Dynasty Decapitated

Body and Soul

((Title from king of my heart by t Swift)

Luke wakes up.

He's vaguely aware of the deep sleep that he'd previously been in, only partially thinking that his mind had been somehow both dark and firing with pictures only seconds before his conscious was reawakened. He breathes in sharply through his nose and opens his eyes. They're crusty in the way they are in the mornings and heavy like he's been asleep for days.

The first thing he notices is that he's warm. He's warm and there's sunlight streaming on him. He immediately thinks Michael's left the curtains open and the sun is pouring onto their bed. His body aches as he realizes he's sitting in his car, not in his bed. He's holding the keys tightly in his hands and slouching against the drivers side window. He glances around and notices that he's pulled over on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere, with only a long stretch of road in front of him and open fields of grass around him.

Ashton's in the passenger seat, leaning against his own window with his eyes open, staring blankly into the fields. He looks fucking exhausted and scrawny and all around unhealthy.

Luke blinks and reaches up to rub the sleep from his eyes. He shifts around and tries his best to stretch his neck, but the ache remains. He glances over, but Ashton only remains staring out the window.

"What the fuck are we doing?" Luke mutters. "What- why are we here?"

He's aware of what had happened the night previous, but his brain is trying to block it out. He shakes his head and then rubs at his temple forcefully. Ashton still hasn't moved. Luke sighs and reaches around to start the car. The engine chokes off twice before he gives up.

"We're out of gas, is that it?" Luke asks. "We stopped because we were out of gas? Jesus Christ, right now? Of all the fucking times? God, I- I don't even want to think about this fucking car."

Last night feels like a blur. Almost sleepy and slow in his mind, but the color red is incredibly vivid amongst the empty black spaces his memory had forgotten. Luke squeezes his eyes shut before popping them open again to look at Ashton. He's not sure what had happened last night, or if anything in his head was actually real, but it's the only way to explain why Ashton's here.

"You're really not going to say anything to me?" Luke huffs. "I jumped out of a ten story building for you, and you can't even tell me what's going on?"

"He's dead, idiot," a voice says from behind him. Luke jumps about a foot in the air and scrambles to grab ahold of the steering wheel, like that'll help him in the situation. He spins around and notices Ashton's also lounging in the backseat, directly behind the Ashton in the passenger seat. Who is looking surprisingly dead.

Luke looks to the back, then back to Ashton in the front seat. He hasn't moved an inch since Luke's awoken. Upon further inspection, he finds that Ashton's hand is wrapped around his own torso and his hoodie is stained with blood. Luke immediately looks back up to his face and slaps and hand over his own mouth.

"No," Luke replies. "No, he- he can't be dead, I just got him back!"

"Dead," Ashton kicks the back of the passenger seat and his own body in the front jerks, but doesn't move otherwise. "Dead as shit. And you know what? You fucking killed him."

"What?" Luke turns to inspect him more closely. He looks just like Ashton, only less starved and more pissed off. "No, I didn't. I couldn't have."

"You fucking did it," Ashton spits out.

Luke glances down all of a sudden and sees a bloody knife in his hand. That wasn't there before. It couldn't have been. He'd just taken his hands off the steering wheel, it couldn't have been there. He drops it immediately and watches it fall to the dirty floor of the car. His hands have blood splattered all over them.