Work Text:
His phone lit up for the seventh…? time, buzz echoing across the room. Still, Aiden didn’t bother to get up from where he was lying on his bed, surrounded by bottles. The call rang out yet again.
Aiden had never been one to be still and silent (to the annoyance of his report cards and teachers). But sometimes, sometimes , it just all got too much. With his ADHD, his friends almost dying every night, his grades slipping, and his countless other mental problems it was really only a matter of time. After all, there’s only so much one 16-year-old could take without his parents around.
So to cope on those days, Aiden would sneak down to where his parents kept their fancy wine and… borrow a little. Okay, maybe a lot. But it’s not like they’d ever notice all the way out in Shanghai. Or was it Berlin this time?
The alcohol was taking over his senses and he couldn’t remember or find it in himself to care.
Vaguely, he thought about Ben and how he always managed to calm him down when he got like this. He was at Taylor’s, like he was a lot these days. Aiden hated the fact that he couldn’t just be happy for them. He was always so needy, so clingy, so much of a burden. It’s no wonder Ben left and Ashlyn couldn’t stand him.
Ashlyn . He was a fool to think he ever had a chance. As her friend…and especially as anything else. Who would want him after all? When all he was capable of doing was screwing up? She never wanted anything to do with him until he pestered her into going to Savannah and got them all stuck in this mess.
This was all his fault.
His phone rang again, rolling one of the bottles he’d haphazardly discarded onto the floor where it shattered into pieces. Aiden reached toward his phone but came up short as his fingers found one of the glass shards instead and wrapped around it. The faraway sensation was pain he realized, as he saw red streaming from his hand.
He wondered what would happen if he did that again? Never one to control his impulses, he gave in. His phone rang again and as he drifted into the darkness, he wondered who could possibly care about him enough to call him 9 times.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Ashlyn began to panic the first time he didn’t pick up. She knows it’s stupid but she couldn’t help but worry. Aiden would always text back right away, and he’d always pick up her calls on the first or second ring. Not answering 9 times was… eerily out of character for him. But what wasn’t out of character was doing stupid reckless things and acting like they didn’t give everyone who loved him a fucking heart attack.
She’d called him hours ago so they could study together for a math quiz. Now that was the farthest thing from her mind as she began to imagine all the things that could’ve happened to him.
Her mind made up, she left a note for her parents and strode out of her front door into the freezing winter.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
When she snuck in through his window, she had hoped to see him, perfectly fine, in his room with a smile lighting up his face at the sight of her. He would tell her he was happy to see her and that his phone had died hours ago but he kept forgetting to plug it in. She wouldn’t say that she called him 9 times, her previous panic seeming ridiculous. He would say something and she would laugh and then say that they should study. He would groan but eventually relent and everything would be fine.
Everything was not fine.
Aiden Clark was bleeding out on the floor in front of her, broken glass from wine bottles he shouldn’t even have surrounding him. She was silent for a moment as the shock caught up to her.
“…Aiden?” She didn’t want to believe it was him. She must’ve gone through the wrong window. The real Aiden was fine and smiling and-
A blood soaked hand closed around hers. “Ash?” A voice that was unmistakably his rasped. He turned to look at her, and his eyes widened when he realized she was real.
He scrambled back as if her touch had burned him and shakily attempted to get to his feet.
“Aiden stop-“
His knees buckled and Ashlyn was there in seconds helping him sit down on his bed.
“I’m fine Ash. Really-” Aiden tried his signature puppy-eyed smile like it would erase all of the damning evidence against that statement.
“Save it.” Ashlyn’s tone was curt, trying to hide the fear bubbling up inside her. “We can talk later. Where’s the first aid kit?”
“Downstairs.” Aiden looked down at the floor. “In the second drawer to the left in the kitchen.”
Ashlyn nodded and got up. When he didn’t do the same, she extended an arm. He looked at her quizzically.
“I’m not leaving you alone.”
The “because I don’t trust you” was unspoken.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Aiden sat on a chair in his dining room as Ashlyn disinfected and wrapped gauze around each of his cuts. It was something they’d done many times in the phantom dimension but never in the human one. Finally, she finished and the moment he dreaded arrived. Now, they would “talk.” Whatever that meant.
She put away the first aid kit and sat down in the chair next to him. After a few moments of tense silence and Aiden looking everywhere but her, she sighed and reached for his bandaged hand.
“I’m not going to make you tell me anything.” He looked up to find her emerald eyes shining with sincerity.
“I’m not going to make you tell me anything,” she repeated, “but I want you to know that you scared the shit out of me today.”
“I-“ He squeezed her hand but then stopped when it sent a flair of pain through his palm.
“I’m not saying that because I want an apology or to guilt trip you into telling me what’s wrong. I’m saying it because I want you to know that people care about you, we care about you, I care about you, so much, Aiden.“ When her voice broke, so did his heart.
“So please, please talk to me the next time you feel like this.” He opened his mouth to protest and she added, “And I know you’ll say you don’t want to be a burden but you’re not. You could never be a burden to me Aiden.”
It took a while for him to find the words but eventually he gave up and threw his arms around her instead.