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“Tell me a story.”
The words are whispered into the fabric of Calum’s shirt, and Calum’s arms tighten around Michael as he hums in response. It’s familiar, the situation, because it’s what Michael always asks for when he’s tired, scared, lonely or just wants to hear Calum’s voice.
“Remember when we were kids?” Calum starts.
“Mhm.”
“Remember when we used to go to each other’s houses after school every Friday, and we’d have a sleepover? We’d tell ourselves we were going to stay up until midnight and have a feast but we’d always fall asleep around nine thirty. And after a while, you insisted we turn on an alarm so that we could wake up and eat our sweets. It didn’t work, though, ‘cause we either slept through it or ended up eating our sweets as if we were extras in some zombie movie. The first time we actually managed to stay up past midnight, though, we were twelve years old. It was night of my birthday – you were more excited for mine than you were for your own, God – and it was just us at the sleepover. And we weren’t tired at all, but as it got closer and closer to being my birthday you started to get a bit subdued. D’you remember that, Mikey?” Calum asks, nudging him slightly.
“Mhm,” Mikey mumbles, burying his face further into Calum’s chest because he knows what’s coming next, knows it because Calum loves telling that story. “Wish I didn’t.”
“Shut up, it was fucking cute. And I was all like, ‘are you okay, Mikey?’ because I didn’t want you to be sad on my fucking birthday-“
“Oh, so that was the real reason. I thought you cared.”
“-and you just wrapped your arms around your knees and shook your head. And I was like, ‘what’s up’? And you shook your head again, ‘cause you’ve always been a stubborn little bastard, but I knew if I waited long enough you’d tell me. So I just crawled over and sat next to you, waited for you to be ready to say it. It didn’t take long, ‘cause you just wanted some attention-“
“I did not, Calum Hood.”
“-but then you just kind of blurted it out. You said, ‘now that we’re both twelve, we’re going to be starting high school soon. What if we’re not at the same one? What if you forget me?’”
“I know, fuck,” Michael mumbles, fisting his hands in Calum’s shirt. “I was such a dumb, clingy kid.”
“It was cute,” Calum insists. “I just put my arm around you, ‘cause I hadn’t even thought about being away from you – like, whenever I was thinking about being in high school you were always in the picture - and promised that I’d follow you wherever you went. And it worked, didn’t it? I’m still here, six years later.”
“Fuck,” Michael says fiercely, grip tightening because Calum’s there, and he’s been there for the past ten years and he can’t ever leave Michael, not now. “Better stick to that promise.”
“Don’t plan on breaking it,” Calum hums, resting his cheek against the top of Michael’s head.
-
“Tell me a story.”
Luke and Ashton are already fast asleep in their bunks but Michael knows Calum’s still up because he can hear his restless shuffling and the clicking sound of him constantly locking and unlocking his phone.
“You should be asleep.”
“Tell me a story,” Michael repeats stubbornly, and Calum shifts again, sighing.
“If you’re gonna be a little bitch about it, I’ll tell you one you don’t want to hear,” he says.
“I always want to hear them,” Michael says. “‘S the sound of your voice.” It’s also the warm feeling that starts in his chest and spreads through his veins with each thud of his heart at knowing that Calum remembers all of these moments, still thinks back over times he spent with Michael, but Calum doesn’t need to know that.
(Given how well he knows Michael, he probably already does.)
“Fine, whatever. How about when I first became friends with Luke?” Michael groans. “Hey, you said you wanted to hear it. I can shut up and go to sleep if you want.”
“No, fuck, fine,” Michael says. “Get it over with.”
“Good,” Calum says, and Michael can hear the smirk in his voice, the fucking bastard. “Well. You hated Luke, as soon as we started high school. I thought he was kind of a cool guy, but I stuck with you because – well, because you were my best friend. But then there was one day where you weren’t in and I had Music all alone, and Luke offered to be my partner. He was all shy about it, like, ‘if you don’t want to that’s fine, I know you don’t like me but neither of us have a partner and I just thought we could work together, if you’d rather work alone that’s okay’. But because I’m not a total arsehole like you are, I was like ‘yeah, let’s work together’. And it was a laugh, actually, and I found out that he’s even cooler than I thought he was. But you were livid when you found out, weren’t you?”
“Don’t- just, just fucking finish it,” Michael says, because he doesn’t much like this story and Calum knows, the dickhead.
“I’m getting there. So, yeah. You weren’t the happiest of lads when you came back next lesson and found I’d already paired up with Luke. You didn’t talk to me for two whole days, actually.” He pauses, and Michael frowns. There’s no reason for a pause.
“What?” he asks, when the silence becomes uncomfortable.
“I missed you,” Calum admits quietly, as if lowering his voice is going to make them seem less like a confession. If anything, it makes it more of one. “I missed you so much, Mikey. It was only two days and I missed you.”
“I missed you too,” Michael says. “I had to hang out with fucking- fuckin’, what’s his face, James Straughan.”
“Yeah, but it didn’t seem like you missed me,” Calum says. “You seemed fine. So I had to pretend to be too, when really I spent all of lunch staring over at you laughing with James Straughan and his friends and wishing I could pull you away and into a hug and forget about it all.”
“I wanted to go over and sit with you instead, Michael says, “but you were sat with Luke and it was just- it was like rubbing salt into wounds, y’know? I felt…replaced. Yeah. I felt replaced.”
“Luke knew,” Calum says. “He said it was okay if we couldn’t be friends because I’d rather be friends with you, he understood that. He said he’d never want to get in between us.”
“Fuck,” Michael says lowly, because he hadn’t known that. Calum’s told this story a few times now, mainly when Michael’s being a bit of a prick and he wants him to shut up, but he’s never mentioned that. God, he feels like even more of an arsehole now. “I didn’t know that.”
“Yeah, well, now you do,” Calum says. “I don’t think anyone could ever come between us, anyway. I told him that, even though you were sitting half a room away laughing with James Straughan and ignoring me. Told him nobody could ever take me away from you.”
“Luke came close,” Michael says, and Calum huffs out a laugh.
“Only ‘cause you let him.” Michael pouts, because that’s not really fair.
“You shouldn’t have befriended my mortal enemy,” he says. “What kind of an awful best friend are you?”
“Oh, ‘m sorry,” Calum says sarcastically, “d’you want to turn back time and have me unfriend him? Where would we be now?”
“Not lying in a fucking coffin every night,” Michael mutters, because his nose nearly touches the ceiling if he rolls onto his back.
“Probably failing our HSCs,” Calum says. “Not living our dreams. Not friends with Jack Barakat.” Bastard. He knows that’s one of Michael’s weak points.
“Whatever,” Michael huffs. “We could have made it alone.”
“Mikey, c’mon. We weren’t good enough, messed around too much. We needed someone sensible like Luke to keep us in our place.”
“We would have been together, though.”
“We’re together now,” Calum points out. “And we always will be.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
Michael smiles at that, at the sincerity in Calum’s voice, and settles onto his back to go to sleep. Calum didn’t finish his story, but it’s okay. He got a promise instead.
-
“Tell me a story.”
“Jesus fucking Christ, Michael!” a shirtless Calum gasps, pulling his hand out of his trousers. “I was a bit busy, fuck! You could at least knock.”
“Were you wanking?” Michael asks, shutting the door behind him. Calum scowls at him.
“No, I shoved my hand down my pants for the fun of it,” he says. “Love feeling my flaccid dick.”
“Shut up,” Michael says automatically, moving to stand next to the bed. “Move up.”
“Michael,” Calum groans. “Please, c’mon. I never get to have a wank.”
“You can do it later,” Michael insists. “I wanna hear a story.”
“Here’s a story. One time, a poor, deprived boy called Calum wanted to have a wank but his annoying best friend wouldn’t leave him alone long enough,” Calum says. “Now piss off and let me have an orgasm.” Michael pulls a face.
“Three out of ten for plotline,” he says, and Calum groans, tips his head back in frustration. Michael wants to kiss his neck.
“Mikey, please,” he says desperately. “I was so fucking close.”
“Should have locked the door,” Michael shrugs, figuring his best bet is physically forcing himself onto the bed. “Anyway, if you were so close, why didn’t you take your pants off?”
“Do I need to explain my wanking routine to you?” Calum huffs, but he lets Michael climb all over him until he’s nestled into Calum’s side. Calum slings an unwilling arm around him, still pink-cheeked and slightly wild-eyed. Michael kind of likes Calum like this.
“Go on, indulge me,” Michael says. “Wanna hear a story anyway.”
“Are you serious?” Calum asks, because there’s a very fine line that Michael sees with blurry eyes, but when Michael shrugs and mutters a quick ‘yeah, why not’, Calum sighs.
“Alright. I can’t believe I’m doing this, Christ. Okay, whatever. I- usually I’m kind of turned on already, yeah? Like, I wait until I’m properly hard to start doing anything, like, y’know. I’ll watch porn sometimes, just palm myself a bit until I’m fully- fully hard, oh my God, I feel like a sex line. And ‘cause we don’t exactly have the most time ever when we’re on the road, I tend to- tend to, uh, not take my trousers off?”
“You have the time to take your shirt off but not your trousers?” Michael asks.
“Yeah, ‘cause like, if I have to leave without finishing it’s fine to be shirtless, but not that okay to have my balls hanging out.”
“You walk out of the shower like that,” Michael points out and Calum flicks him on the arm, making him pout until Calum rubs the spot, soothing it almost absent-mindedly.
“So, like. Yeah. Trousers on. I palm myself through my jeans until I’m like, really worked up anyway, so that it’ll be quick when I- when I get my dick out, Christ.” Calum’s blushing properly now, a fierce tinge to his cheeks, but Michael’s heard him dirty talk before and knows his mouth gets a lot filthier than this. This isn’t even dirty talk. This is just a description of an event. “And, uh. Yeah. I’ll um, touch myself a bit before I get my- before I pull it out, like, hand down my pants. And then I, like, properly wrap my hand around myself, and it’s usually a quick job by then, just a bit of imagination and sometimes a bit of porn, and I’m- I’m, y’know.”
“Mm?” Michael’s a prick, and he’s going to make him say it.
“Oh my God, you absolute wanker. Then I come. Are you happy?”
“Yeah,” Michael says, humming contentedly as he hooks his chin over Calum’s shoulder, pressing a soft kiss to Calum’s neck because Calum’s his best friend and he’s allowed. “I liked that.”
“Liked what, giving me blue balls and using me as some kind of perverted sex toy?”
“Yep,” Michael says happily. “Sorry about your blue balls.” He’s definitely not, because he’s a bit turned on himself at the idea of Calum getting off.
“Yeah, of course you are,” Calum says grumpily, and Michael lets his eyes wander down to Calum’s crotch. He’s still noticeably hard – which is understandable, he’s a teenage boy – and it’s- kind of hot, actually? Weirdly hot, but it doesn’t really matter because it’s Calum and Michael’s used to feeling all kinds of things about Calum that would freak him out if he felt them about Ashton or Luke but don’t bother him at all simply because it is Calum.
“It was hot,” Michael tells him, kissing along his neck to his jaw and making Calum’s breath hitch. “I liked that story.”
“‘M not telling it again,” Calum says, tilting his head slightly to the left to allow better access for Michael’s small, gentle kisses. “One-time deal only.”
“We’ll see,” Michael mumbles against Calum’s jaw, kissing along it until he’s reached the corner of his mouth. “Might make you tell me something worse next time.”
“I’ll tell you all the different ways I’ve got planned of killing you,” Calum says, lips barely moving because of the proximity of Michael’s.
“Can’t be very effective methods, if you’ve had to plan numerous ones,” Michael notes.
“Shut up,” Calum says automatically. “Planned the rest for fun, obviously.”
“Mhm, sure,” Michael says, smiling a little as he presses his last kiss to Calum’s lips.
-
“Tell me a story.”
“Y’know what?” Calum says, not looking up from his bass. “I’m going to put that on your fucking gravestone. Tell me a story, Calum, tell me a story, I’m a needy little boy who’s still mentally seven years old.” He says the last part in a mocking tone, a few octaves higher than either of their voices, and Michael scowls as he sits down opposite Calum, cross-legged on the floor.
“I’ll make sure your gravestone says a massive wanker righteously killed by Michael Clifford,” he says, and Calum huffs out a laugh, still absent-mindedly playing something on the bass. Michael watches his fingers move, appreciates the way his hands spread across the neck of the bass.
“What’s that?” he asks after a moment, and Calum flattens his fingers against the neck, muting the strings.
“Just something I was messing around with,” he says.
“Sounds good,” Michael says, and Calum smiles.
“Thanks,” he says, and it’s kind of fond and gentle. “Wrote you a song the other day, y’know.”
“For me to sing or for me to hear?” Michael asks.
“Both, if you want,” Calum shrugs, but Michael can see that there’s some kind of tension there, some kind of nervousness. “D’you wanna hear it?”
“Yeah,” Michel says, leaning back. Calum nods, lays the bass down next to him and picks up one of the slightly battered steel-strings they’ve got lying around.
“‘S not much, yeah?” Calum says, and that’s definitely nervousness in his voice.
“Wasn’t expecting it to be,” Michael says, and Calum scowls.
“Dickhead,” he mutters, before he starts singing.
It’s not not much, not to Michael. It might not make any sense to anyone outside of the two of them, lyrically, but it’s so them that it makes Michael rise onto his knees, shuffle forwards slightly and stop Calum in the middle of singing with a fierce kiss. Calum kisses back immediately, half-desperate and like it being three a.m. has got to his head, got to his heart, making him pull Michael closer, as close as he can get with the guitar in the way.
They kiss for what feels like half an hour, until Michael thinks he’s suffered from multiple organ failure, until Calum’s lips are moving against his all lazy and slow and sweet way and his hands have slipped to Michael’s waist.
“Fuck,” Michael says when they break apart. It’s not like they haven’t kissed before – far from it; they’ve been kissing each other constantly since they were maybe twelve, thirteen – but it’s never been like that, never had the emotional weight of two hearts at three in the morning behind it.
“Yeah,” Calum says, huffing out a laugh that hits Michael’s face. “Christ, didn’t know my songs were that good.”
“They’re not,” Michael assures him, tracing the line of Calum’s cheekbone with his forefinger. “They’re terrible. I kissed you to shut you up.”
“Didn’t have to kiss me for like, ten days straight,” Calum says, and Michael pouts.
“Don’t question me,” he says.
“I didn’t question you,” Calum points out. “I showed you the error of your ways.”
“You’re not Jesus, Cal.”
“Might as well be.” Michael grins and Calum grins too, and they stay like that for a few minutes, eyes memorising every part of the other’s face.
“I meant it, y’know,” Calum says.
“Meant what?”
“Meant it all.”
“Thanks for the descriptiveness,” Michael says sarcastically. Calum rolls his eyes.
“I take it back,” he says.
“I’ll take you back,” Michael says.
“I never left you.”
It’s meant as a joke, meant to be aha, dickhead, your comeback didn’t work, but Michael realises that it’s true and ends up smiling instead.
“Stop smiling like that, God,” Calum says. “You look like Chucky.”
This time Michael really does kiss him to shut him up.
-
“Tell me a story.”
Michael’s expecting at least a long-suffering groan, an exasperated eye roll or four, but he gets nothing except a simple hum in response.
“Remember when we were kids?”
“Kind of a broad spectrum,” Michael says, sitting down on the grass next to Calum. “D’you wanna be a bit more specific?”
“I don’t know if I can be,” Calum says, not tearing his gaze away from the night-lit city spread out in front of them. They’re in LA, maybe, or San Fransisco, and Luke and Ashton had decided it would be a good idea to drive up a hill and watch the city at night. Luke’s sat a little way off now, Ashton standing behind him just smiling fondly at him. Michael wonders when he’s going to get his phone out to take yet another picture of Luke. “I think maybe it was the same when I was seven as it was when I was seventeen.”
“What was, your mental age?” Michael says. “This is a terrible story. I want a refund.”
“Being in love with you.”
It kind of takes Michael’s breath away just a little bit to hear those words from Calum. Is that what this is? Is that what all the kisses, the promises, the songs, the nights, the days, the memories- is that what it is? Is it being in love?
“What d’you mean?” he asks after a moment, when he trusts himself to speak again.
“I dunno, like,” Calum says, shrugging. “I feel the same way about you now as I did when I was seven.”
“What does that even mean?” Michael asks.
“Means nothing ever changed,” Calum says. “Means I wanted to kiss you when I was fifteen, and I’ll want to kiss you when I’m fifty. Means forever.” Michael swallows.
“You think we’re in love?”
“Never said ‘we’,” Calum says. “I said I was.”
“Yeah, but if you are, so am I,” Michael says, shrugging and picking at the hem of his shirt. “I didn’t think I was old enough to know what love felt like.”
“I think I fell in love with you when I was a kid,” Calum says. “Maybe that’s why I never noticed, ‘cause it was like, ever-present.”
“How can you fall in love when you’re seven years old?” Michael whispers. “How could you fall in love with me?”
“Don’t say that,” Calum says. “I’m not- I don’t know for sure, but it makes sense. I think it made sense as soon as I met you. It all kind of clicked into place, like- like yeah. It felt like yeah.”
“I know, but…fuck, Cal,” Michael says. “Seven years old.”
“I saw a shooting star when I was seven,” Calum says. “Didn’t even make a wish. I turned my back on it, ‘cause I had everything I needed in you. You shone so bright, Mikey, fuck. You still do. It’s like- y’know when you look at Luke or Ashton? And you’re like, hell yeah, these guys are my best friends. But then when I look at you, it’s different. It’s like you’re just mine, not like it is with Luke and Ashton where we’re all best friends on an equal level. It’s like you’re still shining but only for me.”
“I am yours,” Michael says, and it kind of- it clicks. He’s Calum’s.
He’s something to Luke, something to Ashton, something to the fans and to his family – he’s a best friend, he’s an idol, he’s a son, a nephew, a cousin – but he’s none of that to Calum. He’s just- he’s just Calum’s.
“Yeah?” Calum says, when Michael exhales shakily.
“Yeah,” Michael says. “Just yours.”
Calum’s hand finds Michael’s in the darkness, squeezes it, and Michael feels seven all over again.