SOS

Six

⚠️TW// low⚠️

"Wow, it's actually kind of nice to be sitting in a green room again with all of you." Crystal laughs, glancing around at Michael, Calum, and Ashton.

"It's been a hot minute." Calum chuckles, "But it's nice to have you here too. Definitely better than the other one that's been with us."

"Yeah but can we really be mad at him now?" Ashton sighs, "If the rule was no girlfriend in Europe but we're all okay with Crystal being here, isn't it a little bit hypocritical that we're not okay with Amy being here?"

"No, Crystal was always coming to Europe. The rule was no girlfriends, Crystal is my wife, she gets special wife privileges, and is excluded from that rule." Michael grumbles, wrapping his arms around Crystal and leaning his head onto her shoulder.

"Plus, I mean, we'd all be less mad if it was one of your girlfriends." Crystal's cheeks heat slightly as she admits it. "I know I shouldn't hate any of your girlfriends, and I'm cordial to her face, but I hate the way Amy treats Luke and I hate that he lets her."

"Join the club." Ashton scoffs.

"Yeah, well at least Luke is allowing her to do it." Michael mumbles under his breath.

"What is that supposed to mean?" Calum asks, sitting himself up and eyeing Michael sharply.

Michael breathes out deeply, "Okay, there may have been an incident in Düsseldorf where I found a certain very quiet member of the team-"

"Elodie." Ashton interrupts, giving Michael an annoyed look.

"Possibly, Elodie." Michael nods, "Coming around the corner, seemingly frazzled when she literally ran into me, and I may or may not have noticed some pinch marks on her wrist. Now, we all know said person doesn't talk much, actually she doesn't talk at all, so I don't really know the whole story, but it had Amy written all over it. Then when I mentioned telling Luke she may have panicked. I mean besides the fact that we all know Amy doesn't like Elodie in the first place, you have to agree she'd be your first guess too."

"You've been keeping this a secret for a week, Mike? You need to tell Luke." Ashton insists.

"I know, but Elodie made it seem like she didn't want me to, and partly I'm afraid that Luke is going to take Amy's side. Especially because after ten minutes there probably wasn't any proof left on her arm."

"That doesn't mean Luke doesn't need to know, Mike. If his guest on this tour is being threatening and harmful towards part of the crew, the guest needs to go." Calum pushes.

"What does she have against Elodie?" Crystal asks, glancing between the three of them, "Isn't she the new guitar tech?"

"Yeah, and the only thing Amy actually has against Elodie is that the fans like her." Calum scoffs, "She does well at her job, she's attractive, and she's around Luke. Because she's new to the crew the fans have taken notice and have discussed who she is and such on Twitter. So now Elodie is a threat to Amy."

"There's something else." Michael says, combing his hair away from his face.

"Something else Amy did, or another reason Amy doesn't like Elodie, or something else Amy is doing that we should be aware of and Luke probably should be aware of?" Ashton inquired sharply.

"Okay, I don't have proof that Amy's the one doing it, but she's the most likely suspect when you put all the facts together. So in Düsseldorf again, when Peter and Elodie went to tune up the guitars for the show, mine were normal, only a couple needed a little bit of help here and there. All of Luke's were entirely out of tune, every single one, and not like a little bit out of tune. It looked like someone had gone in and just twisted all of the tuning keys one way or the other to mess them up. Elodie, Peter, and I were working on them for the better part of three hours, going through and re-tune all of them before the show. It took three of us, all experts, three hours together. Multiple of them have been out of tune and Elodie has had issues similarly at every show since then. They finally weren't this morning when we checked, but Peter also made Andrew make everybody give their key to the guitar cases back to him, including Luke and I. The only people that now have access are Elodie, Peter, and Andrew."