[DISCONTINUED] In The Crowd (Muke)

1.1 - Tracklist

Calum smiled as the video ended, liking the way Luke's voice sounded. He didn't care that it was poorly edited (if at all), or that there was literally no video description. He turned to Michael and was confused when he was met with Michael staring at the screen of Calum's phone, his eyes squinted as he sat quietly, thinking.

"Did he really say he knew a dude named Michael?" Michael asked in amusement, laughing quietly at the name change. Although it was a little awkward, because you know. Calum nodded, a smirk slowly growing on his face.

"I know that boy from somewhere, though." Michael said, "Like, he looks very familiar." He added, nodding his head as he spoke, his hand stroking his invisible beard. Calum chuckled at the sight.

"How?" Calum asked, furrowing his eyebrows together in pure confusion. Surely he wouldn't know the boy, he doesn't even know where he is from and he only had one video. Michael shrugged, mumbling something Calum was unable to hear, and he left the room. The two of them shared a conjoined room, meaning they had two seperate rooms but there was a door connecting the two, so they could enter each other's whenever they pleased without having to go out in the hallway. It was one of the only hotels in Sydney that had rooms like this. Well one of the hotels that had conjoined rooms and rated four and a half stars. Lots of hotels had conjoined rooms. Conjoined is a weird word.

He turned his attention back to his phone and gave the video a thumbs up. He clicked on the picture of the channel to bring him straight to his info and all that jazz. Calum was surprised at the amount of subscribers he already had. 289, and it's only been two, maybe three days. He didn't keep count. It took him and Michael at least six months to gain that many subscribers. So how could he have gotten so many? Then he remembered where he'd found the channel. A tweet. The boy must've somehow already been famous on Twitter in some way that gave him an advantage, and he wished he remembered the username for the boy, but he didn't.

Michael was sat on his queen sized bed in his room, his back against the backboard of the bed, throwing a bouncy ball up and down. He was thinking. He knew that boy somewhere. He doesn't quite remember where, but something about his features made him very familiar, and it bothered him to know that he couldn't recall where he'd seen him before.

"How was the wedding?" He suddenly heard someone ask, he turned to see Calum sitting down on the arm chair a few feet away from Michael's bed, fixing his brown and blonde high-lighted hair.

"T'was pretty good, I had fun even though I couldn't stay the whole time." Michael replied, smiling at Calum and then fixing his attention back onto the small green and blue ball that was still flying up and down through the air. "It was a bit hot, but not too hot since "winter" is just around the corner."

"Then don't wear all dark clothing and hats, moron." Calum smiled at his red-headed friend in front of him, chuckling quietly. "We're expected to be back in America by Friday, Colten's orders. We have to finish the last month of the American leg of the tour, then we tour around England and Denmark for about two and a half-ish months."

"So we won't be back in Australia for another three and a half months, since we come back in the middle of February." Michael muttered, a little upset. Calum nodded, then stood up and left the room, leaving Michael alone with his thoughts which he hated. Why does everyone always leave him to think?

He missed home, he missed his friends, and especially his parents. He felt bad for leaving them all alone. He wished he had siblings so it didn't seem as if their only son had abandoned them. How funny, usually it would be the other way around. Michael would get left at home alone almost every weekend while his parents went out for dinner and stayed in a nice hotel, leaving Michael at home to cook himself ramen noodles and the occasional bowl of mac and cheese. But even though he felt abandoned for those three seemingly long days, he knew that his parents loved him. Maybe that's why Michael was so reliant on music, it's all that's really been there for him every single day. His parents never were the loving type. Sure, they would hang out together and do lots of things, but he was the only kid in his group of friends that never got compliments from his parents, and never got the I'm-proud-of-you-son pat on the back from his dad. It was the small things in Michael's child hood that made him the lonely boy that he is today. Even being surrounded by thousands of people in an arena every night wasn't enough to fill the empty void he had buried deep in his heart. He had a longing feeling in him that made him wish he had a closer bond to his parents. He prayed for the day to come, the day that his father would finally tell Michael that he was proud of him for accomplishing so much at age nineteen. He yearned for those five simple words.