"I like this feeling

I'm not dreaming anymore

Oh, when it breaks

I know you're gonna be there

I know you're gonna be there

When the storm's hanging over this place

You're gonna wanna see it when it breaks"

✰

Arlo Abbott had never indulged in the hell that was fireball before tonight, though she was quickly finding that she never wanted to taste the substance again.

The girl's poor head was spinning, her cheeks warm to the touch from the alcohol running through her veins as she clings to Luke's body for dear life. Luke was equally as drunk, as were all of the other boys. The difference was Luke had been this drunk before, many of times- Arlo had certainly not.

Even though Luke's head felt all floaty, he was still perfectly capable of taking care of Arlo as they stumble into the hotel room, the boys following behind. She's giggling quietly to herself and Luke has a dumb grin on his face because who wouldn't when hearing a sound so beautiful?

Despite the alcohol swimming in his veins Luke was beginning to think that maybe his head was spinning from the way her small hands had slipped under his shirt, placed delicately against the bare skin of his lower stomach.

Luke sucks in a sharp breath at the feeling, his stomach twisting in a way that forces him to remind himself that his girl is drunk. He wasn't going to let his mind wander to a place like that when she had no idea what she was doing.

"Why did we only get one room?" Ashton groans, flopping face-first onto one of the queen beds. "If I have to listen to Calum gagging all night I'm going to get sick too."

"We're bonding. Besides, I know how to handle my alcohol, Irwin." Calum declares as he walks past Ashton, slapping the boy's ass in a way that prompts him to rear back and kick the back of Calum's knee caps.

Calum's knees buckle and the boy collapses, luckily landing on the other queen bed where he promptly passes out, snores leaving his lips. His long limbs are sprawled out across the entire bed, leaving no room for anyone else.

"Oh, come on." Michael whines, throwing his hands up in the air. The red-haired boy has an empty bottle of fireball shoved in the waistband of his pants, his belt securing it to his body so he wouldn't 'forget it'. "I wanted the bed close to the window."

Ashton merely scoots over, on the verge of sleep already as he makes room for his bandmate. "Here you go, Mike." The boy pats the pillow next to him welcomingly. "I won't even puke."

"Sick." Michael smiles lazily before kicking off his shoes and crawling into bed. The boy doesn't even bother with removing the empty bottle of alcohol from his belt before he pulls the comforter over his body.

Luke watches the entire scene, not at all surprised by their antics. He had a feeling that he'd end up with the pull-out couch, but he hadn't planned on Arlo having to sleep on it too. The hotel they were staying in was nice enough, but as Luke glances at the thin mattress on the pull-out couch he can't help but wince.

Suddenly, Luke hears the sound of a zipper, causing him to whip his head around. Luke's eyes go wide at the sight of Arlo working at the zipper of her already very short skirt, a frustrated look on her face.

In a split second, he's standing in front of her, putting his back inbetween the girl and his drunk bandmates passed out on the bed. He didn't care if they were too drunk to see, Luke sure as hell wasn't going to let them see her like that.

Luke's mouth goes dry, his throat tightening as Arlo finally seems to figure out her zipper, a barely-there peek of white lace catching his eye. He shoots his hand out quickly, covering hers to stop her movement.

White lace? Are you fucking kidding me, Arlo? Luke clenches his jaw, nearly giving himself a headache from how hard he works to redirect his thoughts. But in the end, he was a teenage boy and Arlo was the hottest fucking girl he'd ever seen.

"It's hot, Luke." Arlo whines, only working against the boy's cracking resolve. She was certainly not making this easy for him.

"I know, baby." Luke says gently as he fixes her zipper, covering her properly. "Cmon." He urges her towards the bathroom, swiftly bending down to grab a pair of pajamas from his suitcase for the both of them, considering hers was across the room.

Luke practically carries her into the bathroom, her feet working far too slow for his much longer legs. Through his own drunken haze, Luke manages to get them inside and closes the door behind them, locking it.

Arlo leans against the sink, her eyes heavy-lidded as her inebriation turns into pure exhaustion. The boy really, really didn't want to cross any lines, but he was also pretty sure that if he left her to her own devices the girl might end up busting her head open.

"Do you trust me, Lo?" Luke asks, his hands cupping her jaw in order to look into her eyes.

The girl blinks lazily, her bottom lip pouting as she feels her hair sticking uncomfortably to her neck. Why did being drunk kind of suck? She didn't think she liked it anymore.

"Duh." Arlo grins, a giggle nearly leaving her lips as her vision doubles, making it look like her boyfriend had two lip rings instead of one. "I don't let just anyone kiss me, believe it or not."

"Good girl." Luke hums, sliding his leather jacket off of her shoulders. "Nobody but me."

As Arlo smiles drunkenly, her brown eyes shimmering with intoxication, Luke battles with himself internally. Eventually Luke sighs, running his hands down his face. He decides that as long as his intentions are pure, him helping her would be alright.

Luke keeps his eyes on her face, occupying himself with counting the freckles on her cheeks as he bites down harshly on his bottom lip before unzipping her skirt. The sound of the fabric hitting the floor causes Luke's stomach to turn, though he forces himself to ignore it, quickly pulling a pair of his boxers up her legs.

"That feels so much better." Arlo hums, her hands bracing on Luke's shoulders to keep herself steady. "I kind of hate skirts."

"Oh, really?" Luke raises a brow, keeping his eyes firmly on her face as he slides her white cropped shirt over her head and replaces it with one of his own as fast as possible. "Why is that?" He asks as he untucks her hair from the collar of his shirt.

"They're uncomfortable, only sometimes though. But I really like how they look" Arlo wrinkles her nose, reaching for the hair tie on her wrist. Her hands fumble with her hair, her brows furrowing in frustration.

Never in his life had Luke Hemmings helped a girl with her hair, though as soon as he sees the struggle on Arlo's features he acts on instinct. He takes the hair tie from her hand and twirls her hair up in a bun on top of her head, just as he's seen her hair look before.

It looks nowhere as good as when she usually does it, but Luke was proud of himself nonetheless.

"You okay now?" Luke asks his girl, brushing her baby hairs out of her face.

"No." Arlo pouts, suddenly bending her arm behind her as she reaches for something on her back. "I can't." She declares after struggling for a moment.

Luke watches in confusion, his hands hovering over her body as he scans over her small frame, trying to figure out what the hell she was talking about. He thought his shirt was pretty damn comfortable if he did say so himself, and she looked good in it too.

"What-" He begins, only to cut himself off as he realizes. "Oh. Oh- okay, yeah I can do that." Luke exhales shakily, watching as Arlo fiddles with the clip of her bra, struggling miserably as she fails to take it off.

Luke swallows thickly, pinching his eyes shut for a moment. She was fucking killing him. "Okay, I've got you." He stops her frustrated movements, as his hand dances up her spine. He grips the countertop of the sink tightly with one hand to ground himself and uses the other to undo the clasp of her bra.

As he helps her pull the fabric out from underneath her shirt, the boy catches the sight of the see-through lace material, pretty little lace flowers decorating it. Luke's chest feels tight as he does his best not to imagine how fucking good she probably looked wearing it.

"Okay, I can sleep now." Arlo declares, a sigh leaving her lips. "Thank you, Lu." She pushes herself up onto her tiptoes to place a kiss on the underside of his jaw.

The location in which her lips land does nothing to calm the boy down as he runs his hands gently up and down her back. "You don't have to thank me for taking care of you, Lo." He murmurs. "Now stay still, okay?"

Luke makes sure the girl is stable on her feet before quickly changing out of his own clothes. His intoxication hard all but worn off by now, the energy he put into not losing his fucking mind while helping Arlo had definitely sobered him up.

Luke makes sure to pick up both of their discarded clothes from the bathroom floor and tuck them under his arm as he leads them out of the bathroom. The boy knew exactly what would happen if his bandmates woke up in the morning to see that pile on the bathroom floor. And well, if they even thought about insinuating something like that about his girl, he'd have no choice but to knock his knuckles into their faces.

The pull-out couch is just as uncomfortable as he assumed it would be, though as Arlo curls up on her side next to him, her head of dark waves on his chest, it doesn't seem all that bad.

Luke runs a soothing hand through her hair as he stares up at the ceiling wondering how the hell one girl could make him feel so much. Her presence was overwhelming in the most intoxicating way and Luke didn't ever want it to stop.

Thoughts from earlier in the day swirl around his mind as Arlo's breathing slows next to him. How had he gotten the privilege of being with someone like her? After all those years of treating girls like shit and even being rude to Arlo herself when they met. What had he done to deserve her?

And as deep as he was in his emotions for her, how could he be so sure that he wouldn't fuck up? Luke was surprised that he hadn't done so already.

His hand stills in her hair, his blue eyes drawing from the ceiling down to her sleeping figure. "Do you wish I was different?" Luke asks hesitantly.

Arlo peeks her eyes open, just barely. "Never." The girl hums tiredly. "I might change one thing though."

Luke's entire body stills, his heart clenching painfully in his chest. "What is it?" His voice is desperate, but he'd do anything to keep her here, like this, with him.

Arlo snuggles closer to him, her lips brushing the crook of his neck as her hand curls the fabric of his t-shirt in her fist. "I wish you could see yourself through my eyes." Her voice is muffled against his chest. "Because if you could, you'd never want to change."

✰

A certain unfamiliarity settles over the group as Calum's signature mustang pulls back into their small town.

They'd left New York City that morning knowing their lives would never be the same. As they left that meeting room neither of them quite felt like themselves anymore. The unknown of their inevitable future was terrifying but it was also utterly exhilarating.

In the meeting, they were informed that overnight a video of the boys performing in that dive bar had gone viral on the internet. They'd gained hundreds of millions of views in the span of fewer than twenty-four hours and the entire world was on their edge of the seats to find out who they are.

And so, they signed the contract knowing that in one short week they'd be back in the city, only this time to record in a real studio and film a music video for She's Kinda Hot. They'd all turned off their phones except for Arlo.

Nobody had discovered her identity yet, which comforted Luke to no end. She wasn't in the video considering she was sitting at the bar, so no one had figured out who she was to them. They use her phone to navigate and play music, knowing hundreds of notifications won't pop up on her screen.

For the most part, the boys were overjoyed. And well... as for Luke; 5 Seconds of Summer's new social media team had forced him to completely change his social media. From the moment Luke saw the picture Calum took of him and Arlo on the train, he was obsessed with it.

Luke wasn't one to use social media very often, but he used it enough to take the time to change his profile picture to that picture of them on all of his accounts. Why wouldn't he? That picture was certainly better than any other picture he had in his camera roll.

According to the team they were assigned, part of what was helping the band to gain popularity was the idea that all of them were single. They were young, ridiculously attractive, and talented and the world was already beginning to feed off of that.

No matter how many times Arlo assured him that it didn't bother her, Luke couldn't shake his annoyance about the situation. The one thing he didn't want is to be controlled, if he wanted to show off his girl he was going to fucking do it.

As they pull into Calum's driveway, Arlo closes the small notebook that she'd bought in the city. They had a deadline for songs to be written and she wasn't going to let them fail.

"I can't believe you spent the whole ride writing." Luke pouts, helping the girl get her small travel bag out of the back of the car. "You know you don't have to do that, right?"

Arlo frowns. "I want to help." She practically pleads. If anyone deserved to succeed, it was her best friends and she was going to help them get there.

"We still have a few weeks, Lo." Luke pouts his lips, ducking down to kiss her lips now that they weren't cramped with Michael in the back of Calum's car.

Arlo frowns, stress filling her system. "That's not that much time."

Luke smirks, his fingertips skimming over her waist in an attempt to elicit a smile from her lips. "It's convenient that I can write a million albums about you then."