Paint You Wings // Ashton Irwin [au]

Eight

Emilia's POV

"Hey, Emilia!" Michael shouts as soon as my foot enters our history classroom. Thankfully, there are only five students in the room so far and they are all passed out, light snores escaping from a few. I'm surprised to see Michael has arrived to class earlier than me. Before we met, I always saw him arrive about two minutes before class started or not at all. He would always look exhausted and bored, but today is different; he's very chipper. I take a seat next to him, placing my backpack in the seat to my right out of habit.

"Hey," I greet. "You're very...well-rested this morning." I struggle to get the right word out.

"Rain helps me sleep and since we had that nice storm last night, I slept like a baby." He smiles, the apples of his cheeks prominently round. I return his friendliness and unzip my backpack and pull out All Quiet on the Western Front.

"Here," I say. "The book you were looking for?"

"Oh, right. Thanks!" he exclaims, snatching the book from my grasp. He drags his thumb along the text block, rapidly scanning through the pages. His eyebrows furrow at certain pages. "Didn't people ever tell you not to write in books?" he teases, showing me a page with words and phrases circled and underlined as well as the margins filled with little notes in blue ink.

I shrug. "My money, my book."

He chuckles. "Point taken."

A few more students enter the classroom, filling up the empty seats in the rows ahead of us. Class starts in ten minutes and the professor still hasn't shown up yet. He's normally punctual and arrives thirty minutes before class begins. As much as I don't like history, I'd rather not fall behind on the syllabus.

Michael calls my name and waves his hand in my face.

"I'm sorry, what?"

"I was asking what you thought of the other guys when you came over to the house," he repeats himself.

"They were very...welcoming." I fumble with my words again, trying to come up with a more than average adjective. I should probably invest in a thesaurus. "Almost as if they were welcoming in a new member of the family."

His full cheeks rise as he smiles, a small laugh escaping his lips. "I guess that's one way of putting it," he says. "From the way that Ashton talks about you, it was like you were already a part of our little family before we even met you."

"Did I meet your expectations?"

"No."

Oh.

"You completely surpassed our expectations," Michael adds.

Oh.

"Calum and Luke really like you; we all do. You're different, not in a bad way or anything. You're just not very feminine, which makes it easier to get along with you," he explains.

"I feel like I should take offense to that." I chuckle with uncertainty.

He laughs. "Don't. We all like that you're not a complete girly girl, and the fact that you eat like a savage."

I playfully hit his arm. "I do not eat like a savage!" I defend. Michael begins babbling, imitating me and pretending to have a mouth full of food. The mix of his accent as well as his accurate interpretation of me eating made it almost impossible to understand him. "Okay, I get it. I do eat like a savage." There is no denying it after his little act.

We laugh loudly together, receiving angry shushes and annoyed glances from the other students. I quickly cover my mouth in embarrassment while Michael flips them all the bird. I take out my phone to check the time, and it is already past ten-thirty.