Look At Us - l.hemmings + a.gaskarth

Luke's Soulmate

He'd been hearing those noises for the past 3 hours and he was sick of it. Why couldn't Michael have gone to her house? At least there wasn't screaming; that was where he drew the line.

Luke was so bored that he was literally just sitting there, staring at the clock slowly ticking on his ring finger while the t.v. quietly hummed in the background. 15:36:19...20...21. That meant he was on the east coast. Of course he was; he was on break.

Luke was one of those people who took a year off to track down their soulmate, and he'd found him. It was actually quite easy to narrow it down, at least to 20 people, especially since they toured constantly. And last year, his soulmate took a solo trip to Paris, just for fun. So he got it.

However, he was almost positive he didn't know it was Luke. Probably thought he was some 20-something, blonde-haired, green-eyed woman with a high-paying job, nice curves, and a thing for traveling. And while he was blonde, he was most definitely not what his soulmate had in mind.

"Just call him," Calum said, walking through the door with Ashton on his arm. Calum tossed Luke his phone with the contact pulled up. It landed on the couch next to him, shining up at him with an obnoxiously bright light.

"Can't, sorry." Luke picked up the phone and handed it to Ash, who had flopped down on the floor after plugging in FIFA, a controller in his hand. He shoved the phone in his back pocket before returning to the game.

"Sure you can, it's easy. Just press the call button. Fletcher, give him my phone," Calum called from the kitchen.

"Sure thing, Thomas," he called back before shoving the phone into Luke's hands.

"Nope," he said, pulling his own phone out.

Lots of people never found their soulmates. And it didn't seem to bother them. They just went on with their life; ignoring the clock ticking away on their finger; ignoring the dreams that haunted them every night. They all found someone else, someone they loved, and were happy. Some even decided to get their clocks covered up, with everything ranging from tattoos to constant make-up. Honestly, it kind of bothered Luke that people didn't want their soulmates, so he tried to avoid those kinds of conversations.

But some people, like Luke, needed to find their soulmate, or it would bother them their entire life. They needed to locate the person the universe decided they should be with. And they spent years and thousands of dollars trying to find and verify that they were right and they had found them. Luke wasn't that extreme, but he was positive about his by now, so it was too late to try and pretend there was no clock.

Ashton was the former. He didn't care about his soulmate. Well, actually, that's kind of a lie. He had a big turn-over a few years into upper-level school, deciding he didn't want some ultimate force he had very little proof existed to decide what he did with his life. He accepted that he might end up with his soulmate anyway, but not because they're his soulmate, but because he's actually, truly in love with them.

Calum, on the other hand, was as bad as Luke. Or used to be. He spent way too long to be healthy trying to locate his soulmate and came up empty-handed. Then Katie came in. She broke down all his walls and morals, and now, he just tried to be happy. At the moment, he was happy spending every moment of every day on the bus with Ashton or the dressing room with Ashton or pretty much anywhere with Ashton.

"Fine, I'll call him," Calum retorted, wandering back into the room. Luke heard Ashton snicker and his eyes widened, turning to stare up at Calum. He was smirking as he took his phone back and dialed in a number.

Luke felt a twinge of jealousy that Cal had the number memorized, the number of Luke's soulmate when he barely bothered to look at the contact. It's not that he didn't care, or didn't stare at his picture into the late hours of the night, hoping he'd call him first, but he kept forcing himself to delete his profile so that he didn't end up doing something stupid while he was drunk and then getting it back from Cal or Mikey or Ashton. Luke just never had it long enough to remember.

"Hey 'Lex." Calum laughed into his phone, biting back the giggles from Luke's expression. It must have been one of pure hatred.

"Oh, nothing much. Luke just wanted to call and talk about something but was being a big baby pretending he didn't, so I did it for him." He could see the smirk in the back of Ashton's head, the way his ears turned slightly down and his curls bounced a bit more. Damn, Luke was gonna kill that adorable little turtle someday.

"No, I thought I'd just call you, tell you, and hang up, leaving you in confusion, and let the curiosity eat you up for a few days while I convince Luke to call you himself.... No, of course not, that was totally not sarcasm, William." He mumbled something about why everyone thought it was a perfect day to call him by his middle name. Luke laughed a little bit before straining his ears to hear what "William" had to say.

"Well... I can, but I don't want to."

"OH MY FUCKING GOD!" Luke heard him yell through the phone. Calum laughed and pulled his phone a little ways away from his ear. "JUST GIVE HIM THE FUCKING PHONE!" Calum's giggling died down slightly, enough for Luke to hear Ashton's snickering just loud enough to deserve a smack to the back of the head.

"What if I say-"

"CALUM THOMAS HOOD, I SWEAR TO GOD, GIVE LUCAS THE FUCKING PHONE BEFORE I CLIMB THROUGH IT AND STRANGLE YOU!" This sent both Calum and Ashton into full-on giggling, as well as Luke laughing quietly to himself.

Calum smirked at him before handing him the phone. Luke then mouthed, May I? before nodding out the door. Cal shrugged, jumped over the couch, and curled up with Ashton, bragging about how he'd totally whip his ass at this game if he wasn't so tired.

Once out of the room, Luke was about to pull the phone up to his ear when the noises from Michael's room got even louder. Rolling his eyes, Luke pushed the door open, glaring at Michael, who was curled up on the bed with Annie, his sister.

They were about the same age, Annie is only about 11 months older, and she lived near where they were staying for this brief break on tour. They were having to head out soon, so Michael was spending as much time as he could with the tall, silver-blonde girl with a slight Tennessee accent, mixed nicely with Australian.

"Can you please turn that shit down, I'm trying to talk to... someone."

Michael smirked at Luke as he turned the volume on the t.v. down. Like, Luke understood the want for a movie marathon, but come on, do they really have to enjoy every Harry Potter movie at a volume of 60? Really?

"Ooh, who's that?" Annie leaned up, biting her lip and staring at Luke with big brown eyes.

It surprised him how much she looked like Michael yet didn't at the same time. They had the same lips and similar attitudes, but her eyes were her greatest feature, standing out strikingly against her pale skin. Plus, she was very confident about herself and chose to keep her hair so extremely light, almost like silver water.

"N-no one. Michael, just keep it down." Luke turned fast, trying to keep the blush out of his cheeks. He jogged down the hall, throwing the door to his room open and closed before pulling the phone back up.

"Hey," he murmured.

"Well, that took a while," Alex laughed through the phone. Luke's face must have broken out into a big smile because soon, his cheeks began to hurt.

"So what was it you wanted to talk about, kiddo?"

That stung. Luke was barely 9 years younger than him. Actually, 8 years, 7 months, and 3 days younger than him, exactly. Not counting hours, he's not that extreme.

"Um... I was just curious about... um... you know what, never mind, I'm just being silly. See you in two weeks." Luke quickly pulled the phone from his ear and hung up.

Well, that went well.

He spent the next hour watching Alex call back to Calum's phone and get no response, eventually giving up.