#and Malum just seem to be talking to each other lol

[ijustdontlikepeople]

Big fan of these guys

[allsassnoclass]

Hello everyone!  Today is the one year anniversary of my favorite fic I’ve written (so far), Puzzle Pieces!  I thought I’d give a full length director’s commentary to commemorate the occasion.

Spoilers for the fic below!

The idea for this fic stemmed from a few things.  I’ve always been fascinated with the idea of a soulmate au where colors appear on your skin when you first touch your soulmate(s).  I think I initially encountered this in a newsies fic that I’ve since lost track of that was heavily focused on platonic soulmates.  I liked this convention because the possibilities for multiple soulmates are endless and I like the idea of colorful splotches on people.  I also think that identifying soulmates via touch rather than the first sentence they say or some sort of other identifier gives a lot of opportunity for relationships to grow and develop before they know that they’re soulmates.  I am always a little bothered when soulmate aus have people fall right into a relationship and kissing and intense emotions right away when the two people don’t know anything about each other.  This seemed like a way to combat that a little, but I’ll speak more on that later.

The Beginnings

The first record I have of this fic is a message I sent to Helen on May 8, 2020.  The fic was very much only in the idea stages then, as I took over three more months to write it and wrote Too Close to See during that time.  A google doc for the fic wasn’t started until July 20, 2020, and it was titled “soulmate colors au.”  My method for writing is going in order these days, and for this particular fic there wasn’t a specific scene that I started with in mind.  I really was just going or it and making it up as I went, chugging along and seeing what happened.

The Colors

A pretty significant part of this fic is the colors.  When I figured out that colors would appear on people when they touched, I knew that figuring out who had what color would be very important.  Initially I was going to have each pairing have their own color (so for example cashton would both leave blue on each other but malum would both leave green on each other) but I quickly decided that I didn’t like that and that each individual should have a color that they leave, instead.  I sent a message to Bella asking what colors she thought the boys would be, but I can’t find that message anymore and know that while it was similar it wasn’t quite right.  Here’s some reasoning behind each of the boys’ colors:

Michael: I went with red not just because of the iconic red hair, but because it’s a pretty loud and brash color.  Michael (especially when he was younger) doesn’t really filter things, wears a decent amount of his personality on his sleeve, and first reaction that said red to me

Calum: Calum has always been forest green.  This is partially influenced by the empahty hoodie, even though it’s a bit brighter than the green in my mind for him here, but I also think green is a very dependable, stable color.  (I used that color symbolism in one of my fall out boy fics years ago lol) It reminds me of pine trees, and I think Calum can give off that same sense of reliability in weathering the seasons.  It’s a quieter color but can really pop next to another one.  It also worked out nicely that Calum and Michael’s colors were compliments

Luke: Luke gets gold because he is a sunshine boy!  Luke actually was the person I had the most trouble with, because I was flipping between gold, a lighter blue, or pink.  Pink ultimately was too close to red to make me be able to visualize what the marks looked like on each boy to my satisfaction.  It just looked ugly and clashing.  I went with gold because there is a lot of outward brightness in Luke.  He’s the kind of person where if he’s happy everyone else gets a bit happier, and gold also seemed fitting for the eventual shift into a rockstar and the amount of talent he has

Ashton: Ashton gets purple, but a deeper purple.  Dynamic but still relatively stable, has a lot of depth.  Purple is a secret color, but it’s still beautiful and it draws people in.  When I visualize it it ends up being a really dark shade, but in reality he’s probably more of a royal purple than a plum purple.  I feel bizarrely passionate about his color specifically.  I don’t know why that is.

The colors didn’t have any sort of influence on the fic, but they were deliberately chosen.

The World of the Fic: Chosen Soulmates

So here’s the thing.  I feel very strongly about love being a conscious decision that people make over and over.  It takes work.  It takes a deliberate commitment.

Soulmate aus kind of negate that.

So, how do you fix this?  Well, I did that by having these marks not necessarily indicate soulmates.  The way that the marks are described in the fic is that they indicate how easy it should be to love someone and how compatible two people are.  It doesn’t automatically mean that you’ll adore them forever and never leave their side.  You still need to put in the work.  (Luke shows this early on when Michael asks if he loves Calum and he says  “I don’t think I know him well enough for that yet.  I know I will, because the colors say it should be easy and I want to, but not like you do.”  He has made the decision to work toward loving Calum, but he knows that just having the colors doesn’t immediately make them love each other.)  In that way, it almost isn’t a soulmate au, at least not in the traditional way.  Things aren’t inevitable.  There is still an element of choice.

This was also shown with Ashton.  I don’t remember when I made the decision to give Ashton a Tragic Background with his dad, but I know it was relatively early because by the time I wrote his introduction I knew that would happen.  I wanted to give a bit more of a reason for his hesitation to let them touch him, which I was already including because Ashton has always been the least touchy of the band, and I saw this as another opportunity to show that necessity of choice.  It’s sweeter to me for the boys to choose each other rather than to just be stuck with each other, and if Ashton hadn’t actually been a soulmate of theirs then I wanted there to be the assurance that they could still love him just as much, because all love is chosen.

In the end, having a broken soulbond in Ashton’s past was a good way to accomplish all of that.  It’s heartbreaking to not be chosen despite the fact that it should be easy, but once Ashton accepts that Michael, Calum, and Luke are vehemently choosing him with or without the soulmark, it makes his acceptance of their love very sweet to me.  He’s saying that he trusts them to put in the work to love him.  The scene where he talks to Michael in the car and the scene where he accepts their touches and soulmarks are probably my two favorite scenes in the fic.

The World of the Fic: Touch

In a world where the first skin-on-skin contact can indicate whether it’ll be extremely easy for you to love someone, how common would touch be?  Would we greet people with handshakes still?  Would gloves be more common fashion accessories?  Would touching someone be a Big Deal?

Hence, the First Touch was born!

I figured that, with touch possibly being a lot more significant in this world, people would be a lot more careful about whether they make skin-on-skin contact.  Kids would be taught that it’s impolite to try to touch someone, to a more extreme degree than they are now.  Handshakes simply are not a greeting anymore.  Instead, sometimes the first contact people make is considered a big deal, seeing as it can indicate whether two people are soulmates or not.

I figured that Luke especially would enjoy important first touches, because he’s a sentimental sweetie.  Of course, his first touch with Michael ended up being special simply because it was with each other :)

This also let me really lean into Ashton being touch-adverse.  Now on top of not liking touch, he also has another reason to avoid it, which makes every cuddle moment after the first touch even better, because he’s definitely touch starved.  The band cuddles him so much once they share the colors.

The World of the Fic: Platonic Soulmates

Guys. GUYS. I love platonic soulmates. I love them a lot.  I feel very passionately about them.  Romantic love is not the pinnacle of human love, and as someone who cannot at this point see myself with a romantic partner I really wanted to ensure that platonic soulmates were a thing.  Given that information, it’s a no-brainer that I included them in this fic.  Part of the appeal of this type of soulmate au was that it gave opportunity for more than one soulmate and more than one type of soulmate.  As such, platonic, familial, and romantic soulmates could all be indicated by the colors.  I also really liked that there wasn’t any sort of differentiation between the types of soulmates.  One type of love isn’t hailed over the others.  It’s an even playing field here.

That was one of the things that immediately drew me to this type of prompt, actually.  I wanted to write a fic about Michael parsing through his emotions and figuring out what he feels for Calum.  The difference between platonic and romantic love has always been very interesting to me, because I find that the line can be pretty blurry personally.  The best way to do that was to give him a set of soulmates who he cares about equally but in different ways.  

The following excerpt really is the theme of the story to me:  “Calum is an old, comfortable sweater, but Luke is like a favorite pair of shoes.  They both fit him perfectly.  He feels more at home when either of them are around, and although the love he has for Calum is different, he thinks he could love Luke just as much.”  Each of us love everyone we meet a little differently, because everyone is a different person, but different doesn’t mean unequal.

While the fic is about Michael figuring himself out, it’s equally a love story between all four of them.  The moments where Michael finds out he’s soulmates with Luke and Ashton were just as important to me as the moment he and Calum get together, and I really wanted to be sure that each relationship had it’s time in the limelight.  That’s ultimately why the idea of puzzle pieces became a theme (that I added on editing).  I like the idea of all of them coming together to create something bigger than themselves.  They fit.  They click.  They are better for it.  The first time someone referred to this as an ot4 fic it threw me off, because only malum is romantic in it, but I really like that classification for it, because it is.

Asexual Representation (Accidentally)

I didn’t know I was writing Michael as ace until about 4 days before I posted the fic.

Looking back, that’s a little bit ridiculous, because I was brainstorming this fic for three and a half months and actively writing it for two before I realized.  I believe there was a conversation in the discord about ace rep in fics (Bella and I think Heath were part of it, I can’t remember any other participants), and I thought to myself “hey I’m ace and like ace rep, Michael in the soulmate colors au could probably be ace.”  Lo and behold, he already was.  All I had to do was add a few sentences and finish the fic (I hadn’t written the scenes in England yet).

My asexuality definitely influenced the way I had been writing Michael’s confusion over his feelings for Calum.  Part of the reason I myself see the line between platonic and romantic as so blurry is because I’m ace and so much of romantic love in media is tied in with sexual attraction.  When you don’t feel sexual attraction, that can get confusing, especially since most strong feelings of love are depicted to be romantic.

While Michael and I had very, very different paths to figuring out our sexualities, I drew on my own experiences of ace-ness to write him.  This was a bit more apparent in the sequel scene Bedroom Activities, but it ended up becoming a core of the story.  I genuinely don’t know how I didn’t realize that’s what I was writing.

As an ace person, ace rep means a lot to me, given how little of it is in popular media.  I’m glad I explored it so early on in my 5sos fic career, and I’m proud of this one.

Miscellaneous Things

The process of writing this story was, as I stated before, pretty linear.  I went from the start to the end without a lot of planning.  I specifically had no clue what was happening at the Hot Chelle Rae afterparty until it was happening.  The kiss came out of no where.  However, I want to point out that initially I thought this fic would be 8k.  It is now my third longest fic ever written.  I have never learned to correctly estimate how long a fic I’m writing will be.

I have a few various favorite lines, but one repeated theme I love is Michael craving Calum’s touch.  I say he’s touch-starved for him twice, once relatively early on and once at the end, and I love that Calum’s touch has been a constant for Michael.  They had their first touch accidentally and became best friends immediately in the way that little kids do, so Michael has always had him as a constant, tactile presence in his life.  That’s why losing him to Luke scared him so much and why then gaining Luke and Ashton as soulmates is so good for him.

I really like referring to Michael, Luke, and Calum as a triangle.  I first did it in this fic, but it’s now my tag for the three of them.  Idk I just like how equally distributed a triangle is, all sides touching, no one left out.

Branching off of this, one of my favorite lines is when Ashton and Michael do their first touch: “The dark purple reminds him of spilling grape juice on his clothes as a kid, and when he collapses into Ashton he feels like they could have known each other at that age, too.”  There is something so charming about meeting someone later and feeling like you’ve known them your whole life, and that was significant here because Michael has known Calum and Luke since they were younger (although Luke did come in the picture when they were tweens/young teens instead of kids).  I wanted to be sure that although Michael, Calum, and Luke are the triangle, Ashton is an equal part of their soulmate group.  He doesn’t have the same history, but that doesn’t matter because it feels like he does.

Luke’s obsession with soulmate statistics is a convenient plot device and partially a result of his mom being a math teacher.  Above all things, it’s a manifestation of his desire to be loved.  The guy just wants to be loved!!! and he wants others to be loved, too!!!

This is by far my favorite fic that I’ve written.  It’s not perfect (there are for sure two lines that I would change, and I think I could’ve done things differently with the very slight OCD I gave Michael that manifested in his hand washing), but I love it dearly.  It’s the type of fic that I would’ve loved to read, and the response to it has been wonderful.  Thank you to everyone who has read it and special shout out to everyone who has made it to the end of this very long director’s notes <3

[pixiegrl]

prompts! maybe “I would’ve had breakfast ready, but you were sleeping on my arm, and I didn’t want to wake you.” with maybe malum? it feels like a malum prompt to me

Maggie! I love this so much! @tirednotflirting wrote about a malum wedding last week and it made me think of this! I hope you enjoy it! (also shout out to @pushkinalexander who read it and then yelled at me for never showing her the 5sos dogs lol)

As always, its on ao3 too (https://archiveofourown.org/works/25958740)

Michael is peaceful when he sleeps. It’s nice getting to watch him like this, face relaxed as he nuzzles into his pillow. He looks young and soft, burrowing into the warmth that’s coming off of Calum. He reminds him of Moose like this, hair fluffy and soft, curled up with his head resting on Calum’s arm. Cal has lost the feeling in his arm about 20 minutes ago from where Michael has been laying on it, but he can’t bear to tell Michael to move.

Cal doesn’t want to wake Michael up. He looks so peaceful and this is probably the most sleep either of them have gotten in the last few weeks with the prep going on for Luke and Ashton’s wedding. They’ve been left in charge of all the last minute changes: the freak out Luke had when he realized his suit pants were too short, when Ashton had a meltdown over the flight for his mum, when Lauren and Harry got delayed and he thought it was going to ruin everything. There had been one moment when Luke had called Michael and Ashton had called Calum, the both of them freaking out about the wedding, the possibility that the other doesn’t love him as much, that this whole thing is just a long joke waiting for the punchline. They’d been talked down and reassured that they already have almost 10 years of love between them and the wedding is just an extension of their love. 

Helping them plan their wedding; ironing out the kinks, fixing the problems, had reminded Calum of how much he loves Michael. He’s loved Michael since he was a kid and he loves him even more now, as his boyfriend, getting to watch Michael doing things like scrunch his nose up in his sleep like Moose does or when he yells at his video games or whines when he’s been awake for too long. It’s sweet and wonderful and Calum wants to spend the rest of his life with Michael.

Michael peaks one eye open, looking up at Calum. Calum smiles down at him.

“Morning sweetheart.”

“What ‘ime is it?”

“Almost 8am.”

Michale groans, trying to burrow further back into the pillow. Moose perks up at the end of the bed, realizing that Michael’s awake and excitedly makes her way up the bed to lick Michael’s face. Michael half-heartedly tries to bat her away, giving up and scratching her head when she starts to lick him even harder, tail wagging.

“Why do we have to be up so early?”

“The wedding’s today. We gotta get up and eat something. God knows how long everything is gonna be and when we’ll actually get to eat dinner.”

Michael looks at Calum, wide-eyed and confused. “You mean I’m awake and there isn’t even food yet?”

“I would’ve had breakfast ready, but you were sleeping on my arm, and I didn’t want to wake you.”

Michael whines, flopping onto his back and covering his eyes. Moose gives up her licking, snuggling down into the open space between Michael and Calum. Calum sits up, trying to shake feeling back into his arm.

“If you’re not up in 10 minutes I’m going to send Duke after you,” Calum says, getting up and scooping Duke up from where he’s been sitting at the end of the bed, head cocked to the side, watching them. Michael grumbles, waving his hand at Calum.

Calum sets Duke down once he’s made it to the kitchen, rummaging around to find something he can make that he knows Michael will like and will also stop him from getting hungry and cranky halfway through the ceremony. He sets about trying to make eggs and the tea that Michael’s taken to drink instead of coffee. He gives Michael 5 minutes before he sends Duke in to wake Michael up. He hears a shout from the bedroom and Michael stumbles into the kitchen mumbling that he’s up. Moose and Southy follow closely behind him, barking for breakfast. 

Michael comes up behind Cal, dropping his head down into Calum’s shoulder, and wrapping his arms around Cal’s waist.

“Do you think Luke and Ashton will let me out of the wedding if I tell them I don’t feel good?”

“I think Luke would have a meltdown in the middle of the room and Ashton would immediately hunt you down and drag you to the wedding if you made Luke cry.”

“Can’t I go back to sleep? It’s not even 9am. Why do I have to be up so early?”

“We have a whole day ahead of us. We have to run interference on the set-up. Besides, if you had gone to sleep at a reasonable time instead of playing games all night you wouldn’t be so tired.”

Michael huffs lightly, burying his face into Calum’s neck, and pressing a gentle kiss to Cal’s shoulder. Calum tries to turn his head slightly to press a kiss to the top of Michael’s head and is only vaguely succeeding. Calum can feel Michael smile anyway where his face is still pressed to Calum’s skin.

Standing like this, curled up in each other and making breakfast,  Calum is struck by how domestic it all feels. He’s been doing this with Michael for years ever since the guys moved from London to LA and bought separate places, but it strikes him in that moment how at home he feels doing this. Making breakfast for Michael while he whines about being up so early, getting ready to go see Luke and Ashton. Calum has never felt more comfortable or at peace than he does right now.

“Hey, Mikey?”

“Hmm?”

“Have you ever thought about getting married?”

Michael lifts his head to look at Calum, “You mean as a concept or as in ‘do I think about us getting married’?” Because my answer depends on the question,”

Calum frowns. Surely, Michael and he are on the same page. They’ve been together since they were fifteen and realized that “just friends” don’t have thoughts about kissing their friends and holding their hand (although 5sos may be unique. Luke’s been holding all of their hands since long before he and Ashton started doing it. He still does it, whining until someone grabs his hand and squeezes it). Calum’s thought about marrying Michael vaguely over the years, but they’d all been too busy between tours and albums to really talk about it. Now, they’re on a break between WWJ and releasing CALM. It’s the perfect time for them to sit down and talk about their future. Calum wants to get married. Wants to be able to wear a ring and show everyone that Michael is his and he is Michael’s. Get to gush about him in interviews and on stage. Get to kiss him in public. Calum thought Michael wanted that too, but now he’s unsure.

“You’re doing it again Cal.”

“Doing what?”

“Overthinking it. You’re doing that thing you do where you take my words and over analyze them until you’ve created the idea of what you think they are instead of just asking me. So, ask me the question properly this time.”

Calum takes a deep breath, “Have you, Michael Clifford, thought about marriage or marrying me?”

Michael smiles softly, “Of course I have, darling. As a concept, I think marriage is silly and the whole point of it is to have an excuse to throw a party and spend money and you shouldn’t need something big and flashy to tell your family and friends how much you love another person,” Calum’s heart sinks, “But marrying you? I’d do it tomorrow if you’d let me. I want to get up there and tell everyone how much you mean to me. That I want to spend the rest of my life with you, making you smile. I want you to get me up far too early in the morning and drink your too strong tea. I want to keep making music with you and writing songs about you and getting to stand on stage every night and tell everyone how much I love you. I want to have a wedding that’ll be better than Luke and Ashton’s because they don’t get to be cuter than us, we’ve been together longer. I want to get up there in front of everyone we know and tell them I want to spend everyday with you because you’re like another half of my soul and I can’t live without you. So yes, Calum Hood, I have thought about marrying you and I would love to do that.”

Calum turns back to the stove, blushing slightly. Michael always seems to know exactly what Calum’s thinking, what he’s feeling. It really does feel like they’re half of each other's souls. Calum is never alone if he’s got Michael there, telling him what sounds best in a song or what they should eat for dinner or what movie they should watch. He’s always had Michael, will always have Michael, but the idea of getting to publicly say it, to tell everyone how he feels, is overwhelming and comforting. 

“Have you thought about marrying me?” Michael asks.

Calum pauses, “Every day since the first time we kissed I’ve thought about marrying you and what it would be like. I want to get up there and give a cheesy speech about how you mean the world to me, so that our moms will cry. I want to tell the whole world every night on stage about how you’re the love of my life. I want to listen to you play your games and yell at Luke when he makes you lose and get to wake up next to you all the time. I can’t imagine it would change our lives that much, but I want to do it. I want to get married.”

“Did you just propose to me?” 

“Haven’t asked the question yet. I don’t even have a ring.” That’s a lie. Calum has had a ring since Ashton asked him to go ring shopping for Luke. It’s hidden inside one of the cases for Calum’s bass, where he knows Michael won’t go poking around. He even has a vague idea of how he wants to propose. He’s just waiting for their anniversary to roll around.

Michael hums lightly into Calum’s shoulder. “How long do you think we have to wait after the wedding to get engaged so Luke won’t say we did it on purpose to take away the spotlight?”

“Well, if I tell you it won’t be a surprise, now will it?” Calum says, smiling when Michael whines in response. “Besides I have to come up with something romantic to do. You said you didn’t want Luke and Ashton to be cuter than us. Now come on, the food’s ready and we have to start getting dressed.”

Calum manages to get Michael to eat something, to feed the dogs, and get them out the door with enough time to get to the wedding. It manages to go off without any issues and it isn’t until later, while Michael and Calum are sitting watching the first dance, that Michael leans over and says, “You know, if we have the dogs be the ring bearers we’d already win for cuter wedding.”

Calum huffs out a laugh and kisses Michael softly. “Only if you let Moose be the flower girl.”