A Letter Before I Go ; malum

5

CALUM TRIED TO SMILE, BUT COULDN'T HELP HIMSELF. He almost tried to take Michael's anti-depressants. Was this how Michael felt before he left? Calum wanted to know.

But still, he kept the realest smile he could on his face and kept the whole band going. Kept them laughing, kept them living, kept them sane. A journalist came and had to sit with them, watching their every move.

They all stayed still, scared that the reporter would be like the guy from The Rolling Stone and jeopardise the peace in the fandom. They already had enough shit going on. They didn't need anybody else leaving them.

Calum went out for a smoke within the first hour of him coming in, and Michael said he was going to take a piss, but he really just wanted to find the Maori. The purple-haired boy found him in the smoking area in one of the venues.

Michael smiled small, but Calum didn't return it. "Hey. What's up?"

"Don't want another reporter around." Calum whined, an unlit cigarette between his fingers. "They fuck up everything."

Michael took his hand, attempting to drag him back inside the venue. "Come on. Come with me."

Calum rolled his eyes, smiling as he let the pale boy take him inside. They went back to the dressing room and saw the journalist talking to Luke, who was half-asleep. Ashton was uncapping a beer to give to the man that sat in the corner with a phone, ready to write down all of his notes.

"What's your name again?" Calum asked.

"Arthur Flock."

The Maori nodded, sitting on an armchair. Seeing there were no other chairs, Michael sat on the arm of it. He knew Arthur was watching. He knew that the journalist would say they were gay, and that would be another thing they'd have to deal with.

"We were just talking about the tour." Ashton announced, his eyes on Michael and Calum.

"It's good to be on the road; seeing different places and stuff." The olive-skinned boy said, speaking up with a small smile. "It gets tiring and shit. There's constant drama around us all the time, but we try to ignore it."

Calum wanted to take back everything he said instantly.

That was the thing about journalists. They made you regret being honest.

"What drama?"

Calum rolled his eyes. "Guess."

Ashton left the kettle to boil and looked at his feet. "There's times when there's dramas within the band. Like everybody, we're going to have arguments. But we get over them quickly."

This led to Luke quickly making a joke about how Ashton always took his socks. The boys smiled, all countering that Luke stole their underwear, so it was even.

The reporter seemed to think that they didn't make the subject light-hearted on purpose, and wrote something down in his notes. Luke's phone vibrated in his pocket, and he accepted the call, smiling a little.

"Hey, Arz," he said, walking out of the dressing room.

Ashton took the kettle off and poured some water into his coffee. "'m sorry we're not as upbeat as we were last time. We're just tired. Mid-tour shit."

"Whenever it gets to mid-tour, it gets – like – breaking point, you know? Everybody's sick of being without privacy, without a sleep-in, without our families. We're not saying we're ungrateful, because we aren't, but mid-tour is when all our hormones get fucked."Calum explained, trying not to be anxious about it.