Project Ugly// l.h au

1.2// Vices and Virtues

Melody and Luke had been acting strange around each other since the day after he slept over her house. It hadn't taken long for everyone to notice that something was off, but no one had the guts to ask what had happened. So it left the group with uncomfortable, awkward, silences. For the past week lunch had been awful, to put it simply. Melody was excruciatingly quiet, and Luke had barely been there, because he was busy with his hook ups. But now they were all together, and no one was really talking because there wasn't really anything to say.

"Gonna go to the bathroom," Melody mumbled, under her breath, and stood up from the table. She really just needed to take a walk because she was sick and tired of feeling this uncomfortable around Luke. There wasn't even a real reason that they should be uncomfortable around each other, because when he left her house they were fine. They even texted each other later that night, but when they saw each other in person the next day it was so painfully awkward that they avoided any and all conversation.

Melody was too caught up in her thoughts to realize that Asthon had followed her out of the lunch room. He bumped her shoulder with hers, and she jolted back thinking it was Luke.

"Just me," Ashton laughed. Melody exhaled, and nodded. "What is going on with you and Lucas?" He asked after some silence, which Melody assumed that he was thinking over if he should ask or not. They had both stopped walking and they were standing across from each other on opposite sides of the hallway.

"I don't know," she said truthfully. Honestly she had no idea what was wrong with them, but all she really wanted to do was talk to him.

"I'm trying to help, and that's all you give me," Ash groaned.

"Sorry, didn't mean to ruin your plan Dr. Phil," Melody snorted. Ashton tried to hold in a laugh because he was trying to act like he was annoyed with her, but he couldn't help it when he let out a string of giggles.

"Please just tell me what's going on, he won't tell me anything either," he pressed.

"I really don't know, we were fine when he left my house, and now we're not," Melody frowned. The more she thought about the situation, the more upset she got.

"Did something happen?" Ash pried even further. He was just trying to get the two on speaking terms again, and trying to get the both of them to cheer up.

"Um, not really? I mean, I don't think it was a big deal..." she trailed off. She thought back to Luke being so close to her, and his breath on her neck. She was probably blushing, so she tried to hide her face from him.

"Alright, Elmo, what happened?"

"He just kept like kissing my head, and cheek," she shrugged. Ashton gave her a look to go on, she obviously wasn't just blushing about that. She sighed and continued, "I don't know before he left he just got really close, and I thought he was really going to kiss me. But he didn't and he just kind of was really close to my neck," how was she supposed to explain it other than that?

"Was he, like, joking?" He seemed as confused as her. Melody shook her head. Ashton was quiet for a minute, "Show me?" He asked, a slight smirk playing on his lips. Mel crossed her arms, and stayed where she was standing. "From your point of view, I want to see what happened," he shrugged.

"So like you want me to show you what he did?" She asked, trying to clarify what he was trying to get her to do. Ashton nodded, she was a bit confused with why he was so interested in this. "Okay, but why?"

"I need to gather my research before I get to the bottom of the problem," he laughed.

"Thanks, detective," she teased, and walked over to where he was standing. "Okay so I was like against the wall," she instructed him to move backwards. "And he kind of..." Mel grabbed at the fabric at the bottom of Ashton's shirt. "Might be difficult because you're so tall," she said standing on her tip toes, closing the tiny space between her and Ashton's bodies.