Coming Up For Air

[ e p i l o g u e p a r t t w o ]

"January, I took the time to settle down.
Between you and me, that stress comes crawling back,
but you'll go on; saying "Can you sing to me?" and pretend that nothing's wrong.
We still know it's not how it used to be.
All in all, I'm doubting everything lately.
So tell me, what's it like to fly?"
-The State Champs, 'Nothing's Wrong'

•One day later•

"So this is familiar." Luke said as he and Ashton walked into Sydney's airport terminal, hand in hand. It was 7 pm Oz time, and eleven o'clock in the morning England time. Luke's flight boarded at 7:30 and departed at 8, and he was supposed to arrive in England at noon the following day. The time zones had his brain fucked--because how could a 23 hour trip with a one hour lay-over in Hong Kong only take 13 hours?--but he wasn't really thinking about that at all. He was thinking about Ashton.

"Yep." Ashton said in a removed kind of way, looking around and holding Luke loosely. "Yeah."

Shit.

"Ash, love, what's wrong?" Luke asked, stopping in the middle of the bustling open space and momentarily forgetting the world existed when his eyes met Ashton's.

Ashton shook his head, looking at the ground in a self-depreciating way.

"Nothing. It's just...I don't know. This is familiar. Bad familiar."

Luke hated himself violently for a moment.

"Ashton," He said, soft and firm. Ashton didn't move, so Luke took Ashton's chin in his fingertips and guided his face up so they were looking at each other.

"Ashton Fletcher Irwin, I fucking love you. And I'm an idiot for not saying it before, but here it is. Here I am. I'm a boy who'll tell you I love you at an airport. It's cliche and there will be none of that ridiculous romance novel shit where I yell it out for the world to hear, and I'm not going to whisper it and say I did tell the world because you're my world, because I find that nauseating." Ashton giggled, and Luke smiled.

"I've got tons more Nicholas Sparks moments to bash, just in case you want to hear all the different ways I'm not going to tell you I love you at an airport."

"I'd rather hear you tell me the ways you are." Ashton said, his dimples prominent, and Luke poked them because he could.

"You want to know how I'm going to tell you I love you?"

"Yes."

"I'm going to tell you I love you," Luke began with a tiny bit of dramatic flair, "Like a normal fucking human. Which does happen, on occasion. People communicating their feelings like like normal humans."

"Oh, like you're one to talk, asshole. You flew across the world to tell me you loved me when you had my goddamn phone number. You're the page in a romance novel 13 year old white girls want to get tattooed on their ribcages. You're the biggest cliche ever."

Luke smiled for miles.

"Worth it," he said, leaning over and kissing Ashton on the cheek. "I'd get us tattooed all over my body."

"Get me tattooed on your ribcage. Like a full-body image. I'll pose for you." Ashton told Luke.

"As long as it's naked." Luke winked. Ashton pulled a face as they walked up to the ticket terminal.

"Imagine that. A tattoo of me just standing there on your ribcage with my turtle face. Like, casually nude, no big deal."

Luke laughed. "And if we break up, I'll have the tattoo artist give you way more body hair and then people would ask me who the naked guy on my side was and I'd be like, 'Oh, you know, Sasquatch.'"