Archive of Our Own ^beta

The sun was shining on him, the heat focused on the left side of his face. Calum continued to stare at the ground, the heat causing him to sweat a little. He was dressed in all back, surrounded by somber faces and he knows Michael wouldn’t have wanted it like this. Calum remembers him coming back from his grandfather’s funeral sulking, grumbling about he’d want a funeral happier than that.

Calum remembers how Michael wanted to celebrate living, instead of mourning death.

Calum stays silent, instead choosing to watch the tears streaming down Michael’s parents’ faces. He watches a tear fall to the ground, and it’s deathly silent. Just like the buzz of having Michael beside him. It’s oddly comforting, having silence in the midst of the screaming inside him. 

He can’t stop thinking, remembering how Michael slowly faded out.

-

Cold hands are stroking along his back, trembling lips mumbling against his skin and it’s so cold, so unbearably cold. Michael’s shaking, glassy eyes so trusting as he pleads, tries to convince Calum that he can do it. Calum fucks gently, slowly into Michael that night, and Michael’s come smeared between their bodies is startlingly warm in contrast to his skin. 

It’s the last time Calum sees Michael. He’s told Michael passed away peacefully in his sleep the next morning. Calum screams, his vision clouded by thoughts of Michael. Michael was so blindingly bright, a raging inferno in a blustery island of white snow. Calum cries, the nurses have to hold him back when he sees Michael’s body, even colder than it was the night before. 

Calum’s fists are weakly punching Michael’s body, and he’s yelled at by the doctors. Michael’s mother and father watch from the side, their sobs causing Calum to screw his eyes shut and fall to the ground, watches helplessly as Michael’s face is covered and he’s carted away to the morgue.

Calum didn’t sleep that night, scrolling through photos on his phone and looking at how Michael fell apart over time, growing even paler and eventually losing his hair. Calum remembers how Michael cried when he watched his hair fall to the ground as Calum shaved his head. 

Michael sat on the bathroom floor for hours that day, his hands running over the hair that was on his head, thin from the chemotherapy. He yelled, cursing the heavens, and Calum held him through it, kept quiet as Michael screamed himself hoarse. His voice was a weak croak by the time he was done, and he cries into Calum’s shirt.

Calum remembers how Michael was so, so passionate, the fire inside him raging. He would lose it sometimes, eyes darting around the room as he clenched his fists, relaxing and then tensing up again. Calum watched, watched Michael spiral downwards.

Michael was surprisingly calm when he was told he had only a few months to live. He nodded curtly, and walked out of the room. Calum heard him shrieking, and it sounded so far away, the doctor’s voice expressing empty apologies drowning Michael out. Michael’s family didn’t hear it, they were too focused on the doctor. Calum hears Michael screaming in his nightmares for weeks.

Calum looks at the last photo, the most recent one he had of himself and Michael. It was blurry and grainy, but Calum could see Michael’s lips pressed to his, a gentle kiss that wasn’t typical of Michael. With Michael, it was always heated kisses, the pressure of Michael’s lips against his almost too much, but it never was. Michael was never too much.

They were on the beach in that photo, at an unearthly hour. It was just them, like it always was. Calum remembers tasting tears when he kissed Michael, the salt in his mouth. He didn’t know if it was his tears or Michael’s. It didn’t matter, they were both crying. Michael’s fingers were so cold in Calum’s hand. Calum remembers kissing Michael’s hand, and Michael telling him that he thought they should break up.

Michael said it was to make sure Calum didn’t get too hurt when Michael died. 

Calum shuts Michael up, promising to be there until the end. 

Michael nodded, a teary smile appearing on his face as the tide rose, waves continually crashing higher and higher up on the sand like how the cancer was eating away at Michael. Calum holds Michael’s hand the whole time as he writes their initials into the sand with a stick.

C.H + M.C

-

Calum finds himself standing in front of all of Michael’s relatives. He had to deliver a eulogy, and he didn’t know where to begin.

“Michael… Michael was… Michael is Michael.” Calum coughs, the lump in his throat making his words sound choked. 

“He was so loud, you know? I remember hearing him scream, asking why the gods decided to give him cancer. He was always so passionate. He was a fighter, and his life was well-lived. He wouldn’t have wanted a funeral like this, I would know. He would’ve wanted one where his life was celebrated.” Michael’s relatives stare at Calum with disbelieving expressions, and Calum’s forcing himself to smile, his eyes are stinging.

“Maybe you don’t believe me, and that’s okay. I’ll just close this eulogy off by saying that I was the one who watched Michael lose himself amidst the fear of not having a life that was good enough. I was the one who watched him smile the last time before he fell asleep in his hospital bed, before I got kicked out of the room for staying past visiting hours. I was the one who lost my love.”

Calum steps off the podium, and walks away from the funeral. Nobody bothers to chase him.

He finds himself at the beach where he promised Michael he’d be there until the end.

It really feels like the end when he sees that their initials have disappeared, washed away by the waves.