pretty chapped lips : malum :

2.8

for all of the lashton shippers, i hope you enjoy awkward little luke 

The day Ashton Irwin sat down with us at lunch was the day I started wondering if my father hit me hard enough to cause brain damage.

It wasn't even a week after the whispering had started and the whole school knew. It wasn't a shock Luke liked a guy, it was more the fact he liked the most unattainable guy in the district. It wasn't exactly that Ashton was unattainable so to say, he just didn't date.In fact a lot of people thought he was something along the lines of asexual until Calum showed up and they all thought it was a one time thing. That he was just an exception. And, well, Calum seems to have that ability.

The overall feeling of self loathing and embarrassment seemed to have simmered down. At least now Luke wasn't on the urge of tears anyone looked his way, we even managed to sit in the cafeteria again.

It was bittersweet, he had told me a few days before as we sat on the school pitches again, watching birds fly around and idiots chase after a ball.

I asked what he meant, head on my arms as I looked at him sitting therein the sun light.

But his broad shoulders shrugged, chin resting on his knees, arms around them like he could become a human ball if he tried hard enough.

"I don't have to hide it now, yeno? But it sucks, because when I did at least I had this stupid hope that he could feel the same."

We didn't talk about it after that point. Instead we poured our time into the song we were writing for music (which had promptly turned itself into a song about heart break and unrequited love rather than a normal love song) and the conversation was over. And it was strange because for the first time in maybe two years I didn't hear abou tAshton Irwin and his oh so bright hazel eyes and how Angels couldn't exist if something as perfect as him lived on this very earth.

It was like every other day at lunch. We sat down at the same round table with four seats, across from one another instead of side by side. He slid over a sandwich identical to his own (chicken, since it was a Monday and that's a Monday thing in the Hemmings family) and we sat there. I had one earphone in as he talked about pointless things like how he hated his maths teacher and how if they had to climb a rope in PE like they did in America he may die.

And then it happened, and it was anticlimactic.

"Uh, hey, Luke right? Can I - um - can I sit here?"

The only interesting thing that happened was the fact Luke almost fell off his chair.

There was a solid three seconds of total silence. Luke was sitting there, gripping onto his chair and the table and staring wide eyed like he just someone get shot. It was kind of amusing really.

And there he stood. Straightened hair with a fringe I've heard about too much in the past few years, a clear container held in his hands against his abdomen and a smile that made his eyes twinkle and dimples peek out from his cheeks. If there was one thing Luke got right about Ashton Irwin, wasn't hot – he was beautiful.

And it made my stomach churn.

Luke just nodded, wordlessly. Wide eyes staring as the beautiful boy he's been pining for two years above pulled out a chair and sat down right between us. Seemingly unaffected or maybe just unaware of my idiot friends staring, the seventeen year old just opened the container he held his lunch in, setting it into top of the lid before finally looking up.

At this point we were both staring.

"What?" He asked slowly, eyebrows furrowed with a look matching that strongly of a puppy. "Do you want me to leave because I-"

"No!"

And then it was Ashton and I that were staring.

Luke's cheeks were bright red, eyes wide and I swore I almost heard a whimper behind closed lips. He sat there, frozen, and for a second I pitied him.

"No-I mean no like, uh- like I meant in the way that-."

But the seventeenth year old with his pretty smiles and oh so bright hazel eyes just shrugged his shoulders, the corners of his lips turned up as he looked at the stuttering blond and part of me wondered if maybe, he wasn't as much of an idiot as I thought.

"Alright, I'll stay."

A/N

muke or lashton

malum or cashton

quick, pick pick pick, for future reference you'll find out soon enough as to why those questions are so very, very important.

anyways i hope you all liked this little lashton centric chapter, don't worry we go back to malum very soon and by very soon i mean that the next ten, twenty chapters are a lot of malum and a lot less.. well, you'll find out soon enough.

as always i hope you enjoyed this, until next time my lovely readers, have a great day

-rachelx