the doorman » a.i au

nine; "and by the way, yes."

I gulped as he maneuvered his way over. He set the tray down, sat down on the couch right opposite me and grabbed his mug of steaming vanilla latte. I shook my legs – a habit I couldn’t shake off – and set my sweating palms on my thighs. He saw that I was nervous and looked at me expectantly. I was aware that I should start the conversation first, but the words failed to come out of my lips; it felt as if my tongue was paralysed. He cleared his throat.

“I’m sorry,” it came out as a bare whisper.

“For what?” Ashton asked, putting his mug down and clasping his hands together. He leaned forward, perhaps trying to listen more closely. Or maybe even to taunt me.

“For… underappreciating you. For unnecessarily shouting at you. For not apologizing when I had the chance to turn back. Do you forgive me?” I stared at my mug, playing with the foreskin of my fingers. Problem was, I had never been good with apologies. To me, they weren’t necessary. If people were bothered by what I did or said, that’s too bad. It wasn’t as if many of them mattered to me anyway. With Ashton, however, it’s different. I was willing to – and I would - go to a far extent to fix our friendship, even if it led to me pushing my ego aside. Maybe that’s how life is supposed to work – you sacrifice things for people you really care about.

“That’s funny, you’re apologizing for not apologizing,” he laughed, taking me by surprise. I expected him to give me a long speech on how I should treat others but no, he actually laughed, showing me that playful side of him for the first time in a long time. Conventionally, the three days without Ashton were fairly long and especially draggy when you had been hanging out with him a lot before that.

“Don’t be a moodkiller, Irwin,” I threw a packet of sugar at him, play-pouting. If anything, I was really glad that we were back to normal.

He chuckled once more before saying, “Hey, speaking of moodkillers, do you wanna ride the moodkiller with me?”

I tried to stifle my laughter, failing easily as it came out as a snort instead. “That sounds dirty.”

He furrowed his eyebrows before throwing the sugar packet back at me. “You naughty girl. I was referring to The Moodkiller, that new rollercoaster at the theme park. We could go on Saturday!”

“Sure, why not? You’re paying though, right?” I kept a serious façade.

“I mean, yeah I could, that’s no-“

“I was kidding! I’ll see you then,” I said as he raised his mug, sipping on his warm beverage.

-

The week seemed to have flashed by and Saturday came quickly.

We stood in line for The Moodkiller. Ashton was holding a Polaroid camera in his hand, occasionally snapping pictures of our surroundings. He smiled as a photo of a few laughing kids came out successfully.

“You never told me you’re into photography,” I said. I was obviously wrong when I thought he had revealed most of his life in that game of 20 questions.

“You never told me you like cotton candy,” he pointed at the stick of pink fluff in my left hand and the other 3 licked clean ones in my right hand. I rolled my eyes and stuck out my tongue.

As I did that, the flash of his camera went off and he chuckled.

“You could have told me to pose, I would have looked better," I said as we both looked at the picture of me.

“You look really cute, though,” a blush crept up to his cheeks as he realized what he had just said, “Candids are the best. I think they really are worth a thousand words, y’know? They reveal who people actually are. Like in this photo, you come off as playful. And that’s kind of who you actually are.”

“What about bad people? You know… Criminals and whatnot. You could take a photo of them smiling at strangers but they’re still… bad. You won’t even be sure if they’re smiling for the right reasons. For all you know, they could be doing so because they’re observing a possible victim.”

“I don’t think there are ‘bad people’ around us. People make mistakes, people’s thoughts get manipulated in such a way that they behave the way – or say things - they shouldn’t. But there are no ‘bad people’. They can change. They do have a side of them that is better than what people perceive them to be, if you bother to dig deep.”

I smiled, taking another bite off my cotton candy. I was speechless. Ashton was amazing – he saw the best in everything and I really admired that. His positivity intrigued me; had he never experienced something so bad to the point where it skims off his confidence in the good of things?

-

“Fuck, that was so good!” I clung on to Ashton’s arm. I was pretty sure people were staring. We were laughing loudly and stumbling through the crowd as if we were the only two teenagers in the park.

“You were squeezing my arm the whole time, it was hilarious,” he shook his head.

“So, which ride now?” I brushed my palms against my skinnies and pulled my leather jacket over my wrists as the wind howled.

“The tickets were actually only for the rollercoasters, because y’know, it’s new and all,” he said nervously, “I could buy us tickets for the whole park if you’d-“

“No, no, it’s fine, I didn’t know. It’s pretty late anyway, wanna make our way back now?” I was faintly disappointed. A large part of me wanted to spend more time with Ashton but the other knew that if I had relented instead, he would have insisted on paying for me. And I didn’t wanna bother him like that.

“I’ll walk you home then, it’s not that far,” he said. I nodded in response, fighting back a smile.

The walk back was quiet. The silence was comforting and it was a nice ambience – the stars and moon shone down on us and the streetlights weren’t too dim or too bright. Barely any vehicles went past us. We walked past cafes where I observed early lovers sharing mamihlapinatapai, and I could picture myself shouting “Just kiss!” over to them; it made me smile and it gave me hope – hope that I could be happy again in the future, at the right time, the right place, with the right person. I thought of Alec. Did I do the right thing? He made me feel as if I had to choose between him and Ashton, which wasn’t plausible, because I clearly loved him and I was fully devoted. I mean, Ashton clearly wasn’t the issue of the relationship, because I have 0 feelings for him, but it was one of the triggers of that fight. Would it have been different if we hadn’t met? Or was Alec just finding reasons to start a fight with me? It was hard thinking of someone who gave you so much to remember.

I didn’t realize I stopped walking until I looked up, only to see that Ashton was far ahead of me.

“You okay?” he whispered, placing a hand on my back.

“I will be,” I said firmly, trying to convince myself the same thing.

“I know. And you do know I’ll always be here for you, right? Just… talk to me whenever you need to, I’m a phonecall away.”

“I do. Thank you,” I hugged him as he placed his chin on my head, caressing my hair softly.

“Good. And by the way, yes,” he said as he pulled away.

“Huh?”

“I never answered you when we were talking at the café, but I do forgive you. I always will,” he said, putting his hands in his pocket and walking away, leaving me speechlessly happy and in awe.

I slept soundly that night and for the first time in forever, it didn’t take me a hundred tosses and turns to fall asleep. I was happy and I had one person to thank for that.

-

hey

I HOPE YOU LIKED THIS CHAPTER because i did have feels when i was writing that

and this one's the longest chapter i've ever written i'm pretty sure of it

(dedicated to grace because she's really fun to talk to and miss jackson's one of my all-time top 5 fics so you guys should read it!!!)