Fallen [Malum+Mashton/Cake] ✔️

~18~

Chapter Eighteen: The Wistful Sorrows of a Mourning Man

Calum is quite certain this was his breaking point, the end of all he had done and the destruction of everything he was.
His shoes felt worn as he paced back and forth in front of Ashton, hands frantically combing through his hair; pulling it out and repeating the process again and again.

A scrawled note signed by two beautiful angels sat crumpled on the coffee table among a plethora of smashed glass syringes and slashed open bags of cocaine and weed all scattered together in flecks.

There were still tears streaming down Calum's cheeks, eyes red and face puffy as his vision swirled in and out of blurry and clear. His body was trembling, cold within his jeans, shirt and jumper even though the heating system of Ashton's raggedy home was on.

His chest was tight, heart bleeding down the walls of his insides after having exploded with pure agony. He wasn't sure if he could feel anything, or if this sensation was the truest form of numbness. He felt as though he had drifted into another universe and yet he were still anchored to the Hell his mortal body lay within.

Ashton sat slouched over on the couch, singlet torn from the violent fight he and Calum had gotten into only an hour beforehand; neither of them wishing to believe a single word neatly written on the suicide note. It had been left on the kitchen counter of Calum's home, and within short moments it found its way to Ashton's coffee table crumpled and coated with a thin layer of narcotic dust.

The love heart beside Luke and Michael's names meant nothing.

Calum glanced Ashton's way, briefly pausing idle in his pacing as he watched the shaking male stare longingly at the filled needle in his calloused fingers. His arms were dried with blood from a collapsed high not too long ago, his house was bare as his body was thin.
Calum could see now, in the darkest moments of their connected lives, how badly Ashton had needed Michael's help.

Ashton had needed both of them, and Calum had quite simply turned his back. He wondered if maybe he hadn't been so selfish... would their world be different to what it was now?
If he had hardened up and held Ashton's hand through those sleepless nights would they be as miserable as they were now?

"Are you gonna do it?" Calum's voice was sharp, a coarse sound that showed he'd cried the scratches into his throat and winded the air from his lungs.

Ashton looked up, and their eyes met. For the first time in a very long time there was peace in their gaze, though miserable and broken they weren't about to kill one another. Calum wished he could've gone back and held Ashton's hand, because watching the way his thin arm tended under the dirty yellow fabric tied tightly around his bicep made everything all too real.

His best friend, his ex-lover, was a lost cause; just as he himself were.

"I don't know." Ashton finally replied, tearing his gaze away and placing it back onto the needle.

"Will it kill you?"

"I can hope." Ashton mumbled.

Calum's chest grew unbearably tight and he lingered closer, hesitant to the words he was about to spill.

"Can I have one?"

Ashton's head shot up, eyebrows furrowing together as he studied Calum's broken expression.

"You don't deserve it."

"Neither do you." Calum was quick to shoot back.

Neither of them were innocent and they both knew it.

Ashton sighed, tearing the material from his arm and tossing both it and the syringe back onto the table. Instead, his shaking fingers began to roll two separate blunts; thick and horribly done in a rush, he held one out to Calum.