At first, George wasn't entirely sure as to quite what he was supposed to do, because Ross had assured him that this all would be fine, and really this had all been executed by him, as he did all he could to ensure that there were no more awkward outings with only the three of them. Because that was what Adam and Ross wanted - the four of them back together as best friends, because that's how it had been for years, and George found himself astounded as to just how he'd managed to fuck that all up so easily.

There'd been quite the point made of assuring him that it wasn't even slightly his fault, and that Matty wasn't good at dealing with his problems, and that wasn't on him, but it was, because there had to be a problem there in the first place for Matty to ruin himself over, and of course, George was the one who'd let that problem fall into place.

It had been an odd four months on George's end too. He wondered what Matty knew of that, what Matty knew of him, what Matty knew of how it had ended - whether Ross and Adam told him, whether he even listened, whether he let them tell him? There were so many questions racing around his mind, but there was only silence: drawn out and prolonged as the second hand on the clock upon their wall ticked away in half time. No, not their wall - Matty's, because this wasn't really George's place anymore; he felt like a guest, he felt awkward and out of place, and not just in Matty's place, but Matty's life, and he hated that.

No. George told himself: changing his mind. Not Matty's wall, theirs, because despite what Matty thought of it, despite what anyone thought of it, he lived here again too; he had a key, he had a bedroom - this was his house too.

And it was just the fact that he had to question that which really solidified the mess in George's mind, because it had been... it had been four months. The kind of four months that had his throat going dry, and his heart slowing in his chest, because he didn't want to think, but suddenly obsessive thinking was what he was made for, as his mind fixated in upon January, and the mess, and one hell of starting a new year, and February, and how he'd spent it in denial, and March, and how he'd gotten lonely and a little fucked up, and April, and how he finally accepted that he missed and needed his best friend.

But Matty was more than that. In an odd way, more than that, always more than that, but not best best friend, because that was the kind of childish, and maybe they had been acting childish, and maybe George was no older than sixteen inside of his mind, but they were well into their twenties, and if George hadn't fucked everything up quite so spectacularly then he might have asked Matty to come up with a word for it - a word for them. He would have. He really would have. And they would have smiled and laughed.

But Matty wasn't smiling or laughing. He was crying, and George was stood there silently like an asshole, and he imagined that it was already what Matty thought of him, and he imagined that in some respects he deserved it, because George had never known what December was, but he'd always known that it sure as hell wasn't nothing.

And the early hours of New Year's Day hadn't been cheating, but it hadn't been nothing, and they lived it that greyed out awkward sense of something: an unplaceable something, and maybe it would have been okay if Matty had known how to use his words. And that was such an odd thought, because he wrote for a living; he had such a gift with it all - words came naturally, but George knew that words came to Matty when he least needed them: in Sainsbury's when they were deciding whether to get two packets of cereal or just one, at five in the morning when he hadn't slept - so many words that he kept himself up for nearly thirty hours, but not, not when he needed to put everything out how it was.

Because it was neither of their faults, for December had been a month of gestures and kind smiles, and how two people slowly just sat closer together without really realising it, and how sleeping on the sofa so they wouldn't have to go to seperate beds was never mentioned, but they were both so mutually aware of it.

Perhaps it would have been easy, but George reckoned that if it had been easy then it wouldn't have been real, because the Matty with over complicated words and offensive jokes, and even more offensive pick up lines, was the Matty that was put on show and presented to people to win them over - that was the kind of Matty that picked up girls at bars and shagged them maybe twice before blocking their numbers.

And George was so much more than that. For a start, he wasn't a girl, and they both knew that held a lot of weight: unspoken weight, and as much as it branded George as a hypocrite, he knew that they just weren't ready to have that conversation yet. Or maybe Matty was - he didn't know, and maybe if they stood like this forever, they never would.

Because there had been something there, and now there was silence, because this was a different Matty, who seemed to have forgotten how to fill awkward silences. This Matty didn't pick up girls at bars anymore, and as much as George had hated it, he wondered if things would have been better if Matty had gone off and gotten a girlfriend too. But this was the Matty who'd stayed at home for four months, and George both dreaded and longed to see what kind of work he'd produced in that kind of headspace, but he knew that Matty had always been reluctant to show him, and for him to hope that Matty would stop hating him, and stop crying just to reveal what had been going through his mind for the past four months, well, that would make George a whole new kind of idiotic.

He wondered if coming back was idiotic, because he knew that Ross had been lying to him - he knew that Adam had a spare bedroom, and yet, he'd let it all happen, because he'd wanted to come back, and it was more than him missing the magnets on the fridge and the Tesco down the street, and the cracks on his ceiling, and the step three from the top that always creaked horribly.

He wondered if Matty would believe him if he told him so. He wondered if Matty would care. He wondered a hell of a lot in a hell of a short space of time.

And Matty was still crying, and George was looking more and more like an asshole, but in all honesty, he just didn't know what to do about it; he just didn't know how to act anymore, because even though it had been confusing before, at least then they'd been something - an odd kind of something, but a something nonetheless, and now they were just nothing. The kind of nothing that ached through your whole body, and made the house feel colder than it had ever been before.

But it was just Matty. Just Matty. His Matty. But not his Matty anymore. But Matty. Not Matty, but Matty. And that made all the difference, because he knew him; he'd known him for years, and four fucking months had no right to define them - no fucking right at all.

It had been... it had been a hell of a four months.

It had been a rash decision: irrational, stupid, but she was pretty, and they'd worked for four months, they'd coped with one another for four months, but Matty was pretty too and they'd coped with each other for years, and fuck, they'd done more than cope, and George knew that he really should make decisions when drunk, with pretty girls at parties, with a desire to prove himself.

Because it had been Matty And George - always. And there'd been this part of him after it had happened that wanted to just be George, but he couldn't help himself getting lonely, and Saffy And George would never have quite the same ring to it.

And they stood there, not Matty And George, fuck, perhaps not even Matty and George, but Matty Healy, and George Daniel. Two separate people, which was what they were, but co-dependency was warm and intoxicating, and neither of them had ever been any good when it came to staying sober.

So George did the first idiotic thing that came to him, as he often did, and rushed forward and finally just pulled Matty into his arms: a hug, nothing more, but skin against skin, and Matty was so cold, and shaking slightly, but so immobile: freezing up from the inside, and it made George sick, because he couldn't shake the feeling that it was his fault.

"I'm sorry." He whispered against the top of Matty's head, because he was so much taller than him, and he could remember when they were kids and Matty had been taller, and that didn't even feel real anymore, much as he imagined, or at least hoped, that those four months wouldn't in the future. "I'm sorry." This time it came with more passion, more meaning, and his voice began to break slightly, but still Matty was motionless and unresponsive: shivering into his arms, and it scared him - this all scared him so much, because this was a Matty that he didn't really know anymore, and that was just their thing - that they knew each other more than they knew anything else.

And it was in that moment that George wondered if he was only perhaps really beginning to understand the meaning of the word 'regret'. He hated how it took things like these to come to such conclusions, because we lived through life not really understanding, not really taking things in until they came like a punch to the face. And in that moment, he swore to change that, for hope of dreary April, but a better May.

Matty would have thought, would have expected that it wouldn't come to this - them, them again, hugging, like nothing was different, because fucking everything was different, and he didn't want to be bitter but he didn't want George to brush it away and they continued on like normal, because he didn't want that, because as much as he had like December, with every December they had there would always be a January to follow, and he wanted a new start - a change, something that meant something, a heartfelt apology and explanation, and not just some fucking hug in his living room as he cried into George's chest like that was something they did. Because they didn't - not anymore.

Matty also wished he could deny the way that cut into him, because in all honesty, he wanted to let this fly behind him, to let December roll over even in spring, and to live through those few weeks of peacefulness until the eventuality came down upon them, and as they reached no conclusion with what had happened between them, she'd come back into the picture, and suddenly Ross telling him that George staying at his place again was likely temporary made Matty sick to his stomach, because more than anything, he wanted him to stay, because he was his George, and more than anything, he wanted him.

He came to hate himself, and the way his mind worked, and how quick he was pleading to forgive, because there was a simple and easy way to do things, and Matty knew that way wouldn't get them anywhere, but of course, there was still that part of him that was deathly scared to go anywhere in the first place. This was the part of him that left Ross and Adam in the dark for the past few months because he just couldn't bring himself to explain the truth, because Matty was scared, and he wanted things to go back to normal, but good normal, new normal, and he just wanted this horrible sinking feeling in his stomach to go away.

He should have pulled away from George by now; he shouldn't have let him do this in the first place. He should have showed some kind of something, said something by now, but he was scared, and he hated letting other people know that, and he hated crying in front of people, especially George.

"I'm..." Matty managed one word before regretting it, as he felt George pull away and allow him to speak, because that wasn't what he wanted - he needed everything to fade away, and he needed him not to be here, but he couldn't let him leave, he really needed him to have never arrived, because avoiding things entirely was so much easier than letting them go.

George met his gaze with a questioning yet concerned look, and through this all, he wasn't even slightly angry, despite the fact that Matty was clear upon the fact that it was him who'd managed to fuck this all up, and he'd done nothing but apologise, and it wasn't fucking fair - Matty wasn't being fucking fair, on George or himself, he didn't even know at this point; he just wasn't in the state to speak but the only alternative he had was to cry, and he couldn't face that again.

"Why are you here?" He finally choked out: looking up at George, and knowing from Ross exactly what had brought him here, but that wasn't the exact answer he wanted; he didn't want the what, he wanted the why, and most of all, he wanted it from George himself, because he had this awful habit of being accidentally rather blunt about things whereas Ross tended to go overboard on the sugarcoating and looking after people's feelings, and mothering Matty to the extent that was getting borderline unnerving.

From the look upon his face, it seemed as if George hadn't been exactly expecting that, or at least such a direct form of questioning. Matty could only wonder just what he had been expecting: some form of apology, or some form of argument, perhaps. Maybe he should have just yelled at him, and in hindsight that did seem easier - highly counterproductive, and messy, and likely to have him crying again, and George leaving within a few days, but easier, unlike holding that distant, uncertain look in George's eyes as he struggled to form an explanation.

"I..." George leaned back against the wall momentarily and ran a hand back through his hair: fixating his gaze upon the house, and how it was their house, but not theirs anymore, and how that hurt more than he ever could have accounted for. "Me and..." his voice grew quiet, drifting off into something like a mumble, "Saffy... we... well, broke up... I guess." He glanced up at Matty: hopeful that somehow, despite all he knew, what he'd provided would act as a suitable explanation.

"You guess?" Matty raised his eyebrows, rubbing his eyes in order to remove any evidence that might lead back to the fact that he'd been crying just a few minutes ago; he didn't exactly know why he'd bothered, with George having witnessed it all, but somehow it mattered, and somehow this made a difference, and he didn't feel like he was in much of a position to question that.

"I guess?" George repeated, changing his tone to meet Matty's - louder, clear, and picking up as time went on.

"You either did or you didn't." Matty raised his voice again, and came to regret it: watching as George grimaced, and came to wonder if maybe this was sensitive for him, maybe he didn't want to talk about it, and if he was succeeding again in being the world's biggest fucking asshole by insisting that he addressed it.

"Uhh..." George pulled his gaze away, and scratched his neck absentmindedly. "I guess... we did?" He let out a sigh: fixating upon the coffee table and the stack of magazines and random papers gathered there, and how the house was generally messier all around, and how this was in his absence, because despite what Matty always insisted, he really couldn't look after himself on his own. It wasn't that there was anything directly wrong with him, it was just who he was; he needed people - people like George, as George found himself hoping to think.

Living with Saffy had been different; she didn't leave junk on coffee tables for him to clean, and as mundane as it sounded, he missed it, because it was always the little things, like how Matty was always awake in the early hours of the morning and he left little reminders of that for George to find come nine or ten. They were the most silly things to miss, and George was just wondering if he had somewhat of a penchant for those kind of silly things. Matty being the silliest thing of all. But that was Matty. His Matty. Sort of. He wasn't really so sure anymore.

"We-" George found Matty cutting him off, which, considering the fact that he'd asked the question, was not something he'd been expecting, considering it was Matty who'd seemed so determined in asking him so in the first place.

"You don't have to talk about it..." Matty trailed off: biting his lip. "I mean... it's... a break up, they're hard, aren't they? I shouldn't be... I mean, you should've been crying." He attempted to laugh it off, like it was nothing, like this was just a joke, but no kind of joke lasted four months and left him feeling like this.

"Shouldn't I?" George paused for a moment: taking in Matty's appearance, taking in the whole house, like he was scared that Matty might just kick him out at any moment, because all in all, he certainly didn't doubt his ability to do so. "I mean... that's what mates do, isn't it?"

And Matty gave him a look as if to say 'we're not exactly mates anymore', unable to stop himself as the tone upon George's face immediately shifted, because by now, he was, of course, an expert in reading Matty by facial expressions alone, and he shouldn't have forgotten that, but he had, and he'd let himself, because maybe he'd needed to forget and just stop thinking about George entirely, but suddenly that really just wasn't an option anymore.

"About..." George began, stopping himself momentarily: unsure if he really wanted to go there, because there was a very strong part of him that couldn't face this all falling apart, but in all honestly, what were they now if not already in pieces? And he asked himself one of those stupid questions, like what did he really have left to lose? Perhaps that was just asking for it, but the look in Matty's eyes made him hopeful for a different story entirely. "About... about... New Year..." He watched as Matty grimaced slightly, and felt himself freezing up: unsure, unable to continue, because beyond everything else, he was scared.

"What about New Year?" Matty finally managed to ask: his voice cracking as he spoke, leaving him to blush slightly, because now that they'd started talking, it was beyond awkward and painful, and Matty even began to see the positives in just going back to crying.

"You know." George told him with a sigh. "I... you should have talked to me- fuck, why did you talk to me? That was why I left, you know? I thought you hated me, and maybe you do, I don't know, but surely if you didn't you would have thrown me out the minute you saw me, wouldn't you?" And suddenly he was halfway to yelling before he was even fully aware of it, and Matty felt so very small and so very close to crying, which suddenly didn't seem like quite the shining example of a perfect alternative anymore.

"I don't know." Matty choked out, looking at George and then looking away again as his chest began to ache, because he needed this to end; he needed this conversation to just go away, but how? Where could it go away to when George was here with his stuff because he was staying here for a while at least. "I... just... I..." He shook his head.

"It's okay." George fell into a sigh, "maybe we should leave this until later, you know? I mean... I mean... it's just us. You don't hate me, right?"

Matty looked up at him and found a sense of familiarity in his tone: the sense of home that he'd lost inside this house, because home was so much less the actual four walls you stood within, but the people within it. "We need to talk about this, though, I'm not-" He stumbled over his words in a desperate attempt not to fucking cry again, because once was enough and twice was just fucking pathetic. "I'm not fucking letting you just fucking leave again, and I'm just-... we need to talk... we need to fucking sort this out... I don't know how, though." He sighed, before playing it off with a laugh, "I guess there is a limit to the amount of things I can get Ross to do for me."

"You should have talked to them, you know? Like properly." George's tone suddenly grew quieter, "about what happened, about... it... mattered, didn't it?"

"What?" Matty asked, feeling suddenly under pressure with George's gaze. "What mattered?"

"New Year's." George muttered, suddenly pulling his eyes away, because this was leading dangerously into a conversation he was sure that neither of them were quite ready for, but in turning away, he missed the slight, but present, nod that followed in response.

"I don't hate you." Matty eventually found the words to fill the silence. "By the way."

George chanced a smile, far happier to hear Matty say those words than he perhaps should have been. "Well, I guess you'll be glad to know that I don't hate you either."

"I guess." Matty gave a gentle nod.

"You guess?" George raised his eyebrows, "you either do or you don't."

Momentarily, Matty's eyes grew wide and George's heart began to drop in his chest, but with time, Matty's face gave way to the slightest smile, and the room was filled with the slightest hope that there might be some hope for them in all of this mess, because there had to be, didn't there?

They were Matty And George, after all. And that had to count for something, even in all of this mess.

-

His room looked empty. But then again, it wasn't really his room anymore. There was a lack of permanence to this all, and it was the kind of lack the dug deep into you and had you sick with two eyes staring off onto the white plaster of the wall opposite.

They hadn't spoken since their first conversation, and indeed, only perhaps an hour or two at most had passed, but as George had spent it, at first slowly unpacking his stuff: places shirts back into their places in the wardrobe, because they did have places, but it was the just the matter of wondering how long they were going to stay there again - how long this would last, this evidently temporary kind of arrangement.

George hated that, because he just couldn't wholeheartedly see this working again, and more than anything he wanted that - things to go back to normal, things to go back to them, but this had been largely down to him.

He'd spent too long laid back on his bed: mind elsewhere, wondering just what part of him had let Ross do this, knowing full well that it would upset Matty, and there had been the proof of that in the very moment that he'd walked in; George hated seeing Matty cry, and even more than that, he found that he hated knowing that it was his fault.

He considered calling Ross, just asking him for help, for what the fuck to do, and for him to undo this all, but there was no act of undoing this all, sure, he could get up and leave but George knew very well that it was the worst thing he could do in that situation, yet he packed and unpacked all his stuff three times before giving up and falling back onto the bed: reaching for his cellphone on the bedside table out of habit, but finding that it was still inside his bag instead.

He wondered if maybe he should at least text Ross, just to let him know that Matty hadn't killed him or something, or that Matty was alright, and everything was generally sort of fine, but of course, George found that with Matty somewhere out of sight and having been so for nearly two hours now, George had no idea whether he was alright or not.

The idea to check crossed his mind, but he found himself uncomfortable at the thought of it, because suddenly the last thing he wanted was any kind of confrontation with Matty, because finding him and checking was such a them thing, and they weren't really them anymore. George hated this kind of loneliness, not just with Matty, but with Saffy gone too.

It had been a mess of a four months, and there was no way around that. George had at least consolidated the fact, with his own personal experience, that relationships formed on drunk decisions at one am on New Year's Day, and the desire to prove one hell of a stupidly spiteful point to his best friend... now sort of ex best friend... didn't work out well at all.

He'd wanted Matty to him again - that was the thing. And he'd been angry, and a bit drunk, and refusing to listen to Ross since he'd deemed that Ross was on Matty's side, you know, back when George had insisted that there were sides in all of this, and that this was an argument and not just the most unfortunate event in his life.

He'd moved in with Saffy to get a reaction out of Matty - so he'd admit that he couldn't ignore him and that they needed each other so George could move back in. But Matty had been all new kinds of stubborn, or just all new kinds of fucked up, and it was all new kinds of George's fault. And it was just that come February, it was sort of awkward to call it off and run back to Matty again.

Just sort of awkward.

He sounded like a dickhead. He was a dickhead. He just hadn't meant to be, yet suddenly intentions held very little weight at all.

It wasn't that he never had feelings for her, because he had. He just found, that in hindsight, they perhaps weren't the right kind of feelings. George just wasn't very good with feelings overall: whatever kind of fucked up state he and Matty's 'relationship' lay in was sufficient proof of that.

It had been a relationship, and they'd definitely liked each other. They'd fucked often enough, and they hadn't really gotten into arguments, well, until they did. It had been one hell of an argument and it came with very little warning, only a few days prior; she'd just looked at him during dinner, downed an entire glass of wine, met him in the eyes and just said Matty's name.

She'd figured it out somehow. All of it, how it had been from the start, always about Matty more than anything - George was unsure how, and maybe if he'd told her that things weren't the same anymore and that he did care about her then maybe they'd have had a chance at fixing things, but he didn't. He just let it all happen over a few days, because there was this part of him that wanted it all to fall apart, and perhaps that part of him was wrong, but he figured that it was likely too late for that now.

He still wanted to be friends with her though - she was a nice girl, she'd always been a nice girl, and it was just that George was never any good at making decisions with alcohol involved, and it had been far too many occasions now without Matty there on the spot to stop him. In that kind of way, he needed Matty, but they were just at a point where that didn't seem like an option anymore.

George jumped a little when the door opened slightly and little ball of brown fur made its way into the room: although at first a little confused, George figured that this had to be the dog Matty had gotten - the one of Ross' suggestions that Matty had actually listened to, as Adam had described it to him as.

George found himself putting all other thoughts and regard for the rather fragile nature of his relationship with Matty aside in favour of the fact that an actual sunshine ray in the form of a puppy had walked into the room. Without even thinking, he got up from the bed, and sat down beside the puppy on the floor, finding that he soon made his way into George's lap. George didn't want to be a prat about this, but there was definitely a strong feeling that this encounter with Matty's new puppy was certainly the best part of this year so far.

Because hey, even if Matty didn't really want him around, at least Matty's dog did, and George figured that had to count for something at least.

Of course, however, it was only a matter of time until the doorway parted further, and tentatively, just behind the door, stood none other than Matty himself. George found his gaze trailing upwards to find Matty's eyes, and the puppy squirming in his lap to run back to Matty, which George couldn't help but let out a smile at, because they should have gotten a dog sooner. They. George bit his lip, looking away.

"His name's Allen." Matty finally broke the silence, and George turned back to the doorway to see Matty stepping forward and sitting down a metre or so away from George: Allen now in his lap, and George couldn't help be a bit jealous - of both Matty and Allen. "Allen Ginsberg." George couldn't help but raise his eyebrows at that. "Shut up." Matty noticed George's expression, and seemed to say out of instinct than anything else.

"I didn't say anything." George told him with a sigh: a smile, however, falling back over his lips. "It's a nice name. Very you. I mean who else is going to name a dog after Allen Ginsberg?"

"Exactly." Matty's hands ran slowly across Allen's fur as he spoke, and George couldn't help but to fixate upon it slightly. "What would you have called him then?"

"George Junior." He spoke without really thinking, and finding the meaning of life itself in the way Matty snorted before falling into a full blown laugh.

"What are your kids gonna be called, fucking George Two, George Three, and George Four?" Matty found himself still laughing, and having forgotten that they weren't quite supposed to like each other anymore.

"Could call one Bedford." George suggested, leaning back against the bed.

"Yeah, because that's such a great name, isn't it?" Matty sighed as he glanced up at him: his tone somewhat reminiscent of how it had been before, and his sigh serving as evidence that he'd come to realise as such.

"Alright, Timothy."

"Fuck off." Matty looked to the floor, letting a few moments pass before he met George's eyes again. "This was Ross, wasn't it? Told you to get here before I came back and all that. Thinks he can fix things just like that."

"You shouldn't hate him for trying to help you." George muttered, hating how quickly everything seemed to have fallen apart again; there was no permanence to this now, and very little hope for it - he hated that.

"Help me?" Matty looked up at him: all wide eyes and raised eyebrows. "What is that what you think? That I need fucking help. Is that why you're back here, is that why you're being nice, because there had to be a reason, didn't there, I mean-"

"Matty." George met him with a stern look behind his eyes. "I don't think there's anything wrong with you. I just... you push people away, and you do need them. You need Ross, you need Adam, you need..." Me.

"How the fuck would you know? It's not like you've been here at all, is it?" The loud tone to Matty's voice had Allen moving away from him and out of the room. He looked after him with a silent look of apology, and lowered his voice. "You just fucking left, you know?"

"I regret that." George sighed, chancing a look across at Matty. "We need to talk about things. You need to open up - you can't just push people away, it's not good for you."

"I didn't push you away, though, did I? You just left of your own accord. If anything, you pushed me away." And of course, Matty had to have a point, and George hated how he was right.

"I'm sorry." George looked him in the eyes. "I mean that. I want to fix this. I want this to go back to how it was before."

Matty shook his head, pausing for a moment, "I don't know if I want that. I don't know if I want that at all." He got to his feet, "I don't know why... I just, I don't know. I don't know." And with that, he stepped outside and closed George's bedroom door behind him.

The silence that followed was the worst, and George spent it sat on the floor with his back against the bed, trying not to cry, because that was just the last thing he needed to do in all of this, but perhaps the only thing he could, and even if that counted for something, George just wasn't sure that he cared so much anymore more.

It was always going to end. He'd known that all along, hadn't he? Just not really believed it.

-

He hated how they'd spent the day awkwardly tiptoeing around one another as they found that suddenly they didn't know quite what else to do, as before there had been this definition of who they are, and as much as Matty had wanted to start things anew, he found that it was so much harder than he could have bargained for.

Allen seemed to like George, if that counted for something - it didn't. Matty wondered if Allen even seemed to like George more than him, but there was no point in getting fucked up and petty over who his fucking dog wanted to sit next to. It wasn't like George was the enemy here, or anything, except, in a weird way, perhaps subconsciously, he kind of was, and Matty just didn't know what to do about that.

Matty wished he could just fix this all: pull himself together and sort things out, but the truth lay in the fact that he'd lost control of his brain quite a while ago. Things didn't work like that anymore; things came at four am, and in sleepless nights, and weeks without human content, and showers that spanned on for hours, after weeks had passed without them.

He wasn't do so well in all honestly, and at least, tonight, he hadn't forgotten to eat, he just purposefully hadn't done so in order to avoid talking to George again, or maybe perhaps that was worse - Matty didn't really know.

He'd spent the past few hours locked in his room: sat at his bed, sat at his desk, then sat beside the window - sat to watch the rain, and sat to curse the skies opening up to give him something to lose himself in. But he cared little for the hours it'd waste away, and just needed the opportunity to lose himself in any form of thought that didn't directly relate to the George situation.

The George Situation. Because it was a situation now - a problem, something to be solved, something out of turn, and something unearthly. And it was Matty himself who had unintentionally penned it as such; he found that he and his subconscious weren't on the best of terms, and he found that just wasn't anything he could do about that.

He was in quite the mess, and this really wasn't helping - The George Situation, because that was what it was now. But maybe sitting alone and letting this all kill him from the inside out was hardly the better alternative - perhaps there was no better alternative, perhaps there was no good way out, and perhaps he was just going to have to face that.

Perhaps George would stay and they'd stay in this awkward state with a fading hope of something more, or perhaps George would leave and Matty would go back to himself, but George would go back to her. Matty didn't know what he wanted anymore.

He glanced to his desk and the paper upon it: displaying the lines he'd written only last night, although now, last night felt like several worlds away. Earlier, he'd sat down to add something, to create anything at all, to gather some sort of justification for the fact that maybe he wasn't just a complete waste of space, but there was nothing in his head besides worry, and it was that kind of ugly worry that didn't form intricate sentences and startling questions, but the worry that blotted across your mind like thick, black ink.

Perhaps it was just the subject of his previous work, and how that subject now resided in the room beside his, and how everything had turned itself on its head so quickly, and now that there was absolutely no hope of closure with George staying right beside him.

Or maybe he didn't need closure. Because Matty had never been any good at figuring these kinds of things out. Maybe they did need to see each other all the time - maybe they needed to pull through, maybe they needed the kind of resilience and stubborn qualities that Matty had held in January, but had fizzled out into a wispy kind of nothingness in the course of a few months.

Or perhaps it wasn't to do with George at all, because it wasn't like his entire world had to revolve around him, was it? Yet it did, through it all, it did, and that was hurt, and that was hurt to admit - it was left him drifting: awkward, anxious against the cold glass of his bedroom window, hoping to pull himself back to how things had been through the sheer force of his mind.

But he couldn't concentrate; he couldn't focus on anything at all, which wasn't exactly far from his kind of ordinary, but it was more so than usual - perhaps worryingly so. Except Matty was strongly against getting other people to worry about him, and he was likely going against that with his persistence in ignoring every message from Ross on his phone, but if he really wanted to know what was happening that badly then he could call George.

George who'd likely be out of the kitchen by now, as the sun fell long past the horizon, and George who'd likely be in his room. Because in all admittance, he was hungry, and he couldn't think on an empty stomach, let alone write, let alone focus, let alone make a conscious effort not to fuck up his life anymore so than he had already.

With time, he unlocked his bedroom door. At first, he just listened at the door and into the hallway: listening for anything at all, listening for George, but finding nothing but silence, but it was a bitter kind of unpleasant silence, that existed with spite, as if it was forced to, like someone had dragged it along and forced it to remain despite all of its wishes.

Matty hated how he could understand why the silence might lay with discontent, and in turn, hated how he ceased to do anything about that. He had this awful habit of letting himself waste away and ruining his own life out of stupid things like convenience, and awkward gestures, and irrational thoughts placed erratically in his head.

His footsteps fell with precise and cautious silence: slowly making his way into the kitchen in the intention of quickly grabbing the first thing he laid his eyes upon and heading back to his room. The matter, however, was the fact that as he made it through the kitchen door, the first thing he laid his eyes on was George himself.

The eye contact was instant: George as wide eyed as Matty as he sat at the breakfast bar with a bowl of cereal - of all things, at eleven in the evening.

"You really don't have a lot of food in the house." George told him after a moment; his voice gentle, tentative, and quiet. Matty gave a startled nod before chancing another step into the kitchen. "Do you want me to go down to Tesco tomorrow and get some stuff in?" George continued, looking over Matty, who remained unpleasantly apprehensive as he crossed the kitchen to reach the fridge.

"Y-yeah..." Matty gave a nod: his hand shaking as he pulled it back through his hair, praying to God that George wouldn't notice - he did. A silence followed.

George watched Matty look through the fridge and eventually pull out the last yoghurt in a packet of four, so naturally it was apricot one, because nobody fucking likes apricot yoghurt, but Matty wasn't that fussed in that moment.

"Should've made proper dinner, you know?" George let out a sigh, "you've not got a lot in, though." He bit his lip - an 'are you looking after yourself properly?' right on the tip of his tongue.

"It's..." Matty trailed off: hovering awkwardly - yoghurt in one hand, spoon in the other. "Okay..."

"You should get to bed." George told him, finding the only other thing he could think to say. "You look tired." Matty did, and Matty was.

He gave a shrug, considering taking the seat next to George, but settling with leaning back against the counter as he ate the yoghurt as fast as humanly possible: wishing he just could leave, but they had this awful kind of conversation thing going on. "I've got to write." Matty drew out a sigh, and George hit him with a familiar look.

"Your health comes first. Always." George had this kind of thing coming like a reflex. "You don't have to write the works of... I don't know... a genius, every night, you know that?"

"I can't. I can't write anything." Matty shoulders slouched in defeat. "Nothing. It's just static silence in my head."

George paused for a moment, before leaning forward with a suggestion. "Would I sound too much like Ross if I told you that you should go outside more?"

"Yes." Matty practically yelled, leaving a smile to ghost momentarily over George's lips.

"Ross is usually right, though." George offered him up a smile as he finished his bowl of cereal.

Matty shrugged. "Usually."

George paused for a moment: heart racing slightly. "Come to Tesco with me tomorrow. It'll get you out, and it's not much - just down the street, just get a few things."

"Oh, yeah, because the fucking frozen aisle of Tesco is going to be my long lost muse." Matty rolled his eyes and made quite the scene out of shaking his head. "An Ode To Frozen Veg? Not likely." George snorted.

"Not what I meant." He looked up at Matty with wide, optimistic eyes. "Fresh air-"

"Don't you fresh air me, as well-"

"Good for you." George insisted: getting up and putting his bowl and spoon in the sink, before putting the box of cereal back into the cupboard. "You've not done a lot of washing up, either." He commented as he looked down at the sink.

"Well, you're very welcome to do it for me." Matty threw out a sigh and slid his spoon across the countertop and into the sink.

"Come with me tomorrow." His tone was suddenly rather sincere: the kind of hopeful that Matty had given up on years ago.

Matty shrugged, his eyes fixated upon the floor. "I don't know. Maybe."

"Please." George insisted, drawing close to spewing some kind of shit about how this was the kind of making an effort that Matty needed to do to fix things, but he knew that it wouldn't help anybody.

"Maybe." Matty added with a sigh, making his way to the door. "I'll think about it in the morning."

George gave him a nod as he followed him out of the room. "Night, Matty." The words came like instinct as the two stood in the hallway: ready to turn away to their separate rooms.

Matty stood frozen in response for a moment, until the silence was punctured with a sigh, and a, "night, George."

George was thankful for the darkness to hide the size of his smile until he made it to the safety of his room and a closed door: falling back on his bed with the hope for something to come of tomorrow, in Tesco, of all places.

-

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