The front door opens after what seems like years – when it's only been a few hours in reality – and I immediately feel like someone's punched me in the stomach; I can only hope that I don't say, or do, something as stupid as burning myself like I had this morning.

        "Hey," I look away from Jamie Oliver on the TV, to greet Ashton as he walks into the living room. But he doesn't say anything; he's just slowly taking off his beanie and jacket, while looking around with a frown. I should be getting used to him doing that, but it doesn't mean I like it. And I don't like it one bit.

        "Was anyone here?" He asks, as if on cue, in a voice that's way too casual for me to not think he's suspicious about something. I sigh internally as he looks behind the counter, bookcases and basically every flat surface, as if expecting to find a corpse behind them.

        "No," I say slowly, not wanting to sound mocking or sarcastic, but it's like he doesn't hear me; now he's checking the other rooms in the apartment. "Was someone supposed to come?"

        "Uh... no." Ashton walks in the living room again, looking at me foe the first time. I'd say that's a good thing, but the frown on his face is making me keep quiet. "Did you go anywhere?"

        Seriously? I need half a day to walk to the bathroom with the tree-sized cast on my leg, and he's asking me if I'd gone somewhere? "No," I repeat in the same light tone, "Been here all day."

        He barely gives me a nod at that, still looking around but with more assurance. A minute pasts before I hear a sigh from him, as he drags himself to the armchair on my left. I turn the volume on the TV down when he slumps down, putting both his arms on the armrest and his feet up on the coffee table, not saying anything.

        "Um..." I begin, the sight of his somewhat wet combat boots on the wooden table that I've wiped just yesterday, making me a little anxious. Now the old Lucy would have already chopped his feet off for it. "Do you want something to drink? Eat?"

        Ashton runs his hand through his hair, sighing again as he stated at the TV for a few seconds. I don't know why he does this, I ask him something and then he takes an ice age to answer my question. It's annoying because I know that he will eventually answer, but it's like he likes to keep me waiting to the point where I forget what I'd asked him.

        "Are there any pancakes left?" He asks, glancing over his shoulder at the kitchen. I press my lips together when he doesn't move at all after that, his back against the soft material of the chair, and his feet still up on the table; I decide not to tell him anything for it, I'll just mop around when he goes to play a video game in the guest room. I still don't understand why he sleeps on the couch, and not the guest room.

        "Hm? Oh, yeah." He only nods at my reply, obviously not even thinking about getting up and getting the pancakes himself. I stay in my spot for another few seconds, just to see if he'd do anything – and eventually he turns his head to me, slowly, his eyebrows furrowed.

        "I'll get them for you," I say, a bit louder than intended, when he opens his mouth to say something too. He only blinks a few times as I stand up, a bit clumsily while reaching for my crutches. Okay, he's a really sweet and caring guy per se, but when he's not in the best of moods, he becomes a complete control freak. Everything has to be done his way, but he won't move a finger for anything. And I don't even want to start about what happens if I dare to make a mistake of any kind.

        "Syrup?" I ask while getting a clean plate from a cupboard, and the one with pancakes from the oven.

        "Chocolate."

        "Do you want me to reheat them?"

        "...Nah."

        "Okay, well..." I trail off as I walk back to him a minute later, with slight difficulty because I can only hold one crutch and carry his food in my other hand. I place the syrup on the table, letting it slip from my three fingers that the bottle was hanging from, and hand Ashton the plate.

        "Here you go." By the time that I'd gone back to the kitchen to get my other crutch and returned to my spot on the sofa, he was already digging into his food. Well, there's something he could have done himself.

        "So, how was the audition today?" I ask, ignoring how irritated I've become with him. This is just like in the beginning, when he made me do stuff for him and got 'angry' if I didn't do as he said. He was never really serious about being like that, but it could get really annoying.

        And, clearly, in time I learned to stand my ground and fight him back and, when I think about it, that's what led to us falling apart. The fact that he was just 'joking' when we'd fight, and I was actually serious about everything I did and said. He was fire and I was water, but when I became fire as well, everything that we built in the time that we were together burned down.

        "It was good," Ashton says, his flat voice yanking me out of my thoughts, and just now I'm noticing how clenched my fists have been this entire time. I don't know if my thoughts made me angry at him, or myself. "Successful."

        "Successful?" I repeat, having him nod while still stuffing his face with food. "You found a guitarist?"

        "Yeah, his name is Michael," He mumbles, looking up at me with a slight frown. What the hell did I do now? "I think you were in the same year as him."

        So I was in the same year as this guy. Sue me. "Yeah? You sure?" I ask, and earn quite a confident nod from Ashton. Garrett? Welch? Carlson? Clifford? Jennings? I dunno, there were a lot of Michaels in my year in high school.

        "Wouldn't know him even if he was standing in front of me," I say, awkwardly looking around while he added more syrup to his pancakes. I swear there's more chocolate syrup on that plate than there are pancakes left for him to eat.

        "Michael Clifford, rings a bell?"

        Oh, the tall, pale, alarmingly awkward kid who started dying his hair in every existing color at the end of our senior year. Yeah, he was in my year. "No, sorry. He might know me, but... yeah."

        Ashton shrugs, finally finishing his 'lunch', and pulling his feet off of the coffee table so he'd put the plate there. I gulp as I look at the spot where his shoes were; I don't know if I'd rather get up and get a cloth to wipe the dirt off, or choke him with it.

        I glance at Ashton, but do a double take when I notice that he's looking at me too, his eyes narrowed in a curious manner. I'm a little taken aback when a smirk starts forming on his face; he's having mood swings today for sure, I can't even keep up with him.

        "I know that look," He says all of a sudden – I swear this is the first time since I've woken up from my coma that he has started a conversation with me. "You want to stab me between the eyes, don't you?"

        Dead on. "Uh, well..." I shift, slightly uncomfortable at his question, for some reason. I mean he did just ask me if I wanted to kill him. "It just- the-the dirt kind of... bothers me."

        "Why didn't you tell me to get my feet off, then?"

        Because that's exactly what you wanted me to do. "It's not that big of a deal, I don't want to... tell you what to do in your home."

        He throws his head back at my words, laughing louder than I've heard him in months; and I was shocked about him smirking? I'm supposed to be having a stroke because he's laughing, then. "Oh my God," He says in a high pitched voice, barely containing his laughter. Alright, now I'm really worried. Or curious. Could be both.

        "You don't want to tell me what to do?" He mocks, once he's stopped laughing but then starts again as the words leave his mouth. If that's what he's laughing at, then I don't really find it that funny. "Lucia Harrington doesn't want to tell me what to do."

        I glare at him, trying to keep a straight face and not show him how pissed off he's really making me. If I let one word slip off my tongue, everything else would slip.

        "There's something I thought I'd nev-" He cuts himself off, forcing the smile off his face. Is it possible that he realized he'd gone a little too far? That would be really nice. "Right, um... sorry. Got carried away."

        I raise my brows as he runs his tongue over his lips, staring at his hands, bluish from the cold outside. Got carried away? You don't say. "You really hate me, don't you?"

        Ashton's head snaps up, his green eyes wider than the bottom of a beer bottle at my bold question. "What?"

        I don't know where the question came from, but I have no intention of taking it back. "I'm not stupid, Ashton," I shake my head lightly, having him blink cautiously at me. "And you're not really trying to hide it either."

        He only blinks again, taking a few seconds before looking down at his hands. As he starts inspecting his hands, the veins and small calluses, I realize he's doing that annoying thing where he makes me wait for a reply longer than needed, again. This time though, he might not have anything to say. He's always the know-it-all, giving me time to figure something out by myself; I'd love to see him when he has nothing to say.

        "Well..." I guess I'll have to wait for that. "At first I hated myself," He suddenly says, his voice casual as he leans back in the armchair, gazing the walls of the apartment. There's one answer I wasn't expecting. "Because I thought it was my fault, that you and I..."

        Licking his lips he trails off, and brings one hand to rub his face. "You and I... what?" I urge him on, an uneasy feeling settling in the pit of my stomach.

        "You and I... fell apart?" He suggests through a bitter laugh, shaking his head at the lack of better words. "I blamed myself for it, because I... did some things that you weren't exactly comfortable with, and I hated myself for it."

        He looks up at the ceiling, running the back of his hand over his lips and then startling me as he starts laughing again. It might be cruel, but I'm pretty sure he hit his head when he crashed the car. "But, then you started doing some things that I wasn't exactly comfortable with, and... yeah, I hated you too. God, did I hate you."

        Taking a pause to look around, he only shrugs. "Guess you could say I was full of hatred."

        I gulp as he trails off, for good this time; this, whatever this dysfunctional mess can be called, isn't like us at all. Even when we weren't close at all anymore, or barely spoke to each other despite the fact that we lived under the same roof, or when he hated me, we could at least cooperate. We could agree on most things, we could stand one another. After this conversation though, I think I'm going to have trouble asking him what he wants for dinner.

        "Do you still hate me?" I ask stupidly, desperate for some kind of comic relief. Ashton lets out a light laugh, but the way he shakes his head right after assures me that he must think I'm ignorant.

        "I don't know," He simply says, not bothering to look me in the eyes. "I mean, I look at you and I just, I don't know. It's not easy, you know, figuring out how I feel about you."

        It might be pathetic, but that's probably the greenest light I've gotten from him so far. "Since- since you woke up from the coma, you've been this whole, entire new person, and... it's-it's confusing. It's not something I was prepared for, but it's one of those things that, you sort of... you have to give them some time if you wanna be sure how you feel about them."

        "So you're giving me time?" I ask, my eyes narrowed in curiosity.

        "...Yeah. Your unaware-of-your-past self deserves that."

       Correction; that is the greenest light I've gotten from him, and it doesn't even matter that his words aren't that flattering at all. It's more flattering that I could have assumed it'd be.

        I nod curtly at his statement, wondering if there's a possibility that he can actually hear my heart beating, or see it through my sweater. I don't know if he's had a beer, or possibly two with the guys, but this right here is serious progress. It'll definitely keep me from being annoying and asking more questions for a few days.

        "Okay. Thank you for... giving me time," I awkwardly say, clearing my throat. Ashton just shrugs – it's really not that big of a deal to him, because he's already planning to move me out in a bit over two months, but, if I 'keep up the good work' as I have been until now, he might change his mind. That's the main reason I'm doing all of this; so he'd change his mind about me, and us, and maybe start believing that we're not destined to split up.

        "Alright, listen." My head snaps up as Ashton starts talking, sat up in the armchair and finally looking at me. "I am going to take Kai out for a walk, and I'll be back in an hour or so, and... you can make lunch while I'm gone. Oh, and the guys are gonna come over in a few days, so it'd be cool if you could cook something when they do. Sounds okay?"

        I nod, almost eagerly, and he nods back at me before standing up, clapping twice and calling our dog. His back is turned to me, so I take the liberty of smiling widely for a short few seconds – I have half a mind to do a happy dance once he leaves.

        "Um, Ashton?" I suddenly remember something, and call his name while he's kneeling and putting the leash on Kai's neck, just a few feet away from me. A second later he stands up, looking over his shoulder at me, his eyebrows raised slightly.

        "You told me not to cook again, this morning," I say slowly, not being able to contain the amusement in my voice. "Changed your mind?"

        To my small surprise, he sighs, and looks around in thought. I'm almost expecting him to say 'oh yeah, I almost forgot about that, don't make lunch', but then he drops the leash and leaves the living room for a few seconds. I almost start searching for my crutches to get up and go see what the hell he's doing, but then he walks back in, holding a fire extinguisher in his hands, and places it on the top of the counter with another small sigh. That is incredibly sweet and expected of him.

        "How about chicken fajitas?" He suggests as he turns to me, nodding somewhat encouragingly.

        "Okay, you got it," I laugh lightly, giving him a wide smile; he gulps at my expression, refusing to laugh with me, and keeps his head low as he takes Kai's leash and walks out of the room again. I sigh right after him, deciding that whenever I'm going to be happy, he's going to leave.

        "Bye," I exclaim, the word almost sounding like a question, but I let it go when he shouts a quick, sharp 'bye' in return. On the bright side though, this is the first time he's left the apartment after a good conversation.

*

i'm sorry for updating late but askjhsfdsk this part was kinda hard for writing. i'm still only getting the story started and the exciting stuff is nearrrrrrr :))))

vote and comment please? opinions, thoughts? x