Work Text:
You'll realize this love is strong
As it has been all along
For miles and miles can't come between
The kind of love we've seen
--
As a big brother and swimmer, Ashton was no stranger to injuries. He’d gotten concussed a few times when he was playing footie as a kid, and the ringing in his ears made him think that was what had happened this time.
That, and the fact that his head felt like it was stuffed with steel wool, really. He sat up and looked around--he was in a hospital room and there was a blond dicking around on what looked like a mobile phone, probably.
Ashton coughed, and the blond dropped his phone.
“Oh, good, you’re up! The docs want to run a few more checks on you now that you’re awake, but as long as nothing’s gotten, like, dramatically worse, they said they can check you out in a few hours. We might even make the Cincinnati show on time, so you can stop worrying--”
“Listen, I don’t know who you are, and I’m not sure I give a damn,” Ashton said. His voice was shrill even to himself. “Urg. My head feels like it’s going to explode. Who the fuck are you?”
The blond startled. “Uh. I’m Luke?” When Ashton stared at him in confusion, the blond clarified. “Luke Hemmings?”
“I know a Luke Hemmings,” Ashton said disdainfully. It was true, he did know a Luke Hemmings. Only vaguely, in the sense that his maths teacher Mrs. Hemmings had a kid named Luke who sometimes came by Richmond to help his mum with tutoring. “He looks nothing like you. You’re lying.”
“I promise I’m really, really not?” The blond dug a wallet out of his pocket and flipped it open to show an ID. The picture there looked a little closer to the Luke Hemmings Ashton knew, and sure enough, the name on the ID matched the blond’s claim. “We’re in a band together, and we’re in the US. Mikey and Cal are off doing damage control since one of the speaker towers practically squished you and your drum kit flat.”
“Speaker towers? Mikey? Cal?”
“Um. You know. Mikey and Cal.”
“Dude, who the actual fuck are Mikey and Cal?”
“You saw them this morning,” the blond said slowly. “Michael was literally here three hours ago. He tried to steal your Jello and you shot half of your hair ties at him, and he got your fingers stuck in a chinese finger trap in revenge.” He gestured to the wheely tray thing that was over Ashton’s lap. There was a totally busted mess of what looked like straw and twine there. Ashton supposed it might be a chinese finger trap if someone had run over it with a car a few times. “You used Calum’s tacky shark tooth necklace to break it. And you, uh. Broke the necklace. Which, thank you, by the way.”
“Who the fuck is Calum? Who the fuck are you? Tell me the truth.”
That was when the blond got up and left, leaving Ashton in even more confusion.
He heard the blond--Luke--talking to the doctors in worried, hushed tones. The doctor came over to Ashton a few minutes later.
“Hi, Ashton. You’ve got a concussion, so we’re just checking to see where your brain activity is at. Can you tell me your name, age, and date of birth?”
“Ashton Fletcher Irwin,” he recited obediently. “I’m seventeen, and I was born on the 7th of July, 1994.”
He heard the blond inhale sharply, and somehow knew that was the wrong answer.
--
Six hours later, after the doctors had run an absolutely monstrous amount of tests on him, it was determined that he had retrograde amnesia, of a sort. It was worrying that he hadn’t displayed it immediately, but there didn’t seem to be any physical damage to his brain, just a gap of four years completely inexplicably gone.
When Ashton questioned how the hell they didn’t know anything else, the doctor shrugged. “We don’t know a lot about the brain,” she explained, in the brassy sound of an American accent. “We make educated guesses, but it’s far beyond our understanding.”
It didn’t seem like there was much the doctors could do, and while the amnesia was weird, it wasn’t necessarily life-threatening enough to keep him in the hospital any longer.
The blond didn’t come to pick him up from the hospital; instead, there was a boy--man?--with near fluorescent hair and a short woman who wore almost entirely black. While the boy wore a leather jacket and skinny jeans, the woman had SECURITY emblazoned across her back in white and an armband with an ID attached.
“Luke says you’ve forgotten us,” the redhead said cheerfully. “Calum’s never going to stop making fun of you for this, by the way. Okay, well, I won’t either. This is hilarious.”
“Who are you?”
“Oh, right. I’m Michael.”
“How do I know you?”
“I’m, uh. We’re in a band together,” Michael said. “You’re the drummer, I’m the guitarist.”
The woman coughed like she was trying not to laugh.
“Shut up, Lisette,” Michael sang cheerfully. “Right, we’ve got to wheel you out of here, I heard. Wanna see how fast we can go down the hall?”
“Can’t I just walk?”
“Ha, ha, no.”
Lisette shook her head at Michael’s response. “Hospital policy, you’ve got to leave in a wheelchair. Liability. This is going to be ridiculous for the next few days, isn’t it?”
Ashton had no idea how to respond to that.
“We are absolutely gonna do wheelchair races,” Michael said, and it sounded like a confirmation of Lisette developing a migraine. “Alright, here we go.”
The last thing Ashton was expecting was to be met by a wave of flash photography and shouting.
“Fuck off!” Michael shouted. “He’s injured, leave him the fuck alone!”
“Just get him to the car,” Lisette said. “I’ll handle this. Seriously, Clifford. Car.”
“Do I get to flip off paps?”
“Go for it. I’d recommend it,” Lisette said wearily before jogging off to discourage the paps from harassing either Ashton or Michael.
Surprisingly enough, Michael was efficient at getting Ashton to a black SUV, and from there helping him out of the wheelchair and into the car proper.
“So what the hell is that about?” Ashton asked once they were settled and just waiting for Lisette so they could leave. He was starting to believe Luke and Michael when they said he was in a band. “All the cameras.”
“We, uh. Have a decently famous song called ‘Amnesia’,” Michael said sheepishly. “People are wondering if your accident is a stunt. We haven't even gotten into the memory loss thing.”
Ashton blinked. “You’re joking.”
“Does this face look like it’s joking?”
Ashton looked at Michael sidelong. A smirk was playing along his lips, but Ashton couldn’t tell if it was amused or smug. “Yes,” he said decisively. Amused or smug could amount to joking, he thought.
“Point taken.” Michael reached into a backpack that was resting at his feet and dug out a mobile phone. “I’m not joking, though. We released it a couple years back.”
Ashton stared at him. “I’m having a hard time believing we’re in a band, since I can’t even remember the Twelve Days of Christmas at the moment.”
“What, the carol? Five golden rings, four calling birds, three french hens, two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree?” Michael sang. Ashton had to admit he had a good voice.
Lisette returned then, swearing lowly. “Right. Time to get you two to Cincinnati.”
“Did the bus leave already?”
“Michael, the bus left two hours ago, and you were too stubborn to get on it. We’re going to have to rush to even possibly make it in even the vaguest sense of ‘on time’.”
Ashton snorted when Michael looked sheepish.
For the first twenty minutes of the drive, Ashton sat there in awkward silence as Michael lost himself in his phone and Lisette hummed to herself while driving.
“Oh!” Michael reached into the back of the car and dumped a backpack similar to his own onto Ashton’s lap. “All your crap and miscellaneous junk. I saved it from Calum and Luke,” he added proudly, as if that was some grand accomplishment Ashton should give him a medal for. Michael sighed when Ashton didn’t react how he thought he should. “Right. Well, your phone’s in the front pocket, and your headphones are in the big pocket.”
Ashton rummaged around and found the phone and headphones exactly where Michael said they’d be, but there was a small problem: his phone was locked and Ashton had no idea what code to input.
“Uh. Do you happen to know the code to my phone?” Ashton asked.
Michael rolled his eyes. “251195,” he recited. “Can’t believe you’d forget that, dumbass.” If Michael had meant it to be sharp, he missed the mark; he sounded affectionate, in a teasing sort of way.
Ashton furrowed his forehead. “Wonder why I picked that number.”
“Important birthday, obviously,” Michael said imperiously. Before Ashton could ask whose birthday it was, exactly, Michael had put his headphones back on.
--
When they arrived in Cincinnati, Michael was hustled off. Lisette took Ashton to a nice hotel and ushered him inside.
“You should call your mom,” Lisette said, once she’d shown Ashton to a room with two double beds. “You’re probably pretty confused.”
“I’m hallucinating,” Ashton said plainly. “That’s--yeah, that’s what’s gotta be happening.”
“You’re really not,” Lisette said, politely hiding a laugh. “Call your mom, then take an early night. Tomorrow’s going to be hectic for you. I’ll be back to check on you in about an hour.”
Ashton sat on the edge of the bed and typed in the number code Michael had given him. It took a bit of scrolling through his contacts--and gaping at the fact that Rian Dawson and Joel Madden were in his contact list--before he found his mum.
She answered after three rings. “Ashton? You out of the hospital? Everything okay?”
“Mum,” he said helplessly. “They’re--what’s going on, Mum? Why--why can’t I remember anything?”
She inhaled sharply. “So Michael wasn’t joking?”
“Does he--does he normally?”
She swore, the words sounding sharp and unfamiliar in his mum’s voice. “Oh, Ashton.”
“Who are they to me, Mum? Why--when did this all happen?”
“Your band became big when you were about nineteen,” she said. “The rest of it--oh, honey. You met them when you were almost eighteen. They’re like family to you now. You’re with them more than you’re with me, not that I don’t worry. You’re twenty-three, darling, how much can you not remember?”
“I thought I was seventeen,” he said, leaning forward onto his knees. “Mum.”
“Oh, darling. You’ve...well, you’re missing quite a lot, then.”
He didn’t know what to say to that.
“Look, I haven’t got much time, so I’ll make this quick,” his mum said. “I’ve gotta take Lauren and Harry to school. I love you, sweetie. You’re doing the best you can. Stick with Michael, he’ll take care of you. Well, Ashton and Calum will too, but Michael will report back to me, so stick with Michael.”
Ashton stifled a hysterical laugh that bubbled up out of his throat. “I’ll do that, Mum.”
“And call me in a few hours, I’ll try to see what I can find to help jog your memory.”
Ashton hung up and flopped back onto his back, staring at the ceiling.
Someone knocked on the door; Ashton cautiously cracked it open. It was Lisette.
“Hey, I know you probably want some alone time,” she said. “But I need to check on your head, see if you’re suffering from a concussion.”
“Other than the memory loss?” Ashton said.
Lisette just shrugged. “Let me check your pupils and reflexes, and I’ll let you alone for a couple of hours.”
She tested him a few times, gave him an ice pack for his head, and left him to sleep. He ordered room service picked at it before falling asleep. He woke up several hours later to the door opening.
“We’re roomies,” Michael said cheerfully, setting his bag down by the door. “Thanks for getting your head bashed in, it’s gotten us a couple of flights and a hotel night when we’d have been stuck in the bus otherwise.”
“You’re welcome?”
“We’ve been rooming together all tour,” Michael continued. “Calum snores--”
“Do not!” Calum said, pushing into the room behind Michael.
“Do too, and anyways Luke is a needy cuddleslut.” Michael took the bed Ashton wasn’t on and sprawled out, his combat boots still on. “God, I’m fucking exhausted. Get your memory back so you can take over crowd control again. You’re better at getting them pumped than I am.”
“Or the whole crowd was just worried,” Calum suggested. “Oh, sweet, french fries.”
And that was how Ashton’s dinner got co-opted by Calum, and then Luke.
“So,” Calum asked, when all four of them were congregated in the room. He’d settled in on Michael’s bed, his head in Michael’s lap. “What do you remember?”
“Um.”
“You don’t have to--” Michael started.
“No, uh. The last thing I remember was--it was early October. I had work and I left early to walk Lauren home from footie practice. Harry kept trying to sneak into my room to play XBox, which he couldn’t because he’s seven--was, seven, I guess. Mum shouted at me for getting my uniform all dirty, which didn’t make sense because tomorrow was a mufti day, and I was doing my own laundry besides. I fell asleep doing bio homework. I really fucking hate trying to memorize the genus of species, or whatever. Then I woke up in hospital.” Ashton frowned. “If--if that was really six years ago, why do I remember it so well?”
The other three looked between each other.
“Maybe you’re making it up,” Luke suggested. “You remember stuff that was normal, like working at the video store and walking Lauren home, and getting in trouble for mussing your uniform. Your brain made it into a normal day.”
“I guess. October 9th is the last date I remember.”
“You hadn’t met us yet,” Michael murmured. “I met you at a Halloween party when you were seventeen. If you only remember the beginning of the month, everything the band’s ever been just...isn’t in your head.”
“I guess. I remember most of this--that year. I was playing with--”
“Swallow the Goldfish, right?”
Ashton blinked in surprise. Of course Michael knew that. “Um. Yeah. I went to bed, and then I woke up in hospital. Except I know I didn’t, I know stuff happened in between. I thought I’d gotten a concussion in gym class or something. Then Luke said he was Luke Hemmings and I remembered Mrs Hemmings--”
“You call her Liz now.”
“And he insisted I’d talked to all of you earlier, but I don’t remember that.” Ashton looked between them. “Why would I forget between being fine and waking up again?”
“Shit,” Calum said suddenly. “You don’t know who we are.”
“Not--not more than my mum said,” Ashton admitted.
“Which was?”
“You’re all like family, and will take care of me, but that Michael will report directly to her.”
“I bet he does.”
“Shut up, Calum.”
“Whatever, Mikey.”
“Don’t--fucking call me that--” and suddenly Michael had tackled Calum off the bed and they were wrestling on the floor.
“Is that...normal?” Ashton asked Luke, who was taking photos.
“Huh? Oh. Yeah. They’ve known each other forever, I keep forgetting you wouldn’t know that. Calum should get bitten soon, end the whole argument.”
“Oh. Okay.”
Ashton figured maybe Michael and Calum were dating. His future self--or his current self, whichever--probably knew. He was getting really tired of feeling out of the loop on all the injokes he apparently had with these guys.
“So, uh. While they sort that out, I’m Luke. You--I guess, that you knew. I guess you kind of knew me before a little.”
“I remember you sitting in the back of Mrs Hemmings’ class with a black eye.”
Luke snorted. “God, that would be what you remember.”
Calum yelped from the floor. Ashton couldn’t see, but if Luke had been right, Michael had probably just bitten Calum. Ashton felt a little surge of jealousy that he couldn’t explain.
“Uh, Michael was actually the one to give me that, back when we hated each other. Mum was in a rage, pulled me out of school for a week. Calum made us be friends after.”
“Yeah?”
Calum sat up, his head peeking over the edge of the bed like a fucking meercat. “Michael and I knew each other since...primary? You were seven, right?”
“God, it’s weird telling this to you, you’re usually the one reminding us stuff about ourselves. Yeah, seven, I think. So were you, Cal! We were both seven!”
As Calum and Michael scrambled back onto the bed, Ashton could see the bitemark on Calum’s neck, an imprint of teeth and a blossoming red mark. “So Cal and I were best friends for all of ever, but then Calum got paired up with Luke for a school project and I hated Luke. We were all at Norwest together, you were over at Richmond--”
“You went to Norwest?”
All three of them winced.
“Yeah,” Calum said. “I was on a footie scholarship. Both of Luke’s siblings had gone, so he did too. And then Michael went--fuck, was it because your cousin went?”
“One of my distant relatives who I don’t give a fuck about,” Michael said cheerfully. “Pretentious ass school, I sucked at everything. You and Luke are the only ones who graduated, Calum and I just stopped going.”
“Drop out buddies!” Calum fist bumped Michael.
“Anyway, Luke had made a youtube channel, being all of fourteen and a squishy little nerd that he was, and suddenly Calum liked him more--”
“Did not--”
“Did so--”
“Fuck off, both of you.” Luke rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I was fourteen. The videos are still on youtube somewhere, I don’t recommend looking them up. They were bad.”
“No they weren’t!” Michael said earnestly. “They were really good.”
“You hated them when they came out,” Luke shot back easily.
Ashton wondered where he fit into this easy bickering, this casual back and forth. He’d never had good, close friends, just a group of friends he kind of hovered around. Apparently he’d found these three, and had promptly made himself at home.
How, though, Ashton had no idea.
“Calum and I paired up for a project and Calum found my youtube channel. Suddenly all three of us were in a band.”
“A band of nerds,” Michael cut in.
“Pretty much. We were short a drummer, though. Calum made himself learn bass and he’s killer at it now--”
“Aww, I knew you loved me--”
“Fuck off, yet again. Michael and I are both good at guitar, but we tried to put Michael on drums for about six minutes before discovering that it was not a good idea, he was not cut out for even the bongos.”
“Which is where I came in?”
“Yeah,” Michael said softly, a look on his face Ashton could only describe as affectionate. “A lot of stuff fell in line. I met you at a Halloween house party. A month later, we booked a show at the Annandale, and messaged you to see if you wanted to come play with us. I might have exaggerated the size of the gig a little bit--”
“A lot,” Calum cut in. “He exaggerated a fucking lot.”
“Details. Anyways, you came and the show sucked but you clicked with us better than your other band, and we kept you forever after you proposed to all of us. We’re all married now.”
Ashton looked at Calum, who just nodded solemnly. “Band bros for life.”
“And now?”
“Well, now we’ve got three albums and we’re on our third headlining tour. You and I live together,” Calum said. “We’ve got an apartment in LA. Michael is always spending the night, since he refuses to either share with Luke or get a place of his own--”
“It has to be the perfect place, I’m gonna live there forever,” Michael said easily. “Besides, Ash always lets me share his bed.”
“Don’t fucking remind me, you absolute asshole.”
“How did--how did we go from youtube covers to--a headlining stadium tour in six years?” Ashton asked.
“Uh, One Direction took us on tour with them. Twice.”
“One Direction?”
“Uh, they had a big song. They were really big at the time, and one of them, Niall, he liked our youtube videos. We opened for them on two tours,” Calum offered. “We’re on our third tour on our own now.”
Ashton sucked in a breath. “Really?”
“We sold out Madison Square Garden.”
Ashton gaped.
“Yeah,” Michael said. “It was fucking awesome.”
“I don’t remember that.”
“Yeah,” Luke said, face falling. “Oh.”
“We’ll go it again,” Michael said. It sounded like a promise.
--
Calum, Luke, and Michael discussed themselves with Ashton, trying to get him familiar with them.
It had been a profoundly odd day, especially once Calum logged into Michael’s laptop and started showing him video clips of their performances.
He fell asleep, hopeful this would resolve soon. He was wrong.
The next week was absolute bedlam.
Ashton was trying to reconcile the life he remembered with the life he apparently is living, and was drawing a lot of blanks where the two didn’t quite totally align.
Michael was helpful the whole way, pointing out the outfits modern Ashton would wear and talking him through what sort of thing Ashton needed to know in order to pull off being Ashton Irwin of 5 Seconds of Summer.
His other bandmates are helpful too--Calum keeps laughing at him, apparently finding the whole situation funny beyond all reason, while Luke is slightly more reserved about the whole thing. Ashton can’t tell if that’s just their personalities or if his apparently inconveniently timed memory loss has changed their group dynamic.
If Ashton didn’t have direct evidence to the contrary, he’d be tempted to believe this whole thing was some sort of massive prank. Except, well. He can look into the mirror and see how his face has aged--which, that’s a trip he never expected to take--and see the traces of his mum and his dad. Between that and Harry’s enthusiastic recounting of the past six years, and seeing him and Lauren babble at him through skype from the room he and Harry used to share...well, he can’t help but believe the whole thing.
Ashton leaned his head against the bus window. It was cool to the touch, aggressively chilled against the scorching American summer.
Apparently, they were in Cincinnati, a city Ashton had never imagined himself visiting. Not that he was really visiting--he was staying in the bus while the other three boys, the ones he apparently was in a band with, went and gave interviews. Calum had grimaced and called it damage control. Michael had called it “dealing with boneheads” followed by a string of foul mouthed descriptors.
Luke has just worried at his bottom lip before launching himself at Ashton for a tight clinging hug.
“You're like my brother,” Luke said. Ashton still had no memories of Luke, so he couldn't return the sentiment. “I miss you.”
“I'm...I haven't gone anywhere,” Ashton tried, because it sounded like something he'd say.
“No,”Luke said miserably. “If you had we could text you.” He clung tighter to Ashton. “This is something else. You're you, but not you. You’re the Ashton we used to know. You're not done yet.”
“What's that supposed to mean?”
“Everything,” Luke said before Lisette shooed him out the door
So now Ashton was sitting alone on a tour bus, feeling lost and scared and exhausted. Michael had helpfully left sticky notes everywhere. Ashton wondered how it was that he was so sure it was Michael’s handwriting.
This was the first time Ashton had really been left alone over the past week. He’d always had one of the boys with him, so it felt like he did know them now. He wasn’t drumming for any of their shows or participating in any of their PR; he wasn’t sure why they hadn’t sent him home yet.
A mug sitting on the bus’ counter had Ashton’s name on it, with green tea scrawled on a pink post it note.
To be fair, Ashton wouldn’t have assumed his go-to drink was green tea, not until he made black tea the way he always had and found he hated how sweet it was. Plain green tea was what he liked now, and he couldn’t quite get his brain around that concept.
He left the mug there without putting the kettle on or making tea, and went back to the bunks. Each one had a post it note above the pillows of each bunk: Calum’s was captioned big nerd Luke’s was captioned bigger nerd. Michael had coolest guy on planet earth, and Ashton’s read amnesiac.
He hadn’t needed Michael to explain which note went to which person, which was a sign of progress. He thought.
His bunk had dark blue sheets, stiff cotton. His blankets were plain but fuzzy and soft. He couldn’t remember picking any of these out, or why he would have chosen these, but they were comfortable. There were snapshots pinned up along the bunk walls.
There he was, leaning against Michael and beaming with the face he’d only just started to recognize in the mirror. Calum and Luke making faces at each other in another photo; the four of them posed together against a plain white backdrop. In this one, Michael was piggybacking on Ashton; in that one, Calum and Michael were hugging each other. Here was Ashton himself behind a drumset, arms thrown to the sky. Michael in a Pikachu onesie, mugging for the camera. The four of them crowded into a restaurant booth, looking much younger. The one right next to his pillow was just Michael’s filling the entire frame.
Each photo had a sticky note attached, Michael’s best guess as to why each one was there.
There were gaps in the photo wall, bare patches. Ashton could only assume they were bare because he hadn’t put photos there yet in anticipation of further memories.
On his bed lay the laptop he hadn’t dared yet to open, next to a leather bound journal. This was the way he’d left his bunk the morning of the accident; this was what he’d expected to come back to.
He took the laptop and the journal, and went back to the little sitting area.
Your laptop, read the sticky note on the macbook. Password is ‘iluvemichaelscock’. No joke.
Ashton rolled his eyes.
Your songwriting journal. Don’t worry Luke only graffitid a few pages. And calum stole one. Not my fault. Michael had apparently run out of space since there was another note underneath. I didn’t even look. It’s still private.
Ashton left the journal alone and opened his laptop. It hummed to life under his touch, waking out of hibernation mode. The default username was smASH.
He wondered what the story there was.
He typed in the password Michael had left him, half-expecting it to be wrong. It worked, the account blossoming open in front of him.
An internet tab was still open from the last time he’d used this computer. Apparently, he’d been researching flower meanings. Had he wanted to know what peonies meant? Or queen anne’s lace? Had he been interested in roses, or snapdragons? What had he been looking for the morning the speaker towers came down?
He supposed he’d never know.
--
“Sometimes I wish I smoked, then we could take smoke breaks and get away from people.” Ashton turned to find Michael coming up behind him. “You okay? I know it can be kind of...overwhelming.”
Ashton had been swept up into a whirl of publicity; he wasn’t performing with the band, since he didn’t exactly remember any of the parts he was supposed to, but there was a limited amount of photoshoots and interviews he still had to try to participate in.
It had been weird enough accepting that he wasn’t seventeen, that he was twenty-three and this was actually his life.
“What’s up with the bandanas you’re wearing on your wrist?”
Michael looked down at his wrist as if he was surprised. “Oh, uh. They’re yours. I guess I just started wearing one when you got hurt so you’d be with us on stage even if you, y’know weren’t.”
They fell silent.
“Were we dating?” Ashton finally put forward, quietly, cautiously. He’d started piecing things together, like the fact that Michael stayed with him at the hospital and was late to his own show. On a whim he’d googled Michael’s birthday, and sure enough it was his phone’s passcode.
Then there was the fact that Michael was keeping track of him, and that he wasn’t dating Calum, that they always roomed together, that most of the photos on his phone were of Michael.
Michael looked at him, long and steady and so, so serious. “As far as I know, we still are, soon as you get your memory back.”
Ashton sucked in a breath, long and low. “Oh,” he managed.
“We’ve been dating for six years,” Michael said, sighing. “Six years of you and me, and we were going to move in together, but you got cold feet and moved in with Calum instead. We’ve been working through it. We were just getting better, but then you went and lost your memory, and--well. Yeah.”
“How did we meet?”
“At a Halloween house party, like I said before.” Michael smiled, clearly remembering. “You and I both were wearing the laziest, stupidest costumes ever. We commiserated over how awful they were. It was my first house party, since I was fifteen. I missed most of it, since we ended up making out in a corner for the whole time, until Calum dragged me home since his sister was there to give us a ride. You friended me on Facebook the next day--no idea how you remembered my name, since I definitely didn’t remember yours.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. We needed a drummer, and I bitched about it to you on Facebook chat one day. You mentioned you played, and I asked you to come play for us. You did, and then we started dating a few months later. Luke threw us a party when we figured it out and got over ourselves.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Turns out he had a bit of a crush on me, or thought I had a crush on him or something. He was really happy when we got together.” Michael smiled wryly, the side of his mouth quirking up. “I’m an only child, you know. So if Luke wasn’t going to marry me, I wasn’t going to be part of his family forever. But you, you’re like an extra Hemmings to Luke, so you marrying me is perfect.”
Ashton snorted. “That sounds like Luke.” They were silent for a minute. “Can, I, um. Actually nevermind.”
“No, say what you want to. I guarantee you’ve said a lot worse.”
Ashton socked Michael in the arm. Michael recoiled back, rubbing the spot and laughing.
“I was going to ask you to kiss me and see if that helped me remember, but you can forget it now.”
“Oh,” Michael said softly. “You sure?”
“Yeah,” Ashton said, and stepped forward. “Please.”
Michael smiled crookedly and crowded into Ashton’s space. “You sure?”
“Very.”
And so they ducked close together, on a hotel balcony, with their friends inside for a photoshoot that was waiting for them too.
Ashton wondered how he could have ever forgotten this, Michael’s hands holding his face, pulling him close. The scratch of Michael’s stubble, the way Michael smelled faintly of the cigarettes he didn’t smoke, the sweat smell that never really left their clothes, the clean sharp scent of plain deodorant.
He still didn’t remember, when he opened his eyes, and found Michael staring right at him.
But he felt like he could learn, and this could be fixed.
This kiss tasted like hope, and Ashton never wanted to forget this feeling.
--
AN INTERVIEW WITH ASHTON IRWIN AND MICHAEL CLIFFORD OF 5SOS
After drummer Ashton Irwin’s accident last year, 5 Seconds of Summer have been on a hiatus while they determine the path they’re going to forge. As the band reviving pop punk, their hiatus shook the foundation of the genre, much to the concern of many fans. As explained to us by guitarist Michael Clifford, the band went on a retreat to write a new album, and now they’re ready to share it with the world.
Today, we talk with Ashton Irwin (drummer) and Michael Clifford (guitarist) of 5 Seconds of Summer. A condensed version of this interview is published in this month’s issue of RockNews; this is the full transcript.
Interviewer: Thanks for meeting with us, guys.
Michael Clifford: it’s been a hell of a year, let me tell you.
Ashton Irwin: Your year has been fine, it’s mine that’s a problem.
Interviewer: Care to elaborate?
AI: I got whacked on the head with a speaker tower.
MC: And then proceeded to lose six years of memory.
Interviewer: ...really?
MC: Yeah. Hell of a year, like I said.
Interviewer: That’s not common knowledge, is it?
MC: Oh, absolutely not. This is the first time we’re talking about it in public.
Interviewer: Can I ask why?
MC: We were hoping it would come back and it would be a non-issue. Didn’t exactly happen. At this point, we’re holding out hope but realizing it’s highly unlikely.
AI: I haven’t got all of it back, either. I’ve got muscle memory for some things--
MC: Drumming came back pretty easily--
AI: Of course it did. But I forgot the guys, so that was a fun morning, waking up and having no idea why I was in America with a group of strangers.
MC: You didn’t have to break the news to your mum.
Interviewer: This isn’t a stunt to promote your song Amnesia?
AI: Kind of late for that, isn’t it?
MC: I wish. Then he’d remember the favors he owes me.
AI: I have never owed you a favor. I’m not that stupid.
MC: Sure, use the amneisac excuse. That’ll work on everyone.
AI: You’re a c***
MC: And you’re a d*** but that doesn’t stop you, does it?
Interviewer: Um, how did you go about recovering, then?
AI: Watching a lot of old interviews and wondering a lot of things. My laptop had a tab open on flower meanings. Still have no idea what I was doing that morning, and I don’t think I ever will.
MC: Your memory’s like 50% back, right?
AI: There are huge gaps still. Sometimes I mix up stories that people have told me with actual memories. I’ve mostly memorized laundry lists of things I know have happened, like we played Madison Square Garden! We worked with Feldy--oh, uh, John Feldmann--and Alex [Garskath]. So there’s some stuff I’ve remembered on my own, but mostly I’m lucky to have the six years I’m missing so well documented.
MC: You’re just lucky in general. First you got the one in a million chance to become famous, and then the one in a million chance to be hit by a speaker tower, and the one in a billion chance of becoming an amnesiac.
Interviewer: Sounds like you should start buying lottery tickets.
MC: I told you!
AI: The whole band’s been awful about that, please don’t encourage him.
Interviewer: I was going to ask about your upcoming album, but I get the feeling that Ashton’s memory loss is going to be the bigger story.
AI: Oh, we can kill two birds with one stone. I wrote a lot of the stuff on the new album; it’s all about self-discovery.
MC: Probably not self-discovery the way other people do it.
AI: Since the whole world aren’t amnesiacs, we did have to generalize a bit.
MC: And Luke had this whole stash of older songs that we retooled and made better. God, we’re all such nerds.
AI: Talented nerds, though.
Interviewer: So we should expect an older 5sos sound from this new album?
MC: I don’t know if I’d say that. We work really hard to keep evolving our sound, so even though a lot of this album’s inspiration came from earlier songs, they were just...inspiration.
AI: Me kind of being mentally seventeen made everyone else think about how they’ve grown up and changed. Discovering ourselves as teenagers on an arena tour with the most famous band in the world--I’m talking about One Direction, by the way, when you consider how big they were in 2013--discovering ourselves was a challenge.
MC: So looking back at what we’d written about who we were then, and looking at who we are now, it just came kind of naturally to write an album about discovering ourselves. At sixteen, Luke was touring the world. He didn’t have time to date and figure out who he liked; I was working on my guitar and praying to god that our album would sell well since I never finished secondary. Calum gave up footie.
AI: And I woke up in hospital, not knowing anything we’d done over the previous six years. My discovery period was a lot quicker because of that, believe you me.
MC: The artists who helped us write the album, who contributed guest vocals, who hung out with us as we worked on our songs--they grew up so differently than we did. They had a more slow--s***, sorry, they had a slower rise to fame. We kind of found ourselves dumped into it.
AI: So the album is really for anyone who wants to be someone but doesn’t yet know how. It’s for people who want something but don’t know how to get there. It’s for people who find themselves in a situation they could never have imagined, and have to take it, no matter what else might come. It’s for the feeling a lot of people in our generation have, you know? Of being a millennial.
MC: Watch out, he’s going to botch facts.
AI: I’m not! It’s an album for people our age, you know? One of my first memories is my parents separating. Then my mom remarried, and separated right around when the whole world was going into the--f***. Michael, help me with words.
MC: The recession?
AI: Yeah, that. So, like, my first job was when everyone was struggling to find them. Michael’s family had problems for awhile. So, like, people are age are finishing up uni, if they went, and looking for jobs, or they’re like five years into a full time job, and there’s kind of a sense of--well, is this what I want? Is the world giving us what we need? Is what we value the same as what our parents value?
MC: Paradise Fears, the band who opened for us on our last tour, they focused a lot on that. The Summer Set guys do too! We kind of jokingly call it existential millennial music.
AI: It’s about memory too, looping back to my memory issues. People our age don’t remember a world when things weren’t uncertain, you know? We’ve lived through the--Michael, word.
MC: Recession.
AI: That. We lived through that, and wars and political upheaval. Our world’s never been stable, so how can we know who we are and what we want in a world that isn’t always threatening to fall out from beneath us. That’s what the album is about.
Interviewer: Wow, guys. That’s a fantastic sound byte.
MC: He rehearsed in the mirror.
AI: Only a little bit. Good to practice when you’ve got memory problems.
Interviewer: I think we’re about at time. Thanks for coming in, guys.
MC: Thanks for having us.
AI: It’s always fun to come and talk with you guys. You’ve got bean bags.
Keep an eye out for 5 Seconds of Summer’s new album, set to release this fall.
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I'll wear your colors, my dear
Until you're standing right here
Next to the one who adores you
Whose heart is beating for you