Back To Basics {Malum AU}

[13.] What about school

This is what i always imagined Calum and Michael's houses looking like. Idk it's cute.

Calum's stomach twisted as the droning noise of his alarm, pulling him out of a restless sleep.

But all of his sleeps had been restless recently, he couldn't count how many nights he had slept well since the accident. Because there haven't been any.

He would always find himself about to knock on the wall, telling Michael good night, or good morning. But Michael wasn't opposite that wall. His stuff was, photos of his friends, stuck in various places, the huge stack of records and CDs, messily piled next to his desk, he was too lazy to sort them. They were still there. The smell of Michael was still in there, his cologne still stunk up the duvet, but Michael wasn't. He was coming back tomorrow, but it still wouldn't be the same. Maybe in time, but it would be tricky

Calum snuck in there a few times, trying to make himself feel more normal. Because he hadn't felt normal. He constantly wanted to move, fidget, do something, but he also wanted to just sit and stare into space until he couldn't keep his eyes open. He had no motivation do anything, out of fear that something else might happen. He had to avoid news papers, and pretty much all social media, just in case there had been a car crash or road accident. Last time that happened he couldn't leave the house all day.

He turned over and slapped his phone silent, it was 7:30 a.m, he had to leave at 7:45 and no part of him wanted to go to school. There were good days and bad days for him, for all four of them, but all Calum wanted today was to be like Michael, like they used to be. Laze in one of their gardens, on their phones, or talking, but always holding hands. Just be like nothing happened.

It wasn't Michael's fault, he couldn't blame him, he couldn't. It wasn't his fault, but there was no point in trying to hide that he wished things were the way the way they were before, that Michael could remember him.

But he had to go to school today, he didn't really care about ditching, he was relatively clever, and wasn't failing, he had also skipped multiple times since the accident, but he couldn't today. It was Luke's first day back, and he was scared.

Everybody in the neighbourhood knew who the four boys were and what had happened to them. Calum and Ashton were stared at everywhere, especially in school, for the first week or so, people still looked at them, but not as much, they had either gotten over the fact the car crash had happened, or gotten better at being caught staring. Either that or Calum and Ashton were so used to it they had stopped noticing.

Luke had been stared at a bit too when he came back, he told them people stared at him on his street when he left the car with his parents, that bothered him enough. Luke was always very happy talking a lot to people he was close with, he could talk to strangers, he proved that on the night of the accident, standing up to that homophobic dick. Luke could cope with a few people having their attention on him, but he was shy, and didn't really like being in the limelight for too long. He didn't like answering questions in class, or having long conversations with multiple people who he didn't know.

He didn't like being the centre of attention.

He would be stared at even more than Ashton and Calum was, for one he had been in hospital, he was on crutches. But him and Ashton were now dating. A lot had changed, he would be the hot new topic at school.

So Calum had to go to school today, for Luke. He had Ashton, but they were all in it together, they all needed that extra support.

Reluctantly Calum slid out of bed, pulling on a clean AC/DC shirt, pretty much every shirt he owned was a band shirt, and a pair of dark blue jeans, which was a little weird, but all his black ones were all dirty.