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lavieendonna · 6 years ago

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Snapshot || ArtMajor!Ashton AU (Chapter 1)

Summary: A ‘Brushwork’ spinoff where Tillie - VCA’s resident library assistant - has to supervise Ashton - VCA’s holiday troublemaker - and she discovers that a collection of photographs is the biggest inconvenience she could have ever agreed to. Date: 7 Feb 2019 Requested: lol no Pairing: Ashton x OFC (original female character) Words: 4.9K Warnings: none! A/N: So this (and two other spin-off stories) have been in the works for... so long. It’s got a long way to go, and it’s still in an experimental phase. I wasn’t going to post this until Brushwork was completely wrapped up but I thought this might motivate me to finally tie the knot in the end of that. So let me know what you think, if you liked it, if you didn’t, if you want more... I could use all the love I can get! Big Love xo

Chapter 1: Disappointed Soccer Mum

‘So, are you coming out with us tonight?’ Wren asked, and I could tell that she was teasing me because she was already laughing at the thought of me going with her wherever, just waiting for me to say ‘no’. I rolled my eyes at the older girl, a small crooked smile finding my lips.

‘I’ll give you one guess.’ I laughed at her.

‘Thought so.’ She chuckled back, and I felt like a normal person would have been offended that Wren wasn’t in the least bit surprised that they weren’t going anywhere with her. But this happened every other night and had for nearly four years now, and we were both just used to this whole routine. Wren planned something fun, she offered for me to tag along, I politely declined and made my own entertainment for the night.

‘Well,’ Wren checked the silver watch dangling on her slender wrist before looking back down on me. I was sat at my usual spot in the very back corner booth of the restaurant, my things sprawled across the table. ‘Do you want anything before I clock off?’ I shook my head but smiled gently.

‘I’m okay.’ I told her quietly. ‘I’ll grab some leftovers before I go upstairs.’

‘You make sure you do.’ Wren gave me a stern look with a matching pointed finger and I just nodded quickly, almost afraid to disobey (even though I knew I would). She had this habit of getting a little mothering toward me about this stuff. Actually, when I thought about it, everybody in the restaurant had the same habit when it came to me.

It made sense, I guess. Harvey owned the restaurant so he was, naturally, the head of this little family situation thing he and his staff had going – I was basically part of the furniture, the way I treated the restaurant like a living room, so I guess I was kind of included in all of that. Not to mention he and Queenie had just become first-time grandparents, so to Queenie I was like her third chance at parenting.

Wren was a little different; like me, she was single and lived alone – but she was a few years older than me so she was entering that stage in her life where she just wanted to take care of somebody. I was still studying and had a bad habit of neglecting my basic human needs, so naturally I was the prime candidate for her to unleash her inner caretaker.

Wren was also essentially the closest thing I had to a “best friend”, and though she’d never explicitly said the words I knew that she was aware of how I’d ended up living in the flat upstairs. Harvey knew because he was my landlord, and Queenie knew because she was married to Harvey. But I really had this gut-deep feeling that the older couple had told Wren too. I didn’t mind too much; she never mentioned it. She and the bosses just hovered and mothered and asked me why I hadn’t eaten yet.

‘Did I just hear you turn down food?’

Queenie had come marching out of the kitchen, hairnet almost falling off of her head of greying black hair, and what looked like a tomato sauce covered wooden spoon sitting in the front pocket of her stained white apron. Her hands were on her hips, brow furrowed together with pursed lips, and I got the feeling this was what a disappointed soccer mum looked like when she stormed into the living room to find the kids playing ball in the house after she specifically told them not to.

‘Uh, yes?’ I nodded, not meaning for that to come out like a question. ‘I’m not hungry.’ That was clearly the wrong answer, I realised, as Queenie’s disapproving stare turned into one of bewilderment.

‘I haven’t seen you eat all day, Missy.’ The older woman scolded me. ‘It’s eight o’clock! You need to eat, you can’t keep starving yourself!’ I rolled my eyes, all in good faith. This was also a common occurrence.

‘I ate upstairs, I promise.’ I told her with a small, reassuring smile. ‘And anyway, I was just about to go home, right after I finish this email.’ Queenie shook her head at me, hands folding across her chest, hoop earrings hitting her neck with every shake. I could’ve bet everything I owned and then some that she was scolding me in her head. In Spanish. Loudly.

‘At least take some soup home with you.’ She said very pointedly, and before I got a chance to decline she’d taken off into the kitchen again to get the damn soup that, honestly, I probably was going to forget about and let it go off in the back of my fridge.

I chuckled quietly as I turned back to my laptop screen that was glowing bright in the dim mood lighting of the back of the restaurant. The feeling of Queenie making a fuss over me, while it made me kind of uncomfortable (even after all these years), ultimately still felt kind of nice.

The email in question, however, that sat unfinished on my screen, was starting to give me a migraine. I’d been trying to write it for a few days now, but every time I tried it sounded so… whiny. It sounded like a “why me?!” kind of email which, to be fair, was exactly what it was but I knew that there had to be a more professional way to word it.

Hi Leanne, I tried again.

I understand the situation; however, I feel that Carolyn or Stefan would be more suited for the task because…

And this was the part where I got stuck every time. I couldn’t say that Carolyn and Stefan had more experience than I did, because that wasn’t true. And I couldn’t say that I didn’t have time because Leanne was my boss and she’d been conspiring with the school’s Head Office and, you know, it was kind of their job to search me in the database and just knowthat when I wasn’t working in the library or in class that I had literally nothing else to do.

No, the truth was that I just really didn’t want to conduct community service in my library, supervising some delinquent dude who couldn’t sit still over the break. I enjoyed my solitude here, and I liked the quiet and I liked being on my own. I actually got things done when I was working alone, and if I had to babysit all semester then I could kiss all of that goodbye.

Hi Leanne, I tried one more time.

That’s fine. Please have him come to the service desk at the library at 12pm with his paperwork.

Thanks,

Tillie Daniels

Well. So much for fighting the power. I hit send and prayed to God that I wouldn’t regret it. I mean, I already kind of did, so I guess I was hoping I wouldn’t regret it even more.

After packing up my things and begrudgingly accepting the damn soup that Queenie shoved under my nose in the plastic takeaway container, I waved goodbye and called out my farewells to the rest of the staff on my way through the kitchen before I pushed through the back door that lead into the back courtyard, headed for the metal stairwell just to the left and flush with the building.

When I first moved to Melbourne after getting accepted into VCA, I nearly dropped dead thinking I was going to have to live in the actual restaurant on a stretcher in a pantry somewhere – either that or worse; that Harvey and Queenie were going to kill me in the courtyard and feed my flesh to their customers. But, no, neither of those things happened. Instead I was shown what looked like a fire escape out the back. It still seemed sketchy to me, but against all better judgement I followed the Cook and his Wife up the rickety stairs and, lo and behold, I was pleasantly surprised.

The flat wasn’t overly big, but without the unnecessary clutter of furniture and the like it looked quite spacious for what it was. The two windows in the living area were big and wide and let in so much light I didn’t really know what to do with it all. They took up most of the far wall, and in front of them were a couple of cushion-clad bench seats – very FRIENDSstyle – and the thought of curling up on one of those with a good book and some coffee got me more excited than I’d been in years. The kitchen was on small side, but it had the most gorgeous white faux-marble benchtops I’d ever seen, and the bathroom benches seemed to match too which brought great peace to my inner OCD.

The bedroom was a modest size, although I did have to buy a hundred-dollar IKEA closet for the corner of the room. It did have a tiny ensuite attached to it, though, and the little window inside had a gorgeous view that was, probably, my favourite in the whole house.

It was like there were just layers and layers of mini horizons outside of the small rectangle. There were the tops of the trees that lined the street behind the restaurant, and then behind that I could see the tops of all the buildings and town houses of all the streets that lay behind that. Off in the distance was the silhouette of the Melbourne skyline, and beyond all of that was the rest of the sky that seemed to just stretch on forever.

I locked the deadbolt of the front door as soon as I walked inside, switching on the main lights as I somewhat floated through the flat putting my things away. The soup went straight into the fridge to be forgotten, laptop on the counter in front of the only barstool I owned and my bag hung on the back of my bedroom door. I finished tidying what little mess there was in the flat, and when I felt content, I flicked the kettle on and found a Bluetooth speaker to let some gentle music float around me to fill the space.

The flat didn’t feel empty or anything, it was just a habit of mine that I had formed over the years. My whole life had been surrounded by noise – every home I’d had was noisy whether it was from music or TVs or loud conversations. These days I had the library, which had the gentle buzz of students and teachers, and the restaurant that had the rustle and bustle of staff and customers.

The flat just had me. And having control over the noise that surrounded me made the flat feel like it really belonged to me this time.

By the time the kettle finished boiling I had swapped out my jeans for a pair of warmer sweatpants and some UGGs, making a coffee carefully – despite it being nearly half eight in the evening – and finding my old, weathered copy of Mansfield Park. To say it was my favourite was a slight understatement; the spine was currently being held together with so many layers of invisible tape that it really wasn’t invisible anymore.

As I sat down on the banquette seating in front of the window my phone started to ring. I quickly put my book and drink on the coffee table beside me, pulling my phone out of my pocket to find Queenie’s number and picture lighting up the screen.

‘Queenie?’ I answered without a proper greeting, part of me worried that something was wrong with Harvey. Queenie didn’t usually ring this late, especially since she was just downstairs and I’d just seen her barely half an hour ago. Harvey was a pretty old guy (I suspected, anyway) and he’d not been well the last couple of weeks. I felt like it was pretty fair for me to think that maybe something had happened. ‘You okay?’

‘Hi, yes, everything’s fine.’ Queenie reassured me right away, though I wasn’t a hundred percent convinced. ‘Sorry, Mija, you’re probably already settled for the night.’

‘It’s fine, Queenie, I was just having coffee.’ A small lie, technically, but she didn't need to know that.

‘At this hour?’ The older woman laughed on the other side of the line. ‘Dios Mío, girl, you’ll be up all night.’ I chuckled but rolled my eyes as if Queenie could still see me – though with her Super Spanish Mother Powers I wouldn’t put it past her if she could.

‘Ah, you know me.’ I said simply. ‘You all good? Did you need me to come back?’

‘Nah, nah, stay there.’ She said gently. ‘I just wanted to ask a favour from you for tomorrow morning.’

‘Sure, Queens, what do you need?’ I picked up my coffee and had a quick sip, knowing that sometimes Queenie got carried away on the phone. Knowing my luck my coffee would be cold by the time I finished talking to her.

‘I have to take Harvey for another appointment tomorrow so we won’t be able to come in for the Leone’s delivery in the morning.’ Queenie said and my heart sank as soon as I registered the words because I knew exactly where this was going. ‘I just need you to let the girls in the back when you hear the buzzer, she’ll know what to do.’

‘Girls?’ I made a face. ‘I thought Tony and his son did the deliveries?’

‘Jules said something came up so they’re sending Rocky and Claudia instead.’

‘Huh.’ I gave a quiet sigh. ‘Alright then. What time are they coming?’

‘Probably around seven.’ I could almost hear the grimace in Queenie’s voice as she spoke and I groaned inwardly. ‘I know it’s early – I can ask someone else if it’s too much trouble, Tills.’

‘Nah, don’t stress. I can do it.’ I told Queenie as I pinched the bridge of my nose, feeling the migraine begin to make a comeback. ‘I have to be up early anyway.’ Another lie, but I felt like I owed Queenie this much. And regardless of that, even though I didn’t technically work for the restaurant, I was probably one of the better people she could have asked anyway.

‘Ah, gracias, Mija, really.’ Queenie gushed. ‘I owe you, okay? I’ll have Harvey cook you up something nice.’

I tried to decline the offer but, naturally, Queenie was having none of it and pretty much planned the meal there and then. Eventually she let me go and, as expected, my coffee was cold. I sighed again, taking the mug back to the kitchen to tip the rest of the contents down the drain. I wouldn’t be needing it anyway, I had to be up early apparently.

The thought of an early start as well as that stupid supervising shift in the library, the prospect of tomorrow really didn’t seem so great. Switching off the music and shutting the blinds gruffly, I hauled myself to bed and fell face-first into the pillows, almost wishing that I would suffocate before morning came.

Seven o’clock rolled around quicker than I wanted it to, but my saving grace was that both Claudia and Rocky, the Leone’s delivery boys for the day, looked exactly how I felt. Claudia had this long dark hair that was thrown up into a messy top-knot, Rocky’s shaggy (almost) pixie cut hidden under a maroon beanie. Both of them were in oversized hoodies and tights, which made me feel a hell of a lot better about my UGGs and sweater paws while I helped them unload the van into the restaurant kitchen.

‘You guys don’t really do this often, do you?’ I asked with a small laugh as I helped Rocky with a particularly heavy box of what I guessed were vegetables while Claudia took a phone call from their father, I deduced based on the fact that she was repeating ‘yes I know,Dad’ many, many times.

Rocky scoffed at my question, trying to disguise it behind another yawn.

‘I could ask the same thing,’ She said with a curt – but friendly – gesture at my feet once the box was set down on one of the steel counters. ‘Are those uniform around here or what?’

I glanced down to the UGGs on my feet and laughed.

‘Ah, no.’ I admitted. ‘No, I don’t actually work here.’ Rocky’s eyebrows shot up in a silent question. ‘I live in the flat upstairs – Queenie asked me to supervise the delivery.’

Rocky seemed to smirk at the new information, dark eyes crinkling in the corners just a little.

‘What, they don’t trust us?’ She asked me with a tilted head. I rolled my eyes at the girl, Claudia coming back around the corner (though she was still on the phone, and unimpressed by the looks of it).

‘More like they don’t trust the bozo’s in here.’ I grinned and Rocky gave a loud laugh with a slightly impressed nod before we dragged our feet back outside to the van to help Claudia with the rest of the boxes. 3

We all yawned our way through the next hour and we all sat and had coffee while the morning staff prepared for the day and before I knew it, it was almost nine and it was time for them – and me – to go back to work.

I could think of a hundred different things that I could have been doing that would have been more productive than just sitting around at the service desk in the library waiting for this Ashton guy to grace me with his presence.

At twelve thirty, when he was officially half an hour late, I’d already sent out overdue emails to half of the students in the entire university and had started stamping the new books that had been delivered earlier in the morning. That was supposed to be his job, and here I was doing it for him. In those thirty minutes, I’d looked at my watch more times than I had all year. I was aggressively unimpressed.

‘I’m looking for, uh… Tillie? Tillie Daniels.’

‘Who’s asking?’

‘Uh, I’m Ashton.’ He said. ‘I was supposed to be here at –’

‘Twelve.’ I finished for him. When I looked up at him, face rock hard and glaring daggers, he was looking down at me over the desk, shifting his weight from foot to foot sheepishly with a small smile twitching on thin lips. ‘You know you’re late, right?’

‘Yeah… I’m sorry about that that.’ He said, smile wavering (though he didn’t look away from my killer scowl, which surprised me since I was usually pretty good at making people uncomfortable with that Angry Librarian Face). ‘I woke up late and had to do a make-up test for one of my classes. Then my roommate was having a bit of a crisis, then I couldn’t find the library –’

‘Did you bring your paperwork?’ I cut him off. I wasn’t interested in his life story, I just wanted to get this over and done with. The sooner he started stamping books, the sooner I could get back to inputting the new books into the system and, more importantly, the sooner my shift would be over and I could ditch this guy.

‘Oh.’ Ashton said dumbly. ‘Yeah.’ He fumbled around in a seemingly empty satchel that hung over his shoulder for a minute or two before he produced two slips of crumpled paper and an envelope. He handed them to me and it took me a couple of moments to actually take them from him, just because I hadn’t quite finished staring.

He was wearing a loose, white muscle shirt and black board shorts, vans on his feet – with no socks, since no guy seemed to feel the need to wear socks anymore – and his blondish hair was slightly wet as it curled around his ears. I cocked an eyebrow, my fingers brushing his as I took his paperwork.

‘Couldn’t find the library?’ I questioned and the guy kind of shrugged. He didn’t seem uncomfortable, but he didn’t elaborate on it either which made me think that he hadn’t thought up a detailed enough story to continue the lie. I just blinked away the thought, trying to flatten the papers on the counter while Ashton stood there, hands in his pockets as he waited for me to read them.

One was pink and was double sided. It was a time sheet, one with a grid that I realised, without even looking at it properly, that I was going to have to sign and stamp every day for the next few months. The other was a letter from the Dean, explaining that Ashton’s presence here was mandatory. There was no way he was getting out of this, and consequently that meant I wasn’t getting out of this either.

‘What’s with this?’ I asked as I turned over the last item in my hands, trying (kind of) to smoothen out the creases while I looked for a label or stamp. But there was nothing on it, it was just an off-white, sealed, blank envelope. It barely even felt like there was anything in it. I stared at Ashton incredulously and, once again, he just shrugged without even looking bothered by it. He pulled out his phone instead and started to scroll or text or whatever, and I suppressed the urge to scream.

Usually I was pretty patient with people and strangers, but for some reason there was something about this Ashton guy that just really irked me. He was standing there, lying about why he was late and wasting my time, and then he had the nerve to mess around on his phone like he wasn’t wasting my time as well as his own.

I took a breath and counted to five in my head, trying not to snap too soon. This was already going to be a long semester – I didn’t want to make it even longer by completely throttling the guy on the first day.

‘Alright, whatever.’ I huffed, stamping the pink slip and handing it back to him gruffly. Ashton shoved his phone back in his pocket and took back the time sheet hurriedly, a flash of annoyance passing through his eyes that made me roll my own.

I took a second to glance around the area where we were to see if there was a free three feet of space for Ashton to work and shuddered inwardly when I realised that the only table that wasn’t currently being used was almost right next to me. I fluttered around for a bit, letting Ashton tap his feet and look around with a glazed over and bored expression while I stood and pushed the trolley of new books a few feet down the long librarian’s desk. I found the other School Stamp and set it down in front of a desk chair, rolling an empty trolley between his chair and mine to create two separate work stations.

‘You can come ‘round over there,’ I finally spoke again, gesturing to the small entrance gap at the opposite end of the desk. ‘You’ll be stamping the new books we got in yesterday.’

‘O-kay.’ He pursed his lips but made his way around anyway, dumping his bag next to the chair before he sat down. ‘That’s it?’

‘That’s it.’ I said shortly, picking up a textbook from the pile and sitting it in front of the blond. ‘Just open the book –’ I opened it. ‘– stamp the inside –’ I stamped. ‘– flip to the back –’ I flipped. ‘– stamp again.’ I stamped again. ‘If it has a jacket, stamp the inside of the jacket too. Stamped books go on the empty trolley; you’re here ‘til two.’

I dropped the newly stamped book onto the empty trolley before I sat myself back down in my own chair, intending to ignore Ashton for the rest of his stay here. But as I stole one last annoyed glance at Ashton, he was grimacing again.

‘Two?’ He asked, though I wasn’t sure it was really aimed at me entirely. Regardless, the whine annoyed me – probably more than it should have, but I really didn’t have time for this today. I was not in the mood.

‘I should make you stay ‘til halftwo, you know.’ I shot, unable to help the acid in my voice. ‘You were late by like thirty minutes.’

‘Yeah, you mentioned that.’ Ashton sighed, taking the first book from his full trolley very begrudgingly. ‘I just thought I’d be doing something a little more… interesting.’

There was no way this was real, like, he was not saying that right now. I’d never met somebody so obnoxious in my life.

‘Maybe you should have thought of that before you pulled whatever stunt landed you in here in the first place.’ I snapped back, and I watched as Ashton recoiled though he was smart enough not to comment.

‘Can I at least listen to some music while I do it?’ He asked with a slightly arched brow, gesturing to the headphones he’d just pulled from his pocket. I gave a small shrug but nodded.

‘Yeah, do whatever.’ I huffed and that was end of it.

With a tense silence falling between us – finally– I was able to turn back to my computer and finish sending out the emails I needed to. Despite how annoyed Ashton had made me, it was surprisingly easy to tune him out. He found a kind of rhythm for his stamping that sort of set the pace for the afternoon. It was a little slow, but it was better than him giving lip and annoying me with actual words. I would take it, I decided, and used the constant thudding to gently guide me into my own rhythm until the sound was nothing but dull background noise.

I’d progressed from emails to homework over the course of time, but when a literary analysis failed to peak my interest I moved on to a piece of writing I was in the middle of brainstorming for the school magazine. I didn’t contribute to the VCA Focus often, but the Autumn Edition was going to be published soon and the Editor in Chief, Rae, actually came to me and asked if I would write something to be featured.

It was an honour, really, I’d never actually been askedto write before. Usually I submitted things on a whim. They were weirdly popular, my pieces. I saw my poems and flash fiction pieces being talked about on the school forums and in classes more often than I thought they would. It was flattering – and exhilarating at the same time since nobody (except for Rae) knew that those pieces belonged to me.

I was never sure why, but it never really appealed to me to have my name out there. Part of it was that whenever I was writing I seemed to just dissociate from my regular self and become somebody else, and I felt like if I ever put my name onto my pieces I would lose that part of me forever. TD wasn’t Tillie Daniels. She was somebody else who didn’t know anything but writing for writing’s sake.

It wasn’t the cleverest of pseudonyms, but it was enough. There were an infinite number of students in this school with the same initials, so I still felt safe. I felt insured.

This particular piece was starting to do my head in a little bit, though; it felt like I’d been ‘brainstorming’ for days. Rae had said the theme for the Autumn Focus was something along the lines of “longing” and “desire” – but I wasn’t really sure if I was supposed to take that literally or not. Then there was the added problem that I didn’t usuallycorrespond to any particular theme when I wrote. I just wrote whatever came to me in the moment, or whatever felt right, and the Focus usually accepted anything I submitted because there wasn’t usually a set theme in mind. Rae was introducing a new system this year, for some reason, and whether she knew it or not she was messing with my own system (or, you know, lack thereof).

I was immersing myself into research and definitions, as time went by, and before I knew it, Ashton was tapping me on the shoulder and bringing my attention back to earth.

‘It’s two.’ He said simply and flatly. I just stared blankly, stealing a glance back at the monitor and then back to Ashton who was staring at me almost impatiently from where he stood on the other side of the half-full trolley of books.

‘Okay?’ I twitched my eyes ever-so-slightly, thinking Ashton would have just gotten up and left on his own. But he didn’t, he just kept staring.

‘Can I go?’ He tried again as he made a quick gesture in the direction of the library exit. I gave a nonchalant shrug and nodded.

‘Yes?’ I half-mumbled and Ashton rolled his eyes and left. I huffed, watching him sling his bag back over his shoulder and turn on his heel to wander with that obnoxious walk he had going on. I was still scowling when he turned to call over his shoulder.

‘See you tomorrow, I guess.’ He said, and he already sounded defeated.

‘Whatever.’ I muttered again, but he was already out of earshot, almost moseying out of the doors.

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