status (luke hemmings)

three

"Hey, is that Anna?"

A half-hour after Luke and Calum got their first drinks from the fancy bar in the dining room (and two or three more), somehow Calum had gotten Luke onto the dance floor.

They weren't really dancing (well, at least Luke wasn't--more like Calum doing awkward hip thrusts and Luke pretending that he didn't know the bassist of his own band). Still, the fact that Luke was there at all was a huge accomplishment.

There were still a lot of people surrounding them; it was now around ten o'clock and the dance floor kept getting more and more crowded. It would remain this way until midnight, when the Rihvalskys did their own New Year's ball-drop celebration on the backyard patio.

The "ball" was actually a crystal multi-colored glass chandelier-like contraption, designed to shatter into a million pieces as it dropped from the roof of the mansion and dropped down five floors into the pool.

Guests technically didn't have to watch; they could hear the glass shattering from a thousand miles away. But most watched anyways, 'oohing' and 'aahing' as they watched the giant splash and the pretty mosaic-like pattern the "ball" created at the bottom of the pool after it was shattered.

Luke thought it was a cool tradition, although somewhat wasteful. And ear-shattering.

The Rihvalsky children had always been the ones to drop the "ball", alternating based on the year. Eva did it last year (Luke remembered this because she was so wasted she misaimed and accidently threw the "ball" onto the patio instead. It looked like a mess and sounded like one, too), and Anna had thrown it the year before that (that, of course, he knew because he was so obsessed with her.)

That meant it was Nathan Rihvalsky's year to drop the "ball". He was the youngest at sixteen, and he basically was born wearing an Armani suit. He was the only child with blonde hair and blue eyes, compared to Eva's and Anna's brunette hair and green eyes.

Oh. Anna.

"Hello, anyone home?" Calum smirked, snapping his fingers in Luke's face. "I asked, 'Is that Anna?'"

Luke, clearly caught off-guard, did a double-take. He wasn't drunk (just tipsy), but after three drinks in a half hour both his mind and attention span was a little foggy. He couldn't tell if Calum was just messing with him or if he was serious, but either way, Calum held Luke's attention now.

"Wait, what? Where?" Luke yelped, perhaps a little too excitedly. But he didn't care.

Calum laughed at him, shaking his head. Luke knew how whipped he sounded, but he couldn't help it. He was whipped and he couldn't really help that either.

"I mean, I might be seeing double, but I'm pretty sure that's her." Calum gestured towards the center of the room and squinted. "Yeah, both Eva and Anna are dancing... With... Ashton?"

Luke didn't know what to expect when he turned around to where Calum was pointing. He certainly didn't expect to see Ashton Irwin there, dancing with both sisters in a triangle formation.

Ashton was clearly having the time of his life, pulling all sorts of horrible dance moves and grinning ear-to-ear. Luke would've felt ashamed that he knew Ashton if he wasn't so jealous.

"No way." Luke scoffed, half-angry that Ashton was dancing with both of them but also half-intrigued. How did he get them both to dance with him while he was completely sober?

But he shouldn't have been so surprised; this was typical Ashton.

Ashton tended to stay sober during most high-class social events, because that was his 'role.' Luke was supposed to be 'confident', Ashton the 'sober health nut'. So, Modest! had prepared him with many cheesy slogans to say to the public, including "health is more beneficial in my life" and "getting white-boy wasted isn't my thing."