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Arthur leant against that sticky, whiskey-stained bar, gazing through the crowd of drunken townsfolk to watch as Callum’s delicate hands danced over the keys of the piano that sat in the middle of the stage. Pianos were big, hulking things that were rare in towns like these. Arthur had only seen the richest towns that they weren’t welcomed in ever have these open for anyone to play. But this rickety old farming town managed to have sourced one.
As Callum played, some keys were dull or out of tune, but he adapted and found ways to work around it. It was mesmerising to watch the scene that had only ever graced his presence once before, when they had first met in that underground bar that had the best booze in town. An ex-gang member had managed to drag him out and into the bar somehow. Arthur was pretty sure it was because the guy offered to pay for all his booze. After all, he only remembered meeting Callum and getting so wasted he was puking throughout the next day.
Also waking up with Callum naked in his bed, but that part he pretends never happened.
The men seemed to enjoy Callum’s music; he had grabbed the attention of a few men and a couple of the women who had originally been searching for a way to make some cash.
Then he began to sing.
His voice was a deep hum that was indistinguishable from the melody coming from the keys. It was like hearing a river meandering in the most lush forest filled with the sounds of wildlife; it was something that just belonged there.
A few people double-took at the boy singing on stage. A couple silently raised their glasses in acknowledgement, not wanting to distract from the best show they’ve had in some time.
Arthur watched, now completely enraptured by the boy. He hadn’t known that Callum could do both at once; he didn’t even know Callum could sing properly. He had heard the man quietly hum and mutter lyrics as he attended to chores or got bored, but nothing like this. He would’ve remembered something like this.
His stomach churned with desire.
Arthur signalled for the bartender and ordered the strongest drink he could think of and downed it immediately. He needed the excuse of excessive liquor for whatever might happen when Callum finished on that stage and made his way over to him.
After a couple more of those absurdly strong drinks, now most certainly swaying as he tried to stay upright at the disgusting bar, Callum was playing some sickly sweet-sounding song. It must’ve been for that girl Jane at camp that the boy seemed to be having his eye on lately. Arthur had seen him gravitating towards her quite often in recent memory.
It was most certainly for her when Callum was singing about how much he adored those beautiful blue eyes, and how he could die happily without ever seeing the ocean as long as he could live in the depths of their eyes forevermore, or whatever sappy bullshit he had to say.
Arthur was holding the glass in a white-knuckled grip that was beginning to cause his entire hand to ache as he clenched his jaw. He didn’t know how much longer he could stand there and watch this man serenade about the woman he loved when all Arthur yearned for was the man to be with him in his tent once more. All he wanted was himself and Callum to fall apart once more at one another’s sinful touches that they could never acknowledge outside of the dark of the night and the confines of one another’s tents.
That’s all he ever wanted, sober or not. But the alcohol gave him an excuse to act on it. An excuse to continue to ignore these feelings that ate away at his very being in the middle of the night when he didn’t have the other by his side and keeping him warm.
Because it was just a drunken fantasy, whatever they had in those moments they shared.
Nothing they had was real.
They weren’t anything.
Arthur didn’t–
“Oh, Arthur…”
It was sung so softly. No one else seemed to have caught the soft murmuring of his first name leaving the lips of the man on that small stage. But he heard them; he felt them reverberate throughout his entire being.
His head snapped back up, and he looked up to the stage to stare up at Callum once more. The pianist had a few empty tumblers resting around the instrument and this intoxicated flush upon his cheeks as he allowed his rawest emotions to slip from his lips in the form of heartfelt lyrics.
“I love you…”
Arthur looked around to see if any of the other Van Der Lindes had seen or heard what Callum had just admitted in front of a full bar of hillbilly-looking fuckwits. The man was being an idiot and risking his safety, but oh, how Arthur’s heart fluttered.
They never referred to one another by their first names; they were only ever Morgan and Shepard to one another. Never did they speak their first names aloud. A silent rule between them, as they knew the moment that boundary was crossed, the thing they had between them had gone too far. Nothing was clearer than now that the line they had mutually agreed upon was nothing more than a facade to hide the very fact that they had reached a point of no return between them both.
Arthur pushed off the bar and walked over to the stage, grabbed Callum by the arm and stormed out of the bar with the other flailing about behind him.
“Mica– Morgan? What’s going on?” He slurred as he tried to match Arthur’s speed.
Arthur stormed down an old compacted path towards the woods and then continued further until he truly knew no civilisation could ever find them.
“Morgan? Are you okay? Did you- did you start a fight again?” he asked, falling into Arthur’s body, completely disoriented.
Arthur grabbed Callum by the shoulders and slammed him into the tree behind him. “You, you, you–” he didn’t even try to verbalise what was going through his head before he began kissing Callum. Trying to express to Callum all the things he wished he could say. The things he yearned to know the words for so that this musician could understand him and how much he truly felt.
Callum gasped and sloppily tried to return the open-mouthed kisses from the other.
Arthur pulled away and stared down at the man before him, holding his face between his large, calloused palms. He ran his thumbs over those sunkissed cheekbones that were currently flushed after all the drinks and the kisses that they had shared.
He was beautiful, and Arthur wanted so desperately to tell him that.
But he simply didn’t have the words.
He was too choked up to manage a pathetic attempt at something even intelligible.
He leaned forward and wrapped his entire being around Callum, with everything happening inside of his mind; the next noise that left him was a soft sob. He never cried, but in that moment, it was the only thing he could do.
The worst part was that the other man didn’t say anything; he didn’t push him away or speak comforts or just say anything. He brushed those slender fingers that had been dancing along those keys for hours that night through Arthur’s dirty hair. He allowed his actions to speak for themselves.
Maybe Arthur should learn to do the same.