Chapter 14 (Feeling Free)

Mitchel

When you spend half of your life loving someone so much that it hurts, it's pretty hard to hear it when said person rejects you for someone else. It hurts even more when you're their best friend, and even more when you can't help but continue to love them.

Except now they know and they'll never look at you the same. And you can't look at yourself the same. You can't see yourself when you look in the mirror. You see a stranger who stares back at you with a familiar face. You recognize them but you can't quite place where you know them or what their name is.

You recognize the red puffy eyes and the tears on their cheeks and the braids on their head, but you don't know them and it hurts.

It hurts a lot.

+++

Mitchel didn't lie when he said that he would shower. He got up quickly and moved without looking back, desperate to get the smell and feel of Christian off of him. Sure, he loved Christian, but that didn't take away from the fact that he was dirty and didn't clean up after he and his best friend did the deed.

So he did what he knew how to do. He kept his morals high. He brushed his teeth and got into the shower, cold water running down his skin. He washed his hair and got soap in his eyes. He rubbed shower gel onto his skin and rinsed it off a few moments later. He cleaned the nooks and crannies and then stood in the shower for what seemed like seconds, but in reality, it was another 45 minutes.

By the time he got out, he was shivering but clean, so he patted himself dry and tied his towel around his waist, and looked up into the mirror.

And he flinched.

Who was it that was staring back at him? Mitchel ran his hands over his face and felt his cold, pink skin. Single beads of water traveled down his features and dripped onto the counter.

Blue eyes and long lashes that illuminated in the bright bathroom light looked at him with wonder and misery. It was him, he knew, but he refused to accept it. There was no way that such a pathetic person was looking at him through the glass.

He was Mitchel Cave. Mitchel fucking Cave. Singer, songwriter, Australian star. There was no way that Mitchel was crying over his bandmate.

He ran his thin fingers through his wet hair, sniffing harshly and looking at the foggy mirror. He pulled at his braids to make sure that what he was living was real and he wasn't dreaming. He looked at his long hair. He was almost fully grey and dyed it every few months. He hadn't dyed it in forever and white strands peaked out of the grey and dark brown bunch.

He looked at it for a long time, remembering how his ex-girlfriend used to braid it. He remembered how his mother used to tell him to stop straightening it because it just fried and damaged it. He remembered his emo phase and when he grew it long and messy.

His hair was always long when he loved Christian. He still loved him and it was still long. But now it was confirmed. Christian didn't love him back, at least not the way that he wanted him wanted to.

And then Mitchel suddenly hated it. He hated his hair and all of the memories, all of the shit he had to put up with.

So he did what any other emotionally unstable person would do on a whim: he cut it. He snatched a pair of scissors out of his cupboard, the ones that he used to trim the ends. He did it quickly and he didn't cry, not like the typical cis white girls do when they cut off an inch. No, he cut it all off and he did it quickly. It felt so good to be free of it- refreshing, even.

When all of the long locks were gone, he was left with a big mess of uneven and choppy clumps. Without much thought, he took Clinton's electric razor and cut the rest of it off, enjoying the hum and vibration as he went. When he was done, he was left with an even buzz cut that was much too well done to have been cut by him at his mental state.

He looked at himself in the mirror again, turning around and getting used to how he looked. It suited him, he figured. His head felt light and he could think straight again.

The counter was dusted with his hair, fat clumps, and little choppings littering the marble and sink. He busied himself with sweeping up the hair with his fingers and throwing it out, then heading to his room. His hair was already dry and he'd discovered that Christian had left the house by looking out of the window. That was fine. He preferred it that way.

Mitchel also needed to think. He needed to get out and maybe go for a walk. He needed to Be. So, he slipped into whatever clothes he could find, not caring that his outfit didn't match.

He slipped into a pair of shoes and stepped out of the house, breathing in the fresh spring air. It rained during the night, and the Earth smelled of mid-afternoon dampness and the overall idea of freshness.

He slipped his earbuds into his ears and tucked his phone and hands in his pockets, setting off on a fair-paced walk. It didn't matter where he went. He just let his feet guide him until he found himself at a park just over a half-hour later.

He looked around to find it empty except for the occasional tweeting bird or squirrel. As he walked, he hadn't thought about much; he just listened to his playlists on shuffle. When he sat on a rickety park bench, however, he finally put his body at ease. He tilted his head back on the bench and closed his eyes.

Christian Anthony came into view. He was smiling his toothy smile and reaching out for him.

"Come on, Mitchel," He said. Christian looked a little younger. His hair reached just under his shoulders and he had a clean-shaven face. The lines on his face hadn't yet formed and his cheeks were a little more smooth. He sat on his chair in sweats and a tank top, patting his lap.

"Wanna sit on my lap?" He asked. Mitchel did, saying something about how he didn't want to hurt his legs. Christian waved off his comment and helped him on, swiveling around and facing his computer again. They were live on twitch and streaming Overwatch.

Some of their fans were watching, but not too many. Their stream was mellow and they didn't do anything very special. They just talked and played, enjoying the company of their fans and each other. Sometimes Clinton came in and talked to them for a bit, but he'd be gone just as quickly as he came.

Mitchel took his time, reading the comments that the fans left, laughing at some, and reading others out loud while Christian worked at the keys. One comment, in particular, had caught his attention and he read it aloud: "How much do you love Christian on a scale of 1-10?"

It was nothing special, but it got him thinking. He chuckled as he read it, but Christian had stopped playing and was looking up at him.

"Aren't you going to answer the question?" He asked. Mitchel glanced at the camera before looking back at his best friend.

"I, uh," He began, his heart skipping a beat. His palms had already warmed and slicked with sweat. He breathed out a gust of air and nervously laughed.

"Come on, man, I don't know," he replied.

Christian wrapped his arms around Mitchel as he was looked at the chat.

"Of course I love Mitchel," Christian told the viewers, chuckling at a few comments.

"100," he said. "Yep, I love Mitchel 100 percent out of 10."

Christian nodded, smiling up at Mitchel.

"Oh, come on, mate," He said when he saw his reaction. "You can't really be that surprised."

Before Mitchel could stop it, his lip was quivering and he couldn't stop the tears. Christian hugged him tighter, no longer caring about the game.

"Aw, Mitchel," He sang his name and pressed playful kisses into his cheek.

"Christian," Mitchel gasped, scrubbing at his tears. It was much too embarrassing to cry on Live, but he couldn't help it.

Christian kissed him once more before smiling his bright smile, the one that lit up the whole room.

"Come on, Mitty, you know I'll love you to the day we die," He told him.

A few minutes later, they ended the stream.

It killed him, how much he longed to live in the past. He longed to live in simpler times when his worries didn't stretch farther than his next math test and whether or not his mother was making stew for dinner.

He felt a clear salty liquid roll down his cheeks as he recalled the memory, choking on small sobs. He wanted everything that he couldn't have, and what hurt the most was that everything was just out of his grasp. He longed to sit on his best friend's lap and read their fan's comments once more. He wanted to feel the obliviousness and wanted to know that he still had something to look forward to.

Most of all, he wanted his best friend to look at him with the same amount of innocence and contentment as he used to. He knew that Christian never would again. He fucked it up that morning and many times before. He messed up again and again and he couldn't seem to get it right.

It was starting to look like he never would. Eventually, the tears stopped falling after he had a good cry, and he was left as nothing more than an empty shell that sat on a lonely park bench in the late afternoon.

The faint sound of jogging feet hitting the pavement drew closer, and he didn't bother to look up because what were the changes that he knew who was running by? But then the feet slowed to a walk and the faint scent of vanilla and mint drew closer, and he knew it before he heard her say, "Mitchel, is that you?" that it was Molly Reginald.