Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/5003266.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      5_Seconds_of_Summer_(Band)
  Relationship:
      Michael_Clifford/Calum_Hood
  Character:
      Michael_Clifford, Calum_Hood, Ashton_Irwin, Luke_Hemmings
  Additional Tags:
      Magical_Realism, Dreams, Parallel_Universes, Rock_Out_With_Your_Socks_Out
      Tour, Gay_Panic
  Stats:
      Published: 2015-10-15 Words: 37439
****** unlikely lighthouses ******
by asymmetric
Summary
     The thing that's messing with him is that it hadn't felt like a
     dream. The details haven't spun together as the day goes on, and the
     colours and voices and sensations hadn't been off in any way. His
     room had looked exactly like he remembered it looking when he was a
     kid, and Calum had been even wearing the right pair of soccer
     shorts—the ones with the number “1” peeled off on one leg so that his
     right said “19” and the other just said “9”. It hadn't felt like a
     dream; it had felt like a memory.
     Michael may feel fucked up sometimes, but he knows that's impossible.
     Obviously it's impossible. He could never have forgotten something
     like that. He never propositioned Calum when they were fourteen.
     (in the middle of the North American leg of the ROWYSO tour, Calum
     builds a friendship bracelet and Michael starts to have dreams of
     another version of them)
Notes
     OKAY
     so this was supposed to be done ages ago and was supposed to not
     cause me this much grief, but it is here now. it is DONE! this fic
     was inspired by malum being ridiculously real this past tour
     and...always
     endless thanks to ellen, who looked over this for me and let me
     scream on gdocs chat even though i wouldn't answer any of her
     questions
     there iiiisss a fanmix HERE which you can listen to if you want
     enjoy boys being really really dumb
See the end of the work for more notes
Midnight is long gone and the bus is gliding through the darkness like a boat,
lost somewhere in the wide open sea of America. Michael has been awake for a
couple hours now, launched out of sleep into the swaying hum of the bus by a
nightmare he can't quite remember, something about fire and hands on his face.
He gave up on the idea of getting back to sleep the last time the yellow lights
of a town swept past the windows—ten, twenty minutes ago—and now he's just
lying on the bench in the back lounge, bare feet propped up against the window.
His skin sticks to the glass, clinging cool and damp like plastic wrap, and
it's a welcome distraction from the persistent coin of heat at his left
temple. 
The burns are bothering him again. 
He reaches up and places his thumb carefully against one of them, the one
nearest to his eye. It feels like smooth, tight leather under his hand, and the
heat of it flares up again at the contact. The back of his throat feels like
chalk and he swallows hard, thinking of the bandages he'd had to wear on his
head and the strange humiliation of facing his own reflection when they had
come off. The burns are barely visible now, and don't even hurt—the hotness of
his skin there is just a phantom feeling, a ghost injury. There's no way it
could actually still be hurting. It had happened back in London, in a whole
other country, weeks ago. Michael isn't sure how many weeks, exactly; on tour,
time becomes liquid, and it's only the consistency of it that changes, some
days moving molasses slow, others glugging out fast like water being poured on
concrete. He's floating no matter what, and never quite sure where he is. 
He moves his arm slightly, planning to cross it over his chest because it's
gone a bit numb from hanging off the bench onto the floor, and somehow the
movement makes his shoulder lock up, a twinge of pain shooting through his
body. 
“Fuck,” he mutters, and his feet are skidding down the window with a cartoonish
squeal and slamming loudly—painfully—into the windowsill. “Fuck!” 
Instinctive tears well up in the corners of his eyes. It's a reflex more than
anything, but it makes him feel worse, more pathetic, the idea that he's crying
over this. I'm a mess, he thinks, wallowing a little. 
“Michael?” 
The door to the lounge slides open slowly, and a dark silhouette appears.
Michael can't see his face, but he doesn't need to; Calum's voice is one of
three he could identify even from ten miles away. He's not surprised somehow
that it's Calum—Calum's been paying Michael a little bit more attention than
usual since Michael took a burst of fire to the face, watching him sometimes
like he thinks Michael's going to disappear. 
“Did I wake you?” Michael mumbles. “Sorry.” 
“'S alright,” Calum says. He's just a slap of ink against the door, his voice
scraping lower than it ever goes when he's fully awake. Michael closes his eyes
and hears the shuffle of Calum moving towards him, feels the ballooning of the
cushion under his cheek when Calum sits down a foot away. 
“You okay?” Calum asks. 
“Can't sleep,” Michael answers. “You should though. Go back to bed.” 
Calum shifts like he's going to do as Michael says, like that's enough for him,
and Michael has to fight down a sudden urge to grab him and force him to stay.
He doesn't move, but he gets his wish anyways; Calum settles back down, poking
at Michael's hand where he's still rubbing his temple absentmindedly. 
“You're messing with it again,” Calum says. It's a statement of fact, not an
accusation like Ashton would've made, but Michael feels chastised anyway. He
pulls his hand away, Calum's fingers slipping off. 
“I can do what I want,” Michael mutters. 
“Is it hurting?” Calum says. 
“Yes,” Michael says. “It's like my skin is bubbling right off of my face.” 
Calum snorts and scrubs the pad of his thumb right over one of Michael's burns;
Calum runs hotter than Michael does, and the touch brings heat flooding to
Michael's head, to his cheeks, his neck. He feels flushed all over, and he bats
Calum's hand away, irritated. 
“Yeah, right,” Calum says. “You can't even see them.” 
“What does that have to do with how it feels?” Michael grouses. He wants to be
grumpy, and Calum has this unfortunate tendency to try and cheer people up
unless he's in a mood himself. 
“Are you okay?” Calum asks. 
“You already asked me that.” 
“I meant specifically that time. Now I just mean generally.” 
Michael opens his eyes and peers up at the cliff underside of Calum's jaw.
“Like, cosmically, am I okay?” 
Calum shrugs. “You were being weird earlier today too.” 
Earlier today they did an acoustic performance at a radio station, and there
had been a sound tech after who had been flirting with Michael. Michael had
sort of flirted back, just for fun, because the tech was a guy—25 and short,
with a strip of purple down the centre of his hair and a sick neck tattoo of a
dragon—and obviously the guy part meant that Michael wasn't actually
interested. Only, the tech had made a leading comment about how he could “show
you some more of the...equipment”, and Michael had had the strange thought that
if he wanted, this was something he could do. He could pull this guy and see
what the gay fuss was about. The guy was older and cool and it would be a funny
thing to tell his band later, one of those gross, weird things you did just to
have bragging rights, something like, “I chugged the glass of sour milk in the
fridge”; “I ate bull's testicles from that weird sketch restaurant”; “I made
out with a dude in a closet!”
He hadn't, of course, done anything. He'd made stupid, fumbling excuses,
instead of just saying the truth (“sorry, I'm straight”), and the guy had given
him this odd, pitying look, like he knew something Michael didn't. 
“Shame,” he'd said, patting at the side of Michael's face. “You're kinda
sweet.”
His fingers had stroked over the burns beside Michael's eye, and they had made
something there flare up. Michael couldn't stop feeling it hours later, feeling
it now, and it was annoying. He'd been burned ages ago—the effect of
pyrotechnics shouldn't last this long. 
“I've got a headache,” Michael says to Calum now. It's not untrue. 
Calum makes a little humming noise, and they coexist in silence for a minute.
Calum's staring off out the window, and Michael takes the opportunity to look
at him, cataloguing all the ways he looks different from this angle. For a
second he wonders if he's ever seen Calum from this particular position before,
but he dismisses the thought quickly. He's known Calum for over ten years now;
there's no way that he hasn't looked at Calum. 
“I wish our bunk beds were a bit bigger,” Calum says suddenly. 
“Why?” Michael asks. 
“'Cause at home we could just share a bed and I could force you to sleep,”
Calum says. “But I think one of us would probably die if we tried to stuff into
the bunk bed together.” 
“That's quitter talk,” Michael says. “But I told you I was fine. Go to sleep.” 
“Don't tell me what to do,” Calum says softly. His left hand is lying on the
seat in the space between them, and the backs of his fingers are just brushing
up against Michael's head. Michael squirms a little closer, trapping one finger
defiantly under his skull, punishment for Calum not listening to him. Calum
doesn't even seem to notice. 
“You're not homesick, are you?” Calum asks. 
“No,” Michael says. “Why would I be homesick? I've got you guys.” 
Calum grins, teeth cutting a sudden white slice into the darkness. 
“Damn straight,” he says. 
It takes Michael two more tries to get Calum to go back to bed, but at least by
the time Calum agrees, Michael is okay with him leaving. Calum drags his hand
down the side of Michael's face as he stands up, his hand big enough that he
can press his thumb to the centre of Michael's chin while the tips of his
fingers are still laid hot over the burns. He hovers there for a second above
Michael, cradling Michael's face in a weirdly firm grip, and then he's letting
go and moving to the door. The door slides shut behind him, and Michael rolls
over on the bench until he can press his burned temple to the cushion
underneath, needing the pressure he'd lost when Calum left. The bus moves them
weightlessly on. 
He falls asleep sooner than he thought he would be able to, and his mind is
dreamless and opaque. 
****
Calum is in full “cheer-up-Michael” mode the next day, and Michael doesn't
bother telling him it's unnecessary because it's sort of awesome. Calum trying
to cheer someone up is pretty much him initiating as much physical contact as
possible, so it means hugs and slaps on the back and occasionally weird
humping. It's grounding, each touch like a little reminder, like a chime going,
“best friends! Best friends!” 
They share headphones in the car, squeezed together. Calum sits across from him
when they eat dinner and tangles their legs together, which turns into a
kicking war that is way more fun than it is painful. Michael tweets about
“National Girlfriend Day” at Calum, and they trade ugly selfies to cement their
girlfriend status to each other. During the show that night, Calum keeps giving
him shout-outs and bouncing over to Michael's side of the stage even more than
usual to sing into his mic and mess with him. Calum knows that Michael has a
huge weakness for cute things, and Calum also knows how cute he can be—it's a
lethal combination. When they tumble onto the bus at the end of the day,
Michael is torn between wanting to squeeze Calum like a teddy bear or punch him
a little, just to burn off the excess energy Calum's attention has built up in
him. 
Luke and Ashton are hyped up too; it was a good show, one of their better ones
this week. Luke tosses out the idea of going out, and Michael starts to resign
himself to losing both him and Calum for the evening, but Calum surprises all
of them by tucking into Michael's side and saying he wants to stay in. Somehow,
they all end up agreeing to stay on the bus with some of the crew, and they
watch a really loud movie with a lot of explosions. Michael has no idea what
it's about because Calum keeps leaning up close to Michael's ear to whisper
really dumb jokes, dissolving halfway through them into tickling giggles.
Ashton, of course, gets heavily invested in the romantic side plot onscreen,
and he recruits some of their security to throw cushions at Michael and Calum
to try and get them to shut up. The whole band ends up screaming and wrestling,
with Luke curled up and complaining at the bottom of the pile, security egging
them on and ignoring them in equal measure, until Cookie, the driver, finally
comes back to tell them to “shut the fuck up!” (They all love Cookie. He fits
into the band crew family really well.)
The bus pulls into a tiny gas station rest stop just off the highway somewhere
around 1am. Luke and Ashton stay on the bus, arguing sleepily over the episode
of SpongeBob they had put on after the movie ended and everyone else went to
bed, but Calum tugs Michael off the bus onto the cracked pavement, yelling to
Cookie that they'll only be a minute. Dave, their head of security, who never
seems to sleep, stumbles off after them to keep an eye on them from a couple
metres away. 
“I'm tired,” Michael whines, slumping against the side of the bus. “Get Ashton
to go running off with you.” Usually exploring things together was Calum and
Ashton's thing. Michael liked sitting on his ass. 
“I'm not running off anywhere,” Calum says, his eyes bright. “And you're
already out here, so you might as well stay.” 
Michael makes a weird burping noise and Calum imitates him before grinning and
wandering off aimlessly across the lot, silhouetted against the candy bright
lights of the closet-sized convenience store beside the gas pumps. 
Michael wasn't lying—he's tired, terribly so at this point, but he's riding it
like a fading high, a low buzz of contentment keeping him awake. There's an
almost magical veneer of grit and glow to the gas station and the hulking spine
of forest behind it. Calum looks small and slight, kicking at pebbles,
shoulders tilted almost perpendicular to the ground. He's bending to poke at
something, and Michael looks away, feeling as pleasantly insubstantial as the
smoke he can taste in the air. 
They could be anywhere in the world right now—it's impossible to tell with the
dark and the circle of trees around the rest stop, and the thought feels like
freedom instead of fear. 
“Mike,” Calum says, and he's skipping back over to Michael's side, one hand
held out in front of him. “Look what I found.” 
There's a metal bead sitting in the cup of Calum's palm, little notches cross-
hatched in it, and Michael feels a swell of instant recognition, like spotting
a friend at the other end of the hallway. 
“We had a bunch of these when we were kids, didn't we?” he says excitedly,
holding his hand out so Calum can tip the bead into it. “Yeah, they had
different designs and we wanted to collect all of them between the two of us.” 
They had come in the cereal box and they had been the start of the very first
real conversation Michael had ever had with Calum—Calum had seen him playing
with his bead in class and had asked to trade. The cereal company's promotion
was only for a couple months, and presumably it was only done in Australia.
Finding one of those beads here now, on tour, parked by chance at a tiny rest
stop in the middle of America just because Cookie thought they were running low
on gas, feels like the kind of serendipity that doesn't happen to Michael.   
“I traded you this one for your one with flames on it,” Calum says. “I mean,
the one you have that looks like this.” 
“I lost it,” Michael says. “Found the jar I kept them in last time we were at
home, but I only had like, two of them left. Lost this one for sure, I know.” 
“How fucking dare you,” Calum says, flushed and excited. “I gave you that.” 
“You traded it,” Michael corrects. 
“Well, fine,” Calum says. “I'm giving you this one. Wait—” 
He bends down sharply, so sudden it makes Michael dizzy. He's on one knee in
front of Michael, fiddling with the laces on his right shoe, neck bent so all
Michael can see is the stretch of his own legs and the top of Calum's head
dipped almost between them. Michael feels unsteady, looking at the brush of
Calum's hair against his thigh—he's more tired than he thought. 
“Here,” Calum says, lurching back upright. He's got one of his black shoelaces
in his hand, and he feeds the end of it through the metal bead before holding
it out to Michael. “Friendship bracelet.” 
“That's a shoelace,” Michael says. 
Calum grabs his wrist and Michael lets him, watching as Calum ties the shoelace
around his arm. 
“It's a friendship bracelet,” Calum says. “I made it for you, and you're going
to hurt my feelings if you take it off.” 
“Whatever,” Michael says, but he doesn't stop Calum from tying a huge, looping
bow. The metal bead digs into his skin a little bit, right over his pulse
point. “Thanks, I guess. Don't you need this though, for your shoe?” 
“I've got other shoes and laces,” Calum says. “Only one you though.” 
Michael is glad it's dark, because he knows he's making a stupid face. Calum is
too close, though—he might be able to see it anyway. 
“Aw, babe,” he simpers. “I didn't know you cared so much.” 
Calum laughs, swaying in front of Michael's eyes, closer and then farther away
all at once. “Only for you, honey.” 
Michael ducks his head and stares at the bracelet. He meant it the other day
when he said he couldn't really be homesick on tour with his band around—they
are home to him. They are family. But Calum in particular has always been the
most familiar, the biggest slice of home Michael carries with him. He figures
it's 'cause out of all of them, he's known Calum the longest by far. They are
classified by their elasticity—Michael and Calum can bounce apart, spend more
time with other people than each other, and then be just as close when they get
back to each other. Calum is a constant in Michael's life, tied to him as
surely as an impromptu friendship bracelet. He's unchangeable. 
Cookie finishes pumping up the gas, and Dave ushers them back on the bus.
Ashton's already disappeared to bed; Luke is sitting up in the lounge, sunken-
eyed and mouthing along to Patrick's lines. Calum makes the executive decision
that Luke's going to bed, and he drags Luke to his feet. 
“You too,” Calum says, and it's so uncharacteristically mother-hen that Luke
and Michael both burst into laughter. 
“Shut up,” Calum mumbles. “You guys never take me seriously. I'm leaving the
band.” 
“Nope,” comes Ashton's voice from behind the curtain to his bunk. “You're not
allowed. Now will you all fucking go to bed.” 
The bus kicks and sputters beneath them, coming alive to move back onto the
highway, and Calum takes the moment of distraction to sack Luke in the balls
and run for the bathroom first. His hand catches on Michael's wrist as he
passes, fingers skipping over the makeshift bracelet, and he glances back once
to grin at Michael, that stupidly bright one that Michael can't help but
return.
“Fuck you, Calum,” Luke wheezes. 
Calum cackles, muffled through the bathroom door, and Michael tightens the knot
on his bracelet.
He strips down to his boxers to go to sleep, but he doesn't take the shoelace
off for one second, the metal bead glinting in the corner of his vision like a
reminder. 
He falls fast.
**** 
Calum is sitting on Michael's bedspread, his shorts still tacky with sweat and
mud from soccer practice. Michael's whined at him to get off a few times now,
both because his mum is going to get mad at him if it's dirty, and also because
Calum sitting where Michael's jerked off makes him feel kind of weird in his
stomach, but Calum is refusing to move. Michael's ignoring him as a result,
staring determinedly at his computer screen. 
“You're losing,” Calum says loudly. 
“No, I'm not,” Michael says. “You don't know anything.”
His army is wiped out about five minutes later, and Calum laughs. Michael hates
him for so many different reasons, especially when he turns around to stick out
his tongue and Calum's lying back on his bed, legs spread at such an angle that
Michael can almost see right up the leg of his shiny soccer shorts. 
“I told you you should've been the Zurgs,” Calum says. His lifts his head up
and waves a hand at Michael, like he wants him to come lie down next to him.
Michael stays sitting where he is, but he turns his chair so it points in
Calum's direction. He grabs one of his metal beads off of his desk, rolling it
between his fingers so he has something to do with his hands. 
“You don't even play StarCraft,” Michael says. “How would you know?” 
“They're the monster things, right?” Calum says. “Monster things are always the
best choice.” 
Michael isn't in the mood to explain the finer points of StarCraft to Calum,
not when he's spent the afternoon while Calum was at practice sweating out the
idea of telling Calum what he thinks he wants to tell him. He rests his cheek
on the back of his chair and stares at Calum blankly until Calum squirms up
against Michael's pillows so he can meet Michael's eyes. 
“What?” Calum says. “Are you finally going to talk to me about whatever it is
you were freaking out about?”
“I'm not freaking out about anything,” Michael shoots back. His hand clenches
into a fist around the bead, one cold spot searing his palm. 
“You were weird around your mum and dad at dinner,” Calum says. “You're never
weird around them. Or me.” 
“Janie,” Michael says suddenly. “From the girls' soccer team. Did you tell her
you like her?” 
Calum scowls. “No, but that's because I heard her saying she likes some guy
named Dave who is sixteen.” 
“I thought she was around our age,” Michael says. 
“She is!” Calum says indignantly. “Thirteen!” 
“Guess she likes older guys,” Michael says, tactfully not mentioning that he's
older than Calum. 
“I'll be fourteen in a week,” Calum grumbles. Michael watches him pick at the
neckline of his shirt, tugging at it until the sweaty edges of his collarbone
are practically stabbing out into the air. He's probably going to want to peel
it off soon, complaining about how gross he feels, and Michael wants to jump
out of his skin.
“I always like the wrong person,” Calum sighs. 
“I think I might like guys,” Michael blurts. 
Calum stares at him, his face a perfect picture of shock. It would be funny if
Michael didn't feel like vomiting all over the floor. 
“As well as girls,” he says. “Like, both. Maybe. I don't know.”
He hides his face in a hoodie he's got draped over the back of his chair. It's
one that Calum had left here a couple days ago and keeps forgetting to take
back home, and it smells half-sweaty and gross and boyish, which isn't really
helping Michael right now. 
“Are you serious?” Calum asks. His voice has gone high and nervous, strung
tight like a laundry line. Michael feels like a piece of underwear flapping in
the breeze, just barely clipped on. 
Michael shrugs. “I said I don't know. I'm not like...sure.” 
Another pregnant pause. Over the folds of the hoodie, Michael can see Calum
staring down at the bedspread, his brow furrowed. He doesn't look angry, just
deep in thought. Michael can feel denials and just kidding's lined up like
soldiers at the back of his throat, dying to fling themselves off his tongue to
protect him. He swallows hard and remembers the way he feels prickly sometimes
in the boys change room, the disjointed thoughts he has in gym class. He's not
lying, is the thing. He's not sure about anything. 
“It's not like there's a bunch of boys I know who...who would wanna kiss me or
do other stuff,” Michael babbles. “I can't really test it out so it's this
weird thing in my head. Like, what's it like to touch another dick, or, or suck
it, or—I don't know, maybe I'd hate it all, maybe I'm wrong and this is
nothing, I—” 
He cuts off when Calum slides abruptly down on the bed and curls over onto his
side, hands clutching anxious fistfuls of his shorts at the top of his thighs. 
“Shut up,” Calum says tensely. 
A devastating rush of heat shoots up Michael's neck, climbing to his eyes. He
can feel his expression crumbling, and he knows he's about to cry. He's dropped
the bead somehow, and his hands are empty now. 
“Sorry,” he says, and his voice sounds distant, strained. Calum looks up
abruptly, and Michael lurches back in his seat, swiping angrily at his eyes.
“Sorry, I said I wasn't sure, I'm probably not, so you don't need to stop being
my friend, I'm probably not—” 
“No, Mikey, I didn't mean it like that,” Calum says urgently, sitting back up.
“I just...I just wanted you to stop talking about like...dicks and stuff,
'cause I—” 
Calum's nervous fists on his thighs are framing an awkward, obvious bulge in
his shorts, and Michael coughs up a wet cousin of a laugh, surprised and
relieved. Calum doesn't hate him, Calum just can't control his dick. 
“You know I've got like...a problem with that, be quiet!” Calum says. He grabs
a pillow off of Michael's bed and throws it, narrowly missing Michael's head.
“It's never properly...down, especially not when people are talking about
like...blowjobs and shit!” 
Michael's laughing for real now, almost unable to stop. It's a building
hysteria in his chest, new relief warring with the panic still gaining
footholds inside him. He thinks of Calum confiding to him at school a couple
weeks ago that he kept getting hard when he was talking to girls or watching
movies with girls in them, or even just sitting in class doing nothing. Michael
had laughed at him then, ignoring the unsteadiness in his gut, and had been a
useful human shield anytime Calum hissed for help.  
“Shut up!” Calum whines. “You suck!" 
“You wish,” Michael said, and it's such an instinctive shit-talking response
that he doesn't think anything of it until Calum makes a tiny, kicked sound,
one of his hands falling from his leg to press down on the tented fabric of his
crotch. 
They stare at each other for a second, Michael's eyes flicking from Calum's
face to his hand on his dick. There's a sick idea stretching heavy from his gut
to his throat. 
“I could,” Michael says softly. “I mean, I trust you more than anybody and
like, Janie isn't exactly here to help you with that, and I could just...” 
“You need to test it out,” Calum says, always on Michael's wavelength. “Like,
if you like guys.” 
“Yeah,” Michael says. He's getting hard, and he hopes Calum can't see it even
though he already knows Calum's got a boner. “I could just help you out and it
would help me see if it's something I...like. It doesn't have to be weird.” 
Calum swallows, adam's apple shooting up and down like the slide of a shotgun
barrel. “Okay.” 
Neither of them move. Michael has an invitation to touch Calum's cock, and he's
paralyzed in his chair, terrified that this has just been talk and the second
he tries to reach for Calum it's all going to dissolve into accusations and
expressions of disgust.  
“If I could just—touch it, first,” he says stumblingly, his mind going white
hot and hazy just at the idea. 
“Yeah,” Calum says. “Yeah, okay.” 
Michael can't look at Calum's face anymore, and his gaze drops, getting stuck
on Calum's crotch, what little he can see of stretched fabric through Calum's
clenched fingers. It's all sort of a blur when he stands up—one second he's in
the chair and the next he's kneeling on the bed in front of Calum, sharing the
same breathing space. Calum's skinny chest is pushing out against his shirt in
rabbit-quick inhales, and his knuckles are chalk white where he's grabbing onto
his shorts. His hand is still covering his dick.
“Calum,” Michael says. “You gotta, you gotta lemme—” 
He gestures helplessly at Calum's lap. Calum stares at him for a second longer,
seemingly frozen, and then he catches up all at once; his hands jerk away from
his shorts and clap onto his face. He falls backwards on the bed, sprawling out
with his fingers digging pale trenches into his cheeks, and his cock is right
there, right in front of Michael, a little rise in the fabric like a hill on
the landscape of Calum's body. 
The back of Michael's throat feels hot and slimy like it gets when he's on the
verge of throwing up. He can't stop swallowing, staring down at Calum stretched
out like an offering. 
“Okay,” he mutters to himself. “Okay.” 
He sets his palm to the curve of Calum's dick, misjudging the distance and
accidentally grinding down hard right away, Calum's thigh tense under his
knuckles. Calum makes a weird, choked noise, and Michael freezes, only barely
touching him. The material of Calum's shorts is sticking to Michael's sweaty
hand, and the heat of Calum's cock is burning through it like it's made of
paper. Michael is two seconds away from sprinting out of the room and shoving
his hands under cold water; he's two seconds away from yanking Calum's shorts
down and rubbing his face all over his dick. 
“Okay?” he asks urgently. His world is being flipped on its head right now; he
needs Calum here with him, or nothing makes sense. 
“Yes,” Calum squeaks. “Yeah, Michael, you can—”
**** 
“—wake up!” 
There's a clattering, ripping sound and light pours onto Michael's face.
Michael's entire body flips to panic mode so fast it's disorienting; he shoves
himself backwards until his shoulders hit a wall, his eyes flying open, hands
grasping for some kind of shield. All he can reach is twisted, sweaty sheets,
and he clutches at them, blinking white spots away until Ashton's face comes
into view. 
“Ew, gross,” Ashton says, turning away to yell down the hall. “Michael's got a
boner!” 
“Shut the fuck up!” Michael yells, fumbling for the curtain Ashton's torn open.
He yanks it back across the opening of his bunk, the world turning a dreamy,
filtered red, and he stares at the grain of the fabric next to the white
granite lump of his fist, trying to make his breathing slow down. 
“Someone's grumpy,” Ashton says, his voice getting distant as he presumably
moves away. Michael can hear him talking to Zop, their tour manager, heckling
Luke, and then Calum, and the sound of Calum's voice answering back is like an
electric shock down his body, his cock twitching. He lets go of the curtain and
sinks back against the wall, trying to get his bearings, because Calum's voice
sounds wrong, too deep, too different from what he'd been hearing seconds ago. 
He's in his bunk on the tour bus. He's nineteen, not fourteen, and it was a
dream. It was just a dream. A really, really weird one, but a dream all the
same. 
“You've got ten minutes to be up and on your feet, Michael,” Zop calls. 
“Stop jerking off and come for breakfast, Mike!” Calum yells, and Michael
almost has a heart attack. 
A dream, a dream, a dream, a dream, he tells himself. It's like a scrolling ad
in his mind, like the strip of news moving along the bottom of the tv screen.
It's his mantra as he gets dressed and brushes his teeth and tries to face the
day. It was a dream. 
They've got the day off until the show that evening, and since they have a free
block of time set out, Michael isn't in the mood to do anything except play
League in his hotel room until his brain leaks out his ears. He needs to do
something with his hands, and he needs to not be looking at Calum. Calum
doesn't seem to get this though; he isn't in the mood to go traipsing across
whatever city they're in with Ashton and Luke (for once), and he invites
himself into Michael's space easily, grinning like he's just allowed to do
that, fuck with Michael's head like that. 
“You sure you guys don't wanna come?” Ashton asks. 
Michael grunts, already halfway sunk into his game. Calum is a soft dent in the
bed beside him, about a foot away, and Michael is not thinking about him.  
“Nah,” Calum says. “I'm gonna spend some time with my best friend here.” 
“No. I hate you,” Michael says tonelessly. 
“You love me,” Calum says certainly. 
“Go away,” Michael says. 
Calum smiles wider. Michael's mouth twitches, and he fights down an answering
smile. Stupid Calum, being a beacon of goddamn sunshine. Ashton's already left,
muttering something Michael probably doesn't want to hear. He wishes they had
stayed, both of them—there's no way he's telling anyone what his stupid head
came up with when he was unconscious last night, but he could use a cuddle from
Luke, or Ashton's vague-ass advice.
It's almost normal for the first hour, Calum just scrolling through his phone
and listening to music on his own, and Michael killing things on his computer.
The guys know that trying to engage Michael in conversation while he's on the
computer is pretty useless, and Michael uses this as a shield against possible
interaction, making sure to stare as intently at the screen as he can anytime
he sees Calum look over in his peripheral vision. He can see the metal bead on
his makeshift bracelet winking up at him and he wishes he'd taken it off
earlier because it's making his chest go all tight with guilt. It feels
awful—he hasn't felt this awkward around Calum since they were first starting
to become friends, and he hates that a dumb dream is making him feel this way. 
The thing that's messing with him is that it hadn't felt like a dream. The
details haven't spun together as the day goes on, and the colours and voices
and sensations hadn't been off in any way. His room had looked exactly like he
remembered it looking when he was a kid, and Calum had been even wearing the
right pair of soccer shorts—the ones with the number “1” peeled off on one leg
so that his right said “19” and the other just said “9”. It hadn't felt like a
dream; it had felt like a memory. 
Michael may feel fucked up sometimes, but he knows that's impossible. Obviously
it's impossible. He could never have forgotten something like that. He never
propositioned Calum when they were fourteen. He did remember having some of the
feelings from the dream, the stuff about being uncomfortable changing in front
of other boys and feeling weird in gym class, but he'd never come to the
conclusion that he was gay because of it. He swears he never thought that, but
it made so much sense in the dream that it's fucking him up. He knows what's
real, but it's like there's two overlapping memories of himself now, fighting
it out in his head, and he just wants it all to shut up. 
Calum touches his elbow and Michael jerks violently. 
“Geez,” Calum says. He's looking at Michael weirdly, and Michael tries not to
die. “Just wanted to ask if you wanted to share my headphones.” 
“There's no one else in here, just play it out loud,” Michael snaps. “What do
you even need headphones for right now.” 
His character dies onscreen and Michael swears loudly. 
“I like headphones,” Calum mumbles. 
“I gotta piss,” Michael says.
In the bathroom he stares at himself in the mirror, soaking selfishly in the
absurdly melodramatic feelings in his chest for a minute. This shouldn't be
hitting him so hard, weird memory-type feelings aside. He once had a dream that
he was dating his mother, and clearly he didn't secretly want to be doing that.
Dreams are fucked up. They don't mean gay things in real life just because gay
things happened in them. 
“This is not the end of the world,” he tells himself sternly once he's done
being sorry for himself. “And you can't take this out on Calum.”
“Are you talking to yourself in there?” Calum yells through the door. 
“No!” Michael yells back. “I'm talking to my dick. Leave us alone!” 
“You know, if you two need quality time together I could always go find Luke
and Ash.” 
Yes, Michael thinks. Please go do that. “Don't be stupid,” he shouts, because
he's stupid. 
Michael flushes the toilet and runs the tap for a couple seconds so it seems
like he did something other than give himself a pep talk in there. When he
pulls the bathroom door open, he can see that Calum is just where he left him,
lying on the bed next to Michael's computer. Looking at him drives all the
breath out of Michael's chest and he leans heavily against the doorjamb, trying
to reconcile years of friendship with the dream-version of a thirteen-year old
Calum sprawled out so similarly on a bed. The Calum in front of him now is
taller and broader, and he's in skinny jeans, not shorts, big hands folded
around his phone, one earbud in and the other one lying haphazardly on the bed
in the scrape of space Michael's body had left. The curtains are pulled and
they didn't bother turning the main light on, so the whole long sprawl of him
is existing in a grey half-light, making his features soft and uncertain. 
Calum glances up and catches Michael staring. 
“What?” he says. 
“Nothing,” Michael says automatically. “Just—” 
“What?” Calum repeats. 
“Give me a hug,” Michael says, stretching his arms out. That's how he solves
most problems. Through cuddles.
Calum smiles, his eyes becoming squints. 
“Awww,” he says, clearly delighted. “Come over here.” 
Michael lurches away from the bathroom door and crosses the room in a couple
shaky steps, collapsing onto the bed sideways across Calum's body, forcing a
grunt out of him. 
“This is not a hug,” Calum protests, squirming. 
“I can hug in whatever way I want,” Michael says. “Asshole.” 
Calum kicks and wriggles until he's stretched out alongside Michael, their feet
sticking off the side of the bed like diving boards. He's as warm and bright as
a tubing of neon light beside Michael, and Michael presses his cheek against
Calum's shoulder, letting it radiate into him. 
“Cuddle,” Calum coos, and wraps his arms around Michael. 
They lie there for a long, syrupy moment. Michael feels like he could maybe
fall asleep like this, and he flails out an arm to shut his laptop before it
dies. 
“I'm sending you good brain vibes,” Calum says, rubbing his palm over Michael's
skull. Michael focuses very hard on not tensing. 
“Why, do I seem crazier than normal?” he mutters. 
“You're not crazy, Mike,” Calum says. “Don't call yourself that.” 
“I can call myself crazy if I want,” Michael says. He says it jokingly all the
time, but Calum always gets sensitive over it if he thinks Michael's being
serious. It's kind of nice, honestly. “But I'm okay. It's just, you know—” 
“Tour stuff?” 
“Yeah,” Michael says, pouncing gratefully on the excuse. “Tour stuff.” 
“Well, you've got us,” Calum says. “Like you said the other day.” 
Michael hums, and thankfully Calum drops it, leaving them in contemplative
silence. 
Calum's phone buzzes and he pulls his arm away from Michael's back so he can
check his messages, leaving a strip of coldness where it used to be. 
“Huh,” Calum grunts, and then he shoves his phone in front of Michael's face.
“Look at this dick.” 
It's a picture from Ashton of Luke dramatically clutching at a cardboard cut-
out of Selena Gomez, his face all pink with a particular embarrassment that
says he may have been talked into this but he's actually definitely down. 
“Where even are they?” Michael grumbles. “How did they find that?” 
“Up, get up,” Calum says. “We gotta respond. They can't go thinking they're
funnier than us.” 
“Why does that involve me getting up?” Michael asks. Calum is already sliding
away to his feet, and Michael mourns the loss of the cuddle already. 
“What do we have in this room that I could hold dramatically?” Calum asks.
“Should I go for the bag or the lamp?” 
Michael sits up; his head spins a little, woozy—when did he last eat?—and Calum
spins with it, moving around the room like a planet in orbit, his face lit up
with a kaleidoscope grin. 
“Lamp would be pretty funny,” Michael says. 
“Yeah, but is it pseudo cardboard cut-out girlfriend funny?” Calum asks. 
Michael shrugs. The room has stopped wobbling, and Calum's smile is aimed
directly at him now, making it impossible for him not to return it. “We could
just do it with the two of us.” 
Calum's eyes go cartoon wide and he stabs a finger at Michael. “Yes!” 
“You'd be the girlfriend, though, obviously,” Michael says. 
Calum adopts a pose similar to Cardboard Selena, one hand on his cocked hip and
his lips pursed in a slight smile.
“How's this?” he asks, barely moving his mouth.
“Perfect,” Michael says. His heart won't shut up in his chest. It's too loud.
They have to find a spot to prop Calum's iPhone up so that it can see them
both, and then they have to set an appropriate timer so they can press it and
get into position, Michael running to drape over Calum's side like an octopus.
They set it up to take a bunch of pictures at once and Michael loses his
balance and knocks Calum sideways a couple of times so that when they look
through the pictures some of them are just blurred smears of Michael's laughing
face, Calum half pushed out of the frame.
“Beautiful,” Calum says, pausing on a picture where Michael's face got shoved
down into Calum's chest, one of his arms thrown out behind him like he's about
to start doing jazz hands. “What grace.”
“Shut up,” Michael says. “That was on you, you kept moving.”
“'Cause you were leaning on me!”
“Cardboard can't move, Calum, you're a terrible actor!”
They settle on one picture and send it, accompanied by about seventeen
aubergine emojis and the panting tongue one. Ashton responds a couple minutes
later with four devil emojis and 'you guys are weird', which totally means that
they won.
'you're just jealous that you don't have a tour boyfriend like I do,' Calum
types back, followed by the lips emoji and another aubergine. He looks back at
Michael with his tongue poking out between his teeth, so pleased with his joke,
like a puppy looking for approval, and Michael can't help but laugh. There's a
wash of warmth going through him—Calum doesn't know what weird shit he's
dreaming, and they can still do this. Best friends.
'why would i be jealous of that,' Ashton sends back. 'mike is grumpy all the
time.”
“Slander!” Michael exclaims. “I'm gonna text him and tell him what I think of
that.”
“I mean, he's not wrong,” Calum says. “But it's not like he's really got a leg
to stand on when he gets super grumpy at the drop of a hat. Besides, I still
love you even when you're grumpy.” 
He's grinning down at his phone, his cheeks sort of flushed from all the
falling and laughing. His eyelashes look terribly long from this angle.
“You guys are all awful,” Michael says. “This is why I'm grumpy all the time.”
“Hey, I'm confessing my feelings for you here!” Calum protests. “Last time I do
that, jesus. Give me my bracelet back.”
“No take-backs on friendship bracelets,” Michael says.
“There is if I say there are! Give it back!”
“No!”
Calum chases him around the room for five minutes, both of them screaming
increasingly ridiculous things, until Calum manages to tackle him down onto the
bed and sit on him. Michael goes limp, letting Calum crow in victory, and then
flips them over as soon as Calum shifts his weight like he's going to get off.
Calum squeals when he hits the bedspread, bouncing up a little into the knee
Michael sets on his back. He flails an arm back and Michael fumbles with it
before getting his fingers around Calum's wrist and slamming it down to the bed
next to his face. Calum's cheek is shoved into the sheets, a pillow half
underneath his neck and making his hair fluff up with static electricity, and
he's grinning like mad, eyes closed, almost peaceful.
“It's my bracelet,” Michael pants. His fingers flex around Calum's wrist—he
presses down a little harder just to watch Calum's eyelids flutter, his smile
take on a sharp edge.
“Yeah, it is,” Calum agrees happily.
This is how it ought to be.
****
The show that night feels electric, the wave of screams like the buzz of some
huge machine pumping energy into Michael. He can't keep still, bouncing over to
Ashton's drums and then to Luke's side to push him away from his mic and shout
the lyrics, reach over and mess with his guitar way more times than usual. Luke
plays back as awesome as always, sweaty and smiling under the lights, but it's
Calum who is really feeling the same high as Michael. He seems to somehow
always be there whenever he isn't having to sing, shoving his face in Michael's
neck and grinning like a hyena. The crowd eats it up, and it's a feedback loop
of excitement going from the audience to them and back again.
It's Michael's turn to pick someone from the audience, and he knows exactly who
to get: a tall guy on his side of the stage who has been going nuts all night
with air guitar solos. He looks dazzled and thrilled when he gets onto the
stage, and he keeps looking at Michael, at his hands and how he holds his
guitar, and even though Michael should be used to being looked at, what with
the whole “celebrity” thing, it always feels a little cooler when it comes from
someone who looks like the kind of guy Michael would've been jealous of in high
school. As a reward to the guy—Robbie, he says his name is—for having good
taste in favourite band members, Michael slings an arm around his shoulder and
compliments him 'till the guy is blushing and pleased.
“You're so good-looking,” Luke says to Robbie, joining in on the compliment
fest. “Like, for real.”
“I should just go backstage and you can play the rest of the set for me,”
Michael says. “I'm ruining the view up here.”
Over Robbie's shoulder Michael can see Calum raise his mic to his mouth like
he's about to say something, but before he can get it out, Robbie is blurting,
“Are you kidding me, man? You're fucking hot.”
The crowd screams. Robbie's face is very close, and Luke was definitely right
about the good-looking thing, so it's even more flattering that he thinks
Michael is hot. Michael blinks at him, a smile building up, and Robbie goes red
and stammers, “My sister loves you.”
“Your sister has good taste,” Calum says loudly.
“Have you played guitar before?” Michael says, a bit reluctantly; he knows
they've got to get back on track, but he's a sucker for compliments.
“Uh, yeah, I have,” Robbie says. “Been playing since I was ten.”
“Aw, yeah,” Ashton yells. “Show us!”
Of course he shreds it up better than any of them, and Michael gets half a
music boner over the sight of him leaning back with the guitar settled on his
hips, playing like a god. Luke bows down to him multiple times, and Ashton
actually climbs out from behind his drums to come over and point at Robbie
while making loud squawking noises. When Robbie's done and they've sufficiently
praised him, Michael hands the guitar off to Luke and then sweeps Robbie into a
congratulatory hug, overflowing with the urge to spread the love. Robbie yells
something indecipherable in Michael's ear, his hands slipping from Michael's
back down over the seat of his pants, and Michael pulls back so he can get a
good swat in at Robbie's ass in retaliation. Robbie jumps and the crowd loves
it and Michael's buzzing, buzzing, buzzing, grinning at Robbie as he makes his
way back down into the crowd.
Playing live is fucking great.
“Whoooo!” Calum screams when he gets his talking bit. “Who is having a good
time tonight?”
The arena explodes and Michael can barely make himself stop smiling long enough
to get a proper drink of water.
“I dunno, I don't know if that was enthusiastic enough,” Calum says. “I don't
know, some of you guys might be having a shitty time, I'm just not sure. I
said, WHO IS HAVING A GOOD TIME TONIGHT?”
Michael's pretty sure the fans break some sort of record with the next sound.
He makes eye contact with Luke and they share a dazed grin—it doesn't stop
knocking them out, how fucking awesome performing is.
“I think they're having a good time, Calum,” Ashton quips.
“Shhhh, Ash, I'm trying to commune with the fans here,” Calum says. “I feel
like some of you out there really get me, 'cause I was seeing some signs
earlier that really just...spoke to me.”
He squints out into the audience.
“Michael Clifford is my life and soul,” he reads out, and Michael jerks his
head up, gaping. “And right next to that: 'Michael, please'—actually, I don't
think I can read that one out loud.”
Luke lets out a bark of laughter and Michael is frozen on the spot, staring
over at the left side of the stage with a dumb expression creeping its way up
his face.
“Are you guys friends?” Calum asks. “Or are you like, mortal enemies? Battling
over Michael?”
Michael recovers enough to duck in towards his mic and say, “plenty of me to go
around, guys, no need to fight.”
“It would be kind of cool though,” Luke says.
“Start a mosh pit over Michael,” Calum says. “I'd have to jump down and join in
though.”
“I don't think that's really a compliment to Mike,” Ashton says. “You'd mosh
over anything.”
“You say that like it's a bad thing,” Calum says. He finally looks over to the
right, like he's only now feeling the force of Michael's gaze, and he catches
Michael's eye, his grin somehow growing even wider. Michael's cheeks feel
distorted with his own expression, like he's never gonna look the same after
being this happy.
“Well, sadly we aren't going to be moshing right now,” Calum says, turning back
to the crowd. “Because we're going to slow it down for you. I want to see
everybody singing along to this next song. Here's Amnesia.”
Halfway through the song, Calum's voice cuts off, and Michael looks over to see
Calum backing away from the mic, staring at the stage floor. He shakes off
whatever weird distraction it was really quickly and ducks back in to finish
the line, and Michael doesn't think anything more of it until a couple songs
later, when Calum comes running up to him during Luke's solo verse.
His eyes are a night sky, stage lights reflected in them like stars, and he
crowds up next to Michael, shifting him so their backs are tilted to the
audience. He opens his hand, and there's a metal bead sitting in his palm, one
with little squares etched on it.
“Someone threw it onstage,” Calum says. “During Amnesia. Just threw it at me.”
He looks full of wonder, and Michael sort of feels the same. He holds out his
wrist without even questioning it, and Calum laughs.
“Fucking greedy,” Calum says. “Maybe I want this one.”
They duck back to the mics for the chorus. Calum decides to share Michael's
instead of running all the way back to his side of the stage, and even when
Michael's eyes fall shut with the weight of the music, he can still feel the
buzz of Calum right next to him, almost touching where they're both leaning
into the mic. His eyes blink to half-mast and there's the side of Calum's face
and the cushion of his mouth, outlined strangely by the fringe of Michael's
eyelashes. Michael feels a bit light-headed—his own voice is coming to him from
a distance and Calum's is the only thing he can really hear.
When they all leave the stage after the main set and bundle together backstage,
scrubbing hands over each others' backs and shoulders and hair with the show
high of needing to run and jump and touch all at the same time, Calum shoves in
next to Michael. He pulls the metal bead out from his pocket and fumbles to
untie Michael's bracelet and thread the bead on next to the first one.
“This is like the one you took from the cereal box at my house the first time
you stayed over,” Calum says to him over the thunder of distant screaming and
clapping.
“You tried to fight me for it,” Michael says. He doesn't look away from Calum's
face as Calum ties the bracelet back on.
“I did not,” Calum says.
“You definitely did,” Michael says, and then Ashton is waving his arms at them
and they're storming back onstage to the shrieks of the crowd. 
In “Good Girls”, Calum is too far away, playing to his side of the audience.
Michael squirms up to Luke and makes stupid faces at him until he breaks in the
middle of a line and peels out a high, adorable giggle, but Calum doesn't look
up at that. The bracelet was retied too loose, and the beads are knocking
against Michael's guitar, getting in his way.  
On the other side of the stage, Calum sings out, “I swear she lives in that
library...Michael, what does she say?”
Michael's head is balloon empty and he hip bumps Luke away from his mic to lean
in and squeal, “Calum is so fucking hot!”
The roar is incredible—exactly what he was going for. A girl directly in front
of them looks like she's going to maybe pass out, and Michael makes sure to
catch her eye and grin wide as he runs back over to his own mic. He's gotta
spread this feeling somehow, especially to the people who appreciate his wit
the most.
Michael can hear the laugh in Calum's voice in the chorus of the song, and he's
on top of the world, loving this life more than anything.
They go out that night, all four of them, and Michael drunkenly tells the other
three that they're the best things that have ever happened to him. Luke and
Calum hug him, and Ashton coos “awwww” and pats clumsily at his face. They all
smell like booze and home, and Michael loses long liquid minutes trying to
figure out if music has a smell or if it should. It's a good night, but Ashton
and Michael decide to go back early, not wanting to go as nuts as Calum and
Luke are clearly aiming to go. When they announce that they're leaving, Calum
lunges across the booth they're in and hooks a finger in Michael's bracelet.
“Remember,” he says in that serious way he gets sometimes when he's drunk.
“That you gotta wear it. And...”
He loses track of what he's saying, blinking down at the table.
“What does he have to wear?” Ashton asks, completely lost.
“And?” Michael says.
Calum's head snaps back up. “And...I really AM fucking hot.”
Luke laughs so hard he slides off the booth.
Michael doesn't take the bracelet off to sleep. The hotel bed is too big, he
thinks hazily. He needs some sort of company.
****
They're in Calum's room this time—Calum's mum and dad are out shopping with
Calum's sister, and the house is empty. Michael feels too big for his clothes,
too warm, like he's melting into the couch, and Calum is soundly whooping his
ass at Banjo Tooie minigames.
“So,” Michael says when they get back to the menu screen after Calum's latest
victory. “You. You remember like...a couple weeks ago?”
Calum shrugs. “Remember what? You wanna play the one where we're bees next?”
Michael wants to swallow his tongue, but he's been working up the courage to
bring this up since yesterday, when David, who sat next to Michael in science
class, made a sneering comment about what he thought Michael's mouth was good
for, and Michael had felt a sickly churn of heat along with the humiliation. If
he can't tell Calum this stuff, he can't tell anyone. He sticks his hand
briefly in his pocket to run his fingers over the ridges of the metal bead he'd
brought with him, just for good luck.
He needs to keep better track of his part of the bead collection, he thinks
vaguely. He keeps losing them.
“When I—” Michael scrunches up his face. “When I...you know.”
He waits 'till Calum looks over and then makes an awkward fist in the air over
his own lap and pumps it up and down a few times. Calum's face floods red.
“Oh,” he says, his voice cracking.
“Yeah,” says Michael nervously. They haven't talked about it since—Calum sort
of went useless and floppy after he came and Michael had been freaked out
enough by the come on his hands that he called Calum's parents to say Calum
felt ill and wanted to go home. The next day Calum seemed down with pretending
it had never happened, and Michael was more than okay with that at the time.
Calum nods his head, staring intently down at his own hands on his game
controller. “Did you, um.” He stops, licking his lips. “Did—you never told
me—did it help you figure things out? You didn't tell me.”
Michael drops his controller on the couch next to him and shoves his hands
under his armpits, trapping them against his sides so he can't do something
stupid like reach out for Calum.
“I don't know,” Michael says, and it feels like a stupid thing to say, but it's
the truth. “I mean, I didn't hate it and I got like, hard and stuff. But what
if it was just the idea of like, any sex that was what made me get, like—I
mean, I've touched my own dick, so it's not really that gay to touch someone
else's, right?”
“Right,” Calum says. “So you think you're...not gay? Or bi or whatever?” He
flushes even more when Michael looks at him, surprised. “I looked it up.”
Something about Calum crouched in front of a computer, googling things to help
him understand what Michael's going through is terribly endearing, and Michael
has to fight down a pleased smile, not wanting Calum to think he's making fun
of him.
“Well, see,” he says, “the other day David told me that...that I had like a
cocksucking mouth—”
“Fuck David,” Calum says hotly. “If he's saying shit things to you, I can beat
him up.”
He looks genuinely angry, like he'd actually take on a kid twice his size over
Michael's virtue, and it makes Michael warm down to the pit of his stomach.
“He'd crush you,” Michael says. “But no, I'm not mentioning it 'cause I'm mad
or upset or whatever, I just...when he said it I felt kind of like...”
Calum is watching him, unblinking. His fingers have gone loose around his
controller, his right thumb braced beside the joystick.
“Kind of like what?” Calum asks.
“Like maybe that would be something I'd want to do,” Michael finishes quickly.
The words leave his mouth a bit like vomit—he feels gross, hot and sweaty,
right after they pass his tongue, but there's a relief also, his stomach
settling a little.
Calum's face is impossible to read when he's thinking, so Michael looks at the
curve of his hunched back instead, slouched forward into himself like a skinny
slash of punctuation. There's a buzz in Michael's head, white noise, and he's
half-hard in his shorts just from the memory of Calum pushing his hips up into
Michael's hand. They haven't talked about it 'till now, but Michael hasn't
stopped thinking about it. He doesn't know if it's just a sex thing, or a boy
thing, or a Calum thing, but it's there when he closes his eyes, it's there
when he's wide awake, it's there when Calum is right next to him. 
“Did you wanna test that too?” Calum says quietly.
A wave of heat shudders through Michael and he shoves one hand up through his
hair, the other flashing down to cover his crotch in what he hopes is a subtle
move. He's shocked and nauseous, but distantly he knows that this is what he
was hoping for.
“Are you—are you actually asking me to suck you off?” Michael asks slowly.
“No!” Calum shouts. “Shut up!” He throws his controller at Michael, and it hits
him in the side of his jaw, catching the edge of bone just hard enough to
actually hurt.
“Oww!” Michael whines, shrinking back. Calum looks sort of pissed now, and
Michael has no idea why since Calum's not the one putting himself on the line
with all this weird sexuality stuff. “What was that for?”
“Don't say you want to suck dicks and then look at me weirdly if I offer to
help or whatever because—because you wanted to use me as a human guinea pig
before, so you can't look at me like I'm weird if I assume you want to—”  Calum
breaks off, skinny chest heaving.
“I do want to,” Michael says. “I want to. I wasn't—” Looking at you weirdly, is
how he wants to end that sentence, except he's looking at Calum now and it is
weird, especially since he can see Calum's got a half-chub like him.
“This can't get weird,” Calum says firmly. “We're friends, and I'm just—because
we're friends.”
“Mouth is a mouth,” Michael rushes to assure him. They don't need more than one
person having a gay crisis here, especially when Michael's sure Calum is one of
the straightest people he knows. “It's only gay on my end, you're just, you're
just...you're just being nice.”
Calum's mouth does a little seasick twist. “Right.”
“And it's only maybe gay on my end,” Michael corrects.
“Obviously.”
Five minutes later, Michael is awkwardly folded down on the ground between
Calum's legs, Calum's knobbly knees framing his head as he tries to get his
fumbling hands to work enough to get Calum's fly open. Michael can't look at
Calum's face and he can't look at the bump of his cock where it's knocking into
Michael's wrists, so he stares at Calum's stomach, at the shivering strip of
skin where his shirt's been rucked up. It's somehow alien to him, different
than the place Michael's wrapped an arm around or laid his head on or kicked in
a fight a thousand and one times with Calum before. It's something sexual now,
pulling in tight and shocked on a gasp when Michael gets his fingers on skin.
It's all something new.
Taking Calum's dick in his hand maybe shouldn't feel new, because he's done it
once before, but it still does. Michael pumps his hand automatically, soft,
damp skin sliding in his sweaty grip, and stares now, numbly classifying
Calum's dick by all the ways it is different from his own. Michael's got hair
down there now, and Calum still has none, smooth like a baby or a porn star.
Michael's cock is bigger, but he's always felt that it looks awkward, doesn't
fit his body. Calum's looks right, looks like how cocks are supposed to look,
and now that Michael is looking properly, he can't look away. He had kept his
eyes shut for most of it last time, opening them only to get his grip and then
to watch Calum come, gross and way too real all over Michael's hand. Now
Calum's prick is right in front of his face, and Michael can see exactly how
hard he is, a deep pink pushing little veins to the surface to press eagerly
against Michael's palm. Dicks are fucking weird-looking, especially this close,
and Michael is swallowing down a laugh almost as much as the fucking flood of
saliva in his mouth.
Michael leans in and licks flat over the head of Calum's prick, fast, just to
taste. Calum's hips twitch ever so slightly, and Michael stays close as he
thinks, breathing on the wet spot he's made. Cock tastes like skin. He doesn't
know what he expected.
“Are you gonna—” Calum starts after a long moment of Michael just sitting
there, paralyzed, and the sound of his voice is so jarring and out of place in
the headspace Michael's built up that he opens his mouth wide and shoves
himself down on Calum's dick just to make him stop talking.
Calum lets out a shocked squeak that melts into a drawn out whine. Michael
ignores him; Calum's dick isn't very big but it feels bigger in his mouth than
it felt in his hand, and there's a fuzz of panic building in the back of his
head about it all. He can't go very far down without it feeling like the back
of his throat is gonna collapse or he's gonna burst into tears, but he tries
anyway, because that's what you're supposed to do. He chokes a little and has
to pull off, panting against the spit-slick skin of Calum's dick while he tries
to fight back a little surge of humiliation and fear. He's only just started
and he's already shit at this.
“Mikey,” Calum says, and there's a soft, hesitant touch on Michael's cheek,
Calum's fingers just dipping in against his skin like he's testing the water.
Michael can't help but look up at him then; Calum's tilting down towards him,
his face eclipsing the ceiling light so there's a white glow around the round
edges of his cheeks. Michael is struck dumb by the image, thinking dazzlingly
of paintings in history class of people on their knees in church, seeing angels
above them.
“You good?” Calum asks. His voice is shaking, higher than Michael's ever heard
it, almost like a girl's. “You can—you can change your mind, you don't have
to...”
He trails off awkwardly. His hand is warm against Michael's face, and he's
still hard, dick shiny from Michael's mouth. Michael shifts his weight, and
he's gone a little soft in his shorts, but he's starting to plump up again just
from looking at Calum, clearly halfway to wrecked even though Michael's only
been touching him for about ten seconds.
“No,” says Michael. “I've gotta do this—I want to, I—”
He braces his hands on the insides of Calum's thighs, sliding them up until the
fabric of his shorts goes accordion folded under Michael's hands. Calum lets
out a huge exhale and slumps back against the couch, spreading his legs farther
apart at Michael's urging. He looks ridiculous with his dick poking out of the
fly of his shorts and his boxers, looking like much more of a kid than Michael
feels right now, but Michael's leaning back in like he's starving.
It's easier somehow, the second time he gets his mouth around the knob of
Calum's prick. This here is just for him, Calum letting him do whatever he
wants, and with the initial fear fading, Michael wants everything. He wants to
suck until he can feel his cheeks pulling in, and he wants to rub his tongue
hard against the bottom of Calum's cock, and he wants Calum to make that little
hurt sound again. He did this to see if he likes it, and god, it feels right
now like he does, he does—his own cock is heavy in his boxers, screaming to be
touched, and the only thing overriding his desire to fuck up into his hand
until he comes everywhere is the desire to stay here on his knees with his face
burning and his lips stretched around Calum's dick.
Michael's got one hand curled around the base of Calum's cock, the other braced
on Calum's hip, pinning him to the couch. Calum tries to thrust his hips a
little bit and Michael shoves him back down, fingers biting into Calum's skin,
and Calum let out a weird, shocked moan, like he liked that. There's a growing
pressure against Michael's teeth, Calum's prick twitching fitfully against
Michael's tongue, and Calum's sliding a hand through Michael's hair, petting
him.
“Mikey,” he pants. “I'm gonna, I think I—”
Michael is going to pull off—he's going to. Calum's come was gross enough on
his hands, so there's no way he wants it in his mouth. He's going to—except
Calum looks sweaty and weak above him, taken apart by Michael's touch, and
Michael feels suddenly powerful. He presses down harder on Calum's hip, hard
enough to bruise, and sucks harder, Calum's cock snug up against the roof of
his mouth. Calum's eyes squeeze shut and he's whimpering, hips ticking up into
Michael's grip like he just wants to feel how he's being held down, and then
suddenly there's a flood in Michael's mouth and he's—
****
—coughing into the sheets, his stomach cramping up, convulsive. He practically
falls out of his bunk, his eyes still closed, and runs to the bathroom. He
bangs inside and ducks down over the sink, spitting saliva and air out into the
basin, still feeling the sticky, clingy phantom weight of—of come on his
tongue.
His knees are sore, and he's too small for his body, rattling around in it like
an ice cube in an empty cup. He's bent with his forehead pressed to the cold
faucet in the bathroom of the tour bus, but he's also still fourteen and shoved
in between Calum's legs. His throat contracts; he spits and spits. There's
nothing in his stomach for him to throw up.
His body is burning up, heat radiating out from where his dick is hanging thick
between his legs. He reaches down and gets his fist around it through his
boxers, squeezing like a punishment. A vicious feeling of hate balls up in his
gut for a second—he envisions clenching his fist hard enough that his dick pops
like a water balloon, all signs of its betrayal gone—but the feeling can't last
when his hand on himself just feels good.
“Fuck,” he hisses, and shoves his hand down into his boxers to touch himself
bare.
The bathroom door is still open and there's no guarantee that none of the other
boys were woken up by Michael's mad dash out of his bunk. He fumbles to pull it
closed and then sags back against the wall, hand working automatically. He's
trying to think of nothing at all, but disconnected images keep flashing in
front of his eyes; dream Calum's shaking stomach; the mouth on the girl who'd
sucked him off in a club bathroom three weeks ago; Harry Styles' dimples in the
weird backstage lighting of the TMH tour; the neck tattoo of the sound tech
from a couple days ago; Robbie playing the guitar; present Calum's shoulders,
present Calum's waist, present Calum's smile—
Michael bites down on the side of his free hand as he comes, muffling the
stupid sounds he's making. His eyes are screwed shut and his cheeks feel a
little wet; he hasn't felt this pathetic in a long time.
He keeps his hand on his dick past the point of uncomfortableness, forcing
himself not to pull away. He's fucking gross, so he deserves to sit and feel
just how gross he is for a minute longer. He catches sight of the shoelace and
the beads around his left wrist in the mirror and he pulls that hand out of his
mouth and catches the bracelet between his teeth, yanking hard until the beads
bite like blunt, animal teeth into his skin.
It's supposed to be a friendship thing. He and Calum are a friendship thing,
and he's fucking it up.
****
Michael sits out in the back lounge and watches the sun rise through the window
of the bus as they rattle along. He knows he's going to regret not trying to
get back to sleep later in the day when he's going to be wilting and crashing
on everybody, but he can't imagine returning to his bunk, terrified that he's
going to open his eyes and be happily sucking Calum off again.
Because that's the thing, isn't it. That he wanted it in the dream.
Dreams aren't supposed to continue between days. You aren't supposed to have a
specific place that you go when you sleep. Dreams are supposed to be different
every time, things that you forget when you wake up, things that feel real only
while you're asleep and then are obviously false when you're presented with the
waking world again. By those definitions, he hasn't had dreams the past two
nights.
The panic of it has dulled by the time the other boys wake up, and Michael
doesn't freak out when Calum sleepily lurches into the lounge and collapses
beside him.
“How long have you been up?” he mumbles.
Michael takes in a long, slow breath and looks down at Calum curled up next to
him. His eyes have fluttered shut, and the meat of his cheek is pushed up into
the bottom of one eye where he's got his face pressed to the back cushion of
the bench, slowly sliding down. He's shirtless and Michael can see all the
muscles from the stage and from working out packed in tight and lean along his
ribs, bunching up under the immediate softness of the surface of his stomach.
Michael feels a little numb. His temple itches where the burns were.
“Dunno,” Michael says.
“We're going straight to the venue, right?” Calum says.
“I think so,” says Michael. He stares out the window at the tipping rush of the
world going by.
He can hear the murmur of Ashton and Luke's voices through the lounge door,
Ashton coaxing Luke awake, and it feels like it's coming from a distance. He
has the sudden urge to tell Calum that he actually is homesick, even though he
thought he was over that now. His past is being warped in his sleep, and he's
homesick for the simplicity that he remembers of his and Calum's childhood
friendship, meeting in class over beads and playing games and talking and doing
projects together. Calum's right there, and he misses him.
“You ever feel—” he starts, and then cuts himself off abruptly. Calum knows him
too well. He can't make throwaway comments; Calum's going to know something is
really wrong and he's not going to fucking drop it until Michael says something
stupid.
When Calum doesn't prompt him for more, Michael looks down to see that Calum's
fallen back asleep, face still smushed uncomfortably against the bench. He's so
soft-looking, hair curling down over his forehead like a cherub. He looks
younger in the milky morning light, all of his edges smoothed down until he's
just the essentials. He could be any age. He could be thirteen.
He's going to drool all over the bench, Michael thinks, and then he's smiling
like he's unhinged, a complete disconnect between his face and his brain.
“Shit,” he whispers, and he laughs into his cupped hands until Calum wakes back
up and demands to know what's going on.
****
Michael finds a slip of paper in the back pocket of his jeans when he shimmies
into them later that morning. It's the same pair he wore yesterday, because
washing up is not a thing they're very good at doing, even though they
technically have people to do it for them, but he has no memory of putting a
memo of some sort there.
He unfolds it, and it's a phone number, Robbie's name scrawled next to it and a
little winky face. 'Call me, if you want,' says the paper, and Michael stares
blankly at it, remembering the moment when Robbie's hand slid down over his
ass, the surprise of it. He hadn't suspected this, but it feels obvious now,
and he quickly crumples the paper in his fist, looking up to see if any of the
boys are nearby and have noticed what he's found. They aren't, and they
haven't—the bus arrived at the venue a couple minutes ago and Calum and Ashton
are already outside looking around, Luke sitting in the back lounge and texting
someone. Michael is alone in the hallway between the bunks, standing awkwardly
with his jeans half pulled up and no shirt on and a piece of paper crushed
between his fingers telling him he could have something if he wanted.
He can't think about this. He shoves the number in his pocket, gets his clothes
on and heads outside.
They have enough time before soundcheck and show that they could explore the
city for an hour or two if they want, but they all seem to decide that that's
more hassle than it's worth. Exploring the venue is enough. They get golf carts
and race around the wide open spaces in the big back lot and backstage, Luke
almost running into the wall at one point. They're kicked off of the machinery
then, and they get a soccer ball from the bus to play around with. This is
where Michael would usually bow out, because he still thinks he sucks at
sports, but he wants to be with them all today, needs the camaraderie of the
four of them to keep him standing up. Ashton keeps trying to rope in passing
crew members so they have enough for a proper match, but the sight of four boys
running around like chickens with their heads cut off is enough to put off most
people. At one point Calum almost hits Michael in the face with the ball and
they have a brief shouting match that dissolves into laughter.
They've all been emailed the behind the scenes video for the “She's Kinda Hot”
music video so they can see it before it gets put on youtube in a couple weeks,
and Michael puts on his headphones and sits against the side of the bus to
watch it when he simply cannot do soccer anymore. Ashton had said he thought it
was good (he'd watched it as soon as it got emailed out, because he's a
keener), and Michael assumes it'll be a nice little distraction, reminder of
why the four of them are doing this, reminder of why he's here and not at home
avoiding all thought of Calum. He'd forgotten how much dumb shit he'd said
while a camera had been aimed at him though. He watches Calum hug him on the
screen, watches the stupid, tiny smile crawl up his own face, watches himself
ask Calum if he wanted “to make out” and Calum saying, “I'm going to pretend
you didn't say that”. And he knows it's a joke, because he was fucking there,
and it was just something that sprung to mind when he was looking at Calum,
something outrageous to say just because that's what they do, they entertain
people, and...and he knows it's a joke, but he doesn't want to be thinking
right now about what would've happened if he and Calum were different people
with a different past, and a question like that wasn't a joke.
He turns the video off and watches Luke chase Calum around the lot, soccer ball
held over his head like a trophy. They're laughing hard enough that Luke's
practically wheezing. Ashton has his arms held out like a referee, yelling
something about calming down. Michael can see Dave and some of other security
hovering a few metres away, looking fondly exasperated with the band's entire
existence, and Michael smiles a little bit, ducking his head so no one sees it.
He thumbs open a new tab on safari. He types in “bisexual” and hits the search
button before he can talk himself out of it, his breath in his throat like a
dishcloth on a washboard, worn-out knuckles pressing down and scraping it
clean. He watches the other three run around while the page loads on his phone,
unfocusing his eyes until the boys are just a swirling fuzz of colours, distant
stars seen through a deep-space telescope. He feels very, very far away from
them.
Google loads and the list of blue links stares accusatorily up at him from his
phone screen. His fingers hover over the screen.
“Michael!”
He closes the tab. Calum is grinning at him from thirty feet away, his hands
tangled up in the bottom of his t-shirt.
“Do you dare me to strip naked right here?” Calum calls.
“Yes,” Michael says.
“No! No stripping!” Ashton cries. “There could be children around!”
“Behind the arena?” Luke says.
“People climbed through air vents to see us, Luke, they could be behind an
arena!”
“Zoe!” Calum yells, catching sight of their tour mum trying to walk by without
getting sucked into their weirdness. “Do you want me to strip naked?”
She gives him a withering look; the tick of amusement at the corner of her
mouth spoils the severity of it a little.
“Seen enough of that for one lifetime,” she says. “Behave, boys.”
“You got told,” Luke giggles as she walks purposefully away.
“You guys are no fun,” Calum says. “Can't a guy let his balls get some fresh
air without being lectured around here?”
He's not looking at Michael anymore, and all signs point to Michael no longer
being part of the conversation; he's sitting outside of their circle, one ear
still covered by his crooked headphones, cast in grey from the shadow of their
bus while the other three are soaked in golden sunlight. They're all tilted in
towards each other, Luke's body sweetly mirroring Calum's, and Michael
desperately wants to be noticed again.
“We could form a human wall around you and shield your naked body,” he yells.
“So you could get some fresh air on your balls that way!”
“You see!” Calum says dramatically, pointing both hands at Michael with his
palms held up like he's presenting a fancy dish or something. “This is why Mike
is the best. He fucking gets me. He cares about my balls.”
Michael laughs and laughs until his chest feels as pinched and small as the
palm of his hand.
****
Michael runs over memories in his head during soundcheck, through joking about
Luke's flip flops, through playing and singing, through sitting on the edge of
the stage like a lineup of dominos and answering questions, through heading
backstage again. He's trying to reassert reality. He thinks of the month he and
Calum played Mario Kart obsessively until they had double stars on every track.
He thinks of when the cereal company discontinued the metal beads and the two
of them spent a math class trying to compose a letter to the company asking if
they could have the beads they weren't able to collect. He thinks of writing
together this year, telling Calum about how twisted he feels sometimes and
hearing that Calum gets it, gets him, and then the two of them working to form
it all into lyrics with Feldy and other people.
He thinks of the afternoon a couple weeks after Calum's fourteenth birthday,
when his mum kicked them out of the house and the two of them walked for miles
through Sydney, just talking about everything under the sun that entered into
their heads until they came across a fenced in park for an upscale private
school and decided to break in.
They climbed over the fence, feeling like the heroes in the games they played,
and scrambled over the plastic playground like it was an undiscovered country.
They whispered fascinating things about testicles to each other through the
weird yellow hollow poles at either side of the yard, and talked about how you
could tell the school was rich since they had woodchips instead of pebbles
covering the ground.
Calum was determined to successfully run up the biggest slide, a feat Michael
had deemed too hard to try. Michael plopped himself at the top and goads Calum
as he throws himself against the surface of it, shoes slipping the second they
touch the red plastic.
“It's impossible,” Calum grunts on his fifth try. His makeshift necklace of
string and a metal bead keeps swinging up and hitting him in the face. He's
pouting, his cheeks a hectic red, and Michael's staring again. He's been doing
that with Calum a lot lately.
“You can do it,” Michael says, lazily certain.
“You come down here and try it if you think it's so easy,” Calum says.
“I don't think it's easy,” Michael says. “But if you make it up here I can make
it worth it for you.”
Calum's eyes gleam; he loves winning things.
“Oh yeah?” he says, grinning a little nervously. “You—you'll—”
“You have to get up here first,” Michael says.
There's a low fizzing hum through his body, like his blood's gone carbonated.
The playground is too open for this, but he feels reckless. It's all a game.
It's all part of the game, and he just wants Calum to keep laughing.
Calum takes his shoes off. He backs up so far Michael almost thinks he's giving
up and going to do something else, and then he sprints full force at the slide.
His feet thud up the slope and Michael scrambles backwards to give him space as
Calum slips halfway up, gains a last second purchase on the sticky soles of his
feet, and lunges for the top, just barely grabbing onto the edge. He's panting,
his flailing legs making sharp, girl squeals as they skid over the plastic, and
Michael hesitates only a second before he grabs onto one of Calum's hands and
helps him up.
Michael topples onto his back and Calum collapses beside him, breathing hard.
“You did it,” Michael says.
“No, I didn't,” Calum whines. “You had to help me.” Out of the corner of his
eye Michael can see Calum glancing at him squirrelishly. “Do I—do I still—”
Michael rolls over onto him with a burst of bravery, spidering his fingers up
against Calum's sides. Calum erupts into squeaky peals of laughter, squirming
underneath him all warm and solid and skinny, and Michael hides his face in
Calum's neck, grinning helplessly into his skin. He slides his hands up
underneath Calum's shirt and presses them to the flex of his stomach, and Calum
shudders, still anticipating tickling.
Michael shifts until his thigh is between Calum's legs and grinds it down
against Calum's crotch, feeling Calum jerk. His heart is racing—they've never
done it like this, so out in the open, so real in the crisp, bright, plastic-
smelling air. He feels like there's a spotlight on them, and he shifts to cover
Calum as much as possible, rocking down into him as Calum plumps up against his
leg.
“Mike,” Calum gasps, his hands clenching and releasing in Michael's shirt.
“Mike, Michael.”
Michael keeps his own hips held away, because that's not part of this. One of
Calum's knobbly knees is cutting into Michael's side, and he's still pressing
closer.
“Just wrestling,” Michael whispers nonsensically. “We're just wrestling.”
His mouth keeps bumping up against Calum's neck, and he very badly wants to
kiss the skin there, leave a mark. This experiment is maybe warping a little,
swelling inside Michael's head, and yet somehow he still feels like he knows
nothing. Everybody wants to get off and everybody probably falls a little for
their best friend, right? That's why they're called “best”.
“Michael, please,” Calum whines, and Michael shoves a hand down into Calum's
shorts to—
“Hey.”
The sky splits open—everything tips sideways and the playground disappears and
Luke's face eclipses it all, hovering above Michael as he jackknifes into
awareness.
“What?” he says, his chest feeling so tight he thinks it's going to explode. He
looks around to find that he's in the dressing room backstage, slumped on one
of the couches.
“You fell asleep,” Luke says, looking vaguely concerned. “Food's here, if you
want.”
“Right,” says Michael. His mouth feels gummy, and he can't believe he'd slipped
into sleep without even noticing, transported to a whole other world while
still in the fucking dressing room, where anyone could see him. He can feel
that he's not hard—thank god—but what if he talked in his sleep or something?
“You okay?” Luke asks, crouching down so he can be at the same level as
Michael.
“I'm fine,” Michael snaps. “Why wouldn't I be?”
“It's just—you're sweating a lot,” Luke says. “You didn't have a nightmare, did
you?”
“I always sweat a lot,” Michael says. “You always sweat a lot, who are you to
talk? You're disgusting.”
Luke eyes him suspiciously.
“I didn't have a nightmare,” Michael says, wondering a little hysterically if
he's telling the truth. “Where's Cal and Ash?”
“They went off to bug Casey and Nia and them,” Luke says. “You wanna go find
them?”
“No,” Michael says. He likes their opening act a lot, but he can't imagine
dealing with the hyperactivity of both of their bands together right now. “Can
we just—let's just eat.”
He feels bad for snapping at Luke once his stomach is full and he's calmed down
a little bit. Out of all of them, Luke is the one who gets him the most,
probably, and Michael doesn't want to complicate another friendship.
“You're my favourite,” he says out of the blue, cuddling up to Luke on the
couch.
“That's just 'cause I brought you food,” Luke says.
“It is not,” Michael says.
One of their stylists pops her head in to tell them it's apparently half an
hour to the start of Hey Violet's set and that they should come see her for
hair stuff soon. Michael nods and flashes a thumbs up, letting Luke do the
talking. Michael is tired. He wants to sleep without dreaming for once.
“You'd tell me if something was really wrong, right?” Luke says once they're
alone again. He looks awkward—Luke is most comfortable talking about deep
things and feelings and stuff at night with the lights off. They've had some of
their best bro chats past midnight, huddled together on a hotel bed or in the
shadowed lounge of the bus. Michael misses that, wishes he could tell Luke
about this weird stuff in his head. He misses knowing who he is with his
friends.
He wonders if Calum's told Luke anything about Michael being off or something.
Lately, Calum and Luke keep whispering in corners and stuff, quick, short
conversations that Michael's pretty sure he's not supposed to have noticed.
Michael shrugs in answer to Luke's question, and before Luke can press further,
Zop's there, ushering them along to get ready.
****
Nothing changes in the show. It's electric again, the sound of the crowd like a
shot of adrenaline right into his heart. Calum is all over Michael and Michael
is all over him right back, crazy, disjointed thoughts in his head, like,
“gotta fight fire with fire”, and “the only way out is through”. Calum comes
over and props one knee up on one of the speakers at Michael's side of the
stage, and Michael sits on his knee, rubbing his ass back when Calum tries to
escape the weight of him. It's too loud for Michael to hear Calum's laughter,
but he can see it round and wild in the open stretch of his mouth as Michael
chases Calum away from his side of the stage, bouncing backwards to wag his
butt like a threat. He can feel the phantom jut of Calum's knee into the meat
of his ass for the next three songs, and he can't stop dancing around, trying
to shake it off.
Calum reads out more signs about Michael and “malum”, and Michael can tell that
it's going to be a recurring joke now, his stomach knotted tight as a fist as
he laughs and laughs 
In 'Good Girls', Calum sings, “Michael, what does she say?”
And Michael screams back, “Calum's my boyfriend!” 
He tells himself it's the shrieks of the crowd that make it worth it, not
Calum's grin. 
**** 
They have a meet and greet after the show for some contest winners from some
sort of thing, and Michael throws himself into it. One of the girls gives him a
handmade pikachu plushie and Michael rambles about how great it is until she's
gone so pink that she is a thousand times cuter than the pikachu. She keeps
pressing her hands daintily to her cheeks and Michael wants to bottle her voice
for a cartoon character. A cute squirrel, maybe. She looks like she's barely
fifteen. Growing up, Michael never really wanted younger siblings, but he has
his moments sometimes when he meets people like this. 
Most of the other winners are more taken with the rest of the band (Luke is
floundering awkwardly in a small sea of girls), so Michael doesn't feel bad
about talking mostly to the pikachu girl, Marie. He asks her if she's excited
for their new music, and her face lights up so much it's almost cripplingly
good for Michael's ego. She tells him she's really excited with the direction
that the music seems to be going in, and then fumblingly explains how her
girlfriend, who helped her make the pikachu, is really looking forward to the
new album as well. 
“Oh,” says Michael, not able to completely tamp down the surprise in his voice.
He's terrified about reacting wrong for a second, knocked off kilter. He feels
weirdly exposed. “That's awesome. Did she come with you to the concert?” 
Marie's smile returns, and something loosens in Michael's chest.
“No,” she says. “She lives too far away. You're...you're the first person I've
told about her.” She pats at her cheeks again, looking dazed with her own
personal victory. “Sorry, is that weird?”
“Of course not,” Michael says. He's shit at this role model thing, but he knows
this is something he's gotta do right. “Look, don't let anyone tell you who to
be if people are shitty to you or if you're scared to tell people. I mean, your
girlfriend's clearly really cool. Look at this pikachu.”
He waggles the pikachu back and forth and Marie laughs—so, so cute, like a baby
elf—and hugs him again. Michael holds her and focuses on the warm feeling in
his chest rather than the screwed up ball of sick hiding underneath it. He
doesn't know how to classify what he's thinking—the threads unravel the second
his head tries to throw a rope to connect this situation to his weird dreams,
to his thoughts about Calum. Does Marie know something about Michael that he
doesn't?
They take group pictures and say goodbye to the fans and then troop back to the
bus, comparing presents. The highlight, other than Michael's pikachu, is a
caricature of Ashton that someone made and a bag of chocolates and other
goodies that Calum shares with the rest of them. There is no going out, because
they have to drive through the night again, so they slowly separate and prepare
themselves for bed as they tire, the bus rumbling under their feet.
Michael is lying in his bunk with his headphones on, listening to their new
album and staring up at the ceiling, trying to remember how he felt recording
the lines, how he felt writing them. They'll be letting people who pre-ordered
it have “Jet Black Heart” soon, and Michael worries the base of his thumb with
his teeth and puts it on repeat, trying to figure out if Marie and her
girlfriend would like it. He remembers Calum, shirtless with a guitar on his
lap, L.A sun sweating on his golden shoulders, singing along as they came up
with it. Convoluted thoughts keep tumbling over and over in his head, sentences
starting and breaking off. The song feels like a fatal prediction; all the
lines about demons and dreaming and hurricanes is hitting way too close, like
his past self was trying to warn him. He's so afraid to go to sleep; what if
the next memory that gets changed is a more recent one, from writing and living
together? What if he dreams about pulling Calum aside in a writing session to
suck him off, or that the two of them slept in the same bed the whole time they
lived there?
He scrubs a hand over his face, shivering hot at the thought, and almost jumps
out of his skin when the curtain of his bunk gets yanked back.
“Jesus,” Michael says, pulling his earbuds out and staring at Calum—because of
course it's Calum. “Knock or something. I could've been jerking off.”
“Whatever,” Calum says. “You always wait to jerk off until you think we're all
asleep, same as the rest of us.”
“What do you want?” Michael says, his voice knocked a little crooked by the
thought that Calum has heard him jerking off before, even though it's
objectively not very surprising.
“Don't be grumpy,” Calum says. “I've got a present for you.”
No fucking way, thinks Michael, and then Calum's pulling out a terribly
familiar metal bead. This one's got tiny triangles etched on it, and Michael
stares at it, a horrible falling sensation happening in his chest.
“How—?” he says weakly, because this isn't a funny coincidence anymore.
“It's the craziest thing!” Calum says excitedly. He's almost completely in
shadow, but Michael can still see the brightness of his eyes shining out. “In
the last box of chocolates, there was one chocolate missing, and this guy was
sitting in the last spot! I don't remember ever mentioning that we once
collected these in an interview or something, so I have no idea how the fan who
gave me these knew, but she did, and it's like—it's like I'm supposed to find
these, you know?”
He's got his arms braced on the edge of Michael's bunk, the curtain falling
against the back of his head and making his hair stick up. He's looking at
Michael with this slipping smile on his face, and Michael can't find it in him
to school his own expression into something happier.
“What is it?” Calum asks softly.
“Why are you giving them all to me?” Michael blurts. “Why not keep some, why
not make bracelets for the other guys?”
Calum looks taken aback, his mouth moving slightly like he's coming up with and
rejecting potential answers. 
“I don't know,” he says. “It's—it's a you and me thing. These beads. They're
from when we were kids together. It feels important, like...like a reminder
that we're friends and I'm here for you and stuff.” He pauses, looking
embarrassed. “Do you think it's stupid?”
“No,” says Michael, and any other words get lost halfway up his throat. He
turns onto his side, wordlessly offering Calum his wrist. Calum looks at him
suspiciously, something hurt stretched along the skyscraper cut of his stiff
shoulders.
“Give it to me,” Michael says. “That's the same as the one you took from my
room when we were fighting about Christie, so you owe me.”
Calum's smile is back, like a light in the dark bunk, and Michael is a deer in
headlights, dazzled stupid by it.
“Look, you were being a dick,” Calum says, carefully untying Michael's
bracelet. His fingers keep brushing over Michael's pulse point, soft over the
jump of Michael's blood. “It wasn't my fault she liked me instead of you, and I
didn't even like her, so you were being really mean to take it out on me.
Besides, I gave you this bead in the first place, so I was just taking it back
'cause you were being a bad friend.”
“That's definitely not what happened,” Michael says quietly.
“It is,” Calum says.
“Fuck off,” Michael says. He feels drunk, almost, and the words lose their
edges in his mouth, falling out soft and round like peaches. Calum laughs,
slides the third bead on and re-ties the shoelace, staring down at his fingers
stroking absentmindedly over the fabric.
“You don't have to wear it if you don't want to,” he murmurs. “If I'm
like...weirding you out or something with this.”
“Shut up, Calum,” Michael says.
Calum is quiet for a long minute, as if he's taken Michael's words to heart,
staring down at their overlapping hands. Michael takes the opportunity to stare
at Calum, at what he can see of his face from this angle, his hair falling in
front of his eyes and just a sliver of his lips visible beyond his nose. He
looks so different from the younger version Michael has been visiting in his
dreams, but he's still so clearly the same person that Michael half-expects
Calum to look up with that blazing, determined look dream Calum had leveled at
Michael before tackling the slide.
Calum doesn't look up though. “How many people do you think still are friends
with people they met when they were eight?”
“Not many,” Michael says, though he's not sure Calum needs an answer.
“I thought I would've gotten sick of you long ago,” Calum says. “Or that
we'd've grown apart. But we're both still here.”
“Other people aren't us,” Michael says. “We're gonna be banding until we're
sixty, right?”
Calum glances up then, and maybe Michael shifted nearer while Calum was bowed
over their hands, or maybe Calum did, but suddenly their faces are
claustrophobically close. Michael is frozen in place, his field of vision
filled with the darkened curve of Calum's cheek and his eyes as round and
bright as globes. Michael can't breathe. A heavy, leaden feeling takes over his
body, his fingers tingling like the blood flow has been cut-off, and all he can
do is look at Calum, feeling like he's standing on the wing of a plane, waiting
to be pushed off into open air.
Calum blinks. His eyes flit over Michael's face, and whatever he finds there
makes him lurch back just enough to cleanly fracture something in Michael.
Michael pulls his hand away, trying to make the movement look natural,
panicking like mad inside. He's given something away—told a secret without
opening his mouth. He doesn't know what it was, but he knows it was important.
“Yeah,” Calum says shakily, and Michael can't even remember what Calum's
agreeing with. “Obviously. I'm—”
“I'm gonna go to sleep,” Michael cuts in, rolling over to put his back to
Calum.
“Right,” Calum says, his voice already distant, like he's happy for the excuse
to leave. “See you in the morning.”
There's the squealing, shredding noise of the curtain being slid fully back
into place, and the bunk fills up again with deep red shadows. Michael runs his
hand over the spines of the three beads on his bracelet, creating matching
grooves on his palm and his wrist. He listens to the vague sounds of Calum
rustling with clothes and climbing into his own bunk, Ashton emerging from the
bathroom and having a short, hushed conversation with him about something
Michael can't quite hear. He's trying not to think. His chest hurts.
The dreams started after Calum gave him the first bead. He's been wearing the
bracelet every time he's had these dreams. And random metal beads from an
Australian cereal promotion from years and years ago don't just show up in the
middle of another country and find their way to boys who'd collected them when
they were kids. These things just don't happen. The universe is playing some
sort of sick joke on Michael.
And yet, obviously, that's ridiculous. Beads don't 'cause really gay dreams. He
rolls over onto his back and holds his left arm above him, examining the
bracelet as if it'll suddenly start spitting smoke and screaming in demon
tongues. It just looks like a shoelace and three beads. He can't be sure that
there’s a connection if he takes the bracelet off and he doesn't dream anything
tonight.
He's had two and a half dreams—the one in the middle of the day barely counts.
Three nights though. That would make a pattern. He'll keep it on one more
night, just to see.
He's awake for a long time. He stares into the flat black ceiling of his bunk
until his entire body feels like it's melted away into his sheets, becoming
something thoughtless and guiltless; it's only then that sleep comes.
****
They're lying on their backs beside each other on Michael's bed, shoulders
nudged up tight. His mum made spaghetti that night, and Michael is pleasantly
full, staring distantly up at the ceiling and enjoying the way the food sitting
in him and Calum stretched beside him make him feel warm and loose. They've
been talking in little bursts, both too content to sustain a conversation for
more than a couple minutes. It's one of the things Michael likes most about
Calum—the way they can exist together in silence and Michael doesn't feel like
Calum thinks he's boring. Maybe it helps a little bit that Michael's been
getting Calum off pretty consistently these last couple of weeks, but Michael
doesn't think he's stupid to believe it's just that their friendship is that
awesome.
“Janie was talking today,” Calum says out of the blue.
Michael grunts to show that he's listening. He's thinking a little hazily about
how he could reach out and slide his hand down around the inside of Calum's
thigh if he wanted to, and how Calum would let him, would probably go all soft-
limbed and stupid about it. It's a pretty nice thought, and it doesn't stop
giving Michael little fizzes of excitement—touching Calum and not being
rejected still feels like getting away with something.
When Calum doesn't say anything else, Michael prompts him: “Talking about
what?”
Calum flushes and his jaw juts out a little, pre-emptively defensive. “Kissing
and stuff.”
Michael stares at the side of his face. A sliver of cold rushes through him,
like there's a window open somewhere. “Like, with you?”
“Not like, about kissing me,” Calum says, and Michael tries not to look
horribly relieved. “She was talking about Dave and how good he is at kissing.
She was like, showing off.”
“Sorry,” Michael says. “I know you like her.”
“It's whatever,” Calum says. He's brought his hands up to rest on his chest,
one hand fiddling with a metal bead he grabbed off of Michael's bedside table.
He's watching the glint of silver in his fingers like it holds the secrets of
the universe, but Michael knows he just doesn't like meeting anyone's eyes when
he's feeling nervous. “I mean, I don't, really, anymore. But it's like—”
He cuts himself off and sighs loudly.
“What?” Michael says.
“What if I'm shit at kissing?” Calum mumbles. “I've only had the one, you know,
at the start of the year, and it was so awkward she wouldn't talk to me
afterwards.”
“You didn't want to talk to her either,” Michael points out.
“Yeah, because it was shit!” Calum says, pushing his shoulder into Michael like
he wants to hit him but is too lazy to commit. “I just feel like...like maybe I
need to practice, or something.”
Michael goes very still. Calum's cheeks are dark with colour, and his eyelashes
are super long up close. He's watching his own hands, but Michael's eyes are
drawn directly to Calum's mouth, pursed slightly in nervousness, terribly pink,
all smooth skin around like a girl, even though Michael's getting stubble on
his own upper lip already.
“You've been helping me practice,” Michael says softly. “It's only fair if you
get to like, use me for that too.”
“Not like you know anything about kissing,” Calum says, throwing the bead off
somewhere into Michael's bedroom with one savage pump of his arm. “I'm doing
you a favour too.”
Michael squirms onto his side on the bed, pushing his face into Calum's
shoulder and breathing in deeply.
“You do me lots of favours,” he says, and bites Calum through his shirt, the
starchy fabric rough on his tongue.
Calum squeaks and shoves at him weakly, and Michael grabs his shoulders,
pressing him down hard against the bed. Michael knows Calum could beat him in a
fight if it came to it, but he's gotten good at reading this side of Calum—a
lot of the time, he pushes just because he wants to give someone a reason to
push him right back. Calum gets this hot, intent look on his face when Michael
goes along with it, and it's sort of the best thing Michael's seen so far,
makes him feel bigger than his body, better than fourteen years old and
fumbling like a kid. 
He'd kind of thought this thing with them wasn't going to have kissing
involved, because that feels like it's crossing some sort of weird line from
stuff you do with your friend to stuff you'd do with a girlfriend, but he knows
better than to mention that. Calum is below him, trembling slightly, like a
skittish dog about to bolt, and Michael lays a hand carefully on his side,
propped up awkwardly over him on one arm.
Calum swallows visibly. “Are you gonna—”
“Yeah,” says Michael quickly. “Yeah, I'm, I'm—”
The words get softened out into candy floss in his mouth; he's leaning in
closer, and Calum is eclipsing everything, with those maddening eyelashes
fanned against his cheeks and the slick inside edge of his bottom lip peeking
out because he's gone all soft-mouthed and anticipatory. Michael is definitely
only a kid, completely lost, and he kisses Calum anyway
He keeps his mouth closed, and he has no idea what to do with it once it's
resting there, warm against Calum's mouth. In a burst of panic, he slides his
hand down Calum's side to grab at his ass as if answers are going to be there.
Calum jolts against him, his lips parting on a surprised huff of air and
skidding strange over Michael's lips. For a split second, it's good, and then
the bubble of fear in Michael's chest is bursting into nervous laughter, and
he's pulling back.
“That was—” Calum starts, and Michael squeezes his fingers into the meat of
Calum's ass and swoops down to tap another kiss on his mouth. He misses, sort
of, and it gets smeared over the side of Calum's chin, but he decides to play
it like he meant to do that.
“That was just the first one,” Michael says. “It'll get better.”
“I was gonna say that was pretty okay,” Calum says, shifting in Michael's grip
to press more of his ass into the cup of Michael's hand. “But better sounds
good.”
“Shut up,” Michael says. His chest feels like it's glowing, and he can't let
Calum see that, so he leans in for another kiss.
Time falls away. Michael doesn't know how long it is before they really get the
hang of it, but when they do...when they do, it's delirious. Calum's mouth is
world-endingly hot and open and eager under Michael's, and Michael keeps
forgetting how to breathe, keeps forgetting that that's even something he needs
to do, that there's anything in the world besides the clumsy stab of Calum's
tongue against his own. He pulls away to gasp like he's dying, and then he's
moving back in to kiss Calum harder, forging forward until his jaw aches and
his mouth feels fleshy and numb. Kissing is unbelievably wet, and Michael
doesn't know anything—god, this is his very first time kissing someone—but he
thinks Calum is really, really good at it.
Heat is shuddering in pulsing waves through Michael's body, so much more
visceral than any other time simply because he's lost control and flattened
himself to Calum so that they're touching from head to toe. His dick is snug up
against Calum's, both of them hard, and Michael wants to move more than
anything, rut against him, but this is more than he's ever let himself have,
and he's frozen in place in fear that Calum's going to throw him off, his whole
body tensing and untensing with the shivering urge to grind down.
“Fuck,” Calum hisses, muggy and small against Michael's cheek. His hips tick up
into Michael's pleadingly, and there's no way, no way he doesn't feel Michael's
cock.
“Can I—” Michael whispers, and Calum moans out “yes,” and fists a hand in the
back of Michael's shirt.
They have to be quiet—Michael's mom is just downstairs, doing the dishes.
Michael finds out quickly that rocking forward too hard makes the bed scrape a
little across the floor, bumping slightly into the wall, and after a long,
frozen moment of waiting to hear if anyone comes upstairs to investigate, they
both figure out how to move slower. They rub together with one of Calum's legs
pushed up so Michael can get a better angle, work their dicks together harder.
They could take off their clothes, but they would have to stop kissing to do
that, and Michael is pretty sure he's gonna die the second he doesn't have
Calum's mouth on his.
He's going to come. It's surging in him like a tidal wave approaching the
shore, and he's ecstatic with it, grinding in tight and vicious right where
Calum likes it just to make him whine against Michael's mouth. Michael's never
come with another person there before—somehow, this is sex more than the
handjobs or blowjobs were. This is Calum pushing up into Michael's thrusts and
scrabbling at his back, kissing him like he wants Michael to come.
“Calum,” Michael says vaguely. “Cal, you're so, you—”
“Yeah?” Calum gasps. “I'm—I'm what? Mikey, I'm—”
It's hearing his name in Calum's strung out, aching voice that does it. Michael
bites down on Calum's bottom lip and comes hard, his dick pumping out huge wads
of come into his boxers, shooting again and again. He's crying out, muffled
against Calum's mouth, and then the pressure of Calum's body against him is
flickering and disappearing—Michael's clothes on his skin are changing to
sheets, and he's jamming his hand down over his twitching cock, squeezing out
the rest of his orgasm alone in his bunk.
“Jesus,” he breathes. “Holy shit.”
His eyes are wet at the corners and the inside of his boxers are a mess. He
lies there in the darkness for a minute, trying half-heartedly to gauge what
time it is by the quality of the faint light in his bunk, before he has enough
strength in his body to reach for the box of tissues he keeps in the top corner
of his bunk for 'emergencies'. He checks his phone as he mops himself up, and
he's about ten minutes early for Zop's morning wakeup call.
So that's that then. He tosses the messy tissue in the corner of his bunk,
telling himself he'll deal with it later, and goes about wrestling his cursed
bracelet off of his wrist. When he successfully gets it off, he turns it over
and over in his hands, not even sure what he's looking for. Three times is a
pattern though, and patterns can't be ignored.
He leaves the bracelet in his bunk when they head out to face the day.
****
He makes it to midday, halfway through filming some sort of behind the scenes
thing for the tour, before Calum notices that he's not wearing it.
“Where's your bracelet?” he asks. He's got a weird, shattered look on his face.
The camera's just gone off them, the crew preparing to shoot a segment
interviewing John, their front of house man.
“Oh,” says Michael, fiddling with the stack of bracelets on his wrist. He'd
been hoping Calum wouldn't look close enough to notice. The other two are right
there, looking at them. “Oh, I—”
“He's wearing like a whole store's worth,” Ashton says. “Calum, what are you
talking about.”
“What ARE you talking about,” Michael repeats in a stupid voice. It makes
Ashton laugh, which is always nice, but it's not sufficient distraction.
“Are you talking about the new one I saw you wearing yesterday?” Luke says.
“The like, shoelace with beads? I was gonna ask you about that.”
“I guess I forgot it in my bunk,” Michael says. Calum blinks.
“Well,” he says loudly. “So much for friendship.”
“What, did you make him the bracelet?” Ashton asks.
“It's not—” says Michael.
“Yeah,” says Calum. “But clearly Michael hates it, and me. You guys are my only
friends now.” He collapses dramatically into Luke's arms, hiding his face in
Luke's neck.
“Are we?” Luke says. “Because you haven't made me a bracelet.”
“Obviously Calum was trying to woo Michael,” Ashton says. “With his super
awesome jewelry making skills.”
“I am not trying to woo Michael,” Calum says, pushing out of Luke's arms to
swat at Ashton. Ashton dodges, giggling. “Shut up.”
Michael feels stiff and awkward watching them joke around. Luke is looking at
him instead of the other two, and he doesn't know what to do with his face.
“It's a friendship bracelet,” he blurts. “He's not trying to woo me. That's
stupid.”
Calum trips, falling halfway into Ashton's chest. Ashton catches him
automatically and tips him back up onto his feet. Calum is breathing hard.
“Yeah,” he says. “Friendship. Only Luke gets my friendship now though, 'cause
you're a dick.”
“Me?” Ashton says. “Well, fine. Me and Mike will stick together. We don't need
you guys.”
“We'll split into two bands,” Michael says. Luke is still staring at him, and
it's unnerving. “Mine and Ashton's will obviously be better, 'cause we won't
have to deal with Luke's farting all the time.”
“We'll see about that,” says Luke, and the way he says it is so funny that the
whole conversation gets derailed by the three of them repeating Luke in the
stupidest ways they can, ending with Michael practically screeching it.
Michael gets Dave to come back to the bus with him so he can grab the bracelet
before the show, and Calum lights up giddily when he sees Michael's got it on
again.
“I really did just forget it,” Michael lies, and he keeps it on even when
Ashton starts the whole “wooing” thing up again.
Michael's wrist had felt cold and weird without it, honestly, even with the
pounds of other bracelets.
They play the show and they go fucking nuts, and that night Michael takes the
bracelet off before he goes to sleep.
He wakes up without having dreamed at all, and the relief in his chest is so
heavy that it's crushing, painful.
As a solution it's very much a band-aid on a fucking stab wound in his kidney;
figuring out how to stop the dreams doesn't answer why the bracelet caused them
in the first place, or why he can't stop thinking about them, or why he feels
stupidly self-conscious around any guys his age outside of Luke and Ashton,
constantly second-guessing what he says to them, what he thinks about them.
Robbie's number stays in his pocket, and he stops joking around with Casey from
Hey Violet so much, overthinking it all. They all call Casey “cute”, partly
because he is, and partly because they all swore they wouldn't bring any shit
to the girls of the group by even jokingly hitting on them, not wanting people
to imply that Hey Violet slept their way anywhere, but now Michael feels weird
about it all. It's always in the back of his head—the only two times it isn't
is during shows, when the music makes sense of his life, and when he's asleep.
Sleeping is still fraught. He always remembers to take the bracelet off before
he climbs into bed each night, but that doesn't mean the dreams are gone
completely; Michael can nap anywhere, a skill he only got more practice in when
they started touring and had to deal with jet lag on top of busy schedules, and
sometimes he forgets what's around his wrist and he lets himself drop off in
the back of vans, or in the dressing room, or on the hotel bed in the middle of
watching Pokémon with Ashton and security.
He gets snatches of the storyline happening in cursed bracelet land, glimpses
of Calum's round, smiling face and his skinny legs sprawled across Michael's
bed. Since the kissing started, dream Calum has been pushier, more active,
sneaking in kisses when they're alone in the boys bathroom, or walking home
from school, making out up against fences and walls. The timeline moves
fast—sometimes it's only days that have passed between each little scene
Michael lives, but sometimes it's weeks. Calum's like a tiny siren waiting
behind Michael's closed eyes, and dream Michael is deliriously happy, floating
around in a fog of endorphins, driven wild. It wrecks havoc with Michael's own
moods. Some days he'll drift off feeling grumpy and wake up too overflowing
with warmth to push the feeling away, false as he knows it is, but other days
he'll be fine before he sleeps and pissed off when he comes out of it, angry
that he has so little control over his own head. He thinks about pretending
he's lost the bracelet, just chucking it away or even burning it to make sure
it's gone, but he thinks of Calum's face and he can't do it. It's not Calum's
fault that any of this is happening.
Calum brings him new beads almost every other day, wildly excited. Michael
holds out his wrist and lets Calum fiddle with the bracelet every time,
watching the look on his face with a suicidal curiosity, unable to ignore how
much it looks like dream Calum's expression the first time Michael pushed him
into the art supply closet at school and kissed him breathless. Each new bead
makes the dreams more vivid, more real, and if the other two are anywhere near,
they always make some loud, obnoxious comment about Calum “wooing” Michael.
Michael's wrist slowly gets covered in metal and Calum's stories about where he
found the most recent bead get more and more weird.
“It was sitting in the candy dish in Hey Violet's dressing room!”
“Okay, but when I walked out on the balcony in my room, it literally fell from
the sky and landed on the banister. I'm not fucking kidding, it almost fell
off, but I saved it.”
“Michael, this one was actually in the lining of my underwear in my bag and I
sure as hell know I didn't put it there.”
Calum thinks it's magical and awesome, and Michael can't take that away from
him, so he lets himself feel excited and happy when Calum comes over to tie on
a new bead, and then subtly avoids being alone with Calum otherwise. It's
depressingly easy; they're so busy that there's almost always other people
around, and Michael can use the busyness of tour life as an excuse for the days
when he feels particularly off. Since he and Calum are still lighting it up
onstage, Calum doesn't get that the “off-ness” is related to him.
It's fucked up; Michael is two people at once, and both of them feel real. One
is glowing brighter with every dream, and the other is starting to feel burnt
out. They travel and they meet people and pose for pictures and sign things and
sit on small couches to do interviews and they do show after show after show.
Ashton yells out to the audience that this is their safe space, and Michael
takes that to heart and lets himself go. Calum points out signs to Michael and
dances around him onstage and buoys him up till he feels crazy with it,
terrified because he can't tell the difference between how dream Michael feels
when he's looking at his Calum, and how Michael himself feels when Calum's
burning bright in a show in front of him.
“Michael, what does she say?”
“Malum is real!”
****
The days bleed into each other and Michael's dreams bleed into everything.
They're in a radio station somewhere, sat around a table with headphones on and
mics mounted on long spider leg attachments shoved into their faces. It's been
a good day so far, with nothing but travel scheduled after this interview, and
Luke is cuddled in close to share a mic with Michael, warm and comforting
against his side.
“—and we really just want our fans and stuff to feel like they've got like,
that we're on their side,” Ashton is saying earnestly. “That's sort of the idea
of 'the new broken scene' that we're bringing in with the new album.”
“It's for anyone who's felt out of place,” Michael puts in. “Misfits and stuff,
'cause we can relate to that.”
“People who are going through tough times, like, with mental health or being
confused about stuff,” Ashton says. “Growing up and other people being assholes
and—”
“Sexuality,” Calum says abruptly, and Michael tries not to freeze like he's
being personally called out. “And like other confusions, or whatever.”
“Yeah,” Luke says, nodding supportively at Calum.
Calum's face is blank—Michael can't get a read on him the way he normally can,
probably because Calum doesn't mean anything in particular by it. There's a
half-composed text to Halsey that's been sitting in Michael's phone for the
past three days that just says, “how did you know”, and Michael presses down
hard on the bulky shape of his phone in the pocket of his jeans as if it's
going to start screaming out his secrets.
“Do you explore personal experiences with that stuff in the songs?” the
interviewer asks, and he doesn't seem to be pouncing specifically on the
sexuality thing, so Michael lets himself relax a little bit. He dozed in the
van on the way here and had a dream just short enough that it was only him and
Calum having a stupid conversation in gym class, giggling and pressing their
knees together. He's feeling too loose today to be angsty.
The interview flows on, and the guy asks a mix of decent music-related
questions and stupid shit that lets Michael riff off topic. It's the best
interview he can remember for a while, and somewhere around the time that
Ashton laughingly reveals a prank they pulled where they printed out like a
thousand pictures of Luke's butt and pasted them all over Hey Violet's dressing
room, Michael starts feeling like things are taking a turn for the better.
“You guys have obviously known each other for ages now, but you've done
hundreds of interviews,” the guy says. “Do you still have embarrassing stories
to tell about each other that no one's heard yet?”
“These guys never stop doing embarrassing things,” Luke quips. “So yeah,
definitely.”
“Luke almost fell into the Grand Canyon while naked,” Ashton throws out.
“I did not!” Luke says squeakily.
“You did,” Ashton says, at the same time as Calum protesting that, “everyone
knows that story though, is that really one no one's heard?”
“Hey!” Michael says, leaning forward into the mic. “I've got one—when me and
Calum were kids, he played soccer all the time, and I didn't really like
soccer, but he roped me into helping him practice sometimes. And once when his
parents were gone and I was over, he decided to practice naked, but like, naked
goaltending.”
Luke's already starting to laugh beside him, and Michael is grinning as he
continues. “And it was all fine until I kicked the ball at him really hard and
hit him like, right in the junk. And he screamed—”
“When was this?” Calum cuts in.
“—and his neighbour, who was this little old lady, poked her head over the
fence and saw this naked kid and started screaming too—”
“Even I haven't heard this!” Ashton exclaims in delight.
“'Cause it totally didn't happen!” Calum says defensively. Michael looks over
with a shit-eating grin on his face, because obviously Calum's just
embarrassed, but Calum has a strange expression on his face, more confusion
than mortification. “Dude, I do not remember this.”
“Come on!” Michael says. “How could you not? She screamed and we freaked out
and ran inside and were super worried she was going to call your mum and you
were going to get grounded and—”
and I pushed you up against the fridge and went to my knees, Michael thinks.
Sucked you off with your whole body shivering away from the cold door and into
my mouth, and calmed you down that way.
He stops talking abruptly, his smile suddenly feeling like paper on his face,
stiff and fragile. Everyone is looking at him expectantly. Calum is staring,
one eyebrow arched, and his face falls more and more the longer Michael is
silent, like stories of a building slowly crumbling. Michael doesn't know what
his own face looks like anymore, what he's showing everyone. He ducks his head
and tries not to do something completely insane, like throw up everywhere, or
scream, or burst into tears. The worlds in his head are colliding with huge,
disastrous explosions.
“Calum's clearly just making excuses,” Ashton says, darting in towards his and
Calum's mic. Michael sags back against Luke, and fixes his eyes on Ashton,
instead of Calum, who is still looking at him like he's trying to find the
fault lines in his chest. “I have no doubt that he did something like that. I
could tell you way more times when Calum was unnecessarily naked, but I won't
because this band really needs to get back some of its dignity.”
“This band has never had dignity,” Luke says.
Michael stays quiet for the rest of the interview, tucked into Luke's side like
Luke is his mum or something. He misses his mum, but right now, she's just one
more person he couldn't possibly explain this stuff to. “Hey, mum, how are you
doing, I've been going nuts and confusing dreams with reality!” That would go
over great.
They finish the interview and are wrapping things up, saying goodbyes and thank
you's, and Michael feels like he's going to vibrate apart
“I'm heading to the bus,” he grunts to no one in particular, the second it's
not incredibly rude to leave, and takes off by himself.
The bus is empty. His breathing is too loud, great gasping gulps of air that
are too big for his body. He's going to burst open. He staggers up the steps
into the bus and sags against the wooden frame for the bunks, absolutely
destroyed just by the sight of Calum's rumpled sheets.
Michael punches the side of the top bunk once, as hard as he can, and his fist
explodes in pain, fingers going numb.
“Fuck,” he says, tears springing reflexively to his eyes. “Fuck!”
He shakes his hand out, kicks Calum's bunk sharp enough to jar his ankle. A
hurricane is swirling ugly and huge inside of him, and the energy of it makes
him shake, makes him want to tear something apart. He gets his fists snarled in
the sheets on his own bunk and he rips them off, sinking his fingers into the
mattress like he can gouge right through it and dig out the heart of everything
he's fucked up. The bracelet on his wrist digs in, and he pulls it off with
fumbling fingers, chucking it into his bunk so hard it hits the wall with a
dull smacking sound. His hand hurts like hell, and he's tipping sideways,
cramped on his knees in the tiny aisle between the bunks.
“Michael?”
It's Calum's voice, and Michael tenses up for a second before he's scrambling
to his feet. His head swirls from standing up too fast, and he has to blink a
few times before the silhouette of Calum at the top of the bus stairs comes
into view. He's looking wide-eyed from Michael to the crumpled, pathetic mess
of sheets on the floor, and Michael feels suddenly like a child pitching a fit.
“I was,” he says, clearing his throat, “I was looking for something.”
“Mike,” Calum says, and he's moving closer, which Michael really can't take
right now.
“Don't,” he says.
“Are you okay?” Calum asks softly, in a way that says he knows Michael isn't.
“I just,” Michael says. He shoves a hand up the side of his face to push at the
corners of his eyes, tug the skin away. “I just, sometimes I feel like I'm
going fucking crazy, I—”
“Hey, hey,” Calum says, crowding in close before Michael can say anything else.
His hands are hovering over Michael's arms, and Michael's skin feels like it's
crying out for the contact, desperate for it. “You're not crazy, okay—if this
is 'cause I said that one thing didn't happen, it's probably just that I've got
a shit memory. I know it's been a long fucking tour, Mikey, but you've got us,
we're—”
“It's not about the fucking tour,” Michael says. “It's me, okay, and you're
always touching me, and it would be better for you, if you just—just stayed
away from me.”
Calum jolts backwards, one stumbling step.
“What,” he says flatly, the edge of the word trembling a little. Michael's
cold, peeled open and exposed.
“I—I didn't—it's nothing,” Michael says frantically. “I didn't mean that, I'm
just off today, sorry.”
There's voices outside and footsteps on the stairs, and Michael grabs his
ruined sheets and shoves them into his bunk, crawling in after them.
“I'm having a nap, so leave me alone!” he yells out to the bus as a whole, and
then wrestles his phone and headphones out of his pocket so he doesn't have to
listen to Calum's low, worried voice muttering to Luke, probably about how
Michael is clearly going off the rails and obviously in love with him.
****
Michael does actually take a nap, safe with the bracelet off, and he feels
slightly better when he wakes up. More numb, at least. Calum won't really look
at him, which is fine, because Michael's absolutely avoiding him. The other two
notice the tension, and it makes things awkward. They cart their stuff up into
their hotel for the night—Michael taking the time to very carefully place the
bracelet in his bedside table—but none of them are very tired. Michael wants
very badly to get drunk, so when someone tentatively throws out the idea of
going out to find a club in the city they've just arrived in, he agrees right
away.
They go out.
Zop sends the whole security team with them and vets the place they're heading
to to make sure it's got a VIP lounge so they won't get super mobbed or
anything. All Michael cares about is that it's loud and dark inside, coloured
lights whirling around and people writhing away on a dancefloor, anonymous in
the shifting spotlights.
Three beers in and halfway through some sort of pink mixed drink Luke had
bought him as a joke, and Michael is feeling better than he has in weeks.
Everything is pleasantly hazy around the edges, and Luke is an even better
pillow when he's drunk. Alcohol is a convenient softener of tension; things are
finally feeling normal again.
“What is this called?” he asks Luke, scooting his drink back and forth on the
table. “This, this thing you got me.”
“I don't remember,” Luke says, squinting at it. “Didn't I tell you what it was
called a minute ago?”
“Michael is a lightweight!” Ashton crows from the other side of the table,
which doesn't even make sense, because Michael's pretty sure the amount he's
had doesn't count as “light”.
“Yeah, well, you're...stupid,” Michael says. Everything's gone quiet and
elemental in his head. He can't hold onto a thought for more than a minute, and
it's exactly how he wants to feel.
“Is anyone else hungry?” Calum asks. “I'm fucking hungry.”
“Nachos!” Michael says, slapping at the table. Luke is very comfortable. “Luke,
you're like a cloud.”
“I am?” Luke says slowly. Ashton cackles, curling in on himself.
“No, not nachos,” Calum says. “What's that Chinese food I really like?”
“Pad thai?” Ashton says.
“Yes!” Calum exclaims, pointing victoriously at Ashton.
“That's not Chinese,” Luke says. “That's Thai food. That's why it's called pad
thai.”
“I don't think they have Chinese or Thai food here,” Michael says.
“I don't wanna eat anymore,” Calum says decisively. “I wanna dance. Guys, come
dance with me.”
“Yes!” Ashton yells. “Let's do this.”
Calum starts shoving Ashton off the bench so he can get out, and Michael clings
to Luke. “Stay here,” he mumbles.
“Guys?” Ashton says, looking down at them questioningly.
“Come on, Luke,” Calum whines. “Mikey?”
He's been ignoring Michael since Michael freaked at him earlier, but he seems
to have forgotten about it now that he's drunk, and Michael's drunk enough too
that that's a good thing. Calum's eyes are so bright. Michael wants to reach up
and poke them, see if they feel hard, like marbles.
“No,” Michael says. “Luke's my pillow, he's never leaving me.”
“I have no choice, apparently,” Luke says.
“You guys suck,” Ashton says.
He and Calum melt into the crowd, Calum flipping them the bird with both hands,
and Michael snuggles more into Luke.
“You should buy me another one of those drinks,” he says.
“Buy your own,” Luke shoots back. He sounds distracted, and Michael figures
there's probably some sort of attractive girl giving him the eye.
Michael does end up getting his second drink by being obnoxious and asking
Mack, one of their security guys, if he could please grab Michael another. He
professes his undying love when it's brought to his hands, and Mack rolls his
eyes and steps just out of earshot again, surveying the club like it's a
warzone. Things get fizzy in Michael's brain, everything moving a little bit
faster than his head can keep up with. His hands feel larger than usual, and he
keeps forgetting one of them is bruised until he accidentally whacks it again
on the underside of the table.
He and Luke have a long, liquid conversation about music and tentacle porn and
the finer points of Australia vs. America. Chunks of time keep dissolving out
of the timeline of the night that Michael's got in his head—they leave the
table to stand by the wall and he doesn't know when that happened. He's staring
out at the dance floor when he realizes he doesn't know where Calum and Ashton
are, and he cuts Luke off in the middle of a rant about confusing coffee sizes
to ask after them.
“I don't know,” Luke says. “We could go look for them, if you want.”
“Yes,” Michael says. “Let's do that.”
They tell Dave they're headed to the dance floor, and then Michael's got his
hand around Luke's wrist, trying to follow him without tripping on the wavering
black floor. The lights are fucking with his head, with his depth perception,
and he almost falls three times before they get to the safe crush of bodies,
the sheer volume of them helping to keep Michael upright.
He loses his grip on Luke at some point, but he's not worried, because there's
a girl suddenly there, blinking up at him from under long, spiky eyelashes,
biting at a lip stud and putting her hands on his hips. She's got blue hair,
and she looks a little like Halsey—wasn't there something Michael had to ask
her, something he wanted to say? He can't remember, but this girl is dancing,
and he's dancing with her. He's clumsy and stupid, but it's making her laugh,
so it's all good.
Drinking always makes him want to fuck. He gets weak for contact and desperate
for something or someone on his mouth when he's buzzed, can't stop licking and
scraping his own teeth across his bottom lip the way he wants to across someone
else's. She's maybe up for it, if Michael could get over the thickness of his
tongue enough to do a half decent job of communicating how much he's up for it,
but for now they're just half-heartedly grinding.
He closes his eyes when she presses in close to shout her name, and—
“What?” he says, heart squeezing in his chest.
“Cal,” she repeats. “Well, Callie.”
“Cool, right,” he yells, though it is neither of those things. “I gotta—”
He stumbles away through the crowd, shouldering his way in-between packs of
people, searching for a sign of Luke, or Ashton, or security, not even sure why
he needs to get away, only knowing that he has to. Faces loom out of the dark
and flash by him. He doesn't know if he's heading back towards the table or if
he's sinking deeper into the crowd. The music pulses against his skull, steady
beat outstripping his heart, and he lurches forward.
He trips over someone's foot and is definitely about to overbalance and go
crashing to the ground when a hand tucks around his waist and tugs him
around—the whole room goes spinning with him, spinning in a slur of colours and
landscapes like a globe, coming to a shuddering stop only when Calum's face
rears out of the black.
“Mikey, come dance,” Calum says, the faint glint of a smile on his face. “Been
looking for you.”
Michael falls into him. It's inevitable.
Calum leads him over to the edge of the dancefloor, by the back wall, and it's
darker over there, muggier. There's a cold breeze though, like someone's opened
a back door to try and air the place out a bit, and Michael is shivering,
pressing into Calum's touch. Calum moves slowly against him, silly churns of
his hips like the kind Michael usually makes fun of him for. Michael's throat
is dry. He needs another drink, but Calum will have to do.
“You look good,” he says thickly, because it's true. Calum's gotten all sweaty
under the lights, and it's like a glaze on his skin, making him look
like...like art, or something to be licked. There are curls of hair stuck to
his forehead, and Michael wants to test the texture with his thumb, see how
easily it skates on his skin.
“I always look good,” Calum says smarmily, pulling a stupid face.
Michael laughs, because he's supposed to, and steps closer. “I can't dance,” he
says. Calum's still moving to the music, and Michael feels stupid just standing
there.
“I know,” Calum says. “I've seen you try. You really, really suck at it.”
“Fuck you,” Michael says.
“It's like this,” Calum says, and then his hands are where Callie's were, long
fingers firm around the side of Michael's hips. “You're a musician, you should
be able to feel the beat.”
Michael wants to make a joke about other things he could be feeling, but he's
transfixed by a passing spotlight flickering over the side of Calum's face,
sharp on his cheekbone, making him strange and beautiful in the following
darkness. They fall into a rhythm together, Michael moving under the pressure
of Calum's hands, the waistband of Calum's jeans brushing against his. The bass
is so loud that Michael can feel it like a shudder through his body, a hook
just below his navel, pulling him in to press into the spaces Calum leaves
every time he moves.
“Like this,” Calum repeats, soft against Michael's ear, and the music is so
loud that Michael feels it more than hears it. The back of his throat hurts,
sharp, like he's going to cry or like there's something spiky working its way
out onto his tongue. The only solid thing in the world is Calum against him,
and he's clinging, stuck on the feel of Calum's cheek brushing his.
There's a muted alarm blaring in the back of his head. This is dangerous, it
says. This isn't safe, this isn't safe. The world tips slightly, or maybe Calum
does, and their foreheads meet, Calum's pressing sideways in a tacky slide over
Michael's hairline, all the way over to sear across the dotted skin where he
was burned a month and a half ago. Everything flares—heat like a bomb through
his body, and Michael is pitching backwards, knocked off axis.
“Whoa,” Calum says, laughing slightly. His arms are still outstretched, and
when he steps forward to try and steady Michael, Michael shies away.
He can't see Calum's face anymore—the spotlights have left.
“I've gotta—” Michael starts. “I can't—”
Calum's hands fall to his sides.
“Sorry,” he says, which doesn't make any sense at all. “I didn't mean to—”
“I can't dance,” Michael says.
He fights his way through the crowd back to the table, his hands shaking. He's
drunk too much, and suddenly he needs to be gone. He half expects Calum to have
followed him, but when he steps up out of the dancefloor and looks back, he can
pick out Calum's head sticking out of the crowd. He doesn't look like he's
moving, frozen as one solid point in the middle of a storm.
Luke's at Michael's side suddenly, gazing past him to where Calum is.
“Hey,” Michael says. “Where did you come from?”
“Aw, shit,” Luke breathes, ignoring him. “I gotta—” He breaks off and steps
down into the crowd, moving through the people towards Calum.
Michael makes himself turn away, and pitches off towards the stairs leading up
to the balconies.
****
Half an hour later, he finds his way back downstairs, his mouth stinging, and
his heart pounding. Ashton is sitting at the table, talking to security and a
couple members of crew that apparently decided to come out as well in their own
group.
“Ash,” Michael says. Ashton looks up, his face lit up, and something dims when
he sees Michael.
“You okay?” Ashton asks.
“I wanna go back now,” Michael says. “You should—you should head back too. We
could go back together.”
Ashton's standing, his hands on Michael's shoulder, and Michael's not sure when
that happened. His brain keeps blinking—what if more happened when he was
dancing with Calum and he can't remember now? What if he forgets what he just
did?
He might want to forget that though.
“Yeah, okay, Mike,” Ashton says. “Let's just tell Dave, and Mack can get us
back.”
“Thanks,” Michael says. “Love you, Ash.”
“Love you too, man,” Ashton says. “Let's get you out of here.”
****
Michael sobers up a little on the drive back, Ashton passing him water bottles
that security seems to pull out of nowhere. He's a little irritated by how fine
Ashton seems to be—Michael hadn't had that much more than him. He leans heavily
on Ashton on the elevator up in the hotel, and convinces him to let Michael
bunk with him for the night.
“I want cuddles,” Michael whines.
“God, you're so needy,” Ashton says. “Come on then.”
They tumble into Ashton's room and sprawl out on his bed, staring up at the
ceiling.
“Are you at least a little bit drunk?” Michael asks.
“Yeah,” Ashton says slowly. “Bryana was texting me.”
It seems like a strange segue, but Ashton is weird about his almost-girlfriend.
He'll tell Michael out of the blue that he thinks he might love her, but he's
said he's still single in a few interviews. He talks about image a lot, and all
Michael can think is that if he was Bryana, he'd just want to know for sure.
“You like her a lot,” Michael says.
“Yeah,” Ashton breathes. “I think we might like—do this for real. Like
properly.”
“That's awesome,” Michael says.
“Yeah,” Ashton says.
“What does that feel like?” Michael asks. “When you really...you know...”
“What do you mean?” Ashton says. “Haven't you—”
Michael shrugs, his arm bumping up against Ashton's on the sheets. He leaves it
there; Ashton's skin is warm.
“I don't know,” Michael says. “I just—how can you be sure?”
“Sure that what? That you like them at all?”
“That it's real,” Michael says quietly. “What does it feel like when it's
real?”
Ashton's quiet for a long time. Michael imagines he can hear the gears turning
in his skull.
“I can't describe that,” Ashton says. “It's different, I think, for each
person.”
“You're no help,” Michael says.
“Is there someone you're—”
“No.” He responds too fast; he can feel it when Ashton turns to look at him,
but he determinedly stares at the mottled pattern of the ceiling stucco until
Ashton relaxes again.
“Okay,” Ashton says. “You seem sad, Mikey. Come here. Come into Muma Ashton's
arms.”
He gropes for Michael's side and Michael giggles and swats him away.
“I think I can see a face,” Michael says, pointing up and clumsily drawing with
his finger in the air. “In the ceiling stuff.”
“Shit,” Ashton laughs. “I see it too. It's a demon from another world, here to
kill us.”
“From a parallel universe,” Michael says.
“Big words for someone who couldn't pronounce the drinks on the menu earlier.”
“Some of those were in, like, German!” Michael protests, shoving at Ashton, and
Ashton dissolves into giggles, batting weakly at Michael in response.
They settle. Lying down makes everything swirl a whole lot less, but the
ceiling is still shuddering occasionally, like a screen door in a breeze.
“Do you think parallel universes exist?” Michael asks.
“They could,” Ashton says thoughtfully. He does love a good psychological
discussion when he's a little drunk. “I mean, we'd have no way of knowing if
they did or not, but like, they could be out there.”
“Out there,” Michael repeats, waving his arm dramatically.
“People say that that's like, why we get deja vu or something, 'cause we're
like, glimpsing other universes,” Ashton says.
“Really?” Michael says.
“Maybe. I might have gotten that mixed up with something else.”
“Do you think—” Michael has to stop for a second, just to swallow. His throat
is dry. He wishes distantly that he was still drinking. “Do you think we could
see into them sometimes?”
“Like, in dreams or something?”
Michael jams a hand over his face to hide his crazed grin, mashing at his cheek
with the heel of his hand.
“Yeah.”
“Well,” says Ashton. “Maybe. That might be an explanation for recurring dreams
or something. They could be moments that mean a lot in the other world.”
“Deep,” Michael says faux-seriously, and Ashton flicks him in the side.
The more the buzz wears off, the more anxious Michael feels. He curls up into
Ashton, clinging like a koala.
“Ash?” he whispers at length.
“Yeah?”
“Do you think there could be a parallel universe where I'm not—I'm not me?
Where like, I do stuff I wouldn't, or feel stuff I wouldn't?”
“I think...” Ashton pauses, and Michael tries not to die in the gulf between
his words. “I don't think so. It's still gotta be you, right? So if there's a
parallel universe where you're feeling and doing other stuff you've never
considered, then it's probably something that does live in you and you just
don't really know about it.”
He shrugs, and Michael presses his cheek into Ashton's shirt until it feels
like it could swallow him up. Ashton shifts to tuck an arm around Michael's
shoulders, and something swells hot and choked in his throat.
“I'm good,” he mumbles. “I'm fine.”
“Course you are,” Ashton says. “Is any of this to do with Calum?”
“Why would it have to do with him?” Michael asks.
“Dunno,” Ashton says. “You guys have been being weird lately. Both of you.”
Michael shrugs. “It maybe has a little bit to do with him,” he admits.
Ashton doesn't say anything at first, and for a moment Michael thinks that
maybe he's fallen asleep and didn't hear that.
“You know you can tell me anything, right?” Ashton says at length.
“Yeah,” Michael says, but he doesn't.
They lie there long enough that Michael falls asleep, and he wakes to a
disorienting clatter of voices.
“Michael,” someone says, shaking his shoulder. “Mike, hey.”
“He's sleeping, Luke, leave him alone,” says someone else—Ashton, Michael
realizes as he surfaces.
“What?” Michael says blearily. He rolls over, out of the cradle of Ashton's
body, and two shadowy figures pitch into view, hovering beside the bed.
“Michael!” Calum says, shoving in front of Luke to knee his way up onto the
bed, insinuating his arm under Ashton's to cup Michael's shoulder. “I missed
you!”
He smells like he's inhaled an entire bar, and his eyes are glassy and
brilliant. Michael can almost see himself reflected there, a tiny, distorted
head and shoulders.
“He cried when he couldn't find you,” Luke says. He sounds weird.
“I did not!” Calum says, but the effect of it is weakened slightly by the way
he's pawing at Michael's body.
“You guys didn't say you were leaving,” Luke says.
“I texted you!” Ashton says.
Luke digs his phone out of his pocket and checks. “Huh. You did.”
Calum's pulling at Michael's arms now, tugging him insistently up and off the
bed. Michael's sea-legs fail him, and he topples into Calum the second he's
standing again, resulting in a strange, awkward hug.
“You can't have him,” Calum's saying nonsensically. “This is my Mikey.”
“I—what?” Ashton sputters. “I'm not trying to—he's my friend too!”
“I'm your Mikerowave,” Michael giggles, remembering a stupid keek from ages
ago.
Calum gets it instantly and clutches him harder, repeating it at top volume:
“This is MY Mikerowave!”
“You guys are fucking weird,” Ashton says. “Get out of my room—I wanna sleep.”
“Michael needs to sleep,” Calum says. “That's why'm—I'm rescuing him.”
Michael closes his eyes and leans against Calum, letting the noise of the other
three fade in a murmur of faint sound, like a radio heard through a car window.
Calum is not a mountain, solid as he feels, and when he finally moves, Michael
lets himself be carried along, his feet moving only enough to keep himself
upright and propped against Calum. Light changes through his eyelids—goes
bright and then dark again with the clunking sound of a door opening.
Calum's saying his name, and Michael luxuriates in the sound of it in his voice
for a second before he allows the urging to open his eyes.
“Michael,” Calum's saying. “Are you asleep? You've fallen asleep on me, haven't
you.”
“No, I haven't,” Michael slurs. His face is pressed into Calum's neck,
eyelashes smashed back so he can feel them like spider legs on his eyelid when
he blinks. It's weird.
He doesn't realize they're back in his own room until Calum pushes him off and
he flops down onto his bed among a tangle of computer cords he'd left there
earlier in the day. He doesn't even remember Calum fishing his key card out of
his pocket, which means he probably did fall asleep for a moment in the
hallway. The ideas of “sleeping” and “Calum” make his stomach go all twisted.
“Shove over,” Calum says. “Give me some room.”
“No,” Michael says firmly. “My bed.”
Calum pushes at his side, and Michael closes his eyes again, trying to become
as heavy as possible so he can't be shifted. The alarm in his head is telling
him that “bed” and “Calum” isn't a good combination either.
Calum gives up quickly, stopping with one hand sunk into the mattress beside
Michael's head, close enough that the hair on Michael's neck feels like it's
reaching for him, close enough for a vague line of heat to radiate there,
making the rest of Michael's body feel horribly cold.
“That was a good night out,” Calum says softly. The sound of his voice is much
closer than Michael had expected, and he fights the urge to open his eyes, not
wanting to know how close.
Michael hums in response.
“After—after you left,” Calum says. “There was this girl. That I was like,
dancing with.”
“Yeah?” Michael says. His tongue feels like it's coated in chalk.
“She was really hot,” Calum breathes. “Like, her tits were...fucking huge,
bro.”
Michael hums again.
“And we were—and we were dancing. You know? Like how me and you were, except,
she was—she was really into me. Told me she'd be down for whatever.”
Michael's gut keeps going tense, shivering, and he can't tell if it's because
of what he drank, or because of the heat shocking through him. Calum is
hovering above, so close, and Michael can feel it all along his body. His brain
keeps throwing up jagged questions, breaking off right at the part that
matters, so he doesn't even know what it is he's waiting for. Is Calum gonna—is
he—
“But I didn't do anything,” Calum says. His voice is small. He sounds like he's
confessing a crime, or trying to describe something he's only seen once in a
dream. “I could've—she was—she was so—but I didn't.”
The heat of him disappears and then reforms all at once, condensed a breath
away from Michael's face. Michael feels like he's falling into a tailspin,
plummeting at high speed away from the soft plateau of sheets beneath him;
Calum sets his teeth to Michael's shoulder and everything in him comes slamming
back at the shock of it. His eyes fly open. The side of Calum's neck is all he
can see—Calum is braced above him, and there's a dull semi-circle of pressure
being bitten into Michael's shoulder through his shirt. His hair is soft
against Michael's cheek and Michael is gasping soundlessly like a fish on the
beach.
It's only a second before Calum's pulling back, still too close for Michael to
see his face.
“It's all so weird, Mikey,” he says.
He's straightening up, and Michael can't get his limbs to work, can't seem to
lift them off the bed to grab Calum, make him stay.
“Come back here,” he says.
“It's so weird,” Calum repeats, and then he's footsteps leading away, and then
he's nothing.
Michael lies there for a long time, staring at the inside of his eyelids and
waiting for sleep to come. There's a swollen balloon of words in his throat,
and he can barely breathe around it. He's abruptly desperately lonely, and
before he knows what he's doing he's fumbling for the night stand, smashing his
bruised hand on the drawer before he manages to get it open enough to reach in
and pull out the bracelet. It takes him three long minutes to get it tied on
his wrist, biting one end and struggling with shaking fingers at the other.
There's a Calum somewhere who won't leave him, and Michael knows how to find
him.
****
They fuck for the first time in Michael's bed a week after he turns fifteen.
Michael had been thinking about it for ages, pulling and squeezing at Calum's
ass whenever they made out, watching a ridiculous amount of porn when he was at
his own house, and slowly working up to fucking himself with three fingers in
his ass during one hazy jerk off session that lasted all afternoon.   He's
passed a lot of gay milestones with Calum's help, and he'd be lying if he said
he still doesn't know if he really is bi or not. He's about 95% certain he is.
100% certain whenever Calum has his tongue in his mouth. But there's one gay
milestone that he's pretty sure will seal the deal.
He's thought the most about what fucking Calum would be like, the tight grip of
his ass, whether Calum would like it, if he would make those cut-off sounds he
does when Michael holds him down and sucks him off. But he's not stupid, and
he's worried that might be a bit too gay for Calum. He's about 80% sure that
Calum is also some type of gay, considering how many months they've been doing
this shit together, but Calum's never actually said anything like that, and the
last thing he wants to do is scare Calum off and bring an end to this. Doing
this stuff with Calum is sort of the best thing in his life, and he doesn't
know what he'd do if Calum wanted to stop.
So he buys the stuff they need (skipping class so he can grab it at a time when
no one who knows him might accidentally see), invites Calum over when he knows
his parents are gonna be out the whole night, and brings it up in the middle of
making out.
“You should fuck me.”
He has a whole argument prepared on why it won't be weird—it's like practice
for Calum fucking girls, lots of girls like getting fucked in the ass so it's
not a specifically gay thing, Michael can be quiet if Calum wants to pretend
it's someone else—but he doesn't need any of it. He brings it up, and Calum
chokes out, “oh my god,” against his shoulder and comes hard, twitching his
hips down against Michael's thigh.
“Sorry, sorry,” he pants, as soon as he gets his breath back. “I can go again,
I swear, I just—fuck, Michael.”
“That was a yes?” Michael asks, just to make sure. He hopes Calum can last
longer than that when he gets inside him. Jesus, Calum is going to be inside
him. 
“Yes,” Calum says. “Obviously.”
They take their clothes off as fast as they can, arms colliding as they try to
strip themselves and each other at the same time. Michael tries very hard to
ignore how self-conscious he feels when he's fully naked, and focus instead on
how Calum looks wearing absolutely nothing but a necklace with a silver bead.
Calum's always been comfortable with nudity in a way that Michael isn't, but
Michael's never seen him naked quite like this, sitting back on his heels on
Michael's bed right before he's going to fuck him, his pink cock resting
against his thigh, half-hard again already. The way he's looking down at
Michael, like he's knocked a little off-balance by the sight of him too, makes
Michael feel powerful again, and his voice doesn't shake when he asks Calum to
hand him the lube.  
Calum strokes himself fully hard again while Michael gets ready, Calum staring
open-mouthed at Michael's fingers pushing awkwardly into his ass. They fumble
with the condoms and lube, Calum's hands shaking hard enough that he can't even
get the condom on when it's out of the package. Michael rolls it on and gets
him all slick. They kiss for a while just like that, both kneeling awkwardly on
the bed, until Michael's fear has gone down enough for him to pull away. He
gets on his hands and knees—'cause there's no way he can actually meet Calum's
eyes while they do this—and says he's good whenever Calum is.
It doesn't hurt so much as feel really fucking weird when Calum first presses
in. Calum feels a lot bigger than Michael knows he is, and it's like his body's
going into shock to try and adjust, everything clenching shivery and tense.
Calum has one hand on Michael's hip and the other at the top of his ass, just
above where he's feeding his dick in, and he keeps swearing in this low,
surprised voice that's somehow unlike anything Michael's heard from him before.
He waits when he's bottomed out, holding tremblingly still as Michael squeezes
his ass around him.
“I'm good,” Michael says hoarsely when he doesn't feel like he's going to pass
out anymore. “You can, you—”
Calum starts to fuck him then, and Michael loses whatever it was he was going
to say.
It's a sweaty, uncomfortable blur, and it's the best feeling Michael's ever
had. He can't touch his dick because he's too afraid he's gonna shoot off as
soon as he does. It's not that Calum's a master at sex or anything, because he
only manages to rub over Michael's prostate once every few thrusts, and it's
not that the feeling of being full up with cock is just so all-consumingly
good—it's that it's Calum. His head is exploding with the reality of it, the
fact that it's Calum's cock shoving into him, Calum crying out behind him,
Calum curling down and kissing the sweat off of Michael's shoulders. It feels
like they've been heading here ever since Michael met him, ever since Calum saw
him spinning a metal bead on his desk and struck up a conversation. Michael is
about to burst open with the feeling of it all inside him, little pieces of it
knocked out of him in stupid noises every time Calum's prick jams in deeper.
It's over pretty quickly; Calum comes first, and then Michael. Calum's barely
done gasping and rutting against Michael's ass when he slides his hand down
from Michael's hip to fumble awkwardly at Michael's cock hanging between his
legs. It's the first time he's ever touched Michael like that, and it barely
takes two unsteady strokes before Michael's coming hard, white noise blaring in
his ears and his whole body clamping down on Calum's softening cock still in
his ass.
“Jesus,” Calum's whispering when Michael gets his hearing back. He's flattened
all the way along Michael's back, collapsed there like he can't keep himself
up. “Jesus, Mikey, god, love you so much—”
Michael's arms slide out from under him and they go crashing to the bed in a
sticky pile, Calum's cock slipping out of Michael's ass—which stings really,
really weirdly. Michael wrestles Calum over so Michael can see his face,
because Calum can't have said what Michael just heard, except Calum's staring
right at him and repeating it:
“Love you, Mikey, love you.”
Michael kisses him—can't not. He's exhausted and buzzing and he feels like he's
glowing somewhere, like it's shining out of him.
“Do you?” asks Calum shakily, and Michael's laughing when he answers, “yes,
god, yes, I—”
****
There's white ceiling stucco above him. He's alone in his hotel room.
“No,” he says. “No, no, give it back, take me back, please, no—”
He sounds crazy. He feels it.
He jams his mouth against the bracelet, curling up on the bed around the
shriveled sensation in his stomach. He cries stupidly until Zop comes to wake
them up.
****
Last night, after Michael left Calum on the dance floor, he had gone upstairs
where people were hanging out on the balconies in the hopes of finding someone
who would share some weed with him. He didn't find that, but he did find a
short guy with black hair that he could back into a quiet corner and kiss for
ten, twenty minutes, until he realized what he was doing and ran away like an
idiot.
Michael doesn't remember this detail until halfway through the day, and he
wishes he hadn't. It was his first actual kiss with a guy, and it feels wrong.
Dream him had it right—his first kiss with a guy should've been with Calum. His
first anything with a guy should've been with Calum. It's like his whole life
is wrong, like he's the alternate universe, and the other one is reality. If he
was gonna be bi, it should've been like in the dreams. That's how it should've
happened.
They have one of their stupidly busy days again, and Michael isn't left alone
with Calum until they're in the dressing room backstage before the show. As
soon as there's a moment where everyone else has left the room, Calum gets up
from his chair, where's he's been studiously examining his phone, and plops
down next to Michael on the couch.
“Hey,” he says.
Michael grunts in response and doesn't look away from his phone. He can't
really look at Calum without remembering the feel of him around and inside, and
wondering how that would feel now that they're both fully grown, so he's
decided to just not really look at Calum all that much today.
Calum sighs. “Michael.”
“What?” Michael says.
“I just wanted to say sorry,” Calum says quietly. “If I was weird last night. I
was just drunk and stuff.”
Michael remembers Calum's mouth on his shoulder. Remembers dream Calum's dick
rubbing carefully over Michael's hole before pushing in. He shivers.
“Whatever,” Michael says.
“But, like, we're friends,” Calum says. “Best friends. So we can work through
this. You can't just tell me to stay away from you. You gotta tell me if I'm
like—like, we work together, so we gotta be on good terms. We can still be
friends, right?”
It sounds like a break-up line, and Michael feels a strange, hysterical bubble
of laughter get stuck in the middle of his throat, choking him.
“Yeah,” he says. “I know we're friends.”
Calum is silent for a long time. When Michael chances a glance at him, he's
staring down at his lap, his hair curling gently over the bent nape of his
neck.
“Can I have the bracelet back,” Calum says.
“No,” Michael says immediately, panicking. “What? You gave it to me, it's
mine.”
“Well, maybe I want it back,” Calum says.
“No take-backs,” Michael says. “We said that before. It's mine.”
“So you get to ignore me just because of—but I can't have back stuff that I
found?” Calum says. “That's not fair, Michael."
“I don't care,” Michael says, wrapping his right hand around the bracelet
protectively, trapping it to his wrist. His chest feels like it's shrunk in
size. “It's mine.”
“You're a fucking child,” Calum snarls. He stands up, the loss of his weight
making the whole couch shift like a body of water. He storms out of the room,
leaving Michael alone and vaguely confused. 
Ashton comes in by himself about five minutes later. Michael leans on him when
Ashton sits down on the couch, and refuses to answer any questions about Calum.
“Whatever is up with you guys, you gotta fix it,” Ashton says quietly. “Even if
you won't let me help. I don't like seeing you guys like this.”
Me neither, Michael thinks.
During the show, Michael tries to ignore Calum. Calum seems to take it as a
challenge, because he's up in Michael's space twice as much as usual, his eyes
gleaming like it's all a funny joke, or like he's purposefully being an
annoying dick. Michael can't show how irritated he is, because they're being
projected on huge ass screens and he doesn't want to affect the vibe of the
show. He grins and ducks away as much as he can, swooping over to chill by Luke
and use him as some sort of safety net between him and Calum.
Calum goes out of his way to point out “Malum” signs in the audience again,
reading them out loud and staring Michael down. Michael laughs the first couple
times, like he's supposed to, but he can't do it the third or the fourth.
There's a poisonous spill of anger starting to trickle through him; it's easy
enough for Calum to joke about this shit, because it's not real to him, and
won't ever be real. He doesn't have to deal with actually being gay as fuck for
someone who won't ever feel it back outside of dreams.
Michael saunters up to Luke in a later song and pretends to grind up on his
leg, pressing himself close so he can get his mouth up to his ear. He takes a
vicious satisfaction in the swell of screaming in the crowd.
“Can you please keep Calum the fuck away from me?” he says.
Luke scrunches up his face in disapproval. 'Michael,' he mouths.
'Please,' Michael mouths back, because he's going to throw his guitar if he
doesn't get some space from Calum.
Luke gives Michael a weird look, but he does as he's asked, because he's the
best; when Calum starts heading Michael's way, Luke lunges to block him
whenever he can, being distracting and stupid in the way only Luke really can.
Calum seems thrilled by this at first. They get through three quarters of the
show before he seems to realize what's going on.
Luke's stuck in the middle of singing, and there's no way to keep Calum back;
he charges the length of the stage, his fingers not even hesitating on the
strings of his bass, and gets up in Michael's face.
“Seriously?” he yells, just loud enough to make it over the noise of the music
around them. “You want to avoid me so bad you're recruiting Luke as a shield?
We're supposed to be fucking friends.”
Michael shakes his head. He can't pull up a mask, not now that he's being
confronted properly. “Leave it, Calum.”
Calum tips his head to the side, like a confused puppy. Something ugly twists
up through the tense cords of his neck into his face; he lunges forward faster
than Michael can keep track of and sinks his teeth into Michael's shoulder
right where he'd bit him the night before. Michael's hand skids across the
strings of his guitar, a hideous screech joining the increasing pitch of the
audience. The back of his knuckles crash into Calum's.
It's only a second before Michael pushes him away. Calum goes with his teeth
bared, not in a grin so much as a snarl. Michael catches Luke's eye over
Calum's shoulder, and Luke is staring, with this look on his face like he gets
what's going on here way more than Michael wants him to. Michael slams his
fingers back on the frets and back into the song. He throws a laugh in Calum's
face—see, audience, we're good, we're fine—and ducks back towards his mic to
sink into the chorus.
When they get to “Good Girls”, Calum sings the lead-in to Michael's little
improv with his whole body tilted expectantly towards Michael.
“Michael, what does she say?”
Michael opens his mouth and it's like a key turns in his head, locking his
voice in his throat. He's lightheaded, trapped in Calum's gaze half a stage and
too many worlds away. They've been ramping it up each concert, this weird prank
of theirs, and there's nowhere left for Michael to go with it except for
something that would be way too true. And he can't—he can't say that as a joke.
It rings through his mind anyway: I'm in love with Calum Hood, I'm in love with
Calum Hood, I love— 
Luke swoops in and saves it, screaming, “Burgers!” into his microphone. Michael
staggers back from the mic and lets the shape of Luke shift to block Calum from
his line of vision. Through the glare of the lights, Michael can see some girls
in the front looking worriedly in Michael's direction, and he makes sure to
grin widely at them in between singing—he doesn't want anyone going home
worried or tweeting guesses about his mental state. Especially since he doesn't
know what the fuck that is right now.
He keeps remembering more details about the boy he'd kissed last night. The way
the corner of his mouth curled up in a pleased way when Michael gave in and
crowded him up against the wall. What his throat looked like when he tilted his
head up for Michael's mouth. The bite of his fingers on the back of Michael's
neck. The memory is fighting with the dream-images of him and Calum stretched
out on Michael's bed, kissing and rubbing off against each other. One of them
seems unreal, and it's not the dream. The dream is how it should've happened.
Michael is thin and weak under the lights, his temple burning with old pain.
The cheers blow through him like he's smoke.
He wants to go back to sleep.
****
“Michael!”
Calum is chasing after him through the backstage halls, and Michael wishes he
was in better shape so he could get the fuck away from him.
“Michael, wait up!”
There's a hand on Michael's shoulder, and Michael shakes it off so violently
that he almost falls over. He sways, off-balance, and Calum tips into his
vision, his arm outstretched, his face crumpled like a wet paper bag.
“Look, fine, so you don't want to talk to me,” he says. “But I need to tell
you—are your burns hurting?”
“What?” Michael snaps, and then realizes he's rubbing at his temple, scrubbing
at spots that don't even stand out against his skin anymore. “No, I'm fine. I
just wanna be alone. I'm going back to the bus.”
“I found another bead,” Calum says urgently. “Well, I didn't, because it's like
it found me. One minute my hand was empty and then it was there, and I think
we're meant to—”
“It's my bracelet,” Michael says. “And if you've got another bead, you can keep
it. I don't want more.”
“Michael,” Calum starts, but Michael is already turning and heading blindly off
down the hall.
He glances back once, just before he turns the corner, but Calum isn't looking
at him anymore. He's staring down at his hands, cupped very carefully, like
he's holding an egg. Or a heart.
****
Michael stares at the bracelet on his wrist for a very long time before he
falls asleep, trying to convince himself that he's going to take it off. He
doesn't, because he's stupid.
****
They're sitting on the far side of the sports equipment shed, under the cover
of a few small trees. Michael is supposed to be in Science, and Calum's
supposed to be in English, but it's more important to be hiding here with each
other, holding hands carefully between them. There's a gym class playing soccer
on the other side of the shed, and Calum tenses up each time a voice gets a
little too close. He settles easily enough when Michael squeezes his hand, and
eventually he tips over to lean his head against Michael's shoulder and snuggle
in. Michael's got his other hand in his pocket, absently tracing over a wrapped
stick of gum and what feels like one of his metal beads. It's pretty damn
peaceful.
“Did you know this would happen?” Calum asks softly.
“What?” says Michael.
Calum taps his fingers along the back of Michael's hand. “This.”
“I didn't do anything to try and trick you into gayness or whatever,” Michael
says, feeling a little insulted. “What, do you think I purposefully was trying
to...stockholm you or whatever?”
“No,” Calum says. “I didn't mean it like that. Did you honestly think I just
started doing gay shit with you because I was being nice? I'd thought about it
before too, I just wasn't brave enough to come out and say it like you did.”
“Oh,” Michael says. He'd suspected, but he hadn't wanted to ask earlier on in
case Calum got spooked and shut down everything. 
“I just meant,” Calum says haltingly, “do you think you knew somewhere that
this was always gonna...that we were meant to...”
He shrugs, awkward against Michael's shoulder. Michael turns his face into
Calum's hair, closing his eyes and breathing in.
“Maybe,” he says. “Didn't know if I was just hoping or what."
“Or what,” Calum says. His voice is so cute. Michael wants to bowl him over and
bury his face in Calum's neck, make him squeal.
“I had this weird thought for a couple of weeks at the start of this school
year that you had a crush on Hemmings,” Calum says, and Michael pulls his head
away in surprise.
“What?” he squawks. “I don't even like Hemmings!”
He doesn't add that part of why he doesn't like him is because the Luke kid
seems to like Calum, and Luke looks so much cooler than Michael in a lot of
ways and...Michael's maybe a bit threatened by him. Just a bit. Hemmings is
probably a douche though; guys that look cool and attractive and stuff usually
are. Calum is the exception.
“You're always staring at him though,” Calum says, turning their clasped hands
over and over. “And like, I knew you were doing stuff with me, but I was
worried that since I was just practice, you were going to drop me for him.”
“That's stupid,” Michael says. “You're the one who keeps talking to him.”
“He's cool,” Calum says. “And I had to get to know the enemy. You know he likes
Good Charlotte? He's seen them live. And he plays guitar and sings and stuff.”
“I'm going to start thinking you've got a crush on Hemmings,” Michael says.
Calum shoves him, then reels him back in with his grip on Michael's hand. “I do
not. Here—I'll stop talking to him. He's always hanging out with those older
guys, so he's probably too cool for us anyway.”
“Fuck him,” Michael says, secretly thrilled.
“I'd rather fuck you,” Calum says, leering. There's a scream, and the thudding
sound of a soccer ball hitting the other side of the shed and bouncing off.
Calum doesn't flinch away, and Michael kisses him quickly, feeling like a
triumphant thief.
“Maybe it's my turn next,” he whispers, and Calum shivers against him,
swallowing visibly.
“Shut up,” he says, giggling. “We're in school. You can't wind me up where we
can't even do anything about it.”
“You like it,” Michael says. He lifts their joined hands and bites one of
Calum's fingers, for no reason other than that he can.
“Who knows why,” Calum says. He's smiling, smiling so bright and big, his whole
skinny body tilted into Michael's side, and it feels like every fucked up thing
Michael's ever felt about himself just can't exist when Calum's looking at him
like that.
“It's 'cause I'm so ruggedly handsome,” Michael says.
“Right, right. Yeah, that's it.”
This is all I'll ever need, Michael thinks, sinking against Calum. Calum feels
so soft, like a pillow, or a mattress, and he's everything, every—
****
Michael opens his eyes with a vague sense of confusion. Something is wrong.
Something about the dream, something that he was just thinking. Something is
wrong.
He goes through the first few hours of the day in a fog of confusion, but
thankfully it's another busy day that lets him and Calum mutually avoid each
other without issue. The dream is stuffing up Michael's head like a hangover—in
a different way than all the others—and he can't get past it. Michael keeps the
bracelet on, and can't stop fiddling with it, running his fingers over the
bumps of the beads as if it's braille and he can read an answer in it. He
slumps against Luke and watches Calum and Ashton talk to Zop. He sits in makeup
and lets their makeup lady powder his face and watches the other three run
around like idiots. He cuddles into Ashton's side during an interview and
listens to him talk about music. He sits in the van on the drive to the next
radio station and stares out the window with his headphones in, their new album
playing on repeat, until finally he figures out what it was that off in the
dream.
Calum isn't all Michael needs.
In the dream, Calum had said he'd stop talking to Luke, but if he did that,
neither of them would've eventually become friends with him. And if they'd
never become friends with Luke, they wouldn't be here right now. They probably
would never have met Ash. They wouldn't be making music Michael loves. They
wouldn't be performing to all these people.
At first he thinks it was some kind of mistake, that because he didn't let
Calum give him the new bead the other day, the bracelet got confused, showed
him the wrong thing. But even he knows he's reaching. The truth is just that
the dreams aren't the better universe. They aren't how it was supposed to
happen.
For better or for worse, this is where he's supposed to be, but he can't go
back to thinking of the dreams as a glimpse into some other weird Michael that
isn't connected to him. Not after waking up alone and wanting to go back. Not
after standing onstage and realizing how very far he's fallen.
It feels like a switch has been flipped in his head. He excuses himself from a
pre-interview conversation with the radio station's crew to go to the bathroom
and stare blankly at the wall, his heart racing, until a guy comes in and asks
if he's okay.
“Yeah,” Michael says. It's a young guy, one of the interns at the station,
maybe only a couple years older than Michael, and he's cute. He's no Calum, but
he's attractive, someone Michael could be attracted to, and it doesn't feel as
horrible as it did yesterday to admit that in his head. “Yeah, man, I'm good.
Thanks.”
When the guy leaves, Michael braces his hands on the sink counter, and looks
carefully at himself in the mirror. He rubs a hand over his left temple.
“I'm bisexual,” he says quietly. Then, a little louder, “I'm bisexual.”
It's not as terrifying to say it out loud as he would've thought. Michael
smiles shakily, quickly double checks to make sure no one else was hiding in
one of the stalls, and then hurries out to get back to the others in time for
the interview.
It goes alright. They get asked about Michael getting fire to the face for
about the umpteenth time, and Michael rattles off his favourite story of him
actually saving Luke's beautiful face from a fireball.
“But it must have been scary for the rest of you, right?” the interviewer says,
turning her gaze away from Michael. “Seeing your bandmate go through that.”
“It was,” Calum says abruptly. It's the first thing he's said all interview,
and everyone stares at him a little. Calum is staring at Michael though, both
of them on opposite ends of the desk, Luke and Ashton squashed between them as
awkward buffers. “It was probably one of the worst moments of my life.
Michael's really important to me—to like, the whole band—and it was really
awful that he had to go through that.”
“Awwww,” the interviewer says, pressing her hand to her chest. Michael looks
down at the desk, ignoring Luke when he gives Michael an obnoxious little elbow
to the ribs. Sometimes it feels like all of them are conspiring against him.
“You must love him lots, right?” the interviewer continues.
“Yeah,” Calum says, and Michael glances up to see that Calum's finally looked
away, fiddling with something he's got hanging from a chain around his neck.
Ashton starts taking the piss out of Calum, and somehow smoothly shifts the
tone and topic of the conversation back onto safer grounds.
Michael hasn't really thought about the night he got burned in a while, but he
thinks about it in the van on the way back to the venue. He doesn't think about
the pain or the shock or the belated humiliation; he thinks about the way Calum
hugged him after Michael was all bandaged and safe. In terms of being freaked
out, Calum was probably the worst of the other three, at least on the
outside—Luke had a tendency to go blank when he was feeling the most, and
Ashton always took it upon himself to be the responsible one and stay sort of
calm in crises. Calum though—Calum wore it all on his face. He'd looked really,
really scared. Michael can almost feel Calum's arms around him now, squeezing
tourniquet tight.
Calum and Michael have known each other long enough that when they fight, it's
like brothers. They get pissed as hell and then they slingshot right back to
each other. And even though Michael's turned that metaphor all incestuous with
his stupid feelings, he can't keep punishing Calum for not feeling it back.
He goes up to Calum just before soundcheck and collapses on him in a hug. Calum
grunts under his weight, but hugs back automatically.
“Sorry I've been being weird,” Michael mumbles.
“S'okay,” Calum says. “You're always weird.”
“It wasn't about anything you did,” Michael says.
“I thought—” Calum starts.
“I've been figuring out some stuff,” Michael says. Calum goes tense so briefly
Michael might've imagined it, and then melts into Michael, warm all along him.
“What kind of stuff?” Calum asks quietly.
Michael shrugs. “Dunno.” Calum feels so good against him, and Michael doesn't
want to let go.
“If you don't know, does that mean you haven't figured it out?”
“You're a smart ass and I hate you,” Michael says.
“I know,” Calum says. He pats clumsily at Michael's hair. “I know.”
They're silent for a moment, clinging together. There's a lump in Michael's
throat; he's missed his best friend, the real one. Just thinking that sentence
in his head makes him hold Calum tighter, swallowing hard around the sudden
urge to cry. Whatever's on the end of Calum's necklace is digging into his
collar, but he doesn't even care.
“It's these dreams I've been having,” he says, all in a rush. “I just haven't
been sleeping well recently and it's been fucking me up. Sorry.”
“Dreams?” Calum says faintly.
“It's stupid,” Michael says.
“What are they about?”
Michael tucks his face into Calum's neck. “It doesn't matter. Stuff I didn't
know I wanted. And they just feel—really, really real. But I'm here now. I'm
figuring it out.”
Calum hums into Michael's hair, and Michael tries not to feel too much. They
stand there, holding each other, until Zop calls them to get onstage for
soundcheck.
They walk over to the stage, side by side, shoulders knocking together. Calum's
hands are drawn up into fists, and the back of his knuckles keep brushing
against the bracelet on Michael's wrist; tick, tick, tick, like a swaying
pendulum on a grandfather clock. Michael doesn't move his hand away.
****
Michael loves performing. He loves being onstage in front of the crowd and
playing their music. Sure, he has his bad nights, when he's just dead tired, or
he sprains his ankle, or he gets his face set on fire, but it's where he really
comes alive. This is what he's good at. Probably the only thing, really.
When Calum comes up to try and dance up on him, Michael dances right back, and
watches Calum's face light up. When Luke gravitates towards him, goofy grin
hiding concern, Michael makes faces at him until Luke is laughing for real.
When Ashton says “Michael's chipper tonight!” as they pause between songs,
Michael says, “Yup!” in as 'chipper' a voice as he can, and listens to the
other three laugh.
“I'm exactly where I want to be,” Michael says. “With you fabulous people!” He
throws his hands up towards the crowd, and they scream back in answer,
completely in sync.
“And me, obviously,” Calum says.
“And Calum,” Michael agrees.
Calum meets his eyes across the stage and raises an eyebrow, as if to say,
'really?' Michael waggles his own in response. He feels a little invincible,
his feet firmly planted in the right universe.
The show is different that night. Calum's different. 
Calum tests it more and more as the show goes on. He walks up close and
hesitates a metre away until Michael turns his body out and invites him over to
the mic to sing into it with Michael. He bobs up near Michael, but doesn't
smile properly until Michael reaches out and strokes a hand through his hair.
He pushes and Michael pushes back, and it's not long before they're circling
closer and closer, trading spots as sun and planet in orbits around each other.
They split to sing in their respective mics, and to suck Luke into their fun,
but mostly it's the two of them dancing and spinning and shredding it up
together. Michael's body just wants to be near Calum's, and bizarrely enough,
on stage in front of thousands of people seems like the safest place, where
every true thing he does is hidden under the umbrella of performance.
The acid burn of nausea threatens in the back of Michael's throat a few times,
leftover surges of fear and confusion searing there, but he beats it back with
the glow of Calum's presence. He shoves all of the anger and sadness into one
song only, screaming “I'm wrapped around your motherfucking finger” into the
dark roll of the crowd and letting them scream back. The rest of the time, he's
good. Before all this mess, Calum could always cheer Michael up, even when he
felt horrible, just by being Calum, and Michael's ballooned up with happiness
at being able to find that feeling again. The bracelet is bumping up against
the neck of his guitar in a constant reminder of all the strange places he
holds in his head, but he's here, with this Calum, in this time and space, and
he's not going anywhere.
There's a fire coming off the two of them, and before Michael knows it the show
is almost over, and they're between songs and Ashton's loudly saying something
about Michael and Calum and
“—all the sexual tension.”
A little shock goes through Michael at the words, but he can handle it—they've
made jokes like this seven billion times, so actual gay feelings shouldn't
change anything. There's sweat turning Michael's vision into a crazy blur, but
somehow Calum is perfectly clear all the way over on the other side of the
stage, grinning like mad. They start talking at the same time, voices
overlapping.
“It feels like a—” Calum starts.
“It feels,” Michael says, and Calum goes silent. “It feels kinda sexual.”
Calum's eyes are burning past Luke's cheek and lighting up Michael's whole
body. Michael kind of wishes he would stop, because he's not lying—it feels
like hands moving over his skin, like breath on his thighs, like...like
something kinda sexual. Michael keeps rocking forward on his toes and rocking
back, swaying as if into a kiss. He wants to move.
“Fucking admit it,” Calum says, his words all rushed together. “The
connection.”
Michael points at Luke, hovering in the middle of the stage.
“But he's in between it,” Michael says. He's making lists in the back of his
mind, things he'd give up if only it would mean this wasn't a joke; dying his
hair; greasy foods; his sight, his legs, his ability to fall asleep at the drop
of a hat. The silver beads are blazing bright around his outstretched arm,
shining in the stage lights.
“So wait, Luke, give us a minute,” Calum says, “so we can figure this out.”
Luke glances quickly over at Michael, a funny little smile hovering in the
corner of his mouth. “Okay,” he says mildly, and steps away from his mic so
that there's an open line of sight across the stage, nothing but one mic stand
and empty air in between Michael and Calum. 
“Do you mind if we—” Michael starts, not even sure where his sentence is going.
Calum's already talking over him, his smile making his whole face wild.
“Is there feelings?” Calum asks, and Michael freezes, staring at him. “Is there
feelings right now?”
It sounds like just part of the bit, but Calum's watching him, and behind his
easy, laughing expression is an intentness that Michael can't quite read.
Calum's hand is tight around the mic stand, the clench of each individual
knuckle standing out even all the way across the stage. Michael can't look away
from Calum, and even though he's got a grin still pasted on his own face, he's
terrified that it's all obvious anyway—the fear and the love. The real answer
almost claws its way out of his throat before he manages to morph it into some
sort of ridiculous whale noise, an “ehhhh” sort of wishy washy sound that is
definitely leaning more towards a yes than a no. He wants to ask Calum what the
fuck he means, if he actually wants a real answer.
Ashton saves them.
“That would just make it awkward on the tour bus and I don't want that,” he
says sternly, and Michael's able to snort and look away from Calum, his heart
slamming against his ribs.
Distantly he hears Calum say,  “yeah, we'll stop, we'll stop this”, but when he
glances back up, Calum's is still staring, and it doesn't seem like stopping is
anywhere on his mind.
Luke says something to the crowd and they roar, everything sliding back on
track like nothing happened at all, like Calum isn't giving Michael a look that
says he'd be doing way more than that if they were alone. Michael's glad he's
got his guitar in front of his crotch, because he's chubbing up just a little
over it, heat shuddering through him like lightning currents. Is it just the
glow of stage lights making everything seem brighter and hotter? Is he making
this all up in his head?
As soon as he starts moving, Calum does too. Michael runs across the stage,
meeting Calum in the middle behind Luke. Michael lets his guitar hang free from
its strap and takes Calum's face in between his hands, swaying in to yell,
“What was that?”
The crowd is screaming, screaming, screaming. Michael doesn't know if he and
Calum are being blown up on the big screen right now, if thousands of people
are filming to scrutinize his mouth later and figure out what he's saying. He
doesn't care if they are—Calum is staring at him from a foot away, sweaty skin
sticky under Michael's hands, his eyes glittering.
“Tell me what you dreamed about,” Calum shouts.
Michael drops his hands and staggers back a step. “What?”
Ashton says something about the next song they're playing, and Michael takes
the excuse to run away to his own mic, snapping back into concert mode. The
beads on his wrist feel like they're burning his skin. Michael's head is a
scrambled junkyard, and Calum wants to know what he's been dreaming about.
They only have a couple more songs, and then it's time to say a temporary
goodbye. Michael's the first one offstage after the main set, hands feeling
numb. He needs to catch his breath before the encore; he peels his shirt off of
his chest and fans it, trying to get some air over his drenched skin. Michael
closes his eyes and listens to the roar of the audience, the pure animal thrill
of it. It feels like it's scraping him clean.
He hears footsteps, and then Luke is circling around him to grab water bottles,
giving Michael a weak high five as he pass. A second later, someone crowds up
against Michael's back, arms sweeping around his waist and plastering his shirt
back to his skin.
“If you won't tell me about your dream,” Calum says, his mouth pressed to
Michael's ear. “I could tell you about mine, maybe.”
Michael tries to say “what”, but the sound gets lost in the noise around them.
He twists in Calum's arms until they're facing each other, fumbling. One of his
hands somehow ends up on the side of Calum's neck without his permission, thumb
sinking into damp skin under his jaw.
“What are you talking about?” he asks.   
The whole world is shaking.
“I don't know,” Calum says. “Do you know what I'm talking about? Please tell me
I haven't got this all wrong.”
“You had a dream?” Michael asks. “When did you—what happened, was it—was I
there?”
“Yes,” Calum pants. 
“You guys are back on in ten seconds,” someone yells, and Michael doesn't even
look away from Calum's face. He can feel the bulky heat of Luke crowding up
near them, and he doesn't care. Calum's hands are braced on his waist, bunched
in fists in his shirt so it's pulling tight across Michael's back, formed to
his skin 
“You were in mine,” Michael says. “All of them. And we were—” His voice dies.
He can't say it.
“I had mine last night. We were behind the shed at school,” Calum says. “Was
yours—?”
“Yes,” Michael blurts. It's the same dream, it has to be, they had the same
dream, which means—
A voice is counting down and Luke bumps into Michael's side, knocking him and
Calum off balance.  Their guitars, still hanging between them by the straps,
clank together, and Calum lets go of Michael to grab at his bass, steadying it.
A strip of light from onstage cuts across his body from shoulder to hip, and
something flares up like a star against his chest—the bead that Michael refused
to take yesterday is strung on a chain around Calum's neck, shining bright just
below the neckline of his shirt.
There's a flurry of drumming from the stage; Luke bursts past Michael to rush
back onstage, and Calum gives Michael one last breathless look before he's
peeling off after Luke. Michael scrambles to get a good grip on his own guitar
and follow. Exclamation marks and fireworks are creating a mess in his head and
jittering out through his whole body. All he can see is Calum's shoulders
moving in front of him, and he follows blindly.
An echoing sound of jubilation rises up from the crowd when the three of them
run back to their spots, arms in the air. If there's one thing Michael knows
right now, it's that he gets how they feel. Ashton, still sat at his drums,
says something, and then they're launching into “Good Girls”. Michael doesn't
look across the stage at Calum—can't, right now—but he waits to hear one
familiar thing.
“Michael, what does she say? 
Michael squeezes his eyes shut, yells, “Fuck yeah, there's feelings!” and rides
the wave of screams all the way through the rest of the encore
****
Calum decides to play with Ashton’s drums as Ashton runs around to bow to the
crowd at the very end of the set, and Michael ends up bodily dragging him away
from them. Calum flashes him gleeful looks as Michael approaches and he only
flails half-heartedly once Michael gets his arms around him. Calum’s chest is
hot under Michael’s hands, his armpits leaving sticky sweat all over Michael’s
wrists, Michael’s bracelet. Michael gets Calum to his feet and they head back
up to join the other two for the big final bow together, and then that’s it.
They’re leaving the stage for the last time, and Michael’s shaking with giddy
terror.
Calum grabs his hand as soon as they’re properly offstage, and says, “come on,”
his face glowing damply with the biggest smile Michael has ever seen.
Michael follows.
He doesn't know where they're going, but he takes the lead from Calum anyway,
pulling him along just to feel the tug of their connected hands. His arms are
sore and buzzing from the show, but he doesn't mind feeling the stress of it
when he knows Calum's at the other end. It feels familiar, like everything does
with Calum, and memories both dreamed up and real are flooding through him,
running beside and around them in a laughing pack of skinny legs and smiles.
Michael squeezes Calum's hand as hard as he can and runs faster, runs until
they're pulling away from the others, just the two of them racing forward
through the backstage halls.
Calum swerves and brings Michael over to a door with a glowing red EXIT sign
over it. They punch out into darkness and fresh summer air—they're outside the
back of the venue, in a tiny clearing with trees all around it, stars
puncturing the sky up above. Michael doesn't bother looking around, just pushes
Calum up against the wall beside the door and crowds into him all in one
movement.
They argue sometimes, about which one of them is taller, but when Michael steps
into Calum's space in that moment, there seems to be no difference at all.
Calum's face is right there in front of Michael's, taking up his whole field of
vision, his whole world, and all of the momentum Michael had built up onstage
comes to a grinding halt. He can't breathe, fear and adrenaline combining into
some huge, unexplainable static coursing from his head to his feet where
they're slotted in between Calum's. He nudges forward an inch and draws back
just as fast, his free hand moving restlessly, first to brace against the wall,
then to snarl in the fabric at Calum's waist. Calum lets out a sharp, short
exhale at the touch; Michael can feel it on his mouth.
Calum's fingers twitch against Michael's where they're still holding hands,
their arms squashed between them.
“Michael?” Calum says, after a long, frozen moment. His voice is small,
uncertain, and it's like a fist squeezing in Michael's gut—he's surging forward
all at once, kissing Calum before he can think about it anymore.
Calum's whole body locks up, his hand gripping around Michael's like he's
trying to crush Michael's bones. Panic explodes through Michael's head; for a
second he's sure he's got it all wrong, that Calum's going to throw him off and
never speak to him again. He's just starting to pull away when Calum makes a
weak, hungry sound and leans into the kiss, opening up under Michael's mouth.
There's a screaming rush in Michael's ears—he falls forward again, pressing
Calum into the wall, and Calum lets him. He's kissing Michael back like he's
been wanting nothing else, and it's heady how fast Michael feels drugged up on
the hot inside of Calum's mouth, the catch of his teeth on Michael's lower lip,
the way he rubs his tongue over Michael's. Michael squeezes Calum's hand right
back, their arms tensed with adrenaline between them, and Calum's other hand
slides clumsily up Michael's spine to fist in his hair. There are whole flocks
of birds swooping and wheeling in Michael's stomach; he's feeling something too
big to really call happiness. This is the kind of thing that re-writes
dictionaries, he thinks. This is the kind of thing that words exist for.
Calum pulls away to breathe sharp and humid against Michael's cheek, his lips
smeared over the side of Michael's mouth. They pant together for a second,
weirdly in sync. Michael's eyes are still closed, his forehead tipped against
the side of Calum's face. He sucks in a breath of cool night air and slides his
mouth over Calum's again, off-balance and drunk on the taste of him. 
“Michael,” Calum gasps. “Michael.”
“Yeah,” Michael says, the word dragged out over Calum's mouth
“You have no idea,” Calum says. “No idea how long I've—”
“It's been weeks,” Michael says. “You had one dream? I had one for every damn
bead you gave me. More than that.”
“Weeks?” Calum says. “That's fucking kid stuff, man, I've been,” he kisses so
hard Michael rocks back on his heels, still unsteady when Calum pulls away
again and continues with, “since London, Mikey, since you got burned.”
“What?” Michael says. “Dreaming?”
“No,” Calum says. “Feeling, like—wanting this. I mean, I was so fucked up over
that. I had to think about it for a while, and stuff, but that was when I
started realizing. Told Luke, even, 'cause he caught me one day when I was
freaking out about it.”
Michael remembers quiet conversations in corners and Luke looking at him
weirdly for seemingly no reason, and a lot of things start to make sense. 
“I had no idea,” Michael says.
“I was good at hiding it, but I thought you figured it out,” Calum says. “And
that's why you were being weird around me and avoiding—”
“I thought you figured me out,” Michael says. “That I was starting to—” He
loses the rest of the sentence to a thin laugh. “Fuck.”
Calum closes his eyes, thunking his head back against the wall. The stretch of
his neck makes something cramp up in Michael's mouth, jaw stiffening with the
urge to bite. And he can, he can—so he does, bending in to set his teeth to
Calum's skin. Calum shudders, his hips knocking up against Michael's. Their
hands had untangled at some point, and Michael's got both of his gripping
around the top of Calum's jeans, covering shirt and denim and a hot strip of
skin.
“I've never,” Calum chokes out, “done anything with a guy—”
Michael scrapes his teeth over a mouthful of Calum's throat and pulls back to
speak. “I kissed some guy at the club after dancing with you, but that's—that's
it for me.”
“You left me to go make out with a fucking stranger?” Calum says. His eyes are
open now, and they're so dark Michael can barely look at him.
“You were too dangerous,” Michael says. “I didn't even know I liked guys 'till
I started dreaming about you.” The wet mark of his own mouth is starting to
fade into Calum's skin, and he presses his lips there again to renew it, sweat
under his tongue. 
“Tell me about them,” Calum says breathlessly. “The dreams.”
“It was us if we fucked around when we were kids,” Michael says. “I wanted to
test and see if I was bi, and you let me test it on you. I've had weeks of
watching this whole other life of ours. You were so little. Skinny.”
He slides his hands up to Calum's waist, digging his fingers in.
“I'm not dreaming, right?” he says, unable to help it. Calum's right here,
under his hands, but Michael's gotten used to having this and then blinking
awake to find it gone. What if he's finally gone off the edge and this is him
completely mixing up reality and fantasy?
“Not unless I am too,” Calum says. “Weeks? Since I gave you the bracelet?”
“Yeah,” Michael says. “I don't know how, but it's the beads.”
“And that's why I dreamed last night,” Calum says. “'Cause you wouldn't take
the last one from me. I knew there was something fucking weird about them, and
when I woke up this morning, I knew it was connected, but I wasn't sure 'till
you said you'd been having dreams.”
“Sorry I was such a dick about not taking the bead,” Michael says. “But it's
really your fault that magical beads or whatever were drawn to you somehow,
okay—”
“You were a fucking dick,” Calum says. “You could've just told me why you
didn't want the bead, and then we could've, could've—”
He kisses Michael instead of ending the sentence. It gets intense fast—Michael
can't keep his hands off Calum, stuck on all the ways it's different from and
the same as the dreams. He's no longer bigger than Calum, and different parts
of their bodies line up when Michael's pressed all along him. Calum's got
muscle now, tense on his stomach and packed tight along his arms, and yet he
still lets Michael push him around a little, still seems to like it. And when
Michael flattens his hand at the small of Calum's back, he arches into the
touch just like his dream self did, his mouth going loose against Michael's.
It's all dazzlingly new that he can do this here, in actual real life, but
finding that he knows Calum, that there are things that are the same about the
two of them together even across space and time—it's the most obvious thing in
the world.
“Love you,” he whispers, hot with embarrassment and certainty. “Calum, I—”
There's a sudden flash of light, a golden burn against Michael's closed
eyelids, and he's seeing a distant image of two people, younger versions of him
and Calum, sitting in Michael's childhood room and arguing over beads. It
changes almost before he's registered it, flicking to them a little older than
they are now, kissing on a balcony overlooking the ocean. Then it's clearly
their dream-selves, laughing behind the shed at school, and Michael's pulling
out of the kiss, pressing his forehead blindly against Calum's. He tries to
open his eyes, but he can't—the pictures have taken over, scrolling through at
breakneck speed.
“Calum?” he says.
“Yeah, yeah, I see it,” Calum breathes.
He can feel his Calum touching him still, pressed all along his body, hands at
Michael's waist, but his head is full of other versions of them. There's Calum
with actual facial hair, playing with a dog on a beach while Michael sits on a
blanket. There's Michael with grey hair on his chest, lying comfortable in bed
with a wrinkled Calum leaning against the doorframe. There's a child Michael
spinning a bead on his desk by himself, and no Calum approaching him. There's a
skinny, teenaged Calum screaming something at Michael and shoving him away in
the middle of the hallway at school. There's them getting married, there's them
getting divorced, there's them with a kid, and them onstage, and them kissing
and yelling and fucking and crying, and then suddenly, just when Michael thinks
his head is going to explode with it, it's all sucked away, leaving them
shaking against each other in the dark.
“Holy shit,” Michael pants, as soon as he can speak. He opens his eyes, and
he's never been happier to see Calum, just as he is, sweaty and rumpled, his
mouth still slick and swollen from kissing.  
“What the fuck,” Calum says. “Has that happened to you before?”
“No,” Michael says. “Jesus.”
“The beads,” Calum says, glancing down. “Your wrist—”
Michael pulls his hand up between them. Every single silver bead has turned
gold. Calum lifts his necklace up to see the bead on the end; it's done the
same thing, all of them glinting like tiny suns.
“What the fuck,” Calum repeats flatly. His gaze shifts from the beads and then
out over Michael's shoulder. “Michael.”
Somehow Michael isn't surprised when he turns around.
The small clearing they were in before is gone, and they're standing at the
edge of a tiny parking lot. There's two rickety gas pumps in the middle of the
pavement and a convenience store a little beyond, bright neon lights flickering
in the window in front of a rainbow display of pop bottles lined up inside. The
whole thing is surrounded by a ring of dark trees, enclosing them, locking them
in this time and space under the night sky. The wall behind the two of them
hasn't changed—they're still definitely outside the venue. It's as if this gas
station has just been picked up and plunked down here.
“It's the same rest stop place,” Calum says, slowly. “This is the same spot
where I found the first bead. Where I made you the bracelet.” 
Calum lets go of him and walks over to one of the gas pumps, carefully laying
his hand on it, like he's testing how solid it is. Michael slumps back against
the wall, dazed with the impossible familiarity of it all.
“This is where it started,” Michael says. “The dreams and stuff.”
“The first bead was over here,” Calum says, wandering over to a patch of
pavement off to one side. “Right here.”
He nudges his foot at a dent in the tarmac that looks weirdly precise, like
someone took an ice cream scoop to it.
“I read somewhere once that places like this are like, thin spots,” Michael
says. “Rest stops or roadside gas stations or whatever. ’Cause like they're not
places anyone actually lives, they're just places people pause at, sort of. So
some people think they're like—liminal spaces. Closer to other worlds. Maybe
all that stuff we just saw was like, other versions of us. In parallel
universes and shit.”
“And the dreams weren't dreams.” Calum says, fingering the bead around his
neck. “They were just you seeing into one of those universes.”
“There were beads in the dreams sometimes,” Michael realizes. “And I think I
kept losing mine. What if these ones belong to the us that we dreamed about?”
Calum gives a little jolt, like he's just thought of something.
“I was thinking about you when I found the first bead,” Calum says. He laughs,
soft and disbelieving. “I was thinking about you being all weird and sad the
night before and touching your burns and stuff. I was thinking that I wished I
had some sort of way to make you know for sure that you were loved. That I
loved you.”
He's staring down at the ground, like he's too embarrassed to look at Michael,
which is stupid, 'cause Michael fucking said it first. Michael's chest feels
tight, and electricity is buzzing through his limbs—he can't stay by the wall
anymore. He takes off, and meets Calum in more of a tackle than a hug, the two
of them colliding and rocking back and forth on their feet in the middle of the
gas station.
“So maybe the first bead was pulled through because of that,” Calum says,
muffled against Michael's shoulder. “So they could show you how we could be.”
“And then kept coming 'cause I didn't get it,” Michael says. “You totally were
wooing me.”
“Fuck, I guess I was,” Calum giggles. His eyes have gone all squinty cute, and
Michael wants to pin him to the ground and kiss him all over. “I mean, I tried
to use them to remind myself that we were just friends, 'cause like, friendship
bracelet, but each time I wished, just a little bit, that somehow you would get
it.”
“I get it now,” Michael says. “Fuck, I definitely get it.”
Calum kisses him, fumbling and off-centre because they're squashed too close
together. It still sort of knocks Michael off his feet. He's pretty sure it's
not going to stop doing that for a very long time.
Calum had asked in the dream if Michael thought they were meant to be, and
Michael still doesn't know if that's a thing, magic and universes and visions
aside. But they're just outside an arena where they played tonight, where they
sang songs they wrote together, and wrote with their other two best friends,
and when they go back inside, they've got Ashton and Luke there and their whole
tour crew. Maybe in other worlds they had it easier—maybe Michael wasn't so
scared and got there faster—but he doesn't want to be anywhere else but here,
with his Calum. The dreams were only the best universe to show him to get him
to figure out that where he wanted to be was right here.
Out of all those other versions of themselves, he's pretty sure they're the
ones who got it right.
****
When they try to go back into the venue, the door won't open, and Michael
panics for a second before Calum figures it out. The gas station showed up
because it was where Calum was given the first bead, and now the beads have to
go back. They leave the bracelet and the necklace lying in the dent of pavement
where it all started, and only then will the doorknob twist.
There's a flash of golden light from Calum's neck and Michael's wrist just as
the door closes, and they find tiny imprints of the beads on their skin, almost
like they were burned there. It doesn't hurt though, nothing like months ago
and fire against Michael's head.
“We match,” says Michael, when Calum tries to apologize.
They open the door for one last glance back, and the clearing is back to
normal, just a garbage can and a picnic table, no sign of the gas station or
the beads.
They hold hands in the halls, and wave cheerfully to crew as they pass. No one
gives them a second glance, because apparently being stupid in love is
something that is vastly unsurprising to everyone. The shaky feeling in
Michael's chest is closer to happiness than fear, and he clings to Calum's hand
as hard as he can.
When they get back to the dressing room, it's empty except for Luke and Ashton.
They're whispering furiously on a couch, and as the door opens, Ashton springs
up and points dramatically at Michael and Calum.
“I knew there was someone you were getting screwed up over!” he yells at
Michael. “You should've told me! And you—you told Luke, but not me?”
“Sorry,” says Calum. “It was an accident. No one was supposed to know, but once
Luke did, if I told you too, then it would’ve been the whole band against
Michael. That’s not fair.”
“So you're not gonna get mad about how we'll make it awkward on the tour bus?”
Michael says. He tries to make it nonchalant, but by the way Ashton drops his
arm and looks at him, he's pretty sure it doesn't quite work.
“You better not make it awkward,” Ashton says softly. “No hurting each other.”
“You can't threaten both of them in one go,” Luke says. He's grinning in a way
that is somehow both parental and smug at the same time.
“Sure I can,” Ashton says.
“Calum, I told you things would work out and you didn't need to be all 'ah, he
doesn't love me' all the time,” Luke starts, and Calum lets go of Michael's
hand to lunge across the room and wrestle Luke onto the couch, trying to cover
his mouth while muttering various death threats.
“Always pining!” Luke shouts, flailing under Calum. “So much emo!”
“Shut up!” Calum shrieks. He's gone all flushed, smiling stupidly, and Michael
barely has to think about it before he's launching himself on top of the pile.
“Band orgy!” he yells. “Someone grab Ash!”
“No!” Ashton laughs. “I do not approve! No! Let go of my leg!”  
They end up in an exhausted sprawl on the carpet about five minutes later.
Calum's face is smushed somewhere near Michael's armpit and Ashton is lying
half on top of Michael and half on Luke, and all Michael can think of is going
on their first tour with 1D and pushing their beds together to sleep in a giant
cuddle.
“I love you guys,” he says. “I'm so glad we became friends with you.”
“No sex on the tourbus,” Ashton says.
“What?” Calum yells.
“Just because I love you too doesn't mean anyone's having sex on the tourbus!”
Ashton says.
“I'm with Ash on this,” Luke says.
“You guys suck!” Calum says.
Michael's laughing too hard to contribute. He puts his hands over his face and
finds it wet. He doesn't know when he started crying, but it's okay. His temple
doesn't hurt anymore and his wrist is empty, but he knows who he is, and
Calum's here. They're all here.
****
That night, Michael has one last dream.
It's the first one of its kind where he can tell he's actually dreaming. He's
not seeing from the eyes of fifteen-year old Michael anymore—he's standing
somewhere off to the side, watching, and everything has the soft, hazy quality
of real dreams.
The dream versions of him and Calum are alone in the music room at their high
school, sitting with acoustic guitars in their laps, practicing a song. Their
knees are touching. Calum's got a look of deep concentration on his face, and
he's fumbling to get a specific chord right, skinny fingers flashing sore, red
lines when he flexes his hand. Dream Michael glances furtively at the door and
grabs Calum's hand to press a kiss to the centre of his palm. Calum smiles
while Michael's eyes are closed, and then shoves his face away. They snipe at
each other, grinning over the top of their guitars, and it's as familiar and
endless as it's ever been.
They both are wearing bracelets. Shoelaces, with small golden beads on them.
End Notes
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