SUNLIGHT. ━━ ( M. CLIFFORD ) ✓

• s i x t e e n •

michael was itching to know what happened to eleana next. it was like there was a burning need inside of him that would not be satiated, no matter how many times he told himself that the boys had no plans tomorrow and that they could spend the entire day reading eleana's messages.

he barely slept that night, tossing and turning continuously, trying not to squeeze his hands in anger due to his painful injury.

stupid motherfucking wall.

if you asked one of the other boys how much michael slept, they would easily say at least 10 hours a night. thinking about this made michael laugh now. it probably looked a bit weird; a 22 year old man in his hotel bed, with a bandaged hand, laughing to himself at 4 am.

he dozed off a little at 7 am, but it was the kind of sleep that you would probably wake up from if even the slightest sound was made. y'know, when you know it's sunny outside but your body is so freakin' tired that you just have to sleep, even if you don't want to.

at around 9 am he was vaguely aware of luke coming in to tell him that the hotel breakfast was about to close, but he didn't really care about that. his mind was split into two equal parts, eleana and sleep. okay maybe one overpowered the other, but he wasn't going to say which.

the boys had made a deal to meet up in michael's room at 2 pm, and no earlier. they needed rest and that was that. well, that's how ashton put it. right before calum hugged 'mama ashton' goodnight.

at half one calum and luke crashed into michael's room, immediately waking him up, but not giving him enough time to move as they jumped onto his bed and bounced up and down. michael cried out in pain when luke landed directly onto his bruised hand and luke and calum both halted their movements.

"mikey? you okay?"

michael hissed a little as he lifted his hand for them to see. there was a small cut that had gotten a lot deeper due to it not being treated correctly.

"that shit looks infected," calum commented.

michael shrugged, "where's ashton?"

"he's-" luke turned around, but stopped talking once he realised that was he was about to say was wrong. "-he was right behind us."

calum looked like he was about to say something when ashton burst into the room, panting, "i'm here, i'm here, i just had to- i had to-" but he was too out of breath to say anything.

"dude. chill."

ashton walked over to the bed and plopped himself down near michael's torso, and then leaned back so he was lying across michael's midsection.

after he had calmed down, he put michael's phone on the bedside table. michael raised an eyebrow, about to say that he no longer wanted it, but ashton held a finger up. "i got wipes, special wipes, phone- glass ones, some shit like that, it's clean, i promise," he explained.

michael nodded, but still asked luke to pass him his laptop from his suitcase. luke agreed, handing him it. michael used google to open tumblr and then turned the screen to ashton, "you changed the password," he pointed out bitterly.

ashton, who was tired and too punk rock to explain, didn't move the arm that was covering his eyes, "it's eleana."

how fitting, michael thought fondly.

firstly, he-read the messages thay he'd read without the boys last night and they smiled. only eleana would think like that. michael then explained that the next messages were from later on the same day.

"hurry up, we waited a whole fucking night for this," calum said impatiently.

"will we get it all done today?" luke asked doubtfully.

michael furrowed his eyebrows. "we don't have any plans for the rest of the day, do we?"

"no."

"nope."

"then yes," michael affirmed. "we'll finish it."