Chapter Text
Ashton didn’t understand.
“Ashton, it’s your eleventh birthday,” his mother stated.
“I know that! But why are my timer and my birthday so important, Mom?” he asked for the one hundredth time. He flashed his bent arm in the air so he could look at it again.
Etched softly into his wrist had been a timer. It was tiny and had a bunch of zeros on it. He didn’t understand why the mysterious tattoo-like thing was there, so he tried asking his mom. She wouldn't tell him.
While lost in thought, the weird itchiness came back again. It snapped him back into reality, and Ashton scratched at it relentlessly. His wrist was red and blotchy and had white bumps surrounding the timer. It freaked him out. "Ashton, stop scratching! The timer might fade away if you do that!” his mother demanded sternly.
His hand dropped to his side and was shoved into his jeans. “Fade away?” He didn’t understand what that meant. How could it fade away? It burned itself into his own skin against his will; the least the pesky timer could do was not fade away.
"Yes, fade away. Now, let those bumps heal. Don't touch them, okay? They'll disappear with time," she ordered. Ashton groaned and rolled his eyes, as signs to show he wasn't afraid of causing a scene.
The timer was problematic already, and the young boy hated that.
When he’d woken up this morning, he’d awoken to a sharp, burning sensation trailing up his left arm. He had screamed out in pain as soon as he witnessed his flesh boil.
The irritation was unbearable, so he scratched mercilessly at the most infected area on his arm - his wrist. Soon enough, skin was peeling off, only causing him to scream louder. The broken skin exposed tiny black numbers, which were decreasing rapidly. He watched in awe (and surprisingly ignored the pain) as the final few numbers reached zero.
His mother rushed into his room, frantically searching for the cause of her son’s disturbance. When he showed her his arm, she’d relaxed. “Oh, your timer’s forming,” was all she said. From there, he didn’t bother questioning it because his mother looked happy. She kissed his forehead to her happiness. Besides, it sounded cool to him - a timer. He had his own timer.
Though he didn’t know what a timer was, he felt like it wasn’t important. Did a timer help to keep track of time? Was it an alarm clock? He sucked at waking up for school. It could help him a lot.
"So why is this dumb thing so important?" he repeated, hoping to get a real answer from her this time.
“It’s important because it's essential for us to have. Girls and boys all around the world get their timers when they’re nine, ten, or eleven. You got yours today, on your eleventh birthday,” she explained.
'Eleven,' it didn't roll off her tongue smoothly. Ashton heard the stutter between each syllable. Was eleven a bad age?
Ashton didn't know.
He didn't think too much of the awkward mannerisms of his mother. Barely paying attention to her words, Ashton’s wide, bright eyes were admiring the dark numbers on his tiny wrist. “Will it always be this small?” he mumbled after minutes of inspection.
The numbers were enclosed around a thin, feeble rectangle. It seemed like a cheap design to him, considering all the pain he’d underwent to get this stupid little clock.
“No,” she confirmed, “it’ll mature and get prettier as you get older. Here, look at mine.” Ashton’s mother pulled up the sleeve of her fleece jacket.
The surroundings of the large clock were rounded out. It was an oval, unlike his wobbly rectangular one. Inside the two lines creating the shape, bold Aztec-inspired lines and patterns gave a three-dimensional illusion to the piece. Splattered around the odd oval were curls and dots of various thicknesses and sizes.
"See? It's pretty, isn't it?" Ashton could only nod weakly in agreement because he was too engulfed in memorizing every detail of her timer.
His mom was right. It was pretty. Ashton wanted his to be pretty, even prettier than his mom’s.
“Mommy?” he'd said while tugging on her pyjama pants as a cry for attention. While doing so, his sparkling eyes met his mother's dazzling ones for a fraction of a millisecond. A smile broke out on her face, ear-to-ear.
Ashton was adorable, completely and utterly adorable.
His figure was slim, and his active sports and school schedule helped to maintain that. Though he didn’t care about his body. It wasn't a concern to the growing lad. He'd never put any effort into staying fit. Maybe that was just his age convincing him to do that, he wasn’t sure. Frankly, he was just fit; it wasn't like it was difficult for him to stay like that.
Unanimously, everyone agreed that his best feature was his dimples. His dimples, once the most neglected aspect of his face, had evolved to the most prominent. The reason for this was because he smiled a lot. With every smile they curled deeper into his cheeks, due to those frequent experiences. Ashton was a happy child, and it showed.
He liked them - not only liked, but loved. Girls always poked them when he'd smile.
Also, his smile was so wide and so unnaturally cheery, thus kick-starting his dimples' creations. Flash one of those infamous grins, if he was trying to trick his mom into buying him more Pokémon cards. It never failed.
"Mommy," he called again.
He loved the attention. He didn’t have to work hard to get it. It just came to him, and he accepted it with open arms.
“Yes, sweetheart?” she acknowledged.
“Will my timer be as pretty as yours, one day?” A glint of hope had cloaked his wonderstruck appearance as yet another question passed his lips.
Her smile only grew wider. Ashton was a beautiful boy, and he had no problem showing it. Sometimes, he would do something cute simply because of subconscious habit. It was natural to him. “It will be, Ashton, but it won’t be as pretty as you.”
Ashton giggled. Safely, he could admit: he was not used to being called pretty.
He was used to ‘adorable’ and ‘cute.' He was used to, ‘Oh, you’re just so adorable! I could eat you right up!’
It was weird, because he just turned eleven. He'd figured he reached a mature age. He didn’t want to be called ‘cute’ anymore. To accommodate his manly age, he should be called ‘handsome.’ He liked handsome.
But he also liked pretty.
He’d never heard ‘pretty’ as a descriptive word for his looks. Strangely, it’d made the youngster giddy and jumpy. It made his giggling seem relevant, so he giggled louder. His mother chuckled, the sight of her son looking so happy, making her happier.
They’d calmed down, by Ashton’s manly request (also known as, 'Stop, Mommy, I'm handsome, not pretty!'). Now behaving seriously, Ashton flipped on the curiosity switch in his brain. Laughter was removed from the atmosphere, though it twitched at his mother’s lips.
As he examined her timer, he saw the timer had big zeros on it, just like his. He smiled, happy they’d shared that resemblance. The serious act that he’d tried to mask himself with broke into pieces. Though he didn’t mind. It was hard acting manly and serious, anyways.
“Mom, you have all zeros, too!” he chirped. She laughed, sharing his excitement instead of explaining. She’d do anything to prevent the curious child from asking questions she couldn’t answer properly.
However, he’d realized hers was inked on the inside of her forearm. That made him wonder.
“Why is yours there?” he interrogated, poking at his mother’s still timer. Even though there were only zeros, Ashton could tell her timer was frozen in place. It was dead, for nothing could rev it back to life. Even if it had a mere second left, it wouldn’t budge. It looked pale and monotone against her warm skin. “Why is mine on my wrist?”
Question after question after question - his mother could take only so much. It wasn’t his fault though. His brain couldn’t handle the unknown. His hazel eyes were clouded with a frenzy of questions, always, but none had the strength to force Ashton to ask them.
Many questions to ask her, little power to ask them.
The youngster couldn’t stand when he wasn’t aware of what was happening. If an event had passed that he missed, he’d beg until someone told him what happened. Curiosity was the child’s strongest attribute.
Well, only sometimes.
When it isn't played to it’s fullest capabilities, it only worsened a situation. He didn’t know how to filter his curiosity. Just like many things in his life, he had no power over it. No one really had control over what controls them.
However, Ashton’s mother didn’t have the time nor patience to explain everything to him. It would be too much information for his stuffed brain to withhold. “You’ll understand when you’re older, sweetheart. Now…” she trailed off, looking for an excuse to escape this topic, “you don’t have to go to school today. I know how painful getting your timer can be.” At that, she kissed his forehead, leaving her confused son alone in the middle of his dim bedroom.
Later that day, he left his bedroom and padded down the extensive hallway recklessly. His slightly massive feet pounded against the squeakiest of floorboards, and the sound made Ashton wince. Fortunately, he was energetic enough to leap to the telephone, instead of walk. Standing on his tip-toes, he made grabby hands at the corded electronic until he was successful.
Ashton punched in the memorized phone number of his friend, Calum, on the dialpad. He'd anxiously waited until he picked up.
“Hello?” Calum’s high-pitched voice greeted on the other end of the call.
“Calum, guess what?” Ashton urged, skipping the useless smalltalk immediately. The jittery boy could be impatient at times, especially if what he was waiting for took too long to come into the picture. This happened to be one of the occurrences. He barely could talk because he was so excited.
Though he wasn’t sure why he was excited, he knew that a timer pierced into his skin barely a few hours ago. That’s enough to be excited about, right? According to his mom, it’s a ‘very big deal!’
“What?!” Calum shrieked, the jitters overwhelming the skinny boy's body already. “Oh, and happy birthday, Ashton!”
“Thank you!” he replied. “You got your timer when you were nine, right, Calum?” He, being one of the very few kids, got his timer last year, at the vibrant age of nine.
Ashton's mother once told him that she got her timer when she was nine, and that was apparently the greatest event to occur in her life, aside from meeting his father. ‘Age nine is a rare age to get a timer!’ she said . Ashton knew that if you got one at age nine or ten, the timer planned something extra, extra special for you.
That made Ashton worry. He got his timer when he was eleven. What did that mean?
Ashton didn’t know.
Calum, when he’d gotten his timer, literally would not shut up about it. The dark-haired lad was only a year younger than Ashton, so Calum’s ten, presently. Do the math; you would discover that it’d been a whole year, and the younger boy was still talking about his timer!
It was like he was infatuated with it. Whenever Ashton asked what the purpose was of the timer, Calum would clamp his mouth shut. He understood, based on the assumption, that Calum knew only as much as Ashton did. If not, even less than Ashton.
“Yeah… so what?” A moment of silence tore through the static. Suddenly, a gasp then fell from the boy’s mouth. “Birthday… Eleven years old… Timer... Oh, Ashton, y- you finally got your timer!”
“Yes!” Ashton squealed. Calum laughed and celebrated with him for a hefty portion of the phone conversation. “But, wait, Calum…”
“What?” Both lines carried a heavy, serious vibe to them now. Ashton didn’t do well with serious.
Ashton regretted what'd spilled out of his unfiltered mouth, “I don’t understand what it means.”
“You don’t understand what?” Calum repeated.
The impatient boy sighed exasperatedly. “I don’t understand what a timer does. Like, what's it's purpose? No one’s telling me, not even my mom.”
“Mate, she isn’t telling you because she can’t,” Calum informed. The birthday boy furrowed his eyebrows. "Don't you know that?"
Turned out that Calum knew more than Ashton.
“Why can’t she?”
“Because you have to find out what a timer does on your own."
“My mom didn’t tell me that I had to wait even longer!” Ashton whined. He hated waiting. Waiting rose questions. Questions dug up answers.
Ashton, though, never got any answers.