Chapter Text
Slithers of sunlight were beginning to creep their way through the cracks in the blinds, painting streaks of light on the wall opposite the window. Judging by how far they had managed to climb up the wall, Luke assumed that it was somewhere around 6:30am. For the past week he had been awake at this time, and by now he was becoming somewhat of an expert at telling the time this way.
Luke groaned and rolled over, burying himself further into his blankets. He'd been laying here for the last five hours trying to fall asleep but failing miserably. At this point he can't even remember the last time he got a decent amount of sleep, or when he woke up in the morning actually feeling refreshed. If by some miracle he did manage to doze off he'd often wake up in the morning feeling worse than he did before he went to sleep. It was like when you had a nap for twenty minutes, nine times out of ten all it did was make you more tired; make you crave sleep that little bit more. Except Luke could get several hours of sleep and still wake up tired, he'd still wake up and feel as if he had only slept for those twenty minutes.
He knew that this wasn't good - he wasn't completely ignorant to the fact that this wasn't exactly all that healthy. He was currently on break from tour, but he wasn't at home in Australia just yet. They had all decided that they'd go to the place they owned in the UK and spend a few months there working on some new songs for their next album, and in the meantime attend some events here and there and conduct a few interviews every now and again. So they weren't exactly on break per say, but they weren't exactly rushing from town to town every couple of days on tour. Essentially, Luke had nothing to place the blame on for his tiredness, he had no reason to be this exhausted and worn out. He knew this wasn't good.
Not to mention the fact that he couldn't for the life of him remember the last time that he truly smiled. He'd come to notice a few weeks back that it was taking a lot more than usual to get him to laugh, to get him to feel the slightest spark of happiness. He'd never had to force a smile, or a laugh around the rest of the boys before, their humorous nature always managed to squeeze a laugh out of him, but he now found himself having to force himself to do so numerous times a day. By this point he'd mastered the art of plastering a fake smile on his face, making his laugh sound as genuine as possible, and pretending that everything was okay.
But everything wasn't okay - and Luke didn't understand why. So it was easier to act as if it was, because if one of the boys happened to question why he wasn't okay, he wouldn't even remotely know how to respond to that. He didn't understand why he was feeling this way, he had no reason for why he spent countless days in bed, wrapped up in his blankets, trying to sleep his very existence away. He had nothing to place the blame on, and that unnerved him greatly.
Sure, there was the occasional homesickness - of course he missed his family and friends back home, not to mention his dog, and the normalcy of just being an average teenager in Sydney - but he had his closest friends here with him, and he wasn't stressed out travelling back and forth. He managed to call his parents at least once a week, and he wasn't feeling the urge to jump on the earliest flight back home, so he ruled that out as being the cause for his mood's decline.
Then of course there was the occasional hate on Twitter - but all the boys had their fare share, which was to be expected. It wasn't like there was an overwhelming amount of it also, or even that noticeable unless he actively went and sought it out.
However, he was beginning to start doing just that. He'd begun spending hours upon hours just scrolling through the various tags and reading all of the hate that people were directing towards him - at his personality, his voice, his body, anything and everything negative he had started devouring and churning around in his mind. He needed justification for his own negative thoughts towards himself, and if so many other people thought the same thing, then that must make it accurate.
Maybe that's why he was starting to feel more and more depressed - was he just now starting to realise how worthless of a person he was, how bad of a singer he was, how unattractive he was, how much the band didn't need him and so on.
Hell, maybe there wasn't even a reason. He knew that people could be depressed without a reason, that clinical depression was in-fact an actual thing, and that chemical imbalances could happen to people despite the fact that they were part of an internationally successful band. Luke just assumed that all of the positive feelings he should be experiencing right now would overrule any negative emotions he managed to conjure up, but that unfortunately wasn't the case, because it had now been weeks since he'd felt anything other than this persistent sadness, it was as if a permanent grey cloud had decided to make the space above his head home.
Sighing, he threw the blankets off of him and decided on going for a shower, he knew by this point there was no way he'd be getting any sleep anytime soon. He grabbed a clean pair of underwear, some sweatpants, a black t-shirt and a beanie. He didn't even bother keeping up his appearance anymore at this point, he rarely left the house and went out in public, and he doubted that the other boys noticed, nor cared that he no longer had the energy to tug on his usual pair of black skinny jeans. Once he had gathered all that he needed for his shower he dragged himself down the hall to their shared bathroom. At least being the first to wake up each and every morning meant that he got the bathroom all to himself for awhile. Although that meant more time alone with his thoughts, which as of late, wasn't exactly something he was looking forward to.
Once he'd gotten into the bathroom he couldn't help but let his eyes wander to his reflection in the mirror, his hair was messy and lay flat against his head after the many hours of tossing and turning in search of sleep. His once bright blue eyes were now a lifeless, dull colour, and he just couldn't understand how nobody had noticed that his eyes no longer resembled a vibrant ocean but now more of a polluted river. The dark circles underneath his eyes from the lack of sleep he was getting, appeared to be getting a shade darker as the days rolled on, and they seemed to complement the dullness in his eyes.
He tore his eyes away from his reflection before he managed to make himself nauseous. At this point he was beginning to think that any fans that found him even remotely attractive were delusional and in need of some serious help. There was absolutely nothing attractive about what he saw in his reflection. Quickly removing his clothing and chucking them into the hamper, he stepped inside the shower and adjusted the water until scolding heat was cascading onto his face.
After about twenty or so minutes of being left to his own thoughts, and musing over random things, he stepped out and wrapped a towel around his waist. He shook in the meantime to expel any excess water off of his hair, the remaining water that stayed attached to his locks dribbled down his back, the effect causing a shiver to run down his spine. After drying himself off adequately enough, he threw on the clothes that he had brought into the bathroom with him, and ran his fingers through his damp hair, slipping his beanie onto his head.
He took one last look at his reflection in the mirror before exiting the bathroom and heading back towards his room. He only made it halfway before he was startled by a noise coming from the direction of the kitchen. This was confusing, as he hadn't spent that long in the shower, meaning it must be roughly somewhere around 7am, and the other boys normally didn't get out of bed until around 9am, save for Michael of course, who sometimes only managed to crawl out of bed at around 1pm in the afternoon. He found himself walking towards the direction of the noise, curiosity taking over him.
Once he got nearer to the sound the smell of bacon began to assault his senses, and at least now he was certain that it wasn't a murderer. Unless of course they planned on cooking themselves breakfast before killing the occupants of the household, which Luke thought would be quite an odd pre-murder ritual to have. He rounded the corner to the kitchen and was met with a mop of curly golden brown hair, and a shirtless back.
Ashton.
"Morning." He felt himself sputter out.
Sputter? Why on earth am I sputtering.
Ashton paused in his movements in front of the stove at the sound, obviously not aware of the younger's presence until now; he turned around and his usual radiant smile was plastered across his face. "Morning Luke."
"I didn't expect you to be awake so early?" Luke said, walking over to the counter and perched himself on one of the stools, quite content all of a sudden to just sit and watch Ashton cook.
"Neither did I." Ashton giggled, he fucking giggled. "I woke up around half an hour ago and I couldn't fall back to sleep so I decided to just get up. What're you doing awake so early? Couldn't sleep either?" Ashton by now had turned back around to focus his attention on the food he was cooking.
Thankfully he missed the way Luke's face heated up at the sound of the giggle leaving the older boy's throat, and he subsequently also missed the look that flashed across Luke's face at the mention of not being able to sleep.
"Yeah, I guess I couldn't really sleep either."
I haven't in a few days now, but no big deal.