"It's Not Love If It Hurts" //5sos

/85/

"It's scary," she admitted. "Johanna makes it look so easy, but she's really capable. I don't know how I'm going to do."

  Calum brushed his fringe aside before putting his hand back in his hoodie pocket. It was raining just barely, just enough that they kept their hoods up and their hands in their pockets. "Well, your not going to be given a ton of work right away. And won't you get training?"

  Annie frowned, looking at the sidewalk as they walked along it. The evening sky glowed a medium blue as the sun set, clouds turning orange in the last remnants of light. Annie could just make out the moon in the sky, becoming more and more visible as the sun disappeared. "I'll get training. Most of it from Johanna, but I also have to take a class on self defense and on basic medicine. To be your handler, I have to be CPR certified! It's crazy!"

  Calum laughed lightly at Annie's growing anguish, knowing that it seemed like a lot now, but that she'd be able to get it eventually.
 
  "When does the training start?" He murmers, bumping into her casually.

  "Training with Johanna starts tomorrow. The first self defense class is the day after that."

***********************************

  The next day, Annie found herself laying in bed, not sure what to do.

She'd woken up that morning to the smell of fruit stinking up the kicthen.

  Calum had made smoothies for breakfast (as he tried to eat resonably healthy as his contract states), but had forgotten to put the lid on the blender, resulting in a mixture of strawberries and frozen pinapple splattering the wood floor and the brown cabinets. When Annie got up, she found him on his hands and knees, trying to get the goop off of the floor.

  Laughing, she had bent down to help.

  After the failed smoothie attempt, they grabbed some of the fruit that hadn't been annihilated, and ran out the door. Annie was only two minutes late for the first day of her new job.

  Not that Johanna minded. It seemed as though she only counted the seconds when she was high on caffeine, which Annie only saw once, after Calum got back from the hospital. Now Calum's voice, including his singing voice, was returning, and the fans were ecstatic. The boys, Annie, and Johanna were more than just ecstatic, though they tried to keep calm about it. Calum seemed more smiley than usual, but that might have to do more with him and Annie than his voice returning.

  Once they got inside, Annie and Calum had split off, Calum going to the practice room and Annie going to Johanna- and now her- office.

  The rest of the morning went well. Johanna went over the basic responsibilities of the job, and she and Annie started working on the plan for Halloween. Johanna and John had apparently planned the costumes over a month ago, and the boys stylists had gotten all the pieces together. Annie never knew how much work went into something stupid like costumes, but she always figured that the boys would just chose the costumes themselves. Boy was she wrong.

  When it was lunchtime, Johanna kept working but Annie went to meet the boys in the cafeteria. When she mentioned their costumes, she realized the boys didn't even know what the costumes were yet. Annie just hoped she wasn't supposed to keep it a surprise.

  After lunch was when disaster struck.

  All through lunch, Luke was being weird. Weirder than usual, that is. He kept on trying to make eye contact with Calum, nudged his legs under the table, once asked him if they could talk in private. Annie noticed- she'd be a crappy handler if she didn't- but she just assumed Luke wanted to talk to Calum about something trivial, not concerning her.
  She was wrong.