Pairing: 5SOS ot4 friendship
Rating: teen and up
Key Tags: Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Bad Weather, Ice Cream
Word Count: around 2,555
Read on AO3
Summary:
"Tornado warning!" he calls, vaulting down the last few stairs and grabbing Luke's arm. "We have to get to a safe place! Into the bathtub!"
"Uh," Michael says, watching Ashton haul Luke towards the bathroom before he gets his bearings enough to speak. "We should get to the basement, actually."
Ashton stops abruptly enough that Calum runs into him.
"The basement?"
"Yeah," Michael says, slinging his backpack over his shoulder and grabbing his phone. "It's like none of you have been in a tornado warning before."
or: Michael and his housemates are caught in a tornado warning during their summer internship.
Michael stands transfixed as rain pelts the windows, creating a thick sheet of water outside that he can barely see in the darkness from the cloud cover. Lightning flashes, illuminating the water rushing in the street, turning the pavement into a river as the rain continues to fall in droves. A second later a rumble of thunder sounds above him, loud and booming enough to shake the old house. His heart thumps, excitement starting to pool in his stomach.
He fucking loves storms. Even though the house they were provided for this internship is older and ricketier than the one he left at home, he's excited to hunker down and spend the evening relaxing guilt-free rather than running errands like he had originally planned. He and his housemates have been working themselves to the bone this summer, and part of him is thankful for the excuse to do nothing for a few hours, even if the tasks he’s putting off will only be worse once the storm clears.
His ears pick up the faint echo of sirens a second later, the high-pitched wails floating above the cacophony of the rain to reach him. His phone beeps, the abrasive weather alert tone ringing through the living room, and a second later footsteps thunder down the stairs.
"Tornado!" Luke calls, landing hard with both feet on the wood floor at the bottom of the stairs, sliding in his socks and grabbing on to the railing to keep his balance. "My phone says there's a tornado!"
"It's a warning, it might be radar indicated instead of an actual sighting," Michael says. Luke looks at him with wide eyes, hair in disarray and worn t-shirt making him look smaller and younger than usual. He doesn't have any time to respond before Ashton appears at the top of the stairs with Calum right behind him.
"Tornado warning!" he calls, vaulting down the last few stairs and grabbing Luke's arm. "We have to get to a safe place! Into the bathtub!"
"Uh," Michael says, watching Ashton haul Luke towards the bathroom before he gets his bearings enough to speak. "We should get to the basement, actually."
Ashton stops abruptly enough that Calum runs into him.
"The basement?"
"Yeah," Michael says, slinging his backpack over his shoulder and grabbing his phone. "Come on. Bring something to keep you occupied."
"There's no time!" Ashton insists, grabbing Calum when he starts to head back upstairs. He drags both him and Luke towards the basement stairs, and Michael rolls his eyes up to the ceiling as another flash of lightning flares in his periphery.
"We don't have to run," Michael says, following them at an even pace.
"It's a fucking tornado, Mike!" Ashton yells. "Get your ass down here!"
Michael makes it to the basement just in time to hear Luke ask "Are we going to die?"
"Of course not," he frowns, setting down his backpack near the couch. The basement is going to be converted into another bedroom this fall so the small arts center they work for can house more interns next year, but for now it simply has brown carpet, two second-hand couches, and a TV set that they rarely have time to watch. It’s open and drafty, and part of him is worried about unexpected leaking with the amount of rain outside, but it’ll do for their shelter.
"Sit down," he says, motioning to the couches. "Get comfortable so we can wait it out. It's like none of you have been in a tornado warning before."
"I haven't," Calum says, flopping down in the corner of the opposite couch. "I live on the East Coast, dude."
"I only remember one as a kid, and we didn't have a basement where we lived," Ashton says, taking the spot next to him. Michael blinks, then looks at Luke, who shakes his head.
"Oh," he says.
Logically he knew that there were differences between living on one of the coasts and living in the Midwest, but tornado drills and warnings have been such a normalized part of his life that it never occurred to him they wouldn't be part of his fellow interns'.
Luke flinches at another rumble of thunder.
"It's going to be fine," Michael says confidently, pulling him down onto the couch. "We get tornado warnings all the time where I live and they've always just been warnings for me. Even if the wind gets bad enough to topple some trees upstairs, we'll be safe down here. Let's turn the news on and hear what the weatherman has to say."
They have to dig in the couch cushions for the remote. Ashton is the one who finds it and holds it up with a noise of triumph, and Michael hopes that the somewhat spotty signal they get down here holds on despite the weather. He sighs in relief once the weather radar fills the screen, even if it's fuzzy with gray pixels.
"See?" he says, listening to the weatherman describe the path of the storm, which counties are under a thunderstorm warning, and the danger of the high winds. "He said they haven't officially had a tornado touch down yet, and the radar prediction would put it south of us. We just have to hunker down here and wait for the storm to pass to be sure."
"Okay," Luke says, pulling his knees to his chest and wrapping his arms around them. Michael looks at Calum and Ashton, both of them equally tense from their own precarious perches on the couch, and makes a decision.
"I'm going to be back in thirty seconds."
"Michael--" Ashton tries.
"You can time me if you want!" he says. "Thirty seconds. I'm just going up to the kitchen. A tornado isn't going to suddenly materialize that quickly."
He's on the stairs before he finishes talking, taking them two at a time. He knows that he'll be fine up here for a bit longer, but there's no use stressing the other three out by lingering. He finds what he needs in the freezer and cupboards quickly, bundles everything into his arms, and hopes he doesn't accidentally drop and break any of the bowls on the stairs.
Ashton waits for him at the base and frowns when he sees Michael carefully descend, arms laden with bowls, spoons, chocolate sauce, sprinkles, an ice cream scoop, and the gallon of chocolate chip ice cream they bought last week.
"Really?" he asks, taking the bowls and spoons before Michael loses his grip and sends them tumbling to the ground.
"I'm fine, see?" he says, plopping down on the floor in front of the couches. "Besides, ice cream is an essential part of every tornado warning. One of my earliest memories is eating ice cream during a tornado warning, actually. It was one in the middle of the night, so my parents had to wake me up to get me downstairs. I just remember being excited I got to stay up late and have ice cream."
"It's hard to be scared when you have ice cream," Calum says, sliding down onto the carpet next to him. He tugs at Luke's ankle until he uncurls and joins them on the floor, completing their circle around the bowls. Michael cracks open the tub of ice cream and dishes it up, handing the bowls out as he finishes so everyone can add their preferred amount of sauce and sprinkles. The weatherman steadily reports in the background, deterring against driving and repeating which counties are under severe weather warnings, but otherwise it's quiet. Michael can still hear rain and thunder, but it's muffled underground.
He gives Luke an extra scoop and a smile, because he eats the most out of all of them and seems the most nervous, although Ashton's head keeps whipping towards the walls with every rumble of thunder, breaking his eye contact with the tv's weather radar. For a few minutes they eat in silence, only the clink of their spoons against the bowls and drone of the tv filling the dead air, and Michael watches the other three become more and more anxious as the weather man gives tips for how to protect yourself from severe weather and continues to repeat the counties under the warning.
"So..." he says tentatively. "How's it going?"
They blink at him.
"Well, Michael, there's a tornado," Ashton says. Michael rolls his eyes.
"The weatherman says there hasn't been an official touchdown yet. I'm just trying to take everyone's mind off of it."
"Does that go along with the ice cream for tornado warnings?" Luke asks. "Is that what you did as a kid?"
Michael tries to remember anything more about that specific night. He can see flashes of his dad in his white sleeping shirt and his mom's blue pj pants, and he remembers wrapping himself up in the lion blanket that's still folded on the back of the couch of his basement back home, even though it's significantly more worn now.
He doesn't remember what they talked about, but he remembers that he wasn't scared of the tornado, even with the storm outside and the tv turned to the constant red weather radar.
"I think so," he says. "Probably. It's a really early memory, so I don't remember what we talked about, but I wasn't scared. I assume they distracted me somehow."
"Yeah, parents are good at that," Ashton says, picking at his ice cream. "I remember when I was really little, my mom was always distracting me with music. She would listen to a lot of sad songs, especially in my earliest memories right after my dad left, but she knew I loved music, and she'd listen to a lot of rock songs, too. I remember sitting in my car seat when I was really tiny and us belting out "Tonight Tonight" by the Smashing Pumpkins, even though I didn't know the lyrics, let alone understand them. That didn't matter, though. Mom liked the song, and singing it together made her smile, and I liked when Mom smiled."
"That's cute," Calum says sincerely, taking a break from stirring his ice cream and sauce together to give Ashton a smile.
"I can't remember shit about anything before kindergarten," Luke says. "My earliest memory is from my cousin's wedding. I really wanted to dance with her because she had a big pretty dress, even though I didn't really know her because we lived far away. I can't remember anything about the wedding or what song we were dancing to, but I remember that my mom had to ask her to dance with me because I was too shy to do it myself."
Michael tries to imagine a tiny Ashton singing along to his mom, or a tiny Luke dancing with his cousin on her wedding day. He can't quite manage it, both of them still unfamiliar enough that he can't picture them in any way except exactly as they are now. In his mind, young Ashton still has a bandana around his forehead to keep his curls at bay. Young Luke is unrealistically tall and gangly. Even though they've been living and working together for a few weeks and there's a deep sense of camaraderie, he's barely scratched the surface of who they are.
"What about you, Calum?" Ashton asks. "Do you have any early memories you want to share?"
Calum hums around his spoon. They patiently wait for him to swallow, listening to the weather report.
"My grandma had this little chocolate fountain that she'd hook up when we were over sometimes. We would dip fruit or other food in, and my sister accidentally clogged it by dropping a mini dill pickle in," he says. "I was little enough that my parents had to help me to ensure I didn't drop anything in, either, and I was so upset that we had to stop so someone could dislodge it and fish it out. We talk about it every year when we use the fountain again."
"Mmm, chocolate," Luke hums dreamily. Michael pushes the ice cream and chocolate sauce towards him so he can dish up another bowl.
"How many siblings do you have?" Ashton asks. "Is it just your sister?"
"Yeah, just an older sister for me," Calum says. "What about you guys?"
"I'm an only child," Michael says.
"I have two younger siblings, a brother and a sister. Lauren is 15, Harry is 11," Ashton replies. They all turn to Luke.
"Uh, two older brothers," he says, carefully pouring more chocolate sauce on his new stack of ice cream scoops. "They're absolute asses, but I miss them. It's weird being a time zone away."
Michael hums but stays quiet. Although he's only about an hour from home for the internship, he was a few states away for college. He doesn't regret flying the nest for school, but it was a difficult adjustment when he had barely been out of state before then.
"Time zones suck," Calum says vehemently. "I went to soccer camp in Brazil one summer and I could never figure out what time it was back home when I tried to call."
"You went to Brazil?" Michael asks. "That's fucking sick! What was it like?"
Calum launches into a story about his time there, and then conversation flows quickly, with everyone passing around stories and anecdotes about themselves like they've been doing it for years. Michael learns about Ashton's cat allergy, the time Luke broke his arm, and Calum's favorite birthday present, and he learns even more by watching them as they continue to switch topics at rapid-fire. He learns that Ashton is the best of them at keeping a straight face while he's telling a joke, and Calum can't control his facial expressions at all. Luke keeps his limbs tucked close to him like he's afraid to take up space, but Calum is far more comfortable spread out. All three of them have a good taste in music, and all three of them have absolutely insane opinions on other things that they'll defend to the death. At one point they start assigning each other different characters in A Bug’s Life. Michael doesn’t know how they got on the subject, he just knows that his stomach hurts from laughing so hard.
Michael thought that they were friends before this, but on second thought that might not have been true. They were definitely friendly, and they've had long conversations before about things besides the house meal schedule and how terrible this internship is, but this feels like they crossed a bridge. Now, Michael can clearly envision himself calling one of them to catch up when they're back at their separate college campuses, or making plans to meet up for a weekend or two. He thinks this friendship could be something that carries on even when they're not all stuck in the same place together.
None of them notice when the tv switches back to its regular scheduled programming, the weather crisis long since averted. They continue to talk and laugh until the leftover ice cream in the tub turns to lukewarm liquid and the rain outside lightens to a gentle patter, safe with each other in the basement, drowning out everything else with their laughter.
Title: i don't run away when your face says "achoo"
Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/46297543
Squares filled: Mundane Chores for @anyfandomfluffbingo
Pairing: 5SOS - OT4
Rating: Teen+
Word count: 2,260
Summary: Ashton gets sick, and his boyfriends come to the rescue to take care of him.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 5 Seconds of Summer (Band), One Direction (Band)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Michael Clifford/Luke Hemmings/Calum Hood/Ashton Irwin
Characters: Ashton Irwin, Calum Hood, Luke Hemmings, Michael Clifford, Harry Styles, Liam Payne, Louis Tomlinson, Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, random crew
Additional Tags: OT4, 5+1 Things, Established Relationship, Polyamory, Public Display of Affection, Secret Relationship, 1D is oblivious, 5sos are bad at holding their affection back, set in the 'where we are' 1D tour, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Cuddling & Snuggling, Shoulder Massage, reassurance, Work-outs, Attempt at Humor, theres this racist dude that calls Zayn a slur, Grocery Shopping, Drinking, they kiss awn, nik said nym wanted a fic like this and who am i to say no
Summary:
The boys of One Direction may be a little dense sometimes, but they’re no idiots. They know something is up between the boys of the band that tours with them as a supportive act. They just don’t know what yet.
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Or, alternatively, 5 times the One Direction boys didn't realise 5 Seconds of Summer were dating and 1 time it was blatantly, inexcusably obvious
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/13
Fandom: 5 Seconds of Summer (Band), One Direction (Band)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Michael Clifford/Luke Hemmings/Calum Hood/Ashton Irwin, Niall Horan/Zayn Malik/Liam Payne/Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson
Characters: Calum Hood, Niall Horan, Luke Hemmings, Ashton Irwin
Additional Tags: Superheroes, Humor, Cute, Team Work Makes The Dream Work, basically this is kinda like Sailor Moon but their powers are from magic flowers, and it will take some time but they will fall in love and get together it'll be sweet, Villain of the Week
Summary:
Getting unexpectedly drafted by a magical flower super-force with vague instructions to "use your power wisely" translates quickly to "fight flower supervillains who decide to misuse their new powers." It would have been nice if the superpowers came with a How-To manual though.
At least they're meeting some new friends along the way. Who knows what might blossom from this?
