Sam (I feel like this one requires zero explanation) @doveportsammy
Spencer. (twinsie) @spencerportcr
Asher. (idk, i just feel like if I didn’t put him on the list it’d be a reason for him to believe I’m too hopelessly in love with him to admit he’s hot. And like yeah, he’s hot. whtvr.) @asherpucks
Sebastian. (he’s gay, not ugly) @smytheonline
Blaine. (he’s a catch dudes, hit this gay up.) @doveportblaine
what: self para; asher wakes up to a facebook post from rowan's parents and spirals.
when: thursday, august 6th
asher woke up to rowan’s face.
for a few seconds, still half-caught in sleep, he did not understand what he was looking at. his phone was bright against the dark of his bedroom, the screen too close to his face, his thumb having opened facebook before his brain had fully come back to him. maybe muscle memory. maybe punishment. maybe some part of him already knew what week it was and had gone looking for the wound before the rest of him could stop it. rowan’s memorial page had been updated twenty-three minutes ago.
his parents had posted.
asher stared at the first photo before he read a single word. rowan, younger than asher had ever known him, smiling with one arm thrown around his mother’s shoulders, curls wild from wind or the simple refusal to sit still. rowan in sunlight, before london, before pale harbor, and before asher. before the first kiss that had cracked asher’s life open and filled it with music.
rowan alive.
asher’s chest tightened so sharply that, for one strange second, he thought he might be sick then he read.
in a few days, our beautiful rowan should be celebrating another birthday.
his thumb froze. the house around him stayed quiet. morning light pressed pale and thin through the curtains of his room in manchester park. outside, the neighborhood was probably doing what neighborhoods did in the morning. cars starting. sprinklers hissing. someone walking a dog. life moving along with obscene, ordinary confidence.
asher read the post once. then again. then a third time, because pain had a stupid rhythm to it, and once his body found it, it did not know how to stop.
how fortunate, to be able to make something from his absence.
his breath caught. just a small, useless hitch that did nothing to keep the rest of him from falling apart. absence. that was what they thought he had built on. not love. not memory. not the last broken piece of himself he had managed to carry home without bleeding all over everyone who touched it. absence.
asher sat up slowly, the sheet slipping from his waist, phone still clutched in his hand. his head felt thick before he had even moved, a dull pressure blooming behind his eyes. he had not slept enough. he never slept enough this week. rowan’s birthday had been approaching like weather, heavy and impossible to outrun, and asher had spent days pretending he could keep busy enough not to feel it gathering, but there it was. two days away. another birthday rowan would never have. another year asher got to keep.
how fortunate, to be the one left standing.
asher let out a sound that was almost a laugh, except there was no humor in it. left standing. as if survival was a victory. as if he had climbed out of the wreckage clean, unburned, grateful. as if he had not spent months after rowan died trying to disappear from the inside out. as if he had not slept on his grave and bathroom floors and strangers’ couches. as if there were not entire weeks of his life he could not look at directly because they were nothing but liquor, static, and the horrible animal ache of waking up again.
left standing. he looked around the room like it might prove them wrong somehow, but all it showed him was his own life. his guitar leaning near the wall. his jacket on the chair. a half-finished notebook open on the floor. the keys to good frequency on the nightstand. proof after proof after proof that he was still here. rowan was not. asher swallowed hard and looked back down.
rowan, you deserved more years, more music, more birthdays, more love that protected you instead of surviving you.
his vision blurred before he could stop it. more love that protected you. asher pressed his thumb against the side of the phone until the edge bit into his skin. he could hear rowan’s voice in his head with cruel, impossible clarity. not the voice from the demo, soft and careful over acoustic guitar, but rowan laughing in the kitchen at two in the morning. rowan calling him ash baby from another room. rowan arguing about a bridge that was too clean, too pretty, too safe. rowan saying his name like asher was a place he liked coming back to.
had he protected him? the question opened under him like a trapdoor. asher had loved rowan. loved him so completely that sometimes he still did not know where that love was supposed to go now. it lived under his ribs with nowhere to land. it moved through his hands when he worked. it lived in the booth, in the speakers, in the silence after a song ended. it lived in the shop, whether rowan’s parents believed that or not, but had love been enough? it had not kept rowan alive.
and there was the ugliest truth, the one asher could not sing into something softer. rowan was dead. asher had survived him. asher bent forward, elbows to knees, phone hanging loose between his hands. the tears fell without much sound. he hated that too. hated the quiet of it. hated that grief had become familiar enough to move through him without ceremony. no great sob. no dramatic collapse. just his body remembering a pain it already knew by heart.
he wanted to be angry and he tried. there was a part of him that knew the post was cruel. a part of him that knew grief made people look for someone to blame because otherwise the universe was too big and too empty and too unfair. he knew rowan’s parents had lost their son. he knew they were allowed to miss him in ways that were ugly. he knew, he knew, he knew, but knowing did not stop the words from getting in. it did not stop him from feeling like maybe they had only said what everyone else was too kind to say out loud.
that good frequency was selfish.
that finishing your frequency was selfish.
that laughing again was selfish.
that kissing harriet, holding her hand, asking her to be his girlfriend with a ruined cake and a shaking voice had been selfish.
that every happy thing he touched now was something stolen from a man who should have been here to have more.
asher wiped at his face with the heel of his hand, but more tears came. his throat hurt from holding back all the noise his body wanted to make, even though there was no one there to hear him. that almost made it worse. the house was too quiet without hattie in it. she had been there last night. warm in his bed, real beside him, close enough that he could have reached for her in the dark and found proof that something good still wanted him, but she had gone to work before he woke up, leaving behind only the faintest trace of her in the room. the disturbed pillow. the memory of her body beside his. the kind of absence that was ordinary and temporary and still somehow made his chest ache.
he did not want her to text and ask if he was okay. he did not want his parents to check in. he did not want claude to somehow sense something from across town and call from the attic above the shop, because what would he even say?
i woke up and remembered i’m the one who lived.
i think his parents wish i hadn’t.
i don’t know how to carry being loved by someone who is gone without making everyone hate me for still breathing.
instead, he sat there phone in hand. rowan’s face on the screen with the post beneath it. morning coming in like it had any right. after a while, asher locked the phone and set it facedown on the bed beside him. the room looked darker without it. quieter too, though the words did not disappear. they stayed right where they were, branded behind his eyes.
more love that protected you instead of surviving you.
he got up eventually because his body knew how to move even when the rest of him did not. he pulled on yesterday’s shirt. found his jeans. brushed his teeth too hard, like he could scrub the taste of guilt out of his mouth. downstairs, he poured coffee and did not drink it. opened the cabinet. stood there too long then reached for something stronger.
by the time he drove the short distance from manchester park to good frequency, the morning had sharpened around him. the shop was still quiet when he unlocked it, the records waiting in their bins, the air holding that familiar mix of old vinyl, dust, and the coffee he had not bothered to bring with him. somewhere above him, claude was probably still in the attic, or maybe not. asher did not check.
he could not handle being seen yet, so he went straight to the production booth and shut the door behind him. he decided he was going to work. that was what people expected from him, wasn’t it? to make something. make something from absence. make something from grief. make something from the hollowed-out place where rowan used to live.
asher sat in the chair. the monitors stared back at him. the session file waited on the screen, patient and terrible. he put on his headphones. for a long moment, he did nothing then he pressed play. rowan’s voice filled the room.
you hear music where the world goes quiet…
asher closed his eyes, and the first tear slipped down before the guitar even came in. “i’m sorry,” he whispered, though there was no one there to answer him. no one alive, anyway. and still, like a punishment and a prayer, rowan kept singing.
the stones are one of those families people in carroll tend to know by name even if they do not know them well. not because they are loud about who they are, but because they have always carried a certain kind of gravity with music, medicine, old cultural legacy, too many opinions at dinner, and the sort of warmth that makes people feel like they have accidentally wandered into the middle of a family argument and been handed a plate anyway.
at the center of the family are elliot stone (64) and beatrice “bea” stone (61), who built a home that somehow managed to be both deeply loving and deeply chaotic. bea is a cardiologist, practical and warm, the kind of mother who can diagnose a heart problem in more ways than one. elliot is quieter, more cerebral, and dryly observant, the son of one of the men who started rolling stone magazine. while he grew up close to music history, fame, and all the noise that came with it, elliot chose a quieter life, working as a music historian, archivist, and documentary consultant rather than chasing the spotlight himself.
together, bea and elliot raised four children: sebastian, remy, vivica, and asher.
sebastian “seb” stone (39) is the oldest, and it shows. responsible almost against his will, seb grew into the kind of man who knows where the paperwork is, who read the contract before anyone else realized there was a contract, and who has spent most of his life acting like he is above family chaos while quietly managing half of it. he works as an entertainment attorney specializing in music rights, publishing, and licensing, which makes him the sibling most likely to ask asher if he has actually signed anything before agreeing to something ridiculous.
remy stone (36) is the second oldest, adopted into the family as a child and loved no less fiercely for it. non-binary, theatrical, sharp, and warm in equal measure, remy works as a stagewear stylist, costume designer, and creative director. where seb is structure, remy is expression. they understand performance, image, and the power of walking into a room already knowing exactly who you are. they were one of the first people to make asher feel like being “too much” was not a flaw, and they have taken great pride in encouraging some of his more dramatic instincts.
vivica “viv” stone (33) is the only daughter and the sibling closest in age to asher. glamorous, cutting, protective, and terrifyingly perceptive, viv works as a music supervisor for film and television. she has impeccable taste and absolutely weaponizes it. viv is the kind of older sister who can ruin asher’s life with one raised eyebrow, then fix his collar before anyone else sees he is falling apart. she and asher bicker constantly, usually about music, taste, timing, or whether he is making an emotional decision with his whole chest again. he usually is.
then there is asher stone, the baby.
the baby of the family, asher inherited a little bit of everyone. bea’s heart, elliot’s reverence for music, seb’s understanding of the industry, remy’s flair for performance, and viv’s impossible standards. a musician, producer, and owner of good frequency records, asher has spent most of his life turning feeling into sound. he is the family’s golden retriever with a motorcycle, a studio, and too many feelings to fit neatly inside his body. adored, teased, protected, and occasionally bullied by his older siblings, asher is very much the emotional youngest child of the stone family.
the stones love loudly even when they are pretending not to. they argue about music like it is a moral issue. they show up for each other, sometimes with advice, sometimes with food, sometimes with legal documents, and sometimes just by standing in the back of a room and listening. for all their different paths, they share the same foundation: heart, music, loyalty, and the belief that if something matters, you show up for it.
have you seen ( asher stone, he/him )? They look a lot like ( milo manheim ). The ( 28 ) year old ( indie music producer ) is so ( goofball, charming, hardworking ) but I heard they can also be really ( sarcastic, never serious, impulsive ). Can you believe they’ve been in town for ( their whole life )?! They live in the ( Manchester Park) neighborhood and kind of remind me of ( late night coffee runs, headphones around your neck, texts asking if you made it home, humming absentmindedly without noticing ). If I was asked, I’d guess that they were ( most likely to start a band ) in their yearbook for the class of ( 2015 ).
FULL NAME: Asher Stephen Stone
AGE: 28
DATE OF BIRTH: February 14
GENDER IDENTITY: cis male
NEIGHBORHOOD: Manchester Park
OCCUPATION: indie music producer, starting a record shop soon!!
POSITIVE TRAITS: goofball, charming, hardworking
NEGATIVE TRAITS:sarcastic, never serious, impulsive
LENGTH OF TIME IN CARROLL: his whole life, but has just came back from a two year stint away
FACE CLAIM: milo manheim
BIOGRAPHY
Asher is the youngest of four in the Stone household, the baby of the family and the one who seemed born with music already stitched into him. From the time he was small, he could pick up nearly any instrument and coax something beautiful out of it, so his parents—who saw his gift early—made sure he always had what he needed to grow. The Stones came from a deeply musical lineage; Asher’s grandfather had been one of the founders of Rolling Stone magazine, and the family’s success meant they could fully indulge their youngest son’s passion.
Despite his easygoing nature, Asher was quietly brilliant. He skipped a grade and surprised everyone by graduating as valedictorian, never having made a show of how hard he worked or how much he understood. After graduation, he chose to take a gap year to travel, drifting across Europe with little more than his instruments and a laptop. What began as casual collaborations with small indie bands turned into steady production work, his reputation growing through word of mouth as artists realized how intuitively he could read their sound and translate their “vibe” into fully realized tracks.
By the end of that year, college felt unnecessary. He leaned fully into producing, using his connections to keep traveling and working with artists both well-known and obscure. For the past 2 years he was rarely home in Carroll except for brief holiday visits, always humming some melody stuck in his head and chasing the next project. Now, though, he’s returned—at least for a while—opening a record shop in town, a place that lets him stay rooted without ever really leaving the music behind.
