The Drummer || a.i [completed]

55 - how is it you'll never notice

that you are slowly killing me

For the past week Ashton had been the dream boyfriend. He talked to me in school every chance he got, he introduced me to his friends (who I didn't like but I decided to keep my mouth shut about), he even sat with me and Calum at lunch, even if he didn't want to. But then again, he told me that that part was for the future of the band, not for me. I think he just didn't want to accept what his friends said about him and me; he was whipped.

All this teasing actually warmed me on the inside. The possible fact that Ashton was whipped for me... it made me happy. I wanted him to be so in love with me that he would do whatever I wanted just to make me happy. That may make me seem like the most selfish girl alive, but doesn't every girl want that? A knight in shining armour, a man who is flexible for you, a man who just wants to see you smile? Isn't that every girl's dream?

My words from the past were just that now: the past. I no longer believed my prejudiced assumptions, I no longer thought of the words I had said to him the first time he acknowledged me... "I know what you do to girls and I know that even if you say you will change, I know you won't really. You need to stop trying to lie your way into bed with me, Ashton. I don't even know why you want it, to be honest."

Ashton had changed since I first truly met him. He was no longer the Jerkton I thought I knew of.

I wandered down the hallway, and stopped abruptly when I saw a group of boys crowded around the janitor's closet laughing together. I hurried backwards and hid around the corner, peeking around the wall to watch what was happening from a safe distance.

I heard muffled shouts which I presumed were coming from the closet, and when they induced more laughter from the boys, I thought I had enough evidence and would go over to them and help the person in the closet.

But then I saw Ashton.

The keys to the closet were dangling from his index finger and a triumphant smile was on his face.

"You've got to come out of the closet sometime, Jason!" Ashton teased, proud of his play on words as they earned more laughter and high-fives from his peers.

My bottom lip started to tremble and I bit it to stop myself from crying, while my fists clenched in anger. This was unforgivable.

Ashton has hurt me before, but every time I've let it slide.

He beat up my brother, he kissed me without consent, and he's just straight up been a cocky asshat. Every time I have forgiven him, I have forgiven him because I love him.

I've had those dreaded rose-tinted glasses on the whole time, stopping me from seeing him for what he truly is... a bully.

Locking Jason in the janitor's closet is evidence I cannot deny. This has been right under my nose the whole time, but I've been ignoring it, looking straight ahead, willing to forgive Ashton for anything just so I can live out my fantasy of us loving each other.

I pressed myself against the wall, looking up at the ceiling and trying to gather up the courage to go over there and confront him. But I... I just couldn't. I couldn't bring myself to shatter my happy image of a lovey-dovey relationship with him.

I heard the boys walk away, dropping the keys in front of the closet just for Jason's torment. I took a deep breath, waiting until the sounds of Ashton and his friends' laughter had faded away, and then hurried over to the closet.

I picked up the keys and hesitated for just a millisecond - causing self-hatred to bubble up inside of me - before unlocking the closet door and opening it for Jason. I saw him standing up in the corner with his arms wrapped around himself and swaying from side to side, staring at the floor. "A-are you okay, Jason?" I asked, biting my lip again as the nerves made me want to run away to avoid getting caught here by Ashton.

He looked up and froze. I saw the incredible fear in his eyes, and he cowered away from me.

"It's okay, I'm not going to hurt you, Jason," I promised, reaching out a hand to him and trying to make myself seem as unthreatening as possible.

He blinked for a second and then hesitantly took my hand, letting me help him out of the closet without any mops or anything falling on him. "B-but aren't you Ashton Irwin's girlfriend? Why would you help me?"

I looked at the floor, ashamed. I couldn't believe that I genuinely thought that maybe Ashton wasn't doing all the things I heard he was doing. I just nodded in response to his first question. I couldn't think of an answer to his second one.

"Well, um, thank you," he said, then took off running.

I shut the closet door with a sigh, a breath of air with contained all my rose-tinted hopes and dreams of my relationship with Ashton.

For the past week, Ashton had been the dream boyfriend. The perfect boyfriend who attended to all my wishes. He listened to me, he learnt from his mistakes, the mistakes I pointed out. But those ones had been under my nose. They had been obvious, blatantly staring at me and distracting me from the more subtle mistake, the one he'd been hiding in the janitor's closet.

Ashton was an enigma. Every time I thought I'd figured him out, I found a new mystery that he'd been hiding. He was a twisted web of deception, white lies mixed with black ones, dark ones that he thought he could twist into a different persona, a new facet of him that he thought I might mistake for an entirely separate person.

But he couldn't hide this from me anymore.

Ashton was one whole jumble of people. I'd only grown to love one of his faces. He was like a rubix cube of personalities, the one he'd shown me being the white one. What I had to do now was expose each side of him, turn him over and twist him around until I discover every one of his secrets. If he was going to be my boyfriend, I had to figure out if every one of his facets actually loved me.

I believed his first one. When he told me he loved me, I saw right into his eyes. I knew he wasn't lying. But did the Ashton I just saw now, dropping the keys just out of reach of Jason's fingertips, did he love me?

No matter how I looked at this scene, I knew that my glasses had shattered. There was no way I was going to get through this hurdle in my relationship with Ashton.