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If Callum had known that getting involved with Ben Mitchell would end in this scenario, with the latter sprawled out on a hospital bed with all kinds of tubes and wires sticking in and out of him… he wouldn’t have got so involved. He’d scolded himself repeatedly, even when it was happening. He made a terrible mistake. This was the last in a long line of stupid decisions.
His first was Whit, the girl he convinced himself that he loved. He’d convinced her to love him too, but she was the girl he’d left to sob on her wedding day. He’d broken her heart. He couldn’t seem to stop hurting people. Everyone in his life seemed to walk away bleeding, if not dead. Those who should have cared for him, his dad? Stuart? They saw him for who he truly was. A soft, reckless, failure. A guy who thought with his heart never with his thick-head. His second, was Stu. He should never have told him anything. Clout ran thicker than water though, as Mick had told him.
In the silence of the ICU, Ben’s past words hung in his head like neon signs illuminating every fuckup in over-saturated colour. They were loud, screaming “You’re not worth the effort” maybe he wasn’t, especially if they reward the effort like this.
The room was more like a morgue than a hospital, the walls white and peeling where the floor was sticky. It might have just been his imagination, but there was a definite pull at his feet that made him feel like the ground was trying to swallow him up. Would’ve been nice for the ground do so earlier, he thought, before all this had happened.
Yet there was another part of him that was grateful. Not that he’d admit it to anyone.
The heart is a strange thing, a thrumming, powerful engine for humanity which drove everything that he wanted, everything that he feared, but it hurt too. His heart sat in his chest like a stone as he watched the blips of the monitor rise and fall. The picture on the black and green screen was as much a rollercoaster as the rest of this mess was. Where he was right now a definite dip, a canyon he’d thrown himself down, without question. He’d found time to think about how much he regretted it. He had nightmares and woke in a cold sweat.
Now he hung back from the scene. He was afraid if he approached something might go wrong, on another hand he didn’t want to acknowledge that this was what was happening. Drawing a deep breath and summoning as much courage as he could he stepped forward. He’d not come to stare, he had something to say. It felt okay now, it felt urgent. He’d otherwise procrastinate saying anything. Running away from the responsibility was his speciality, acting true to the child he was. He ran away from the wedding. Or it felt like he had, and the army? Well… he was infamous for how that had ended.
Breathing hard through his mouth he sat beside Ben and picked up his prone hand. He breathed a deep sigh. He knew the other man couldn’t feel it, but every time that he touched Ben Mitchell’s skin there was a buzz which shot up his arm, a bolt of electricity which sizzled even down in his bones. It was a connection, raw and physical. He’d never felt that with Whit. There were moments in the heat of their arguments (and they’d had many in the few short months they’d been involved) where he just wanted to touch, to hold, to get the feeling of butterflies rising in his chest again. It was a feeling that made his head spin. It confused, scared and excited him in equal measure.
Callum didn’t want the heat of Ben’s anger, he wanted the warmth of him, the precious rare softness at the core of him that just wanted to find someone.
It was a shame that he hid it behind a raging inferno, too weak to be unprotected. Now his tenderness was on full display, the ultimate show of vulnerability. Only he was unconscious. The siege at the Vic meant they’d been the closest they’d been in ages, but the crowd and the situation, demanded that he keep it strictly professional. Sonia had looked at them like she knew, which had made his heart thud all the more, but she was kept plenty busy. There were a few times the previous day he could have been outed, shown up for the man that he was… It was almost kind of Hunter to get involved. Shame what had to happen to him though.
It was time to set things right. If Ben died too, Callum thought, at least he’d come clean, and if he lived… well who knew what it would lead to. He hoped, somewhere deep inside that it would be positive. He shifted around on the bed, trying naively to get comfortable, then coughed three times into the silence. “So uh… Yeah.”
“Uh.” he repeated, feeling a rush of heat explode in his cheeks. Yesterday it had felt natural, less awkward because at least he was getting some response. But now? It was like talking to a brick wall. Still with his hand covering Ben’s, and his thumb circling over the other man’s skin he spoke.
“Hey Ben” He began, “It’s me… Cal. Your mate- now I know I’m not as much of one as Jay but still, ya get where I’m goin’.” he shook his head. This was stupid. He plunged on anyway. “look, I just- thank you. Not for the fights, the punches, the arguments. I din’t enjoy them that much. But for understanding me.” He imagined being laughed at, and chose to explain “I would’ve said this all before but, you know, the situation didn’t seem right, you know? And you know, I was gettin’ married.”
“Anyway, it was good of ya. Even though you had the dirt on me, ya kept it quiet. You let me figure out my shit on my own” He finally breathed out, it came out shakey and hitched.
”I was proper scared of what you said, that night… after I punched ya. I thought I was safe here. I didn’t have to deal with anything’. I could just be Halfway, the clumsy lad that nobody took seriously. I was the clumsy lad that got the girl and lived a happily ever after once he got out the army. You had the power to destroy that, you had every right, you were angry, you could have told Whit right there and then and I wouldn’t have blamed ya. I would’ve been pissed sure, but I woulda understood where you were comin’ from. But you didn’t. And… well you could’ve. It was then that I saw you’re a decent bloke. No matter how much you try to cover it up. No matter how many stupid fights you get yourself into. You ain’t your dad, you ain’t Phil Mitchell. You can try to be all you want, to throw up your walls but if I know anythink about walls it’s that someone else could knock ‘em down. You’ll be ‘appy when they do, even if it scares ya. Because you can stop hidin’. You can stop pretendin’ to be someone you’re not. You can be Ben Mitchell the man, not the Dad, or the Son, the human bein’. You ‘elped me so much. Even though you din’t want to, so I guess… what I’m tryin’ to say is… I’ll be here to be Callum Highway the person, whenever… or if you get outta this.”
He planted an awkward kiss on Ben’s forehead, his lips shaking, and sparkling with electricity. It was then, as soon as skin met skin that Ben suddenly made a sound, a guttural bubble, as if his lungs were heaving with the effort of breathing. Then it happened again! And again! Callum startled, and looked down.
His heart was pounding, but then a smile appeared on Ben’s face. A weak one, but still recognizeable as his signature smirk.
“I should get shot more often” he slurred. “Never had this much attention off ya before, never 'eard you speak so much either.”