Paint You Wings // Ashton Irwin [au]

Twenty-eight

Ashton's POV

A parade can be marching in my room right now, spreading joy and happiness and whatever other fucking positivity it creates and it wouldn't even come close to the inexpressible merriment that saturates my entire being as I stare at my girlfriend lying beneath me.

Girlfriend. Emilia is my girlfriend.

I love that sound of that. She is mine, and I am hers. My days of longing for her have come to an end, and I don't have to struggle to hide my affection from her anymore. Everything is out in the open and words of adoration have been exchanged. There is no confusion, no second thoughts, and absolutely no doubts. This is what we want; what we need. This was never planned. I never set out to fall for her and vice versa; it just happened. It's not the end of our friendship; no, this is the beginning of something greater—something right.

Her arms stay wrapped around my neck, one hand playing with the short hair at the nape of my neck and the other resting on my shoulder blade. As I look into her eyes at such close proximity, I can see the white and dark blue rays that enhance the overall grey color of her iris. She blinks slowly, her pupils changing from dilated to un-dilated in milliseconds.

Emilia parts her mouth and speaks softly. "You're hot," she says.

I lift my head up, quirking an eyebrow and smirking. This is new.

In a split-second, realization flashes over her eyes and her cheeks turn a shade of crimson. She removes her hands from my body and chills run down my spine from the loss of contact. "I didn't mean it that way!" she says. "I meant that your skin is hot. I'm burning up here with my hoodie, you lying on top of me, and the heater that seems to be on full blast. It's like a sauna in here."

I chuckle and pull myself up off of her small body and sit next to her. I'm pretty sure it's more than just the physical heat around her that is making her burn up, but I keep my thoughts to myself. "I'm still going to take that as a compliment," I say, winking at her.

She rolls her eyes and tries to hide a smile. "So now what?" she asks sheepishly, fixing her hair before pushing the sleeves of her hoodie up to her elbows. She really doesn't have any experience with being in a relationship, seeing that I'm her first real boyfriend, so I'm not surprised that she's unaware of how this works.

"We just carry on with our day like we always do. Nothing has changed. Things are going to be exactly as before, except now I can kiss you whenever I want to," I say, kissing the top of her head as an example.

"Well, if we're carrying on with our day, I should probably leave then."

My face falls and turns to a mixture of hurt and puzzlement. "Why would you leave?" We literally just became a couple and now she wants to leave.

"I still have two other classes to go to today. We kind of spent the time that we normally use to get lunch talking and kissing on your bed and my next class starts in," she pauses, taking out her phone and checking the time, "less than an hour."

Right. Well, this blows. I wanted to spend the rest of the day with her. "Can't you skip?" I ask, hopeful that she'll say 'yes' so that we can just sit and bask in each other's presence.

She shakes her head and I frown. "I've skipped a lot of days already," she says. "I can't really afford to miss anymore class right now since there's only like five or six weeks left until the end of the semester and I want to start early on studying so that I don't stress out too much before finals."

Is that all that's left of the semester? I haven't really been paying attention to what's going on at school. "Wait, did we already have midterms?"