As stories about celebrities go, everything becomes old news. But this, it doesn't fucking leave us alone.

When we move from A to B, there's usually buzzing paparazzi and fans. While we understand the fans are just excited to see us and want a picture, the paparazzi could be doing anything else. They violate and they insist and they push to the fucking limit.

We step out of a car, they're there, we walk through an airport, they're there, we're fucking shopping for boxers because this hotel doesn't give guests washing machines and we've been here for almost three weeks now, and they're there, locked out of the shops, but still filming, still snapping.

The hotel itself has become it's own monster, with locked doors and the same people monitoring day in day out. We're allowed to leave, but outside are more things ready to swallow us whole.

We can't go online or switch on the telly without seeing our faces, seeing our words being twisted, seeing Candice Fitzpatrick.

Oliver and Luke are not speaking, instead maybe glaring, sometimes nothing at all. Luke is fucked most of the time that he's asleep for all of this battle anyway. He and Demitri go out to parties and Oliver doesn't follow. Sometimes I do, just to get away, just to be with people like me.

But I never go to a Dawn Senate party.

.....

We leave another interview feeling like shit. Like the shit on your shoe when you walk through a dog park. It's for radio, so people can't see Luke's prominent cheekbones, Demi's bloodshot eyes, or my consistent frown.

But they all heard Oliver's voice.

Ever since Candice left L.A, he's been dragging me into the studio and making him work that fucking muscle and...I just realised how dirty that sounds.

I wish it was as dirty at it sounds. No, his voice is raspy from all the singing, from all the vocal warm ups, from actually using his fucking voice for what it's supposed to have been doing for the last two years.

While Oliver mopes for most of the time we're around other company, when it's just me and him, he cracks smiles, he laughs, his eyes light up. It's magical watching him play the piano with me, watching him watching my fingers. I know he stares at me, I know his eye contact can make a person feel so welcome and valid and in that moment, you are important.

He gives me far too much attention these days, and I love it, but I feel like I don't deserve it.

"I think you should call Candice." I say one evening, taking a long and secluded route we'd found from the studio back to the hotel. It's a calm street with unattached houses with giant drives and their own post boxes on the edge of each property. It's so American, but also it's nothing. We barely see anyone and if we do, they haven't a fucking clue who we are, and ignore us. Flowers wrap around white picket fences, and Oliver doesn't give me eye contact for the first time today.

"You talk to her?"

"We all do."

"Even Luke?"

I hesitate. "We don't talk about Luke. She misses you." I'm not trying to mend a relationship that wasn't there, but a friendship, or some kind of thing that reminds them that they should care and respect one another. I shrug. "I mean, you don't have to. If you're not ready..."

"Scottie," He stops walking. We're in the middle of the road at this point, cars parked either side. "I...I didn't love her. You understand that right?"

"Why didn't you break up with her?"

"I don't know." He looks up, and starts walking faster. "Come on, I want to show you something."

.....

The something is everything. It's a bench in the Hollywood hills, and the view is the whole world below us. The studio had always been on some sort of hill, one we'd walk instead of grab an Uber to (apart from that time when Oliver found out that Candice was...well, you know). But geography is not my strength, but it seems walking on an incline is.

We both stare out at the United States of America, a place we'd only heard of on screens. It was a thing that existed but, did it exist if you hadn't perceived it with your own eyes? Your mind? This place had so much influence, yet we hadn't even set foot on it until now. It had moulded us; a closested kid from Greater Manchester who loved to write music, and a public school boy from Oxford, who wanted to love everyone.

It's then that I feel Oliver's hand press into mine, squeezing it tight in between us. I think, if I look down at them, entwined together like they were always supposed to, that it might not be real, that I'm just imagining it.

"I come up here to breathe. Down there is just too suffocating right now." He takes in a large gulp of air, his chest inflating. It reminds me of when Demitri did it, breathing in his room, trying to make it all feel right again. I copy him. "It doesn't smell like cars or bins or people up here. It's just..." He shrugs. "Detached."

"Is this where you went the other week?" He nods. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you I've been talking to Candice."

"That's OK, I've always wanted you two to be friends. It feels right."

"She's a laugh."

"Yeah, she is." The wind whistles through thickets of dry grass, there's a howling in my ears because they're so bloody sensitive. "I...umm...want to thank you..." I know this, this feeling that guys get when complimenting each other. It's so fucking hard for us; not because we don't mean it, but because sometimes it just doesn't need to be said. Sometimes a nice punch to the shoulder'll do. Sometimes a ruffle of the hair or a high five is enough for your best mate to know that you'll be best mates forever and ever amen.

But Oliver just, he has so much love. And I have so much love for him. We're holding hands looking over at skyline while he tells me he appreciates me.

It's so fucking gay.

"You don't have to, mate. I'm supposed to be there for you. You're here for me, all the fucking time."

"I just knew, from the moment I met you, from the moment you were sat there with all those other boys I just knew..." People and things change. Me and Oliver have changed. I'm still sometimes that scared eighteen year old because it's a part of me that got me here, to L.A, to sit up here with the love of my life telling me that he'll always be here for me.

How can I let that part of me go?

He brings me into a hug, the kind that I always go limp in because it feels so fucking good. Because no one can hug Oliver and still dislike him. I'm petitioning that he hug Luke, and then all of this nonsense can be over with. We can all return to some idea of normal.

I might fall asleep in his arms right now, as the sun sets over California. I might let him kiss my forehead and tell me he loves me, might steal it from my dreams and splay it out in the open. When we part, our faces are too close together, and his nose brushes mine. In a story that isn't ours, he might be shocked at it. In another, he brings our faces closer.

But in our story, my fucking phone rings.

Neither of us move, locked in a timeless moment with our lips inches from each other. I slowly move my hand into my pocket and grab at my phone, press the accept call button aggressively.

"What?" I don't even look at who it is; Oliver and I just stare at each other, my eyes focusing in and out because he's so close.

"Oi, I'll have less of that attitude, thank you. I get enough of that from your lead singer."

I can only just about hear Mitch Simmons on the other line, but not because it's poor reception, and not because he's talking quietly. But because while I'm on the phone, trying not to move any muscle of my body, Oliver is there, our noses touching and my upper lip so close to his that I can feel his breathe on my skin.

And he just waits.

He moves only gently, his eyes fluttering open and closed, just waiting for me to hang up. When I talk to Mitch, my words flow through Oliver, into his open mouth, like he's a mouthpiece.

"I'm calling to remind you all about rehearsals tonight. First stadium is tomorrow and if anyone doesn't turn up I'm firing you all."

"We'll turn up."

"Is Oliver with you?" I stop staring at Oliver's lips and I look up to his eyes.

"Mhmm."

"Ok, tell him too. In fact, tell him to switch his fucking phone on once in a while. I know what he's doing and I don't like it." I like it. I really like it.

"Mitch?"

"Yeah?"

"I gotta go. Something really important is happening."

"You're fucking weird, kid. But, I do what The Talent says. Write more music, sing more songs. Ah, I dunno. Just be there tomorrow."

Mitch Simmons hangs up.

Oliver Godfrey kisses me.