A Letter Before I Go ; malum

14

Neither of them could help it, really. It had been a couple of days since the fan had caught them kissing, and nothing had happened, so there they were – in an interview – testing the waters in between 'best friend' and 'boyfriend'.

"So, are any of you guys single?"

"Yeah, we're all single." Ashton answered quickly. "There's no time for dating when you're on tour, you know?"

"Yeah." Michael agreed, a slight smirk on his face as he looked down and cleared his throat.

"Okay, time to address the elephant in the room; this article in MusicFix Magazine shed a lot of light on what tour life is like, what problems are there within the band?"

Luke sighed dramatically, leaning back. "The coffee, the fact that Michael's phone charger is broken . . . damn, it's a hard life." The boys laughed along with it.

Ashton was the first one to stop laughing. "No, but seriously, we're not willing to answer anything about that article, because it's just more bullshit that we wouldn't like to deal with right now."

At Ashton's bluntness, the interviewer didn't know what to say. "Okay, fair enough."

The interview was over, and they left quickly after, going to the venue to rest in the dressing room for a few minutes before they had to get up and do something. Michael and Calum collapsed onto the lounge, together in seconds, as if they were magnets.

Calum rested on Michael's chest, listening to Michael mumble things under his breath as he scrolled through Twitter.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck," Calum listened to his heartrate pick up, sitting up a little to see what was wrong. "U-Uh . . ."

The Maori grabbed Michael's phone, his eyes widening at the video on loop. It was a little blurry, but it was obvious that it was them. Hell, there was audio to back it up. He watched in horror as he saw the grainy footage of Michael kissing him, hands on both sides of his face.

"I've known you for sixteen years, and I've never found you as cute as I do now."

Calum dropped the phone.

Yeah, he knew he said he didn't care, but that was a fucking lie. He got up, wiping his face as he tried to figure out how to deal with this.

"Alright," he finally said, containing his frustration, "I'm going out for a smoke; you can join me if you want."

They both went out to the smoking area, and Calum lit up a Camel before pacing back and forth. He made sure his voice was steady before he spoke.

"Okay, so, Modest! are going to ring us, and we're going to be split up, probably. We need to prepare for the worst."

"Calum . . ." Michael trailed off, finding a seat.

The olive-skinned boy continued, ignoring him. "We're going to get a lot of homophobes, as well, but that's fine. We can just ignore that."

"We're not breaking up." Michael said, crossing his arms. "We like each other; that is not why people break up."

Calum nodded, not even protesting because he didn't want them to break up either. He took a few more puffs of the cigarette and then put it out, hating the way Michael cringed at it. He sat down on Michael's lap, frowning.

"What are you doing? Get off me, you cock." Michael grinned.

"But I love you, Mikey." Calum giggled, putting his head on the purple-haired boy's chest.