, so he didn’t feel that weird when he held out his arms. “Come here.”

“Hug time?” Ashton said, the subtle bite that his words could have carried vaporized by the affection in his voice.

“Shut up,” Luke whispered. 

He wrapped his arms around Ashton, who did the same. Dimly, Luke realized he probably shouldn’t find Ashton’s embrace as therapeutic as he did. He decided it was too late to worry about that. He released a breath and let Ashton ground him in reality, pressing his face into the side of Ashton’s neck just like that first night on the train, breathing him in, making him think about the west coast again. His body warmth gave Luke a sense of safety, and he clung tighter, trying to absorb it.

Sunlight, Perth, and Ashton. Luke felt so real.

“What time is it?” Ashton said, muffled. 

“I don’t fuckin’ know,” Luke replied, just as muffled. They started laughing and drew apart. “What? You have a phone, too!”

“Yeah, yeah,” Ashton said, pulling his out and reading it over the top of his sunglasses. “Nine-ish. We should probably start heading back to the station soon.”

“Already?” Luke grumbled.

“Unless you wanna sleep on the beach, punk boy.”

“Okay, okay.” Luke flopped back on the sand and stared up at the sky. It was a deep indigo, and some of the brightest stars were beginning to show. “Ten minutes, then.”

Ashton joined him on his back. “Ten minutes,” he agreed.

* * *

It was a warm night, but despite the heat, Luke felt chilled. It seemed that every dimly-lit corner he glanced at hid a shadowed person, just out of reach, with a voice strikingly familiar. 

Cars bothered him too, and while Luke hadn’t been affected in the daytime, his body and mind was making up for that now. His heart would speed and slow at troubling rates, directly influenced by the nearness and speed of passing vehicles. He hoped he wasn’t being so obviously skittish that Ashton would notice. 

When they were near the bright lights of the station, Luke bumped hard into Ashton’s shoulder trying to step farther away from the road, where a pickup truck roared past. He muttered a “sorry” and wiped his hands on his jeans.

“You okay?”

“Sorry. Uh, yeah. No. Did I tell you…” Luke trailed off. He thought back to when he told Ashton about the car crash; he’d given very little details, which had been intentional at the time.

“Tell me what?” Ashton was insistent, but respectfully so.

“That I was in the car with them.”

He tried to distance himself from the words, to depersonalize them and make them facts. He felt his throat start burning. The sensation was becoming far too familiar, and he rubbed a hand over his face in resignation. 

“Oh,” Ashton said, finally. He was looking at Luke with an indiscernible expression. “I didn’t… oh, Luke.” He didn’t say it, but they were both thinking it. This entire walk back must have been flashback hell. Instead, he asked, “Were you injured?”

“Not badly,” Luke said, shortly. He didn’t want Ashton to feel bad for him. 

They got to the station just before 10 o’clock, and Luke and Ashton just managed to get on and find a seat before the last whistle blew. Luke was beside the window, same as before. They fell asleep, Luke with his head on his backpack, and Ashton with those tinted sunglasses perched on his nose, head against the seat.

TEN

Morning came with glaring sunlight shining directly into Luke’s eyes. He had slept fairly well, if he didn’t count the half hour he spent partly awake listening to what he thought was his brother’s voice on the other side of the train car, trying to talk to him. There was a good chance it was just part of his dreams, anyways, and not a strange auditory hallucination.

Luke checked his phone and pulled up a map of the train system. They were about ten hours out of Adelaide, which meant they were about to cross the provincial border into Western Australia. From there it was two days until Perth.

“Luke, you up?”

“Hm.” It was a half-assed reply, but Luke was still drifting in the haze of sleep. He made an effort to pull himself out, and found Ashton holding his phone up, eyes bright, sunglasses on his head. “Yeah? What is it?”

“Just talking to my friends back home. I told them about you. They want a picture.”

Luke pressed his hands to his face, suppressing the urge to roll his eyes. “Can I see a picture of them first, at least?”

Ashton laughed. “Yeah, good idea. I’ll ask them to send one.” 

A moment later, sure enough, Ashton held out his phone for Luke to take. It was a selfie of two boys, one of them doing a duckface and the peace sign, and the other holding the camera looking fed up with the first boy. Peace sign boy had dark brown hair shot through with bleach-blond streaks and tan skin. Camera boy had an eyebrow piercing and the wildest hair Luke could remember seeing on any guy his age - it was red and purple and sticking up and forward off his head like a hedgehog. 

“So that’s Calum,” Ashton pointed out, tapping his finger over the peace sign dude. “The other one’s Michael.”

“They look like fun people,” Luke commented. He hoped it didn’t come off as a weird thing to say, but he felt it.

“They are. You’d probably like them. Especially Michael - he plays wicked guitar.” 

Luke looked at the picture for a moment longer and tried to imagine talking to Ashton’s friends. Idly, he hoped he’d be able to. Last night, he had realized that even though he wanted to leave Brisbane behind and forget it all, Ashton was not the price he wanted to pay for it. And it was probably for the best that Ashton knew, anyways. This meant that as long as Ashton didn’t ditch him before Perth, he had an actual shot at getting to know Michael and Calum.

“Ready for our selfie?” Ashton prompted.

Luke responded by giving his phone back and letting out a resigned sigh, but a small smile still curved his lips. “Sure.” He ran his hands through his hair, rubbed the sleep from his eyes, and hoped he didn’t look too much like he just woke up.

When Ashton flipped the phone camera, Luke leaned in and rested his head on Ashton’s shoulder. Ashton seemed a little surprised but relaxed a millisecond later, putting the side of his cheek against Luke’s head and sticking his tongue out. It was strangely coupley, Luke reflected, but he was comfortable and didn’t think about it too much as he smiled. The screen reminded Luke of the black ring in his lip. It did make him look better. A little older, maybe, and definitely cooler.

Ashton moved away to finish texting his friends. His face looked a bit pink, but Luke figured it had probably been the lighting in the train car.

Yawning, Luke contemplated the day ahead of them. Then he asked, “What’d you tell them?”

“Huh?”

“What’d you tell your friends about me?”

Ashton shrugged. “Nothing bad. And, well, nothing about, you know. I said that you were from Brisbane and you were travelling west, which is how I met you on the train. And that we stopped in Adelaide last night, so we’d be a couple hours later than they were expecting me. That’s basically it.”

Ashton scratched the back of his neck. Luke found the gesture vaguely endearing.

Later, in the bathroom, Luke was brushing his teeth, and thinking. It was something he had been trying not to do recently, because whenever he did, he started to feel the cold press of despair clench his insides. Not thinking was the only cure he had any success with. Of course, it only worked when he had a distraction.

Alone, Luke stared at himself in the mirror yet again. His appearance was changing rapidly - the broken sixteen-year-old who had boarded the Trans-Australia in Roma Station was a template that Luke had drawn over. He found it was easier to look himself in the face now.

He still hated how his eyes reminded him of his mother, and how his face shape brought back memories of his father’s similar one, and how his brother had the exact same cheekbones. He wished his bruised arm had been ripped off instead. Maybe then he’d feel less bone-deep wretchedness and guilt about being alive.

Luke forced his face to smile in the mirror, desperately trying to activate the dopamine in his brain so he didn’t look like a zombie when he saw Ashton again. A depressed zombie.

He still felt like one now, though, inside. 

“Thought any more about where you wanna go?” Ashton posed the question as soon as Luke sat down.

“Not really.”

“You can come to Perth, you know. It’s- that’s where I’m heading,” he added, somewhat unnecessarily. He was studying Luke’s face.

Luke allowed himself to consider that. He wanted to stick with Ashton, but he didn’t have enough money to rent a place, or do anything, really - to be honest, he’d probably end up sleeping on the street outside some old woman’s apartment until they took pity on him. Either that or get a job somewhere he could lock up and sleep in the back.

He tried to voice this. “I don’t know. I want to- I mean, it sounds beautiful there, and… but I don’t have a lot of money,” he winced, internally.

“I know you don’t,” Ashton said, taking Luke a bit by surprise at his confident tone.

“I- what?”

“Wanna come to Perth with me?”

“I told you, I don’t-”

Ashton sighed, loudly, and said, “Want to live in a flat with me and my two friends?”

Oh. Oh. “Um,” Luke said, taken aback. A door into his future had been opened, and sunlight spilled through. “Uh, yes?”

Ashton grinned and clapped Luke on the shoulder gently. “Yes. Awesome.”

“You’re sure?”

“I wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t. And hey, we’ve lived basically together for the last two days, so I know you’re good.”

Luke was still a bit shell-shocked. Such a troubling piece of his future had disappeared because of Ashton’s kindness. He supposed he also owed it to Michael and Calum, who he assumed were the two friends Ashton shared an apartment with. He felt his face slowly break into a smile, and warmth rush through his veins.

“Thank you,” he whispered, not knowing if Ashton would hear it. Ashton looked up, though, then reached towards Luke’s hand, holding it for a split-second and squeezing it comfortingly. Luke squeezed back and felt the heat in his veins grow warmer before Ashton took his hand away. 

Perth, sunlight, and Ashton. That’s all he needed.

ELEVEN

The rest of the day dragged on forever. Ashton told Luke a bit about the flat in Perth - how it was close to the ocean and a shitty convenience store, and that the paint job on the outside was two different colours. The previous owners had been part way through redoing the walls a burnished brown-orange, which conflicted horrifically with the pale green original. Ashton figured this was partly why they had cheap rent, especially in comparison to the other houses in their neighbourhood.

The landscape around the train turned to scrubby desert. It had been a red desert for the last few hours, and while it was an incredible sight, the lack of any form of life had been disheartening. Ashton swore he’d seen a lizard coming out from under a rock. Luke struggled to believe him.

“Have you taken this train before?” 

Luke was curious for a few reasons. First, he’d like to find out more about Ashton, because he felt like all they did was talk about him for the last few days, and second, he wanted to make conversation to distract himself.

“Not westbound before. I took it east, about a year ago, to Gold Coast. It was with Mike and Cal. They went back to Perth before me.”

“Why’d you go there?”

Ashton sighed thoughtfully. “There’s a lot of reasons. First, I just wanted to travel, I guess. It seemed like a nice place.”

Luke nodded. He looked at Ashton, hoping for more, and was faced with a slightly uncomfortable expression on Ashton’s face. “What’s up?” He asked, instead.

Ashton dragged his hand through his hair, waving the other one vaguely. “Nothing. I also wanted to get life experience, since I’d been living in Perth my whole life, and I couldn’t afford to travel to Europe or America.”

Luke felt like Ashton was dancing around a larger topic, but he didn’t want to press. “Okay.”

A few moments of silence passed. Next to him, Ashton pressed his hands to his face, seemingly in an argument with himself. Luke waited patiently and wondered if he should offer some kind of comfort.

“Okay, I think you deserve to know. It’s a long story, though” Ashton said, muffling his words behind his hands. He took them off his face and turned to Luke, eyes vulnerable. Luke felt his heart twinge.

“It’s okay if you don’t want to tell me,” he said, quickly. But he wanted to know.

“No, Luke, now I’m gonna tell you no matter what,” Ashton tried to joke. He took a breath and started.

“When I was little, my dad left. It was fine; I barely knew him, and my mom was more than capable of taking care of me and my brother and my sister. After a few years, though, she got kind of…” Ashton shook his head and stared at the ceiling. “So she basically became an alcoholic. I had to take care of my brother and sister a lot after that.”

Luke pressed his lips together, sympathy blooming in his chest. He let Ashton continue uninterrupted.

“She started doing rehab at some point, I think because she felt guilty. I was ten, I think, at the time. It was a lot of false starts and she kept going back steps, kept drinking sometimes, but a couple years later she was clean. And she could take care of my brother and sister again. Of course, it didn’t get that much better - my dad called one night, and I heard my mom telling him to go to hell over the phone. At least it didn’t happen again, and at least she was sober.”

“It was good, I knew for the kids, but she didn’t… she didn’t really know how to talk to me. I could take care of myself, essentially. I spent a lot of time with my friends instead of at home, because she had taken to ignoring me. I got to about fifteen, almost sixteen, before I moved out. It wasn’t legal, but she didn’t tell. I couldn’t pay the rent, so I was looking for people to share the flat with, and when Cal dropped out of high school, he joined me. Michael was his best friend, so he came with, moving away from his parents down in Albany. It was, uh, I probably shouldn’t be telling all this for them - but I don’t think they’ll mind.”

Ashton paused a little and rubbed his thumb along his jeans. “So, basically, what I’m getting to, is when my dad called that night - like five years ago - my mom asked him something. She said, ‘Why’d you go and fuck off to Gold Coast?’”

Ashton looked up to meet Luke’s eyes, distantly ashamed. “Now you know. Ran off to Gold Coast just like my dad. Thought if I met him, I’d ask him why he fucked off there, too.”

Luke didn’t know what to say. Ashton was looking at him with the guilt in his eyes - as if he hated himself for doing it. A millisecond later, Ashton glanced away and blinked the emotion away. Luke felt like he needed to say something, so he said the first thing that came to his mind. “Did you see him there?”

Ashton blinked back to Luke. 

“No. I didn’t.” 

Ashton, Ashton, Ashton, Luke’s mind sang. He wished he could take away Ashton’s worries and shut them away in the car with his dead and comatose family. He wished he could have been there when Ashton was thirteen and hurting. He wished he had found Ashton in Gold Coast and distracted him from finding his shitty father and convinced him that this battle wasn’t worth fighting.

“I’m sorry about your dad,” Luke found himself saying. “And I’m- well, I’m not glad you went to Gold Coast to find him, to be honest, but-” Ashton laughed weakly- “but! I’m glad you, uh, left when you did.”

“Yeah? Why’s that?”

“Because you got on my train, and now we’re friends. And, well, otherwise I wouldn’t have anywhere to go.”

Ashton smiled at the floor. “I’m sure there’d be some other friendly stranger on a different train who’d take you in instead.”

Luke rolled his eyes. “Shut up, Ashton.”

“I’m not kidding,” Ashton protested, his grin betraying him. “Maybe an old guy would give you his house to live out of because he pities you. Maybe some girl would come up and you’d run away with her, and then make tons of babies in Alice Springs-”

“Ashton!”

Ashton was laughing now. “What?”

“I’m glad I met you, idiot!” Luke picked up one of Ashton’s hands and held it between his own, insistently, making his point. Ashton quieted rapidly. “I. Wouldn’t. Trade. You. For. A. Girl. In. Alice Springs,” he said, shaking Ashton’s hand with each word. “Wouldn’t trade you for any girl, in fact.”

He felt his face heat up, inconveniently. Why’d he say that? Why, why, why? He despaired over this for a split-second, and then Ashton lifted Luke’s hand to his mouth and kissed the back lightly.

Neurons in Luke’s brain fired at light speed. Ashton’s lips were warm and a bit dry against his hand, and Luke could have sworn his entire face was pink.

“Glad to know I’m your Prince Charming,” Ashton quipped. “M’lady?”

Luke cracked up. He took his hand back. “Oh my god, Ashton.” Ashton’s grin dissolved and then they were both laughing, unworried about drawing the gaze of potentially annoyed passengers around them.

TWELVE

Evening came quickly, and Luke and Ashton were left to their own devices, both bored and a strange combination of tired and buzzed. Luke was definitely getting taller - his legs were cramping familiarly. Ashton was sitting close to Luke, farther from the aisle than usual. Luke didn’t mind. He found comfort in the warmth radiating off Ashton. He was endlessly grateful for him, in a million different ways. 

He was still trying not to think about earlier. It was completely normal to clam up and blush when a friend kissed your hand… was it? Luke was so tired of his own mind. It would never let him stop and catch his breath. First it was the trauma and horror in the hospital that started infecting his dreams, and then it stayed with him for longer than he could deal with, and now when he’d finally got a good enough distraction - Ashton - his brain would circle back on it and give Luke another thing to worry about. Maybe this was why people turned to drugs, Luke thought glumly. There was so much in his head. Pain, loss, anger, hurt, guilt, mixed with a share of peace and joy from Ashton, and now confusion. How the hell was he supposed to cope?

“You tired?” Ashton was leaning his head back against his seat, looking appraisingly at Luke. Luke raised his eyebrows a bit too, then shook his head.

“Yeah, me neither. Wanna walk around, or something?”

“Where?” Luke asked. There wasn’t anywhere to go on a train full of half-asleep passengers, all of whom might not appreciate two teenage boys disrupting them.

“I don’t know. Come with me anyways,” Ashton said. He stood up and slung his backpack over his shoulder, then he held his hand out.

Luke eyed it with a bit of surprise, and then took it before Ashton could rethink his actions. “Okay.”

They kept holding hands as Ashton led them quietly through the train. Luke wasn’t complaining, that was for sure, but he didn’t know what to think. They passed a lot of sleeping people, and a lot of people staring into bright phone or computer screens. Most of the cars were quiet, but every now and then there was a group or a couple who were talking or whispering among themselves - nobody paid much heed to him and Ashton, which Luke was grateful for.

“Okay,” Ashton said, finally, when they were maybe eight cars up. It was a very quiet compartment, empty most notably on the side across from where they had been sitting before. Ashton pulled Luke over to the windows.

The stars were clear and visible in the night sky. It was weirdly calming, especially in the dimness of the train cabin. Ashton took out his phone, tucking it into his side when the brightness was too high, and booted up a stargazing app.

“See? Orion.” Ashton whispered. He leaned towards Luke and held up his phone, which Luke assumed was tracking their angle to the sky, because it matched up with the three stars outside. Ashton motioned that he wanted Luke to take his phone. “Here.”

They spent the next minutes peering into the dark sky, occasionally pointing out a star, or most memorably, a normal-looking dot that turned out to be Jupiter. Luke had an urge to get off the train and sit in the desert. It would probably be cold, and it would definitely be pitch-dark, but the sky would be so much brighter in comparison. And the lights and rumble from the train from afar would sound so pretty.

Luke and Ashton ended up in a booth-type seat, surprisingly vacant. Luke was closest to the window. He felt himself starting to doze.

“I’m tired now,” Luke said softly.

“Me too.”

“I don’t wanna walk back. Let’s just sleep here.”

“Okay.”

Luke didn’t know if he was actually really tired or the bone-deep calm that had infiltrated his body was controlling his mind. He felt like he did after he was forced to do mindfulness exercises in elementary school. Maybe Ashton’s presence this late at night was intoxicating, he thought. The boy was the only thing that felt right to him.

Luke put his head on Ashton’s shoulder and let his eyes slip shut. He felt the train rattle beneath him, and had to expend more energy that he wanted to holding his neck up. “Ashton?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you mind?”

“Huh?” Luke shuffled a tiny bit away from him, then lay down on his side, curled up against the back of the seatrest. He put his head on Ashton’s leg to use as a pillow. He felt more comfortable than he had for a long time, sleeping on this train with nothing to put his head on.

“Is this okay?” Luke asked again, in a whisper. 

Ashton’s small “yeah” was the last thing he heard that night. The last thing he felt was Ashton’s hand brushing the hair away from his closed eyes.

* * *

Luke woke up slowly. The sun hadn’t yet risen, but the sky was brightening. He gradually became aware of his breathing, then the pulse in his neck, then his hands, his legs on the booth in the train, his face. Ashton, warm under his cheek. He’d fallen asleep with his head on Ashton’s lap. A hand was in his hair, and Luke made sure to keep his eyes closed, hoping to prolong the moment.

Ashton moved his hand slowly, as if he didn’t want to wake Luke. He drew tiny circles behind Luke’s ear. Luke immersed himself in the quiet of his barely-awake mind, the security Ashton offered, and the peace he felt lying there. Everything was so perfect, he thought dimly. Everything’s gonna be perfect. He was safe. He was with Ashton.

Nothing good ever lasts, and Luke could not doze forever. He opened his eyes suddenly, needing to blink the sleep out of them. He felt Ashton’s hand freeze.

“You’re awake.”

Luke hummed contentedly in reply.

“Uh, for how long?”

Luke made a very small shrug motion. He heard Ashton sigh resignedly.

With his consciousness came memories, and Luke was bombarded once again with the cold seep of grief. He sat up against the seat and winced as his back shifted into place. He would get off the train today, he reminded himself. He’d get off the train this afternoon. Him and Ashton would be in Perth.

“Fuck!” Luke exclaimed, putting a hand over his face. He had sat up and gotten the rising sun directly in his eyes. He heard Ashton laughing at him and groaned tiredly in good humor.

THIRTEEN

Luke spent the rest of the morning fretting. He counted his money, asked Ashton about the flat, asked Ashton about Michael and Calum, asked Ashton about Perth - eventually Ashton stopped him, saying, “Don’t worry, you’re gonna see it all soon.”

While it was easier said than done, Luke tried not to worry. He found himself recalling his old house in Brisbane. It had been two floors, and he shared a room with his brother on the top floor, across and down the hall from his parents’ room. The ceiling was slanted above Luke’s bed. If he sunk into the memories, he could feel the carpet under his feet, smell the paint drying on the door under the stairs that his dad kept repainting, hear the call of his mom’s voice telling him dinner was on. 

To distract himself from his past, Luke tried to focus on something else. Of course, Ashton was the only distraction that had succeeded over the past few days. It left Luke with little else to think about.

Ashton was… Luke didn’t know exactly what to think. Ashton was his best friend - at this point, he felt like the only friend Luke had, despite knowing quite a few people back in Brisbane. Luke had gotten lost in the mists of grief and hurt; to be honest with himself, he still felt lost in it sometimes. Ashton, who’d sat next to him, had guided him out. 

Luke didn’t want to wax poetic about Ashton for longer than he needed to, but the fact remained that Luke really, really appreciated him. They shared affection between slices of painful life, talking for hours about anything and everything. Ashton was the kiss on his hand to the blood and dirt under Luke’s fingernails. Ashton was an angel running from an untamed past in pursuit of a figure in the smoke, and he’d found Luke on the way back home.

So much for not waxing poetic.

Luke eyed Ashton out of the corner of his eye and smiled involuntarily. Ashton was air-drumming along to something playing in his earbuds. 

Luke caught himself admiring Ashton’s profile. His eyes caught on the boy’s jawline and traced it up into his hair. Luke wanted to get closer to him. He wanted to smell the sunlight again and feel the safety in Ashton’s embrace. His stomach did an inexplicable twist, and it was then when he understood.

Oh, no.

Luke looked away and stared determinedly at the floor instead. Don’t do it, he warned himself. Oh god, don’t do it. Luke stood up and muttered something about needing to go to the bathroom. He almost jogged there.

Things were happening too quickly. Luke glared at himself in the mirror, oblivious of the strange look a guy who was washing his hands shot him before leaving. Ashton was a friend, that was all. A really good friend. Luke could not afford to royally fuck this up, especially when he was on the way to-

Luke put his hands on his face and pressed his fingers into his temples. Oh, fuck, he was on his way to Ashton’s flat, where he’d live with him and his roomates in Perth. Fuck, fuck, fuck, went the mantra in his head. Luke went into the nearest stall, locked it, and shut his eyes, forehead against the door. He breathed slowly. In, out. Breathe, breathe… It’s going to be okay.

A minute later, Luke was calmer. This didn’t change anything, really. He still had a future in Perth and he had a place to stay, which remained a miracle. A crush would pass, Luke thought to himself easily. It was nothing but a passing crush. And he probably should have expected it, too, because Ashton was older and cooler and an incredible person. And Ashton was attractive. Which helped.

Feeling ridiculous, Luke chastised himself briefly. All he had to do was act like he always did. It wasn’t going to be that hard. Ashton was still his friend, after all.

Luke took a long, deep breath, and left the bathroom, an expression of easy confidence on his face.

“Look out there,” was the first thing Ashton said when Luke sat down. He pointed out the window excitedly, and Luke craned his neck to try and make out what Ashton was seeing in the scrubby desert.

Buildings and trees rose out of the rocky and dusty earth. It wasn’t much to look at - just a bit of suburbia in western Australia - but Luke’s heart leaped at the sight. “Perth?”

Ashton nodded. “Dude, we’re almost there. Shit.” He put his head back against the headrest and let out a distressed laugh. “It’s been a whole year. Hope everyone still remembers me. A year.”

Luke let Ashton ramble a bit, enjoying the view outside. He guessed they were still about an hour out from the station, so he didn’t start packing prematurely. Luke was happy to see Ashton excited. He pointedly did not think about Ashton any more than he could handle, but the warmth in his chest that bloomed at Ashton’s smile could not be regulated.

“Luke?”

“Hm?” He’d been staring off into the sky. “Yeah?”

Ashton cleared his throat, and Luke looked to him. Ashton appeared a little self-conscious, and he tilted his head a bit awkwardly, which Luke tried very hard not to focus on too much. “Thanks,” Ashton said. “For coming all this way with me.”

Luke shook his head in response. “No, Ash, I-” he stopped himself once he realized he’d shortened Ashton’s name. “Uh, can I call you that?”

A small smile had been creeping onto Ashton’s face. “Yeah.”

Luke wished Ashton had his sunglasses on his head. If his mouth was curved in that sweet of a smile, his eyes must have been lovely. He realized they’d just been looking at each other for the last few seconds, and cleared his throat. 

“I should be thanking you, really.” He finished.

The smile on Ashton’s face remained, even as Ashton disagreed. “Don’t act like I’m a generous god for being your friend, you fucker. I’m grateful for you, too.”

Luke’s heart buzzed at that, and he felt himself grin. “Bitch.”

“Dickhead.”

“That wasn’t even good!”

“Like you’d know.”

Luke punched Ashton’s shoulder with very little power behind his fist. Ashton elbowed him back, a small dig in the ribs that Luke took as an invitation - he acted on impulse and plucked Ashton’s sunglasses off his face, setting them on his own.

“Ooh, so fancy,” he commented. “Now I know why you wear these all the time.”

Ashton was laughing. “They look funny on you.”

Oh, and Luke could see his eyes, now. Bright and cheerful, and Luke had known they were hazel, of course, but they were just so alive, alive, alive, framed by dark lashes. He didn’t know if they’d always been like that or he’d only just noticed. And he’d been staring too long. Ashton snatched them off his face and set them on his own head, on top of his curly hair.

Then he reached over and ran his fingers lightly through Luke’s quiff to straighten it. His touch brought back the memory of early the same morning, when Luke had woken up to Ashton’s hand in his hair. It made Luke’s cheeks flush in a way he hoped wasn’t noticeable.

“There you go. Back to normal,” Ashton said.