"Why haven't you told your friends to stop their virtual harassment? It's not funny anymore, Mitch."
A tall slender man with disheveled sandy blond hair leaned against the bathroom door and listened to his friend washing the sods of the day off as he deleted message after message off his phone.
"I didn't mind their ' Happy Halloweens' or creepy texts asking me to go on a dreadful date with them; I never got mad at them for asking me to be their roasted turkey on Thanksgiving but this new friend of yours is something else." Jake continued deleting messages.
"It's not that he's rude or anything but what he suggests is really creepy, even sounds real at times. You don't want me to have nightmares again, right?" Jake stopped pressing the delete button and stared at his latest message from Mr. Creepy. 'Tonight is the night your nightmare comes true.' Jake stared at the screen for as long as it stayed bright. Was this some kind of prophecy, an end to his world? There were too many nightmares in the 20 years he had lived and all of them were scary enough to make his life like hell again.
From a young age, Jake was used to being the target of bullies wherever he went. It wasn't that he was small or he was a nerd, not even the fact that he was gay could be the reason for being picked on.
He wasn't really out and he was anything but flamboyant. You could even call him straight considering the number of female friends and fans he had; still something attracted all those bad guys and made them want to beat the shit out of him. That was until he met Mitch, the Karate guy, who nearly saved him from another visit to the hospital, well nearly because in the end he somehow managed to get to the ER.
It was a rainy day and Jake wanted to get home as fast as he could. Something that rarely happened. He never wanted to go to that foster house in the first place but somehow he ended up with a bunch of abusive junkies as foster parents and had no way out. Still on a rainy day even a brothel sounded inviting if it could keep you out of the cold rain. It was pouring buckets of ice on any unlucky pedestrian out so Jake had to hurry for a shelter and he almost made it before he bumped head first into the dumbest scariest kid in the neighborhood. That was the first time he truly gave up on living when punches and kicks rained on him from all the impossible angles, blacking out seemed the best blessing at that time.
When he opened his eyes he was sure he was somewhere in the middle of hell or heaven, probably closer to the border line of hell because his body hurt in places that seemed impossible to ache. According to the nurses he had been in and out for several days before he finally decided to stay with the livings, that was when he met his knight with raggedy brown hair and eyes so blue and deep that could bring the sea to shame; and what a voice he had when he stated the magical words of:" You're awake, dude."
Jake was sure he had died and gone to heaven, if only he could turn the pain sensors off.
Mitch was his knight, the incredibly handsome guy who saved him by using some of his karate techniques on the bastard bully. He had called an ambulance and even stayed by his side for several days, well not stayed all the time but at least he'd visited him a few times and that was the start of a better or maybe worse life for Jake.
Mitch had a thing for saving damsels in distress and he had a perfect job to match that personality of his; he was a firefighter and fortunately for Jake he was off duty that day and on his way home when he heard someone's screams. Later he confessed that he thought it was a girl begging for help otherwise he'd never have helped. Jake never figured out if he really meant it or was simply messing with his mind, however Mitch offered to help him get back to life and Jake accepted without any thought. If only had he known his life could never get worse, he would have stayed with that horrid couple and became a dealer of some sort.
Mitch and Jake were a weird pair. After Jake recovered from his wounds and was fine enough to walk with Mitch's help, It was time to be discharged from the hospital,but he had nowhere to go besides that addicted couple and he was too old to be adopted into a better family so Mitch asked him to move in with him, at least until he turned 18 and he could find his own place.At first Jake tried to refuse but Mitch was very good at reading him and knew it was just a facade and how desperately the teen wanted to live somewhere other than that foster house.
Luckily Mitch's roommate had moved out a while ago and there was an extra bedroom. At 25, Mitch had enough savings to pay for the whole rent and support someone for several months. The first few nights were uneventful since Jake still took his pain meds and slept like a log. However, when he stopped taking his medication and totally relied on his pain tolerance, things got nasty. Each and every night Jake screamed so loud there was no way Mitch could ignore him. At first he just woke him up and gave him a glass of water but when they got worse he slept on a chair nearby holding Jake's hand until he fell asleep. The chair was anything but comfortable and Mitch's muscles felt so tense every morning, after a week Jake got better and after a while the nightmares stopped.
Mitch was Jake's angel, whatever he wasn't, whatever he needed in a man and yet he was his death because he had no choice other than falling in love head over hills with the straightest man in the world. He could never forget the humiliation of his confession, when he finally made up his mind to profess his undying love for Mitch, the look of disgust in his eyes that Mitch quickly covered with one his bright smiles simply saying how sorry he was for not being able return his feelings because they were brothers , besides he wasn't into guys.
Indeed they were brothers or that was how Mitch treated him from the beginning. He was so into his role of a savior that took the extreme measure of adopting Jake, changing his last name and giving him a new life. He even gave him a new birthday, a day that was truly his and Mitch made sure he had the best time of his life. Jake was happy, who wanted to be a "Jake Smith" from a random orphanage with a birthday on December twenty fourth shared by tens of other kids so the orphanage didn't have to get them extra presents. Mitch was his brother, not by blood but by something thicker than blood. They had a bond of their own. Mitch was his world, the guy who helped him get back to school and catch up on the years he wasted on the streets running from dealers and kicking cats. The five years they had spent together was the best years of Jake's life.
So Mitch was right and Jake shouldn't have fallen in love with him, worse he shouldn't have confessed. But he learned his lesson the hard way and he never came out to anyone else, nor he looked at anyone long enough to give his heart a chance to beat fast and put him in an awkward situation.
Luckily Mitch was Mitch, the man with a golden heart and after a week of complete awkwardness and torturing silence that Jake almost made his mind to move out of Mitch's place and find somewhere else, he decided to help Jake by setting him up with whomever looked gay.
What a brilliant idea was to get rid of the gay kid with a massive crush and how unfortunate Jake was to become the victim to the hands of his savior. That was when Mitch outed him to his firefighter friends that mostly hangout with Mitch and Jake. After all it was Mitch's motto "What's mine is yours, bro."
The coming out didn't go well though. Still Jake stayed with Mitch and tried hard to ignore the mean comments or words Mitch's friends shot at him at any possible time.
Jake even managed to talk himself into moving out several times but in the end he decided to stay by Mitch's side until Mitch found his Ms. Perfect and he had to leave.
