Jerome's P.O.V.
I had known Mitch since we were six years old, and since I had met him, he had had a stutter. It had never been particularly bad, stumbling over a few set words that he had always struggled to pronounce, but he had always been self conscious about those words which led to him avoiding saying them like the plague. It made it very difficult because his stutter over those words got worse, and it made him stop using them more.
But the more he ignored it, the worse it got. When Mitch was little the words he stumbled over were difficult words, words not in common use, and so it was easy to hide. As such he never received treatment for his stutter and as we got into high school his stutter began to shift.
By 16 his stutter had worsened- by a mile- and the words he stumbled over became more commonplace, words like want and go. But on top of that, he began to get blocks. Before it had only been repetitions and even then it had been subtle, not too noticeable, but now there were blocks. Blocks were when he stopped in the middle of his sentence, unable to get his words out.
Mitch always got upset when he stuttered, his face visibly falling when he stuttered and he often just stopped talking, even in the middle of a story. There were so many times he turned to me to finish what he was saying because he couldn't continue, and I did it despite knowing that it would make his stutter worse. I hated seeing him embarrassed.
And when YouTube kicked off.... it all hit the fan. Let's just say there was a reason he didn't record with others very often and why he didn't live stream, because it gave us the ability to cut out any sections in which he stuttered. He had improved, but it still he was self conscious about it, avoided words he knew he would stutter over and relied on me to help him when he need it.
Of course I helped him, he was best friend- and now boyfriend. I did what I could.
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Mitch was silent for most of the conversation while the other boys chattering, biting his tongue when someone asked him a question. He had hardly spoken all day and when he did it was full of stutters and blocks and repetitions, it had just been a bad day. He had essentially shut down, our shoulders barely touching.
The other boys were the other members of the Pack, all visiting us down in Florida after almost a year of being apart. We hadn't been in one group since Preston's wedding and even in that short time Mitch's stutter had worsened. They didn't really know. They had to have realised he had a slight stutter when he spoke but none of them had mentioned it, at least to our faces, but they didn't know the full extent- that was how much he avoided speaking when he knew he would stutter.
"Jerome?" Rob drew my attention and I looked up. He was leaning up against the wall with Lachlan pretty much sitting on his feet, playing on his phone.
"Yeah?"
"Mitch is asleep." He stated, and I looked over at him. He indeed was asleep, leaning on one knee which he had pulled up to his chest and just as I watched his head slipped sideways onto shoulder. I smiled myself.
"I guess he is."
"Was he upset? He's been pretty quiet all day."
He really had been, but it wasn't because he was upset. I wasn't surprised the others had noticed because he had barely spoken a word in the morning we had spent together, the lunch we had out and the afternoon we had back at our place. His stuttering did become exasperated when he was tired, but that was only part of the reason.
"No, I think he's just tired." I said, adjusting my position so it was more comfortable for him. "He might be more talkative later."
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