Barely Breathing//Ethis

119||

Ethan's point of view:

When I get back to Chris' house he's curled up in bed under the covers, asleep. I smile and put my backpack down walking over to the bed and sitting on the edge near Chris.

I pull my phone out from my back pocket and open Instagram instantly being flooded with hundreds of comments and almost as many tags. I can't help but worry as I click on my notifications. What I see is not at all what I expected it to be: people are tagging both Chris and I in videos and photos of us from the concert last night.

Photos and videos of us kissing, hugging and dancing. I don't freak out though, the ones freaking out of course are the fans. They're all wanting an explanation, I won't confirm or deny anything until I talk to Chris though. I instead decide to like a few comments asking and saying that Chris and I are dating and I comment a ';)' on a few people's posts about it.

Almost immediately I start getting more and more comments and tags of people reposting my comment and likes.

"Mmm" Chris stirs "Ethan?"

"Hey I'm back" I smile and turn off my phone

"Can you lay with me, please?" He mumbles sleepily

I nod and Chris moves over making room for me to lie next to him, and that's just what I do. Chris tiredly drapes an arm over me and I turn on my side to face him.

"Have you been asleep the whole time I've been gone?" I ask

"Yeah" he says softly as he rubs his eyes "what time is it?"

"It's 5:30" I check the time on his phone that's sitting on the bedside table.

"Can you pass my phone to me?" He asks and I do.

I watch him go on Instagram and scroll through his feed, he looks up at me with wide eyes once he's checked his notifications.

"Have you seen this?" He asks turning his phone to show me a photo of us kissing at the concert.

"Yes I have" I look up to meet his eyes

"Are you... okay?" He sits up more so he can look at me properly

"Yes I'm okay" I reply "are you?"

"Yeah" he says looking back at his phone, but he seems a bit unsure "I think so, it's a bit of a shock that's all."

"You still want to tell the fans right?" I put my hand on his arm gently

"Yes of course I do" he says scrolling through a few posts about the photo of us at the concert. 

"Good" I smile "because I want to"

He turns his head to look at me and he smiles, he's wanted this for a while.

But then all of a sudden his smile fades and it seems as though that both of us have now remembered what we had been avoiding.

"I know you said that you're okay but that was about the photo, are you really okay?" I ask cautiously, I know the answer already though.

"No, not really" he replies flatly "how am I meant to feel right now?"

"I don't know" I reply honestly "I'm here for you, we're in this together" I grab his hand and intertwine our fingers.

"Come here"

I crawl onto him and lie down again, I run my fingers through his hair and push it back.

"I love you so much" he smiles gently rubbing his hand up and down my back

"I love you too, I promise it'll be okay. I don't know what else to say I'm sorry" I rest my chin on his chest and look up at him.

"Don't be sorry, I know it'll be okay eventually."

"Good" I smile, he smiles too and runs a hand through my hair

"So" he says, "how's Tahlia?"

"Well besides the whole being sick thing I'd say that she's doing pretty well, she's got a boyfriend and she told me about him and stuff, his names Jackson. Ummm what else? She told me that she made the netball team at school and she was all happy and excited about that so that's good. Annnnd that's about all I can remember I'm sure there was other stuff." I tell him and as I'm speaking all he's doing is looking at me with the tiniest smile on his face, listening to me.

"It's good to hear that she's doing so well" he notes

"Yeah it is, it makes me happy to know that she's happy" I smile

"That's good Bub" he runs a hand through my hair again. There's a moment of silence before he speaks again, "hey, you wanna go in the pool?"

"Sure" I sit up, going in the pool will hopefully get his mind off everything.

I pull him up and I don't stop there, I run out his room and down the stairs all still pulling him with me.

"Hey wait we have to put our bathers on"

"Nah we don't, come on it'll be fun" we finally get outside and I drop his hand jumping straight into the pool.

I come back up out the water and flick my hair back to look at Chris, he's looking right at me.

"You're weird" he says and I laugh

"Come on Chris it's part of the fun" I splash water towards him

"Hey!" He steps back holding his arms up to cover his face

"Come on Chrissyyyyy" I pull my shirt off and throw it to the side of the pool

"Alright fine" Chris pulls his shirt off and jumps into the pool

He comes back up and flicks his hair to the side out his face.

"See?" I smile "isn't this fun?"

"Yeah I guess" he floats on his back

I smirk and splash water at him.

"Oi!" He stands up and splashes me back

Quickly we've started a splash war and it's definitely gotten in both our eyes and I'd say we've both swallowed a decent amount of water but Chris is smiling and laughing and that's exactly what I had hoped for.

"Okay, okay, okay truce" he holds up his hands and I stop splashing him.

He walks up to me and pulls me into a hug. I hug him back and we just stand in the pool, neither of us speaking.

A/N: I'm not very happy with how this chapter has turned out but for the sake of updating, here you go *hands update to you* enjoy :))

also I couldn't be bothered proof reading and checking for mistakes so you know how that goes