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When Luke got in the dressing room he found Michael standing in front of the wall-size mirror, holding his beanie in one hand.
Luke stood right behind him, wrapped his arms around his waist and pecked his cheek. He placed his arms over Luke's and the flat shape of his lips turned into a slighting curvy one when both men looked at each other's reflexions.
Michael's body went soft under Luke's embrace. His shoulders fell and his muscles relaxed like if he didn't feel the need to put them to work to stay on his feet. It was as if he knew Luke would be his grounding point if he needed to hold into something to keep balance, as if he knew Luke would be his safety net if he ever fell. Of course Luke would be, a million times he would.
"Contemplating new ideas for your next haircut?" Luke asked as his eyes went over his boyfriend's uncovered golden hair strands.
Michael's fingers gripped hard on Luke's forearms before saying "do you think it would be a good idea to dye my hair again?"
"Missing the thrill of having fantasy colours over your head?" Luke arched his neck down and rest his chin on Michael's shoulder.
"I don't know." Michael's words came accompanied by an apologetic expression. "Just, tell me, do you think it would be a good idea?"
Luke lift his chin off Michael's shoulder and his own reflexion on the mirror showed he looked as confused as he felt. "What do you mean by 'good idea'?"
Michael shrugged so reluctantly that it seemed his shoulders had suddenly become heavier. "I don't wanna disappoint anyone."
Luke put a hand on Michael's upper arm and pulled him around so they were face to face. "Mike," he whispered and lied both his hands on Michael's shoulders before continuing saying "what the hell are you talking about?"
Michael frowned as if he was the one who didn't understand what Luke was talking about. "Everyone has something different to say about my hair," he proceeded to explain. "It would be nice if they all could come to some kind of consensus so I could know what to do." A puff of air came out of Michael's nose and his lips spread halfway to the top of his cheeks. Luke knew Michael had intended to laugh but his eyes hadn’t narrowed, it hadn’t appeared wrinkles in their corners. Just as Luke, Michael wasn’t amused by his words but it seemed like he was trying to be.
Luke raised his eyebrows in a way of asking for a further explanation.
“Oh, you know.” Luke didn’t know but Michael sounded as if he was restating the obvious when he declared “some people say they miss old Michael and his million hair colours, some people say they love certain colours but hate others, some people say they prefer it naturally blond."
"Where have you heard that? Has somebody directly said that to you?"
"Oh no, no, no" Michael emphasised the negative answer by energetically shaking his head. "It's all over social media."
Michael's eyebrows appeared to be about to fall over his eyes and the only place his pupils seem to focus on was the floor. He looked tired like he'd had those thoughts revolving in his head for a long time and putting them all together to say them out loud took most of his mental energy.
After all the time Luke and Michael had known each other, after the years in which their relationship had been a step beyond friendship and after all the things they had lived together as life partners, Luke was pretty sure he knew how Michael's mind worked. For the better or the worst, Michael tended to turn little things into gigantic ones, and there were signs of that being one of those occasions when that tendency was messing up with his head. Luke was positive that 'all over social media' was actually some comments here and there and that 'everyone' was some people who probably didn't even mean what Michael thought they meant. Luke didn't have to go on the internet to check and be a hundred per cent convinced, but it wouldn't be that simple for Michael.
"Darling," Michael looked up at the sound of Luke's voice and some of the glow that had abandoned his eyes seemed to return to where it belonged. It was very heartwarming to know that even when Michael was mentally in a low place, that word still had the power of making him poke his head above the surface. "Your looks shouldn't be meant to please anybody."
"But they are our fans," Michael sounded a bit outraged as if Luke wasn't treating the matter the way he should. "Fans have put us where we are. We owe everything to them. The least we can do is to give them what they want, to try to make them happy."
Luke limited his reactions to just nodding while Michael was talking. Everything he said was so consistent with his personality. Among the four of them, Michael was the one who had the most special relationship with fans.
Cal, Ash and Luke himself treasured with their whole hearts all that fans kept doing for them and tried to show their gratitude any chance they had.
But Michael took it to the next level. At autograph signings, he got so invested talking to fans that he often forgot there was a huge line of other fans that awaited for them and that he needed to hurry up if he wanted to meet them all, be on time for their next thing and not get behind schedule. Even when he received an immeasurable amount of gifts he always insisted on having them on the bus during the whole tour even when there were certain occasions when they took the space that was meant for the necessary equipment for their shows. Once, during one of his Twitch streams, he said that if he had the chance to get to know each one of the fans he would; most people must've thought it was just a way of speaking but Luke knew Michael well enough to be sure his words were literal.
The memory of that stream made Luke realised that Michael deciding what he was going to do with his hair based on what fans might or might not want wasn't Michael taking things out of proportion, it was just Michael being Michael.
"Darling," Luke repeated the word that never failed to make Michael's lips bend into a smile, it didn't fail that time either but the smile faded as the word evaporated in the air. “It is impossible to please everybody. And even if it was possible, that shouldn’t be your goal, especially if you wouldn’t be comfortable with the way you look. Good fans, our fans, would never ask you to do that.”
“I know they wouldn’t but they deserve that I give myself fully to them.”
“And you do.” Luke gently shook Michael by his shoulders, like trying to wake him up from the nightmare he’d created in his head. “Every second you spend practising our songs on guitar so you can play perfectly during each performance, every battle you fight against sleepness because you've got a new song idea and you don't wanna let it go until it's finished, those nights you miss your family the most but stay on the road, that's you giving yourself fully to our fans."
Michael raised an eyebrow and remained quiet with his lips pursed. That expression meant he was going over what Luke had said to see if could drop on the same conclusions as Luke.
Michael would probably find a way to conclude that those sacrifices Luke had mentioned weren't enough. Luke decided not to give Michael time for that so he said "you think people don't acknowledge all the nice things you do?" He took his phone out of his pocket and went straight to the gallery app. "Tell me I still have it," he murmured to himself as he scrolled through the screenshots. "Yes!" He exclaimed when he found it. "Check this out." He handed the phone to Michael.
On the screen, it was displayed a collage of pictures of Michael having different interactions with fans: receiving gifts, recognising in the crowd people he's seen in other shows, giving hugs. The caption of the collage was ‘He genuinely looks so happy, this is the sweetest nicest human being on the planet’.
"I came across with this ages ago," Luke explained while Michael stared at the screen with widely open eyes. "I was gonna show it to you the moment I saw it, but then something, I can't even remember what it was, came up and-, you know how hectic our lives are. I forgot about it." Michael indicated he understood by nodding, his eyes remained focused on the screen and the corners of his lips slightly stretched up on his cheeks
"Apparently," Luke alleged, "you only come across with opinions about your image. Or maybe you don't but that's what you store in your brain. But, as you can see, there are posts that don't even mention how you look, they only point out all that makes you such a lovable person."
"I loved that. Thank you," Michael expressed as he gave the phone back to Luke. "You're right, fan's lives don't revolve around talking about my image. But it doesn't mean they don't do it from time to time. And, as you can see, it gets to me." Michael tilted his head down, his voice carried the tone of an apology.
"Commenting on people's looks is a very common human behaviour," Luke explained. "And I'm not talking about mean comments, I'm just talking about having an opinion. We do it too. Especially when it's just us."
Michael quickly inclined his head up. "We do?"
"Yes, darling, we do. I know," Luke asseverated when he saw the confusion crawling onto Michael's frown making it deepen. "We rarely notice because, as I said, they're just opinions, opinions that don't carry the intention of harming. Like when Ash dyed his hair red and Cal dyed his blue. We used to talk about it all the time. And not only you and me. They used to do it themselves. Remember?"
"Those little bastards," Michael said with the same tone of voice a person's got when they catch someone doing something they shouldn't be doing. "Dyed hair is my thing. They stole my thing."
Luke laughed because Michael was the worst actor ever. His fake indignated facial expression was horrible and it quickly got ruined by a light smile. But his lips switched from a curve to a line when he said "although, for people who keep tweeting that they miss the era when I used to dye my hair every week, it might actually be my thing."
Luke slowly breathed in and filled his body with determination. Those mortifying thoughts had taken root in Michael's mind but he would dig as deep as he needed to pull them out.
"I promise that when you read stuff like 'The era when Michael used to change his hair colour every week was the best' it's just people having a nostalgic moment. We all get nostalgic. It's a very human emotion. Missing something doesn't mean that it was better than the current things. What's funny is that a few years from now those same people might be tweeting 'I love it when Michael takes a break from dying his hair and let us see it in its natural state' or some similar stuff."
"Oh, there are people who already comment on my natural hair," Michael cleared. "Every time I spend a while without dying it, I see comments saying how beautiful my natural blond hair is but-"
"Because it is, Mike," Luke cut him off. "It is." He raised his gaze to the area of Michael's head from where hair grew. His eyes trailed the outline of Micheal's naturally blond fringe, very very slowly and making it as evident as possible, so Michael could perceive where was that Luke was looking. "That's just people remarking an undeniable truth," he added after his eyes took a detour that guided them to meet Michael's.
The corners of Michael's lips raised a bit on his cheeks. Luke knew that with a different mindset Michael would've spread his lips way higher in appreciation for Luke's compliment. He never took the praise for granted and always paid Luke back with the prettiest words of gratefulness someone could hear. But at that moment, a fleeting smile was all the talking he did.
"They didn't say they hated the other colours or that they wished you never dyed your hair. Did they?" Michael shook his head no.
"There's nothing more subjective than beauty and people's perception of it," Luke reflected. "Sometimes the issue is that changes catch most of us off guard, we get used to certain stuff and it takes us some time to adapt to changes."
Michael's frown deepening was his way of asking for a further explanation so Luke proceeded: "Do you remember when I got the lip ring?"
"Of course I do. I won't ever forget for how long you had to beg your mom for permission and all the evidence you had to collect to prove that you were gonna get it done by a qualified professional in the most hygienic of the places. I think that's why you told me you wanted to do it before telling anyone else, because teenage Luke didn't want to face Liz all by himself." Michael's lips hinted a taunting laugh that never got to pop up.
"Oh, trust me, grown-ass Luke doesn't want to face Liz all by himself either," Luke admitted with a giggle. "But I also told you because I was scared as hell to do it and I wanted you by my side."
"You might not remember but that was the first time you held my hand," Michael declared. "Like, for real, not just making contact for a few seconds. Your body looked relaxed on the chair but your eyes carried all the tension you refused to say you were feeling. While the guy was getting things ready to inject the anesthesia you didn't look at the needle for even a second. You were scared and I wanted to intertwine my fingers with yours, but I was more scared of doing that than you were from the needle, so I just leid my hand on the armrest as an offer to ease down your nerves."
Luke tried to remember that exact moment, but he'd been so terrified that, apparently, his brain hadn't absorbed too much information of what was happening so his memory of that day was a cracked glass and most of the pieces had been swept off his mind.
"The second the area by your lip got cleaned up you placed your hand on mine. Your grip was so tight." The ghost of a smile hovered over Michael's lips and he opened and closed his hand repeatedly as if he was feeling the same tension at that very moment. "But I would've never asked you to let it go. A purple hand wouldn't have looked that bad anyway."
"You know, I don't even remember thinking of holding your hand. I guess it was a movement guided by pure instinct." Luke took his hand down where was Michael's on the side of his hip, interlaced their fingers together and raised their arms up to between their chest. "Instinct always draws me to you," he admitted, gaze on their joint hands and then on Michael's eyes, lost in the green halo around the pupils.
"What were you saying about your lip ring?"
"Right! My point is, how did people react when they saw it for the first time?"
"Everyone was shocked."
"But it took them, how long? I don't know, two seconds to lose their minds over it and say how much they loved it." Michael nodded. "And now," Luke continued, "it's been like 5 years since I took it off and some people still say they miss it."
Luke allowed Michael a few seconds to draw his own conclusions.
"Again," he pronounced after hearing nothing more than silence from Michael, "you can't please everyone. And, darling," he covered Michael's cheeks with the palm of his hands, "I don't want you to try it." He circled his thumbs over the skin. "Don't try it," Luke almost pleaded, hoping that if Michael didn't do it for his own good he'd do it because Luke asked him.
"Galaxy hair," Michael whispered.
Luke took his hands off Michael's face. "What?" His voice came out slightly squeaky.
"Do you want me to go back to the galaxy hair?" Michael's lips were curled but he wasn't smiling.
"Do you want to go back to the galaxy hair?"
"No, no, you tell me." It seemed that Michael aimed for his voice to be relaxed and carefree but it sounded way too high pitched to be believable.
Luke raised an inquiring eyebrow. He wasn't going to say a thing until Michael explained himself.
Michael's lips were as straight as they could be and he stayed silent for what could've been a whole minute, waiting for Luke's reply. He sighed, closed his eyes and talked: "You said galaxy Michael will always be your favourite Michael."
"Wait, I-" in his mind, Luke played in fast forward the last couple of days to see if there was a moment where he'd gone to Michael to tell him that. "What?" The question was shot out of Luke's mouth as it was a bullet.
"Yeah, in that Instagram thing we did for CALM's one year anniversary." Luke nodded because he did remember about that Instagram live, but it had been a while ago, and it hadn't been a serious interview in a radio station or anything, it had been just them chatting. He didn't recall most of what had been said.
"We were all messing around with filters," Michael reminded, "I used that one that changes the colour of your hair and I said ‘surprise, I did this last night’. On the screen, my hair looked a certain colour between purple and pink, similar to my galaxy hair. That's when you said that galaxy Michael is still your favourite Michael."
Luke bent his neck down and his eyes dropped to the floor, he could feel the tension of his frown as he started reproducing that Instagram live in his mind. He opened his mouth when the memory of that specific moment came to his head. Yes, he had said that.
When Luke lifted his head he took Michael's hand and guided him to the couch that was next to the mirror. He sat down but Michael stayed on his feet, so Luke pulled him down to the couch.
"Oh, Mikey," Luke breathed. He placed his fingers on the fringe that fell on Michael's forehead. "My darling, beautiful Mikey," he spoke as he slid his fingertips up and down the hair in that area. He then intertwine his fingers in the strands and combed them in different directions: up Michael's head, behind his ear, tossed forward to the point of almost covering Michael's eyes, and finally back to their initial position. Michael's gaze followed every move, he looked equally amused and confused.
Was it possible that Michael's distress had been triggered by Luke's comment? Luke wasn't going to ask. Even if it had, Michael wouldn't have realised the moment it happened. Because for Michael, behaving that way was something that came instinctively. He never gave it any thought, he just wanted to please the people he loved, wanted to make them happy. Luke was lucky enough to be certain that Michael loved him, therefore Michael would try to please him even with such detail as his own hair colour, something that was his and nobody else's to decide over.
Luke's hand that was caressing Michael's hair went to cup his cheek. Michael leaned his head on Luke's hand and fixed his eyes on Luke's while his neck was angled.
"Darling, you are so wonderful," Luke professed."Do you know that?"
Michael's reply was a one-sided smile. "It's nice to hear it from time to time," he added once his neck went back to a straight position after Luke took his palm off of Michael's cheek.
Michael's hands went to rest on his thighs and Luke placed his on them. "Darling, I want you to listen to me carefully." Luke tightened his fingers on Michael's as he said those words, it was his way of trying to make his message sound as important as it was. "When I said that galaxy Michael was my favourite Michael I didn't mean my favourite version of you as a person. I meant that it was my favourite among all the hair colours you've had. Because it is, Mike." Luke wasn't going to deny it, that wasn't the point.
"You looked so dreamy, so captivating, so mesmerising, so-" that memory had bombshelled Luke with so many adjectives. "You seemed like taken out of a fantasy. While I still didn't have the guts to confess how I felt about you, I looked at you as if you weren't real and that hair almost conviced me that you, in fact, weren't. Your galaxy hair reminds me of the innocence of the early days, when we fearlessly dreamt, when we didn't notice the evil in the world. It doesn't mean I wanna go back to those days, we were also kind of dumb teenagers."
"Now we're kind of dumb adults," Michael mocked.
"Yeah, kind of," Luke conceded. "I know there are parts of me that you really liked and are gone now."
"Yeah?"
"I'm gonna have to go back to the lip ring. But not to the lip ring itself." Michael looked confused. "No, no," Luke vocalised melodically. "Remember. Whenever we were making out, you used to take the ring between your teeth and pull it just the tiny bit." Luke placed a side of his lower lip between his fangs in demonstration. "I loved the way you grinned while you still had a hold of it. I also remember the special interest you used to put in sliding your tongue over that area of my lip. I know you miss doing those things but I won't put the lip ring back on just because of that."
"And I wouldn't ask you to," the words hurried out of Michael' mouth. "I wouldn't want you to. It would make me feel awful if that was the only reason you-" his lips curved in the shape of a really big O, then he started laughing and shaking his head.
Luke nodded slowly. "Now you see how you've been sounding so far? Now you understand what I've been trying to explain?"
"I'm really dumb, am I not? Oh my fucking god," Michael nearly shouted and he looked a bit outraged. "Am I that needy for other people's approval?"
"I don't think it's like that. You just care so much about the ones that are important to you, that you always put them first, even when it comes to things that should only concern you."
Michael nodded a couple of times. Peace had returned to his features. It seemed like he finally was seeing things as clearly as Luke.
"Some things leave, and others arrive, other things that you might like just as much as the ones that are gone," Luke declared. "For example, you miss having fun with my lip ring, right?"
"Sometimes, yeah, when I think about it."
"If I'm being honest, I do too. I loved it. But you know what I love as well?" Michael raised his eyebrows in expectation of the answer. "I love all the pretty things you say to me whenever I put glitter on."
"Well," Michael brought a hand closed to Luke's face and stroked with his fingertips the outer corner of one of Luke's eyes, where sparkly products often adorned the skin. "I can't help it. You’re a pretty thing yourself. And when you wear glitter your attitude is-, fuck! You own it. It takes you to the top of the world. Do you know the power that has over me? Do you how hard you make it for me to look somewhere else?"
Other people might think Michael was exaggerating, but Luke knew that he meant each one of his compliments, that he literally thought that way. Luke showed his appreciation with a smile and, judging by the warmth in his cheeks, a little bit of blush too.
"The makeup thing was something new at one point," Luke reminded. "Now, those days when we're so tired after a gig that we go straight to cuddling on bed and my head ends up resting on your bare chest and your fingers are tangled in my hair, glitter ends up falling over your skin. You've told me so many times how much you like to see those bright stains on your chest."
"I love it. Makeup is one of the ways you choose to express yourself," Michael explained. "It turns your skin into art. It takes how confident you feel on the inside and shows it to the outside. It's part of who you are now. Seeing my chest all sparkly makes me think of how happy glitter makes you and that I'm lucky enough that you want to share that happiness with me in such an intimate way, emotionally and physically."
They didn't say a thing for a while. They just stayed looking at each other, smiling at each other, enjoying each other's images and presence until Luke said "so, what new hairstyle am I gonna love now?"
"I don't know," Michael chanted, a giggle threatening to ruin the straight shape he was battling to keep on his lips.
"Oh, c'mon darling, I know you," Luke said melodically, and Michael couldn't keep a smile from taking the corners of his lips almost up to his eyes. "Don't tell me you don't already have some crazy little idea running around that beautiful mind of yours."
"I do," Michael admitted.
"Please, please tell me," Luke asked with a pout, pulling at Michael's shirt. "You're not gonna make me wait until you get it done for me to know what it is that you're thinking?"
"I'm not that mean," Michael smirked. "You remember the reverse skunk, right?" Luke nodded. "I wanna do something that involves the same colours, but distributed differently."
Luke was hit by the memory of Michael right before shooting the She Looks So Perfect music video and he imagined how he would look if that black line was somewhere else in Michael's hair. Maybe he’d dye his fringe black and leave the rest of the hair bleached?
Michael huffed out a short laugh. "You're probably picturing it wrong."
"I sure am," Luke admitted. "It sounds like a fantastic idea."
"How can you say it's a fantastic idea when you aren't even capable of imagining it right?"
"It's a fantastic idea because of what it will represent, at least in my mind." Michael quirked an eyebrow. "Yes, darling. Look, you're taking the same colours of a style you had years ago and you're giving it a new use, you're turning an old thing into something new. We're not the same people we were yesterday but our present keeps traces from the past. I see your idea for your hair as a representation of what I just said."
"Wow, Luke Hemmings, when did you turn into such a wise and profound man?"
"Oh please," Luke waved his hand down, "don't think that just because I just came up with a deep metaphor or whatever they're gonna start raining out of me from now on." They both laughed. "But, really, it sounds like a fun thing to do to your hair."
"That, and that I'll look smoking hot." It was so nice to see Michael's genuine happy smile back. "And, it will suit me perfectly as the hardcore punk guy I am," Michael added, doing his best to incorporate an edge of roughness to his voice.
"Yeah, hardcore punk on the outside, a soft kitten on the inside." Luke reached out and scratched with the tips of his fingers down Michael's chin as he'd do to a cat. The porcelain white skin of Michael's cheeks started gaining a beautiful pink shade.
"Shut up," Michael failed miserably at trying to sound annoyed. "You love kitten Michael."
"Yeah, I do. And I love hardcore punk Michael, gamer Michael, geeky glasses Michael, galaxy hair Michael, and even bald Michael if it ever comes to that." Luke chuckled. "I love you, Michael," he concluded and then placed both his hands on Michael's cheeks and pecked his lips.
"Would you love bald Luke?" Luke inquired in a taunting way. Michael hummed, placed the knuckles of his fingers on his pursed lips and narrowed his eyes as if he was having a really bad time thinking of an answer. "I hate you," Luke whined and Michael just laughed.
Joyfulness had returned to Michael's eyes. They went back to look like fireflies that didn't need to be surrounded by darkness for its light to be perceived.
Luke cupped Micheal's jaw with one hand and started stroking the corner of Michael's mouth with his thumb. He felt Michael's lips curl to that side. "I couldn't have been more wrong, you know," Luke observed, "in that Instagram live. Galaxy Michael is not my favourite Michael. Happy Michael is my favourite Michael."