Coming Up For Air

4.9

Luke rolled his eyes exasperatedly and glanced around, locating a blonde ponytail.

"Hey! Ericka!" He shouted across the courtyard. She turned toward his voice, her manicured eyebrows cocked in a practiced way that Luke knew had taken hours to prefect in the mirror. She was one of those girls, with a perpetually full face of makeup, perfectly bleached white-blonde hair, evenly applied fake tan and an artfully aloof attitude that gave the distinct impression that the English class system was still very much in place. Luke had never spoken to her before, and he was almost certain she didn't know his name.

"Yeah?" She called back. "What?"

"My name is Luke Hemmings and this is my boyfriend Ashton Irwin and I think he looks hot in glasses and we make out sometimes!" Luke informed Erikca, who seemed a little shocked before she narrowed her eyes at Ashton. Then she shrugged.

"He does look hot in glasses!" Ericka shouted before continuing to walk to wherever she was headed, not looking back at them once.

Luke turned back to face Ashton, who was bright red and moderately agape.

"Can I kiss you now, please?" Luke asked but didn't wait for an answer, instead pecking Ashton on the cheek and then on the lips once, twice. Ashton kissed him back the second time, twining their hands together and shaking his head.

"What?" Luke asked playfully, bumping their shoulders together as they began walking down the street toward wherever they were meant to go.

"Just--you." Ashton laughed a little. "You're ridiculous and crazy and incredible."

"You made me like this." Luke told him. "I've gone insane for you."

Ashton shook his head again, color tinting his cheeks a bit. "You and your insanity will be the death of me, Luke Hemmings."

Luke kissed his cheek and squeezed his hand and felt like the world was drenched in sugar-coated perfect for a moment.

"I don't wanna be your death, love. I wanna be your life."

x

"So, uh, Ashton?"

"Hm?"

"Tell me more about why we're in the a dirty ally behind a random Chinese place." Luke said as kindly as he could, given the fact that whatever he had just stepped in was something to do with a cat, though the question of wether the substance was fecal matter or a rotted carcass was still up in the air.

"Forgot a bottle." Ashton muttered, looking appraisingly at the dumpster in front of them. "We came all the way to the river and I forgot a bottle."

"I have an idea!" Luke volunteered, suppressing a gag. "Why don't we buy a soda or something and then pour it out?"

"I forgot money, too." Ashton pouted. "And that's wasting. And I need a bottle."

"I will buy a bottle of Coke and drink it, Ashton. Please. Don't make me stay here." Luke said desperately. "I am begging you."

Ashton considered for a moment, but nodded and they picked their way out of the ally, Luke mindfully avoiding all the ambiguous brown sludge puddles.

After Luke scraped the cat off his shoe and they bought a soda, Ashton and Luke strolled along the walkway next to the bank of the muddy river. The Thames was smooth and fast moving, the smell of dirty water rolling off it's surface in waves. The odor of the Thames was not entirely bad, but not entirely good, either, and Luke was contemplating wether he actually liked it or not when he was struck by another question.

"Why do you need this bottle? Why are we here?" Well, another two questions.

"Bucket list." Ashton answered. "I wanna send a message in a bottle. I've always wanted to. As for why we're here, if you mean that in the abstract sense of the word, I think--,"

"You really need to switch out of that philosophy class, like, now." Luke cut him off with a laugh. "Aren't you supposed to use a bottle with a cork for the whole message-in-a-bottle thing?"

"If you wanna go full pirate about it." Ashton consented. "But the only bottles I could think of with corks were wine bottles, and I figured that would be a little insensitive, considering--you know. Calum."

Luke thought about it. "Well, we could have poured the wine out and made it into some grand metaphor. 'You hold the killing thing in your hand, but you don't give it the power--'.

"Luke." Ashton interrupted. "The John Green reference needs to end right now."

"Sorry not sorry. Mark me down as disturbed and intrigued that you knew where that was from, by the way." Luke swallowed the last of the soda. "Okay, do you have your message?"

"Yeah! Yeah--it's..." Ashton rooted around in his sweatshirt's pocket for a moment before pulling out a crumpled piece of notebook paper. "...here."

"What's it say? Can I read it?" Luke asked, reaching out for the paper, but Ashton pulled it away hesitantly.

"Um--nope." He mumbled. "It's...kind of personal."

"I'm your boyfriend." Luke frowned. "I'm personal."

"Yeah. Exactly." Ashton said, and then blushed a little before continuing. "It's about you."

Luke was silent for a second.

"Oh." He finally said, and then, uncertainty plaguing his voice. "Um...what about me?"

"Nothing bad, Luke." Ashton assured him quickly. "Just...stuff. About you. Why I like you. How you are. How I'm afraid to leave you. How I'm afraid for us. For me. For you. For me without you."

Luke stared at Ashton for several hundred years until the stillness got unbearable and Ashton chuckled awkwardly.

"Just. You know." He said, scratching the back of his head. "Fear in general."

"Don't do that." Luke finally said, finding the words to voice what he was thinking and also letting his heart break in an audible way, all across his vocal chords and in his throat. "Don't send that. Don't."

"Why?"

"You're not gone yet, love." Luke said vehemently, passionately, collapsingly, falling toward Ashton and pullingpullingpulling their bodies together so they could pretend distance and time were as relative as they wished they were.

"You're not gone yet."

"I'm not gone yet."

(They repeated the words over and over to each other so many times they turned into this messy river and by the end of it Luke wasn't even sure who was saying what and who was staying and who was going and what was happening and it was all just such a perfect disaster.)

x