Crossed Paths // Ross Lynch

Imagine | Spring

"What were you like at school?" Ross asked out of the blue.

He had been making breakfast that morning, cooking pancakes for him and Chloe. It was one of the foods that they loved to share together and both of them knew all too well that Ross was definitely the expert when it came to making them. A very long time ago, Ross had tried to teach Chloe how to make them but no matter how many times she tried, she kept getting distracted.

The first time she burned them to a smoky crisp after getting into a tickle fight with Ross. The second time they had been so pale that they were almost like sludge, barely cooked and shoved straight into the bin. The third and final time was so casual that both Ross and Chloe had completely forgotten that the pancakes even existed, standing by the kitchen counter pecking each other's lips and whispering kind words into one another's ears. They were so distracted by one another that they hadn't realized the pancakes were turning into ashes behind them, only realizing when the fire alarm started screeching in their ears.

They had been given a severe warning and told that they would be kicked out of their apartment and made to look for another place to stay if they caused more trouble in the block of flats. It was fair to say that after that, Ross was in charge of making pancakes while Chloe watched.

"What do you mean?" Chloe asked as she grabbed one of the pancakes from the cooling tray by the oven. She winced a little as the tips of her fingers were scorched with the hot pancake batter before placing it - or, if you wanted to be precise about it, she almost threw it - onto the plate in front of her.;

"Like, what was school like for you?" he asked, flipping a pancake onto his plate almost effortlessly before pulling out a chair and sitting next to her. He looked over at her, catching her eyes for only a second before she looked down at her plate.

"Awful," she muttered under her breath, her voice barely audible despite the fact that the apartment was nearly silent. 

"What happened?" he asked, pulling his chair closer to hers. Putting his index finger under her chin, he lifted her head up so that her eyes met his and immediately smiled. Even just looking at her for a single second was enough to lift his spirits high into the air and make his heart flutter. 

"I just...it was...it was awful," she mumbled, her eyes dropping back down to the table even though there wasn't really anything that interesting to look at. Ross held back, biting down on his tongue so that he wouldn't say anything more about it.

By the look on Chloe's face - her cheeks were flushed red, her eyes looked a little bit watery and her fingers were tapping against the side of her plate, something she did when she got a little bit overwhelmed by it all - she really didn't want to talk about it, so Ross had decided not to ask anything more about her days in high school.

"Mine was a bit weird too," Ross said, trying to sterr the conversation away rather unsuccessfully. Although he didn't want to talk about Chloe's school days, he was rather happy to talk about his short-lived days in secondary school.

"Why?" she asked, looking him in the eye as she relaxed a little bit more.

"Well, I was only in high school for a while before we ran away. I missed out on so much, but I don't think I'd like to go back," he admitted, his cheeks now going pink.

"So you didn't do any GCSE's? A-Levels? You didn't even get to go to prom?" Chloe asked, looking a bit surprised. She obviously knew about Ross and his family's past but even so, she still sounded a little shocked at the fact that Ross hadn't gone through the stressful struggle of GCSE's or spent days trying to find the perfect dress - or in his case, a suit. 

"Nope. I have no qualifications and I've never been to prom before. But you have, haven't you?" he asked.

"Yeah, I went years ago," Chloe said, looking a little thoughtful as she remembered it, flashbacks of it bright in her mind as if it had happened only yesterday.