The Queue [c. hood]

07 // 10:14 a.m.

"Finally!" Caro exclaims, after taking embarrassingly long to finish her eyeliner.

"It looks great." Calum tells her, as she looks at herself in the camera. He wanted to reassure her, as she had a worried look across her face. He didn't want her to worry at all.

"Thank you. It still feels off but I can't fuck with it." Caro replies, sigh while still inspecting her face on the phone screen.

"You've been saying that the past, like, twenty minutes while doing your eyeliner." Calum laughs, shaking his head at her.

She groans, "I know! It's my process, really. Keep trying to figure it out until I give up, figuring it's good enough."

"Me but with life in general." Calum blurts, laughing once he realizes he said that out loud. Calum sometimes has a problem with speaking his mind, having no filter and just saying exactly what he's thinking.

"Calum!"

"I didn't mean to say that out loud!" He continues laughing, and his laughter caused Caro to start giggling along with him.

"I appreciate the honesty, really." She tells him, their laughter dying down.

She grabs her mascara and lip gloss, the last things she needed to do, so that she could pack away all her makeup again.

Caro quickly finishes up, and takes her phone from Calum, doing one last inspection in the camera.

"You look amazing, Caro. Stop worrying." Calum tells her, snatching her phone from her hands.

"Hey!" She exclaims, trying to grab it from him, but he holds it away from her. She didn't care to fight so she just huffs, folding her arms across her chest.

"I'm just saying. You're good at doing your makeup. It looks great." Calum says, handing her phone back to her.

"Thank you." She smiles, in response to both the compliments and receiving her phone. Caro avoids his gaze, suddenly feeling shy. She thought she might've felt butterflies in her stomach, but there's no way. So she ignored it.

Their two then keep to themselves, both of them on their phones. After a while, Caro looks over at his phone. She refuses to admit to herself she's being nosy, but she's definitely being nosy.

"What's your Instagram?" Caro asks, startling Calum, who was just trying to scroll through his explore page.

"Oh, here." He says, holding his hand out to take her phone, so he can pull up his account.

He hastily types on Caro's phone, pulling up his account and clicking the follow button himself.

"Who says I wanted to follow you?" Caro questions, a smirk on her lips.

"Trust me, you want to." He tells her, handing her phone back.

Caro giggles, now looking at Calum's account. She was genuinely impressed with what she saw, it wasn't a typical account you saw from a guy. It wasn't one single picture of him from three years ago. It was better than hers and she put too much effort into hers.

"You guys are like, artsy, huh?" Caro asks, not looking up from her phone as she scroll through his account.

"I mean, I guess." He chuckles.

"You're fine with wearing eyeshadow, you're as obsessed with this band as I am, and you're Instagram is this good? Where did you come from?" Caro asks, wondering how Calum seems to have no flaws.

Calum shrugs, "I know. I'm kind of a perfect human being."

Caro giggles, focusing back on his Instagram. She notices a picture of Calum and Ashton, clicking on it so she can go look at Ashton's account.

"Oh, hey, Caro." Ashton says, once he sees the notification that Caro followed him.

"Wow... I'm not special? You just follow everybody?"

"Of course. I can't wait to see what you all get up to after this show. How else am I meant to stay updated on my queue buddies?"

"By, you know, staying in touch?" Calum questions as if it was obvious.

"Oh, yeah. I wasn't expecting you guys to want to." Caro replies.

"Obviously! Why not?" Calum tells her.

She shrugs. "I've only managed to stay decent friends with a few people I've met in lines. Most of them it's just following each other across different social media's. The occasional comment or DM."

"We're more fun than that. All four of us will keep in touch with you guys. Even when you don't want us to."

"I love that." She smiles.

"Did I just hear we're all best friends now?"
Ashton asks, joining into their conversation.

"Yeah. We're all friends forever now."