5 Bottles of Glitter (5sos)

Prologue

Dark stage, no lights. They all knew what a cheering crowd sounded like. The familiarity of the cheering didn't it make it's volume any less jarring. The four of them stood, already sweating despite not having even playing a note. 

"Ashton's already out there! There's no time for this!" I imagined him sitting at his drum set, adjusting his kit ever so slightly, feeling out the grip of the drumsticks. Imagining where the rest of us are.

"This conversation's not over." Calum picked up his bass from the hands of a roadie I'd never met, disappearing from view onto the stage. Luke followed him, leaving me alone to Michael's tear-stained cheeks.

"I have to go, too." I look down at my feet. "They'll get over it. Everything's going to be alright." My vans rubbed a blister into the back of one of my ankles as I walked away. He was trying. The whole band knew it. No matter how much those boys pretended to be mad at each other, I knew their bond couldn't be easily broken.

Tonight, I needed to be present. No zoning now, focusing on other problems like Michael. Today was for today's goal. Right now was for right now.

My mouth tastes like ash.

Michael appears between Calum and Luke, merely a shadow on the concrete floor of the stage. I looked at the dimly lit faces I could see in the front row, all on their feet, seperated from us by nothing but a simple metal barrier and a few men. 

The lights are too bright. 

I blink as my pupils shrink, adjusting to the flood of light from the ceiling. The cheering doesn't stop. Luke strums a chord, looks down at his pedal board, and frowns. I watch him adjust a knob and can almost hear Leslie yelling at a roadie. Michael looks at his board, too. Calum tunes his bass and then turns off the tuner.  I start playing.

My vocals are up too high.

Maybe I'm this loud every night. I never pay this much attention during a show. I'm always focused on the boys. I'm always supporting, singing verses solo because I'm legally required to, waiting for another band mate to take over my place vocally. No, tonight I'm real.

Luke's flat during the pre-chorus.

With a spray of confetti, the chorus begins and I pull away from the keyboard. I have thirty seconds before I need to play another note. I carry the mic with me, making rounds around the stage as I belt the chorus to the new song. Fuck the band, man, this song's lyrics are mine and I'm singing it like it should be sung. It's not the album version, but I'm not the album version of Georgie.

I nearly drop the mic.

The energy in the room is different when Luke starts the second verse. The simple four chord progression I'm playing feels like Mozart himself wrote it. We're getting into performing. We're getting into being in the room together.

I stay at the keyboard during the second chorus, continuing to back the chords that our two guitarists were strumming. This chorus wan't an explosion, but it was still powerful just like the first. Luke backs me on some lines, sending a lower harmony through the room. Right on key.

Suddenly we're all singing. The whole band, the whole room, the whole world. We're all singing the lyrics to a song I wrote. Time breezes by as we finish the song. I survey the band. They're smiling, Michael's puffy eyes nowhere to be seen even with the harsh lighting.

"Hello, Charlotte." Luke drags out the last vowel of his hello. We listen to the crowd scream as he speaks. I giggle a little. Calum meets my eye and smiles. Ashton, in the back of us, oblivious to the mess that occurred before we came on stage is smiling, too. He may not be as happy as I am, but he sure is close. I've never seen Ashton look upset while performing. He was built for this.

We closed the set an hour later with an acoustic for the encore. In our brief break between sets, the tension had evaporated as we all chugged water and smiled at each other. Every night would be like his, eventually.

Time heals all wounds.

fuck, i really didn't think i'd ever write any five fuckin bottles of glitter ever again but here we are i guess. enjoy this revamped but still half-baked version of one of the shittiest fics of 2014.