Chapter Text
Michael meets Calum because of a blue marker.
It’s the second week of second grade, late enough in the year that everyone has mostly figured out who’s loud, who’s quiet, who always forgets their pencil, and which kids cry when the teacher raises her voice. Michael, who is eight and deeply serious about art class, has exactly four good markers laid out in a perfect row on his desk.
One of them is blue. His favorite blue.
The only blue that actually works for drawing oceans and superhero capes and anything else that matters.
He turns away for maybe three seconds to pick up a sheet of paper from the supply table. When he turns back, the blue marker is gone.
Michael freezes, confused about where his marker went. He looks around to see if anyone took it. Then he looks to his left.
There, in the desk beside him, sits another kid.
Calum.
He’s smaller than Michael with messy dark hair and a school jumper that was slightly too big for him. He has Michael’s blue marker uncapped in one hand and is using it with complete focus, without a care in the world.
"That’s mine." Michael calls out.
Calum glances over, entirely unbothered. "Okay."
Michael blinks. "Give it back."
Calum looks at the page in front of him, where he has apparently already committed to drawing something blue and important enough that Michael’s outrage does not move him in the slightest.
"In a minute."
"No," Michael says. "Now."
Their teacher is helping someone across the room. Everyone else is coloring quietly or not quietly, depending on how badly they understand classroom volume control.
Michael reaches for the marker, Calum pulls it back out of reach. It becomes, in the space of about five seconds, a war.
War, at this age, mostly consists of aggressive whispering, bad grabbing coordination, and the immediate risk of getting in trouble if either of them escalates too far. Michael hisses that Calum is a thief while Calum says Michael is "stupid and annoying.", Michael lunges again for the marker when Calum simply decides to hold it above his head, and because he is smaller and therefore slightly more flexible and evil, he succeeds.
Michael very nearly cries. Not fully, but enough that his eyes sting with humiliation and anger, which is somehow worse.
And that, apparently, is Calum’s cue, because his whole expression changes once he sees Michael’s eyes almost filled with tears.
He doesn’t look guilty, more like alarmed, maybe. Like this has suddenly become a different kind of situation than the one he thought he was in.
Before Michael can say anything else, another boy from the table behind them leans over and goes, "What are you gonna do, cry over a marker?"
Calum turns around in his chair and looks the boy dead in the eye. “Shut up."
The boy laughs. “Look at Michael! He’s crying over a marker!”
Calum, who apparently decided that Michael was his friend now, leans over and bites the boy on the arm hard enough to make him yelp loud for the teacher to spin around in horror.
Their teacher separates everyone in a flurry of adult disbelief. The bitten boy bursts into tears, Michael sits frozen with his blue marker clutched back in both hands like a sacred object. Calum gets marched to the hallway with the expression of someone who only sort of regrets his choices.
Later, after lunch, after parent phone calls and stern talks and an entirely deserved lecture on how biting is not an acceptable solution, Calum gets moved to Michael’s table permanently because their teacher had decided, for reasons known only to herself, that proximity will somehow improve behavior.
It doesn’t improve behavior, but it does begin everything.
Calum leans over during silent reading and whispers, "I only bit him because he was being annoying."
Michael whispers back, "You stole my marker first."
Calum nods, accepting this. "Yeah. That was separate."
And just like that, they are something.
Not best friends immediately. That would be too neat, too quick. First they’re rivals in classroom competitions and unwilling partners in science projects and the two kids most likely to get shushed for talking through independent work. Calum keeps borrowing Michael’s things without asking and Michael keeps acting offended even after he stops actually minding. They discover over months rather than days, that they both hate tomato slices, both love ghost stories they cannot emotionally handle, and both think most other children are vaguely exhausting.
By fourth grade, they’re inseparable enough that adults stop asking.
Calum starts arriving at Michael’s house after school without needing the address written down, Michael’s mum begins setting out an extra plate for snacks on instinct. Calum’s parents get used to hearing "Is Michael coming?" before basically any weekend plan can be finalized. Sleepovers happen often enough that toothbrushes migrate houses and stay there and their names start arriving together.
Michael-and-Calum.
Calum-and-Michael.
Elementary school passes in a blur of scraped knees, football at lunch, spelling tests, and catastrophically sincere playground arguments that dissolve fifteen minutes later because one of them finds a worm or a cool stick or a reason to laugh. Calum dares Michael into things Michael would not have done on his own, Michael talks Calum out of things that would absolutely have ended in a broken wrist. They get matching detentions in fifth grade for turning a history presentation into a sword fight with rulers. In sixth, they spend a full week trying to build a "real" walkie-talkie system out of junk drawer electronics and blind optimism. It doesn’t work, but the failure somehow only makes them more convinced they are geniuses.
Middle school only makes it worse. Or better, depending on who’s being asked.
By seventh grade they have a weird closeness that comes from growing up side by side - years of shared references, old jokes reduced to single words, a shorthand that makes other people feel slightly locked out even when Michael and Calum aren’t trying to exclude them. They know each other’s moods by posture alone. They know which silences mean anger, which mean nerves, which just mean tired. They know what the other one orders when left to their own devices, what songs they’ll pretend not to like before requesting again, what parts of themselves are for public use and what parts are only ever shown in trusted company.
Michael knows Calum gets quiet when he’s genuinely upset and louder when he wants to hide it, Calum knows Michael cleans his room when he’s stressed and starts too many side projects when he’s avoiding something real.
They collect whole worlds together.
Bike rides that go farther than their parents technically approved, arcades and corner shops and afternoons at the park that stretch until the streetlights flicker on, rainy Saturdays in Michael’s room with one earbud each, discovering songs that feel private just because they heard them together first, movie marathons that leave them sleep-deprived and defensive about terrible plots, summer days at the seafront eating chips with too much salt and arguing about absolutely nothing because arguing is half the fun…
By thirteen, there are already places in town that feel like theirs in a way neither of them could explain to anyone else. A bench in the park, the weird dent in the fence behind their old primary school, the bookstore near the station that smells like dust and old paper and has a cat that may or may not belong to anyone, the arcade machine Michael claims is rigged, and the bus stop where they once spent forty minutes hiding from rain and ended up rating every teacher they’d ever had on survival potential in a zombie apocalypse.
People know them as a pair. Sometimes that means other kids stop inviting one if the other can’t come, because separating them feels like administrative hassle. Sometimes it means teachers sigh "you two" before either has technically done anything wrong. Sometimes it means one of them gets asked a question and the other answers automatically.
Neither of them mind it. Or if they do, they never say it out loud.
They’re fourteen years old and still in that golden stretch of life where the future exists mostly as a foggy concept. School feels endless. Town feels permanent. Friendship, especially friendship this old, feels less like something that could end than something built into the structure of the earth.
Then eighth grade arrives and the fog starts taking shape.
High school talk. Schedules. Which classes they might take next year. Jokes about surviving algebra, about getting older, about how weird it’ll be to not be the oldest ones in school anymore. They talk about it all the time in lazy, certain way of kids who assume their futures are shared unless proven otherwise.
Of course nothing actually important will change.
Then one Thursday in spring, Calum asks Michael to come over after school.
Michael notices the tone shift before they’ve even made it to Calum’s room. He notices because Calum is quieter than usual, because he doesn’t immediately start talking over him about some teacher or some stupid thing someone did at lunch, because there’s a strange stiffness in the air.
They end up sitting on the floor by Calum’s bed, backs against the side of the mattress, school bags still half-zipped beside them.
For a minute, Calum says nothing.
Michael starts to get irritated, which is his favorite response to nerves he can’t name.
"What?" he asks. "You’re being weird."
Calum huffs a laugh that isn’t really a laugh. "Sorry."
He picks at a loose thread on his sleeve for so long that Michael starts to feel something colder under the irritation. Something uneasy, too large for whatever this silence is trying to hold.
Then Calum says, without looking at him, "My dad got offered a transfer."
Michael frowns. "Okay?"
Calum swallows.
"To another city."
Michael stares at him, the sentence taking an extra second to become real. "So?"
Calum finally looks over. His face had gone frustratingly calm, the same way it gets when he’s trying very hard not to let anything show.
"They said yes," he says. "We’re moving after the summer."
Michael actually laughs. Not because it’s funny, but because it doesn’t make sense.
"What?" It comes out sharper the second time.
Calum’s eyes flick away. "I found out yesterday."
Michael keeps waiting for the correction. For the punchline. For Calum to add just kidding or for a few months or we changed our minds.
Instead Calum says nothing.
And Michael realizes, all at once and sickeningly, that this is real.
"No," he says immediately.
Calum’s mouth tightens. "Mike-"
"No." Michael is already shaking his head now, too fast, anger rising because anger is simpler than whatever is under it. "You can’t just move."
Calum lets out a breath. "It’s not like I wanted to."
"That’s stupid."
"I know."
"You just- what, you’re just leaving?"
The second the words are out, Michael regrets them, because Calum flinches.
And then Michael hates everything about this.
"It’s not like I wanted to," Calum repeats more quietly.
The anger falls apart almost immediately after that, leaving something worse in its place. Michael looks down at the carpet because if he keeps looking at Calum he might do something humiliating, like cry, and he’s fourteen now and therefore deeply committed to pretending he has any control over himself at all. The future feels like somebody has put a crack through it.
"When?" he asks.
"End of August."
Too soon.
Michael does the math in his head automatically. A few months. One summer. Then high school starts and Calum won’t be there for any of it. It feels like somebody is trying to remove a wall from the house and act like the roof will stay up anyway.
"It doesn’t mean I’m going away forever."
Michael almost snaps back something angry. Something about how that is obviously not true, about distance and phone calls and the fact that not going away forever is not the same thing as here.
But he can hear, in Calum’s voice, that this isn’t optimism, it’s pleading. Not for the move itself, but for them.
So Michael swallows hard and says nothing at all.
"Hey," he says, after a minute.
Michael doesn’t answer.
"I’ll still be me, dude. I’m not turning into an alien or anything."
That almost does it. Michael laughs once, short and miserable. "That’s such a stupid thing to say."
"Yeah," Calum says. "Still true, though."
"You better call me all the time."
Calum looks at him quickly, something hopeful and wrecked moving through his face at once. "Obviously."
"And text me."
"Yeah."
"And if you get cool new friends, I’m judging them."
Calum actually laughs then, small and shaky around the edges. "You can’t judge people you haven’t met."
"Watch me."
They spend the rest of the spring and summer pretending, a little. Not fully. The move is there in everything now, counting down behind every plan. But they keep doing things anyway. They go to the arcade, sit at the seafront and make jokes. They avoid talking too much about August.
Sometimes they fail. Sometimes Michael catches Calum looking at familiar places like he’s trying to memorize them, and sometimes Calum finds Michael going suddenly quiet halfway through a normal afternoon.
Neither of them say much about those moments. They just stand in them together until they pass.
The day the moving truck comes, both of them have already promised not to make it weird.
This, unsurprisingly, fails almost immediately. Michael stands in Calum’s driveway pretending not to notice the boxes, pretending not to notice how wrong everything looks with parts of Calum’s life already stacked and labeled and ready to disappear.
They hover near the front step for way too long, saying almost nothing useful.
Then everything useful comes out all at once.
“Call me when you get there.”
“Obviously.”
“Don’t become annoying. “
“You already think i’m annoying.”
“Shut up.”
“You shut up.”
Then the hug. Fast, hard, desperate enough to make both of them immediately grateful no one is commenting on it.
They pull apart too soon. Michael stands in the driveway and lifts one hand because he cannot seem to do anything else. Calum presses his hand to the window for half a second like they are in a movie and both of them should be embarrassed by it later.
Michael isn’t embarrassed later, only empty.
And that’s how they learn, at fourteen, that some people can leave and still stay central anyway.
They text that first night, then the next day, then every day after.
The calls come too. Long, stupid late-night ones, followed by quieter ones. Michael with homework half-finished, Calum lying on his bedroom floor in a city neither of them care about yet. They talk through first days, bad classes, songs, family drama, boredom, loneliness, the shape of becoming older in different places. Years pass that way - not cleanly, not without ache, but faithfully.
Distance changes things, but it doesn’t break them. If anything, it teaches them the exact size of what they are to each other.
***
Michael is halfway through brushing his teeth when his phone buzzes on the sink.
He ignores it at first, because it's late and he's tired and if it's Luke sending another stupid video, it can wait until morning. But then it buzzes again.
Michael spits toothpaste into the sink, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, and reaches for the phone.
Three new messages.
Calum:
u awake?
Then, immediately after:
actually don't answer that i know you're awake
you always stay up too late anyway
Michael snorts.
That part, at least, is familiar. It’s been two years and ten months, not that he's counted with any dignity, since Calum moved away, and somehow he still knows all of Michael's worst habits like they came printed in a handbook.
Michael types back with one hand, toothbrush still in the other.
rude T-T
what do you want
The typing bubble appears so fast it almost startles him.
i have life changing news
like actually
Michael's stomach does a weird little drop. For half a second his brain jumps somewhere stupid and panicked. Bad news? Something wrong? Family stuff? He straightens automatically, all the leftover sleepiness gone at once.
whats up
This time Calum takes longer, enough for Michael to stare at the screen and chew the inside of his cheek and start inventing worst-case scenarios he knows are probably ridiculous.
we're moving back
Michael blinks and reads it again.
my dad got transferred back
they told us like 2 hours ago
we leave next week or something like that
Michael's heart starts pounding so suddenly it feels embarrassing, even though nobody can see him. He leans back against the bathroom counter, staring at the messages like they'll rearrange themselves into something less insane..
Back here. Calum was moving back.
His fingers move before the rest of him catches up.
you're lying???
i'm literally not
i swear
calum
michael
Michael laughs out loud, sharp and disbelieving and way too happy for a person standing alone in a bathroom in boxers and mismatched socks. He pushes a hand through his hair and types:
oh my god
oh my god??
good reaction?
Michael nearly drops the phone.
Because yes, obviously, yes. A terrifyingly good reaction. A reaction so good he needs to get control of his face before his mum sees him grinning at his phone like a complete idiot and starts asking questions he is deeply unequipped to answer.
are you kidding
that's the best reaction i've had to anything all summer
wow
kind of obsessed with me
Michael rolls his eyes automatically, but he's smiling too hard for it to mean anything.
kind of?
don't get arrogant just because i missed you
There.
Easy. Casual. Best-friend normal.
Except his pulse is still going too fast, and when Calum replies, Michael feels it in his throat for some reason.
i missed u too or wtv
Michael stares at that one longer than he means to.
It shouldn't hit like that. They say stuff like that sometimes. Not all the time, maybe, but enough that it shouldn't feel new. Enough that it shouldn't make something warm and nervous spread through his chest like this.
Maybe it's because in one week, Calum won't just be a face on a screen and a voice in his headphones and messages scattered through the day. He'll be here. In town. Close enough to touch. Close enough to see in person for the first time since they were both fourteen and pretending not to cry in Calum's driveway while his parents loaded boxes into a truck.
Michael swallows and types before the silence turns weird.
wait
what r u doing about school
The reply is immediate.
think i'm being ripped from my beloved social life and thrown into yours unfortunately
Michael grins.
you never had a beloved social life
yeah but i had one friend and that was you
it was enough
That one lands somewhere deep and unhelpful. Michael sits down on the closed toilet lid because suddenly standing feels like too much energy to contain. His face hurts from smiling.
that's disgustingly sentimental
who are you and what have you done with my calum
moving has changed me ig
hate that for you
liar
Michael bites back another grin, then gives up and lets it happen.
He's trying very hard not to think too far ahead. Not to picture Monday morning, or Calum in the hallways, or what it'll be like to have him back in the passenger seat of the car, back on his couch, back in all the spaces that have felt slightly wrong since he left.
He's trying especially hard not to think about the fact that Calum won't look exactly the same.
Of course he won't. They've video called enough that Michael knows that already. He knows Calum's hair is slightly longer now with a few blonde streaks on his bangs, knows his shoulders have broadened, knows his face has sharpened in ways Michael has tried extremely hard to be normal about. But seeing someone through a phone is different. Manageable. Flattened.
Seeing him in person is going to be a disaster.
you better not have become a weirdo while you were gone
Michael sends it quickly, because if he thinks too hard before texting, everything starts sounding suspicious.
Calum replies:
too late
i'm deeply weird now
it's part of my brand
your brand was always weird
and yet you've stayed obsessed with me for years it sounds like
Michael huffs a laugh.
you say that like you're not texting me insane news at midnight
thats cs you’re the first person i thought of you idiot
Michael goes still. The bathroom suddenly feels too quiet around him, the house too asleep. It's just him and that sentence glowing on the screen.
You’re the first person i thought of.
It should make sense. It does make sense. They've been each other's person since they were eight years old and Calum stole Michael's blue marker in art class and then bit another kid for making him cry. First-person-you-tell news belongs to them. That's just how it's always worked.
Still, Michael reads it twice.
really :0
obviously
Michael smiles helplessly down at his phone.
Subtle flirting, he can handle. Dumb jokes, definitely. Even the occasional missed you, if he shoves all his weird feelings into a locked box and sits on it hard enough.
He types slowly, suddenly too aware of every word.
good
or i would've had to fight someone
Calum responds with:
protective much
shut up
Which is weak. Horribly weak. Calum knows it too, judging by how fast the next message comes in.
you missed me bad huh
Michael drops his head into one hand.
This is unbearable. This is what happens every time lately; one of them says something that could maybe be a joke, maybe not, and then neither of them pushes hard enough to break the surface. They just circle it. Poke at it. Leave each other ridiculous openings and then hide in plausible deniability when things get too real.
Michael hates how much he likes it.
you wish
sure
He should go to bed.
when do u get here
next thursday
school starts monday so i get exactly 3 days to mentally prepare for seeing your face irl again
Michael laughs softly.
3 days isn't enough
you'll need at least a month
for your face specifically? yeah probably
wow
i was being nice
were you
i'm excited too dumbass
Michael's chest does that stupid warm thing again.
He leans back against the bathroom wall, phone held loose in both hands now, and lets himself feel it for a second: the shock of it, the relief, the bright impossible fact that in a week Calum will be here. Really here.
u better not have replaced me with less cooler people
Calum sends.
Michael smiles before he's even finished reading it.
hmmmm idk my friends r pretty cool
i’ve fallen down on the michael friendship ranking i see
you wouldn’t even be on the list dumbfuck
you know youre always n1
wouldn’t expect any less
go pack your boxes or whatever
you've got a big week ahead of you
bossy
you're welcome
gnight mikey
Michael pauses at that.
Calum only calls him Mikey when he's tired or fond or trying to get under his skin on purpose. Sometimes all three.
Michael looks at the screen for a long moment, then types back:
gnight cal
hurry up and get here :(
He sends it before he can overthink how honest it sounds.
Calum leaves it on read for almost a full minute.
Then one last message appears.
on it boss
i miss seeing ur stupid face up close
Michael stares at that until his screen dims.
When he finally puts the phone down, he's still smiling. He finishes brushing his teeth like he's on autopilot, flicks off the bathroom light, and makes it halfway down the hall before the reality of it hits him again all at once.
Calum is coming back.
By morning, Michael knows two things for certain.
First: the next week is going to crawl.
Second: he is absolutely not surviving junior year with his feelings intact.
***
Michael makes it downstairs the next morning in a daze so bad it should've embarrassed him.
It didn't, mostly because he was too busy grinning at nothing.
His mum was at the stove, still in slippers, flipping something in a pan while the radio muttered softly from the counter. His dad sat at the table with a mug of coffee and the paper spread open in front of him, reading with the kind of exaggerated seriousness that usually meant he was barely awake.
Michael had barely made it to the kitchen doorway before his mum looked up once, took in his face, and smiled.
"Well," she said. "I guess you found out."
Michael stopped. "Found out what?"
His dad lowered the paper just enough to look over the top of it. "About Calum moving back."
Michael narrowed his eyes immediately. "You already knew?"
His mum gave him the kind of look that suggested he was being extremely slow on purpose. "His mother texted me last night."
Michael stared. "Before he told me?"
"About five minutes before, I think."
That was somehow deeply offensive.
He dropped into a chair at the table and scrubbed a hand over his face. "Okay, wow. So everyone knew before me."
His mum laughed, sliding a plate in front of him. "He wanted to tell you himself."
That took most of the sting out of it, annoyingly fast.
Michael picked up his fork, trying to act less pleased than he felt and failing completely.
His dad folded the paper down entirely now, smile threatening at the corners of his mouth. "You seem excited."
Michael let out a laugh through his nose. "Obviously I'm excited."
"We can tell," his mum said.
There was no point pretending otherwise. Michael had spent half the night staring at the ceiling replaying the conversation with Calum word for word like a complete idiot, and he'd woken up with the same energy still humming under his skin.
He stabbed at his breakfast and said, "He's coming back next week. That's actually insane."
His dad nodded. "It'll be good to have him around again."
And that was the other thing. Calum had never just been Michael's friend in the eyes of the rest of the family. He'd been part of the furniture, practically. A second pair of shoes by the door, a voice in the house, another body at the dinner table, a familiar name woven so tightly into Michael's childhood that nobody had ever really treated him like a guest.
His mum leaned against the counter and smiled at him over her coffee. "You've missed him."
Michael gave her a flat look. "You're both being very weird about this."
"We're being normal," his dad said.
Michael took a bite just to avoid talking for a second, then failed anyway. "It's just- I don't know. It'll be different having him actually here again."
His mum's expression softened. "Different in a good way or strange?"
Different impossible, maybe. Different in ways Michael preferred not to inspect too closely.
"Definitely good," he said.
His dad took another sip of coffee. "You'll adjust in about ten minutes."
Michael huffed a laugh. "Probably."
"Less, if history is any guide," his mum added.
That was fair too. Because the thing about Calum was that the gap never really held properly. Even after all this time apart, every text still found the old shape of things almost instantly. They'd changed, obviously. Got older. Got taller. Got weirder. But the actual center of it still felt the same.
Michael spent the rest of breakfast trying not to talk about Calum and failing with impressive consistency.
***
When afternoon rolled around, he was vibrating with enough restless energy that lugging amps and cables down into the basement almost felt useful.
Band practice in Michael's basement was less a formal arrangement and more a long-standing occupation. The room smelled faintly of old carpet, dust, and cheap energy drinks. Posters half-peeled from the walls, a battered sofa no one admitted belonged to them. Michael's amp in the left corner, Luke's bass rig near the back wall, Ashton already at the drum kit because he'd shown up early and considered that a personal virtue.
Luke came in carrying his bass and a packet of chips he'd somehow already opened, while Ashton sat behind the kit absentmindedly tapping a rhythm against his knees.
"You're in a weirdly good mood," Luke said immediately, eyeing Michael as he plugged in his guitar.
Michael looked up. "Am I?"
"Yeah," Ashton said. "It's kinda gross."
Michael grinned. "Nice to see you too."
Luke set his bass case down and pointed at him. "No, seriously. You look like someone told you school's cancelled forever or you found buried treasure."
Michael adjusted his strap, mostly so he'd have something to do with his hands. "I just got news, that’s all."
Ashton straightened on the drum stool. "Good news or your usual fake dramatic news?"
"Actual good news."
Luke gasped theatrically. "Mark the calendar."
Michael rolled his eyes. "Can you both shut up for like ten seconds?"
"No," Luke said.
Ashton, at the same time, said, "Go on."
Michael laughed despite himself, then tried for casual and missed by a mile. "Calum's moving back."
Luke blinked. "Wait. The Calum?"
Michael gave him a look. "Yes, obviously that Calum. How many Calums do you think there are in my life?"
Ashton was already grinning. "No way."
"Way."
Luke set his bass down halfway to the floor and straightened back up. "Back back?"
Michael nodded, unable not to smile again. "His dad got transferred back here. They move next week. He's starting at our school on Monday."
That landed exactly how he'd hoped it would.
Ashton smacked one drumstick against the rim in excitement. "Dude that’s sick."
Luke looked genuinely pleased now, all teasing stripped out for once. "Okay, that's actually huge."
Michael shrugged like he wasn't absurdly happy about it. "Yeah."
Luke stared at him for one second, then laughed. "You’re trying so hard to act normal about this."
"I'm being completely normal."
Ashton leans forward over the kit. "Hang on, so after all this time we finally get to meet him?"
Michael snorted. "Why are you saying it like he's folklore?"
Luke held up both hands. "Because he kind of is."
Michael frowned. "He's literally just a person."
Luke gave him a deeply unimpressed look. "To you, maybe. To us, he's this mysterious long-distance childhood best friend you've been talking about for actual years."
Ashton nodded eagerly. "Yeah, like, I've heard enough stories about this guy to know he once jumped off someone's shed roof because you dared him to and that you’ve liked the guy since forever"
Michael pointed at him. "To be fair, he landed it- Wait what?”
"Didn’t say anything." Ashton replied.
This was the problem with having best friends in multiple categories, eventually all your worlds wanted to compare notes.
Luke slung his bass strap over his shoulder and said, "I've heard the name Calum so many times I was starting to wonder if you made him up."
"I didn’t make him up."
Ashton tilted his head. "You'd be kind of committed to the bit if you did."
Michael shook his head, still smiling. "You're both annoying."
Luke grinned. "That’s what we’re here for."
Ashton pointed a drumstick at him. "You talked about this guy through, like, all of sophomore year."
"Yeah," Luke said. "Sometimes with details."
Michael scoffed. "He’s like, my favorite person ever dude."
"No one's blaming you," Ashton said, still grinning. "I'm just saying it'll be nice to meet the person behind the legend."
"The legend," Luke repeated, delighted with that phrasing. "Perfect."
Michael groaned. "Absolutely not."
"Oh, absolutely yes," Luke said. "You realize the first time he comes over, I'm introducing myself like that."
"No you’re not."
"I am."
Ashton leaned back on the stool, smiling. "Honestly, I'm excited. Anyone who's managed to stay your friend from age eight has to be interesting."
Michael lifted a shoulder, trying for nonchalance and failing because warmth kept sneaking into his face at the worst times. "He is."
Luke noticed that immediately. His eyes narrowed just a little. "Wow."
Michael frowned. "What?"
"Nothing," Luke said, which was a lie in its purest form.
Ashton caught it too and looked between them. "No, what?"
Luke picked up his bass and started adjusting the strap, clearly enjoying himself. "I'm just saying, he's saying he is in a tone."
Michael stared. "I didn’t say it in a tone."
"You fully did," Ashton said.
"Fuck off."
Luke laughed. "This is going to get so much worse once he's physically here."
Michael plugged in his guitar harder than necessary. "If both of you could stop psychoanalyzing me and maybe rehearse instead, that'd be great."
Ashton raised his sticks in surrender. "Touchy subject i see."
Luke, still grinning, finally shifted into position. "Fine. But when we meet him, I'm judging him."
Michael adjusted his volume knob. "Why?"
"Because if he's been your favorite person for this long, I want to know what the hype's about."
Michael opened his mouth with three separate responses ready and none of them safe.
So he settled on, "He's not my favorite person."
Luke and Ashton both just looked at him.
Then Ashton said, "Crazy thing to lie about in your own house. You literally just said he was."
Michael groaned and reached for a pick. "Can we play something now?"
Luke smiled like a man who'd already won. "Yeah, alright."
They launched into the first song with more energy than precision, Ashton coming in a fraction too hard on the snare and Luke missing one backing vocal because he was still visibly amused. Michael didn't really care. He was still half somewhere else.
During a pause between songs, while Luke retuned and Ashton took a drink of water, Michael pulled out his phone and checked for new messages without thinking.
Nothing yet. Still, he smiled at the blank screen anyway.
Luke caught him and groaned. "You're being insufferable already."
Michael slid the phone back into his pocket. "You haven't even met him yet."
Luke glanced at Ashton. "See? This is exactly what I mean."
Ashton laughed, twirling a drumstick between his fingers. "I'm still excited."
"Same," Luke admitted. Then, to Michael: "If he sucks, we're telling you immediately."
Michael snorted. "He doesn't suck."
"You answered too fast."
"Because I know him."
Luke plucked a string thoughtfully. "Right. The Calum."
Michael pointed his pick at him in warning. "Drop that."
Luke smiled.
He was absolutely not going to drop that.