The air was warmer: sickly sweet. Still, it felt false, as if the world was still pretending. As if everything and everyone was forever fake. Every effort cast into the perpetuation of an endless charade. A charade, however, that remained cloaked in an uncertain, impenetrable mystery.

Above, the sky lay an astringent shade of blue: cutting deep and leaving permanent scars in the pattern of long lost whispers. The words they dared not to speak anymore. The part of themselves they'd lost in the cold, in the empty mornings, in the pliant, half-hopeful smiles. The part they cared not to get back.

Perhaps it had all been a facade all along. He stared up at her with dark eyes blown wide, as if he needed to take that spirit and smile from her and draw it deep inside himself to finally feel whole again. He didn't doubt it might break her, but that served no hindrance at all.

He focused instead upon her as a whole - on her better aspects: on her hair gleaming like copper in the midday sun. Yet still, as beautiful as it was, as pretty as she was, copper simply was not gold. It was fruitless. Eternal grey skies. They were condemned - like sinners at hands from above - to live like this, forever.

Fervent, she proceeded, living out the hour as if the boy before her regarded her with more than placid contempt. Under the light, under the heat of the midday sun, she left the world to its own issues and concerns, and kissed him.

Desperate, they receded. From sixteen, to the children they once were: young and dumb and innocent, playing out in the sun, in the grass and dirt. They closed their eyes and clung to the illusion; for they were forever young, as long as their hearts declined to beat.

She pulled away as the sky darkened - blue fading out to grey. Her eyes flickered tentatively across his face, searching for any hope of something more: any emotion inflicted by her actions, anything she could grasp onto. Something they could hold out in their hands. Something they could call their own.

There was nothing. Nothing at all.

She sunk down from her tiptoes as the sun ducked behind a cloud, throwing her head back against the wall - the back of the Geography classroom - before taking in a sigh.

Conversation eluded them. Yet they found no reason to chase after it. He stretched his head back, tipping dark, protruding eyes up to the sky: taking in the sudden overcast rain, and making love to every single shade of grey. He was thankful, in earnest.

It was a sign, of some degree; the world telling him to give up, to give in. That this wasn't perfect, that nothing would ever be. Yet despite that, despite everything, he still didn't quite have the guts to go through with it.

He stared at her: auburn hair growing mottled and dark with the rain - no longer a glistening copper, but a leaden brown at best. Eyes vacant, to the floor, to her feet, sinking into the soil: black shoes - patent leather, scuffed and dull with specks of dirt.

It was a sign. If there ever was one.

And still, he withdrew - joining her, with his back to the wall, brushing waterlogged curls from his cheeks as he stared out into the air, urging the rain to pass.

Droplets pounded upon the ground with the force of dozens of tiny fists, as if with the malice and intent to attack, to force some sort of confession from the shrunken, pleading ground. To beat a new, better world out of the broken earth. The rain was tired. The skies were ever-knowing, and ever-forgotten, resigned to their own disgust. At least, he knew, he was not alone.

He dug into his pocket, producing a slightly squashed packet of cigarettes. She turned her head, watching with wide, bloodshot eyes as he reached for the last cigarette, putting it to his lips, and stumbling with his lighter - struggling to light it in the rain.

Eventually, however, with hands cupped tightly around the end, he succeeded.

"I hate it when you smoke." The words slipped her lips without warning; yet she found no urge to take them back.

He exhaled, puffing out a cloud of smoke into her face, as if just to make a point. And still, he wondered why she didn't love him.

She didn't say a word; she didn't give him that privilege. Instead, she watched, eyes burning holes into his cheeks, flushed red with the sudden cold, and dreamt up a world in which it had not turned out like this.

"I hate it when you bitch at me." He turned his head, at least having the nerve to look her in the eye. "I hate it when you tell me how to live my life. What to do, whether to smoke, who to be."

"Like I've ever..." She shook her head, trailing off - it wasn't worth the bother. He'd argue and he'd argue for days, stubborn and petulant: forever the child he'd once been. "I hate it when you smoke. That's all."

"I hate it when you wear your hair like that." He supplied, words balanced on the tip of his tongue like they weighed nothing at all. But they tugged and tore and burned away at her skin, tearing her down with the thundering pace of the rain.

He didn't. He didn't care. He'd never once cared. But still, he put up a fight: forever stubborn, forever arrogant, forever all what he could never hope to be.

"That's just..." She shook her head, not far off speechless. "That's just rude. That's just... you really are a horrible person, Matty."

He stared. He smoked and stared. Still. Hesitant. Unsure whether he could quite disagree.

The moment stretched out for years in his mind, but by the world's reckoning, little more than two minutes had passed.

"Charlotte..." He drew out a sigh, wishing he could fix this, despite all he knew, he still looked at her and hoped they might one day build a castle from the broken ruins.

"What?" Her voice was brash, insistent, tired. Tired of him, tired of them, tired of the rain, tired of clouds of smoke, tired of cold, dark eyes, tired of hiding away, tired of skipping class, tired of stupid boys with tired eyes and forever excuses.

He opened his mouth to speak.

She stopped him. "Doesn't matter."

For a moment, just one, he thought about protesting, about spewing bullshit, about making this beautiful: about drawing hope and love out of broken pieces of shattered glass.

Yet, he relented, he watched, eyes narrow and dark, shrouded with sorrow and confusion and hell itself in human form. He watched her walk away and felt nothing at all.

He was a horrible person. She was right; he'd known it. There'd been something - forever - but much more prevalent in recent months. It was something: something wrong. He'd sought to blame her, but had always known it bore an equal weight upon the both of them.

He only knew, however, in that very moment, as raindrops pooled and fell from his brow, that the problem was sourced, in fact, exclusively within himself.

Matty finished his cigarette, pressing the stump into the dirt underfoot, before retreating out from behind the building, pushing through the bushes, and out into the schoolyard, to stare, with lost vacant eyes, through his barren surroundings.

Yet even as the bell did finally sound for their lunch hour, Matty remained frozen. Like a statue, perfectly crafted from marble, like a long lost hero, or perhaps even a god. Someone with an epic saga crafted out in their name - someone who had perhaps once meant something. Someone who'd done more than pick a fight with a girl between the bushes behind the Geography classroom.

It took the movement of students, crowding and running around him with laughter and life, to break him from the spell, to leave him blinking, stumbling to keep his balance as the rain cleared up, leaving him to shiver out in the cold as his shirt clung to his chest, and his hair stuck to his cheek, hanging limp, as if holding no evidence of the bouncing curls that it had held before.

Reluctant footsteps brought him through the crowds: pushing through students, taking in the stares until he reached the bench at the other side of the yard. Finding hope, at least, in the two familiar faces waiting for him.

"Matty, mate... what the fuck...?" Eyes were blown wide, watching him intently as he sat down, shivering slightly as he pulled his knees up into his chest.

He didn't know quite what to say for himself, instead turned to his left and shot a pleading kind of hopeless look up to one of his two best friends.

Ross returned the look with a sympathetic smile, hiding his nerves the best he could as he pulled an arm around Matty's shoulders and pulled him closer.

"Have you just been stood out in the rain all of maths, or...?" From across the bench, eyes lingered on him tentatively: flickering between Ross and Matty, as he struggled to quite figure out what to make of the situation that had befallen them.

"Adam, mate... give him your coat-"

"Uhh..." Adam stalled, unsure as to whether Ross was really being sincere or not. "I..." He moved his hands up to his shoulders, as if to pull it from his shoulders, but stopped, eyes falling back upon Matty.

"He's freezing." Ross stared Adam down, as if he couldn't quite believe that he was being serious here. "Look at him, he's shivering."

It was true, as much as Matty sought to hide it. "I'm not." Even as much as he sought to deny it.

Neither of the boys gave his protests any attention, as Adam reluctantly pulled his coat from his shoulders and passed it across the table for Ross to drape over Matty's shoulders, watching as he reluctantly pushed his arms into the sleeves.

"I'm fine." Matty told them: insistently. With his eyes screwed shut and his cheek pressed into the bone of Ross' shoulder. Needless to say, he didn't exactly hold the most convincing of cases.

"Just hate maths that much?" Adam raised an eyebrow, hoping to bring some relief from humour, to make the situation just that little bit more light-hearted.

Matty gave a shrug, feeling his hair drip down onto Adam's coat. He tried not to feel bad about it.

"Yeah, just... just... maths." He went for in the end, continuing on like he could even dream of a world in which Adam and Ross might have been stupid enough to believe him.

The two boys, however, shared a look: tentative and fleeting, as if they dared not to continue, instead begging for the moment to remain frozen in time, for them to sit forever that lunchtime, with the world hesitant to warm up around them, with concern upon their faces. As Matty sat with his eyes screwed shut, as if he was truly scared of the sunlight; his hair continued to drip onto Adam's coat.

Ross relented in the end. He was very much one for doing things the right way, however that may turn out to be, however much Matty might hate him for it. But Matty liked him. He was tall and he didn't take shit from anyone.

Matty sometimes just plainly wanted to be him. Brave. Honest. Genuine. Living in a world where things had ended as they should, where had the courage to speak his mind. And what lay inside his chest, so fundamentally broken, refused to prey upon his mind. For even, in his deepest, darkest fantasies, he could never quite paint himself a world in which it had eluded him entirely.

"Charlotte's pissed..." Ross bit his lip, drawing his gaze up to the sky - slowly returning to its former, iridescent blue. "At you, I think. I don't know."

"No." Adam interjected, watching Matty carefully. "It's pretty obvious it's at him."

Ross shot him a glare, mouthing something that might have once vaguely resembled 'you're not helping'.

"Yeah..." Matty drew out a sigh. "It's at me."

"Oh, are you going to-"

Matty didn't let Ross finish. "No, no I'm not."

"But she's-"

"Fuck her." Matty concluded, eyes to the ground; voice feeble, weak, strewn from anything but malice. "She can talk to me if she really wants to - I don't care otherwise."

Of course, really, Matty did. Matty cared in more ways than he could ever care to admit. And they knew that. Adam and Ross. Of course they did.

They didn't stop looking at him like his heart was about to collapse all day. Like he was on the verge of a breakdown: forever moments away from dropping to his knees and screaming out her name on a curse. They looked at him like they knew him through and through. But really, they didn't.

Because really, Matty felt nothing at all.

-

Under the sheepish afternoon sun, Matty was met with an all too familiar smile: the smile of a stranger, yet one that had played out forever at the back of his mind.

His day had been dismal, to say the least. Yet in contrast to everything else, in contrast to the rain, to the argument, to the meaningless kisses, to the concerned looks, to the disappointed ones too, it was grounding. Seeing a smile like that.

Seeing his smile like that. Seeing the boy - well over six feet tall, with messy bleached hair, and a sort of all-knowing look set into his dark eyes. It was something. To say the least.

Matty stopped in his tracks, just a few metres before the bookstore, watching the boy. Watching him watch him back. Watching the smoke drift from his lips and out into the afternoon air. Watching him kick at the ground with the toe of his boots, scuffing up the pavement.

He didn't doubt that he might forever cease to pinpoint it, but this boy, whoever he was, whatever he was - he was really something.

Frozen as before, Matty was left to watch as he stomped his cigarette out onto the pavement with his foot, steadily approaching him with a forever unreadable look in those eyes.

"Got my weed?" He kept the tone light, speaking as if, somehow, that wasn't the most urgent matter he had to discuss. Whoever he was, Matty couldn't deny that he was a liar, and a good one at that.

Matty felt his cheeks flushing a gentle sunrise pink, as his hands stretched down into the pockets of his jeans, almost certain he'd managed to leave it elsewhere, and that this boy was going to slaughter him for it. However, by some miracle, his fingers clasped around the small plastic bag that had been forced onto him the day before.

"Yeah..." His voice was muffled, hesitant, not quite daring to make eye contact; stealing a quick look to the ground before he cleared his throat, and extended the weed out to him.

Almost tentatively, he reached out and took the bag from those small, unreasonably delicate fingertips. Still, despite the business that had been settled, his gaze prevailed: surveying Matty as if he, too, could feel that fundamental sense of upset - something so very amiss.

Matty dreamt that he was courageous type and that he would have met him with wide, daring eyes, and barked a demand with a snarl; he would have told him to 'fuck off', to leave him alone, to draw a line under their something, under their anything. But Matty wasn't.

Matty was shaking all over - from his fingers to his knees. And this time, in the midst of a relatively pleasant afternoon, it was clear it was not just from the cold.

The boy watched and watched him. The moments panned out for days as those dark eyes burrowed little holes to call home inside of Matty's chest.

Matty wanted him out; he wanted his own air to breathe, he wanted a room to himself, in disarray or not, he wanted safety, he wanted to own the right to his own discomfort. He wanted this boy, and his forever contemplative smile, gone.

His teeth were chattering too.

Yet the boy considered the weed for a moment more, before hastily stuffing it inside his jacket pocket.

When he looked back up Matty's eyes had grown wide with fear - an animalistic kind of frightened, as if he was in fact no more than a deer, frozen in the impeding beam of car headlights.

"Hey..." His voice was soft, struggling to hold Matty's gaze, retreating a little way, perhaps in the hopes it might ease up their situation somewhat.

Matty's eyes darted about the street, taking in the few pedestrians across the other side of the street, before finally settling upon that placid smile, and that undeserving warmth he held in his eyes, staring Matty down as if he commanded his heart, body, and soul.

"Look..." He drew out a sigh, desperate to pan out the silence, to put right whatever was so evidently wrong. Perhaps he should have just run - called this over and be done with it, but it was this time that he didn't.

"Hey, I can see, you smoked like half the weed. And maybe I should be pissed off at you for that, but..." He trailed off, shaking his head. "I'm really not. I mean... I mean... there's clearly something wrong, and if it helped then it helped and that's good. We all need it like that sometimes."

Matty shook his head, drawing his world inside his chest with one shaky breath. With a moment to himself, he found the courage to speak.

"It's not that- it's... I'm sorry. I'm fuck-... I... it's been a bad day." Matty concluded, staring down at his shoes, kicking at the pavement absent-mindedly.

"Yeah?" He wrapped his lips around a smile, daring to take that one step closer. "Me too."

Matty regarded him - elusive stoner boy, as if he'd never quite considered him capable of such emotion before. It was grounding. Like before. Like this was something. Something else entirely. Matty clung to that; he had to.

"Oh... I... I'm sorry." Matty managed an apology: undeserved but desperate.

"It's not your fault." He watched him for a minute more. "Hey... what's your name?"

Matty's eyes darted up, growing wide with the sudden realisation that despite this all, despite everything he might have felt, they were still just strangers.

"Matty." He mumbled, cheeks heating up under his gaze: warm like the sun that had eluded them for so longer.

"George." He offered, taking the liberty of another step closer: a steady, tentative approach. "Hey... Matty."

"Mmm...?" He swallowed hard, his name on George's lips destined to echo around his mind for time eternal.

"You're upset. I'm upset. Fuck the shop, come with me and let's finish the weed?" George spoke with the kind of unbreakable confidence that Matty couldn't deny intimidated him, but still, that warmth, that softness, was ever present in his eyes.

Perhaps, despite all he thought of himself, it was that look in George's eyes, and that look alone that had reduced Matty to whim. He knew in every cell of his body that this was a bad idea, that George was a stranger, that he had a job to go to, but still, with a soft smile, and a small nod, he agreed.

George was overly pleased; it was the kind of happiness that bordered upon smug, and all in all, Matty couldn't quite bring himself to trust it - to trust him. Still, despite sense itself, he followed this boy and his bag of weed down the main street, and through town.

Matty resigned himself to quiet, to wordlessness and let George fill in their gaps. He was good at it; Matty could tell. Overcompensating. He laughed the loudest and he smiled the widest, but his eyes never quite lit up to match.

The look he'd worn back at the shop, with Matty collapsing inside of himself had been something else entirely; the minutes it took Matty to realise that were pivotal, standing out, even then, as vital - not just part of living, but part of his life.

"Where are we going?" Matty only spoke up as they reached the outskirts of town, caught off guard by the definitive look in George's eyes; he seemed to sure enough know where he was going - this was more than just a desperate attempt to find somewhere to call home for a few hours. He was instead walking with intent, with knowledge, with something to call a destination.

Matty was jealous. Of the elusive boy. With the weed. With the warm eyes. Of George. But his jealousy didn't burn like flames. Instead, it trickled like a stream, like a forever moving current; perhaps one day it might sweep him off his feet and out to sea, but for the time being, for the slow afternoon, he was content to let the water run over his feet.

"You'll see." George hit him with a grin, ambiguous as ever. Matty was in two minds about pressing him further, but before he could quite make his mind up, the winding path to the woods crawled out over the horizon and fate laid itself out in open palms.

They shared a smile - the two of them.

Matty stopped and stared. With eyes wide open, with heart beating to a steady rhythm, he took in the world before him: a blossoming spring that had evaded them all this time. It seemed as if nature herself had held a grudge upon the town, upon the dreary people, upon their dreary lives, upon their sullen faces and disheveled houses, upon grey streets and greyer skies.

"Is this alright?" George came to a halt as Matty did, digging his feet into the winding dirt path as Matty eyes scanned the horizon. "I mean, we-"

"Yeah." Matty didn't let him finish, heart, not leaping in his chest, but perhaps just getting to its feet, standing in an unexplained ovation. This was something; this was a moment.

Matty looked at George. They were alive.

Despite the silence, George somehow seemed to read his mind, digging into his jacket pocket for the weed, stopping to hastily roll a joint. Matty watched him exhale, pushing away the whole world in a puff of smoke. He was captivating like that - a boy from a movie screen, almost. But not quite. Never quite. Matty could never sustain such an illusion for longer than a moment.

George continued down the path, leaving Matty to follow him, eyes wide, trusting - so young and so dumb, as he took the joint from George's fingers, ghosting against his own. Tingles ran through his fingers, down his arm, right into his chest, and down his spine.

Stupid as he was, Matty inhaled a simple kind of everything into his lungs, and concluded that it just must have been the drugs. A steady forever high, a calm forever life that he secretly dreamt to live.

In his own head, Matty was alive. Alive not in the physical sense, alive not with blood through his veins, but alive in words, in sagas, in epics, upon the page. Matty was alive, forever in other people's heads. He wanted to live on in infinity like that. To live a life worth something, to be free, to be alive, truly, by his own definition.

The first drag felt like that.

Matty wasn't stupid enough to deny the meaning behind that; the way it all entwined, the way it would surely bring him to an unforgiving end. As still, even now, the concerned words of his friends echoed throughout his head. And even as he met George's eyes, building himself a home inside that warmth, tugging and pulling at his insides, like he ought to be closer, like distance itself was foreign.

Even then, Matty stood with the build of high, strong inside his chest, and saw her laugh, saw her smile, saw hair drained on its sheen out in the rain, and heard those words, wondering if they might ever evade him - 'I hate it when you smoke'.

Matty stared down at the joint, and sought to take the whole world in with every breath - to find something beautiful to replace her, something else to drown out those words. Or to cover those eyes - forever condemned to blink back at him, like headlights in the dark: a winding midnight road - one he yearned to get lost on.

"So, dare I ask..." George's voice almost seemed ethereal, floating through the spring breeze as the two ventured down the path and into the trees. "What made your day so bad?"

Matty tilted his head up to the sky: resigning himself to watch as the trees around them grew tall, veering on foreboding as they cloaked the sky entirely with layers upon layers of branches and leaves. He stared up at the few slithers of light that made their way down to the ground regardless; he thought they were brave.

He felt George's eyes upon him: eager for a response, eager to solve the puzzle of the boy from the bookshop with the curls and the glasses. Matty just wasn't sure if he was ready to give himself up like that.

"Charlotte. Her name's Charlotte." He continued, regardless. For the look in George's eyes. For the slithers of light. For the vehement green of the forest floor.

George nodded, sucking his lip back inside of his mouth, as if he almost feared to quite commit himself to any form of response.

In his silence, Matty continued, letting George lead him deep into the woods - to get lost out there together. Despite all that common sense had ever once taught him; he couldn't help but fancy the notion.

"She's quite pretty. You know... quite. Quite pretty. She's nice enough. Quite nice. You know... quite...?"

George raised his eyebrows - as if, even at this point, he could see exactly where this story was going.

"And she's... she's... I don't know... she's pretty and sweet and she's my girlfriend, but... I don't know, maybe it's because we had an argument today, but, thing is, we have a lot of arguments, and... I don't know. Maybe that's a thing within itself..." Matty drew out a sigh.

Moments passed: silent, still. Matty glanced around at the surroundings, at the trees forever closing in upon the two of them. He exhaled. And inhaled. And again. And again.

"I don't love her, though." Inhale. Exhale. Again. And again.

To George, the solution appeared perfectly simple, and he chose to suggest it as such. "Break up with her."

Matty shook his head, as if the idea was just entirely foreign. "It doesn't quite work like that. I think... maybe... I mean, I'm sixteen, can we really fall in love at sixteen? Properly, I mean...? Right now, maybe it's never going to be love."

George's eyes widened. "Fuck, are you only sixteen?"

Matty swallowed, stopping in his tracks, cheeks flourishing with heat. "Yeah." He saw no way around it, despite the surprise evident in George's eyes. "W-Why? How old are you?"

"Eighteen." George drew in a sigh, as if seeking to take the whole world in through his lungs. In taking the joint back from Matty, his hand curled up around it and his whole body seemed to freeze over.

"Stop looking at me like I'm half your age - you're two years older. " Matty scoffed, desperate to fight the reddening of his cheeks, longing to appear those two years older George had assumed him to be.

George fixed his eyes upon him, watching the way the slithers of sunlight caught his face - from the tip of his nose, to the glimmer of his eyes.

"You're..." George trailed off, not quite sure of what to say for himself at all. He stared down at the joint instead, before finally taking it to his lips, after several distant, lonely moments. "Should I even be... giving you weed at sixteen?"

"Yeah, because it's not like I've never smoked before." Matty rolled his eyes, staring George down for a good moment. "I'm sixteen - not six. I am the same person I was as when you thought I was your age, you know? In fact, that was in the past, so technically, I was younger."

George shook his head - not quite sure what to think. "When I was sixteen, last thing I fucking needed was getting involved with someone like me."

Matty couldn't help but laugh. With that elusive courage he so desired, he stood up as tall as he could manage, and stared George down, laughter escaping his chest.

"What?" George barked, eyes growing dark - almost offended; still, Matty couldn't quite take him seriously.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Matty, to contradict their situation, was in fact, all smiles, all wide manic laughter, as he lead the way through the trees - as if on a mission to get them lost like they had never been before.

"I'm a bad influence-"

"Us getting involved?" Matty snatched the joint back from George - saving him the effort of protest, at the very least. "You invite me off to have a smoke and suddenly we're getting involved?"

"Oh fuck off." George rolled his eyes, desperate to tear the smile away from his lips. "I'm just saying... maybe you shouldn't... get involved with me... maybe-"

"You're the fucking one who invited me out for a smoke- fucking hell. You know what? I should be in the shop right now, I should be working. I have a shift." Matty raised his hands up into the air in exasperation, staring George down like he was both the best and worst thing that he'd seen that year.

"Then go back to your shift. Give me back the joint and go back to the bookshop." George waited for a moment, tearing great holes into Matty's resolve - just with his eyes. It almost scared Matty; the dark, heavy weight of them. Almost.

"No." Matty laughed it off, like George was nothing, like he knew him inside and out. He didn't know him at all.

"Exactly." George drew out a sigh. "That's that. We're involved enough for you to ignore your responsibilities for me. And I'm saying, look... you don't know me, and you-"

"Oh fuck off. You're literally a walking cliche. Like what? What's so terrible about you?" Matty stopped for a moment, staring George down with the nerve to demand an answer. "Who are you? The textbook villain? The backstabbing snake? The trusted friend with the dark shrouded path? The hero with a grave secret? Come on, I'm curious."

George shook his head, quickening his pace, lengthening his strides and powering past Matty down the path. Stunned, Matty remained, feet bolted to the ground for a good ten seconds, before breaking into a run to catch up to him.

"Who are you then, George?" Matty positioned himself in front of George, pushing his hands into his chest to grind him to a halt. Needless to say, the gesture shocked him somewhat.

"Matty... I..." He stumbled, pushing at Matty's shoulders, before staring down at him - this beautiful, beautiful boy. It hit him then. Even in the sunlight.

"Who are you then?" Matty continued, beyond resilient, beyond brave, beyond courageous. Perhaps not the same boy he'd woken that morning. George's eyes and the fire behind them; they'd burned a hole, they'd set something free. Something hidden away deep inside of his chest. "Why did you have a shit day - tell me that at least."

George looked like he might have genuinely considered punching him, before his eyes grew soft, and he rolled his lips over into a smile, and lead Matty off further into the trees, giving him little more than a smile to go off on until they reached a river.

The river was shallow, barely more than a little stream, but fast moving as it snaked through the trees, as the ground dipped and valleyed slightly, leaving space for a rather rickety bridge to be strewn between the two hills that had sprung up either side.

"Come on." George turned to Matty, watching as he set his gaze upon the bridge - distrusting it entirely.

"What?" Matty's eyes grew impossibly wide. "Onto there?"

"Yeah." George couldn't subdue his smirk. "Come on - it's fine, I promise."

"You took me out here to kill me didn't you? And that's why you're so fussed that I'm sixteen because murdering a minor is morally worse. Isn't it? I've cracked it - haven't I?" Matty stared George down - part of him not even kidding.

George rolled his eyes, offering Matty no more in the form of explanation before heading up the steep bank of the hill, stumbling to his feet once he made it up on flat ground. Then, from the top of the hill, leant against the post of the bridge, he stared down at Matty, almost as if he was challenging him.

Matty glanced from the bridge, to George, to the hill, to the bridge, to George again. He drew in a deep breath; told himself he was an idiot, but proceeded regardless. This was his kind of brave, this was his kind of something. He knew then, that whoever he was, whatever he thought was so horrific about himself, George was the kind of person stories were told about.

Matty couldn't resist him. Or at least that look in his eyes. It seemed to scream 'adventure' over and over again, until the end of time. He didn't trust that the bridge was safe. He didn't trust that George might catch him. But he knew that he was bored, down there in the valley; tired of gazing at people up top.

He struggled to make it up the hill with legs perhaps half the size of George's, but with George's broad fingers curling around his arm, and pulling him upwards, he managed it in the end. If not, stumbling into George's arms somewhat as he finally reached the top.

And as they stood there, very much together, very much involved. Matty's heartbeat picked up with the wind: fluttering to a half-beat, as the wind rushed in his ears. Yet, it was just the weed. It was just the high. It wasn't the two of them. It wasn't George. It couldn't be. Matty was, after all, yet to know him at all.

"Are you sure that's safe...?" Matty gestured out towards the bridge. From the hill, he could clearly see a part of the bridge that had actually collapsed in upon itself, which really wasn't the most inviting of things, to say the least.

George laughed with the kind of genuine amusement that a hot blush seering in Matty's cheeks. "Look down." He told him.

Despite all common sense, Matty did.

"Look at the river, I mean - come on, not even a two year old could drown in that, look you're going to be fine-"

"I mean the height, George!" Matty interjected, voice cracking a little with exasperation - it was as amusing as it was embarrassing.

"Look, if you fall, you'll fall into water so you won't break your back, and..." George trailed off, voice softening a little. "You won't. Trust me - I'll catch you."

Matty's eyes grew wide, staring up at George with wide fluttering blinks, as if he couldn't quite believe the moment itself.

Yet like every single moment, it passed. And Matty's eyes grew wild: incredulous, staring up at George like he was impossible, like he was the world's every anomaly stood before him in human form.

"Trust you?" His voice was loud - louder than he'd intended, still quite yet to fully take the reality of the situation in. "You've spent the last twenty minutes convincing me not to."

George cracked a smile, glancing back to the bridge. "Yeah. Oh come on, you know what I mean."

And with that, he made his way out onto the bridge, sitting himself down, perfectly calmly, about half way in, with his legs slotting through the railings and dangling off into the air.

Matty absolutely did not know what George could possibly mean. Nor did he exactly trust him. But still, light truly burned in his eyes, and the warmth of fire could only ever draw him closer.

"See!" George exclaimed, far too smug for Matty's liking. "You're fine." He grinned across at the beautiful, curly haired boy who'd sat down beside him.

Matty's stomach was leaping in his chest: performing a routine of only somersaults. He looked down and made quick work of convincing himself that it was indeed just the height. Just the stupid idea itself and not the boy who'd suggested it.

"Yeah..." Matty's voice was frail, feeble at best, with eyes determined to tear him apart: forever fixated upon the ground. "I'm fine." He continued: clinging to the hope that if he said it enough, he just might begin to believe it.

George watched him for a moment: soft curls billowing in the breeze, eyes boring down into the water below, leaving just a trace of blue to flash through darkened irises, just for a second.

He was all drawn in. Matty had gathered up everything he had and stuffed it inside of his chest. A defence mechanism. A safety precaution. He didn't trust George to be there. To catch him. That hurt, like fingerprint shaped bruises - it stung.

"So... my bad day..." George dragged weary feet down the path of revelation, as if their afternoon might be about building bridges and not just breaking them.

"Yeah..." Matty looked up, tearing his eyes away from the water below for the very first time. In its place, he held George's eyes, and instead his gaze traced the ripples of a smile.

"My friend's pissed with me. No, I think, maybe all of them are. Just to different levels." George drew out a sigh, kicking his feet out into thin air. Matty watched him: concerned, but unashamed.

"Why?" Matty couldn't help but inquire; he was, however unsure as to just when he had really begun to care.

George shook his head: despondent, desperate to shy away from the truth. "Doesn't matter-"

"I told you my problems. Tell me yours." Matty continued, somehow convinced that George owed him that right. That George, this tall, mad, unpredictable boy, with the weed and the leather jackets, owed him anything at all.

Up in Matty's head, he did. Up in Matty's head, he cared. Yet up in Matty's head, still, he lied. For perfection was the kind of illusion so grand that even Matty's imagination couldn't sustain.

"You told me about your girlfriend who you hate." George muttered, like it was nothing at all. Matty wished it wasn't. Matty wished George would lie to him properly. "That's nothing. That's... you're..." He took Matty in once more. "You're sixteen and you're worried about your girlfriend and-"

"And you're eighteen and you think you're worlds away from me because your friends hate you." Matty interjected, not taking kindly to George's tone, or to patronisation in general.

"They don't hate me." George argued, face turned away. "They're just... pissed. And it's... it's the situation, you see. It's not the kind of thing I can just easily solve. Like your shit is."

"It's not." Matty shook his head, agitation searing through his veins. Still, he didn't look at George with anything lesser.

"Break up with her. If you hate her. Break up with her. That's not happiness, that's not good for you. That's bullshit." George drew it out like common sense, and perhaps, even if just beyond Matty's understanding, it was. "If you don't like her at all. It's bad for the both of you. And trying to force anything out of that - that's even worse."

Matty shook his head. "I think I could love her... deep down."

"Could isn't the same as can." George bit down onto his bottom lip. "Listen, I've known girls like that. Where we could fall in love, but we just can't. Whatever reason - things aren't going to work like that."

"And what ended up happening?" Matty pushed aside any kind of courtesy for the sake his own curiosity.

George gave a shrug. "We use each other. It's unhealthy. We fuck but we fight and that's it. And we could have been friends properly, if it wasn't for that. And it hurts, because there's always that part of you that thinks you could love her - the part that's fucked, the part that thinks of drugs and the way she kisses drunk, and the way she looks when you fuck. Like she's at bliss. Like this is everything. And then you really think that you could be in your love. But you're not. Because give it a day or two, fuck, maybe even give it an hour, and she'll be snogging all your mates. And you'll be stood there - bitter and sober. And it hurts."

Words evaded Matty: George's ran through his head instead. It seemed odd - the notion of imagining Charlotte like that. It didn't quite fit.

And Matty wondered if he just couldn't love her at all. Maybe he just wished he might.

"You've got shit mates if they'd kiss your girlfriend." With his comfort zone desperately receding, Matty found the only words he could; he couldn't imagine neither Adam nor Ross ever kissing Charlotte, no matter how drunk they got, no matter how fucked things got.

George gave a snort. "She's not my girlfriend. And they're not good mates. Some of them, maybe. It's complicated. You wouldn't understand."

Matty wasn't at all inclined to believe him. "Try me."

George shook his head. "I don't myself."

He felt Matty move closer to him. The trees began to sway apart, leaving sunlight to pool down upon them from heavens above. He looked beautiful like that. In the golden sun: face catching the light. He looked angelic even, ethereal. The kind of boy George ought to have run from. Yet here they were, despite every odd upon heaven and earth.

"It's the weed." George gave in, after all. "There was a thing last night. And they were pissed I didn't have the drugs, and I was a dick to someone else, and..." He retrieved the bag of weed from his pocket. "It was shit. You ever been the only sober person in a crowd of people off their fucking heads?"

Matty couldn't say he had, and George could see through any sort of pretense.

"Okay, maybe one day you'll know what I mean, but..." He drew out a sigh. "It's not your fault, I know you had the drugs but-"

"You made me take them." Matty snapped, eyes bearing weight against George's spine. "Like fuck is it my fault that your mates are pissed with you."

George couldn't help but grin: admiring the spark in Matty's eyes. "Course it's not. I got myself into this shit. Look... that's what I'm saying. I don't want to get you into it too."

"Too late, isn't it?" Matty snatched the weed from George's fingers. "I've already smoked the half of it, haven't I?"

George shrugged. "I'm not going to tell them that yeah, this poor, skinny, little sixteen year old from the bookshop took their drugs."

Matty watched him for a moment: forever unable to figure this George out.

"I'm taking the blame. It's my fault. I let you. I invited you out here to smoke it." George reached into his pocket for papers, steadily rolling them a second joint.

"So it's not... your weed?" Matty eyed him almost dubiously.

George gave a shrug. "It's complicated."

"Oh fuck off." His words were bitter, as if spiked with every retort he'd ever kept inside. "How complicated can it be? So? It's your mate's? Or something? You stole it... or?"

"It's technically Jesse's. It's mine in the sense that I've got the right to smoke it and carry it around. It's just not really mine to give to you. I'm not supposed to do that." Yet, George watched, calm and placid, as Matty lit up the joint.

He snorted, inhaling with desperation. A kind of sense of inhibition. Lost out in the moment. Limbo. Ready to fall from the bridge and drown if fate so bade it.

"But I am." George finished, taking the joint from Matty's, stupidly dainty, fingertips. "I don't really know why." He confessed, letting the smoke fill his lungs, drowning out last drop of common sense he had left.

"It's okay. He's not going to be pissed at me forever. Someone's going to talk him round. Chelsea will do it in the end, when she starts to feel sorry for me, and wakes up on a day when she decides she loves me for all of ten minutes."

Matty watched George. Words soft. Tentative. Spoken like whispers to the breeze. Forgotten to the world. Raindrops. The pitter-patter. Rolling down window panes. One raindrop in a thunderstorm. Forgotten, but not to Matty. He watched George like it was all he could do.

"I don't love her though." George continued, self-deprecating smile clinging to his lips. "Used to. I guess I could again. But I'm not going to. I won't. She's pretty but she's not beautiful."

"Chelsea..." Matty drew out a sigh, physically feeling the weight of George's words unravelling in his chest.

"Yeah. She knows. That I don't love her. And that I know she doesn't love me. I don't know. Sometimes maybe we just get high and like to pretend. Sometimes you just need to have sex, I mean. I don't know. I don't know. I don't understand her. At all."

There was no doubt that it was something: admitting that. As after all, he'd been right - it was complicated.

"I'm never going to love Charlotte." Matty drew out a sigh. "Never even really like her."

"Break up with her." George told him, hopeful for once that it might sink in.

"I would." He shook his head. "But I can't."

"Why not?" George took a drag, drawing out their situation into simple lines and shapes, pulling them into a world they could understand. He'd assumed Matty was all big words and complicated states, but still, it was evident they were both very much out of place.

"Because..." He snatched the joint back, exhaling deeply, as if it might solve his every problem. "They'll call me queer again. The boys at school. And I'm scared."

George's fingers fumbled around the joint, his whole body shuddering as he took it back. Yet with a steady exhale, his eyes fixed upon Matty, and his response was calm, maybe even feigning composed. "It's just a word. Why should you be scared of a word?"

"I'm not scared of the word. Just what it means." Matty explained, drawing his gaze back down to the river, momentarily even hoping to drown.

"Why?" George grew tired; he'd seen the very same boy a hundred times before. It was obvious now - sickeningly so. He wanted to get off this bridge, out of the forest, he wanted to go home.

"Because I'm not." Matty was dumbfounded, uncomfortable; he'd never really imagined that George might have demanded an explanation.

"You're not a woman. Are you scared of all women?" George shook his head. "Doesn't make sense, Matty."

"It does, I just-..." He drew out a sigh. "You've got me wrong. I just don't want people to think I am. Yeah, that. That's what I'm scared of, you see. Not the word, just... connotations. What it means. What people think-"

"Then go get yourself another fucking girlfriend then." George snapped, words abrasive, cutting deep into Matty's skin with each reverberation as they echoed through the trees.

Matty swallowed. Hard. Eyes wide. Pleading. He didn't know George - at all.

"Go up to any fucking girl you see. Half-way pretty. Doesn't fucking matter, does it? Tell Charlotte you think she's a bitch, tell her you think she's ugly, you think she's a slag - whatever. Have the heart to be fucking honest. Then walk right up to the next girl you see and give her a quick snog - make sure everyone sees you as you drag her behind the bushes to get your hands down her pants. There you fucking go. Simple. I told you. You're sixteen. You're stupid. Problem solved."

Matty blinked up at George: dumbfounded.

"I..."

George didn't let him finish, instead stumbled to his feet, throwing the joint and the remaining weed over the railings and into the river. "Whatever."

Matty watched them fall. Watched them fizzle. And watched them sink.

Once the water stilled, and the ripples faded, George was gone.

The forest was silent. As if there'd been no evidence of his presence at all. Yet, despite the confusion that surrounded him, the truth was simple; Matty had fucked up. He always did.

-

hey guys

hope u liked this chapter

hope ur enjoying this gay mess

happy holidays and all that

hope ur doing good

votes and comments would be v lovely

love you !