Archive of Our Own

Ashton is not the daddy of the band, though the concept isn’t completely laughable.

He’s the most responsible, if only because he’s the teensiest bit older and prone to seriousness maybe one day out of the month; a werewolf of functionality in a band made up of over-eager and lazy as sin not-quite-not-teenage boys.

He’s capable of being an adult, even though he by and large staunchly refuses to become one, is the point.

If someone was asked to guess which member of the band would be the most likely to do something incredibly ill-advised, potentially fatal, and irrevocably stupid, Ashton would not appear near the top of that list very often, if ever, is also the point.

And yet.

____

“So what you’re telling us is that your one night stand turned out to be a vampire and now you too are also a vampire,” Michael says, all business, his hands steepled beneath his chin, elbows on his knees, mouth and eyes unsmiling.

Ashton feels like he’s being interviewed. Or has fallen victim to an intervention, maybe, since his bandmates and best mates have cornered him in the back of their bus and all but barricaded the four of them in the lounge. (Luke might be physically weaker than Ashton, tough stance in front of the door to the contrary, but he’s also mean when he fights - growing up with big brothers having taught him to be quick and vicious - and Ashton has never and will never find a way to beat that.)

“Yeah … that’s … yeah,” Ashton says, because he wants to say that there’s more to it than that, but, “He was really, really cute?” just doesn’t cut it, Luke narrowing his eyes and Michael raising his eyebrows, mouth thinning to a hard, sharp line and Calum baring his teeth, bizarrely. It’s all very menacing, even more bizarrely.

“Look, it’s not a big deal. It’s not like Twilight. I mostly got stiffed on the super strength, I’m not filthy rich all of a sudden, I don’t glow in the dark, and my - my - my fangs are … they’re pretty small?” Ashton hasn’t really had time to figure out the ins and outs of it all; it’s been three days and all he’s had to go on is one vaguely apologetic, even more vaguely instructional text from someone he’d only intended to change his underwear for, not his entire mode of existence.

“You also drink blood now,” Luke points out.

“Like, exclusively,” Calum adds, looking down at the remnants of the hot dogs the rest of them had for lunch like he’s in mourning.

“It’s hardly the end of the world, lads,” Ashton insists, willing away the panic that burns through him when Calum turns to look his way and inadvertently lets the shoulder of his tank slip down, giving Ashton an all too perfect view of his neck and throat. Hunger hits him out of nowhere, quick and hard and unbearable for a second, until he thinks about what’s at stake here and in that way wills it gone.

“Nothing has to change. Tons of people are vampires and their lives go on just like normal. We’ll organize some blood bags, keep a steady supply up when we’re on tour, there will be no disasters, nothing will be any different at all. People get by like this every day.”

“You’re taking this very well. Suspiciously well,” Michael muses, and Ashton looks at the floor instead of letting his gaze pander to the pull the veins in Michael’s arms pose for him, now.

“I’m a vampire. It’s not like I died.”

The other three all groan, Calum rolling his eyes too, and Ashton laughs.

It’s been a week and they’re dealing with it fine.

Everything is going to be just fine.

____

And it is, until it’s not.

____

There’s a mix up here, a miscommunication there, and with a dropped call added to the mix everything goes to shit.

“I can’t go on stage,” Ashton says thickly through his fangs, and he’s embarrassed and he’s upset, but he is above all else starving, and he can’t let anyone see him like this, he can’t be this way with anyone but his band.

“It’s going to be okay,” Luke is saying, his hand on the round of Ashton’s shoulder supposed to be comforting, Ashton assumes, but he can barely think beyond the slow, familiar thump of Luke’s pulse, the steady, thick flow of blood through him loud enough for Ashton to hear, close enough to smell like the worst kind of temptation; one Ashton doesn’t want to say no to.

“No it’s not,” Ashton says, giving up on tonight’s show and giving up on pretending that this hasn’t turned everything upside down, because thinking about getting his band naked might be nothing new for him, but thinking about getting them naked and then sinking his teeth into them is a little too far off the beaten track of his old, worn out fantasies, even for him.

“I’m thinking about biting you,” he admits out loud, for the first time, and it makes it better and worse to hear how it sounds - the words dug up out of him and covered in the rubble of the lies he’s been telling, the untruth he’s been trying to live. “I’m not … I won’t do it,” he rushes to say before Luke can scramble away from him, not that he does. Instead, Luke is leaning more heavily in against his side, their arms pressed together from shoulder to elbow to hand. Rather than running for his life, Luke is tangling their fingers together, moving closer and staying there, still and quiet and too close, not just next to Ashton anymore but practically trying to climb on.

“You … it’s okay that you … you can,” he settles on, and if Ashton’s heart could still beat, this is what would make it give out all over again.

Michael is on Ashton’s other side on the lounge, and Calum is sitting on the floor against the wall that’s facing them, and neither of them are yelling or telling Luke to stop, telling him to take it back, telling him they have to run.

“I can … what?” Ashton asks, because he can’t have heard right, Luke can’t have said that -

“You can bite me. You can … drink from me, or whatever. We -” he looks to Calum, across Ashton to Michael, who nods, “We looked into it. We’ll be okay if you take turns with us, and if we get you onto a schedule. It won’t affect us, you won’t be taking anything from us that we can’t get back. You …” Luke is rolling up the sleeves of his flannel shirt now, fidgeting with the collar, “You won’t hurt us.”

“We want to do this for you,” Calum adds, and,

“For us,” Michael finishes, quick to get it in there before Ashton can protest.

“But I -” Ashton tries, anyway.

“Oh bite me, Ashton,” Luke says, half impatience, half fond.

“Bite him, Ashton,” Michael instructs, and when Ashton looks to Calum, hoping someone else in his band still has a hold on common sense, but he only nods, his eyes bright with some brand new kind of interest.

“Fuck me,” is all Ashton can say, excitement zipping up his spine and making his gums tingle just at the thought of getting his teeth into Luke.

“We’ll see,” someone murmurs, but Ashton doesn’t even care to freak out about that, because Luke is sitting half in his lap and Ashton’s mouth is on his throat and Luke’s hands are hot on Ashton’s shoulders but that’s nothing compared to the warmth of him when he bursts open for Ashton’s tongue, rich and heady and offered up freely, wholeheartedly.

Ashton hums his gratitude into the thin skin up under Luke’s ear, presses it in something like a kiss to the dip above his adam’s apple.

They take to the stage with Luke between Ashton and the audience, with Luke still sweet behind Ashton’s teeth and Calum’s eyes have been glazed over since Ashton’s fangs had made an appearance, Michael is still flushed like he’s the one that’s full and humming with it.

That’s the beginning of it, and maybe there will be no end.

____

Michael likes it best when Ashton drinks from his wrist.

They sit facing one another, cross-legged on lounges or countertops or floors or beds and Michael smiles and pulls his sleeve up, baring his forearm past his elbow.

“Left or right?” he’ll ask, every time, waggling his eyebrows like it’s a joke, like this isn’t the best part of Ashton’s day, but Ashton always lets him pick, needs to give him that, at least.

Michael always watches, lower lip tugged up between his teeth and his eyes dark and wide.

Ashton learns to make a show of it, for him. To make it good - better - for Michael. He drops his fangs slowly, and tests the tip of them with his own tongue first, teasing. Michael watches in rapt fascination as Ashton trails the sharpest of his teeth across the thin skin of Michael’s wrists, pressing slow and steady until he breaches Michael’s skin, tiny twin points of contact that open him up, bring him to the surface for Ashton’s mouth.

Sometimes Michael gasps before Ashton even breaks the skin, but Ashton doesn’t mention it, and they never talk about it, not during or after.

Before it happens, sometimes, Michael has things to say. When it’s his day, Michael’s spot in the rotation upon them, he’ll say so as soon as he sees Ashton, first thing that morning, bright and sunny.

“It’s my turn,” he’ll say, like he’s grateful. Like he’s proud.

____

Calum talks the entire time. It’s impossible to get him to shut up about it.

He asks questions all day every day, no place or occasion deemed inappropriate.

When the time comes for Ashton to feed, Calum will come to find him, slinging an arm around his neck and grinning wide, laughing and joking like he’s leading Ashton off to have his way with him at FIFA.

Calum is the one who insists that they do this with Ashton sitting down, with Calum sitting on him. The first time he casually slings a knee across Ashton’s lap and settles his weight straddling him, says “Like this, yeah?” all smiles like warm summer sunshine, Ashton accidentally nicks himself, the wrong kind of iron cold and bitter in his mouth, coldness that has become nothing but normal suddenly shocking and hard in his lungs.

“In case you lose control,” Calum continues, lifting his hands to Ashton’s shoulders and tilting his head almost subconsciously, his chin up and his mouth set, the long line of his throat making Ashton’s fangs throb.

He kisses Calum right before, and right after, friendly little presses of his mouth meant to soothe, first, marking Calum’s already-healing skin like some strange ‘I was here’, afterward. When the tip of his nose brushes up under Calum’s chin, it’s an accident the very first time, and then only framed like one every time after.

Michael keeps his hands to himself, all heavy, lasting eye contact like this is a spectator’s sport, for him.

But Calum touches, and Ashton takes that as permission to touch right back.

Calum’s fingers knot in Ashton’s hair, cradling the back of his head and keeping his mouth pressed into Calum’s throat like he’s afraid Ashton might need the encouragement, like he’s managed somehow to remain oblivious to the tremble in Ashton’s hands, the tremor that chugs all along him. It’s easy to stay in control, contrary to Calum’s plan and suspicions. It’s holding onto the knowledge that giving in wouldn’t be a good idea that’s difficult.

Ashton holds onto Calum’s hips tightly, as close to polite as he can be about it when Calum needs to shift his weight back and away, needs whatever claim to space he can stake.

It’s the weight of eyes on him that Ashton feels for hours after he feeds from Michael, a sense of being watched - having been seen - that ghosts up on him from time to time for the rest of the day, making the hair on the back of his neck stand up, making his hands clench on nothing, for no reason.

He feels Calum in his fingers, forever, after. He feels the hot, familiar weight of him across his thighs and sucks at the taste of him in his own mouth. He misses Calum in the tight, pleasurable curl of his toes inside his shoes.

____

Luke is the closest thing to squeamish that you can find, in this band.

He’s more determined about the whole thing than the others are, and Ashton isn’t at all surprised that Luke was the one to broach the topic in the first place, wouldn’t be surprised to find that this was all his idea and his doing, because Luke is the most determined when it comes to the things he’s afraid of, loudest about the ideas that he’s not at all confident he or they can pull off.

Luke gives nothing but game face on those occasions, but this becomes different, though it didn’t start out as anything but pure and sure determination.

“I don’t really … I can’t … I don’t want to see, if that’s okay,” he says the second time, the next time their band cycle works its way back around to him, again.

Ashton doesn’t push him, doesn’t ask which part scares him the most or what about all of this he’s most fearful of seeing - his own blood or Ashton’s fangs or what must be the frightening combination of both. He’s torn up by Luke being so honest with him, telling him though he uses so few words that he’s frightened, that he needs Ashton’s understanding, his help. It makes something claw at Ashton from the inside out, the absolute trust Luke shows him and gives him with this; the fierce fire of love and protectiveness that that sets to Ashton’s heart.

Ashton doesn’t get to ask him again if he’s sure, because when he’s still trying to think of a gentle and careful way of doing so, Luke takes him by the hand and leads him to the back lounge, sternly says, “Don’t even fucking think about telling me I don’t have to do this. I’m doing it and that’s it. I know I don’t have to, and I want to, so shut up Ash.”

Respectfully, reverently, Ashton doesn’t tell him he doesn’t have to, doesn’t argue or ask questions when Luke’s hands and words guide them together until Luke is sitting slumped sideways into the cushions, Ashton cuddled up behind him and staying that way, simply mirroring the mould of Luke’s body until Luke sighs and reaches back for him, his hand on Ashton’s bicep tugging him forward until his chin is hooked over Luke’s shoulder and it’s all instinct from there.

Luke keeps his eyes closed the entire time, his forehead scrunching up sometimes maybe in concentration or maybe in pain, though Calum and Michael never complain and Luke’s body doesn’t get tense, he never sounds hurt or does anything but lean into Ashton, back and up and in. For more.

It’s a strange and difficult thing for all of them. Brand new in such weird and awkward ways.

Sometimes Luke needs a minute beforehand, needs more than a minute once Ashton is done.

He’ll sit with his eyes closed, his head tipped back toward the ceiling, and he’ll breathe slowly in through his nose and out through his mouth like he needs to calm down before they can do this, though Ashton knows the opposite is the case - he’s trying to psych himself up, working himself up to it.

Ashton doesn’t mind and he doesn’t push.

Mostly, Ashton needs those minutes too.

Just for a very different reason, is all.

____

Sometimes, Ashton sees Michael slip out of hotel rooms and radio station bathrooms, looking both ways as he goes and looking for all the world like - for once - he cares about whether or not he is seen.

Calum will follow soon enough after that Ashton doesn’t have to wait long to see him do the very same thing, Michael’s shadow leaving a trail for him to follow.

Neither of them seem to notice Ashton, and Ashton tries as hard as he can not to notice the way their mouths are kiss-stung and still wet, full and bright. Their lips would be hot to the touch, he thinks. He’d feel the soft burn of them if he were to touch his fingers to their mouths. Or touch his lips to theirs.

The sight of them makes something like jealousy tighten hard and fast in Ashton’s belly, the corkscrew twist of it driving right through him and leaving him breathless, shocked even after the tenth, eleventh time he sees them.

He’s not surprised. Not really.

He’s not jealous. Not exactly.

He doesn’t wish they wouldn’t, or wish he didn’t know that they do.

He thinks about Luke, and he thinks about himself.

He thinks about how two of them together - any two - just isn’t ....

Two just doesn’t feel quite right.

____

“But how did this happen?” Calum asks one afternoon when they’re all lying around doing nothing, piled up on one another and kicking at whoever is closest, waiting to be told where they’re going next and what they’re supposed to do, there.

They’ve talked about what this means for Ashton now, and they know the bare bones of how he came to be this way, but Ashton knows from what they have talked through that what Calum is asking about is the stuff he hasn’t told them, the things he didn’t know for sure they’d want to know.

“It … uh. It wasn’t on purpose, if that’s what you mean,” he says, still sticking to vague, for his own sake as much as theirs,“I didn’t know.”

“And you’re not, like, connected to him, somehow? Did he do this for a reason?” Luke asks, ever the worrier.

“None I can see,” Ashton answers truthfully. “I have no more awareness of him now than I did then. He was cute. He seemed nice. He was, until he was … something else.”

“And now you’re something else,” Michael says, always the one who wants these conversations over before they started, doesn’t seem to want or need more clarification or detail than is absolutely necessary.

“Well, he’s always been something else,” Luke adds, mouth quirked into a sharp little smirk, and the hunger that kicks through Ashton has nothing to do with blood or feeding.

____

Ashton has to layer on a lot more clothes these days, and that’s really as challenging as this thing gets, side effects wise.

He steals more hoodies, deigns to wear actual sweatpants on his days off, and shamelessly requests cuddles as frequently as he’s granted them. Which is pretty much every single time he asks.

Cuddling becomes a staple act of banding, and Ashton is pretty confident that none of them could say they’d have it any other way, even if given the choice.

It’s different, though, in that it’s a change born of necessity rather than simple inclination.

There’s an air to it sometimes, some kind of tension that Ashton can’t quite put his finger on and for this reason does not like.

“You’re squashing me,” he tells Luke one morning, when Luke has decided that instead of finding a space next to Calum or Michael on either side of Ashton, he’ll take the spot right on top of Ashton, instead. “I’ll bite you, don’t think I won’t,” Ashton warns, mostly joking, when Luke refuses to move or respond, snuggling closer until his nose is in the dip between Ashton’s collarbones and his hands are warm and welcome between Ashton’s back and the sheets.

“Like that’s not what he’s angling for,” Michael gripes, and Ashton can almost hear him roll his eyes.

“Wait your turn like the rest of us, Lukey,” Calum admonishes, scritching his fingernails up over the curve of Ashton’s skull like he’s a much beloved pet, like he can’t hear or understand the conversation they’re having about him, above him.

Ashton tries to ask what the fuck is going on, but is soundly shushed by the collective rest of his band.

This will have to be a mystery for another day, he decides, turning his face away from Luke but wrapping his arms up and around his middle, settling in for something like a nap.

____

Luke sleeps in Michael’s bed some nights.

Any time the two of them share a room, Ashton knows he can amble in first thing in the morning to find them wrapped up together under the covers of a single bed, the other still made and as undisturbed as it was before they arrived and brought chaos with them.

Michael always takes the bed closest to the door, and that’s where Ashton finds them, when he goes looking.

Though Luke is taller, he sleeps curled up into the bracket of Michael’s body, their legs tangled together and Luke’s head tucked up under Mikey’s chin. Michael tends to keep one arm high and tight around Luke’s waist, even in sleep, and there’s never so much an inch of space between them, no space for anyone or anything else.

Still, Ashton likes to happen upon them, together like that.

The lovely tangle of them makes something in him warm and bright, the beginnings of a feeling that only gets bigger and brighter and hotter and harder to ignore as time passes and nothing changes.

____

They don’t ever ask what they taste of, or what feeding from them is like, for Ashton.

He doesn’t think he could give them a straight or honest answer even if they did.

Michael tastes full, somehow. Brimming over with something that Ashton doesn’t understand and couldn’t put into words. After he drinks from him, Ashton feels overwhelmed. Heady with the weight of him warm inside him, too much and just enough.

Calum leaves Ashton satisfied for the longest, after. He isn’t hungry anymore, after Luke and Michael, but the hum of Calum’s blood through his body lasts forever. For days. Calum is bright, in Ashton. Lit up with energy and steady in his veins, everything he needs and more.

Ashton drinks the same amount from each of them; just enough to see him full and no more, no longer. But it’s hardest to tell himself that when he’s spooned up behind Luke. Luke is sweetest, somehow, kind and light like smiles first thing in the morning, love without expectation, pure with the kind of bite it can only ever hold when it’s bare-boned, stripped down. Luke on Ashton’s tongue leaves room only for one thing, and it’s the need for more, though Ashton never asks, could never take.

They’re different, all three of them. Worlds apart, when Ashton thinks about it.

But he doesn’t think about it too often, too caught up in a million other things at once, instead.

They give him everything he needs, and in doing so, they become everything he has, all he could ever want.

____

As with all things 5sos, control quickly becomes a thing of the past.

A fond figment of Ashton’s imagination, maybe.

Control is the one thing he can’t afford to give up, now, but the rest of his band - as usual - have no such qualms.

Kind of the opposite, actually.

____

“Just … just … oh yeah. Yeah, there,” Michael breathes, and Ashton can’t breathe at all because Michael is tipping forward into him, his right wrist warm and wet for Ashton’s mouth, his forehead a heavy weight on Ashton’s shoulder, and his left hand … Ashton can’t actually see it anymore, but he’s pretty sure it’s down Michael’s pants.

“Harder. Please, Ash, just -” Ashton obliges, transfixed by the way Michael’s voice sounds - low and pleading, genuinely needing - and unable to disobey. He sucks a little harder, lets his teeth sink just slightly further in, and Michael shivers against him, gasping long and loud until he’s silent entirely.

“Did you …” Ashton starts to ask, but one look at Michael’s face, flushed and doe-eyed, says everything Ashton doesn’t want to hear.

Fuck.

____

“Fucking fuck,” Calum is saying with feeling, and Ashton fervently wishes being a vampire meant he’d lose all feeling in his extremities, because for sure - not playing drums anymore would be a tragic loss, one super tough to come to terms with - but it would probably be worth it if it meant he didn’t have to sit through this; Calum all but writhing in his lap, his throat open between Ashton’s teeth, his blood on Ashton’s tongue and his hands in Ashton’s hair, his hips shifting into Ashton’s rather than away, like usual.

Calum is hard, Ashton is hard, and everything about Ashton’s life is hard now, it seems.

“That’s so - you’re so good,” Calum says, chest heaving high and hard against Ashton’s collarbones, and his taste gets thicker, headier somehow. Ashton isn’t the one losing blood, but he’s the one that’s lightheaded, anyway.

Calum jerks against him, moving hard into his lap before he stills there, audibly panting in Ashton’s ear as he slows his drinking, tries to find a foothold in the thunder that’s rolling through him in the pulse of Calum’s blood, new and lovely in his veins.

Ashton doesn’t even ask this time.

____

Luke is scared by all of this, or at the very least a little bit grossed out by the whole thing, so Ashton doesn’t think to worry about him and what might happen when his turn next comes around.

Ashton really should have thought to worry.

“Please, Ash,” Luke is saying, and Ashton doesn’t get it at first, doesn’t really understand what Luke is even asking for (though he already knows without doubt that he’s going to give it to him, no matter what it is) until Luke is reaching blindly for Ashton’s hand, the one that isn’t on his throat, and pulling it around his waist, guiding with his own hand until Ashton’s fingers are edging down underneath the waistband of Luke’s jeans, under the band of his boxers.

It almost physically hurts him to do, but Ashton retracts his fangs until he can take his teeth out of the gorgeous stretch of muscle that chords Luke’s throat, can’t believe he has to try and have this conversation with the taste of Luke still making his whole body sing.

“What are you - Lukey are you -”

“I am so fucking sure,” Luke interrupts, “and no pressure if you’re not interested, but if you are, you should put your hand on my dick, please.”

Ashton almost wants to laugh, it’s such a Luke way of asking someone to get him off, but it’s such a Luke way of asking someone to get him off that it hits Ashton low and hard, gets him curled up even closer around Luke, his hand pushing down into Luke’s underwear even before he’s finished his sentence. Luke, to his credit, is thoughtful and helpful throughout; unbuttoning his jeans to give Ashton more room to work, tilting his head into the pillow so his neck is all stretched out for Ashton’s mouth, again.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” Luke says over and over again, almost chants, as Ashton wraps his fingers around his cock and works his fist over him, cups his balls in his hand and squeezes gently, his thumb rubbing hot along the vein that throbs for his touch.

Drinking from Luke, feeling his hips shift restlessly between moving forward into Ashton’s fist and back to work his ass against the hard line of Ashton’s cock, Ashton finds himself in the grip of a much more earth shattering experience than being turned in the first place had been.

He doesn’t think, doesn’t question it, just moves as Luke directs him; gives and takes whatever Luke allows.

When he’s full and sated, Luke’s blood biting on his tongue and Luke’s come warm and webbing between his fingers, Ashton still doesn’t think. He rolls up and over Luke, pushing his thighs apart with the palms of his hands and kneeling there between them, letting his weight drop until his hips are against Luke’s, until he can press his blood hot mouth to Luke’s.

Luke clings to him, still shaking through the aftershocks of his own orgasm, as Ashton rubs up against him until he comes in his own jeans, not meaning to, not thinking he could, until Luke had planted his feet and spread his thighs wider still, tightened his knees up around Ashton like he needed him closer, like this was just a prelude.

It’s that thought that drives Ashton’s mind inside out.

Luke is arching up into him; kissing Ashton with a fierce sincerity that would suggest he’s wanted to for ages, for forever maybe, and when Ashton tries to get closer, struggles hard to find more, Luke only helps. His thighs fall wider apart for Ashton, locking tight around his hips when he has dragged Ashton in where he wants him; when they’re pressed so close together Ashton can barely tell whose body is whose.

All Ashton knows is that Luke is sucking the taste of his own blood off Ashton’s tongue, is dragging blunt fingernails up through the short hair at the back of Ashton’s neck, lifting his hips for Ashton to rut back down into like he’s the one who still needs to come.

It’s with Luke underneath him and in his mouth, Luke’s voice a rumbling tremor against his skin and in his veins, Luke filling up his hands and the space behind his eyelids, letting Ashton touch him like maybe he’d let him inside ... it’s with that that Ashton’s mind whites out into some ethereal kind of bliss, nothing he’d ever known when he was human still, everything that’s in him now giving up whatever he has to give, for Luke.

“Fuck,” Ashton says, when Luke lies still but gasping for breath, staring up at Ashton with wide eyes, fingers tightening their hold on Ashton’s shirt when he shifts away, not meaning to make Luke think he’s about to leave, but maybe wanting to put that option on the table, just in case.

“Sorry?” Luke hazards, and Ashton doesn’t know if he loves or hates this - this brand new and totally foreign reality where they don’t know exactly what one another is thinking, don’t know for sure where they stand.

Ashton knows where he stands, though. He knows that much for sure, in fact, with a certainty that almost takes even him by surprise.

“No,” he says, thumb brushing up under Luke’s bottom lip, needing to feel for himself how it’s fat and hot from use, slick because of Ashton’s teeth and tongue. “I’m not.”

Luke’s grin and the bright, happy gleam in his eyes make Ashton hungry. Hungry for it all.

“Me neither.”

____

Though it doesn’t seem complicated in the moment, Ashton has to wonder when the next inquisition is scheduled. He has to wonder if he’s doing something wrong, if he shouldn’t give each and every one of his bandmates exactly what they ask for, because he wants to make them all happy, wants them all period, but the very last thing he wants is to hurt them.

It doesn’t seem likely to Ashton that he’ll ever figure out how to say ‘no’ to what they want, but he’s waiting for them to realize how greedy he is, how far beyond control being with them makes him.

Eventually they’re going to stop giving him the chance to say ‘no’ or anything else, and Ashton waits for that day with a sorry, sad pang of something that should be regret.

____

What Ashton gets, instead, is hijinx. Better still - full band hijinx, his favourite kind.

They’re doing an interview and photoshoot for a British magazine, and there’s lots of down time between setting up shots, between hair and make up, between sitting around answering questions and standing around exactly as directed.

It’s the perfect opportunity for boredom to become tension, for frustration to bleed over into confrontation, and Ashton spends the first half of the day avoiding eye contact with as many people as possible, just in case. For their sake as well as his own.

But by late afternoon they’re all set up for the last shot of the day, and though Ashton had been apprehensive about it at first, it turns out that dumping huge buckets of ice cold water over one another’s heads is maybe exactly what they needed.

Calum and Luke team up like always, this time to mercilessly target Ashton, but there’s nothing mean in it, nothing but playful favouritism.

Michael is doing his very best impersonation of Rihanna in her video for Umbrella, and by the time the photographer completely loses his patience with them, they’re all lying in a heap in the middle of a huge puddle of water, Calum with a bucket over his head now, Luke’s hand absentmindedly brushing Ashton’s wet hair back from his face, Michael laughing so hard he’s doubled over under it.

It’s exactly what Ashton needs to take his mind off things, because it’s a much needed reminder that no matter what else is going on, they’ll always have this - they’ll always be this, for one another.

When the time comes to clean up and go home, Ashton has been so completely lulled into his new sense of safety that he slips up when they’re stripping off, lets his eyes linger for just a second too long on the broad planes of Calum’s chest when he tugs his soaking wet tshirt up over his head and off, the smack of it audible when he play-whips Michael with it. The movement makes the definition in his biceps and forearms stand out, stark, and Ashton’s mouth gets hot and dry, his heart plummets when he looks up to see Calum staring right back at him, the look on his face making it clear that Ashton has been caught.

Ashton doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t know what to say, but Calum, as usual, is on it.

He smirks at Ashton, not sweet and knowing, and he comes to stand directly in front of him to unbutton his jeans and drag them down off his legs.

It’s not enough for the rest of the room to pick up on, space is a hot commodity wherever they are most days, but Ashton feels every second of Calum’s impromptu show like it lasts a lifetime. He feels it like a brand when Calum puts a hand on Ashton’s shoulder to kick his jeans off and away.

“There’s no need for modesty, Ash,” Calum tells him, low in his ear, and Ashton wants to pick him up and pin him to the nearest wall, wants to sink his teeth into his throat just to hear Calum beg for more.

“Right,” Ashton coughs, still sitting in his sopping wet clothes and thankful for it, really, “We’re all lads here, ey?”

“Something like that,” Calum says with a glint in his eye, before he wanders off to shamelessly wheedle a clean, dry shirt off Luke.

_

When they get back to the hotel, they’re dry and bundled up in fresh hoodies and jeans, but the cold has settled deeper than new clothes can address, so they split up and head for hot showers, Luke taking the longest as always.

Without talking about it or planning it they all end up naturally gravitating toward Calum and Ashton’s room, lying together in an exhausted heap on Ashton’s bed, tapping away on their phones and hitting one another with pillows, generally downtime banding the way they always do; the way god intended.

There’s still something extra to it; an air of more that Ashton tries his hardest not to think about or give into, hopes he can eventually shelve as a strange but brief side effect of his being different now, not their being different from now on.

No one is avoiding him or giving him hurt looks, he’s not being yelled at or ignored.

Everything seems to be continuing as normal, and that in itself is already more than Ashton had thought to hope for.

Mikey shoves Luke’s shirt up out of his way and sucks a bright, vicious little bruise into the thin skin above his ribs, and in some bizarre kind of retaliation Luke decides that biting Calum hard on the calf will teach Michael a lesson.

Ashton watches all of this, and he does not feel left out.

His fangs seem to hum in his mouth, and Ashton runs a careful tongue up over them instead of saying anything.

Instead of asking for something, maybe.

____

“Hey, Ash. Help. Ash - help,” Calum is mumbling - whining, really - when Ashton wakes up. He sighs and rolls up onto one elbow, never having gotten so deeply into sleep that it’s a hardship to swing his legs over the side of the bed and go help Calum struggle drunkenly out of his clothes.

Ashton knows his boys, he’d known well enough to expect this when Mikey announced that he and Calum were having ‘lads bonding time’ after the show tonight, when all Ashton wanted to do was crawl into bed and sleep until he couldn’t anymore.

“There you are,” Calum says in something like wonder, palming the back of Ashton’s neck when he goes to his knees to help Cal out of his shoes, carefully catching an ankle in his hand and easing his Vans off when Cal spreads his knees too quickly, too enthusiastically, to make room for Ashton between his feet.

“I was always here, you’re the one who just got back,” Ashton tells him, patient because he always loves Calum, but he maybe especially loves him when he’s like this.

Calum frowns, put out by something Ashton has said, and Ashton waits, kneels up in the meantime so he can start working on Calum’s jeans.

“Are you sure?” Calum asks, eyes wide in the dark, mouth soft and slack and loose. “That doesn’t sound right. Why would I be somewhere else if you were here the whole time?”

“Because you wanted to go get drunk with dear Michael, who is always happy to help you out with that.”

“And you didn’t want to be with us?” Calum is still frowning, but he’s malleable enough for Ashton’s guiding hands, stands when he’s directed to, lets Ashton drag his jeans down and steps neatly out of them, only stumbling when the time comes to sit back down. Ashton reaches out to steady him, hand on his hip even after Calum takes a hold of Ashton’s shoulders for support.

“I was just tired, mate. I’ll come next time, ey?”

He stands up and carefully folds Calum’s jeans over the arm of a chair, picks up his Vans and tosses them in the vague direction of the pile of shoes by the door.

When he looks back at Calum, he’s passed out and snoring.

Mostly naked.

In Ashton’s bed.

___

[ “Why are you over there?” Calum asks, after he’s almost flailed right off of Ashton’s bed in the process of trying to locate and silence their alarm, the next morning.

Ashton rubs his cheek against the soft, sleep-warm sheets of Calum’s bed and wonders briefly what it is about bedding that has his fangs going hot in his gums first thing in the morning.

“You ninja-d your way into my bed, so,” is Ashton’s reply, still distracted because his attention is split between the problem he’s having with his mouth and what is starting to become a serious situation in his boxers.

“So you got into mine? What kind of flawed logic, Ashton?” Calum is sitting up now, pushing the covers off and sitting with his elbows on his knees, his hands trying to right his bedhead. He’s almost naked and he’s cranky with Ashton, so all things considered Ashton shouldn’t be surprised to find that he still wants Calum. Wants him always, really.

“Where would you prefer I sleep, bro? In the shower? The corridor, maybe?”

“You are so dumb,” Calum tells him, rolling his eyes and then rolling out of bed to land neatly on his feet, stretching out tall and lean and lovely in the space between their beds.

Ashton turns his face back into Calum’s pillows, sinks his teeth into nothing at all.

It’s still two days until he’s due to feed again. ]

____

Ashton’s dreams are different now to how they used to be, before.

He’s never been one to remember what goes through his head at night, what happens to his thoughts when he’s not the one carolling them, sorting them through and stopping what needs to be stopped, putting pause to things he isn’t ready to look directly at, not yet.

Before, Ashton’s dreams would come back to him in pieces. Bite sized bits. The grip of a feeling he’d felt in a dream would band like steel around his chest in the middle of breakfast, in the shower the next evening, when the front wheel of his bike met the lip of a curb that marks the territory of Mikey’s house. He’d hardly ever remember why he felt that way in the dream, or what came before or after, but he’d know from how out of place the feeling was - how sudden and not at all warranted it was – that this wasn’t about him, not really, not now.

Now, though.

Now Ashton can’t quite seem to draw that distinction anymore.

-

He’s sitting next to Calum in an interview that’s important, one they need to use to get actual information out to their fans rather than as the usual opportunity to let their thoughts and words and hands and minds wander, and all of a sudden there is no air in Ashton’s lungs because he’s remembering how it feels to wake up with his teeth already in Calum’s throat, the broad taste of him slowly waking Ashton like the soothing fog of a hot shower after a long day, his muscles warmed lax, the ache smoothed from his bones.

Ashton doesn’t know what waking up that way feels like, because he’s never dared to let himself fall asleep next to Calum or Luke or Mikey, not since. He can’t trust himself when it’s his body that’s in charge, his thoughts offline and his wants and needs permitted to be, for once, totally mindless.

And it’s his wants that are the driving force behind what hits him late one afternoon when they’re on a bus in the middle of nothing and nowhere and the sun is so big and so low it feels like a heartbeat to Ashton.

They’re lying around after lunch, his bandmates a full and sated pile around him, when Ashton reaches out to take Luke’s wrist in his hand for no reason at all. He doesn’t mean for it to happen, but he isn’t unhappy about it when the movement means his calf drags up along the inside of Michael’s thigh, a slow and easy drag of skin that Michael curls into instead of away from.

Ashton is getting better at letting it happen when they welcome him into their space like he belongs. Lately he is quicker and quicker to not question or doubt it when he reaches for them and finds them ready and waiting – more than simply willing. It’s so easy, now, to take what he needs, even though that’s not just blood, not just comfort, not just support and friendship and understanding.

What Ashton wants from his bandmates is blowing hard and fast through the flimsy barriers he’s had hastily pulled up since day one, thinking it right and polite, even though it never felt important or necessary.

Sometimes, when it’s as clear as day that his bandmates don’t mind, Ashton can start to think about his transition from ‘human’ to ‘decidedly not’ as something that … while maybe not being good on the whole, came to be that way anyway, in the end.

When he’s lying in the midst of his friends with their love for him literally keeping him warm, it’s hard to think of it as something he’d go back and do over, given the chance.

-

But then there are the times when it’s clearer than clear that they’re not out of the woods, not nearly.

-

Ashton is lying in the back lounge half slumped off the couch, caught in the tangle of his limbs overlapping with Luke’s and Calum’s and Mikey’s and Luke’s pulse is hammering in his hand and then he’s not there anymore, he’s nowhere at all, because he’s struck dumb by a flash of something that he knows is coming back to him, somehow.

Luke had been shirtless in Ashton’s dream. In and of itself that’s nothing special, nothing all that out of the ordinary, but in Ashton’s dream Luke had been shirtless and pressed between Ashton’s body and a wall, goosebumps waking in waves across his bare back when Ashton swept his hands up the length of it, making Luke arch forward into him as much as he could with Ashton’s hips pinning him where he was. He’d had his jeans on still, and Ashton had watched his own hands work them open with his forehead pillowed on Luke’s shoulder, his teeth grazing the curve of Luke’s collarbone. Luke had been trembling, his shoulders shaking against the rough wallpaper of some nameless hotel or another, and Ashton had only known one way to soothe him; could only do one thing to help. When Luke’s hands had joined Ashton’s at his zipper, pushed Ashton’s fingers out of the way so he could get his own jeans open and shoved impatiently down to his thighs, Ashton had held on tight to Luke’s straining biceps instead and sunk his teeth right in.

In the dream, Luke’s skull had thunked back against the wall with a dull sound that paled in comparison to the moan that Ashton’s fangs had pulled up out of him, and Ashton had been the one shaking, then, his hips hitching up against Luke’s and then falling still completely at the feeling of another body behind him, the bright flare of Mikey’s hair coming into view at Ashton’s shoulder.

The hands that were starting in on working Ashton’s belt open were tanned and tattooed, strong and quick, and Ashton doesn’t have to pull back from Luke’s throat to figure out who is making rough, wet sounds with their mouth on Luke’s, because it doesn’t matter who it is, Ashton is still going to be jealous, Ashton is still going to need to kiss whoever that is, he’s still going to need to kiss Luke right after. Whoever he’s left out, then.

A rivulet of Luke’s blood had spilled out of the side of Ashton’s mouth, running in a thin, vivid trickle down the long line of his throat, right into the dip between his collarbones and down along his chest, set to meet the straining material of his boxers until a thumb that isn’t Ashton’s swept into view to drag upwards through the red, halting the stream and collecting the thick of it. Mikey had lifted his hand to Ashton’s mouth, offering his hand up as a salty conduit for Ashton’s spoils, and Ashton hadn’t had to think about it, in that moment, in his dream. He’d known he was going to drink from Michael’s thigh, next. Calum’s wrist after that.

Ashton hadn’t been thinking about anything, in his dream. He’d trusted completely and easily that his band were going to give him everything he wanted, one after the other, and he’d known there when he couldn’t be so sure here and now that that was because they wanted the very same. Wanted him. Wanted this.

Here, reality is an evening when Ashton has to worry about how much time they have before they reach their next venue, and if somewhere in there he’ll have enough time to feed from Calum and make him eat again before they head into soundcheck. He has to wonder whether Calum will let Ashton hold him, just for a minute, afterwards. He’s already fretting about whether he’ll be able to heal the marks he leaves well enough that they’re not visible, not obvious at least. He’s looking down at Calum’s head in his lap and he’s searching Calum’s face for some sign that he’s sick of this already, tired and bored of how heavily Ashton relies on them, now.

He’s looking at Luke and Michael and thinking about what he might do if he sees them look at Calum in sympathy.

But the truth is – there’s nothing Ashton could do. Nothing he can do but keep on asking, keep hoping, keep depending on them for something that he no longer wants from anyone else, probably never did in the first place.

There’s no one around to sympathize with him on that. No one that gets what it means to want what you need.

And so Ashton writes it off as a leftover trick of his overactive and all too pointed imagination when he thinks he sees a flicker of something like keen interest cross Luke’s face when Ashton’s grip on his wrist goes harder than he means it to. Old, unwanted tides of thought from Ashton’s dreams are the only thing that could explain how it almost seems to him like Michael is pouting, Calum’s mouth pursed right back at him but his eyes bright with mischief, lit up in something like taunting.

“Snack time, Irwin,” Calum says, and it’s still just Ashton’s imagination that makes it sound excited.

____

Michael’s looking particularly pale tonight, his bright red hair making his face appear near-translucent in comparison, and Ashton is just about to ask if he’s feeling alright, double check that feeding Ashton isn’t hurting his entire band. He’s going to stand up from the couch he’s lying on and he’s going to cross the room to where Michael is fixing his eyeliner in a mirror, and he’s going to check in with Calum and Luke next, make sure everyone is okay before they head out onto the stage.

That’s absolutely what Ashton intends to do, until what happens instead is that Ashton tries to stand up and passes out cold.

He blinks his eyes open slowly and painfully to the sight of his three bandmates framing his brand new view of the ceiling, crowded around him with their hair glowing in the fluorescent light. Ashton isn’t quite sure what’s going on, but he knows he should do his best to not make it explicitly clear that he’s head over heels for all of them, and so instead of asking if they’re angels, he manages;

“Are you all alright?”

That is, after all, still his biggest concern in that moment. In every moment, really.

Luke’s cool, smooth palm replaces the scratch of a bandana across Ashton’s forehead, and Luke doesn’t look alright. He’s frowning so hard that his eyebrows are meeting in the middle, and his pout of concentration is … well … Ashton finds it in himself to be a little bit selfish, when he looks at Luke’s mouth and gives himself a second to think about nothing but how that mouth feels when his tongue is inside it.

It happens almost every time Ashton looks at Luke, lately, and that’s sort of the problem, here, now that Ashton actually thinks about it all at once.

“When was the last time you fed, Ash?” Michael is asking him, all business, so Ashton answers honestly, though he knows he’s in for a world of hurt when he does.

“Luke,” he manages, simultaneously hating and loving the fact that it’s not about days for him anymore. It’s never really been about the ‘when.’ It’s ‘who’, to Ashton. Even when he’s caught up in the ‘how.’

Luke’s frown deepens, somehow. He still looks perfectly angelic, to Ashton.

“Ash that was … that was almost a week ago. You have to feed every four days. Minimum. You didn’t - why didn’t you?”

Ashton doesn’t wonder how Calum knows when the last time he fed from Luke was. He doesn’t wonder about much of anything at all, because his band are helping him sit up and then they’re carefully guiding him into Calum’s arms.

“You’re so dumb,” Calum tells him for the second time in as many days, but it’s softer this time around, concern still clear on his face as it swims into view for Ashton.

“Hi, sorry,” is the best Ashton can do with Calum this close to him, with Michael’s hands on his shoulders and Luke huddled up behind him, moulding his front to Ashton’s back like a support he didn’t ask for but wants anyway.

“Don’t be sorry, don’t say anything at all, just shut up and put your teeth in me,” Calum tells him, impatient now, thumbs tripping up the line of Ashton’s throat when he takes his face in his hands and pulls him closer, tilts his head back for him, Calum’s fingers warm and strong on Ashton’s jaw.

Ashton’s so hungry he’s helpless to do anything except what’s asked of him, what’s expected of him, then, but it’s not him that sighs in satisfaction when he lets his fangs drop, lets his forehead rest against the gorgeous angle of Calum’s jaw and lets his teeth sink in.

It isn’t Calum, either.

“You’re an idiot,” Luke tells Ashton, with his head hooked up over Ashton’s shoulder and his arms around Ashton’s waist, his heart thumping a full and frantic rhythm against Ashton’s back.

“You’re so hot like this that it almost makes me hate you a little bit,” is Michael’s contribution, and it makes Ashton’s concentration slip, sees his teeth nip a little bit harder than he intended.

“Oh god,” Calum says, hands clutching at the curve of Ashton’s skull, now, his fingers in his hair, “Oh fuck.”

Ashton’s head is swimming, half from the relief of feeding at last, half from the mixed messages he’s getting from his bandmates and their alternatingly praising and disparaging commentary.

“Did I hurt you?” he pulls away to ask Calum, but before Calum can do more than roll his eyes Michael is tangling his fingers in the collar of Ashton’s tee and tugging.

“Hurt me,” Michael says, some element of honesty clear to the rest of them in his voice, clear to Ashton in the tight pull of his hands, his fingers trembling at Ashton’s hips, now.

“He doesn’t mean it like that,” Luke clarifies unnecessarily, still so close to Ashton that it’s making his head spin; Michael’s blood spilling into his mouth but everything around him smelling like Luke, twisted up with the taste of Calum still sweet on Ashton’s tongue.

Michael is letting him drink from his throat, and Ashton doesn’t have to wonder why that is for very long.

“We didn’t want to push you,” Luke continues, his mouth up close to Ashton’s ear so he can speak quietly, so they can maybe preserve some false sense of privacy even though the four of them are sitting together in a heap in the middle of the floor, limbs in a complicated tangle and all of them with their hair and clothes out of place, their hands gone wild. “We didn’t want to ask, or push for more, in case you weren’t comfortable anymore, after - after what happened. We tried to keep our distance, keep this … not personal, but we wanted - we want more.”

Luke’s bottom lip drags up under the curve of Ashton’s jawline and Ashton has about three seconds to wonder if this means they’ve all talked about what happened, to wonder what on earth Luke is about to do, before he has to close his eyes and think about nothing but the rich pull of Michael’s blood, because he can hear what Luke is doing, he can hear the sound of Luke’s mouth catching and giving against Michael’s.

Ashton isn’t jealous, he finds, surprising even himself.

His most immediate reaction is one of impatience, a frustrated little thump that knocks through him when he realizes he can’t drink from Michael and watch Michael and Luke kiss at the same time.

“Hey, don’t do that,” Calum interrupts his thought process, smoothing the frown lines from Ashton’s forehead with his thumb and then leaning in to lick away the mess Michael’s blood has made up under Ashton’s bottom lip, across his chin.

Time is moving in slowly pulsing waves for Ashton, now. A push and drag of minutes that aren’t measured in units of time at all, spun out around him in the flush of Michael’s cheeks, Calum’s hands cool on Ashton’s sides, stealing inside the cut away sleeves of his tshirt. Luke is all around him, his hair the brightest thing Ashton sees and the smell of him the best kind of home.

He’s covered in them, and he’s almost full. He’s lost in all three of them, together around him.

“Almost there, babe,” Luke says, finally releasing Ashton from the hold he’s had on him so Ashton can turn in his arms and crawl into his lap, move up and over Luke until he’s lying back against the sofa and Ashton is mostly in his lap, eager to have him.

He sets his teeth into the soft, thin skin that covers Luke’s pulse and closes his eyes in bliss.

“We didn’t want to freak you out,” Michael is saying from somewhere to their left, and meaning sings through Ashton when he winds a hand up around Ashton’s calf muscle.

“We didn’t know how to tell you that we want you this much,” Calum says, voice cracking as he leans in close, his fingers framing Luke’s jaw and tilting his head just so for Ashton when he settles in for a second bite, sets his teeth just below the marks he’s already left.

When he’s finally full, a different kind of awareness comes back to Ashton. A superhuman, sharp collection of details that won’t ever matter to him as much as what’s really important.

The room is too bright now, and everything electrical in it hums too loud. He can feel the air against his skin, not painful or cold but an awareness that he can’t easily escape.

Luke’s heart is beating hummingbird hard under his ear, where Ashton lies with his head on his chest. Calum has Michael’s blood smeared across the corner of his mouth, a reminder Ashton doesn’t need that Calum licked it off his lips, sucked it from his tongue. A thin trickle is still dripping from Michael’s neck, pooling in the dip of his collarbone in a way that makes Ashton’s tongue feel too thick for his mouth, because they’re all still bleeding a little bit, lying in various states of overwhelmed and satisfied around him because he hasn’t found the nerve to go to them again, tend to their bitemarks so they’ll heal away to nothing.

If anyone was to walk in on this, it would look like the aftermath of a particularly savage kind of orgy, Ashton thinks.

He takes one last look at them all, curled up on the floor with their bodies twisted to get close to him - close to one another - each of them still bearing the mark of his teeth, faces smoothed into sated smiles when he glances at them in turn.

Ashton runs his tongue across the sharp edge of his fangs one last time before he lets them disappear, and then he puts his head back on Luke’s chest and leans into the palm that starts to brush his hair back into place.

It takes no time at all to get stage-ready again, Ashton full and thriving now, helping Calum wipe his mouth clean, knocking Calum’s hand out of the way like this was only ever meant to be Ashton’s responsibility. Tonight Ashton’s thumbs are the ones that smudge Michael’s eyeliner until he’s satisfied that it looks right. Luke doesn’t need any help at all, has always been pretty much gifted at making the rough and tumble natural state of himself look effortlessly put together, somehow, intentional when it never has been. Ashton has no reason to touch him, but he does anyway. He holds the gorgeous line of Luke’s throat in his hands as he heals him, and just like with the others he does a half-arsed job, can barely bring himself to even try.

They tumble out onto the stage bouncing and laughing, thumping at their guitars with the fists their hands make to beat along with Ashton’s drums.

Ashton sits behind his kit and watches them like they’re one, stays palpably aware of the way they move like a wave, backwards and forwards and criss-crossing, bunching up in twos and a full and perfect three before him. They’re constant motion, and he’s a fixed point, but his belly is warmer than it’s ever been, his heart thumping hot and fast with all three of them winding their way through his body at once.

They’re constant motion, and he’s a fixed point, but they’re all part of the singular, each of them one quarter of a whole.

____

The zen, centered state of mind Ashton experiences on stage that night isn’t unfamiliar, it’s as old and familiar as all the best things about this band are, but it doesn’t last forever, and it doesn’t mean Ashton has any clearer a view of what’s happening here. Not really.

He has gathered - from his band gathering him to them and feeding him in turn - that they’re all on the same page when it comes to that part of this, at least, as less a chore or hassle or complication now than Ashton ever thought it could come to be, for his friends.

They’re into it and he’s into them and mostly he figures that’s okay.

Things can continue as they’d begun, only now with the added security that comes with the knowledge that no one is unhappy, no one is anything less than totally pleased about these developments.

Unchartered territory stretches out before them, but Ashton has never been afraid of any kind of abyss he could encounter with his boys by his side.

They, above all else, have time, and Ashton is happy to wait.

____

In theory.

____

In practice, however ….

____

It’s been a long day of increasingly boring and unnecessarily number-heavy meetings with their London label heads, and even Ashton - who generally has the most patience for this sort of thing - is bored out of his mind by the time late afternoon rolls around.

Michael and Calum are first up to squiggle their names on the long line of documents that’ve been set out along the edge of a desk for them to sign before they’re released back out into the wild. Maybe on another day Ashton could find it in himself to be offended that each of the small stacks of paper have tiny neon numbered post-its stuck above them, like they’re children who can just about be trusted to follow shockingly simple direction, but Cal and Mikey’s signatures are literally wobbly lines by the time they’ve reached document number twelve (under a pink post-it) and then they’re tearing off down a corridor darting in and around the retreating team of lawyers and execs who have to sit through this sort of thing all day every day in shirts that button right up to their necks. Ashton’s pretty sure he glances a nip slip when Calum lifts his arms up over his head in victory, upon beating Michael to the elevator, and Michael’s wearing jeans that are about a perilous centimetre away from possessing rips that proudly reveal Mikey’s left butt cheek, and so Ashton can forgive their team their condescension this once, he decides benevolently.

Ashton finds himself feeling benevolent pretty often these days.

He’s mellowed, maybe, in a way that has a lot to do with how Luke is crowding up against Ashton’s back right now, leaning around him to sign his name under Ashton’s simultaneously, rather than waiting his turn.

“Hurry up, Ash, I’m so bored I think I’m a zombie now,” Luke whines with his chin hooked up over Ashton’s shoulder. Ashton tries to stave off the shiver that’s always to hand when his body has to process how tall Luke is these days, how broad his shoulders are and how maddeningly great they feel pressed up against him.

“I can hear you pouting, you know,” Ashton tells him in a hail mary attempt to distract himself. If he doesn’t focus completely on teasing Luke, he might do something reckless and stupid like flirt with him, instead. He might even - god forbid - let himself think about when he’s due to feed next, get caught up in imagining all the ways Luke might let him touch him then, lose himself to wondering whether or not Michael and Calum will want to watch.

“Oh yeah?” Luke asks, voice low and close and his hands on Ashton’s waist, his long, lovely fingers straying dangerously close to the hem of Ashton’s shirt. “You wanna feel me pout, instead?”

And then his mouth is at Ashton’s throat, his lips pursed. His fingers are pushing up under Ashton’s tee, hot hands finding and covering the goosebumping skin of Ashton’s stomach and his teeth are nipping at Ashton’s throat, a perfect parody of what Ashton is thinking about, and one second Ashton is standing there, shaking with want in the cage of Luke’s arms, and the next he’s moved faster than he knew he could to switch their positions. He gets Luke pressed up against the desk in front of him and he takes advantage when Luke sways forward with his hands palm down, scattering stacks of paper. He presses his fingers into the gaps between Luke’s and holds his hands there like that, holds Luke in place with his body until Luke bows his head low between his shoulders, shifts back into Ashton and says “Please,” so quietly, so desperately that it shocks Ashton out of the haze that has descended over him.

Someone slams a door somewhere further down the corridor and Ashton steps away from Luke, closes his eyes against the sight of Luke staying exactly where he was, staying still for him and wanting - asking.

“We - fuck. We should … we have to go,” Ashton says, and his biology is a strange and difficult thing these days, but he’s used to this feeling now, he’s always felt like he could choke on nothing at all - on air, on his own tongue - because of Luke Hemmings.

“Okay,” is all Luke will say, and he doesn’t look up at Ashton as he stretches to straighten and sign the last stack of paper, won’t look at him afterwards, either.

____

It’s a few days later, and Ashton has fed in the meantime, when he finds himself holding Michael bodily against a wall and thinking very seriously about putting his teeth in him until he comes from nothing but that. Michael could, Ashton knows. Michael knows so too, and he’s been vocal about sharing that knowledge with Ashton.

Which might explain why Ashton really only means to hold Michael still, only wants to stop him from running around a dressing room so cluttered with bags and piles of clothes and laptop cords and phone chargers that it’s a nightmare waiting to happen to a boy who has more enthusiasm than sense at the best of times, let alone right now when they’ve just come off stage.

Ashton means to protect him from himself, is all.

But instead he winds up lifting Michael up against brick and mortar and holding him there with nothing but his hands and hips. Not to mention the helpful little twist that Michael’s legs automatically fold around Ashton’s waist.

He just wanted to keep Michael safe, but now he’s staring down the throbbing pulse in his throat and clenching his fists until the whole room, deadly silent now, has to hear the way Michael’s shirt rips in his grip.

“Are you okay?” Michael asks quietly, and then, “Do you need anything?” in a voice that’s something closer to hitched, anticipating.

“No, I’m - no,” Ashton says, stumbling over his words as he drops Mikey back to the ground and stumbles away from him, out of the heat of his body to seek solace in the strange new caress of temperature controlled air, instead, sitting in a corridor by himself and breathing into the palms of his hands until he can think some way close to straight again.

“No, I’m not okay,” he needlessly confirms to himself and no one else at all.

And then he stands, and wills his fangs away, and wipes the blood from his hands onto the helpfully concealing black denim of his jeans.

“Sorry, I … sorry,” he says to the room in general when he walks back into it, and is met with nothing but looks of patient interest and something that might, in Calum’s case, be pity.

____

Ashton needs to get his shit together.

____

Calum is, predictably, the very opposite of helpful in this regard, by virtue of nothing but the act of being himself.

____

New York is freezing cold in January, is the thing.

Like, so cold that Ashton has four hoodies on, is huddled up in an armchair with the blankets from both his and Calum’s beds layered over him, and is still pretty damn close to death by hypothermia.

Ashton is never one to whine or make excuses, but his vampirism is definitely playing a large part in his misery today.

Blood isn’t just food for him now, it’s how he gets all of his energy, everything he needs to function on every basic level you can think of. It stands to reason that the colder it is, the harder his body is going to have to work to stay warm, vampire or no, and that effort drains him now in ways that come down to his singular source of fuel, now.

He’s not due to feed for another day, but he already feels the cold, sharp edge of hunger; the extra bite of soon, soon that makes every moment drag out a little bit longer, makes what’s coming feel that much further away, makes his hands tremble until he gets embarrassed and tucks them up into his armpits.

Calum is curled up on his bed, napping sans the blankets that are tucked around Ashton’s shuddering shoulders instead. Ashton can taste the heat of him from across the room.

Calum is so warm, his body such a soft, lovely curve of sleepy heat when Ashton finds himself folded up around him.

It’s not a conscious decision. Ashton doesn’t remember a thought process that ends in ‘yeah, spooning Cal as he sleeps is a really fucking good idea,’ but here he is; here they are.

Ashton is clinging to Calum like bodily contact is the only thing that’ll save him, and he’s dragged his blankets with him; he’s cocooned them in the middle of the bed in a pocket of skin-hot heat that makes his mouth go dry.

It’s pure instinct, and Calum’s still mostly-sleeping body indulges him.

In his arms, Calum unfurls. His hands reach back to touch, fingers pushing past fabric boundaries and searching until he finds skin. Ashton’s knees are kissed up snug to Calum’s, just for a second, just a suggestion, before Calum’s hips tilt and his legs shift apart, one thigh heavy and so warm on top of Ashton’s, Calum’s bare foot winding hot around his calf.

It’s the heat, that drives Ashton then.

Calum is right next to him, so open for him, and Ashton wants in.

His hands go automatically to the soft jut of Calum’s hip bones, Ashton’s palms just a rough enough rub to make Calum move, to wake him up a little bit more. The topmost knob of Calum’s spine is a welcome hiccup when the tip of Ashton’s nose trips up over the lip of it, and Calum’s skin is sweet in sleep; sweat sugared in the shadows of his body like a secret Ashton wants to lick right up and keep.

“Ash?” Calum asks, voice a thick rumble when Ashton presses his mouth up under his jaw to feel it.

“It’s just me,” Ashton assures him, and even as he’s saying it as soothingly as he can, he hates himself for doing so, because he should be telling Calum to get up and go, to get as far away from him as fast as he can.

“Mmmm. Hey,” Calum mumbles, eyes still closed, and everything is more, closer and that much harder to tune out when the darkness behind Ashton’s eyelids gets hot, goes darker than just dark.

Calum’s blood blooms tart, sharply sweet on the tip of Ashton’s tongue when he licks it from the cusp of his fang. Ashton’s sealing his mouth to the pinprick wells he’s bitten into Calum’s skin and starting to suck before he even realizes what he’s doing.

It’s Calum who makes him see.

It’s Calum, rolling back into him and groaning in pleasure that shocks Ashton back into reality.

____

Ashton really needs to get his shit together.

He needs to re-find whatever hold on his control he had before his bandmates collectively decided to show him and tell him that boundaries weren’t really their thing.

It can’t be his fear of losing them or pushing them too far, anymore, because the longer this goes on, the more Ashton begins to suspect that every little thing he thinks to want is something they’re all already ahead of him in needing. There’s nothing he doesn’t want from them, and they’re making it as clear as they know how that there’s also precisely nothing they don’t want to give him; give each other; give and take in turn.

But this band is his life. These boys are the beat in his chest, now.

And this - all four of them, together?

Well that would just be madness.

That would be kneeling down and begging sweetly for the kind of trouble that Ashton has been working so hard to keep them out of, all this time.

It doesn’t make sense, and Ashton can’t talk himself into thinking otherwise, no matter how much he wants to; no matter how much he needs Luke, needs Calum, needs Michael, needs the hooked lurch of his tummy when he gets to have them in combination, in a bright and beautiful mess, the scorchingly hot tangle they make when they come together to let him in.

They can’t.

He won’t.

____

He shouldn’t.

____

What Ashton fails to take into account, as usual, is that though he might at times like to consider himself something of a centering force in his band, that only really works when the rest of them don’t choose to gang up on him in combinations of two or more.

One of them, Ashton might be able to say no to. Maybe. If you catch him on a good day. If he’s had a good night’s sleep. If he’s fed and well rested and thinking clearly and his moons are all aligned in the house of venus or whatever. It’s certainly a vague possibility then.

But not …

Not when ....

____

“You’re not doing it properly, you have to -”

“I can’t do it properly, Luke. I’m not Ashton, I don’t come with the equipment built in, remember? Just - stay still. Stop squirming, or I swear to god.”

“Oh yeah? What’ll you do? Lose your patience and skip the foreplay entirely? I know you Calum Hood, I know exactly what you’ll do, so if you’re not going to even try then stop pretending, just take your pants off and let me suck you off already.”

Ashton stares at the ceiling of his own bunk and wonders if it’s possible that he suffered a head injury in his sleep. The bunks on the bus are really, really small, after all, and it’s entirely more plausible to think that he concussed himself in his sleep than it is to imagine that Luke and Calum are doing what it sounds like Luke and Calum are doing in the bunk just across from him.

The bunks are tiny, and Calum and Luke are not.

“If you wanted my dick in your mouth all you had to do was say so, babe, but that’s not what you asked for, is it? You wanted to see if the biting thing worked with anyone, so that’s what we’re going to figure out. With or without Ashton’s help.”

The curtain rustles and someone moans and Ashton drops a hand to apologetically cup his own dick through his boxers before he rolls onto his side and sighs.

“Ashton can hear you, you know,” he says, not trying for loud because he knows they can hear him if he can hear them.

What he doesn’t know is what their angle is, here.

Michael and Luke curl up together when one or both of them have feelings to talk about or turn into songs, and Calum and Michael are constantly waging prank wars together, holing up in the studio or back lounge together when Michael needs to make sense of the depths of the mess he makes when even Luke can’t get close enough to understand.

Luke and Calum only ever team up when something needs to get done.

When they’ve decided to join forces to achieve something so huge and/or diabolical that it takes the awful combination of them working together to make it happen.

Luke is ruthlessly intelligent and Calum is merciless when it comes to seeing through the things that Luke asks of him. They could wage and win wars together, and Ashton is understandably terrified whenever they launch an assault. Now, especially, because his control isn’t what it was.

He wants them more than he can even try to deny, like this.

“Ashton should stop eavesdropping and start helping,” Calum says, not raising his voice from how he’d been talking before - not trying to be quiet, but a low tone to his words nonetheless, sincerity laced through them. Ashton doesn’t know what to do when Calum talks to him like that. This is only going to get worse if he has to see him, too.

“Ashton was sleeping before your … sexperiments woke him up.” He’s stalling, and everyone knows it. The hand he now has in his own boxers doesn’t know whether to be constricting or conciliating and Ashton sympathizes, he really does.

“Ashton should stop talking about himself in the third person and consider himself cordially invited to take part in our sexperiments, considering they are mostly his fault in the first place.”

But Ashton is still stunned prone in his bunk, not moving at all for fear that his racing thoughts trembling hands will get him into such, such trouble if he makes to leave the safe space behind his curtain, when Michael effectively solves that problem for him by pulling his curtain back and hitching up the waist of his low rise skinny jeans so he can squat to be eye level with Ashton. Mostly, his denim-clad crotch is eye level with Ashton, and Ashton is fervently thankful that Michael only pulled the curtain back far enough to see his face.

“Hey,” Michael says, grinning wide and easy like their bandmates aren’t fooling around without them all of two feet away.

Ashton has no idea where that ‘without them’ came from.

He knows without a doubt, however, that it’s a terrible idea to keep touching himself right now.

He ignores his own advice on that.

“Hi,” Ashton tells him, nothing about this situation making it difficult to return his smile, because it’s sweet, just like Michael, and as much as Ashton pretty often wants to pin him up against things and go to town on him these days, he’s always happy to see him, he always wants him around no matter what or how or why.

“So listen,” Michael starts, and Luke starts to giggle, Calum shushing him loudly as best he can until he starts to laugh too. Ashton should be terrified and he knows this, but they’re his band and he doesn’t just know that, he feels it like a palpable, physical thing. It’s like drinking a hot drink on a cold day. It’s like a hug when you feel like shit and don’t know how to say so. It’s everything he needs without ever having to ask.

“What’s happening right now?” He asks, and he’s not scared or confused, he realizes. The low, hard swoop of his stomach that kicks in at the wet, muffled sounds coming from the bunk have nothing to do with fear. The way his mouth gets dry when Michael closes his eyes and clenches his jaw is nothing but eager, nervous excitement.

Michael leans in, his eyes still closed, and the long hot line of his throat drags across the round of Ashton’s shoulder when he stretches to press a kiss to Ashton’s cheek.

“It’s feeding time.”

____

“I can’t really … I - can you - how can you concentrate on this, when they’re doing that?” Ashton has to pull away to ask, because sure, Michael is sitting more in Ashton’s lap than he is on the couch in the back lounge, and absolutely, Ashton is hungry. His fangs are starting to ache in his gums and he figures it’d probably be pretty painful if he could concentrate for five seconds on anything that wasn’t the answering throb of his dick, still thick in his boxers under the cushion he’s hiding behind.

As if to punctuate his point, there’s a particularly loud thump from the bunks, followed up by the most obscene sound Ashton has ever heard Calum make, and that’s saying a lot. Luke laughs, dark and amused, and Ashton presses his hand harder into the cushion covering his crotch, nips at the sweat salty skin of Michael’s wrist with blunt, human teeth because if he uncovers his fangs right now he’s not sure he’ll ever get back to being human again.

Michael shifts back in Ashton’s lap to look at him, and Ashton is strangely relieved to see that he’s grinning. It would be understandable, Ashton thinks, if Michael were to be offended that Ashton could be distracted at a time like this. Ashton can barely believe it himself.

“Why is this bothering you so much?” Michael asks patiently, asks the way he does when he’s irritatingly ahead of everyone else and waiting for them to catch up - waiting for what Ashton suddenly realizes is supposed to be the right answer.

“Because it’s distracting?” Ashton leans in to mouth at the sweat-sweet base of Michael’s throat, lets his teeth find the curve of his collarbone and bite down. Ashton maybe sympathizes with Luke’s brand new biting fixation a bit too enthusiastically. A bit too hard, if the way Michael’s eyes roll up into his head is anything to go by.

“Yeah, but,” Michael gulps and sways forward, “Is it distracting because of what they’re doing or because it’s them that’s doing it?”

It’s difficult to think with Michael’s pulse jumping just under the surface of his skin, getting faster and faster until it’s racing for Ashton, pounding through the body that’s straining forward for him. It’s next to impossible, but Ashton tries, for Michael.

“It’s … because it’s them.” Ashton doesn’t really understand the distinction, doesn’t totally get what Michael is getting at, here, but he answers as honestly as he can. There could be a football team sized orgy going on right next to them and Ashton would find that less distracting than if Luke and Calum were on their other side, playing FIFA or messing with their phones. The fact that they’re clearly and loudly, enthusiastically banging definitely makes Ashton’s preoccupation with them next level, but it’s a preoccupation that’s standalone, nonetheless.

Michael’s mouth slides up into a smug, honeyed grin when he sits back this time, and Ashton can’t be embarrassed by how he reaches for him immediately, because he’s all but given up on shame when it comes to his band, especially lately. He’s so easy for them it’s absurd. They have to know that, by now. He can’t let himself believe he was ever fooling anyone on that one, vampire or no.

“Hey dipshits, put some pants on and get out here,” Michael yells back in the direction of the bunks, and Ashton doesn’t really know what they’re waiting for, exactly, but he’s happy enough to wait when he gets to do it with Michael in his lap, still.

There’s something of a stampede outside the door, which is then all but flung off its hinges in the wake of Luke and Calum tumbling through it, clothes clearly hastily thrown on, though Ashton finds himself much more distracted by how they’re holding hands and grinning at each other with wet, blush red mouths.

Ashton doesn’t like seeing them like this. He for some reason can’t stand the knowledge that they did this to one another behind closed doors. Or curtains, as the case may be. He’s pouting, and he knows it.

Calum drops Luke’s hand to take Ashton’s face in both of his hands, instead, and Ashton is torn between feeling triumphant about it, feeling sorry for the way Luke’s smile dims for a second. After a beat, though, his grin gets small and bashful. Shy.

“Jealous, honey?”

Michael reaches up to hold a hand out to Luke, and then Ashton is surrounded by his boys; Mikey still in his lap with Luke plastered to his side, Calum right next to him, closer than he needs to be, closer than he should be.

It physically hurts to not touch them.

Calum’s hands are still skimming down the line of his throat, Michael is so warm, so lovely in the cradle of his thighs, and Luke’s eyes on Ashton’s mouth feel like a touch, make the clench of his stomach go hot, jolt hard.

He’s supposed to be drinking from Michael, and he needs to, but he can’t.

His frustration must show in his face, or maybe in how tight his hold on Michael gets, the way his jaw clenches in Calum’s hands, because everyone gets quiet for a moment, and then Luke is asking “are you alright? Is there … what do you need?” and Ashton doesn’t know when he closed his eyes, but he can hear the concern in Luke’s voice, hear it in the silence from Calum and Mikey.

“You need to feed,” Mikey says, shifting in Ashton’s lap, getting closer, and he says it like he’s half asking a question, half chiding Ashton for inspiring the reminder.

“I know that,” Ashton says, because he does; he knows it in an ever present, utterly visceral way. He knows he has to feed, and he’s going to, he will, but …

“But that’s not all you need, is it?” Calum asks, and Ashton’s eyebrows furrow, he bites so hard at the inside of his bottom lip that he tastes his own blood, bitter and cold and making his stomach turn over.

This feels like A Moment. Capital letters, meaningful pauses for affect, the works.

This is where Ashton is supposed to open his mouth and let his teeth do the talking. He’ll sink his fangs into Michael, and maybe Calum and Luke will stick around to watch, but in ten minutes’ time the back lounge will empty out and it won’t be a dramatic or meaningful thing at all. It will be feeding time, done and dusted, and then Ashton can sulk, and Ashton will wallow, and their lives will continue as normal.

But.

“You need to touch us. You need us to touch you,” Calum decides, almost taunting, but softer than that, sympathetic at least.

And fuck that. Fuck Calum. Fuck him, Ashton thinks, for always going straight for the jugular, and for letting Luke teach him not to be apologetic for it.

That’s what Ashton’s thinking when he moves, faster than the rest of them can even keep track of, to lightly push Michael onto the lounge next to him, to reach out and take and turn and hold until he has Calum pinned down into the cushions, Ashton’s body a cage up over him, Calum’s wrists caught tight in Ashton’s hands.

It takes him a second to adjust, blinking up at the roof of the bus and then at Ashton, testing the hold on his wrists and laughing when Ashton doesn’t let him budge.

“I love you, but you are so, so stupid sometimes, Ashton Irwin,” he says, and somehow through the haze of needing to feed, wanting Calum, wanting Luke, wanting Michael, wanting, wanting, wanting, Ashton registers a tiny pang of hurt at that.

“Let me up for a second, you tool,” Calum goes on, and ow, okay, Ashton gets it, message received. He lets Calum go; sits back on his heels on the lounge and starts to work up an apology, starts trying to get out of this as quickly as he can so he can retreat to the bunks to lick his wounds and get started on being so embarrassed he could die again, but before he says a word he finds himself flat on his back, staring up at a smug and grinning Calum.

“You seriously think that’s what this is about, don’t you?” Calum asks, and when Ashton glances up over his shoulder at Luke and Mikey, hoping maybe they’ll be able to help him make sense of Calum’s sudden but not entirely unexpected lunacy, but Luke is straddling Mikey instead, seems pretty caught up in kissing Michael so enthusiastically that Ashton can see hot, gut-punching flashes of tongue. Huh.

“Weren’t you fooling around with Luke, like, thirty seconds ago?” Ashton asks, momentarily distracted from Calum’s absolutely distressing breakdown. It’s just that now Ashton has to wonder if he isn’t having one of his own. Matching breakdowns, that’s kind of sweet. Very them, Ashton thinks.

“Yep,” Calum tells him, proudly popping the ‘p’, grinning when Ashton goes almost cross-eyed staring down his mouth, “Immediately prior to this, I had my hands down Luke’s pants and I had my teeth in his neck, because he wanted to figure out if teeth in general do it for him, or whether it has to be your teeth specifically. We never really worked out the answer because we kept getting distracted.”

“Oh,” Ashton says, shifting a bit lower on the lounge, mostly meaning to make the balance of Calum’s weight across his thighs more comfortable, but not exactly not trying to bring their dicks into closer contact, at the same time. “He -” Calum pitches forward, putting his weight on the hands holding Ashton’s forearms pinned to the cushions, and he grinds down against Ashton, both of them hard, both of them groaning, low, like they can’t help it.

“Yeah,” Calum says, though Ashton has already forgotten what he was going to ask. “Luke is super, super into the biting. Luke is also super into you. So’s Michael. So’m I.”

Ashton can’t think. Ashton can’t move, can barely follow the thread of words Calum is stringing together because over his shoulder Ashton can see Michael’s lovely long-fingered hands white-knuckled in Luke’s hair, and the sound of a zipper being lowered rips through the room like a thunder clap.

Calum laughs, the sound twinkling like bright lights.

“You think this is all you, all ‘grrrr I’m Ashton, I’m a vampire, I’m a bad guy who’s gonna stick my teeth in my unwilling victims and then brood about it for eternity.’ But it’s not like that at all. I kind of wish it was, almost, because that sounds hot.”

Calum dips down, still smiling, swaying right into Ashton’s space and pouting infuriatingly close against his mouth. It’s a tease, and Ashton doesn’t appreciate the spirit of it.

“This isn’t funny, Calum. This isn’t a joke.” Ashton might not know exactly what’s going on, right now, but he knows that much. He knows that people can and will and do get hurt, here.

“I know, babe,” Calum says, conciliatory, actually kissing Ashton like he’s been threatening; his mouth a soft, hopeful kind of sorry. “I know that this is serious for you, and it’s serious for us too. We’re not making trying to make this into something that it isn’t. But has it occurred to you that maybe you are?”

Ashton tries to be offended, he does. He tries for affronted, when that fails. But Calum is still in his lap, and he’s trailing his lips down Ashton’s neck, his hands moving restlessly to the cushions on either side of Ashton’s head, planted there like maybe it’s hard to keep them off Ashton. Ashton despairs.

“You think Luke’s frightened of you, don’t you? You think he doesn’t like it when you bite him?” Calum’s nose is pushing the collar of Ashton’s shirt out of the way so he can nip at Ashton’s collarbone with blunt, human teeth and Ashton is struggling to stay clear headed, already finds it near impossible to make sense of anything that’s words instead of action. He’s hungry. He’s even hungrier in another way.

“Luke’s … Luke is Luke. He’s squeamish? I’ve been trying to think of another way to do this, maybe we could switch him out every second time or -”

“Don’t you fucking dare, Irwin,” Luke manages from three feet away, and it’s an impressive feat because Mikey is stroking a leisurely hand up around both of their dicks, and Ashton gets dizzy, he gets so much harder. “Fuck. Michael, Mikey. Mikey, your hands …”

Calum picks up where Luke leaves off, always so helpful.

“Luke makes you spoon him when you feed from him because he’s embarrassed about how hard it makes him. He comes in his jeans sometimes, just from you biting into him. Isn’t that ridiculous?” Calum lifts his head to look down into Ashton’s eyes, mirth crinkled around his shining eyes, so close his bangs are falling into Ashton’s face. Ashton’s fangs drop free and he’s so gone already, so utterly fucking gone for his band that all he can do is suck at them with his own tongue to soothe the ache. “Thinking about Luke blushing like a sweet little virgin when he creams himself for you is the single hottest thing I’ve ever done, I think, and my dick isn’t even involved in that scenario.”

Ashton has to close his eyes. Ashton is falling further and faster with every syllable that rolls out of Calum’s mouth, every wet little sound that Michael’s fist working at his and Luke’s leaking cocks makes echo through the room, so much that Ashton feels it like a touch.

“Please, Cal,” he manages to whimper, and he’s asking for permission, he knows. He’s biting into his own bottom lip and lifting his hips, already so fucking grateful when Calum simply lets him lift his hands to Calum’s waist, lets him hold him close and rut.

His own blood is stale and wrong in his mouth, and it feels like the opposite of defeat.

It feels earned, when Calum cradles Ashton’s head in his hands and offers up the smooth and wanton stretch of his throat.

This time, the slow push of Ashton’s fangs into Calum’s neck feels like forever, tastes like coming home.

Calum’s blood floods his mouth, and Ashton’s head swims, his vision twisting and flaring and righting itself to see that Luke’s right next to them, now, on his knees next to the couch and leaning in to nose up along the other side of Calum’s throat.

“‘can feel him all stretched out for you, Ash,” he murmurs, his hands tucked tight around the hem of his tee like he’s afraid he’s intruding right now. His jeans are still open, tugged down low on his hips, and Ashton only needs this brief taste of Calum to rip through him like lightning, make him feel so hotly charged that he can barely stand it.

“Go on,” Calum urges, sitting up and wiping at the blood that wells up at his neck with a thumb that he feeds into Ashton’s open mouth, then, “Go get our boy,” he says, grinning, and Ashton …

“I love you,” Ashton tells him, taking the hand Cal holds out to him when he stands and following him right up onto his feet, taking Calum’s face in both hands and kissing him soundly, sure.

Calum beams.

Luke whimpers from the floor.

“I’ve got you,” Ashton reassures him, scooping Luke up in the one impressive display of his newfound strength he’ll ever manage, probably.

“Got you, sweetheart,” Ashton says into straining denim when he gets Luke spread out on the couch and gets his face pushed into the space where his thighs meet, breathing hot into the push of Luke’s needy, humping hips.

It’s not easy to get Luke’s jeans down and off, and it might happen with rips and tears that make them unwearable now, but it’s worth it when Ashton can tug Luke’s underwear out of the way and get him bare from the waist down, get his hand around Luke’s hard, spit-slick dick as he noses into his thigh and lets his fangs fall again.

“Ooh, thigh, that’s new for you Lukey,” Michael observes, breathless. Curiosity gets the better of Ashton, and he pauses in his purpose to glance over. Michael and Calum are sitting next to one another, both of them with their jeans pushed down to their knees, and that makes it dirtier, somehow, makes it hotter to see the two of them fisting one another’s cocks with their clothes still on, only pushed hastily out of the way. Calum is twisting at his own nipple with his free hand, and Michael is biting hard at his bottom lip, and suddenly Ashton isn’t so full anymore.

“Don’t let me drink you dry,” he mumbles, a hasty warning smudged into the thick muscle that lines the inside of Luke’s thigh, because Ashton can’t help himself, Ashton can’t slow down when he gets his teeth into Luke.

“You taste like coming feels,” he slurs, mouth full and dripping blood that he’ll happily lick up in a second in thick lines across Luke’s skin. He’s only sipping from him, only keeping his mouth as occupied as it needs to be to see his brain stay online, because he’s concentrating as hard as he can on twisting the loose curl of his hand up and down around Luke’s cock, lifting his head to curl his blood hot tongue around the soft salt of Luke’s balls.

“Fucking - fuck. Jesus, Ashton. Ash, I’m gonna, can you -” Luke’s head is tipped back over the edge of the couch, his eyes clenched tightly shut, his forehead creased up in some lovely combination of pleasure and pain.

“Anything, anything you want, babe,” Ashton tells him, putting his hands on Luke’s knees to lever himself up over him, getting as close as he can before Luke’s hand shoots out to drag him down.

“Want you,” Luke says against his mouth, lips quirking up into a sweet smile before he’s angling up for a kiss, Ashton barely getting a hand back around his dick before Luke’s sucking hard at Ashton’s tongue and coming between them, making a mess of Ashton’s tshirt and his own bare belly.

It’s Ashton that cries out, when Luke’s come drips in spurts down the back of his hand, slicking ribbons across his knuckles.

He’s got Luke and Calum still honeying his mouth, drinking from them so close together that he can’t tell where one ends and the other begins, and the whole room feels warm like the blood pounding in his veins, only warmer, louder, closer when Calum holds his fingers around Michael’s and curls forward, coming in their hands with his breath punched out of him.

“This is unbelievable. We’re doing this all the time from now on,” Michael declares, and Ashton can’t believe he hasn’t come yet, can’t believe he gets to watch it happen.

“C’mere, Mikey,” he says, flopping down next to Luke and dragging his own jeans open and down, freeing his aching cock. He feels like he’s been hard for hours. He looks between Luke and Calum, Luke trembling gently, Calum breathing hard, and thinks he might be hard forever.

“Oh, is there something you want, Ashton?” Michael asks, coy even when he’s taunting.

“Shut up and get over here,” Ashton tells him, is comfortable with demanding, now, because all of a sudden this entire thing makes sense. Now, at last, Ashton gets it.

“I’m going to blow you, next time,” Ashton informs Michael, when he settles straddling Ashton. “I’m gonna feed from Luke and Calum, and then I’m going to suck you off with their blood still making my tongue thick.”

Ashton tastes it when Michael swallows, because he can’t help it, he bites down as soon as Michael comes close enough to reach.

“Just … just try to keep your keep to yourself, then, maybe,” Michael tries, struggling to make it sound lofty.

“I don’t think you want me to,” Ashton pulls off to say, licking up the length of Michael’s throat and seeing it this time, when his Adam’s apple jumps. “I think you’d like it if I were a little bit careless with these,” he says, dragging the sharp points of his fangs carefully across the pale, lovely skin of Michael’s neck.

“Fuck,” Michael swears, hands fumbling for Ashton’s hips, twisting in his lap until he gets them lined up properly, his cock pressed snug beside Ashton’s, both of them bare and sticky, Michael’s cock slick with his own spit, Ashton’s steadily dripping precome into the slide. “Can I come like this? No hands, nothing. Nothing between us, just … this?”

Ashton would smile, if he could, because he thinks that’s the first time Michael Clifford has ever asked someone for something in his life. Ashton might call him out on that, if he could, but he’s too busy bracing himself against the urge to come there and then, instead.

Michael seems to take Ashton’s obvious and painful struggle as an affirmative response, because his mouth falls open, lush bottom lip shining, and starts to grind in against Ashton, moving slow and hard in his lap so that the head of his cock nudges slick against Ashton’s. It’s agony, looking down between them and seeing their dicks pushed together in a wet little kiss against Ashton’s belly, his shirt pushed up under his armpits, his cock longer than Michael’s but Michael’s thicker, fat in a way that makes Ashton squirm because he’s gonna want that in him, he knows, he’s going to need Michael to fuck him open until he comes on that cock, mouth muffled on Luke, on Calum.

Ashton could ride Mikey right here, flip their positions and get Luke and Calum sitting on either side of them, front row seats to Ashton getting fucked while he has his fangs and his moans hushed by Luke’s throat or Calum’s forearm, their blood spilling into his mouth when Mikey comes inside him.

Just thinking about it, Ashton comes. The huge, swaying sense of inevitable possibility making his mind white out and his hips lift up off the couch, seeking a comfort and contact from Michael that Michael gives him in spades, petting Ashton’s hair back out of his face as he catches his breath, indulging Ashton easily when Ashton needs to kiss him into his own orgasm, working it out of him with nothing but his tongue in Michael’s mouth when Michael hitches and gasps against him.

“That,” Calum says after an easy, earned pause, “Was definitely some of our best work, as a band.”

Luke laughs, sitting up to halfheartedly wipe at the come drying on his stomach, and his hair is a mess and his jeans are still caught around one ankle. He’s still bleeding from the thigh, and Ashton might not be hungry to feed, but he’s still hungry to lick Luke clean, to touch him any way he can.

“This, my fine and super hot friends, was what the great Zac Efron could only call ‘the start of something new’.”

Calum groans, Luke tosses the first shoe he finds at him, and Ashton has to bat it out of the air before it hits him in the face, but he does so with grace because he feels sated for the first time since he got turned, and he sees now that that has nothing to do with thirst.

“And so the lion fell in love with the lambs,” he concludes to a chorus of boos, closing his eyes to his bandmates outrage and basking in the comfort of just them, all together at last.

____

[ Weeks later, Calum comes to find Ashton backstage before soundcheck, running to get to him if his heaving chest is any indication.

“What is it? Who - what’s the matter?” Ashton asks, instantly alert in his panic, though he’d been meditating with a very helpfully peaceful roadie until right now.

“It’s Luke. It’s … you should. Come, come on,” Calum pants before Ashton is untwisting his legs from their knot and racing ahead of him, arriving right by Luke’s side in seconds.

“What’s wrong? What’s happened?” Ashton asks, calmer now that he’s there, can see that Luke looks mostly okay, just shaken up, wired.

Michael’s laying on the floor by Luke’s feet, one earbud in and one resting on his chest. He cracks one eye open now to squint at Ashton.

“He’s fine, he’s just letting Calum lead him astray again,” he tells Ashton, but he’s sitting up and crawling toward them on his hands and knees.

“M’not fine,” Luke finally manages, taking Ashton’s hands in his and holding on, looking up at him through his eyelashes imploringly. Ashton notices now that he isn’t wearing a shirt, distractedly starts to count the faint freckles spanning out across his wide, strong shoulders, and oh. Oh. Ashton might know what’s wrong with Luke.

“I need you,” Luke tells him, mouth plumped up into a pout, “Need you too, Mikey,” he adds, but Michael is already shrugging off his denim jacket and pushing Luke’s knees apart to make room for himself between his thighs.

They have about forty minutes before they’re expected onstage. This is dumb. It’s awful timing.

Ashton sighs just as Calum appears in the doorway, still out of breath, but grinning openly now, his sharp smile bright with teeth.

“See, it’s an emergency,” he says, mock-solemn. “It’s a disaster. It’s the most urgent kind of tragedy, and only you can save us now, Ashton Irwin.”

Ashton sighs again, louder, and purely for show.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he says, the opposite of put out, “Get over here, Cal, I’ve got this.”

And, as he always has, he does. ]

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