Asher feels... strange.

It's not like there's any shortage of work to do. He still has to turn in Fisk to the police and send information to the newspapers, practice with more mind-control devices, design more products for Stark Industries, figure out how to donate more effectively. But he has a hard time concentrating. Sometimes he realizes that he's been staring out into space for fifteen minutes, twenty minutes, an hour, and he hasn't done anything. When he tries to make a decision, he feels overwhelmed. He always used to be quick and confident and now he spends hours dithering over the simplest things.

He can't sleep. He doesn't eat. He stays up late, pacing circles around his workshop.

He feels miserable. He deserves to feel miserable, he murdered Sasha, he wasn't good enough and Sasha died and he was lucky that Sasha is still alive, stupidly lucky, he didn't deserve to feel that lucky, and Sasha is never going to want to speak with him again and that's what he deserves because he was not good enough. He almost made a mistake he couldn't fix, after a lifetime of making mistakes.

He's killed kids. He doesn't know if he'll make another mistake again and murder some other child. He's not okay with himself and he doesn't get to be okay, child murderers don't get to be okay.

Asher thinks a lot about Sasha telling him that he should just go die, and then jumping off a building without his suit on, and on the way down seeing Sasha smiling because he deserves to die and then everything is okay. He doesn't know how else to make things okay.  

He thinks a lot about flying the nuclear bomb into the portal and the moment he thought he was going to die and he thought, This is it, I'm 21 and my life is over, I never fell in love or had kids or visited China or saw the stars for real without city lights getting in the way, and his eyes closed and everything went dark and then his eyes opened and they were alive and got shwarma and it was okay, everything was okay, because he was alive and he was Asher Stark and as long as those things were true nothing could go really wrong except it did and he would have been happier if his eyes had never opened at all.

He goes out to the clubs he used to like for the first time in... a while. It's not fun. But he gets really really drunk and picks a girl up and fucks her in the bathroom and. It's okay. He still hates himself but he can drown it out if he throws enough at it, enough loud music enough alcohol enough drugs enough sex enough--

He doesn't use condoms. He does use needles. He really can't bring himself to care.

Asher calls Alex and fucks him stone-cold sober and it feels like insects are crawling all over his skin but that's okay because that's what he deserves.

Asher is not only not talking to him, he's getting drunk and high and having loud sex with someone Lev hasn't actually met before but who seems to be a disturbingly angry mutant rights activist! Instead of responding to Lev's emails about the Stark Foundation, even the time-sensitive ones!

This is all really really concerning.

He sees Lev in the afternoons and texts Marlo at night and avoids any and all information about how he's doing in school and ignores his classmates. 

He makes a Google doc of texts he doesn't send. It gets very long very quickly. He reads probably too many shitty tabloid articles about Asher. 

"You can tell me you don't want to talk about it and it's fine," Lev says one afternoon, "but I'm really kind of worried about Asher."

"I don't mind talking about it. 

I am too." 

"He's drinking a lot. And... other things. And he's not talking to me or Z but he is sleeping with this guy who keeps hashtagging his tweets #MagnetoWasRight."

"Yeah." He reaches out and laces their fingers together. "Do you think I should try to talk to him, or —?" 

"...I don't think he would want you to talk to him if it would make you sad?"

"...I don't know if it would or not." 

Not talking to him is making me sad, he doesn't say, because he doesn't know if that's true either. I'm sad right now, he doesn't say, because they both already know it. 

"It can't hurt." He rests his head on Sasha's shoulder. "I realize that I'm-- so far from the person worst affected here but. The problem with only having two friends is that if both of your friends are sad and it is hurting you there's no one to talk to about it."

He puts a hand on Lev's hair, turns to kiss his forehead. "Yeah. We should try to find you more friends, but — yeah. 

I'll talk to him tonight. And — I want you to feel like you can talk to me if things are hurting you? Even if things are hurting me too." 

"I don't want more friends." He's sniffling a bit into Sasha's shoulder. "I want you to be happy."

Sasha lets go of Lev's hand so he can hold him better. 

"I know. I'm working on it." 

There are cuddles so there is at least one thing in the world that is not terrible.

There are cuddles and Lev, that makes two. 

Cuddles and Lev and Sasha. Three!

Yes. Three at least. 

That night he drafts yet another text to Asher and reads it and deletes it and retypes it and hits send before he can rethink. 

are you awake?

It's Sasha's ringtone.

yeah

can't sleep lately

I think I'm sick?

I can't either 

He pauses, types 

can I come over?

pauses again, and sends it. 

The text comes quickly:

I'd love to see you

and he texts Alex to cancel.

He grabs his backpack and swings over, changes into normal clothes while he's still on the roof before knocking on the door inside. 

Asher makes a move towards scooping him up in his arms and then. Stops.

He hugs Asher. 

"Hey." 

He hugs back very tentatively. 

"I think I might be sick but I don't know what kind of sick it is. Pretty sure it's not contagious. I've, uh, been physically close to a lot of people lately and none of them seem to have come down with it. Although if Alex came down with a case of listlessness and tiredness I'm not sure how we'd know."

"...I'm not going to ask if you've tried looking it up on WebMD, just because that's the first thing I do doesn't mean it's actually a good idea. Do you want to sit down?"