Outcast | Luke Hemmings [AU]

Nine

Woo, 200 reads :) now if only all of them had voted XD

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"I'm home!" I called out as I entered my house after returning from Ashton's.

When I was greeted with no response, I walked into the kitchen and was relieved to find my mother with a wide grin stretched across her face as she glanced up from where she was washing dishes in the sink.

"Hello sweetheart," She warmly said, obviously in a good mood.

I loved my mother in this mood, it almost reminded me of how she was before everything happened. It made me miss her.

"Hey mom. Where's dad?" I asked, walking to stand near her.

"Oh, he went to work an hour or so ago." She shrugged mildly.

"On a Saturday?" I sighed. My father was going to work himself into an early grave.

"You know how it is." She waved it off, leaning into the sink further to scrub a plate. "So how was band practice?"

She handed me a sopping wet plate, and I knew what she meant by it. I grabbed a tea towel and began to dry, then put away the dishes as I talked.

"Good. Ash has a new member in his band, my friend from math class. Calum."

"Oh?" She said, raising an eyebrow. "What does he do?"

"Play bass, and sing." I said as I put another plate away.

She handed me a mug. "Is he good?"

"Very," I smiled widely. "Ash is so excited."

My mother laughed richly, a sound I hadn't heard in a long while. I had always loved her laugh, not because it sounded all that great, but because when she did it lit up her face entirely. It allowed me to see the resemblance to that beautiful woman I had seen in her wedding photos, and pictures from her youth, rather than the stern, stone faced madwoman I had grown to know. People used to tell me how much I looked like her when she was younger, but personally I didn't see it. I had too much of my father in me.

"I'll bet Ashton is very excited. Is he ever going get an actual gig though?" She asked, her tone teasing as she handed me another dish, and I beamed, proud that I had taught her the lingo.

I reached out to grab the plate, but before I had got a proper grip on it she had let go, the slippery dish sliding through my fingers and landing on my foot before shattering into thousands of tiny pieces on the tiled floor. My smile fading, I gasped and jumped back, as I could visibly see the gash opening up on my foot. My mother froze, her shoulders forming a rigid, angry posture.

She slammed both of her hands down on the bench in anger, and turned to me. "My god Thea, I tried to be nice, but you just had to screw everything up, didn't you? What's wrong with you? Why can't you do anything right?"

That question's been bugging me for a while too, don't worry.

I had the sense to stay silent as my mother ranted, and I attempted to put on an air of remorse for what ever I had apparently done wrong. Because dropping a dish was the worst crime on earth, it seems.

"Clean this up, and go to your room. I don't want to see you for the rest of the night." She barked as she stormed out of the room, presumably to the living room.

I sighed. I guess that's the end of her good mood then. Damn.

I grabbed a paper towel from the cupboard, careful not to injure my throbbing foot any further, dampened the towel and used it to clean up all the little bit of porcelain, before grabbing the rest of the plate and dumping it in the bin. I then grabbed a cloth and quickly pressed it against the bleeding gash on my foot. It wasn't so bad as I had originally thought, but it was still an annoying inconvenience to clean. I removed my ballet flats, and made a simple knot around my foot with the cloth, while I mopped up my blood, and then dashed to the bathroom.