Take It Out On Me [Malum AU]

Chapter 8

This is my favorite Malum picture ever. Cute picture of Cal - wait. Michael? What are you doing back there?

Thank you, everyone who wished me luck on my exam. I think I did pretty well.

When Michael woke up the next morning, he smiled, remembering that Calum had said he loved him.

Wait. Why would he smile at that? It was just a friendly 'I love you'. It wasn't special or anything.

Michael sighed and got ready for school, then went to Calum's house and let himself in.

"Hey, Michael," Mrs. Hood said, smiling at him.

"Hey, Mrs. Hood," he replied, then headed upstairs. "Calum, are you ready to go?"

"I don't wanna," Calum whined, opening his door. He was pouting, and he looked quite grumpy.

"Come on," Michael said with an eye roll.

They left the Hood house and walked to school in silence.

There was an awkward tension around them. Michael was embarrassed that Calum had walked in on him and Luke, and he was worried of how Luke would act at school today.

"Hey," Calum said when they got to school. "Please don't think I think any different of you."

"I don't."

"Really?" Calum raised an eyebrow. "You just seem kind of cautious around me."

Michael smiled and ruffled his friend's hair, messing it up, much to Calum's annoyance.

"Nope, it's all good. Just, don't act weird around Luke, okay?"

"Right, yeah, of course."

They parted ways and headed to their different classes, but neither of them focused in any of them. Michael didn't even take his notes in AP Music Theory.

During gym, Irina kept giving Michael confused looks because he wasn't his usual chatty self, but she never addressed it.

When lunch finally came, the first fifteen minutes were filled with Irina and Ashton looking between Calum, Michael, and Luke, who all just picked at their food.

"Did something happen between you three yesterday?" Irina finally asks.

"I walked in on Luke and Michael almost having sex," Calum said, then gasped and covered his mouth with his large hands.

"Again?" Ashton asked. "Lay off the sex, Luke."

"What the fuck, Calum?!" Michael screamed. "And what the fuck, Luke?! Ashton knows?!"

"I may have, um, told him," Luke said sheepishly, not meeting his friend's eyes.

"Great," Michael said, tears in his eyes. "This is just fucking great."

He stood and walked from the lunchroom, not bothering to take his backpack with him, and he ignored his friends calling for him.

He was starting to hyperventilate, so he headed to the nearest boys bathroom, and locked the door, after making sure no one else was in there.

His phone was constantly ringing, but he ignored it and curled into a ball on the ground, not caring how dirty it was.

He hated crying, but he let the tears fall, and he bit his lip.

One of the people he trusted the most had told his biggest secret to one of his other friends, and didn't tell Michael that he'd told him. Then the person he trusted most told one of his only secrets to Irina, who would probably hate him, not because he was gay, but because he kept it from her.

He couldn't breathe, but he didn't care. He was used to feeling that way. It was how he felt after every time his dad cut him. Michael would hide in a closet and cry until his mom got home, and he often times hyperventilated in the closet and he couldn't breathe.

-

For the rest of the week, Michael skipped school and wouldn't answer his phone. Whenever one of his friends would come over while his mom was home, he would just tell her that he didn't feel well, and he'd ask his mom to send them away, which she would.

On Saturday, Calum decided that he had had enough of this stupid childish game Michael was playing.

He grabbed one of his mom's bobby pins from the bathroom, then made his way to Michael's house, where he picked the lock and walked up to Michael's room.

He slowly opened the door and looked inside the room, seeing Michael with his back to him.

He was wearing short sleeves, which Calum had rarely ever seem him in. Michael always wore long sleeves, which was still a mystery to Calum. Seeing his arms was weird.

"Michael?" he asked softly, and the boy jumped and turned to him.

"C-Calum?" he asked. "What are you doing here?" He then gasped as he looked down at his arms, and he tried to move to his closet to get a jacket, but Calum saw the unmistakable scars on his arms.

"What the fuck is on your arms?" he asked, quickly walking over to Michael and grabbing his wrists, turning his arms so he could see the scars. He hadn't seen them at first, because they were on Michael's forearms. Calum had at first only seen the back of his arms, since Michael's back had been to him.

"It's not what it looks like!" Michael insisted, trying to pull his arms from Calum's grip, to no avail.

"Then please, tell me what it is. Because it looks like you cut yourself."

Michael's bottom lip trembled. He didn't want to look back on his past, but, he took a deep breath and whispered, "M-My dad."

"What?"

"My dad used to cut me." He squeezed his eyes shut. "He, um, he used a knife when I was really young, then started using a box cutter when I got older. That was kind of his way of beating me up, even though he punched me and kicked me, too." He opened his eyes and took a shaky breath, looking at the ground instead of at Calum. "I know you probably don't believe me, but-"

He was cut off by Calum pulling him into a hug, and he realized that the boy's shoulders were shaking.

"Are you crying?" he asked.

Calum pulled back, tears on his face.

"I believe you," he said. "I'll always believe you. This is going to sound sick, but I'm just kind of glad that you yourself don't cut yourself. Please never do."

"Um, okay. I wasn't really planning on it."

Calum wiped his eyes, then said, "Come with me."

"Where are we going?"

"I don't want to keep any secrets from you. We need to be honest with each other from now on. And, now I know two of your secrets while you don't know any of mine. So, I'm going to show you one."

-

Half an hour later, they were at The Bar, and Michael was clinging to Calum, scared of everyone around him.

"You come here?" he asked as they sat at the bar.

"Yeah," Calum said. "I lost my virginity in the girls bathroom here."

Michael scrunched his nose up. "Ew. I didn't need to know that."

"And here's the girl I lost it to," the younger boy said, grinning as a pretty girl sat beside him.

"Hey, Calum," she said, smiling at him. "Who's your cute friend?"

"Mariana, this is my best friend, Michael. Michael, this is my friend, Mariana."

That night, Michael lost count of how many shots he had, and for the first time in a long time, he let loose and had fun with his best friend.

-

Short chapter, sorry, but it's the third chapter I've written today, and I took an AP exam, so I think this is pretty damn good.

The first part of Nightmare Games is up!