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.
"Me leaving," Luke says, and he hears Calum sigh. He's getting pretty good at that kind of reaction to most of what Luke has to say. "I get why you're mad, and–"
"You've done a pretty good job of proving that you have no idea why I'm mad," Calum replies, and Luke can clock the annoyance in his boyfriend's voice. "You don't understand, and it's like you never even tried to."
"You're upset that I didn't tell you about any of this," Luke states, "But I did. We were talking about Connecticut back when I was still with Max."
"You only wanted to move because he was moving, too," Calum fires back. "Don't spin this back on me."
Luke laughs now, for he actually can't believe any of the words that just came out of Calum's mouth. "You were literally the first person I told that I was considering going back to school. You know it didn't actually have shit to do with him. None of this does."
"It has everything to do with the fact that you took a job on the other side of the country to start at the beginning of the fucking month and I found out after the fact."
"Was I supposed to turn it down?" Luke finally turns to face Calum. "What the fuck was I supposed to do?"
"I don't know–" Calum shrugs– "Take a second to have a discussion about it with your partner?"
Luke uses the huff that can't help but escape from his lips as energy to stand up, because he's mad now too. "I was already leaving. We literally looked at apartments together."
"The timeline wasn't leaving at the end of June when we looked at apartments," Calum says as he follows Luke's actions and stands up. "You just packed up all your shit all of a sudden and now you're gone and I'm supposed to shut up about it?"
Luke looks at Calum like the man has grown a second head. "When the fuck did I say any of that? We just spent the entire month fighting; it is not on me that you're pissed I'm leaving so soon when we had time, we–"
"We didn't have any fucking time," Calum interrupts Luke. "You packed everything up, and–"
"We had time," Luke snaps. "We had time."
"You ignored me every time I tried to talk about being upset about this," Calum says, his voice softening once more. "It feels like you don't even care that you're leaving me here."
"Of course I care," Luke forces out. His chest feels hollow, like all the air has been expelled from his lungs. Of course he cares. He cares more than he's ever cared about anything or anyone else. His little claylike home is so small, it's so, so small, and he carved out a space just big enough for Calum to squeeze in after years of residing in this lonely, tight space. Even when he was with Max, he was stuck in a tiny room only big enough for himself; so it's not a small thing that he let Calum take up space in his life. He's never known anyone quite like Calum Hood. Of course he cares, of course he does. "Why do you think I came down here to talk to you?"
"It doesn't feel like you do." Calum averts his gaze to the floor. "Feels like you're so wrapped up in New Haven and your job and... and Atlas that you completely forgot I'm a part of this, too."
"What the hell does Ace have to do with this?" Luke asks and, yes, maybe he should've addressed other aspects of Calum's statement before that one, but it's called hindsight for a reason.
Calum meets Luke's eyes once more, his own now filled with tears that begin to overflow as soon as he looks into Luke's. "That's what you got from that?"
"I just don't understand what he has t–"
"Of course you don't," Calum laughs, tears flowing freely as he does. "I'm worried about how– how our relationship is going to survive you moving across the fucking country without us even discussing it a... and you're worried about what Atlas has to do with it."
"I'm not worried about that," Luke begs, tears forming in his own eyes now. He isn't worried about that, he really isn't, but now it's all he can think about. Their relationship is crumbling as they speak and Atlas is the last thing on Luke's mind, but all he can think about is that Calum is probably certain that he's in the same situation Luke was with Max. Calum starring as Luke, Luke as Max, and Atlas in the role of Kai: unsuspecting, innocent while a fire is raging next to him. But Luke isn't Max, this isn't happening, it can't be happening. Luke knows this isn't what's happening, but that's stuck far deeper down than Luke is emotionally able to go right now. "I just want us to fix this," he admits, and it sort of feels like defeat.
"You broke it," Calum mumbles, "Not me."
And the air is thick with loss and indecision.
"I have to meet with the dean Monday morning," Luke cuts through the silence. "So I can maybe leave a day later, but that's all I can–"
"Just go," Calum stops him. "You have to go."
"And just figure this out on the phone?" Luke asks, sarcasm dripping from him.
"I don't know." Calum shrugs. "I don't know. You hate long distance relationships anyway."
If this were a movie, it would be the climax: the slow-motion moment of realization from the main character. Only difference is the characters run back to each other in the pouring rain or something, and Luke doesn't see that happening here. But he gets the slow-motion moment, the dizziness as he tries to prepare for what's about to happen. "I never said I wouldn't do it," Luke sort of squeaks out.
"If I ask you to stay, you're going to hate me," Calum goes on. "And if you go after this, I'm probably going to hate you a little bit."
"So we're just giving up because we can't figure shit out with one conversation?" Luke asks, and he's snappy again. Daggers in his voice. "I gave Max at least two."
"Fuck you," Calum snaps on what Luke can only assume is impulse. Nonetheless, he does it, and Luke hopes Calum is coming to understand why this conversation needed to be had in person. They can't take any of this back; can't make any of it go away. "I'm not Max. And every time we try to talk about this we end up fighting."
Luke knows he's just delaying the inevitable by continuing to fight. Maybe Calum was right. The inevitable talk talk. Neither of them thought it would come so soon, though.
"Just go to Connecticut," Calum breathes. "It's what you want, you should go."
"I don't want any of this, Cal," Luke replies. "I don't give a shit about any of it if you're not with me."
"And you'll end up hating me in five years for turning that job down," Calum says. "Just go. Please. I need you to just go."
But Luke can't go, he can't move, his feet are stuck to the floor. Calum doesn't know it, but Luke is still stuck at it feels like you don't even care that you're leaving me here. This is the moment he won't be able to get past, the last thing he'll have a clear memory of. How is he supposed to just go on after this?
"Please go, Luke."
"So this isn't what you want?" Luke asks, tossing his arms out in some half-ditch effort to show frustration, upset, something that will get Calum to change his mind. "We're just done? And I'm the one that doesn't care?"
"No." Calum shakes his head. "This isn't what I want."
Luke is out the door in ten seconds.
Stop, you're losing me.