requested by anonymous
summary: if you love me let me go, if you love me let me go (4/4, This is Gospel, Panic! At The Disco)
disclaimer: mild trigger warnings for the first one, please be safe <3
Ashton: ‘cause these words are knives and often leave scars
I was the first girlfriend any member of the band ‘announced’ to the fans.
It was the biggest shit storm I’ve ever witnessed in my life.
I don’t do much in terms of online media – I don’t make YouTube videos, I have a very small personal tumblr blog and I have twitter so I can keep up with Ashton and my friends.
I’m a travel journalist so I literally get paid to tour with my boyfriend’s band except I scoot off to go visit quieter parts of a city and meet historical experts in the area and I then write up the articles while he’s on stage. I love it.
But then he posted one picture of us on instagram. It was a cute picture, Michael had taken it one night when we had a few shots in a hotel room and we’d got kind of giggly. Ash posted it with the caption ‘my gorgeous girlfriend, I hope you all love her as much as I do’ and he tagged me.
Abuse was hurtled at me from all directions – instagram, twitter, they found my tumblr and even my personal Facebook. They slated everything about me – how I look, how I dress, my job, what I say, music I like and ‘how I treat Ash’. Apparently I wasn’t good enough under the scrutiny of the 5SOS fam.
I didn’t want to let it bother me but it did. I started re-evaluating everything I did – when I wasn’t working I was trawling through twitter tags and message boards about everything that was wrong with me.
I kept the whole thing hidden from Ash – he knew I got hate but he didn’t know how much it upset me.
Until he caught me getting upset. I’d had too many ‘just go cut’ messages, the words were too much – I listened.
Ashton soon interrupted, ripping the weapon from my hand and rocking me in his arms as I sobbed.
“I’m not worth you.”
“Don’t say that.”
“Everyone hates me Ash!”
“They don’t know you, they don’t know me – they know the celebrity me, the public me – but you know the real me. No one could be better for me. I wish you’d told me you were upset.” He whispered. “I know words can cut deep but they’re not real – they don’t know us. I love you – if you ‘weren’t good enough’ we wouldn’t be together.”
“I love you too.” I whispered.
The next day there was an instagram video asking people to be kinder and he didn’t let me out of his sight.
This is why he’s perfect for me.
Calum: don’t try and sleep through the end of the world / and bury me alive
We were fighting for our lives. Others had run away from the end of the world and whilst it shouldn’t have been us, no one else was doing it. We found guns and swords and cross bows and all sorts of weapons to fight these zombies with.
But then everything went quiet. There were no zombies, no humans – nothing.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
Calum shrugged. “Maybe a higher power is calling them to order.”
“Well, I’m going to take this time to catch up on sleep.” I decided instantly. I wandered around the town we were in, finding a decent bed and breakfast and closing all the curtains and settling down on the super king sized bed.
I knew Calum would follow because he’s a loyal, protective boyfriend and I knew he would not miss this opportunity to cuddle.
We got a blissful three days where we barely moved from the bed. It was so nice to be able to spend time with Calum as my boyfriend not just someone who I happened to kill zombies with.
You’d think two relatively young adults alone in a bedroom for three days would be up to one thing and one thing alone and sure there was a bit of that but we’d not slept properly for months before this and we were definitely going to take the opportunity to catch up.
But we only got three days and we were headfirst back under attack.
I was asleep. I heard mild footsteps but assumed I was dreaming. Then I heard Calum grunting. I realised he wasn’t lying in bed next to me and panicked, running to the window to see if I could spot him.
He was on the ground, trying to fight off ten zombies.
“Hey! Get your ass down here and help me! I’m not letting you sleep while I get buried alive down here!” He called. I grabbed a shot gun, using all of the seven available bullets to take out seven of the living dead. He had the other three under control.
I tossed him the sword and grabbed my cross bow and our back packs having spotted more zombies in the distance.
And we were back on the road again, fighting for our lives until we found something sustainable. Until then, the only thing we had worth living for was each other.
Luke: this is the beat of my heart / the fear of falling apart
We’d argued before. Of course we’d argued before – every healthy couple did but this time I wasn’t so sure it was just a couple’s argument. I felt like I could stay angry at him this time – I didn’t know if I wanted to let him back in.
I only questioned this when I saw his face fall a little bit, half falling onto the sofa and running his hands through his flat hair – we’d been arguing for so long that he hadn’t even bothered to do anything with it.
“Is this… is this the end?” He asked, holding his hand in a clenched fist and pressing it against his chest.
“What are you doing?” I asked, kneeling in front of him and pulling his hand away, holding it steady in my own but he was shaking.
“Are you breaking up with me? Am I loosing you?” He whispered, gripping my hand and trying to keep the tears from falling down his cheeks.
I sighed. “Of course not, Luke – we’ve been through this too many times for me to ever let you go.” I tenderly kissed his hand as he let out a long breath.
“I couldn’t… I thought… After five years I can’t lose you. It’s been too long.” He panted.
“What were you doing with your hand?” I asked, genuinely a little bit confused.
“My heart started racing, I could feel it. The thought of losing you does that to me okay? You can’t leave me, I need you.” He begged, pulling me up onto the sofa next to him and holding me close, like if he let go I wouldn’t be there anymore.
“We’ve been together too long, Luke. You’re stuck with me now Hemmings.” I chuckled awkwardly – trying to lighten the mood more than anything else. “That’s what couples do, right? They argue over stupid things, the stupidest things and then they realise they couldn’t actually live without each other and they move on. I imagine, my parents just abused each other and got drunk.” More awkward laughter.
“You’re nothing like them.”
“That’s why I’m scared of this Luke. I can’t end up like them – I can’t do to any child what they did to me.”
“You won’t – you’re not like that and I would never let you treat anyone like they treated you.” He promised, holding my hands tighter and tracing his finger over the promise ring he bought me three birthdays’ ago.
I took a deep breath; decision made; argument resolved. “Yes.”
“Yes what?”
“I’ll marry you.”
Michael: assembling their philosophies / from pieces of broken memories
He’d helped her through so much. He’d been to school with her since they were little and Calum always knew the Michael thought she was pretty but Calum liked football and Michael liked playing in the dirt aged eight, so neither of them did anything about the girl with bruises.
It was around year 10 – they’d made friends with Luke and started all their band stuff that Michael noticed she was just as pretty as he thought she was when they were younger. It was just a bonus that she was into the same music as him.
But she was still the girl with the bruises, except she was bruised mentally now too.
He shared a math class with her – Luke was off in his advanced classes and Michael and Calum had been split up within two days of being in the same class so he sat next to her every day. She wore beanies and had her hair in cute plaits, wearing glasses that didn’t fit on her nose and trying to cover the marks on her arms with long sleeved shirts that didn’t suit the height of summer.
One day he risked saying hello. They got to talking, they exchanged numbers and Michael invited her to band practise. Not that he wasn’t proud of his band; but it had nothing to do with the band. He wanted to get her out of her house – out of the house with the drunken father and the mother of high expectations, the live in boyfriend that didn’t see her as anything more than a sex machine.
Michael slowly built on the broken girl she was and tried to fix her – he helped her find out what a relationship should be out of the fragmented pieces she already knew. She learnt about all new philosophies from pieces of broken memories that haunted the dark corners of her mind. He helped her escape from her awful past.
“Michael, you’re going to have to tell her one day that you’re in love with her.” Ashton scoffed, taking the opportunity at the one band practice she wasn’t at.
“In love with her? I’m not in love – I like her a lot but-”
“Michael, she needs you. Just tell her how much you like her.” Calum smiled.
“And you need her.” Luke added. “You have not concentrated once tonight – I think it’s because she’s not here.”
So he did tell her how he felt and he gave her the first loving kiss she’d ever had in her life.