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“Right foot blue.”
“I can’t put my fucking foot on the blue without sticking my ass in Calum’s face,” Michael groans.
“Nothing new there,” Calum shrugs, or shrugs as much as he can with his right hand on yellow and left stuck under Ashton’s hip on green.
“Nope, no, I thought we said we weren’t going to make this sexual,” Luke groans, leaning his head down onto Ashton’s shoulder.
“It’s fucking twister, mate, your ass was in my face for the better half of the past twenty minutes,” Calum laughs, reaching around Michael’s thigh to spin the wheel again.
Luke sighs, waiting for the moment where Calum can finally move his left foot to red, effectively getting his ass away from Michael’s face. He’s not quite sure which one of them suggested twister as a good game to play, but he’s cursing their name. He’s had more of his bandmates' body parts pressed up against him tonight than he’d like to. Not that touching at multiple points is abnormal for them after ten years together, but still.
In honor of the band’s ten year anniversary, the four of them have rented a cabin out in the middle of nowhere, far away from their busy L.A. lives where no one can find them. They fulfilled their obligatory band duties on the actual anniversary, but dedicated the whole weekend to a retreat with just the four of them, the way it used to be.
“Thank god,” Calum mutters, moving his leg from where it’s been stretched across the mat on red to a far closer and more comfortable spot next to Michael’s right foot on yellow. He rolls his ankle around, adjusting to the new position before he tilts his head up to meet Luke’s watching eyes. He grins, squinting his eyes a bit as he bares his teeth at Luke in an attempt to get him to laugh.
It works, because of course it does; Luke is helpless in Calum’s presence. He’s been laughing at Calum’s facial expressions for the better half of their lives, and he doesn’t see it stopping any time soon. In every way possible, Luke is so endlessly fond of the band and everything they do. They’ve been so wrapped up in each other for years, it’s hard not to be so familiar with the other people in his life. Playfully, Luke drops a wink at Calum while he lifts his hand to spin the wheel again.
He lands on left hand blue, which he quite literally cannot do considering each person has two limbs already touching the blue dots, leaving none open for him. “What the fuck do I do now?” Luke whines as his arms shake slightly with the effort it takes to hold himself up.
“Looks like you’re fucked,” Calum taunts, wiggling his toes on the blue spot closest to Luke.
“You’re trying to sabotage me!” Luke cries.
“Will you hurry up and move your hand, I’m starting to get a cramp in my side,” Ashton complains.
“I can share,” Calum says, moving his right hand just a little to the side to allow space for Luke to put his hand on the spot too. Luke places his hand down as close to Calum’s as possible, stroking the back of his hand with his pinkie carefully. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see him smile softly before directing his attention back to the spinner as Michael takes his turn.
“Fucking losers,” Michael teases, before his elbow buckles below him and he instantly falls to the ground, dragging Calum down with him.
“Serves you right,” Ashton says, shifting to a more comfortable position.
“Get him, Luke,” Calum urges, sitting at the corner of the mat closest to Luke’s face. “Don’t let him win, he won’t shut up about it.”
“That’s rich coming from you!” Ashton laughs. “You always have to brag when you win, I’m glad you’ve already lost.” Ashton spins the wheel, landing on right foot green, an easy stretch.
Luke spins again too and they fall into an easy pattern of spinning and moving without much commotion. Calum roots for Luke every chance he gets and Ashton tries to talk trash, claiming how Luke would be better at this if he worked out more often. It only makes Luke focus more, intent on proving Ashton wrong if at all possible.
Michael gets bored after no more than five minutes of watching Ashton and Luke move slowly around the board, heading to the kitchen for a snack instead of hanging out and waiting. It figures that he would be the first one to leave their celebration, leaving the rest to battle on without him.
The next time Luke turns and catches a glimpse of Ashton, he knows he’s on the brink of winning. Ashton’s face is contorted into a painful grimace, body bending to alleviate what is probably a cramp in his side. “Give up, Ash, you’re not going to win,” Luke says, smirking when Ashton tries to straighten himself out and fails.
“This was so much easier when we were sixteen,” Ashton grumbles as he gives into the pressure, sitting down on the mat to massage his side.
“Winner!” Calum cheers, leaning forward to press a quick kiss to Luke’s cheek, always throwing affection around carelessly. A light blush dusts Luke’s cheeks regardless.
“You suck,” Michael taunts Ashton as he comes back into the living room, hand stuck deep into a bag of chips they had brought along with them to the cabin.
“You lost too,” Ashton bites back, laughing through his words.
“Choose a different game, I’m sure I’d kick your ass,” Michael says.
“No more games,” Luke moans, twirling his wrist around to loosen the tension from holding himself up for so long. “Movie?”
“Food?” Calum suggests, grinning hopefully up at Michael, the only one standing.
“Are you talking about snacks or ordering food?” Ashton asks, pushing up to sit on the couch while Luke and Calum stay seated on the plastic twister mat.
“I was thinking of ordering,” Calum shrugs.
“Nothing will be open, it’s nearly 1 am,” Michael points out, licking the salt off his fingers. Luke’s face crinkles in disgust as he sticks his hand back in the bag. No one else will be eating those chips tonight.
Ashton has already pulled out his phone by the time that Luke and Calum fold up the mat and return the coffee table to its rightful place in the center of the large living room. “Denny’s is open and nearby, Uber Eats will deliver still.”
“Fuck yeah,” Michael says, plopping down on the loveseat adjacent to Ashton. “Order everything on the menu.”
“No,” Ashton says, leaning forward onto his knees. “That’s a waste of money.”
“But how cool would it be to just order one of everything. That’s a power move, we deserve to celebrate today!”
“And you’ll get sick,” Calum points out, sitting almost on top of Michael and wrapping his arms around his neck. In turn, Michael throws his legs over Calum’s lap, effectively tangling them together as one.
“You all got lame with age, we would have done this when we were younger,” Michael says.
“We didn’t have money for that,” Luke laughs, sitting next to Ashton but not quite close enough to touch. “We could barely afford McDonald’s back then.”
“Do you remember when we went to Denny’s when we were in New Zealand?” Michael asks the room, scanning through each person individually.
“No, actually I don’t,” Luke says, wracking his brain for just what time Michael is talking about.
“You know, the time when we were there for that thing,” Michael says, waving his salty chip hand around.
“None of us have a clue what you’re talking about,” Ashton says, looking up from his phone for a minute before scrolling through the menu again.
“Why am I the only one who remembers shit!” Michael yells.
“That’s a full lie, we all remember things except Luke,” Calum says.
“Fuck you!” Luke replies, gaping at Calum in astonishment. “I remember things!”
“You contributed the least to the podcast, you repeatedly said how much you can’t remember anything,” Ashton tacks on.
“Wow, fuck you all, I’m going solo,” Luke complains.
“You already did,” Calum says, “Unless you forgot about that too.”
Michael’s cackling laughter rings through the room, harmonizing with Ashton’s melodic giggle and Luke’s wheezing laugh as Calum basks in the glow of a joke well done. Luke falls across the empty space between him and Ashton, landing against his bicep and pressing his face into the material there. He shakes his head fondly, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye when he finally sits up. “Fuck you,” he adds again, just for good measure.
Calum simply rests his head on Michael’s shoulder.
Their food finally comes an hour or so later, with Ashton having picked out a variety of things, but not the entire menu. Michael only pouted for five minutes before accepting that Ashton may have been right about only ordering some things. None of them really trust a steak cooked at Denny’s and delivered miles away.
They devour their food while watching a random movie on Netflix, something that none of them have ever seen before but would never watch again. They talk through most of it, reminiscing about the memories that they didn’t want to share with the entire world in the podcast. The more intimate times, especially the emotional moments when things weren’t going well and they didn’t think that they would be able to make it as a band.
The hard times, filled with uncertainty and misdirection and people who didn’t have the band’s best interests at heart. The times when it was just them, when others around them had given up and left them to fend for themselves. The bitter moments of breakups, the nights spent talking through all the negative emotions in their brains, fighting through the fog to get just a moment of clarity.
But with the bad times came countless good ones. Memories of traveling around the world in their teenage years with wide eyes and so much excitement for everything. Never ending passion that drove everything they did, making sure that they were never actually going to give up. The highest highs of award shows and number one albums and personal growth that was only made possible by the four of them together.
As Ashton recounts a story of something that happened in 2016, Luke’s mind wanders further to those early years, back when he was unsure about every move he made, but held himself together with the fake it til you make it attitude that they were all trained to hold. He’s not sure he would have made it this far, been this successful and really, happy , if not for the other three.
They’ve stuck together through thick and thin, through the absolute darkest of nights and brightest supernovas that threatened to end them all. Their bond is unbreakable at this point, with ten years of memories and fights and critical moments stitched together.
“Ready, Luke?” Ashton asks, nudging Luke’s side carefully.
“Huh?” Luke says, focusing back on the conversation around him. All three of them are looking at him expectantly. “Sorry, I was lost in my head.”
“Yeah, we saw. We were talking about going to bed,” Michael says, smiling softly in that way that’s just reserved for the early hours of the morning.
Michael stands first, stretching his arms high over his head and arching his back with a slight pop. Ashton follows, reaching to pick up his water bottle off the floor. Calum stays seated for a minute, looking at Luke intently, like he knows that there’s something Luke wants to say.
“Hey do you think,” Luke says quietly, catching Michael and Ashton’s attention as they start towards the stairs to the bedrooms upstairs.
“Yeah?” Ashton says, head titled just slightly so his messy curls fall over his shoulder.
“Do you think we can bring the mattresses out here and have a proper sleepover again, just for old time’s sake?”
“Oh,” Michael says softly, a smile gracing his face immediately. “Just like the old times.”
“Exactly,” Luke says, blinking hopefully up at Ashton standing above him.
“I’m game,” Calum says, finally standing too.
“Let’s get the mattresses,” Ashton says, heading off down the hallway with a sense of authority that he’s always managed to carry with him.
It takes a bit longer than anticipated, having to help each other maneuver large mattresses through small door frames and down the hall, back around the couches and into the empty space. They take many trips, lugging out piles of bedding and pillows, thrown down into a messy pile in the middle.
“How do we do this?” Michael asks once he’s brought his pillow into the room.
Wordlessly, Calum starts pulling mattresses into place, easily showing the rest just how he thinks they should arrange themselves for the night.
When the lights are finally lowered, each one of them settles into their beds with their heads in the middle and their feet pointing away, pillows bumping into each other when they move even an inch. Luke pushes himself up on his elbows, looking at Calum across from him, Ashton to his right and Michael his left. They haven’t done this in years, not since they were finally able to afford to each have their own hotel room and they bought their own houses away from each other.
If he closes his eyes, Luke thinks he can almost believe that he’s 16 again, that they’re in Australia and they’re just starting out, thrumming with energy and excitement and glee that still lingers in their bones if they look hard enough. Some of that childlike wonder bleeds through the moment, Luke’s sure of it, as the others all turn onto their stomachs too. Their outlines are barely able to be seen through the darkness, but Luke would know the contours of the other guys even if he went blind.
To find someone —or rather, three someones— who change your life in such an important way at such a young age is special. It’s not something that any of them take for granted, the way that they were destined to be together and make moves as a group. They’ve taken on the world together and spent the better part of their lives making memories that will never fade.
“I love you guys, you know?” Luke says, nothing more than a whisper above the rustling of the bed sheets around each of them.
“I love you all too,” Ashton echoes easily, with both Michael and Calum making affirmative noises in response. It doesn’t need to be said verbally, the emotion of ten whole years together ringing stronger than any words could ever say.
“Ten years down, ten more to go,” Michael says, rolling onto his back.
“I hope more than ten years,” Calum says, following Michael’s movement.
“Forever, I think,” Ashton says, finally laying down on his stomach, head facing towards Calum.
Forever , Luke’s mind echoes as he too lays his head on the pillow. They could be a band forever, as dependent and loving and intertwined as they are now.
Yeah, forever would be okay.