Fallen [Malum+Mashton/Cake] ✔️

~3~

Chapter Three: A Parched Secret

Michael unzipped his Bronson jacket, tossing it into the wash basket in his bathroom--shortly followed by the rest of his outfit. The hot water of his shower ran for a moment or two before hitting just the right temperature, the clock in the lounge room hitting six forty three in the afternoon as he stepped into the shower cubicle and let the water finally cleanse him of his seemingly endless day.

He didn't have time to waste peacefully on clearing his mind, instead cleaning and drying himself off within a span of five minutes before making his way through the silent hallway of his house in order to reach his small bedroom.

With clothes already having been set out on the Queen sized bed by none other than himself before he'd stepped foot into the bathroom, he wasted not a second getting re-dressed into a casual pair of black jeans and a long sleeved grey cotton shirt. Something to keep him warm but not restrict his movements with bulky styled clothes. He pulled on a pair of rip-off black Converse and slipped his wallet, phone and keys into his pockets before making his way back out of the house with six minutes left to drive to the Le-Va Monte bar downtown.

The bar was nothing special, a darkly shadowed brown bricked building with dull neon lights out the front trying to make it stand out in the slums of the downtown late-night district. Strip clubs, bars and the odd 24/7 supermarket store were all you would find amongst the common dwellings of drug-users, prostitutes and the homeless.

He parked his car, not truly bothered should anyone break his windows to unlock and steal it. He held no real attachment to it, and the only disadvantage he'd have would be logical and physical ones such as transportation. Walking into the bar, he let his eyes briefly gain an understanding of the surroundings he had now fallen into.

A couple of people stood at the back, laughing and bickering during a drunken game of darts, some people sat in the booths at the side of the small pub, whilst three males sat slumped depressingly at the bar counter itself.
A useless old television played re-runs of old football games that only the drunken patrons cared to bicker about; claiming their winning team as victorious no matter how old the game actually was.

Michael recognised his friend as soon as his eyes lay upon the smaller male's figure seated at the far end of the bar. Their hand was clutched loosely around a glass of thick brown liquor, their head rested tiredly on their free arm that they had laid over the bar counter.

The glass liquified a clear circle over the polished wood upon which it sat without a drink-coaster, and by the look of the bartender the woman had given up caring about the state of the place. It wasn't as though any of the patrons truly bothered themselves with the scenery they got drunk in anyway.

Michael sat down beside his dark haired friend, boredly ordering an Old Fashioned drink and waiting for it to be set down in front of him before he finally decided to bring his friend's attention up to his arrival.

It was a shameful disappointment that Michael had seen coming; Calum had most definitely been at the bar longer than an hour or so, drinking his secret sorrows away as though he hadn't agreed to meet up with Michael at seven that night. Michael didn't truly want to know how many glasses Calum had already downed by this point, knowing that if his dishevelled khaki jacket, black shirt and alcohol spotted blue jeans were anything to go by then it would have been a solid number over ten.

After a sip of his drink, Michael placed it down upon a drink-coaster and nudged Calum in the arm.

"Only a few, you said." He lightly teased with an underlying seriousness to his tone.