Painting Flowers // Ashton Irwin [au]

Eleven

Emilia's POV

I head over to the copy room and wait for the large quantity of papers to shoot out from the printer tray. Just as the papers begin to slide out, a pair of hands covers my eyes from behind me, and I instinctively jump at the loss of eyesight.

"Dammit, Ash," I say jokingly. "You know it scares the crap out of me when you sneak up behind me."

"Make that two people," a deeper voice says with a chuckle.

I quickly remove his warm hands from my eyes and swivel on my heel. Even though it's not Ash who snuck up on me, I still smile when I see Luke instead. "I swear you're just as bad as Ash," I say, enveloping him in a hug. "What are you doing here?" I ask once I pull away.

"Since you weren't here the last time I tried to visit, I thought I'd try again," Luke says. "And I wanted to talk to you about Ash."

The printer behind me continues to spew out paper at a rapid pace before beeping loudly. "Is he okay?" I ask as I grab a ream of paper and refill the tray to end the beeping and continue the printing job.

"Yeah, he's okay," he says. "That's exactly why I wanted to talk to you. I take it you guys patched things up the other day?"

"How do you know?"

"Well, he came home the with this lovesick puppy expression, which I haven't seen him make in a while. He only makes that face when something good happens or when you two have sex, and judging by your lack of embarrassment at the mention of sex, I take it that it wasn't the reason."

I roll my eyes. "Great observation and deduction skills, Sherlock." I haven't seen or hung out with Ash long enough for us to even do that thanks to our schedules.

"I'm just messing with you, Emmie," Luke says with a half-smile. "So how'd you work things out with him?

"We talked through everything and he got some things off his chest. He even told me about him and Natalie."

"How'd you manage to get him to talk to you about her?"

I shrug. "He asked me for help and I thought that getting everything out in the open would better him. He didn't want to at first but he gave in."

"What did he tell you?"

"How he started having a crush on Natalie when he was 8 and what led to them dating. He was very...descriptive."

It was difficult to hear Ash talk about her that way. I didn't expect him to go into so much detail. The memories of Natalie are so vivid in his mind and the way he spoke about her made me feel slightly jealous and uncomfortable, but I should have expected that. I'm the one asking him to tell me about his relationship with Natalie and I'm going to have to get used to hearing him talk like that.

"I'm not surprised," Luke says. "He has an artist's mind. Anything in this world including memories becomes a piece of art that he can easily describe."

"That actually makes a lot of sense."

"Yeah, it can get annoying at times, especially when he starts talking about you because he talks as if we've never seen you before and has to say every detail," he says, chuckling. "I've learned to tune him out."

"Well, at least you'll never be able to forget what I look like," I joke.

"It's impossible," he says, grinning widely.

Nothing makes me happier than knowing that Ashton is starting to act like himself again. Just being with him and hearing him talk about the one haunting him makes me proud. He pushed himself more than needed, but he did it for himself. He wants to let go and he's working towards doing just that.