A Letter Before I Go ; malum

15

About half an hour later, they ran out again, the arena filled. They were already chanting the Michael and Calum's ship-name, which made them awkwardly look at each other. Once everything was underway, and it was their time to walk down the runway together to address the crowd. They played leaning on each other's back, giggling to each other.

"Can we be gay?" Calum whispered into his ear.

"Course." Michael said, giving him a quick kiss on the cheek before running back to the microphone. The crowd went crazy for it as the Maori flipped him the bird, even though he was internally throwing up from nervousness. The purple-haired boy started laughing halfway through his solo as people started to chant 'malum' again.

During encore, they started to hit each other with the head of their instruments. They were too busy laughing to be paying attention to the crowd. For what Calum thought would be the final hit directed towards him, he stumbled forward.

Michael held him to stop him from falling. "One of the end of my strings is caught in your pants." Michael told him. "Stop moving."

The whole song stopped, and everybody was asking what was going on. Michael, dragging his guitar and – by default – his boyfriend with him, walked over to the microphone.

"I got his ass stuck in one of the strings." Michael giggled, making Calum blush.

There was a mixture of laughter and screams as Michael ended up tugging at the string to get it out. After hearing the deafening rip of his jeans breaking, Calum winced.

"These were my favourite jeans, you dick."

"I'll buy you new ones, okay?" Michael promised, slapping his ass in front of everybody.

"The expensive ones?" Calum asked, pouting.

"Yeah, the expensive ones." Michael assured, smiling at him. He looked at the crowd. "Anyway, uh, thank you so much for coming. We hope you had the best night, and hashtag-malum-forever." He said, stepping back from the microphone.

He left with Ashton's drumbeat vibrating his chest. Michael smiled, turning to Calum once they were offstage, kissing him. "You did good tonight." He said against his lips.

Calum laughed into the kiss. "Thank you. I would say that you did, too, but you got my ass stuck on a guitar."

Michael pulled back and covered his mouth with his hand, trying not to laugh. "Sorry." He grinned, putting his hand down. He took his guitar-strap off of his shoulder, seeing that Luke and Ashton were offstage now. He put his guitar down next to Calum's bass, and looked at the two bandmates that just came off.

"What a fucking great show." Ashton grinned. "You two came out, Luke fell over onstage, Calum got his ass stuck on a guitar," he listed, walking with them to the shower-blocks.

They grabbed their towels and hung them over the door of each separate block. Over the sound of running water, and music coming from Ashton's phone, they talked over each other excitedly, full of adrenalin.

They got out and got dressed, Ashton putting up a few hundred Snapchat stories. They got their tea from the kitchen and locked themselves in their dressing room.

"I could play – like – three more shows, right now." Calum said, walking around the dressing room, dancing along to the music occasionally.

Ashton smiled small. "Eat your dinner, first."

The Maori sat down and ate everything on the plate before putting the knife and fork parallel to each other on the centre of the porcelain before getting up again. Ashton opened up his laptop, and went to start up a Twitcam.