Outside the Lines (lashton)

(42)

When I groggily wake up, I feel a hand on my thigh and far away talking. The room is bright and I haven't even opened my eyes yet. As I slowly open them, the first thing I see is a doctor holding a small tube and applying whatever is in it to the smaller cuts on my thigh.

"What is that?" I ask groggily.

"Oh good, you're awake. Your friends are worried sick, especially the curly headed one."

"What is that?" I ask again, more awake this time.

"It's skin glue, or liquid stitches. People call it different things," she says to me.

"Can the curly one come in?" I ask her quietly, squeezing my eyes shut. I wish I hadn't put myself in this situation.

"I'll go get him," the nurse standing at the computer in the room says, and leaves behind the curtain of the room. Just then, the mumbled talk I heard when I first woke up stops, and I realise it must have been coming from the boys right outside the curtain. The nurse returns with a tired looking Ashton behind her. He walks fast up to me, probably not wanting to run in an emergency room.

"Are you feeling okay? Besides the obvious, uh, wounds," he asks me immediately.

I try to smile at him and say, "ask me something else."

And the conversation goes from there. He talks about the funny text he got from his sister, to Calum's story he told over dinner after I left the table tonight- yesterday? Yeah, last time I checked it was past four in the morning, so it was yesterday.

The clock says it's now 5:07.

"Are they okay with staying out there?" I ask Ashton.

"Um, to be honest, I don't think they'd want to see you like this," he gives me a sad look.

"You don't have to stay if you don't want to," I tell him. He probably doesn't want to see me like this either.

"I'm not leaving you when you need someone," he says, carding his hand through my hair. It makes me smile.

"What is that, by the way?" he asks, pointing to the skin glue.

"Liquid stitches," I supply.

"We try to do the least amount of stitches possible, so the skin glue is a good alternative for the smaller wounds."

He nods, and it seems like he's at a loss for words. The room falls silent until the doctor speaks up.

"Alright, I'm going to start on the actual stitches now. What I'm going to do is make the area numb with a shot, and then I'll start stitching you up." I nod my head, unable to talk. I grab Ashton's hand and hold on to it for dear life.

"Hate needles," I whisper. He squeezes my hand back in response.

"How about you and your friend hold a conversation about something, like, what TV shows you're both currently watching."

And the ball rolls easily from there.

I start talking about how I've been watching through How I Met Your Mother again and it's still as funny as the first. I mention some of my favorite moments, such as Marshall's fish joke (which some see as lame but I personally find hilarious each time).

Ashton and I laugh about the running gags of the show, and throughout it, I can feel a tugging at my skin. It doesn't hurt, it's merely tugging. The numbing must have really worked.

Ashton goes on to explain how he's started watching Grey's Anatomy, more-so explaining it to the doctor, as I already know he watches it. "A lot of people on the show come in with lacerations so it's prepared me for this moment in a strange way," he says with a small huff of a sad laugh.