gone ✧*｡ luke a.u.

43: october 17 2011

LUKE

FRIDAY, 17TH OCTOBER, 2011

There was a crack at Luke's bedroom window as loud as a gunshot; he jolted awake and stared wildly around the pitch black darkness of his room, gasping for breath, heart pounding. He'd been jerked out of a nightmare, and couldn't help the flood of irrational, frightened thoughts that rushed through him—someone fired a gun, someone's robbing the house, they're attacking my family.  Only as his eyes adjusted did he become certain that there was not, in fact, a gun-wielding murderer waiting to rob him. Still—there could be anyone in the house.

Luke took a deep breath, steeling himself, and was just untangling his sweaty limbs from the covers and preparing to bolt out of his room when he heard another crack—not in the house, but at his window. Startled, he glanced over at the window so quickly his neck jerked, only to see a rock as it fell from his window, bounced off the sill and disappeared from sight.

"What the . . ." He walked slowly over to the window, torn between confusion, apprehension, fear, and the absurd need to laugh. This could either be an axe murderer—or someone playing Romeo, throwing rocks at his window. If it was one of the boys, he'd kill them for waking him up.

When he opened his window and peered out across the stretch of lawn that framed the side of his house, he saw that it was not an axe murderer, or even any of the boys.

"Ellie?" he hissed. His voice sounded unnaturally loud in the tranquil darkness. It had to be past midnight; all the windows of the houses on his street were dark, no people or cars in sight. "What are you doing here?" The haze of sleep that had clouded his brain since he'd woken up had disappeared; he gazed at her in bemusement. "Shouldn't you be asleep?"

She was standing half behind a tree on the path below his window, everything about her shrouded in darkness except for her face, which glowed an incandescent white in the moonlight. As he watched, a sheepish smile spread across her face, then faltered. Her hands twisted into knots in front of her body as she said quickly, anxiously, "I'm sorry, I can go if you want me to—I really shouldn't have woken you up, it was stupid of me to, I just thought—"

"Stop." Luke held a hand out to her through the window, his voice not ungentle. "It's okay, El. You can explain when you get inside. Come, I'll help you up. Take my hand."

After a moment she stepped forward, climbing onto an old wooden table on the path beneath his window for elevation, reaching up on her tiptoes for extra height. And although she was clearly embarrassed and wouldn't fully meet his eyes, Luke still felt a thrill of nervous adrenaline course through him at the touch of her skin when he grabbed her hand. She gave a small shriek as he lifted her up—she's light, he thought, too light; she weighs almost nothing—and pulled her as gently as he could through the window. Only once she had her feet firmly on the carpet in his bedroom did he release her hand.

He noticed two things as he took a step back from her: that she was pale and violently shivering; and how cold it had become in his bedroom with the window gaping open. He quickly pulled it closed, cutting off the chilly breeze and setting the curtains still on either side of the window, and the room felt suddenly much warmer.

"Better?" Luke asked, and Ellie nodded mutely, her storm-grey eyes unreadable in the darkness. She had stopped shivering. Luke gazed down at her, his lips quirking slowly up into a smirk. "Just out of curiosity," he said, "did you really need to throw rocks? We have a front door, you know."

Even in the dim light, Luke could see the dark flush that coloured her cheeks. "I—well, I thought it'd be—"

Luke's smirk grew. "Romantic?"