Work Text:
Asa Fell was twenty-three years old, orphaned, and alone. He stood on a bridge, stiff and uncomfortable.
A riotous parade of confetti and rainbow flags and too-loud pop music carried on through the streets, anyway.
It was an odd thing, he thought, to feel this broken in the midst of so much color and happiness.
Everything had quite fallen apart, each loss a domino falling, a match striking to light another mountain of gunpowder and ruin everything. This was the first time he’d left the house in nearly three weeks, since Aunt Tracy had brought over a basket of croissants and a rented suit for his mum’s funeral. Elliot had broken up with him two days after that. Asa had been too caught up in grief to sleep with him, too hollow-feeling to don some itchy sweater vest and go back into the closet for some golf outing, so Elliot had left, and now Asa was well and truly alone. Even Aunt Tracy had gone back to Gloucester.
If he’d had it his way, Asa would be curled up in his bed, savoring the silence and ignoring the empty pantry. He could live off his own fat for weeks anyway, Elliot had often reminded him. Noel had called, though, an old friend from secondary, insisting they meet up on this bridge, about two hours ago, so they could catch up.
Noel, as it seemed, would not be coming.
Asa had had quite enough of this hollow loneliness, but he knew he was too much of a coward to really do anything, a failure in this too.
If Asa broke down in the arms of a stranger— an older man in a rainbow bow tie who asked him to call him Derek— well. At least in that moment, he wasn’t alone.