Coming Up For Air

5.6

"Maybe you were needed up there but we're still unaware as why."
-Ed Sheeran, 'Small Bump'

⚑ Luke ⚐

"Did you know we have a window-ledge that's big enough to sit on?" Luke chirped as Calum walked drowsily out of his bedroom. "I sat on it until 3 am. I love the way London smells at one thirty in the morning. I've never smelled that before, but now that I have, I'm considering becoming nocturnal."

Calum glared at him through a haze of exhaustion.

"You have not slept in forty eight hours." He said to Luke accusingly.

"Yup. Yup. I also haven't eaten since yesterday morning because I just keep throwing everything back up. I didn't know that that was something that happened to people when they were sad! The more you know, I guess. You learn new stuff every--,"

"You need to get ahold of yourself, Hemmings." Calum said firmly. "You're acting like a fucking psycho right now, you're so tired it looks like you've got two black eyes, and your skin's looking all vampy. I'm really not down for you to die on my watch."

Luke giggled shrilly. "Oops."

"You have school today, don't you?" Calum asked, grabbing a shirt from the pile of laundry on the couch and pulling it over his head.

"Yeah!" Luke nodded vigorously, brandishing his backpack. "I'm ready to go! I just wanted to say good morning to you and I hope you have fun at college today and I'm sorry for being selfish and--,"

"You're not going to school today." Calum said, shaking his head and tugging at Luke's backpack. "You're exhausted."

Luke pouted and tried to take it back from Calum, but his grip was firm. "I don't wanna get bad grades."

"You'll be fine." Calum assured. "Now, go lay down. I'll make you a cup of tea."

Luke looked at him, a little glazed over due to his deliriously tired state. "I like when you talk to me. It's nice. I don't like when you're angry with me."

Calum sighed. "I don't it like when I'm angry with you either. Now, go sleep."

Luke grinned blissfully. "Can't."

"Can't what?" Calum asked distractedly, pouring himself a bowl of cereal and pulling out his phone.

"Sleep. I can't do it." Luke told him, bouncing on the balls of his bare feet. "I've being trying to, but my eyes won't close and my heart won't stop stuttering and I just can't start thinking slowly enough to stop."

Calum looked at Luke, who, to the untrained eye, would appear to be a walking corpse, and he sighed and set down his spoon.

"Why can't you sleep, Luke?" He asked, even though it was crystal-clear in his eyes that he knew.

Luke was so strung out that he didn't have the strength to look for a place inside himself that wasn't shattered because he was all broken apart. He supposed that he was just so absolutely ruptured his soul had lost all its nerve endings and nothing could really hurt him anymore, so telling the bone-crushing truth wasn't really bone-crushing.

"Ashton. I miss my Ashton." He said in a solidbroken voice that tasted metallic on his tongue.

Calum looked a bit like a marionette that had had all its strings sliced when he slumped forward from the blow of pure sad that Luke's words delivered to his ribcage.

He couldn't really think of anything to say, so he moved toward Luke, and then stopped, and then started and stopped 17 more times before he finally collapsed in on himself and grabbed Luke's wrist and led him toward his bedroom.