I can't find a pulse, my heart won't start anymore.
Luke flips his phone over and over in his hands from his position on the floor where his couch used to reside. He knows Atlas is holding him to this; so he dials Calum's number after about fifteen minutes of deliberation. "Hey," Calum's gentle voice sounds through the phone, and Luke takes a breath. "Luke? What's goin' on?" he adds, and Luke wants to melt through the floor. Calum is still so soft with Luke, whatever they've got going on. Luke isn't used to having someone speak so gently with them despite how angry they are at him.
"Hey," Luke finally speaks up.
"Are you okay? Something happen?" Calum asks.
"I shouldn't have acted like I did," Luke starts, and he admittedly could have come up with better lines. "I'm sorry. Nothing happened, um, I'm just– uhhh– sorry."
There's a short silence, then a sigh. "In the group chat? No, you shouldn't have. But you're okay?""
"Yeah, yeah, I'm okay," Luke reassures Calum. "We need to talk," Luke then blurts out, moving on from his quick apology for starting a fight, so he can inevitably start another fight, because he somehow always starts fights. It's in his blood or something, he figures. He always finds a way to cause a problem, to start an argument, to fuck everything up.
"Is it the inevitable talk talk, or?"
"Don't know how I feel about you calling that inevitable," Luke chuckles, but there's no actual humor laced throughout it. Nothing about this situation is funny. It's almost as if Luke can physically feel Calum slipping from him, pulling away, checking out. And he doesn't blame him– Luke is so hard to love, and everyone inevitably leaves when they've finally grown too tired of his shit to continue putting up with it. And it's not like he doesn't understand why Calum is so upset; he understands just fine, but the understanding is exactly what's making him so angry about all of this. "Are you working?"
"Yeah," Calum replies. "I'm probably gonna head out around five."
"Can I drive down then? I'm tired of fighting with you over the phone."
Calum scoffs, "So you want to fight with me in person? Like that makes it better?"
"Of course it doesn't make it better," Luke lets out a dry laugh. "I wanna see you, anyway, before I g–"
"Okay," Calum stops him. "Just be careful. I'll see you in a bit." With that, he hangs up, and Luke finally just drops his phone on the floor.
This is exhausting, he thinks. He leaves California in three days and the last thing he wants to be doing right now is fighting with the one and only person he's going to miss here. And he gets it, he really does. But he hates it nonetheless.
You might just have dealt the final blow.
He turns the two hour drive into an hour and a half, give or take, then he sits in his car for ten minutes preparing himself for the horrible conversation he knows he's about to have. The steps up to Calum's front door are so familiar, and they feel like the most normal thing in the world to Luke. Like walking up front porch steps to see Calum is something he wants to do every day for the rest of his life. And this all feels so new to him– maybe they've moved too fast, or, maybe Luke has. Maybe Luke shouldn't be so sure that Calum is the love of his life or however he wants to spin it; this would all probably hurt a lot less than it currently does.
Calum's living room is illuminated by the sun shining through the floor-to-ceiling windows. Luke loves it; he says it makes everything feel cozy, but in reality it's just because he feels safe here. They sit on the couch, shoulder to shoulder, and Luke looks everywhere but over to Calum. "What did you wanna talk about?" Calum asks softly. He knows, he has to know, Luke thinks that there's no way he doesn't know.
