Work Text:
A hundred and twenty-five days until he sees you and he won’t let anyone forget it. The plane just landed and when he speaks to you on the phone he sounds wide awake, far too awake for someone who just spent sixteen hours in the air, but just talking to you puts him in a chirpy mood and even when he’s yawning and getting yelled at to focus so the band can hurry the hell up and get out of the airport, he keeps his phone between his shoulder and his ear so he can keep talking to you as he shifts through baggage claim. It’s weird that he hasn’t even been gone for twenty four hours yet. You were there just before he boarded the airplane but he still sounds like he’s worlds away. You can still feel the ghost of his touch, the way his lips felt against yours when he placed one last kiss upon them, the way he struggled to hold back his own tears when he stroked away yours with the tips of his thumbs. Not even a day ago you were inhaling his cologne and now he’s halfway around the world, reminding you that you’re going to miss him til your bones ache. He tries to tell you that it won’t be that long, and before you know it, he’ll be back in your arms, but Michael yelling at him to “shut the fuck up and carry his shit” has a peculiar way of ruining the moment, so he swears that he’ll call you back and blows you a kiss through the phone. He misses you already, he loves you, he’ll talk to you later, he hangs up.
A hundred and twenty-two days until he sees you and he can’t fight the urge to check up on you constantly. He doesn’t want to be clingy and he hates interrupting you when you’re busy, so he holds out hope that if he keeps his phone on him at all times he’ll never miss a thing. Every time it vibrates his face lights up, then almost always falls because it’s never you, but when it finally is, he’s punched right in the gut with the realization that this the closest he can get to you right now. It makes his chest hurt so bad he thinks he might collapse, but he doesn’t tell you that when he answers your call. He’s supposed to be your rock. Rocks do not crumble. They stay strong and support your weight and never let you see them eroding. But he is. The image of you crying in his arms at the airport laps away at his mind like waves against the shore until it haunts his sleep and he’s left lying awake wondering if missing you will ever stop hurting this much.
A hundred and twenty days until he sees you and he already has the sniffles. You knew this would happen because you told him to make sure he was taking his vitamins and drinking lots of water, but everything you say to him always goes in one ear and out the other. He simply laughs and says “Okay mum, you know best,” in his most sarcastic, congested voice, and you can practically hear his lips curling into a disgusting smirk that you’d love to smack right off his pretty little face (if he weren’t so damn sick or so damn far away). Even with his teasing he still expects you to tell him what kind of soup he should ingest to feel better and which brand of medicine he should be taking as well, but he’s almost certain a hug from you would have been enough. You blow a kiss through the phone, and he says that it’ll have to do.
A hundred and eighteen days until he sees you and he’s complaining about missing your embrace. He tries cuddling Michael and Luke and Ashton, but they’re all far too large to properly fit in his arms and none of them are short enough for him to tease and they’re a lot less receptive of his affection anyhow, so he just pouts as he counts down to the day that he will have you in his arms again, even though the wait is driving him mad. He hates that his most recent image of you is one where you’re crying, burying your face into his chest and wanting so desperately to be selfish and tell him that missing him feels like having your skin shredded, like having your throat crushed, like having your hair pulled out by the roots, but you swallow all of that down and tell him to be good and not to miss you too much as you pry yourself away from him and push him towards his band mates. He kisses you again and tells you he loves you so, so much before he walks away from you, but makes the mistake of looking at you one last time over his shoulder. Just in time to see you completely break down in tears. Your vision’s a little blurry from crying, but you’re almost certain you see Ashton slinging an arm around Calum to keep him from running back to you. By now, he should know that having you in his arms is temporary, and every time he holds you, he’ll have to let you go. All good things must come to an end. It’s a nice thought though, having you in his arms. And perhaps it works both ways. Maybe missing you will come to an end too.
A hundred and fifteen days until he sees you and he starts a list of all the cool restaurants they’ve been to so one day the two of you can travel around the world and go on fancy dinner dates in every country. He’s always been a little nervous about trying new foods (God knows he can’t pronounce anything he’s been putting in his mouth), and he even makes a cheeky joke about wanting to taste the underside of your tongue more than German cuisine. You laugh and tell him what he already knows, that his idea is probably going to remain a fantasy for a while, but you know he’s not really concerned with the plausibility of his sentiment. What he’s really saying is that he is constantly thinking of you. Thousands of miles and dozens of time zones away, and he’s out there dreaming of sharing his experiences with you.
A hundred and fourteen more days until he sees you and he admits that his body is finally starting to catch up to his emotions in terms of missing you. If he didn’t say it you would’ve been able to tell by his husky voice, desire and lust laced within his words as he speaks. He’s starting to get a bit frustrated but he and the boys are literally always together so he has no time to himself and if he doesn’t get some sort of physical relief soon he feels like he might just shatter but in the same breath he reminds you that the only person he wants that kind of attention from is you.
A hundred and ten more days until he sees you and he says that there’s a video on YouTube he wants to send you the link to. He sounds really excited and you promise to watch it. Of course you will. You can’t let him get disappointed. He texts you the link and reminds you that this is really important and you wonder what could possibly have him so excited when you click the link and the video starts. The link happens to be a vine, and the vine happens to be of a hound dog, running around in a sweater too big for its little puppy body. It trips over everything, from the sleeves of its sweater to its long fluffy ears, and a minute later, Calum texts you again, asking if it reminds you of Luke. To be quite honest, you have no idea why you didn’t see this coming. But it’s nice, those moments when you can just talk to him, and neither of you bring up missing each other. You can only handle so much of that.
A hundred and six more days until he sees you and he tells you he’s a little bit drunk and he’s going out with the boys. It’s a little bit weird to think about him getting drunk without you there to keep an eye on him but it’s even weirder to think of him as needing you to keep an eye on him so you tell him to make good choices and not get arrested. He makes no promises. He does however promise to think about you the whole night, and that’s comforting enough.
A hundred and three more days until he sees you and he presents you with yet another reminder that he is in fact a teenage boy when he says that Ashton’s found a couple girls to hit on and he might even get to take one home tonight. Calum doesn’t have that luxury. Calum is going to sleep alone, the same way he always does when he’s away from you and you can tell from the slight pitch of annoyance in his voice that it’s simply a side effect of missing you, and that soon enough, he’ll be home to lay with you all he wants. You think of how much better it’ll be, to lay next to him and breathe in his scent since your nose can’t quite bring it to memory. It’s the only thing about him that hasn’t quite stuck in your brain; your skin still burns from his touch, your ears still carry the sound of his voice, his smile is imprinted on the back of your eyelids, gracing your mind every time you go to sleep. But the unique scent he carries, that is something you can’t quite get your body to remember, and even though you’ve got a drawer filled with his sweaters nothing smells enough like him to trick you into thinking he’s still there. He can’t come home soon enough.
Ninety-nine days until he sees you and he won’t stop talking about how you’ve finally hit the double digits. It’s only been a little over a month since he’s seen you but he’s already tired of missing you and even though counting down makes the days go by slower he still does it because he needs proof that there will be a day when he gets to see you again. He sounds sleepy on the phone but is too stubborn to admit it and starts whining when you threaten to hang up so he can go to sleep, so you promise him that you stay on the line and you can practically hear him smile. He can stand to be a little tired tomorrow if it means talking to you right now. “Sing me a lullaby,” you tell him though it’s not yet night where you are and he happily obliges, his sleepy voice cutting through the receiver until his exhaustion tuckers him out. His singing becomes mumbling, his mumbling becomes silence, his silence becomes snoring. You tell him goodnight even though you know he won’t hear, then hang up the phone.
Ninety-six more days until he sees you and he’s still absolutely perfect at keeping you in the loop. Every single day thus far he has called you when you wake and when you go to sleep, even though it fucks up his own internal clock to wake up in the middle of the night just to say I love you. You know the other boys must be giving him a hard time about it, especially when they’re on the tour bus together. You’re almost certain you hear Luke telling him to either shut the fuck up or get the fuck off the bus if he’s going to keep making phone calls at 3 AM, but that doesn’t stop Calum from putting his phone on speaker and (rather loudly) telling you to have a good sleep before telling Luke to get the fuck out of his grill. He ends up waking up the other boys because you can hear Michael’s sleepy voice telling your boyfriend to stop being such a dick, and Ashton telling everyone to stop fucking swearing and just go back to sleep, so Calum tells you he’ll call you in the morning if he manages to live that long and you can’t help but laugh at your idiot boyfriend.
Ninety-five more days until he sees you and he knows you’re probably busy but he has to let you know that there was a really cute puppy named Joshie that came up to him when they were at lunch and gosh, you would have loved him because he was so sweet and friendly and had the same big brown eyes you loved on Calum and his fur, oh God, his fur was so silky smooth it was like touching a Goddamn cloud and he was just oozing cuteness and Calum’s voice trails off because he remembers that he’s having this conversation because he’s away from you. Suddenly he’s not as excited about Joshie anymore. It was nice while it lasted though.
Ninety-two more days until he see you and you wake up with a text that morning saying that he’ll be so busy that day he might not have the chance to call you. He still makes time though, but you miss his call. Its the first time it’s happened since he left. You want to call him but you have no idea what time it might be for him so you send him a text saying you’re thinking of him and listen to the voicemail he leaves you when you crawl into bed. Something about his voice is therapeutic, and even though his message is short, a simple reminder that he loves and misses you and can’t wait to see you, you blush and curl you toes and listen to it over and over until you fall asleep.
Ninety-one more days until he sees you and to make up for not getting to call the day before, he face times you (which is actually relatively hard to do because the wifi is unreliable and the band is constantly moving) while getting ready for an interview. Lou’s doing his hair and he’s trying to listen to you as you tell him about that bitch that cut you off today while you were on the highway, going far enough to nod when he feels he needs to and saying “I’m listening babe,” every once in a while, but you both know he’s not actually listening so you tell him to call you back and he promises to give you his undivided attention about that dumb bitch that cut you off later.
Eighty-eight more days until he sees you and while you’re explaining just how bad you miss him he says he understands the aching you feel in your chest is multiplied within him and all he really wants to do is lie in bed with you and draw circles on your skin with the tips of his fingers and engrave your neck with lovebites but you have to wait. You’re almost at the halfway mark. You can do it.
Eighty-six more days until he sees you and he’s sending you pictures of the hotel room he’s in because he was so busy that he forgot to take pictures of the actual city but he wants you to remember that he’s thinking about you and he really wants you to feel like you’re there with him. Luke keeps getting in the shots and making derpy faces, so it ends up being more of a time for you two to laugh together than to share something cute and romantic. This is better by far.
Eighty-four more days and he falls asleep on the phone. This isn’t like the times when he’d force himself to stay awake and you’d hear the exhaustion in his voice. He simply falls silent in the middle of a conversation and hear his soft snores, cutting you off mid sentence. You weren’t remotely close to being tired but you know that he’s in a completely different time zone and don’t think too much of it. He’s tired. He’s working so hard. You’re proud of him. You just wish he was with you, really.
Eighty-two days until he sees you and he’s already been on tour for so long that he loses track of where he is. You ask him if he recognizes a monument or something, but he reminds you that he dropped out of school to be in the band and even if he did recognize something he’d probably identify it wrong, so he begrudgingly promises to ask Luke later where they are. Luke doesn’t know either. Calum gives up. It doesn’t really matter where he is. He’s doing what he loves and he’s keeping you updated, so that’s all you really care about.
Eighty more days until he sees you and he makes an innuendo so slyly on the phone that you don’t even realize it until you hear Michael and Ashton gagging in background and Luke telling him to “get a room”. You don’t get it until he repeats himself your jaw drops. Even though he’s thousands of miles and dozens of times zones away, he still makes your skin burn with blush.
Seventy-six more days until he sees you and he makes another joke that goes over you head. This time though he jokes about flirting with other girls and you briefly think he’s serious, and he has to reassure you that he would never do that to you. You feel silly for ever thinking he would, but you’re still a little annoyed that he would joke like that in the first place and ask him not to do that again. He’s a little upset you’d take his joke seriously since you’re the only girl he wants, but he obliges. He never wants to be the reason you’re unhappy.
Seventy more days until he sees you and he’s face timing you as he walks through the street with the band. You’d rather be face timing with him alone, or even better, spending time with him wherever he is, but seeing his face is better than nothing until he abruptly tells you he has to hang up right now because they have some news he wants to surprise you with but he’ll call back in an hour and never does.
Sixty-nine more days until he sees you and he feels like he should make a million sex jokes about this but what he’s really doing is he’s ringing you up because the boys have made a surprise stop in your city for just one night and he knows it’s a little last minute but maybe you can stop by and he’ll see you a bit earlier than planned but you’re still kind of mad at him for not calling you back and you’re a bit busy too so you ignore his calls and he knows he still has to wait the entire sixty-nine days until he sees you.
Sixty-eight more days until he sees you and even though you’re not actively ignoring his calls you’re also not actively conversing with him and he tells you if something is wrong to stop bullshitting him so you guys can fix it but something in his diction makes you a little bit argumentative so no, you don’t have anything you want to talk to him about and he hangs up irritated without saying goodbye.
Sixty-seven more days until he sees you and you’ve got a dozen voicemails and four texts from him begging you to stop ignoring him and just say something, and like the smartass you are, you text him the word something and he has half a mind to tell you to go fuck yourself for that response, but he’s picking his battles carefully and replies instantly. He says he’s sorry for being so scatterbrained and not calling you back but he won’t make that mistake again. You try and keep the conversation going, but he never replies to your messages. What a fucking idiot.
Sixty-six more days until he sees you and the only thing you hear from him are “I’m busy, I’m stupid, I’m sorry.” He also says he loves you, but out ignore that for the sake of being mad at him for not being there with you and making you miss him as much as you do.
Sixty-five more days until he sees you and you expect another flurry of messages but only get two. He says he’s too busy and doesn’t have much time to talk, but that only makes him want to hear your voice more. The first is another plea for you to talk to him, the second is a bit more defeated when he realizes you’re serious about this silent treatment thing. You still don’t reply. You hate giving in. But you know that all it’ll take is one more text before he breaks you down.
Sixty-four more days until he sees you and he’s made no effort to contact you. No texts, no calls, nothing. You can’t exactly blame him for getting fed up with you. You know you’re being difficult and making it hard for him to love you but that doesn’t mean you’re going to stop being mad at him. If it had been any other day you would have let it slide. But it’s not any other day. It’s your birthday and he fucking forgot. Wow. Fuck him.
Sixty-three more days until he sees you and you’ve got a fuck ton of messages from Calum. You don’t read any of them. You went online this morning and saw pictures of him from the night before, wasted out of his mind and surrounded by girls. Fuck. Him.
Sixty-two more days until he sees you and he’s already called you fourteen times before you’ve even had lunch. He leaves a voicemail after the fifteenth time and if you bothered to listen to it, you’d hear just how much he knows he fucked up and how he could explain everything if you’d give him the chance. You don’t.
Sixty more days until he sees you and you’ve calmed down a lot and you want to call him but you can’t because you feel really guilty for giving the boy at the bookstore your phone number instead of telling him you have a boyfriend.
Fifty-eight more days until he sees you and you have to call Ashton to get a hold of him because Calum won’t return your calls. He feels like you don’t know him at all if you honestly think, even when he’s inebriated, he’d ever do anything with any girl but you, and he’s sorry for forgetting your birthday-which he readily admits he was wrong for-but he doesn’t understand why you’re being so hot and cold and maybe if you weren’t stressing him out so much he would have remembered your birthday and wouldn’t have gotten wasted to forget how shitty you’ve been making him feel lately and for some reason it sounds like a back handed apology so you lie and say you forgive him and feel a lot less guilty about giving that other boy your number.
Fifty-four more days until he sees you and you still want to pretend to be mad at him but you’re lonely and vulnerable and you know you’ve been acting crazy. That’s what missing him does. It drives you to insanity. You pick up your phone to call him but when you dial his number, you suddenly lose all your courage and toss your phone aside. You can’t admit how much you miss him. Not now. Not anymore.
Fifty more days until he sees you and you still wait by the phone but he doesn’t really call anymore. He’s gotten really good at figuring out your schedule and sends you texts when he knows you’re not around to reply. It doesn’t feel as genuine anymore, because they’re not all about missing you and loving you, but they’re proof he’s still thinking about you. You can hold out a bit longer.
Forty-two more days until he sees you and he asks what they hell you two are doing. He’s not even sure if you guys are even fighting, much less what you’re fighting about if you are, and he comes clean to you. Other girls have made themselves available to him. On multiple occasions, when he was drunk, when he was sober. And he swears he’s always said no. Swears on his life, on the band. He’d do anything for you to believe him because he just wants things to go back to how they were in the beginning, and he needs to know that you’ll be at the airport when he finally comes home. Of course you will. You can practically hear him smile through the phone, but every time he gushes about being glad you guys are back to normal, you feel worse and worse for not telling him about the boy from the bookstore you were texting when Calum was ignoring you.
Thirty-six more days until he sees you and now that Calum’s back to talking to you everyday, you finally tell the boy from the bookstore you have a boyfriend and he apologizes and promises to leave you alone. Calum is blissfully unaware of this, and you decide it’s better left that way.
Thirty more days until he sees you and while Calum’s celebrating that he’ll see you in a month, you blurt out that you were texting another boy when you two weren’t talking. Calum chuckles in disbelief and assumes you’re joking. “Shut up,” he says. “You’re a terrible liar. There’s no way you’d give me hell for being around other girls and then turn around and start talking to another guy.” That would be stupid and petty and hypocritical. He knows he’s the only boy you want. And he’s right, except, you did fuck up and you were flirting with another boy and when he realizes you aren’t kidding, he becomes silent. You ask him what he thinks. He says to ask him again in the morning.
Twenty-nine more days until he sees you and you call him as soon as you wake up and he picks up, no emotion in his voice whatsoever. He’s not chatty, he’s not angry. This side of him is terrifying. You don’t want to hear his answer, but you ask him what he thinks. He waits, your heartbeat speeds up, he breathes into the receiver. “I think,” he says, “That I don’t really wanna see you at the airport anymore.”
Twenty-five more days until he sees you.
Twenty. Fifteen.
He doesn’t really call anymore. You don’t really expect him to.
Ten. Five.
You briefly considered going to meet him at the airport.
Four.
You remember he doesn’t want you there.
Three.
He wants you there so bad it hurts.
Two.
One.
Zero.
He should be looking for his stuff in baggage claim, but he’s checking his phone in case you call the way he always does, but he knows you won’t. He’s looking for you for no reason. You’re not coming and he knows it. He grabs his luggage and the band maneuvers through customs quickly and all he really wants to do is go the fuck home but he can’t because there, in the middle of a sea of people in the airport is a face he’d recognize anywhere.
It’s you.
You stare at him, he stares at you.
He drops his luggage. He opens his arms.