Clean Slate » a.i. au

Eighteen

         The alarming pressure in my pretty recently cast-less leg is telling me that maybe, maybe it's still too early to run around the house. Especially a house that I'm quite unfamiliar with. Especially a house with stairs.

         Luckily, the first room I check is the one we slept in the previous night and – that's where I find him. Scurrying around the room, gathering anything and everything, stuffing it into his gym bag.

         "Ash? Ashton," I call him, walking inside the room instead of just standing at the door frame, watching him. "Ashton, what are you-"

         "Get your stuff if you have anything," he tells me, his tone perfectly normal, but he continues with his rushing.

         "What are-"

         "We're leaving."

         My eyes widen, and I want to stop him, but considering everything that just happened in the past ten minutes, I'm still a bit afraid to actually do something. "What? No, we can't just leave, sit do-"

         "Lucy, I'm not gonna tell you again," he interrupts me, voice just as stern, "get your things in your bag if they aren't already there, and we're going."

         Okay, this is not the right time to cheer about how he's been calling me 'Lucy' continuously since last night, even now, when he's beyond angry and irritated. I mean it's definitely a good thing, but perhaps it's not the right time for thinking about it. Definitely not.

         "Ashton," I sigh, blinking a few times to clear my thoughts, and walk over to him; he's bent over, struggling to zip up the gym bag, probably having consumed more space than necessary by throwing his clothes in rather than folding them. "Ashton, come on-"

         "Look, if you don't wanna go, I'm going myself."

         "No you're not," I frown, grabbing his arms as he stands up straight, picking up his bag, "just sit down and- talk to me for a se-"

         I don't loosen my grip as he tries walking past me and, even though I should probably cut down on being such a drama queen, I stumble and hit the floor on my side as he trips over me. Ashton only loses his balance for a second, gripping the chest of drawers to his right to keep himself up; soon enough he's sighing heavily and walking around me to help me up.

         "Why do I keep trying to break you," he grumbles, though as I sit up, he crouches down to wrap his arms around me and pull me up, instead of just grabbing my hands and dragging me to my feet.

         Okay, maybe my drama queen act isn't yet overused. Or useless, for that matter.

         "Thank you," I say meekly as I regain balance, straightening down my shirt while he slowly, almost involuntarily withdraws his arms from my body. As I look up at him he blinks, sighing again, and finally sits on the foot of the bed to my right.

         "Okay, I'm sitting down. What now?"

         There's still anger in his voice, and his shaking leg isn't really hiding the fact that he's impatient to leave this place, so I might as well get to the point immediately. "Ashton," I begin, sitting down next to him, deciding against touching him at all. At least while he's like this.

         "You can't- alright, try to calm down, yeah? There's no point in being angry, you just-"

         "You know what I didn't need in my life?" he cuts me off- I might as well let him do all the talking. "This. This, what just happened ten minutes ago, I didn't fucking need that. I don't fucking need any of this."