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Calum's always the first person Michael rings in an emergency.
Like right now, for example. Right now's an emergency.
"What the fuck do you want, Clifford?" Calum groans, voice tinny through the shitty phone line, but he's picked up after the first ring so Michael knows he doesn't mean it.
"I need help," Michael says, trying to stop the phone from slipping down his chest from where it’s pressed between his shoulder and his ear. "Green, blue or black?" There's a moment of silence.
"What the fuck are you talking about?" Calum asks.
"Just pick," Michael insists. "It's for a good cause." There's another pause.
"You're not dyeing your hair again, are you?" Calum asks suspiciously. "Because we spoke about this. We spoke about it and banned you from doing it."
"You can't ban me from dyeing my own hair," Michael says, and it comes out slightly sulkier than he'd intended.
"You're going to have less hair than Gollum by your nineteenth birthday if you carry on the way you're going," Calum remarks. Michael scoffs.
“You underestimate my hair power,” he tells Calum. “It’s survived this long.” Calum snorts.
“Barely,” he mutters. “Mikey, your hair feels like straw. Just give it a bit of a break, yeah?” Michael pouts, which is kind of useless because Calum can’t see him. Calum probably knows he’s pouting anyway.
“It’s my hair,” he says.
“I don’t want us to be known as Three Sexy Australians Plus A Balding Old Man,” Calum says.
“Hey,” Michael whines. “Who says bald men can’t be sexy?”
“I do,” Calum says firmly. He shuffles around a bit, and Michael hears a kind of soft crackling sound that sounds like bedsheets.
“Are you still in bed?” he asks, surprised.
“I just woke up,” Calum says defensively. Michael rolls his eyes.
“Cal, even I’m out of bed,” he says. “It’s like, four in the afternoon.”
“You’re still jetlagged,” Calum says. “I was up late doing important things.” Michael snorts.
“Important things like wanking?” he asks, ignoring the filthy look he gets from the mother standing next to the hair chalk with her daughter.
“Shut up,” Calum mutters, but he sounds kind of embarrassed so Michael knows he’s hit the nail on the head.
“You disgust me,” Michael tells him.
“You act as if you’re an innocent young virgin,” Calum says.
“You don't know that,” Michael says loftily. “I could be.” Calum snorts derisively, which is kind of fair because he'd fucked Michael just last night.
“As if,” he says. “I’m going to get up and shower.”
“You could just tell me you’re going for a wank,” Michael says casually, and the mother throws him another death glare. “Sorry, hang on- sorry, ma’am.”
“I’m not,” Calum says petulantly. “And stop giving our band a bad name in public.”
“I’m not,” Michael protests as the mother pulls her daughter away, “I was doing her a favour.”
“Whatever,” Calum says, sighing. “I’ll see you later, yeah? Love you.”
“Love you too,” Michael says absent-mindedly, because he’s just spotted some pink hair dye and is wondering whether he could make it punk rock.
“Mikey?”
“Mhm?”
“Go pink, if you can find any. ‘S pretty punk rock.” Michael grins.
“You’re the best,” he says, reaching for the pink and forgetting that he’s already holding green, blue and black, making them all clatter to the floor. He hears Calum snort and mutter something that sounds like no wonder Ashton went straight for Luke as soon as this band started, Christ and hangs up, which is kind of good because it means Michael has proper use of his left arm again but kind of bad because what a little bitch.
“Fuck,” he mutters, dropping to his knees and picking them all up, shoving them into the first shelf he sees (toothpaste).
Pink is definitely punk rock. Especially if Calum thinks so.
-
Michael has literally had it up to his damn eyeballs with Luke and Ashton. He’s absolutely sick of their endless flirting, blushing, blatant staring and quickly looking away when the other sees. He’s sick of all the stupid song lyrics he keeps finding strewn around the house that are clearly about Ashton, and he’s actually pretty sick of their existences generally.
So he calls Calum.
“What do you want?” Calum asks when he picks up. “I’m next door.”
“I know,” Michael huffs, because he can hear Calum’s voice through the wall. “I want to have a top secret meeting about Luke and Ashton.”
“Well, come here then,” Calum says.
“No,” Michael says. “Come here.”
“Mikey,” Calum whines. “I’m not your bitch.”
“Cal,” Michael whines right back, because he is the master of whining and he refuses to be out-whined. “If you loved me, you’d come here.” There’s a pause, and then Calum groans, all long-suffering as if being Michael’s friend is a hardship.
“I hate you,” he tells Michael, and then he hangs up but Michael’s grinning smugly because a moment later Calum shuffles into the room, wrapped in his blanket.
“Come here,” Michael demands, and Calum rolls his eyes but flops down on the bed. Michael rolls onto his side to face him, and Calum noses into his blanket and looks up at Michael, blinking. He looks kind of cute.
“You’re cute,” Michael decides to tell him, and Calum frowns, moving the blanket from where it’s covering his nose to just under his chin.
“That’s the nicest thing you’ve said to me since you told me my eyes were ‘sort of nicely coloured in some lighting’,” he says suspiciously. “What do you want?”
“I want to talk about Luke and Ashton and how the sexual tension between them is going to tear this band apart,” Michael says, choosing to ignore the first part of Calum’s statement. “I already want to quit.”
“It’s cute,” Calum says. Michael makes a pained face at him.
“We’re cute,” he says. “They’re pathetic.”
“It’s budding romance,” Calum insists. Michael snorts.
“Have you even seen some of the lyrics Luke’s been leaving around? Our band’s going to go to shit if he doesn’t clean up his act. He rhymed ‘want’ with ‘about’ in one song. I don’t know how he’s going to make that work.”
“A Texan accent?” Calum suggests, and Michael hums interestedly.
“I could go for that,” he says. “Five Seconds of Cowboys.”
“Cowgirls, if Luke and Ashton would fucking sort themselves out,” Calum says, and Michael giggles. Calum grins, and it’s cute because it’s him still getting happy that he can make Michael laugh. That’s like, two cute things Calum’s done in the space of five minutes. Maybe the sexual tension between Luke and Ashton is starting to get to Michael.
“What can we do?” Michael asks. Calum shrugs.
“Lock them in a cupboard?” he says.
“Have you seen Luke’s legs?” Michael says. “We’d need a different wardrobe just for them.”
“True,” Calum muses. “We could go for the cliché rigged game of truth or dare?” Michael frowns.
“How is that cliché?” he asks. “How many times have you played a rigged game of truth or dare?”
“Remember that time that we made you ‘accidentally’ sext Luke’s dad?” Calum says, and Michael squawks indignantly.
“You bastard!” he yells, kicking at Calum’s shins because he doesn’t want to move his hands from the warmth of the blanket. “That was a traumatising experience for everybody involved! I can’t even look at Luke’s dad anymore!” Calum’s laughing too much to respond, so Michael kicks at him some more before rolling onto his other side with a huff.
“Hey, hey, Mikey,” Calum says, shuffling up the bed so he’s pressed right up against Michael’s back, essentially spooning him. “‘M sorry.” Michael huffs again, but doesn’t say anything because he wants Calum to apologise some more.
“Mikey?” Calum asks, hooking his chin on Michael’s shoulder. Michael shrugs it off. “C’mon, don’t be mad at me. You know I can’t stand it.” Michael still doesn’t say anything.
“I love you?” Calum tries. “And, uh. Your hair. And your eyes. And when you smile.”
“Keep going,” Michael says. “Flattery gets you places.”
“Um,” Calum says, “I love your sense of humour. And the way you get all grumpy when we wake you up early in the morning and won’t cuddle anyone except me. And your obsession with Jack Barakat.”
“Really?” Michael asks in surprise. Calum always groans and throws nearby objects at Michael until he shuts up whenever he starts talking about Jack Barakat.
“Nah,” Calum says, kissing Michael’s shoulder softly, “but am I forgiven?”
“Fine,” Michael says grumpily, rolling back over. “But only because we need to plan how to get Luke and Ashton together.”
“Fine,” Calum says, but he’s smiling because he knows Michael’s weak where Calum’s concerned.
-
Things are kind of going to plan (which was unexpected, since the plan was concocted by Calum and Michael). Michael had dragged Luke out for a ‘necessary shopping trip, Hemmings, ‘cause you don’t own a single pair of jeans that aren’t ripped at the knee and apparently don’t own a single pair of underwear generally and we’re all sick of you stealing ours’ whilst Calum had convinced Ashton to go on a blind date. Then Michael had ushered Luke into the restaurant, telling him he had a brilliant blind date planned for him under the name of ‘Barakat’.
(“I swear to God,” Calum had said, shaking his head, when Michael had made the booking.
“Don’t blaspheme,” Michael had said curtly, and Calum had stared at him in disbelief before leaving the room.)
Luke had gone with it, and although he’d seemed kind of surprised and awkward when he’d seen Ashton sitting at the table the two of them had actually gone with it, and seem to be chatting half-shyly. Michael’s already told Calum he’s sleeping in his room tonight, because he can tell this is going to end in sex and his room is right next to Luke’s and opposite Ashton’s.
So now, due to their ingenious plan and it actually working, Michael’s bored, which he deems an emergency. Which means he can call Calum.
“What?” Calum asks tiredly when he picks up. “I’m trying to watch them.” He’s sitting on the other side of the restaurant from Michael, so Michael can’t actually see him, but it’s nice to know he’s in the same room as him anyway.
“Me too,” Michael says, “but they’re actually doing alright. And I’m bored.”
“What makes you think I’m going to entertain you?” Calum asks grumpily.
“Tell me a story,” Michael demands, and Calum sighs.
“One day there was a really irritating fucker called Michael Clifford who wouldn’t leave the demi-god Calum Hood alone and so Calum went off and befriended better people,” he says. Michael pouts.
“You’re mean,” he tells Calum. “Tell me a real story.”
“Tell yourself a story,” Calum mutters.
“That’s no fun,” Michael says. “Tell me the story of how we became best friends.”
“You know that story,” Calum says. “You were there.”
“I don’t tell it to myself like you tell it to me,” Michael says.
“I’ve told you the story at least thirty thousand times over the last few years,” Calum says.
“Make it thirty thousand and one,” Michael says stubbornly, and Calum groans for a good five seconds.
“Fine,” he says, exasperated. “So you were the world’s most annoying kid, right? And you used to get in trouble all the time. But I kind of liked that about you, the weird dorky-badass limbo you were in. And one day I forgot my English homework and got a detention, and you told Mr McMillan that the reason his marriage was failing might be because he couldn’t stop staring at you in lessons – which, by the way, was because you had bright green hair – and got a detention too. So we were both in this stupid room, right, with Mr McMillan staring at us as I did my English homework and you did fuck all, and then some Year Seven came running in crying and yelling something about Miss Parker and a staircase. And Mr McMillan ran out with her and you turned to me and you were all like ‘I can’t believe you’re actually writing that shit’ and I was like ‘well you handed it in so you did it already’ and you grinned at me and came and sat next to me and bothered me for the rest of detention.”
“Bothered you?” Michael asks, offended. “I provided entertainment in an otherwise unentertaining environment.”
“Bothered me,” Calum breezes. “And then you told me we should hang out more and since neither of us had anything to do that evening we went to the park and got drunk and laughed together and you played me I Miss You on guitar and made me cry and we got drunker and laughed more and we’ve kind of been inseparable since that day.” Michael smiles.
“Who says teenage drinking never did anything?” he asks, and he can hear the sappiness in his own voice. Calum laughs softly.
“Yeah,” he says. “It was the best day of my life.”
“Aw,” Michael coos. “That’s so cute.”
“Shut up,” Calum mutters, sounding embarrassed. “You’re meant to say it back.”
“The best day of my life was the day Jack Barakat followed me on Twitter,” Michael says, and Calum groans.
“Way to ruin a sentimental moment,” he says.
“I can’t help it,” Michael says. He pauses for a second, before he adds a quick; “It was the best day of my life too, Cal, ‘n I love you a lot” as almost an afterthought.
“Damn right,” Calum murmurs, and Michael can hear the smile in his voice.
-
“Calum,” Michael says, as soon as the dial tone cuts out, “how mad do you think Ashton would be if-“
“How mad would I be if what?” someone asks, and it’s Ashton’s voice at the other end of the phone line, not Calum’s.
“Never mind,” Michael says. “Goodbye, Irwin.”
“What?” Ashton asks. “You can’t just-“ Michael hangs up, flicks further down his contacts to find the contact saved as ‘Cuzmuffin’ with a little blushy-smiley emoji next to it. It makes him smile every time he sees the word, reminds him of all the times Calum’s cuddled up next to him and whispered it in his ear along preceded by the words I love you or I miss you or you’re my best friend in the whole world, and I kind of want to marry you just so I never have to be away from you.
“Mikey?” Calum asks when he picks up. “What’s Ashton yelling about?”
“I called him accidentally,” Michael breezes. “That’s not important. What’s important is the question of how mad he would be if I bought a kitten.”
“Michael,” Calum groans. “He’s mad enough about you wanting to know how mad he’d be about something and then hanging up. You can’t buy a kitten.”
“I want a kitten,” Michael pouts. “They’re so cute.” He pokes his finger through the squares of the cage and strokes it over one of the tiny cats’ heads, making it whine and purr.
“I know, but how sustainable is it?” Calum says sensibly. Michael really, really hates sensible Calum.
“More sustainable than your dick,” Michael tells him.
“Don’t buy a kitten,” Calum says. “I doubt even a hardcore fuck session with Luke could make Ashton less angry about that.”
“That’s a lie,” Michael says immediately. “Orgasms solve everything.”
“Wish I’d known that in my Maths HSC exam,” Calum says drily, and Michael wishes he could flip him off. “Seriously, Mikey. Don’t buy a kitten.” He sounds genuinely serious about it, which is the only reason Michael retracts his finger from the cage the kittens are being kept in and sighs.
“Fine,” he says. “You owe me, though.”
“I owe you for not ruining all of our lives?” Calum asks in disbelief. “I don’t think so, Clifford.”
“Hey,” Michael says accusingly, “you were the one who said orgasms solved everything.” He wasn't, but he doubts Calum remembers that.
“Are you asking for a handjob?”
“No,” Michael says, affronted. “How low do you think my standards are? I want a blowjob at the very least.”
“I’m not giving you a blowjob because you can’t have a cat,” Calum says.
“Well, I might have to put up an ad for a new best friend, then,” Michael tells him.
“Where the hell are you going to advertise that?” Calum asks. “Pornhub?”
“Excuse me?” Michael asks. “Redtube, mimimum. I can’t believe you’ve sunk this low, Hood.”
“You wish I were sinking low,” Calum mutters. Michael pouts, and doesn’t reply until Calum sighs defeatedly.
“Fine,” he says. “Fine, I’ll give you a blowjob. But later. And only if you return the favour.”
“Deal,” Michael says happily, because he loves sucking Calum’s dick anyway and Calum knows it.
Michael walks out of the shop beaming.
-
(It strikes him later on, when they’re both lying in bed cuddled together but still breathless from their former activities, that maybe him and Calum aren’t normal best friends. Maybe they’re kind of like a relationship mixed with best friends, because they’re not technically together and they’re not technically exclusive but they fuck each other and don’t fuck anyone else. And Michael knows neither of them would want to fuck anyone else, although an exception must be made concerning Michael and Jack Barakat.)
-
It’s four a.m., and Michael’s having an emergency.
He’s sat outside because it’s a clear night and he can see the stars and he’d thought it had been a good idea, a nice view of the stars and open air for him to think in. And it kind of had been, until he’d started thinking a little bit too deeply and started reliving old memories and bringing old scars back to life and it’s all starting to get a little too much for just his own mind, so he calls Calum.
“It’s four in the morning,” Calum groans when he picks up, but he sounds fully awake so Michael knows he’s probably just finished wanking or something.
“Cal,” Michael says, and his voice sounds small even to his own ears.
“Shit,” Calum says, suddenly serious, “are you okay, Mikey?”
“No,” Michael says. “Can you come outside?”
“What are you doing outsi- yeah, yeah, okay, hang on.” He hangs up, and Michael’s left clutching the phone so hard his knuckles go white, like it’s his only lifeline.
“Mikey?” Calum’s voice is a little distant, but when Michael twists around he sees him jogging to the middle of the lawn where Michael’s sat. He reaches Michael and sits down next to him but doesn’t touch him, doesn’t know whether he should or not yet. “What’s happened?” Michael shakes his head, because he doesn’t know how he’s going to put it into words. I’m not good enough for anyone sounds really fucking pathetic, and I’m not good enough for you sounds even worse.
“Just,” Michael says. “Life. Kinda sucks. I kinda suck.” Calum doesn’t even pick up on the obvious blowjob joke, ignoring it in favour of handing his hoodie to a shivering Michael. Michael kind of loves him.
“What’s this about?” he asks gently, and Michael sighs as he pulls the hoodie on.
“Don’t you ever think about it when you see the stars?” he asks. “How irrelevant we are in comparison to them, how irrelevant you are. I wasted my first seventeen years doing fuck all at school, and then I dropped out with no qualifications to tour the world playing music and making very little money. But what have I actually done, y’know? Like, I’ve written a few songs, I’ve made a few people happy. I’ve not done anything nobody else has done, nothing I’ll be remembered for. I’m only going to live another, like, sixty years, and what am I going to do? What am I going to do that makes anything worth it? What does it matter what I do anyway, since all my hard work won’t matter in the long run? It’ll get buried with me when I die, burnt with me when the world burns, die with me when the universe dies. It’s not going to matter. I don’t matter. Nothing I do matters.” He exhales, kind of worn down after saying all that but still having so much more to say.
“And like,” he continues, “I’m nothing special. I get hate all the time on Twitter and most of the time I don’t let it get to me, ‘cause it’s just stupid stuff like ‘hey Michael you’re ugly’ or whatever, but sometimes there’s something like- like, people always say that I’m untalented and that I don’t deserve the recognition I have and maybe that’s true but it still kinda hurts, y’know? And I always get people saying that I probably don’t matter to you guys and that you’re all going to move on and get married and have kids and fuck, Calum, I can’t have you move on and get married and have kids. I want to move on with you. I want to marry you. I wouldn’t mind kids.” Calum laughs softly, pulling blades of grass out from the lawn and tearing them to shreds.
“You’re an idiot, Michael Clifford,” he says after a while, shaking his head. Michael huffs, because that’s not a very friendly thing to say when someone’s just spilt their most secret secrets to you. “Who cares what we matter to the universe? We’re our own little stars. You’re my little star. And who cares about what happens in the future? I’m going into the future with you, and I’m not going to forget all your hard work or anything you’ve ever done. Ever. I still remember when you made me a paper crown in Year Three because I was ‘the prettiest in the whole class’, and when you tripped over Miss Campbell on her way into assembly and made her fall flat on her face, and when you wrote your first song.” He pauses. “By the way, if you’re going to propose, you could do it more romantically. I don’t think our kids’ll appreciate this version when they get to school and want to show off their romantic parents.”
Michael kind of wants to cry.
“Who cares about the stars?” Calum says. “Who cares about all the shit up there? We’re down here. Stop trying to be a star, Mikey, ‘cause you’re you. I didn’t fall in love with a star, I fell in love with Michael Clifford.”
That kind of winds Michael, makes him feel like Calum’s words were some kind of iron weights that crushed his lungs. He knows Calum loves him, and he knows he loves Calum, but he’s never thought that it might be in love love. There’s a massive difference, and he’s never stopped to think about it, just gone with the handjobs and blowjobs and sex and kisses and cuddles and memories and long car journeys and laughs and jokes and everything that had come in between.
But when he thinks about it, thinks about how he feels about Calum and thinks about how he feels about the other boys – yeah, that’s- that’s in love love. That’s- he’s in love with Calum Hood.
He waits for the moment of oh shit I’m in love with my best friend oh fuck this wasn’t meant to happen I’m mostly straight I swear I am but it never comes. He just feels kind of…easy.
“Oh,” Michael says, and he can’t help the surprise that comes out in his own voice. “I think I’m in love with you, Calum.” Calum laughs.
“You think?” he teases. “Charming.”
“Shut up,” Michael says. “I’ve never thought about it before.” He pauses, because Calum- Calum’s clearly thought about it, and…well, why? “Why have you?” Calum shrugs.
“I’m not as happy-go-lucky as you, Mikey,” he says.
“You never told me,” Michael says.
“It’s hardly something I can slip into everyday conversation,” Calum says, carding a hand through his hair. “‘Hey, Mikey, I’m in love with you. Want a blowjob?’” Michael shrugs.
“Wouldn’t have said no,” he says, and Calum snorts. “Wouldn’t have fazed me.”
“Really?” Calum says, avoiding Michael’s gaze. He’s picking at the grass again. He hesitates for a moment before adding; “I was scared.”
“Of what?”
“Of, like. What if you weren’t in love with me?”
“You idiot,” Michael says fondly. “‘Course I’m in love with you.”
“Well, you didn’t figure it out yourself until three minutes ago,” Calum points out.
“‘S ‘cause I didn’t notice that I fell in love with you,” Michael says defensively. “It just kinda…happened.”
“I remember the first time I realised I was in love with you,” Calum says, and he’s still not looking at Michael but he’s grinning down at the grass now. “You were dancing around the kitchen half-naked singing to Hello Brooklyn so loud you were more shouting than anything else, and I was just watching from the sofa and giggling at you. And I sat there and thought, ‘how can I be in love with this idiot? How can I want to spend the rest of my life with this absolute loser?’ and it just kinda- it hit me all at once. That I was in love with you.”
“Nice to know that you realised you were in love with me when I was almost naked,” Michael says. “I’m glad my body is appreciated.” Calum snorts.
“Shut up,” he says fondly. “How about you kiss me now, yeah?”
“If you insist,” Michael says, but he’s grinning when he turns around and kisses Calum, kisses him in a whole new light because it’s not just I love you anymore, it’s I’m in love with you and nobody else.
(Michael wakes up with little memories written all over his arms and chest in permanent marker and Calum’s terrible handwriting, with badly drawn stars between them, and a lopsided heart with Calum’s name in drawn over where Calum thinks Michael’s own heart is. He wears a jumper all day rather than washing it all off.)