Work Text:
Ashton is very used to touch hurting.
It comes with the territory when you're as broken as he is, he figures. When you're rock and stone and gravel and glass, when the lines of your body are drawn with substances that didn't come to you naturally. When you're only alive because your shattered pieces are filled in with duct tape and safety pins and a bunch of shit that basically screams Danger: Do Not Touch!
That's what Ashton screams now, really. That's what people see, that's what he wants them to see. He is rough edges and sharp smiles and something—horrifying. Something fragile that looks so very strong. He likes being like this...he thinks. He at least knows it's better than the alternative, better than being something people look at and see as an easy target, something easily destroyed.
'Ashton the Reforged' Orym's leader lady called him, and Ashton feels in his bones how true that is. He was made and remade and then remade himself, and now he's...this, this mess of things, more powerful than even he fully understands at the moment.
But unfortunately, 'power' doesn't mean lack of pain.
He's used to it by now, has to be to not go fucking insane really. It's been years since the accident that put a hole in his head, even longer since his body started transforming into something stone instead of flesh. There is not a single moment of his life, now, where at least some piece of him doesn't hurt. Pain is probably his oldest friend by now. It's always there, always dogging at his heels—only ever gets better when he's raging, when he's using his broken fucking mess of a self to fight.
(And now, his Titan form makes the pain go away too. It smooths it all away like it was never a problem to begin with. And then, when the form's faded, it all comes back full force and leaves him worse off than he already was. It almost makes him wish he never discovered anything about the shard, because how the fuck is that fair? How the fuck is it fair to let him get used to so much pain, only to then play with it like a fucking jump rope? How can the universe just—
But nothing about life is fair, so he has no idea why he'd expect it to start being so now. His group has rubbed off on him too much.)
He avoids touch like the plague, if he can help it. Touch only makes the pain already there even worse, and he doesn't need to add to his issues, thanks. He already has so much fucking shit going on, why add to it just to let people close? It's not worth it. It's a good lesson, even, in not letting people in.
Or, he did avoid it, but now...them. Now, the Bells Hells. Now, Fearne Fucking Calloway.
Ashton is very used to touch hurting.
But Fearne sets his nerves on fire in a very different way.
He'd scoff and put it all on that Titan shit, blame the way he's feeling on what the pair of them both hold inside of them, but he'd be fucking lying because he gave a shit about her long before she took the shard of Rau'shan into her. She stood out to him from the first fucking moment, when their stupid little stealing game started. She continued to stand out, and stand out, and stand out.
Taking in the shard only made her...more. More of what she already was. And Ashton craves her like fucking air.
He wants to hold her, to kiss her, to fuck her and have her fuck him. Ashton is a person who wants a three-foot barrier around himself at all times but Bells Hells have been breaking that barrier off piece by piece and Fearne has simply smashed right through it. She trails her fingers up his arm and everything sparks in her wake and Ashton feels—alive, under her touch. He feels alive.
And Ashton is—fuck, he's a greedy son of a bitch, isn't he? He can't settle for the little things, can't settle for what he's given. He wants more and more and he wants Fearne, he wants everything she is, everything she has, everything she's willing to share with him. He asks to share her bed with her—actually asks someone to spend all night fucking touching him—and then he asks her to kiss him and then he asks her to run with him and he's greedy, he's so greedy, he wants it all—
Fearne touches him and Ashton's body sings. The shard in his chest hums with energy, the mote in his brain vibrates with possibility, and every atom of Ashton's being tells him that this is exactly what he fucking needs in the world. She is exactly what he needs in the world.
She says yes. She keeps saying yes. She looks at him, so confident in her skin, so sure of herself and her right to have what she wants in the world, and says yes. They're in some stupid wizard's tower and there is barely any fucking privacy and Ashton has a lot of weird advice in his head from people he's just met but Fearne just says yes. Nothing complicated, nothing painful. She says yes, and she sets him on fire.
"I don't know what the big deal is," Fearne says, flicking her hair over her shoulder casually when Imogen presses a little incredulously about their night together. "We have fun. I—we just—we like each other and we have fun, so, what's it matter? Isn't it good?"
Ashton grins at her when she looks at him, and Fearne smiles back that adorable dimply smile of hers, and Ashton remembers what it felt like to have her on top of him, their bodies moving together, her lips against his as she grinned and rolled her hips in just the right way and damn is Ashton just so fucking far gone on this woman.
They could all die today. They're closing in on the end game now, and they could all fucking die today. And that's never been something Ashton's been afraid of, not since he lived it, not since Milo pieced him back together—he's not afraid now, either. But goddamn, he finds that for the first time he genuinely wants to keep living. Because he highly doubts that wherever he ends up in the afterlife is gonna be the same place as Fearne and, well, then that's simply a place he doesn't want to be.
"Yeah," Ashton says, still grinning at Fearne even as she turns back to her breakfast. "Yeah, it's good."