Fallen [Malum+Mashton/Cake] ✔️

~5~

⚠️ sexual assault ⚠️

Chapter Five: Refugee Crossfire

There was a time when life was simpler. When Michael didn't spend his nights barely sleeping, when he didn't waste his life worrying incessantly over two friends who kept tugging him into their darkness. He used to fight it, he used to demand they change their ways and try to better themselves but when nothing happened--when they didn't listen--he gave up and slowly came to accept that maybe, just maybe, they would never change.

He's not a fighter anymore. He's more like the water boy of a football game, or the benched cheerleader of a basketball game. He's the rhythmic guitar to a band of thrash metal, used only in sections and never fully taken as talent and only as granted. He's the man who gave you a smile as he passed by in the street, saying hello even if you didn't have the time to say hello in return.

But most of all, he was the twinkling light on the front porch of a house by the ocean. He stood out on the end of the abandoned dock, gazing out to the horizon as the sky lit up with millions of stars amongst the hopeless pitch black that engulfed the world around him. And though he would freeze, struggling to stay warm and awake, he would stand out on the dock each night and wait for his friends to return from the depths of the ocean's mass.

He'd barely been home for half an hour, having been miraculously given just enough time to eat a fully loaded salad sandwich and down a cup of coffee before an impatient knock at his front door left him answering it with a tinge of reluctance.

Calum stood on his porch, expression showing anguish as he shoved into the house and glared at the older male.

"So?" He snapped.

"So... What?" Michael gave him a look of confusion.

"How is he?"

"Who?"

"Ashton! How is he?!" Calum exasperated, agitated and angsty.

"He's okay." Michael trailed off, giving the man a look of concern as he gestured to the couch. "You can sit down if you like... I'll get you a glass of ice tea, you seem... stressed."

"Of course I'm stressed!" Calum exclaimed, slumping down on the couch and running both hands frantically through his hair.

"Why's that?" Michael replied loud enough to be heard from the kitchen as he took out a bottle of iced tea from the fridge and grabbed a glass from the cupboard. He set the glass down on the counter, pouring the peach & mango flavoured drink into it before placing the bottle back into the refrigerator and walking the glass out to Calum.

"Why's what?" Calum huffed.

Michael sat down beside the brunette, his complete and undivided attention placed upon his friend who reached out and picked up the glass from where he had set it on the coffee table. "Why are you so stressed at the moment?"

"Luke fucking threatened to leave me." Calum put the glass back down.

"Oh Cal-" Michael went to express his pity for the man, but Calum was swift to cut him off.

"That's not what I'm stressed about."

"Oh... Then what is?"

"I'm stressed because I don't feel anything."

"What do you mean?" Michael cautiously placed a hand on Calum's back to try and offer him some form of comfort without causing him to fly into any kind of rage or upset anguish.

"I don't care. He can leave if he wants."

"You don't really mean that..."

"Yes I do." Calum groaned in dismay, dropping his head in his hands. "No I don't... I don't know!"