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When Ashton Irwin was seven years old he knew he wanted to join the army.
At seven years old, you shouldn't be feeling like your life is crumbling around you. The world is made of shiny things, where your mother is the prettiest lady you'll ever meet and your father may as well be Superman because he's the biggest hero there could ever be. It's when your little siblings are annoying brats but when you make them cry you feel like the rugs been tugged out from under your feet. It's when the big kids scare you because they're just so tall and they know things that you can't hope to understand. It's when little kids will never be as cool as you and you're so much better because your birthday is a couple months ahead. It's ice cream and candy as special treats, bedtime at nine pm but hiding under the covers til ten because you want that feeling of accomplishment you have no idea that you'll struggle to achieve when you're older. It's wanting to save the world one day: not escape it.
At seven years old, the army seemed to be something bigger than life itself. Something so huge, something so powerful that nothing could simply destroy it. In the wide eyes of a little boy, it seemed to be something that promised a getaway, a life where he could do something and no one could take it away from him. The army isn't as fleeting as love, it's stable and strong and doesn't crack and crumble under the pressure of bills and loans and a kid they never wanted. The army was strong, stable, something he never had.
In short, at seven years old, Ashton Irwin started crossing the days off until he was eligible to sign up.
On his sixteenth birthday, his mother cried at his request. She looked him in the eyes later that night when he left the room of his little brother after laying him on his bed because he fell asleep on the couch. She asked him with a broken voice why he would want to do this, to kill himself when he had so much potential for something else while his little sister sat with her back to her door listening through the crack by the floor. It was the look in her eyes that tore at his ripped up heart, tugging on the stitches so crudely sew throughout the years as he tried to explain that it was about more than she could understand. But that night trailed on because try as he may have he couldn't persuade her that he wanted to leave for him, not because he couldn't look her in the eyes without seeing the broken mess of a woman that he saw through the cracks in the door at seven years old. He tried to tell her that he was leaving to feel like he had a purpose, not because seeing his brother and sister grow up was tearing him about because he couldn't take care of them like a father could. He tried to make her believe that he was leaving to make her proud, not running because he feared to see her tear herself apart again.
When he was seventeen years old he meet a boy in training with blonde hair and pretty blue eyes, his shoulders were wide and from the times he caught him looking off into the distance, he swore he must have had something close to the weight of the world leaning on them. It didn't take long for him to find out his name was Jack and the only reason he joined was because he felt like he needed to make his family proud at last after years of dipping below average. Their friendship began as they crawled under barbed wire, it was watered like a flowers bulb the days they spoke to each other the nights they couldn't sleep from across their uncomfortable bunks, and it blossomed the night before their initiation when they both admitted that fuck, they were so damn scared.
When he was eighteen he was discharged for the first time. He shared a look with the boy he'd grown to love as a brother from where they sat at the back of the truck, gripping onto guns that looked too real to even be real. He swallowed his fear though it tasted like bile and he tried to calm his heavy beating hard from breaking right out of his chest. The first days went by as a blur, nothing made sense, everything happened too fast. His mouth full of dirt from falling too the ground one too many times, his limbs aching because he couldn't stop moving on, and all he could think was run, run, run.
It began to get easier after a while. He began to get used to it all. Used to seeing people stare from where they hid in the shadows of their doors as troops stomped by with heavy boots and tired eyes as they gripped guns they had become far too used to. Slowly but surely he got used to the letters he would have to write home for his mum to know that yes, he was still alive and no, he wasn't coming back home yet, just another few weeks, few months, however long it would be until the next time he'd see her tired eyes and hold her and tell her that he'll always come back. Eventually, he even got used to the fact that the boy he met on his first day with pretty blue eyes would come back with a blank gaze and wide shoulders bowed. After a while, everything about it became normal.
But then he turned nineteen, and he was on leave for a few precious weeks in fall.
He was only a few weeks off of twenty, and he was miles away from home when the plane touched down. Hand clapping the back of the boy he was becoming a man with, duffel bags over shoulders and laughing about how on the ride home one kid couldn't stop asking them questions with his bright green eyes and gapped teeth, how he seemed like they did when they were younger: it felt good to be away from it all. No way of getting home, Ashton still went to part their ways. But the boy by his side was too stubborn, wrapping an arm around his shoulder he told him that he could give him a ride home the next day, give him a warm bed for the night and food that actually has taste. For a second he almost denied his friends offer, but luck have it, he didn't, and that one choice changed everything.
The moment he stepped through the door, he was greeted by a woman with blonde hair and pretty blue eyes he had become far too familiar with who smiled at him and hugged him like he belonged. The Hemmings family were all blonde, blue eyed with crinkles by their eyes that laughed too loud and loved so hard that for a while Ashton was lead to wonder if it was all an act. In the years he had known Jack Hemmings, never had he have met his family. They were all like him, but shiney, brighter and new, not dusty and dim from days spent fighting and nights spent longing for rest and not the sound of fire in the back of their mind.
That day felt like a dream. In fact, late that night at one thirty am as he stood outside, staring at the quiet road he wondered if it was. It was so quiet, too quiet. It almost unsettled him, there were no gun shots, there were no weeps, there was no sound beyond the creak of branches and rustle of leaves he had longed to hear the months he had been gone. Everything felt like a dream, like he had finally fallen into slumber in his bunk and was greeted with images that could make his weary mind feel at peace. But no matter how many times he nipped his arm, he never woke up.
“You breathe really loudly.”
“And you seem sad.”
Luke Hemmings was seventeen years old whenever they met. Bright blue eyes and flattened blonde hair, he seemed like one of those kids that was actually going somewhere. Ashton was jealous of that, irrationally so due to the fact he didn't know him enough to find out if that guess about his character was actually true. They stood there together, at one thirty am of the day he was going back home and didn't say a word for some time. All they did was stare out to the concrete and part of the nineteen year old wondered what kept the younger awake. Was he plagued by thoughts he just couldn't escape? Were there things he ran from that reached out in the dark to grab him so tight he could never hope to escape? Or was he just awake, by chance his eyes did not close by one thirty am and he found himself drawn outside to the young man who couldn't sleep for fear of dreams to be pierced through my gunshots that would bleed over his tired mind.
As that night slowly but surely turned to day, the pair still stayed. Watching as light began to settled upon the rooftops and dust along the quiet road that would soon be filled with life. They talked about little things, big things, anything, nothing. They talked, like they were not strangers who only met hours before. As if they were not walking on two completely different paths of life. As if they knew the other cared enough to listen.
At six am with tired eyes, the pair decided to part. As Ashton made his way to the door, he didn't expect for his arm to be grabbed. He didn't expect to be pulled back by a boy with sleepy blue eyes and tousled hair from running his fingers through it too much. He didn't expect the sudden speechlessness that seemed to descend upon the seventeen year old. But most of all, he didn't expect the words that passed his lips to hit him as hard as they did.
“Take care of him, yeah? I know it's hard out there, and I know shit happens. But -.. Just, look out for him, okay? He's not as strong as he likes everyone to think.”
During the car ride back to Hornsby later that day, all he could think about was the seventeen year olds words. How his voice shook when it shouldn't have, how it was thick in such a way that it made his heart ache and how he seemed to be doing his best not to cry. It made him wonder, even if only for a moment, if someone felt that way about him. If a friend from back home worried about him every time he left, if his siblings were scared that one day he wouldn't come back, if his mothers voice shook and grew thick when speaking of the son she had yet to hear from yet. It sounded so cliché to think, who missed him, who worried when he was at war? Who longed for him to return whenever he was unsure if he ever would. If anyone ever did.
Those few weeks back home were different from the last. He still held his mother in his arms as he stepped through the door, dropping the duffel bag he held as his siblings hugged them and reminded them all of his promise to always come back. He still visited old friends every now and then, telling them that nothings changed and catching up on what has. He still spent nights sleeping in his childhood room, staring at the posters on the walls and wondering what time has changed. But he found himself using the piece of crap phone he's had since he was sixteen, texting back a boy with blonde hair and pretty blue eyes that made him promise his word on his first night back to keep his older brother alive.
He shouldn't have done it. He shouldn't have replied, he shouldn't have promised, he should have let a fucking seventeen year old boy get under his skin and make him think about things he promised never to think about. He shouldn't have started talking to him daily, shouldn't have skyped him on that shit desktop that was sitting in the spare room of house starting to feel less like home and he shouldn't have agreed to meet him during those few days he had left. He shouldn't have laughed so hard at a bad joke, shouldn't have smiled so much at the teenager that dropped his smoothie, shouldn't have felt something for a seventeen year old boy that had so much ahead of him that he shouldn't get in the way of.
But he did.
Because he hugged him in the airport when he left for the first time, and laughed whenever the other promised to write. He never thought he would. But he found himself with letters every chance he could receive one, and he found himself tucking folded up pieces of paper into his uniform to read whenever life got too hard. He found himself writing back, talking about nothing that was going on around him but everything that his mind was over thinking, pondering and filling to the brim with on those few occasions he got a chance to think, let alone breathe.
He shouldn't have done it. He shouldn't have smiled so wide when he saw him in the airport months later, he shouldn't have hugged him quite so hard with his brother around. He shouldn't have laughed whenever he mentioned a joke they wrote about so long ago. He shouldn't have felt so happy whenever he smiled. He shouldn't have let himself get that far, but he did.
He let himself write to an eighteen year old that planned on going to university to become a music teacher. He let himself talk about things he wouldn't dare speak to with anyone else to someone chance had him meet. He let himself wait for his letters, for the printed out pictures of crossed blue eyes and a stuck out tongue, for postcards from holidays and keep him in his pocket to look at whenever he needed to smile. He let himself love, and he hated himself for it.
He hated himself for it because at twenty one he kissed a boy that waited for his letters. He hated himself because he whispered against the lips of a boy that deserved something more stable than someone who could die any given day. He hated himself because he got too attached to someone too stable, someone who would wait, someone who bent over backwards to see him when he was in the country when he didn't deserve it. But he hated himself most of all because he couldn't make himself let him go.
At twenty two years old, Ashton Irwin found himself sitting on the edge of a pier that he never heard of before. With jeans rolled up and feet in the water, he stared at the reflection of the moon and wondered if he made a mistake. He wondered in that moment if he should have let the boy that sat with his head on his shoulder into his life, to take root. But he never verbalised these thoughts as his fingers ran through blonde hair, lips pressed to his temple as they spoke about things that may never be.
They whispered like they were secrets, things only made for them to hear. They spoke of dangerous things, with hearts up for sale and souls left bared. Pretty thoughts of little houses, little flats and waking with arms around one another with early morning kisses despite their breath. It was enchanting dreams of dancing in the tv light at two am, of whispering to one another under the covers and falling asleep in one another's arms with the promise of tomorrow. They were dangerous thoughts, promises that may never be. But neither of them spoke of the truth those nights when all they had was one another and everything seemed possible despite the call to return in a few weeks time and only letters bound with string and tucked into uniform pockets to keep them together.
They promised. As nothing more than children they promised like he promised to keep his brother safe and promised to always come home. They promised that one day, they'll make it.
And they did. They made it through letters, they made it through gunfire and they made it through life moving on. They made it through bullets graving vital arteries, they made it through university acceptance letters and they made it through life changing as years went on. They made it through first apartments in a new city where no one knows his name, they made it through raising in racks and metals for honour after risking his life. They made it through letters, through promises, though love.
They made it for anniversaries. For first flats together, for waking up with arms around one another and early morning kisses despite awful breath. For dancing in front of the tv light at an ungodly hour, to whisper under the covers and falling asleep in one anothers arms with promise of tomorrow. They made it for the awkward proposal where the ring went missing and words were forgotten from the speech rehearsed in his mind when the gunshots silenced for a few moments. They made it for tight grasps with calloused hands, for walking the streets and talking of what to be without worry of what was to come. They made it for getting married when it was legalised, for a middle finger to the air and a kiss at the bottom of the isle because they made it and fuck that's all that mattered. They made it for congratulations, for fights that blew over and slow dancing when there was no music.
They made it.
Until they didn't. Until their luck ran out. Until fears finally caught them by the throat as reality. Until bullets pierced flesh, bone and muscle.
They made it until that knock at the door by a man in uniform. They made it until walking with a coffin covered by the countries flag. They made it until it was flowers by a grave.
They made it until they could no more.