The So-called Boyfie | MewGulf ✔

Part 15 💖

^PC to the rightful owner 

There were almost thirty raised welts scarring his ivory skin, pale parchment lines that traveled from his neck to his waist, dangerously crossing his spine and crossing and overlapping each other in no discernable pattern.

Gulf felt sick to his stomach, remembering how every other kid he had seen with scars like this had screamed in the middle of the night, how they flinched when anyone moved too quickly near them, how they jumped any time anyone had snuck up behind them. The scars on the skin were not the worst part, Gulf knew. The scars that no one else would ever see could destroy someone who had gone through that.

Gulf lay in the bed that he shared with Mew, biting his fist to keep himself from making noises as he cried. He did not want his Mew to have gone through that, he did not want someone as strong as his Mew to have been vulnerable to anyone like that before. He wondered if it had been his dad or Perth's dad that had done that to him. It had to be a man; it was always a man.

"Gulf?" Mew whispered in the dark.

Gulf could not answer without giving away that he was sobbing.

"What's the matter?" Mew asked, turning towards him, and pushing his hair out of his eyes so that he could see his face as his eyes had adjusted to the dark. "Why are you crying?"

"Your back," Gulf confessed, unable to hold it inside himself any longer. "Your back, Tharn," he repeated himself, wailing in despair.

"Shhh... that was a long time ago," Mew said, his instincts making him wrap his arms around Gulf, pulling his head into his chest. "It doesn't matter anymore..."

"Your back," Gulf repeated. "Don't cry, please, don't cry, I'm here," Gulf chanted.

Mew was confused for a moment, and then he realized that he was crying because Gulf was crying. "I'll stop if you stop," he said, chuckling a little bit.

"Tharn," Gulf pleaded with him, but he wrapped his arm around Mew's body and let his hand feel the raised edges of Mew's scars. "Tharn," he repeated, sounding so scared.

Mew just held Gulf tightly against him, too scared to do anything else. He could not figure out why Gulf was reacting this way, but maybe he could tell him in the morning, or whenever he felt more comfortable with Mew. Obviously, this was something that affected Gulf badly, and Mew wondered what was in the man's past that would make him react this way. He briefly entertained the thought that Gulf was scarred, too, but he dismissed it when he suddenly felt the man's perfect, unblemished skin after running his hand over Gulf's back.

There was a story there, and Mew was going to have to find out what it was.

When they woke up at the same time the next morning, they were not awkward with each other surprisingly. They still had koala grips around each other, but there was so much comfort in it for both that it seemed natural. It was sobering to realize that they might both come from equally fucked up backgrounds that not many other people would understand.

Mew kissed Gulf's lips before slipping out of bed, and Gulf felt that kiss to his very core. His heart was in so much danger and he almost did not care because he wanted this so badly.

Their plane was going to leave at three o'clock in the afternoon, but Mew had one more meeting to go to. Gulf stared from the bed as Mew put on a black pin-striped business suit and a white button-up shirt and a red tie. He put on two huge platinum safety pins in the suit lapel, and Gulf wondered where he had gotten his fashion sense as he slipped on a pair of black and white oxford shoes.

Gulf climbed out of bed to fix Mew's collar, a move which had his fake lover freezing like a deer in the headlights as if he made any sudden moves Gulf would stop what he was doing and that might be the end of him.