rain ✧ lrh

9. what is this, twenty-one questions?

Luke Hemmings was facing something he chose to define as a moral dilemma.

He had decided a long time ago that there was nothing morally correct about him, so he had abandoned the line between wrong and right already. But there was Nova. And she seemed to be so right, so unlike Luke, that it scared the hell out of him.

It was just a lunch, for fucks sake. And he's the one that suggested it.

But Luke wasn't used to taking girls out to eat unless his head buried between their thighs and his arms keeping them from squirming away from his commonly referenced as expert tongue was considered food, and he certainly didn't want to taint his time with Nova with former habits that bored the hell out of him when it was all he seemed to do on the weekends.

It was safe to say that he was freaking the fuck out. Like, one-thousand-percent freaking the fuck out. He paced his room for so long that Calum pounded on the wall and practically begged him to give it a rest. It's seven-thirty in the fucking morning, bro. Go back to fucking bed. To which Luke had nothing to say because he knew he should've been sleeping, but he couldn't stop having reoccurring nightmares about Ashton finding out that he was even speaking to Nova and telling her everything; the bad, the worse, and the unspeakable. Plus, he was having an internal debate on whether or not he should show up for breakfast with her; would she get tired of him too soon if he spent more than an hour with her?

Ultimately, he decided that he should probably go - his overthinking had convinced him that if he ditched her in the morning she might think he hates her and not want to get lunch with him. Deciding what to wear was an entire other issue, so he decided to go on a run before he ended up at the dining hall. He hurriedly put on a pair of joggers, a grey hoodie, and an unzipped black windbreaker before he laced up the sneakers that he left on the rack in his closet.

It was cold outside, one of the commonalities of the midwest that Luke despised. He put the hood to his sweatshirt up and tied the strings together so it wouldn't loosen and fall before he grabbed his keys and ID and bolted through the front door.

His pace was quicker than usual and he managed to cover a third of the campus before he realized that he had somehow forgotten a pair of earbuds. He was suddenly aware of his annoyingly harsh breaths and the ache in the back of his throat from running in the cold temperature. And then he noticed the way his hair was peaking out of the hood of his sweatshirt and the way Nova was going to see him looking like an entire god damn mess, so he debated turning back and running home.

Of course, that was when the girl herself decided to send Luke a text that put an embarrassingly goofy smile on his face.

Unknown: think i might have to get actual food this morning. thoughts?

He sat down on the nearest bench, ignoring the looks from the girls he already knew had been staring at him as he ran. He typed out of a message. Deleted it. Typed out another one. Deleted it. Typed something so incoherently cheesy that he threw his head back and squeezed his eyes shut in anguish. Deleted it. Realized that he was Luke fucking Hemmings and he shouldn't be worried about what to text a girl. Wrote something else. Deleted it again.

Finally, he realized in an acute form of terror that he hated iPhones. He couldn't even fathom what it must have seemed like for Nova to see his ellipses appear on her screen multiple times and then disappear as he attempted to think of what to say. So, without allowing himself to think about it for one more god damn second, he sent;

Luke: holy shit. i was assuming this was novocaine but i know she wouldn't actually eat breakfast so what have you done with her?

Before he had to torture himself waiting for a response, he stood from the bench and began to run again. By the time he found himself outside of the dining hall, Nova was already sitting in her respective seat. Her brown hair was covered with a beanie and her hands were covered by an oversized Notre Dame sweatshirt that gave her sweater paws as she wrapped her fingers around a mug.