It had been getting too much recently for Michael Clifford, the lead guitarist of 5 Seconds Of Summer. He'd been getting 'hate', as he called it, from his supposed 'fans'. They were saying he must be eating too much pizza and that it looks as though he is gain a little weight. Michael didn't know that they were just joking. He thought they were serious.

After a little thought, he started ignoring it, believing it was just muscle mass or something like that. He forgot about the comments about his weight, that is, until the boys started commenting on it, saying how he had 'gained a little weight' recently. This was when he started believing it. He knew the boys would never lie to him.

His first resort was something he had seen online as a coping technique, cutting. He bought a box of razors and made slashes on his wrists. He started wearing more wristbands and soon long sleeves as the cuts went further up his arms. He liked the pain, but it started getting a nuisance.

He stopped cutting himself and eventually the cuts faded. Meanwhile, Michael was looking for something that would make him lose weight and give him the satisfaction of being hurt for all the wrongs he has done, all the food he has eaten. He found a new method, an Eating Disorder. Michael liked the idea.

So he started working out more and reducing his meals.

No one noticed, which made Michael even more upset. He thought that maybe someone would notice his decrease in appetite and maybe he could talk to them, but not a single person saw how upset the boy was and how much Michael was hurting. Michael started getting worse and worse as time went on, but still no one noticed and it hurt him even more.

Eventually Michael stopped eating, turning to warm water to keep his stomach somewhat satisfied, even though he liked the stomach pains, they could be annoying occasionally. He vomited out his food if he had to eat. Michael started going to the gym in his spare time and his weight dropped dramatically. But not in his eyes.

In his eyes he was just getting bigger and bigger and there was nothing that he could do to stop it, he was always going to be fat. He didn't care that the late nights he spent in the gym were tiring him out, he needed to get skinnier, to look more like those around him. To look more like his boys.

The lads were all that Michael wanted to be. He wanted to be as good at playing guitar as Luke, as muscley as Ashton and as nice as Calum. But he knew that he would never be able to do that, it would never happen that way. He had no chance, never would he be like them. He was too dumb, too mean, too fat.

Weeks went by and Michael just kept losing more and more weight. No one was stopping him so why should he. But at this time, Luke had taken note of his friend's weight decrease.

"Do you guys think Michael has lost weight recently?" Luke asked the other boys, whose heads shot up at the topic. Both boys had noticed a difference, but were trying to convince themselves it was nothing.

"I mean, I'm sure if something was really happening he would tell us. We are his friends, right?" Ashton replied, looking to the other two for reassurance. Luke bit his lip and Calum sighed. None of them were sure what was going on, and none of them knew if Michael was even okay.

The next night, after a day full of practicing, the boys had a concert. They were super hyped, although Michael was looking a little pale in the face, paler than normal. Calum noticed and decided to question him.

"Hey Mikey, you alright? You look kinda pale." Michael nodded, putting on an obviously fake smile. Calum sat down next to him and furrowed his eyebrows.

"Are you sure, cause me and the boys noticed you've been, um -"

"Gaining weight, yeah I know thanks for informing me. We have a concert to get ready for, why don't we do that?" Michael retaliated and stood up, making his way to the entryway of the stage. He strapped on his guitar, ignoring the confused and slightly irritated look from Calum.

They concert that night went decently, well, decently until it all started to go downhill. During She's Kinda Hot, about three quaters of the way through the concert, Michael started missing a few notes, but continued on as if it didn't happen. But then during the next song, he missed a whole 5 seconds and he tried, but failed to fall back in time with the rest of the band. He decided to stop and take a drink.

The lads noticed this, but kept playing while Michael placed his guitar down halfway through 18 and picked up his water bottle to take a drink. Once he took a sip he wet his hands and washed his face in an attempt to wake himself up, which worked, for a while. Michael picked his guitar and began playing again and managed to keep in time. During the next song he felt a little dizzy, but brushed it off, not claiming it as serious. Boy was he wrong.

Michael Clifford collapsed.

The noise of the collapse was not what made the lads look at where Michael was laying, no, it was the desperate screams of the fans that got the three to stop playing Waste The Night. Ashton was the first to Michael, he jumped down from his drum kit, right next to where Michael was laying, looking paler than the ghost white he usually is. Calum got his phone out immediately and called an ambulance while Luke helped Ashton carry Mikey backstage.

The ambulance got there in record time and Michael was loaded into the back, Ashton hopping in with him. Luke and Calum got in a car to follow behind while the ambulance sped off towards the hospital. During the ride Michael's heart beat starts getting slower and slower. The paramedic in the back shouts to the one driving to get there stp (sooner than possible). Soon they come to a stop and Michael is rushed into the halls of the hospital, while Ashton is made to wait in the hospital room to swim in a pool of guilt.

He wishes he had seen if sooner, the way Michael was getting skinnier. The way he was never with the lads, instead at the gym or too busy doing push ups to play Fifa with them. How he hadn't seen Michael eat very often, and when he had, Michael always had to go to the bathroom right after a meal. He wished he was able to prevent this, despite knowing that there was almost nothing he could have done, he still felt it was all his fault.

All three of Mikey's bandmates felt that way, they all felt helpless. Hopeless. They all felt like it was all their own fault. They felt like they should have done something sooner. They all knew what was happening at the time, but didn't want to admit it. The three were reduced to tears of guilt while they sat in the painful plastic chairs of the hospital, waiting for news, any news, on the condition of their best friend and bandmate, Michael Clifford.

They waited for three hours, not even bothering to ask about Michael, not bothering to talk. All of them were either constantly on the verge of tears or letting the tears fall freely. All they wanted to know was where Michael was and how he was doing. They were all fearing the worst, they were all fearing losing Michael to the evil called death. But they were hopeful, they knew Michael was strong and that he wouldn't let them down.

Finally, a doctor came through the white doors leading to the inner working of the hospital, asking for relatives of Mr Michael Clifford. All three of the lads shot up and ran over to the doctors, hoping to see something in the doctor's face that would indicate what to expect for the news that they were about to be given. But they were met with a blank face.

"I have good news and bad news." The doctor said in a monotoned voice, as if he had done this thousands of times. Immediately all for of the boys started hoping, praying for Michael to be okay. "The bad news is, Mr Clifford's heart stopped as we were.."

The boys didn't hear much of what the doctor was saying after that. They were all on the verge of tears once again. They had lost Michael. The rainbow haired, balding idiot that they all loved to the moon and back was now dead. None of this wanted this to be real. Never. Calum was going to miss the pranks they played on each other, the games of COD they played, the failed attempts at cooking that were shut down by Ashton.

Ashton was going to miss all the times he had tried, and failed, to teach the boy to cook, ending in disaster. All the times he had to wake the boy up at 5 in the morning, resulting in being whacked in the face with a pillow multiple times. Luke was going to miss being called a giraffe by the boy, he was going to miss being able to tease the lad by holding Mikey's pizza above his head and watching the boy jump for it.

"Excuse me, are any of you listening?" The doctor says, snapping the three lads back to reality. The lads look ateach other and realise that none of them had been listening.

"No, sorry. Could you repeat what you said?" Luke asks the doctor as the other two look at the ground.

"Sure. What I was saying was, Mr Clifford heart stopped while we were transferring him to a room, but we were able to get him back. Mr Clifford has a severe case of exhaustion and starvation and would have died if not for getting here when he did. You are all very lucky he is still alive." The doctor tells them. All three of the lads let out a breath that they were holding, glad that Michael was still alive.

"When can we see him?" Calum asks.

"He's asleep at the moment but you can see him if you want to." The doctor says. The three lads nod and the doctor leads them into the hallways of the hospital, to room 605, Michael's room. The doctor opens the door and lets them in, leaving them alone with Mikey. The sight is not one the lads really wanted to see. Michael was laying on a plain white hospital bed, in a hospital gown, with an oxygen mask on his face and various wires poking into him.

The lads took seats on either side of the bed, Calum and Luke on one side and Ashton on the other. The three sat looking at Michael for a little while before grabbing their phones out, all to call people. Calum called Michael's parents, Daryl and Karen, to tell them about the situation. Michael's parents were upset with the boys and decided to fly out to them. Luke called his own mum, Liz, because, despite knowing he would feel her wrath before he got it, he needed her help right now.

Ashton called management to discuss what was going to happen. The coversation turned rather sour however and resulted in Ashton having to leave the hospital as not to wake Michael or and of the other patients with his yelling and screaming. Eventually Ashton came to an agreement with management, post poning the tour until a later date and for himself and the other two to monitor Michael until he was in a condition to perform again.

Upon returning to the hospital room, Ashton was met with a sight to be seen. Michael was awake and trying to get out of bed, but was being stopped by Luke, who was sitting on his lap and holding down his arms. Calum was trying to reason with the sickly boy, but seemed to not be getting anywhere. Ashton chuckled and walked around to the other side of the bed, where he could see Mikey's frustrated and annoyed face clearly.

"I see you're in a bit of a pickle there, Mickey Mouse." Ashton laughs, startling Michael. Michael looks up at him and smiles, stopping his struggles against Luke's death grip.

"Hey Smash." Michael says in his sweety voice, the one he always uses when he wants something. "Do you think you could, oh, I don't know, get this elephant off of me?"

"I am not an elephant!" Luke says, faking offense. "I am a giraffe if any animal."

"I don't know, my balding friend. I think you deserve this for scaring us a few hours ago, going and starving yourself to the point where you stop your own heart. I don't know." Ashton says back in the same sweet voice that Michael was using. "Are you going to listen to what we tell you?"

"I will." Michael says, giving up.

"Okay, but don't try to get up or we'll shove you back down and I'll sit on you then." Ashton says, making Michael's eyes widen, nodding furiously. Ashton motioned for Luke to get off of Michael, he does so carefully. When he is off Michael makes a movement to sit himself up and immediately Calum's arms are over his chest, blocking as if Michael was about to make arun for it.

"Relax Cal, I'm just sitting up." Michael says, laughing slightly. Calum laughs a little too, sitting down. Luke sits next to him and then Ashton sit opposite to the two.

"Right. So, I've talked to management about our little predicament." Ashton starts.

"What'd they say?" Luke asks, remembering how Ashton had to leave the room, swearing under his breath as management was talking in his ear.

"We've come to an agreement, we're post poning the tour until a later date. We have to watch over Michael almost 24/7 until he is in a position to perform once again. They've released a statement saying that Michael had a heart condition that caused him to collapse and that we won't be touring until Michael has recovered." Ashton says, a glum look on his face. The three lads look at Michael, waiting to see how he reacts to the news.

"No." Michael says, his voice weak. He didn't want things to be this way. He was fine, well quite a fat, but fine none the less. He didn't need help. He didn't want help. He wanted everything to go back to normal. He wanted to be rocking out on stage, his beautiful guitar in his hands. He didn't want to be here, need to be here, sitting hopelessly in this hospital bed. He was a failure.

"Mikey, there nothing we can..." Calum starts.

"NO! I don't need this. None of these wires. I don't need this bed, or this gown-dress-thingy. I need to be back on stage, with you guys. We don't need to post pone the tour. I don't need you to watch over me 24/7, that's just creepy. I'm fine, I'm just tired. My heart never stopped. You are pranking me. You must be. None of this can be real. I didn't die. I'm fine. I'm fine." Michael says, shouting at first before reducing to tears.

He couldn't believe that he had died. Yet he was alive. He almost died on his band, his fans, his friends, his family. He was almost non-existent. He almost left this world. He was sorry, he was so so so so so so so so so so so so so sos os osos ow sososnsosmos sos os sos sorry. So sorry.

"I'm sorry." Michael cries. All three of his bandmates are instantly trying to calm him down. Which eventually works. The four lads fall asleep, one on the hospital bed and the other three leaning on the mentioned bed. They all slept peacefully, knowing everything was going to be okay, they knew it was.

Everything was going to be okay.