Note: A quick write, before I go back to TSFMS :)
He's doing it again... Hell, I can't say it doesn't hurt. Because it truly does...
When Mello's concentrated like that on his screen, a smile gracing his features from time to time, that he tries to hide, checking discreetly if I saw it or not, I know it's happening again.
It began years ago, we were nineteen or something, and together for as long as I can remember. Maybe it had even begun earlier, I don't know, Mello's always been quite good at hiding it.
But the more you know someone, the more you see when something's different.
And it is, right now...
It's the first phase. The discover, the lovey-dovey feeling, Mello's on a fluffy cloud and he talks to me way more than usual, telling me about that funny thing he saw on the internet, or how useful his new contact is. Just like if he was trying to reassure me about the time he spends on the damn laptop, talking to a stranger that he wants me to believe is only a contact. I'm pretty sure that he knows himself that he doesn't sound like usual and is giving himself away...
I reply, trying to smile and I even look like I'm interested.
But I'm not. I'd rather tear my ears off my head.
No Mello, I don't want to know that you're doing this again. Even if some insane part of me wants to know up to the last detail. But I simply smile, and go to the kitchen to cook dinner.
No, I'm not an oblivious little housewife. I'm just waiting for the rain to stop falling...
A few days later, and still endless nights chatting on the internet, while I pretend to sleep, alone in our bed. He's got work to do. Yeah, I know Mello, always overbooked...
Soon, he's coming back home later and later. I'm scared. I know how it's gonna end and still I'm scared, wondering why I am.
The someone else gets all of Mello's smiles and I want to slap that mouth of his. The someone else gets time and attention, and I want to throw the laptop by the window. The someone else makes me everything I hate to be, but I'm better than Mello at pretending, hiding...
I refrain from spying, looking at traces that I know he'll have erased anyway, digging into his text messages on his phone when I perfectly know he never keeps them once read. Only mines.
I could end it myself, prevent me from living that nightmare every time Mello leads me down to hell with this habit of his. I could leave him, go, and put a stop to the lies.
But I close my eyes on everything, I swallow back the tears and I stay. I stay strong.
Mello is suddenly back, hours after his work has ended, and I'm in his arms, and he kisses me, and I know that apologies are pouring through the passion he puts into it. And I know that it stopped raining.
Even if I die a little each time he does what he does, I can only accept it when I see our love reborn like in the first day. Because that's Mello's only purpose in such a cheating.
Cheating. I don't like the word, and I wouldn't call it that. The someone else may get all of Mello's time, it's only for a limited amount of time, he gets all of his smiles, but he's more to pity than I am, because when he won't see those beautiful smiles anymore, it will be for good, because they're all back to me, and even with the interruptions I'm forced to get along with, I don't have to live without the wonder that they are forever.
The someone else has to. And if my pain is what it is, I can only imagine getting a taste of Mello and nothing more, nothing anymore. Mello is, even if he doesn't realise it, more cruel with the someone elses than with me.
The kiss is deep, sorry, and mine is understanding, I'm almost comforting Mello when he is the one to temporarily slip away from me.
It's not easy, but even in all this, Mello never crosses the boundaries that would make this actually cheating.
Mello needs to shine. To be desired, admired, he needs to feel the interest in those someone elses that taste the goods, like a drug on the tip of a finger.
But I'm the one to get the line, the full extent of the dope, and it's when I start craving it, being in forced withdrawal because Mello's been wandering out and away from me that the high hits me full force. And it's when he didn't supply me for bad reasons that the shot is the strongest, the most devastating in his love.
Mello needs to be reminded that new encounters are fun, feeling like he's falling in love sends his senses into overdrive for a while, he's walking on sunshine while I see my skies darken, and then he's all mine again because he doesn't see in the someone elses what he sees in me. There's not even a doubt, he never thinks of leaving me, he doesn't want to, ever. He just wants the thrill before seeing there's no one else than me.
So he never goes further, leaving the frontier between playing and cheating very thin but still intact.
Once he's done and back home for good, I get the sun and the fireworks and the stars all at once, I'm pulled fast from hell up to heaven.
Once he's done and back to me for good, there's no talking about it. He's still holding on to the idea that maybe I don't know, and, unsure, he doesn't bring the topic up. I don't either. Useless. It won't make him stop. It will only clear the fact that, indeed, I know, and each time he will do it he'll feel even more guilty for doing it, knowing that I know.
It may hurt me but I'm not seeking revenge, because, even if some may think that there are never good reasons for doing what Mello does, his are valid. To my eyes. And since this concerns only him and me, I don't need more validation to know that what feels wrong is actually right for us.
If there was a right pattern for a successful relationship, Mello's contradictory spirit would do the opposite anyway.
So, there, in the middle of the night, both spent and slowly coming down from our high, tangled and sticky, I know that he's staring at me in the semi-dark, so I lift my head from his chest and stare back, and that smile...
It says that all is good in our world and I slowly forget the hurt and the lies and I know that the next time I'll just go through this all over again on my free will. Maybe because in the middle of the despair I feel, because it's never easy to go through what he pulls me through, I know that the drama has a happy ending every single time.
Under my cheek, the drum of Mello's heart has increased with a simple look at me. The someone elses may make his heart beat faster for a moment, only I can get it to race like this even after all these years. He feels like falling in love each time, but it's me he's falling for all over again, when he's suddenly home, the last someone else stranded on the border of the road of our journey together.
It's not that I'm flattering my ego, I just know that the butterflies Mello searches for from time to time can't keep the pace of his beating heart. Because he loves me with every heart beat.