"Tell me if you wanted it at all

I got a long term plan with short term fixes

And a wasted heart that just eclipses

And I push my luck and trust the dust enough"

✰

"Calum, we only have a few minutes to get this shot right!" Arlo tries to stay stern but she breaks out into a fit of giggles before she can help herself.

Calum squeals in a high-pitched manner causing Arlo to double over in laughter as he stumbles about. About twenty dog leashes are wrapped around his legs and all of the dogs are running in opposite directions.

"Help me, Arlo!" The tan boy pleads, the tan floppy hat he'd been wearing falls off of his head, and the oversized gray cargo shorts the costume director had him wear look like they're on the verge of dropping to his ankles.

"I'm preoccupied." Arlo struggles to catch her breath through all of her giggles, especially when a little brown dog breaks free and runs towards her, jumping into the girls' arms where she sits on the sidewalk curb.

The dog jumps up, licking her face and she scratches its head happily as a production manager runs over to untangle Calum before the next shot. Before Arlo knows it, her friend is taken away, the leash put back in Calum's hand before he's put in place and the makeup team comes in to touch him up.

At first, both Arlo and Luke were a little bit upset when they arrived bright and early to the set of the music video only to be informed that they would be separated for the day. They'd seen each other in between breaks and Luke had a field day cursing up a storm about how he couldn't stand the clothes they put him in.

Luke had been wearing a white short-sleeve button-up and some kind of dress slacks, his hair spiked up to make him look a bit more like he fit the rebellious teenager agenda. He was shooting inside as well, while the rest of the band were in separate outdoor locations.

The only reason Arlo really ended up with Calum is that he had a habit of not wanting to do what the directors needed to happen and when you add twenty dogs into the mix... well, they needed someone to tame him.

"Don't forget your lines, Cal!" Michael's voice shouts suddenly, causing Arlo to whip her head around.

She hadn't seen the other boys in hours, and here Michael stands in a hot dog suit. Arlo has to slap her hand over her mouth so she doesn't accidentally giggle and distract Calum even more. Michael had freshly dyed his hair a jet black color in an attempt to look more like a rockstar, but the suit had really set him back.

"I don't have any fuckin' lines!" Calum yells, throwing up his middle finger just as the camera begins rolling.

"Do that again, Calum! Just look to your left!" The director shouts, causing a look of confusion to plaster itself across Calum's face.

With oversized cargo shorts, a floppy hat, and a t-shirt with a bunch of dogs on it, Calum looks positively ridiculous. The confused look on his face only makes the whole situation even better and Arlo and Michael lose it.

Sitting on the curb of the street corner, Arlo tucks her knees to her chest and doubles over, covering her face with her hands as her entire body shakes with giggles. Michael tries to do the same, but in a hot dog suit it's pretty damn hard to do that, so backward is the only suitable way to go.

Michael flops onto his back, loud laughs leaving his lips as Arlo reaches behind her, swatting at the boy as she tries and fails to quit laughing. His laugh was making her laugh and it was going to get them both in trouble.

Just when they think they've sobered up, Calum finishes the scene and stomps over, red marks on his hands from where all of the dogs had been tugging on the leashes. "One of those fuckers used my leg like a fire hydrant." Calum scoffs, kicking off his shoes with a gag as he plops down on the street corner next to them.

"What the hell happened to you guys?" Another voice makes itself known and Calum, Arlo, and Michael all look up from where they sit on the curb to find Ashton Irwin in a giant dinosaur mascot suit.

Instantly, all the efforts that they made to keep it together break, and Michael and Arlo are doubled over again. Calum joins them as well, more than thankful that this time he's not the one being laughed at.

"Ow, it hurts!" Arlo winces through giggles, grabbing her stomach as the muscles cramp from all of the laughing.

Calum flails his arms around as he laughs so hard that not a single sound leaves his lips. The back of his hand smacks against Arlo's arm and the other points at Ashton as he tries to say something. It's no use though, not even the directors and other stagehands trying to get the group on track are capable of sobering them up.

That is, until one of the directors says something about Luke shooting his last scene inside. Michael jumps up from the curb as fast as he can in his suit, hurrying his friends along. "C'mon, I haven't seen what they did to Luke yet!"

"I hope it's good." Calum scrambles up from the curb out of breath. The boy even has to wipe a tear from the corner of his eyes. "Like having him in a baby costume or a gorilla suit."

"Luke would never wear a gorilla suit." Arlo giggles, brushing off her thighs as she stands from the street corner as well.

"And who in their right mind would let someone put them in a baby costume and post it on the internet?" Michael scoffs, turning his back to face Arlo. "Unzip me."

Arlo assists Michael in getting his hot dog suit off and Calum helps Ashton out of his dinosaur one- though not after taking the time to push him around a bit considering his arms weren't very mobile.

On the way inside the big lot they were filming in, the group passes by a gate that separates the lot from a public parking lot. As they get closer there are screams, a lot of them at that. Soon enough what must be nearly a hundred fans pushes up against the fence, their phones recording, make themselves known.

Arlo freezes while the boys make a beeline towards the fence. It was obvious that they loved their fans and were very grateful for them. She didn't want to hold them back. So, she plans to calmly sneak away, hoping she hadn't been spotted.

"Calum, is that your girlfriend?"

Arlo's heart drops and she knows she's been spotted. She can't just walk away now either, the fans would think she was rude and hate her. That wasn't something she could come back from and she would never forgive herself if she gave the boys bad publicity.

Calum warily looks to Arlo, silently asking her if she's okay. Once she nods, Calum wraps an arm around her shoulders and he walks her over to the fence. "You're, alright. They're gonna love you, trust me." He whispers comfortingly in her ear. Although to the fans, it must look like something far different, for their screams get louder and questions are thrown at them left and right.

"This is Arlo." Calum introduces the girl proudly. She does her best to smile at them when she feels like she's shrinking, getting smaller and smaller by the second the longer they look at her.

Ashton sees the signs of distress on his best friend's face and wraps his arms around her shoulder as well. Arlo's more than thankful for this, but she can't help but notice the way some of the fans are looking at her as if she'd just committed a crime.

"Was she the same girl at the airport with you, Calum?" A girl asks, her phone clearly recording as she points it at the two of them. This recording would be all over social media before they even left and all of them knew it.

Michael stands along the fence, doing his best to take pictures with the fans as they stick their arms between the holes in the fence, allowing Michael to take a selfie of them together. "She's technically our manager, but she was our best friend first." Michael winks, sending the girls into a frenzy.

"Are you dating any of them, Arlo?" Another bold fan asks and it takes everything in Arlo not to let her knees buckle. While the boys had been media trained, she certainly had not and she was at a loss for words.

"Uhm.. no- no, I'm not." Arlo winces, though once the pained look crosses her features she does her best to convert it into a happy one. "I've been around them way too long to think of them like that." Arlo grins, Calum's hand on her back helping to soothe her. "You should see Michael's room back home."

Michael gasps in offense, causing the fans to laugh, though secretly he's proud of how the brunette girl handled the question. "She's right, guys." Michael fakes a sad expression. "Came over once and I had to beg her to come to the band meetings after that."

The fans ask about Luke a lot, but once the boys drop a hint that he's inside filming something, they're more than satisfied. The boys take pictures with everyone they can and Arlo is more than shocked when some of them take pictures with her as well.

After a good thirty-minute setback, the group finally makes it inside just as Luke is finishing up his last scene. Arlo's jaw drops as she sees him in the middle of a set designed to look like a corporate office. Luke's hair is wearing a tan suit that he somehow pulls off perfectly, his usually wild blonde waves gelled down and pushed to the side. To make the vision even more intoxicating, they'd left his lip ring in.

As soon as Arlo walks in, she catches his eye. His face lights up instantly and he forgets all about the scene he's supposed to be filming. Luke looks his girl up and down before looking right past the large camera and sends a wink in her direction.

The director pauses the shot and calls over a few other people to review what they'd just filmed. To everyone's surprise, he seems ecstatic. "That's a wrap everyone! Luke, the improv on that last shot is just what we needed, you're a natural!"

✰

Luke collapses on the bed next to her, wiping his lips smugly and taking the time to clean off his fingers with his mouth as she steadies her breathing.

Arlo's eyes are fluttered shut and her hair is an absolute wreck from the heated kiss that started with her pinned against the large floor to ceiling window in the bedroom and ended with... well, this.

"Okay, I think my creativity is flowing now." Luke smirks, rolling over onto his stomach so he can prop his head up on his palm, gazing down lovingly at his girl. "You're really fuckin' pretty, you know that?"

Arlo's chest heaves as she struggles to catch her breath still. Luke may be used to doing all of this and while she was enjoying it, she certainly did not have the same stamina as he did. "Gimmie a sec." She pants. "I can't feel my legs yet."

Luke smiles genuinely, bushing her hair out of her face where it had begun to stick to her forehead from the perspiration that formed there. "Sick, that means I did my job." He says smugly.

As Arlo recovers, he reaches over to the bedside table and opens the drawer, retrieving a handful of candy he'd stolen from Calum's room and their songwriting notebooks. Both of them looked pretty much the same, but Arlo's was a lot bigger than his considering she didn't take hers everywhere like he did.

Luke pops the candy into his mouth before unwrapping another and gently tapping her lips with his pointer finger. "Open up, Lo."

The girl peeks her eyes open, furrowing her brow. "Where'd you get candy from?"

Luke merely wakes her off. "Don't worry about it, just eat it." He says before popping the candy past her parted lips. "You need to get your blood sugar up. You look tired, I might've worked you too hard." Although his words are cocky, proud even, his concern for her is genuine.

Arlo sits up, adjusting herself to lay on her side facing him as she retrieved her notebook, opening it to the first blank page she could find. She really wasn't a songwriter, for her music talent went as far as being able to appreciate a good song, but she was sure as hell trying to learn- the girl would do anything to help her friends.

Which is exactly why whenever their group came home from shooting the music video and they all agreed to split up and write until their ordered dinner arrived, Arlo had planned on choosing Ashton to work with. She knew exactly what would happen if she partnered up with Luke and although his pouted lips had convinced her otherwise, what she assumed is exactly what had happened.

Calum and Ashton declared that they would be writing a love song and Michael decided he needed to go sit down by the beach and people-watch for inspiration leaving Arlo and Luke with writing another deep cut for the album. Arlo was thankful for that... Luke not so much.

All Luke wanted to write lately was love songs.

"Okay, what's the saddest thing you can think about to write." Arlo asks, pressing the end of her pen to her lips.

Luke felt like he was in a daze as he looked at her. Her back was to the large floor-to-ceiling windows, allowing the orange-tinted light of the sunset to backlight her figure and make her glow like a fucking angel. If that wasn't enough, her eyes were still hazy from what they'd just done, her lips swollen as she presses the pen to her bottom one.

"Uh..." Luke drawls, pinching his eyes shut for a moment to redirect his thoughts.

Arlo had captivated him to the fullest extent- every fucking part of him. She lived in his mind, in his heart, in his music. Arlo Abbott was in his fucking veins, she was running through his bloodstream, giving him life and bleeding him dry at the same time.

She was his angel in disguise, for while she made him addicted to the feeling of her affection, his girl only gave him just enough to survive. Arlo left him wanting more- he had her, but not in every sense of the word. She was his, and he was hers, but how deep could Luke truly allow himself to fall before she fell behind?

"Luke?"

Her voice snaps him out of his own thoughts and he does his best to shake the way his heart had begun faster in his chest. "Sorry, sweetheart." He apologizes with a wince. "What was the question?"

Arlo rolls her eyes playfully, completely unaware of her effect on the boy in front of her. "We need something sad to write about. Really sad."

Luke purses his lips, his fingertips tracing over the cracked cover of his notebook. "I dunno if I can do that." He shrugs honestly, allowing himself to be vulnerable in front of her. "I'm really goddamn happy right now."

Arlo grins, capturing her bottom lip between her teeth as she tries to suppress her smile. She leans down, placing a kiss right on the tip of his nose, causing his eyes to flutter shut. "Well, I'm very glad you're happy, Lu. But, we also need a sad song by the end of the night."

Luke pouts, hating that she's right. He toys with his lip ring, the action drawing in her eyes as it does every time. "Can we pretend? Like, make up something?"

"Oh, that'd be easy to do." Arlo nods in agreement before sitting up fully so she can write.

She adjusts herself on the bed until her back is resting against the window the bed is pushed up against. Originally she was wary that the modern house was made of more windows than plaster, but after being reassured that no one could see inside, she had come to love the view.

Luke stays on his stomach and rests his notebook on her legs as she stretches them out in front of her. "Alright give me a scenario that's sad, but make it believable enough that it could have actually happened."

If she was being honest with herself, the view of Luke stretched out in front of her in nothing but his black boxers, the sunset highlighting every dip and curve of his muscled back, was quite distracting. Arlo swallows thickly, averting her eyes to her notebook as she thinks. After a few moments, an idea pops into her head that she can't quite shake.

"What if you never opened the door?"

Luke's entire body stills and his blue eyes snap up to meet her own, his pupils dilated. "I don't want to think about that."

Luke didn't know where he would be if he'd never opened that door but he could guarantee it wouldn't be a good place. He knows for a fact he would have walked away from the band, potential record deal or not- being in her presence and not having her as his own would tear him apart.

He would have probably resorted to sleeping around more than he did before just to forget the memory of her. Hell, thinking about what his life would be like if he never even got to kiss her sounded like torture in itself.

Suddenly, Luke finds himself reeling. Who the fuck was he before her?

"I know you don't want to, but it could be a good thing to write a song about." Arlo urges him gently, secretly keen on the idea herself. She thought about it a lot too, wondering who she'd be if she didn't have him. "Longing, unrequited feelings, desperation- it's the perfect recipe for a sad song."

She twists her lips to the side in thought. "If it makes you feel better, think about it being us in another lifetime." Arlo fights the urge to run her hand soothingly through his blond hair, for the look on his face was nothing short of upset. "So it's not really us, it's uhm-"

"The Story of Another Us." Luke suggests suddenly, his eyes going wide as the idea hits him. "We write a song about who we would be if, in another lifetime, I never opened the door."

Arlo grins, quickly scrawling the words down in her notebook. "Exactly, that's perfect Lu."

"Alright, celebration break." Luke declares, pushing himself up from the bed in order to grab her waist. He picks the girl up, ignoring her giggles of protest as he pins her to the mattress playfully. "Kiss me, baby."

Arlo does so immediately, though her smile is almost too wide to kiss him properly. Luke doesn't mind in the slightest, for his smile is just as wide. "For the record," Luke begins. "I'm always gonna open the door."