#royalsquad

i was tagged by tanluke to do the 20 beautiful women challenge and also tagged by fucmichael to do the 6 selfie challenge, and i’m rlly lazy so I’m doing both at once!

i wanted to show you guys both versions of me–with my glasses and bare-faced, and with my contacts and makeup. i’m pretty comfortable with both, and i’m at a place where i’m okay with the way i look, which has been hard for me to get to.

WARNING: there's no smut or anything, this is just gonna be really sad and intense probably Word Count: 2k

this is a calum oneshot btw. kinda inspired by small bump//ed sheeran. have fun.

********

They always say you should never drive angry. You never know what could happen, they say.

God, I should’ve listened.

********

“I don’t want you to be on your own for six months, especially not now. Why can’t you just come with me?” Frustration filled Calum’s voice as he lectured me about how bad a six-month hiatus would be for our relationship, especially when I was pregnant.

I stood across the living room from him, the coffee table between us. “Do you honestly expect me to go on tour with you guys? What, I’m gonna be eight months pregnant and sleeping in a bunk bed?” I scoffed, crossing my arms over my tiny, still newly pregnant belly.

“Don’t be ridiculous. There’s a lounge with a nice couch in the back.”

Calum neatly dodged the TV remote I hurled at his stupid pretty face. “Do you even know how ridiculous you sound right now? I’m not fucking living with you and your band on a goddamn tour bus! I’ll be okay by myself. We’re still going to be together when you come back–I don’t know what your problem is.”

“You said you’d come on tour with me before you found out you were pregnant! Nothing has to change. I don’t want our relationship to suffer because your stupid mistake.”

My brainless boyfriend’s voice was loaded with accusation. He refused to look at me, so it wasn’t until I started screaming that he noticed the fixture of my features into a murderous glare.

“MY STUPID MISTAKE?!” I snarled. I crossed the living room in three huge steps, shoving at his stupid muscular chest. “Birth control pills don’t work sometimes–it’s not my fucking fault. And guess what, Mr. “We Don’t Need A Condom”? It takes two to tango, buddy! It’s not like one day I just told my eggs ‘Hey guys, maybe today’s the day! Let’s get fertilized and ruin Calum’s life!’”

He seemed too shocked to reply. I’d never been this angry with him before.

His silence gave me too much time to think, to think about all the times he’d said “the baby” instead of “our baby.” Too much time to think about the betrayed look on his face when I’d told him two weeks ago that we were going to be parents at only 23.

“Do you even want this baby?” I said, my voice deathly quiet. I looked up from the carpet to Calum’s face. He stared back at me, his eyes wide and his mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water.

“Of course I want it,” his words cracked as he whispered them, but it was too late. He took too long to answer.

I couldn’t hide the hurt on my face or hold back the tears threatening to be spilled like a housewife’s dirty secrets after a bottle of wine.

“Would you stop looking at me like that?” Calum muttered, jamming his fists into his pockets and avoiding my watery eyes.

I let out a derisive snort, dashing the hot angry tears from my eyes. “Oh, I’m sorry, Calum. Is how much of a dick you’re being bothering you as much as it’s bothering me? Is realizing how stupid you’re being making you uncomfortable? You poor, poor thing,” I spat.

Calum glared at me, clearly not pleased with the condescension in my voice. I didn’t care at the moment.

“I’m so sorry my crazy pregnant lady hormones are making you squirm. Maybe I should just-”

“Fucking hell, would you just shut up?!” Calum shouted, interrupting me. I paused, my jaw dropping. I took a step back from him, my hands weakly falling to my sides.

Calum must’ve been chastened by the look on my face, because immediately he reached out and grabbed my wrist as I retreated. “Fuck, babe I’m so-”

"Save it,” I hissed and wrenched my arm out of his grip. His wary eyes followed me as I went toward the door of our apartment and grabbed my car keys from the dish.

“Where are you going?” he called out, his tone suddenly filling with panic when I opened the door.

I looked at him, taking in his ghostly pale face and the trembling of his lips and hands. For once, anger won out over the sadness his pitiful expression stirred in me, and I squeezed my eyes shut as that anger burned me from the inside out.

“I’m sleeping at my mom’s place tonight,” I mumbled, turning away from him and shutting the door behind me.

**********

The traffic light had only just turned green. If I’d waited just two more seconds before going, if I hadn’t been so pissed off and just looked, the asshole that ran the red light wouldn’t have pulverized my car.

I was lucky I was wearing my seatbelt. I was damn lucky the owner of the bodega on the otherwise deserted corner saw the crash and called an ambulance right away.

I’d blacked out upon impact. My seatbelt had yanked me back into the seat before I could fly out the passenger window and I got whiplash so bad I passed out.

The next thing I remembered was waking up feeling a sharp, hot pain spreading out from my chest and my lower abdomen. I was lying on a gurney, being rushed out of the ambulance and into the emergency room. None of the EMTs had noticed I’d woken up. I cried out, the pain swirling rampant in my insides too much to bear. I threw my arm out to the side, trying to find something to hold, my fingers finding the arm of one of the EMTs and squeezing hard.

“Shit! Don’t worry, baby, don’t worry…you’ll be okay.” It was a woman, a nurse and not an EMT. Her chocolate skin wrinkled in a frown when she leaned over and looked at me while simultaneously running alongside my gurney.

“Baby….” I croaked, lifting my head to see my sweatpants and the bottom half of my shirt soaked in blood. “The baby….”

The woman’s eyes widened. She look like she was in her forties. “Ma'am, are you pregnant?” Her voice was urgent. It made my head spin. I squeezed my eyes shut as my insides rolled over in pain and managed one nod before I let my head fall back.

The nurse barked something at the doctor running behind us before turning her attention back to me. My breathing was too fast, getting away from me faster than helium from a popped balloon. My hair was pushed away from my face, and I noticed how sweaty my forehead was. I was too hot. Panic overtook me as I hyperventilated. Another nurse pressed some sort of mask over my mouth and nose, and I quickly slipped out of consciousness.

**********

When I woke again, it was from a warm, wet sensation on my arm. My eyes opened to harsh light filtering in through the window blinds and settled on the dark figure at my bedside, only the top of his curly dark hair visible as his head was buried in his folded arms resting on the edge of my bed.

“Ew. Are you crying on me?” My voice was hoarse with disuse.

Calum’s head instantly shot up at the sound of my voice, his cheeks red and splotchy and wet from crying. For a moment, he just stared at me as if not realizing what was happening.

“You’re not mad at me?” he murmured after a minute, his eyes still puffy. I frowned.

“No, of course not, dumbass. Now, come here and kiss me.”

Calum surged forward, capturing my face between his hands and looking over every inch of my face for a few seconds before he finally pressed his full, plump lips to mine. His lips tasted like salt from his tears. I bit into his lower lip and he laughed into my mouth, the noise almost like a sob, and caressed my cheeks with his thumbs. “I love you,” he mumbled against my lips.

It wasn’t until I raised my hands to bury them in his hair and noticed the many needles and tubes and the IV sticking into me that we broke apart.

“I almost lost you,” Calum said when he settled back into his chair. “And we’d been fighting,” he added in a broken whisper. I grasped his hand and my thumb over his knuckles in what had always been a comforting gesture between us.

He proceeded to tell me that it was the morning after the accident, which had happened around 7 last night. My mom and the rest of the band were in the waiting room. He’d gotten a phone call from my mom while I was in the OR for surgery and came over as soon as he heard.

“What about the baby?” I asked, almost too afraid of the answer.

Calum’s face fell, his thick brows knitting into a deep frown. “Listen, Y/N-”

Just then, the doctor came in, and I knew from the look in her eyes that there was bad news.

It was like a scene from a movie. I felt detached from myself as I watched it unfold, the doctor telling me about my injuries. The other car had hit mine on the driver’s side–I got the worst of the impact. I suffered from broken ribs, a punctured lung, a broken leg, and some internal bleeding. I could only clamp a shaky hand over my mouth, trying and failing to stifle my sobs as the doctor delivered the news in an even, calm voice.

“You sustained too much internal trauma…”

“….obstetrical hemorrhaging…..”

“……..miscarriage…….”

After the doctor left, I allowed myself to let go of the tears and felt something break inside of me. My eyes wrenched themselves shut as tears leaked freely down my face and my mouth stretched wide with silent screams.

I couldn’t turn onto my side, couldn’t turn away to hide from Calum. I just threw my head back onto the pillows and cried and cried, hiccuping and gasping for air until my throat was too dry to carry on. Calum cried a little, too, but I’d guessed that he got most of his melodramatic sobbing done while I was unconscious.

The ache in my chest wasn’t just from broken ribs. It was my heart that had cracked, leaving me shattered and bereaved. I thought of the baby that had still been an “it” when it was taken from me. I thought about how I was once carrying life but now carried only death. I thought about the maternity clothes I’d prematurely bought out of excitement, and the list of baby names Calum and I had stayed up all night to write once he’d gotten over the shock. I thought about how wrong I’d been to accuse him of not wanting the baby last night, especially now, seeing him just as torn up as I was.

My cries stopped after about thirty minutes, maybe an hour. I sniffled and wiped the snot and tears from my face with the corner of my hospital blanket. I risked a glance at Calum and saw that he still had his eyes on me, probably hadn’t taken them off me this whole time.

“I’m so sorry, gorgeous. God, I’m so sorry,” he murmured, leaning forward and pressing a kiss to the top of my head. I surprised him by scooting to one side of the bed and pulling him down beside me. He lay awkwardly pressed against the railing on the upper half of the bed, trying hard not to jostle me.

“Y/N, you have fucking broken ribs, I don’t think I should be-”

I cut him off with a soft “shhhh,” carefully laying back against him and pulling one of his arms around my shoulders. It hurt a little bit to move, but I needed his warmth too much to care at the moment. Calum felt me wince and immediately tried to extricate himself from my grasp, but I yanked him back into the bed, ignoring his protests.

“Y/N….” he whined. “You’ll get me in trouble.”

“Calum,” I whispered, hearing the heaviness in my own voice, “please just hold me.”