Seventeen

7

☆☆☆☆

Michael's hands are shaking. He reaches towards Seventeen's latest painting, but his hand withdraws on its own accord and drops back down to his side. The oil is layered in a way that gives the painting a textured look, raising in some places and falling flat against the canvas in others.

He's shaking violently now, stomach quivering and tears stinging at his eyes and the back of his throat. He chokes shortly, trying to get out a why, trying to say anything at all, but no words will come out. He can't even open his mouth.

The painting is of him, a portrait of him from the chest up, that much is clear. He's standing in what looks to be a field, with soft colored daisies and green grass behind him.

Six hands are tearing at his skin, one feminine with long, yellowing, claw like nails, and another more masculine, wrapped around his throat. The other feminine hand is cutting a hole through his shirt with the sharp nails, while the other masculine one is tearing skin off his shoulder. A smaller, more childlike hand is scraping at his left cheek hard enough to leave bleeding scratches, leaving the other hand to clutch tightly to the front of his shirt.

Across each hand is a number, like they've been drawn on with sharpies. The small hands have the number 9 on the backs of them, while the masculine hands have 20. Right at the center, with violently sharp, yellow claws, scrawled across the backs of both remaining hands, is the number 17.

"No," Michael's eyes automatically flick to the older paintings of Luke and Ashton. "No, you can't do this. They've done nothing wrong- I've done nothing wrong!"

Seventeen jerks forward, like the mastermind of the entire plan, and falls, stumbling, catching herself on the wall in front of her, right between Michael's painting and Ashton's. She smiles, looking at both of them, and then down at the one of Luke that was meant for Calum.

"We can," she breathes out. "We can and we will." Michael screams, but no one can hear him. No one except Seventeen, Twenty, and Nine.

☆☆☆☆

Calum's the first to break the silence. "I met Seventeen."

Ashton freezes instantly. His hand are poised over his coffee mug, hands heating up from the steam with how they're placed above it, now. His entire body is tense and he wants to scream, because Calum doesn't even know who Seventeen is. Calum doesn't know her history, what she's painted, how she got into painting, he doesn't know anything. But, yet, he met her. He knows what she looks like.

"You what?" Ashton whispers, trying to keep the anger out of his voice. He turns around abruptly face the small table in his kitchen, where Calum's glancing over at Luke nervously.

"I, um, I met Seventeen," Calum repeats. Luke sips his coffee.

Ashton lets his anger subside the best he can, even as it's still screaming through his bloodstream. He grabs his mug and joins the two of them at the table, blowing the rising steam from his coffee before sipping at it. "Where?" He asks in the calmest voice he can manage.

Calum flicks his eyes over to Luke for a moment, then turns back to Ashton with his big, soft, brown eyes. He blinks slowly, either to piss Ashton off further or subdue him with the innocent doe-eyed look (Ashton can't tell, honestly). "At a club downtown. I was with some friends, and I saw her while I was getting some drinks."

"How did you know it was her?" Ashton asks. Luke moves slowly when he reaches for the basket of fruit in the center of the table, like he doesn't want to spook them, and they both follow his hand with their eyes. Luke, however, looks between Calum and Ashton like he's on edge, like he can sense the storm brewing somewhere. He pulls of a single grape and retracts his hand quickly, to pop it into his mouth.

"She looks like Michael," Calum says. "The only difference was, she was wearing makeup, a crop top, and a tiny skirt. And she had long hair."

Ashton indulges in the words like he's hearing unspeakable secrets. He eats them up like they're the forbidden fruit. He needs to know more. "What was she like?"

Calum shrugs carelessly, but even he knows about Ashton's obsession with Seventeen. He knows Ashton needs to know everything, or else he'll lose his mind. "She had neon paintings on her, because it was a black light club, you know? And she had little drawings on the back of her hands, too. Like, stars. She kissed my cheek and right here," he points to under his chin.

His eyes flickering over to Luke as he says it, but Luke just takes a long drink of his coffee and stares back at him, impartial on the kisses.

"And?" Ashton prompts.

"She said she knew me," Calum continues as he looks back to Ashton. "And she said she had a painting for me. I asked if it was of me, like yours was, but she said it was of something I loved even more. Luke."

Luke's cheeks flush at that, but Ashton couldn't care less. He sits back in his chair and considers Calum's statement. If what he's saying is true, Seventeen knows Calum, and she knows him well. She's spoken to him, but Calum had implied that the club meeting was the first time they'd met.

"This is weird," Ashton decides, looking back up. Luke nods in agreement, while Calum chews on his bottom lip like he's considering it. "I mean, she implied that she'd spoken to you before, but that was the first time you'd met her? You've never seen her before that?"

Calum shakes his head. "I don't think so. Maybe, I meet a lot of people. The only reason I talked to her was because I thought she was Michael in a wig, not- I didn't think she was Seventeen."

They're all silent again, debating that in their own minds, in their own ways. After a minute or two, Luke throws his head back and finishes his coffee, slamming the mug down on the table with a thud. "Michael told me some stuff about Twenty."

Ashton raises his eyebrows and Calum turns to his blonde boyfriend curiously. "Yeah?"

Luke nods. "He came over to my studio the other day, bleeding and throwing up, so I helped him out, you know? And I asked if I should call Ashton, and he said no, because Twenty might hurt him."

Ashton's eyebrows furrow in confusion at that. "Are you sure?"

Luke nods and reaches for the fruit bowl again. "He seemed scared for you. And he said he tried to stop Twenty and accidentally hurt himself, that's why he was bleeding."

Ashton's frown deepens as he looks down at his coffee. He doesn't understand why Twenty wants to hurt him. He's never even met Twenty.

((LOL what do u guys think is happening i want to hear your wild conspiracy theories

-Mel))