Fallen [Malum+Mashton/Cake] ✔️

~11~

Chapter Eleven: Never Really Moving On

Michael cried dismally, hidden in the depths of his dry bath tub as he sat fully clothed inside with the curtain pulled across and the lights off. He could feel the darkness embrace him with a chill so cold it touched his soul and made it into its new home.

It carved at the insides, pushing his beaten and bleeding heart aside as though it meant nothing, and chipped away until it was happy with the devastation it had caused.
He couldn't help but sob, his phone ringing on his lounge room table; seven missed calls from Ashton and two missed calls from a sobering Calum that had realised he'd screwed up all over again.

Michael felt disgusting, he felt as though his body was useless, a pile of tainted flesh with sinful bones and bleeding muscles to hold it together. He didn't want to be held together anymore, he wanted to let go. He wanted to shatter across the floor and never be built back up again.

His heart was tired—so fucking tired of fluttering with hope only to be slammed back into the wall and choked by disaster and disappointment. His soul had given up, losing all hope and joy towards the world as its final straws were pulled and its dwindling candle of love was blown by sleazy lips that had touched his own.

They had marked his skin in purples and reds, biting and sucking and pulling. Rough hands and strong arms grabbed him and threw him about until he screamed for mercy, until he begged for everything to stop. But his cries, like always, seemed to have fallen upon deaf ears as he was yanked away from the mortal realm and left to float in endless despair.

He was gone to the world, bleeding lines of hatred and loathing staining the skin of his wrists without mercy and drooling down against the white of the tub. His jacket had been long gone from his body, and he was certain he'd pulled his shirt on backwards in his haste for an escape from the manic drunk he had once called a best friend.

It was his whimpering sobs that brought a young male to him, the bathroom light switched on and the grey shower curtain pulled open almost hesitantly. Hazel eyes glistened with fearful tears, immediately reaching out and fretting for Michael's attention.

"M-Mikey? Michael?" Ashton's frightened voice was enough to cause Michael to look up in guilt and regret.

"Wh-...What are you doing here?" He didn't bother to hide what he had done, the cuts of a razor drying up from hours of letting them bleed. Ashton had always suspected the depth of which Michael's sadness sunk, but he had never expected to be confronted with it so suddenly. It made him more than afraid, it made him petrified.
Scared he could one day lose Michael, no matter how much the man promised he wouldn't.

"You weren't—weren't answering m-my calls, I-" Ashton swallowed thickly, stepping out the way as Michael hauled himself out of the tub in disheveled clothes and an exhausted body. "I was worried."

"I'm okay." Michael turned the sink taps on in the bathroom's basin, letting it run for a moment as he grabbed a small packet of bandaids from the medicine cabinet. "I left my phone in the lounge."

Ashton shook his head, straining to hold back tears as he abruptly lunged forward and wrapped his arms tightly around Michael's waist from behind; snuggling as close and as warmly as he possibly could.
He was here this time. He was here to help his best friend escape from the demons that plagued his mind, instead of back at home shooting up another hit and laughing through agonising pain.
His decision to be worried after Michael had left with Calum had been the right one all along, and he wanted to say so many things—ask so many questions.

He wanted to know if anything had happened earlier that night, knowing that the day before Calum had been the perfect friend; taking Michael out for fun. But perfection and kindness with Calum never ever lasted. He knew that first hand from a past he hated more than his bleak future.
He wanted to tell Michael so many things from his emotions towards the male, to how amazingly perfect he was. A perfection that would always be there unlike many others.