Aries || Calum Hood

nineteen

ARIES: With fluttering ashes, she burns cities, and she watches the ashes fall around her feet

A T H E N A

CONGEALED TIGHTLY WITHIN velvet sheets, imprinted with endless patterns of swirls perhaps mimicking memories of the night before, the body heat radiating onto her cold, bare-self triggered a brisk awakening.

"What the fuck?" Athena muttered, a familiar tattoo whispered hints as she immediately sat up, her body pressed onto the wooden headboard while the brunette groggily woke up. "You can't be fucking serious."

"What happened?" Calum yawned, sitting up shirtless until realizing what event partook the previous night. "Oh shit."

"How could you?"

"Did I pull out?"

The two bursted out at the same time, each one haunted in realization of the other. Athena gripped onto the roots of her hair —she currently fashioned a combination of bed and sex hair— while grabbing her shirt from the floor to cover herself up.

"Did we use a condom?" Athena desperately searched for a wrapper to be in sight, only to find nothing but the clothes they've torn off of each other. "Why did this happen?"

"All I remember is you saying how you wanted to have sex with me.  It was fucking hot by the-"

"And I was clearly high and not in my right mind.  What the fuck is wrong with you?  Why didn't you stop me?" Regrets seemed to have filled Athena's mind, but the only true feeling she had was disappointment in herself.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?  We used to have sex multiple times everyday and now you are freaking out after we had sex for the first time in like two weeks?"  Calum retorted, a scowl invading his features while he put his pants on, hair disheveled from the previous night.

"That was before I broke things off, remember?"  Athena glared, her heart pounded very loudly in frustration that he just did not get it. 

"Break them off for who?  Your new feelings for Luke, the guy who has been bragging about taking your virginity sophomore year?" Calum angrily taunted, sarcasm enlaced into his expression as he slightly raised his voice from the other side of the bed.  "The guy who takes the nice guy character just to get into your pretty little panties then leave you alone the very next day?"

"That is not why I broke things off-"

"Then what the hell is it?  Don't give me that bullshit excuse about Michael because you and I both know that you were strong enough to stand against him.  You wanted to focus on school?  You don't even know how badly you fucked me up-"

"I broke things off because I fucking like you, okay?!  I don't just like fucking you, I like you emotionally. And that scares me.  It scares me a lot knowing that one person is capable of both crushing my fucking soul and making me feel like I matter.  I hate the feeling of caring for someone so much, and I hate that it had to be you.  But it is, and I am not going to hurt myself in this friends with benefits relationship when all you want sex and all I want love."

The torturous sounds of her staggered breaths and her heart pounding against her chest as mental signals diverted from paths on whether she fucked up or she was brave, but the only thing Athena focused on was the dumbfounded expression on Calum's face, shocked with speech mentally wrung out of him.

The expression prolonged, both muted the mewls of hangover victims rising in the outer rooms.  Athena noticed that Calum couldn't even fish out the words knotted into his throat—she knew it was too soon.  Calum always relied on anticipating the future, but he never would've seen that coming, and Athena knew that.