Love Cliché | DISC 1 | ✔️

Eighth Cliché

"Mia...what's wrong with your face?"

"Huh?"

Mark said after figuring out what had been bothering him since meeting up Mia at their hidden cafe near the campus. They had met up after Mia's last  class had ended, just as they usually did on Fridays.

"What? Can't a girl wear make up?" Mia pouted, not yet like a puppy nor kitten, but it was cute enough for Mark. "I thought you wanted me to dress up sometimes...", Mia even batted her eyelashes at Mark for good measure.

"No. That's not what I meant." Mark looked at Mia briefly before his eyes landed again to Mia's neck. It was not her wearing make up for him that bothered him. He didn't care because he liked her whether or not she had eyeliner or not.

What bothered him was the discoloration on her.

There were bruises and scratches on her neck. It was unnoticeable on her face and to his ignorance but the neck, he could still see it since it was playing peekaboo with him. It was not hidden well as Mia's face.

Slightly odd places for Mia to receive injuries from falling. Mia watched as Mark's gentle fingers reached for her to pull her white turtle neck sweater down.

She blinked several times as he rubbed one spot, it was slightly sore. Mia wondered if she had not covered it enough with foundation. She slapped herself in her mind for her carelessness.

She really could not, no would not, involve Mark in this.

Mia brought her small hands to Mark's fingers and pulled them down, grasping his long fingers and squeezed reassuring him. "It's nothing. I got hurt again. The usual."

Mark nodded but his look of worry did not dissipate from his face. Even when Mia silently asked him to forget it, he could not. He was noticing that Mia was changing. He did not mind changes especially when clothes, makeup or whatever was up to Mia herself. What bothered her was the way she was hiding stuff from him.

Mia was a convincing liar or pretender but she was not an award winning actress. There were limits to what Mia could do to hide things from him and Mark was no idiot nor was he oblivious. To things that related to Mia, he was highly in tune to them.

If it was the usual random, once in a while injuries, Mark could pass it over and agree that it had been because of Mia's usual clumsiness. This was different. Recently her body was sustaining more bruises than she was actually healing.

He first noticed it that it was slightly odd, a month ago. And that was in late September, it was now early November. Three weeks ago Mia had come to his apartment when he had gotten a rather bad cold and had been bedridden.

Since Mia was forced to stay over to take care of him, she had discarded her normal knitted sweater to don on his larger black shirt and a clean pair of boxers to act as shorts. While he had been admiring her from the sofa, ignoring the noisy tv show, he noticed that her legs were more bruised than usual. The usual would be one or two small bruises but she had large bruises throughout her leg, and even to her upper thighs.

Mia had shrugged it off at that time, and he had allowed her to persuade him to do so, but now he was not so sure. There was something going on and he didn't like it. Whether Mia liked it or not, he would find out and without Mia knowing, he would see if he could make her injuries from getting worse.

"Mark...mark?" Mark snapped his thoughts back to his girlfriend. Mia's hand was cupping one of Mark's cheeks.

He smiled as he tugged on her hand from his cheek into his other hand. He easily intertwined their fingers together and saw that it was meant to be.