Give Me Love (Muke)

You're A Regular Decorated Emergency

Ashton comes home the next afternoon from his family sleepover to find Luke in his bed, curled away from him and asleep. He reaches over and rubs Luke's leg, hoping to wake him up without scaring him. "Luke. Luke, baby, wake up. Come on."

Luke stirs and rolls sleepily onto his back. "Ashton?" he mumbles, then sits up fast. "Shit. Sorry, I'm sorry, I'll leave."

"Stay." Ashton hovers over him tentatively. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," Luke says, closing his eyes and shrinking away. Ashton frowns, pulling the covers off him. Luke's legs curl in instinctively and he makes protesting noises.

"You never show up in my bed because nothing happened," Ashton says bluntly. "What happened? Is it about Michael?"

"No," Luke says, but his face gives it away. Ashton sighs. He'd hoped when he left Luke with Michael last night things would go okay. After all, they'd been getting along better lately.

"Wanna tell me what happened?" Ashton asks gently.

"No," Luke says, voice muffled by the pillow.

"We don't have to talk," Ashton says. "But are you sure you don't want to?"

"I'll talk," Luke agrees after a tense moment, "but not here. Please, not here."

Luke's deathly afraid of someone overhearing. Ashton nods. "Let's go get coffee or something, yeah? We can talk there."

Luke grudgingly agrees, and tumbles out of bed. Ashton throws him one of his flannels and his smallest pair of jeans, and waits patiently facing away, since he knows Luke gets embarrassed by people seeing him change. After a minute or two of shuffling from behind Ashton, Luke mumbles, "I'm done."

They slip out through the front door to Ashton's car.

"Have you seen Michael yet this morning?" Luke asks as he gets in. He sounds hopeful, worried.

Ashton hates to shake his head. "No. Sorry, he's been in his room since I got back. Is something wrong?"

"No," Luke says, and his eyes settle on the road. "No, everything's fine. Let's go."

Ashton has a sinking feeling about last night, but he keeps his mouth shut and begins driving.

---

When Calum returns home, he expects some sort of warm greeting (because really, who wouldn't appreciate his presence), but is met instead with silence. It's unusual, really, being that he lives with three other teenage boys, even considering that one doesn't talk too much at all, but there isn't even white noise. No video game bleeps, no music playing in any area of the house, nothing. Ashton said he would be home, and Michael and Luke were supposed to have been as well. There's no note he can find, and when he looks down the hallway, all the doors excluding the bathroom door are wide open, which means absence.

Calum frowns and checks his phone, but none of them have texted him. He ventures down the hall, checking in all the rooms. As he expected, they're empty. He types out a text to Ashton asking about the vacancy in the house, and pauses in front of the bathroom door as he presses send.

He knocks lightly on the door. "Is anybody in here?"

He presses his ear to the door, trying to see if it's shut for a reason before barging in. Boundaries are weak in the house, especially as far as Calum's concerned, but they still exist, and Calum's not too keen on seeing this kind of thing.

There's a slight shuffling, or maybe he imagines it. Silence has a sound sometimes, and perhaps he's only hearing it because he wants to. He knocks again. "Hey, is someone in here?"