Wildflower

Twenty-Four

"We need something different! Something fun and vibrant." Ashton tugs at his red hair, clearly frustrated as he looks over the lists of song ideas for the new album.

"We know Ash. We are all trying, it just hasn't come yet, we can't force it." Luke yells back, also annoyed. The whole room is tense, the boys at their tempers end's after spending so much time locked in small studios together trying to put together an album.

"I have something." Calum finally sighs, "Maybe. I don't know how good it is, and it's a mess still, but it might have the potential to be what we need."

"Why the fuck have you been holding out on us then?" Ashton turns, spitting the rhetorical question at him angrily.

"Okay, chill the fuck out Ashton, I'm sorry I've had other shit going on in my life and this song is part of that. I'm trying here." Calum fires right back.

"Okay both of you take five, we could all use it honestly. Calum get the song, we can have him show us when we reconvene. But everyone yelling is not going to help, we all know it's just the stress and we need to not take it out on each other." Michael speaks up sternly but also calmly.

"Five minutes." Ashton nods curtly, exiting the room almost immediately.

"The notebook is in my car, I'll get it." Calum sighs, pushing off the chair to leave the room too, pulling out his phone as he goes.

Zac Rivers

Any updates on Z today?

No change it seems. I'll
keep you up to speed if
that changes.

Thanks, I'll be there
sometime tonight, after
we're done working.

We're holding it down
here, take the time you
need. Hopefully
things change soon.

Hopefully

Calum slides the phone back in his pocket, digging through the backpack in his car to find the notebook he'd been taking to the hospital with him for the past sixteen days.

"I'm sorry Cal, I wasn't trying to take out my frustrations on you." He turns as Ashton approaches him.

"I know." Calum sighs, closing the car door as he stands upright with book in hand.

"Any changes with Zeppelynn's condition?"

"Not yet." Calum shrugs, "But I found the song." He lifts the small book.

"You think it's a good one?"

"There are a lot of bad ones in here, but there's one idea that's good, and I have a lot of it done, mixed up in the wrong order, but there's a song in the mess somewhere, I can feel it."

"Then let's get to it. I can't wait to hear it." Ashton sighs, wrapping an arm around Calum's shoulders and guiding him back towards the studio building.

"I'm not trying to be an asshole Ash, I'm sorry I've been so distant, but it's really hard to have Z still in a coma, it's messing with me. Her dad was crying on my shoulder last week over it all..."

"I can't even imagine what it's been like for you Calum, I'm not trying to push you to hide any emotion you're feeling, but I'm getting frustrated with the process. I feel like we are so close, but we are missing that one thing for the album and I want it so we can really make it amazing and well rounded." Ashton sighs.

"I'm frustrated by that too Ash, and maybe this song is it, and maybe it isn't, but it's my rambled thoughts about Z and what's going on with her and I so maybe it's just a mess and that's all it will ever be."