Coming Up For Air

3.9

"And darling, I'm lost

Everything that I have loved

Has turned to stone

So pack your bags

And come back home."

-Margot and the Nuclear So & So's, 'Broadripple is Burning'

☂Ashton☂

Luke sat down heavily on the bed, but Ashton was still in a state of semi-paralyzed shock, so he softly closed the door and leaned against it, facing Luke.

"Um." Luke said after some time, "Yep. Yeah. I did."

Ashton raised his eyebrows a little.

"Care to--I mean, will you tell me about it? I'm going to go out on a limb here and say this is the thing Louis knows about." Ashton said carefully. He wasn't angry, just...

just...

Well, it was a rather unexpected turn of events, that was all. He'd gone to answer the door when he recognized Luke's voice outside of it, all prepared to comfort him and tell him his mom was everything terrible, and then he had somehow stumbled into hearing Calum and then Luke and then putting some pieces together and then being right.

"Um..." Luke began, trailing off into oblivion and looking kind of red and kind of grey at the same time. "Well, so, um, I was...sixteen. So last year. In, like...December? December. Yeah."

He stopped for a second, looking winded, and Ashton took the opportunity to slowly walk over the the bed and sit down on the floor beside Luke's legs.

"Go on."

"And, uh--we had this English teacher called Mr. Dunning, and he was alright, but at the beginning of December he had a massive heart attack and he died. So we didn't really have an English teacher for a little while until about a week and a half later when the school hired Miss Shaw. Lisette Shaw. And she was right out of college and she was teaching us way different, way harder stuff than Mr. Dunning ever did."

Luke stopped again and Ashton leaned his head against Luke's knees, hoping he would be able to tell that no, he wasn't mad, just curious and a bit blindsided.

"And I've never been very good at English, so after her teaching us for a week, I went in to ask her for tutoring after school. And that's kind of...when it started, I guess. She was--God, no, Ashton, we didn't have sex then, don't worry!--she was sitting on her desk when I walked in, reading something, and I remember thinking, 'Damn, she's really pretty.' And then, when she was helping me, our shoulders kept brushing and she kept sort of giggling when I said things and so I basically got this massive crush on her, but I thought 'Oh, she's 23 and I'm 16, so she'll either not notice or not care or both'."

Luke took a deep breath and Ashton could tell he was working up to the hard-to-talk-about part.

"But then, during our...second?--yeah, second--tutoring session, before I left, she grabbed my hand and squeezed it, and did this little kind of half hug thing before I left. And, I mean...I don't know. I thought it was strange because a teacher had never, like, touched me before, other than to pat me on the back or whatever. But I liked it, to be honest, because she was all hot and single and older and I wasn't really thinking about any consequences because...well, why would I? Who was going to find out that she hugged me, you know? I didn't think it would ever go any further than that. Not to say I didn't hope--but I just...didn't really..."