ace // luke hemmings {slow updates}

iv

At school on Monday morning Vee made a conscious effort to try and avoid Luke. She wasn't exactly sure why either; it wasn't like they'd fallen asleep in the same bed at his house on Saturday night and they'd woken up wrapped in each other's arms. Quite the opposite in fact, when Luke had noticed her starting to yawn he'd shut off the laptop, wished her good night and then wandered back to his own room.

Vee had left the next morning before he'd woken up though. She's gotten a text from Lainey saying that she was home and Vee just didn't know what the protocol way for leaving an acquaintance/possible friend's house in the early hours of the morning so she'd just gone. The whole thing had given off a walk of shame vibe and she really wasn't sure why.

So skip ahead and now she was trying to avoid having to talk to Luke ever again. Sure he'd been nice enough on Saturday night, and he really seemed to be genuinely interested in getting to know her, but Vee wasn't good with people and Luke was a lot to deal with.

"Hey, where'd you get to on Saturday night?" Lisa asked as her and Amy came to stand beside Vee while she was trying to get some books out of her locker.

"Yeah, we lost you but then you were just gone." Amy added, Vee often thought it was a little strange that the two of them were finishing each other's sentences but they were virtually her only friends so she didn't mention it.

"I got a lift home." She shrugged, desperately searching for her world history notebook.

"With who?" The two of them asked in unison, Vee looked over and the two of them seemed extremely interested in who had taken pity on her.

Maybe they were hoping that whoever it was would adopt her for good and take her off their hands.

"Luke Hemmings." She mumbled, partially because she didn't want them to know, and also because she was worried saying his name might make him appear or something crazy like that.

"Holy shit no way." Amy cried, reaching out and grabbing Vee's arm causing her to halt in her search for her book. "He's the one that's friends with Calum Hood, right?"

"And Ashton Irwin." Lisa put in, nodding her head. She appeared calmer than Amy but Vee had been friends with the two of them for a long time and she'd heard Lisa talk about how dreamy Ashton Irwin was on many different occasions.

"Why are we using everyone's last names?" Vee shook her hand free and resumed her search, giving up a few moments later. "I'm pretty sure there's only one Calum and one Ashton in the whole school."

She turned to find the two of them deep in conversation, not having listened to a single thing she'd said since the mention of Luke's name, so Vee just rolled her eyes and made her way towards world history.

It was when she was just about to reach for the door handle that she remembered something important from Saturday night, Luke was also in this class. She let out a groan, which earned her a few weird looks from the people standing nearby, and considered just ditching the class but her decision was made for her when she heard Luke's voice from behind her.

"Fancy seeing you here Vee." She turned towards him and had to fight the urge to cringe when she saw his smirk, he knew that she was going to try and avoid him and now he was getting off on the satisfaction that she had failed. "I was starting to think I'd imagined even meeting you the other night, but here you are."

Vee didn't say anything, she just turned away from him and entered the classroom. She took her assigned seat and fought the urge to roll her eyes as Luke dropped his book down on the desk next to hers before sitting down.

"Oh c'mon Vee, don't be like that." She sighed and turned to look at him, raising one eyebrow in the process. "I thought we were friends. We did share a hot chocolate and a bed after all."

She wasn't sure why but Vee felt the sudden urge to make sure no one had heard what Luke just said, so she shh'd him as she looked around. She was pretty confident that the few people actually within earshot hadn't been paying attention so he let out a sigh of relief before turning back towards the blonde boy.

"Don't say that too loud." She snapped. "In fact don't tell anyone. I don't want any of your groupies hunting me down and attacking me in the carpark later on."

She might have imagined it, but for a few seconds Luke actually looked hurt; he got over it quickly enough and went back to looking at her with that easy smile in place.

"So even after I saved your ass, you still think I'm a bad guy? I gotta say, that stings a little." They both looked towards the front of the classroom as their teacher walked in and started writing up the work for today on the board.

"No." Vee exclaimed when she saw the words 'group work' written in her teacher's loopy handwriting.

And at the same time Luke let out a short cheer before saying, "This is perfect."

Vee could already imagine the plan starting to come together in his head, and she felt the need to stop it before he got too into the whole thing.

"I'm not being your partner." She told him pointedly, making proper eye-contact for the first time to try and communicate how serious she was about the whole thing.

Luke rolled his eyes and arched an eyebrow at her. "Surely we can come to some sort of agreement on the matter."

"No, Luke." Vee stated firmly, crossing her arms over her chest in the biggest show of defiance she could muster without disrupting everyone around them and drawing their attention. "I'm not being your partner and I'm not discussing this with you."

"Who are you going to work with then? Don't take this the wrong way but you don't really have a lot of friends Vee, and wouldn't you rather work with someone that you sort of know and sort of like?" Their teacher had moved on to explaining the task but neither Luke nor Vee was paying much attention.

Vee looked around the room, futilely searching for anyone else she could work with. She came up short but refused to give up that easily. At the same time though she couldn't come up with a valid excuse so she just glared at Luke, hoping that he would think she was trying to make a point of ignoring him.

"Look, how about this; you work with me for the task. I'm pretty sure I just heard him say something about two weeks until the presentations. So for the next two weeks we hang out and get this done, and after we do our presentation if you still don't want be friends I promise to leave you alone. How does that sound?" Luke clasped his hands together and sat them on the edge of Vee's desk, looking at her with a small pout.

Vee was kind of unimpressed that he was trying to push his presence on her but at the same time she couldn't help but admit that the thought of spending more time getting to know Luke didn't actually seem all that bad. She weighed up the pros and cons in her head and even though she didn't want to give him the satisfaction of being right she found herself nodding.

"Okay, fine." She fixed him with what she hoped was a stern stare. "But we're only spending time together to work on this project or whatever it is; and you've got to keep your word, if I don't want to be your friend after we're done you've got to stop annoying me."

"I promise, not that it matters because I've got a feeling we're going to be great friends." He told her with an over exaggerated wink before turning back to face their teacher and raising his hand.

"Have you picked your partner already Luke?" The older man asked, his nasal voice conveying his utter disinterest.

"Yes Sir, Vee and I are going to be working together." He replied with a childlike grin.

-

this is boring i'm sorry but it's all in the name of plot set up and development (also i was too lazy to actually edit it so if there's some mistakes i apologise).

in other news this story hit 1k reads so i figured i'd update it for you all.

let me know what you think :)