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Calum slowly blinks his eyes open to his own house for the first time in over a month. He slowly peels himself off of his couch and reorients himself. The living room is washed in cool tones from the pale evening light pouring through the windows. His bags remain piled up by the front door where he left them before gracefully collapsing onto the couch and almost immediately falling asleep.
Throughout his shower, Calum catalogues the luxuries of being on break from tour. These lights are much softer than the severe, fluorescent white that illuminates most hotel bathrooms. He can comfortably touch the floor with bare feet. He lets himself fall back into a routine, moving without thought in a familiar space. Except, ‘routine’ in his life has come to mean a lack of consistency. His own house is almost stranger than a new hotel room. At some point, the concept of familiarity became foreign.
The food he hastily ordered before his shower still isn’t here. Calum’s kitchen is barren as a result of his absence, notably different from the surplus of food available when they’re on the road. He and Ashton relish the catering as two guys who live alone. Calum’s kitchen isn’t entirely full even when he is here; cooking feels pointless when there’s no one to appreciate it with. Calum wonders if Ashton ended up with takeout as well, though Ashton enjoys cooking far more than Calum.
Calum trudges around his silent house taking deep breaths, as if he has to inhale the comforts of his own house to convince his body of contentment. He doesn’t have to log in for wifi. The alcohol in his cupboard isn’t insanely upcharged. He can play music for leisure for a few weeks before rehearsing the updated setlist.
Before he can think of any other ideas, Calum’s feet carry him to his music room, which is lacking a lot of equipment that got brought with him on tour. He grabs an old acoustic guitar and sinks down to sit on his keyboard bench, strumming absentmindedly. How amusing, he thinks, to be sitting here. To return from a whirlwind of music and playing and immediately be drawn back. The whirlwind has paused, but music never will for Calum. His house is too quiet without it.
A knock startles him out of his trance, notifying him that his food is on the porch. He saunters through his house, now only illuminated by the stars and a sole lamp in the living room. He doesn’t turn on the TV, just eats in silence, consumed by an empty mind that is simultaneously clogged with thought.
Calum pours so much into the band, into music. It’s the absolute best facet of his life, filling it with purpose when he is submerged in recording or performing. In conjunction are his friends, but he doesn’t find himself missing Luke and Michael much because he knows that their lives have a new kind of purpose.
Calum didn’t expect the band to have this type of dichotomy. When he was younger, he envisioned a vague future centered around a foggy image of a nondescript woman, assuming that such a milestone was inevitable for all four of them. Gradually, this manifestation takes up less and less residency in his mind. Calum’s life has been anything but conventional. It’s hard to imagine anyone seamlessly fitting into a schedule so fast-paced and drowned in his passion. Except Ashton.
When Calum pictures his future now, he still sees music and the band. He sees Ashton. Ashton’s in the band, of course, but it’s different now. As they’ve grown up, Luke and Michael have built structure outside of the band, leaving Calum and Ashton to build within. Ashton remains a constant even through the chaos of touring and the absence of their bandmates. During gaps in their schedules, Calum and Ashton explore local restaurants, brainstorming replies to comments on their socials. Even decompressing post-show is a tandem activity, manifesting in shared smoke breaks and bus rides to the hotel. They’re intertwined in a way that transcends words. Calum keeps expecting Ashton to be down the hall or in the kitchen. He keeps twitching to ask Ashton a question or tell him something, feeling his presence like a phantom limb.
Calum discards the to-go box and rinses his hands. He checks his phone for the millionth time since getting out of the shower and absentmindedly swiping up to reveal a naked notification center. Sighing, he finds Ashton’s name in his contacts and starts typing.
have you started unpacking
A reply comes just minutes later:
Fuck no.
Calum smiles down at his phone on the counter, his face feeling stiff; it’s the first time he’s smiled since getting home, he realizes.
His finger hits call before his brain decides whether or not it wants to. Ashton answers on the first ring.
“Hello?”
“Hey,” Calum starts, before realizing that he has nothing to say. The greeting bounces around the kitchen walls. He hates how echoey it is.
“What’s up—did you need something?”
No. He doesn’t. Does he?
“I…don’t know,” Calum utters, his mind turned to static. “I just—sorry, is this a bad time?”
“No, it’s good,” Ashton chuckles, adding: “I didn’t make many plans for tonight. I am kind of surprised that you’re still up. You were so tired on the way home.”
“I passed out as soon as I walked through the front door,” Calum admits, rolling his shoulders and relaxing after realizing how tense he’s been. He relocates to the couch and lies down to escape his sterile kitchen. “I can’t walk back through the front door, though. My suitcases have not moved.”
“That’s a tomorrow problem.” Calum hears Ashton take a deep breath on the other side of the line, silence settling back in. He envisions Ashton reclining with his eyes closed. They’re both exhausted.
“It’s quiet.”
“Yeah.”
“I can’t tell whether or not I’m happy to be home.” Calum furrows his eyebrows, surprised by his own confession.
“Niether can I,” Ashton softly agrees. “I think…home has become less of a place for me.”
Calum waits for him to elaborate. He puts the call on speaker phone and places it on his chest. Letting his eyes slide shut, he imagines Ashton sat on the other end of the couch.
“I’ve had so many slip-ups on the past few tours where I’ve accidentally called a hotel home. Like, ‘how long is the ride back home?’ after a show, or something.”
“Yeah, me too.” Calum can indeed recall countless instances of this from both of them. Sometimes they’ll correct themselves or make a joke of it—most of the time they don’t.
“But it doesn’t feel that crazy, to say that. We’ve spent so much of our lives together on the road, touring does kind of feel like home.” Ashton hesitates before continuing. “Or, I think maybe I’ve gotten used to home being anywhere with you.”
Calum’s chest constricts. This type of conversation doesn’t come very often; most of the time vulnerability is reserved for during a smoke. Though he’s touch-averse compared to Calum, Ashton’s always been better at verbalizing his feelings. He wishes Ashton were here so that he could drape a leg over his lap or lean his head on Ashton’s shoulder, a silent way of telling Ashton that he feels it too.
“I keep assuming you’re near me. I keep thinking of something to ask you or tell you,” Calum tries.
Ashton hums, then: “Like what?”
“When I ordered food earlier, I almost asked an empty room if it wanted anything.”
“Maybe it did, and you didn’t get it anything. How rude.”
“You’re so stupid,” Calum says, laughing.
“You love it.”
He does. Calum used to anticipate the day where he inevitably gets annoyed by his bandmates, by Ashton. It’s been over a decade now, and the day has never come. He doesn’t think it ever will.
This is the lightest Calum has felt since getting home. There isn’t much to discuss after being attached at the hip for weeks, but he doesn’t want to hang up. He wants to know Ashton’s there when he thinks of something to say.
“Do you want to…uhm,” Calum clears his throat. “Can you come over?”
“...Right now?”
Calum considers being an ass and firing back something sarcastic, but he doesn’t have it in him.
“Yeah,” he decides. “Unless you don’t want to. We literally just got back, you don’t have to.”
“No, I will. I want to, my house feels sad,” Ashton asserts, the background of the call filling with rustling as he presumably moves to grab his things. “I’ll be home in twenty.”
-
Calum slowly blinks his eyes open to his own bed. He did miss his own sheets. He discovers it’s past eleven in the morning after pawing his bedside table to locate his phone. He rolls over and is reminded of Ashton’s presence on the other side of the bed. Ashton is perfectly capable of driving back to his own house at a ridiculous time of night, but he showed up with his toothbrush and phone cord anyways.
Calum takes a deep breath and soaks in how comfortable he is. Ashton is barely lit by a small ray of warm light weaseling its way between the curtains. Calum can observe traces of Ashton all over the bedroom, even in the near darkness: his glasses on the dresser, his hoodie flung over the end of the mattress, the slight scent of him on Calum’s sheets.
He thinks back to an interview they did before tour where Ashton mentioned the importance of having someone (Calum) you can call and blow off steam with. He’s suddenly overwhelmed with gratitude for their relationship. That they get to live this insane life together, even if it means developing a bit of codependency. Calum thinks neither of them truly know the depth of what they mean to each other. Feeling so tethered to your best friend that he ends up in your bed certainly isn’t conventional, Calum supposes, reconsidering his spiral from last night. Here they are, though.
Home.