In George's head, it was already summer. For spring flowers, having lain dainty and beautiful in contrasting shades of pure white and obscene pink, had bloomed into rich, ripe fruit: sickly sweet against his lips.

The sun's beatings were relentless, and rather unheard of for the time of year, yet still, as they lay together, through early mornings and endless nights, Matty would always comment upon the way George's chest was beginning to tan. They were soft words, uttered secretively against bare skin, bronze only under the sun's light, uttered by lips, stretched out in shades of pink and red, like the most lascivious of summer fruits.

Yet in Matty's head, summer had long passed them by. By his reckoning alone, the summer sun had torn the floorboards from beneath their feet within minutes, and all that lay before them was an inevitable descent into the leering haze of autumn.

Still, warmth grasped the air. Warmth grasped Matty firmly by the hand and refused to let go. He looked at George, when the cold came in - an unforgiving breeze - and wondered when it was that they would talk about things.

It had been three days. And yet, spring, summer, and autumn had long passed them by. Yet, George still stared at him with that starstruck look in his eyes, like this was a long summer night, laid out under the stars. Matty yearned for such an imagination, such an illusion, such a high - to stare up at a cracked, yellowing ceiling, and see the stars, see constellations in more than spiders' webs and patterns of dust.

The house had grown on him. Just not in the way he would have liked. Matty ought to have expected nothing less; everything under the roof had been forever reversed, as if upon the doorway, he crossed the threshold into another world. Into another land, in which it was not 1985, but perhaps some time beyond that, some time beyond them entirely.

Matty wondered how long it might be - until the world stopped caring who it was you lay with at night.

He turned on his head, wound up in the sheets, thoughts thrown out in an irretrievable mess: to mingle and merge with the particles of dust in the stale air. But Matty thought fuck his thoughts - he didn't want them back; he didn't dare to go collect them. The house didn't seem quite so friendly anymore - that was thing; he thought maybe now, it had always been George.

Long shadows cut across the room, tearing dark lines across their faces: leaving George's eyes obscured as he pressed his head down into the pillows, safely in shadow. Still, he was at peace - in this house, in this world, in their god awful situation. Matty was still yet to figure him out.

The dim, amber glow of the rugged, halfway antique lamp on the bedside table, cast what seemed to pose as golden ripples across George's chest; Matty traced them, with fingertips so soft, and so pale that they seemed entirely ethereal. He didn't belong in this house at all.

He sat up. Curls fanned out in a languid cascade down into their usual position - plenty rebelled, sticking up with the kind of defiance and wickedly whimsical nonsense that caught Matty alight. He reached upwards, stopping just for a moment before tentatively patting them down, for the feeling of treachery in doing so rang shrill through his bones.

That same wickedly whimsical nonsense: Matty reeked of it.

This house seemed to be entirely constructed from it. For truly, none of its inhabitants could hardly dream a world in which they might live a long and happy life within its walls. The truth, however, had become increasingly apparent - that was not the matter of concern.

The yellowing walls commanded not whole lifespans, not great overbearing futures, but instead single moments, snapshots of lives. And the people who slept within them, revelled in that: alive only in glimpses, only in moments, regarding the future as entirely irrelevant.

It was truly an odd concept for Matty to grasp. It kept him upright, eyes blown wide, bouncing off the shadows cast upon the walls.

Although, he never made it at all apparent that he sat waiting for something, for anything at all, fate was ultimately disinterested, and in turn, limbo came crashing down like a great beast upon the two. It was then, amidst the darkness, that Matty caught George's eyes, and their precious silence fell into fate's hands.

"I kissed you."

Upon the wings of Matty's words - diaphanous and skeletal in nature - the two boys found themselves transported back to that kitchen. To the music throbbing through their veins with sufficient vigour to overthrow their pulses and capsize their heartbeats.

"You did." George's chest rose and fell with the calm, yet unpredictable pace of the tides; night-light ripple waves cast worthy shadows across his chest.

"And that time it wasn't wrong?" Matty was still not entirely sure, if his words posed a question or not. "There was no 'you shouldn't have kissed me'." He was entirely astute in his observation.

"Can I really tell you what you should and shouldn't do?" George propped himself up onto his elbows, positioning his shoulders back against the headboard so his face was no longer obscured in shadow.

"You shouldn't have kissed me because I had a girlfriend, and all that bullshit, and so we had to ignore it completely and let it linger like this great formidable beast that it never had the right to be, but when I kissed you, and I've still got the fucking girlfriend - by the way - that's all entirely fine. And you can drag me off home and try to talk me into having sex with you?"

George couldn't help but chuckle at such an accusation. He sat up further, holding Matty's gaze, deemed forever beautiful under the warm light.

"It was your decision this time. Is it my right to make your decisions for you?" He raised an eyebrow. "No, course it isn't."

Matty rolled his eyes. "What like... ushering me into getting you off isn't?"

George shook his head. "You don't have to. You're not. If you had to, we would have already, but no- despite popular belief, I am actually a decent human being." Matty couldn't help but snort at that.

"I've still got a girlfriend, though." Matty bit back a sigh, stealing a glance at George - beautiful in bed beside him. "This is wrong."

George sat up properly, creating a dip in the bed in which Matty couldn't help but fall into - at least, he'd blamed it on the dip, anyway. He brushed down the last of Matty's uneven curls, and kissed him - gently, just for a moment. Still, it lingered with the kind of feeling that Matty was unable to comprehend - this, between George and him, it was truly something else.

"I thought you were straight back then, anyway." He struggled to bite back another smile, bringing a broad, almost somewhat tarnished, finger up to brush against Matty's cheek.

The word 'straight' lingered like a sour taste upon Matty's tongue; he dared not to repeat it, to let it command the room once more. Yet, however, George had not needed a single word from him to distinguish quite how he could feel.

"Or whatever. Anyway." George's tone grew bitter, finger yanked away from Matty's face. There was a distinct ache to Matty's chest; the overbearing feeling that he'd fucked this all up.

"So what is this? What do we do, because we- I can't stay in this house forever - as much as you'd like me to, I-... I have a life outside of it-"

"And what?" George's laugh was wild, like one you might have expected from a rabid dog. "I don't?" Matty's cheeks flushed red, still, George didn't seem all that offended.

"That's not what I meant." Matty's words grew stern: heavy in his chest.

"I know." George ushered his concern away with a sigh, falling back down against the mattress and closing his eyes - it seemed much more like a promise as opposed to any sort of conviction.

Matty remained silent, bolt upright, concern wavering out into the night time air.

"Pick." A great boom in the place of George's voice came to command the silence in the end. "It's simple."

For Matty, it was anything but so.

George's clarification appeared almost painstaking upon his part. "Me or her." It was then that Matty could understand why.

"That's what you've got to do - pick. She's your girlfriend, or I'm your- we have this thing... and we see what goes from there." George buried his head against the pillow. "Not both. I'm not having that, alright?"

Matty's face grew pale, grave. "Alright." He trembled, hesitant yet to fall back to sleep.

"Not until the morning, though." George muttered, perhaps as an afterthought. He reached a hand out in Matty's vaguely direction. "Come here, come back. Let me kiss you again."

Despite George's saccharine tongue, despite everything repulsive the world had put into this boy, his words lapped around him like waves, and he, with time, lay upon the shore.

George kissed him, as promised, curled up together, away from the light. Matty let him - with all he had left.

"You're beautiful. I don't get to kiss beautiful boys. I'm savouring the moment, making the most of the opportunity. Not that you're an opportunity - you're so much more than that." George whispered his words like excuses against Matty's neck.

Matty let out a whine in disagreement: struggling to see things to be quite so. He felt George regard him, as if there might have been something wrong up in his head. Truthfully, Matty didn't doubt such a possibility at all.

"I kissed one." George confessed, into adam's apple, breath warm as it tickled Matty's throat. "Before. Once."

This was impossibly wrong; Matty reminded himself. He tried to think about Charlotte, but despite his every effort, he struggled to properly picture her face.

"His name was Henry." George uttered it as if it were foreign: unfamiliar upon his tongue.

Matty lay awake, amidst the midnight shadows, and allowed himself to wonder what this beautiful boy named Henry had done.

"Only he could kiss me. He never liked it when I kissed him." George's voice grew quiet, words trembling as if they might fall from some unspecified great height. "Like I was the toy that had suddenly come to life. No one wants their punching bag to punch back." He snorted, leaving Matty unsure as to what portion of his words rang at all true.

"You're not." Matty insisted, voice small, soft, but inexplicably adamant. "You're not that. Whatever he thought you were."

George managed a smile, seemingly disinterested in Matty's response. "That's the thing with beautiful boys. You look at them like they have the world, and god they do. You curse yourself knowing they'll never stare back, but perhaps that's the worst possibility of all. What do you give someone who has it all? What do you tell someone who's heard it all before? Nothing."

Matty wasn't quite sure he knew how to answer that.

"But I'm not nothing. I don't want to be your fucking nothing. And sometimes, I don't trust that you're much different." There was a malice to George's words that neither boy had expected.

When he was young, Matty's mother had told him, as most mothers do, if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all - and hence came the silence. A night, finally more than just a moment, a room more than just light, and shadow, and desperate shapes.

Yet just as eyelids grew heavy, as the darkness began to cave in, sleep offering up its unruly, cloaked fingertips, George parted his lips.

Soft and slow, somewhat of a confession escaped him.

"In the morning... please prove me wrong."

-

Night became morning, and morning became afternoon. An afternoon in which Matty sat alone, behind familiar walls - the presentable, homely, type - and didn't cry. Not at all. Not one bit.

There were a million things that Matthew Healy absolutely shouldn't have done, yet this really did reign supreme. The whole endeavour: in all of its corrupt glory. From the innocent decision to spend the night with George, to the drink, to the kiss, to George's lips burning holes into his mind, holes that could never be covered.

Above that all, he should never have left with the decision he'd made; he should never have faced the world head on, he should have never let himself cry - let those wretched tears curse his cheeks. Then beyond that, he should have never let Adam and Ross in. Not just emotionally, but Matty stood in his kitchen, knuckles turning white as he braced himself against the countertop, as he regretted ever opening his front door for the two boys.

He looked at them, sometimes, although now more than ever, and found himself overwhelmed by the definitive feeling that he'd lost something, or at least that there'd been something lost between the two of them, for Matty looked at his best friends, and saw little more than strangers with familiar eyes.

Too long was spent - thrown away, desperate to figure out exactly whether it had been him or it had been them that had changed.

"Why weren't you at school today?" Ross asked, pacing back and forth through the kitchen like he owned it, like Matty's entire property, like Matty's entire head, was something he had undeniable right to.

Matty scoffed in response, head ducked down, eyes boring into the sink, catching his rather depressingly ashen reflection upon one of the taps.

"We were a bit worried." Adam added, with noticeably less urgency; it wasn't that Adam cared less, it was just that he cared significantly less vehemently.

"I mean, you're just growing more and more distant, and I-" Matty didn't even let Ross finish that time; he'd heard it all a thousand times before, throughout his head and his dreams.

"And..." Adam chose that moment to assert himself; he did however, offer up the only bit of truth that Matty could regard as at all interesting. "Charlotte's like... really pissed at you..."

"You weren't off because of her?" Ross' eyes began to burn, as if he regarded the notion with the weight of cardinal sin. "Were you?" He demanded, voice growing all the more urgent by the second.

Matty could tell he was entirely dissatisfied with the general state of disinterest he was faced with; yet, that only compelled him to keep up the facade. His head worked in funny ways sometimes, more so lately; the notion amused him, at least until he could make sense of it. The truth was, it was a George thing to do; fucking George Daniel was rubbing off on him and not in the way George had been quite so keen on.

The world burned white. Matty wanted out, or a drink, or a smoke, or a kitchen filled with less judgemental gazes. For Ross looked prepared to cut a hole in Matty's chest in order to fit his own version of his heart inside. Matty wondered if that might have fixed his problems, and if he knew so, whether he would let him.

"You were." Ross drew out a sigh, pushing Adam aside and pressing his head against the fridge.

Matty gave a shrug, daring to meet Adam's gaze just for the briefest of moments.

"It's over, by the way." Adam added, the perfect picture of nonchalance. "Charlotte said so. I wasn't sure if you knew..." He trailed off, looking back and forth between Ross and Matty hesitantly. "I mean, you seem pretty... content with it."

Still, Matty shrugged, flattening down stray curls as he wondered how he might care to explain his current situation at all.

"She kissed some other guy last night." Adam continued, in the others' silence. "Thought maybe you might want to know..." He trailed off: unable to do much but view the situation that surrounded him as completely unreadable.

Matty bit back a 'so did I' and shrugged.

"Do you really not care?" Ross stared Matty down in little more than pure astonishment. "Like not even a little bit?"

"I never liked her." Matty had no qualms with making that clear.

"Okay..." Ross trailed off, having significantly fewer issues with that as opposed to everything else. "Then why were you with her?"

"You're not the first person who's asked me that, you know?" Matty couldn't help himself: cheeks flushing as he gave himself that moment, that moment alone to think of George, to think of that smile, to think of those eyes, to think of his every word and what it could mean.

"Who was it?" Adam snorted, amused by the prospect of Matty discussing his relationships with someone other than Ross - simply for the impact it made, clear, and burning red upon Ross' face.

"Tell them they had the right idea." Ross snapped: voice erratic and gravelly, deeper than usual. "There's someone sensible in your life at least."

Matty gave a great bark of a laugh. It was again, awfully reminiscent of a certain boy who he'd left sleeping that morning. The boy he'd left without a response, the boy with the question that still rang out clear through his veins.

"Maybe not?" Adam commented, arching his eyebrows as he looked once more between Matty and Ross.

"You want to know who told me that first?" The question was pointless; Matty already well knew that Ross did. Still, he teased him, holding the information just a little way out of reach, just perhaps, to fuck with his head.

"Yeah." Ross looked awfully close to spitting out demands at him. Matty reckoned, that it would have at least, held some sort of substance to it.

"George Daniel." Matty twisted his name through his lips like a song: fully aware of the effect it would have on the two boys. He was just playing with them now, but guilt was yet to make itself apparent.

"Fucking hell." Ross cut to the chase, crossing the kitchen to stare Matty down with disbelief. "What the absolute fuck has he got do with your relationships? And how the fuck would you talk to him about what's going on between you and Charlotte before you'd dare to mention it to us?"

Matty could think of several hundred reasons, yet not a single one that was at all appropriate to utter aloud.

And silence didn't serve him nearly as well as he'd hoped.

"Come on, Matty is this it?" Adam even began to properly side with Ross at that point; that was perhaps when Matty knew he'd gone too far - still, he could never be sure.

"Yeah." Matty threw his eyes down to floor.

"Fucking hell." Ross found such an exclamation rather comforting amidst everything else.

"I was with George this weekend." Matty wasn't entirely sure why he'd felt at all inclined to tell the truth; it was something along the lines of feeling sorry for Ross.

"All weekend?" Adam's eyes grew wide. "Like you-"

"You spent forty eight hours with George Daniel...? Voluntarily...?" Ross struggled to believe it, staring Matty down, unsure as to what had replaced his best friend, and just who stood before him.

"He's nice." Matty perhaps wouldn't have specifically picked 'nice' as a word to describe George Daniel, but it served its purpose. "If you get to know him."

"Why would you want to?" Adam watched Matty carefully, not with the same adamant disgust as Ross did, but with much more of a hint of genuine curiosity.

"Because maybe he doesn't make the biggest shitshow out of every tiny little thing. And maybe he's got the guts to tell things to me as they are, not wading around with all this 'you're worrying us' bullshit." Matty knew, before he'd even opened his mouth, that he shouldn't have said it.

Both boys remained entirely silent: forever yet to figure out what remained of Matty Healy.

"He's not what you think he is." Matty continued, voice growing softer. "So you can stop making fucking stupid prejudiced judgements about people. Because Charlotte's going to spread a lot of nasty bullshit about me now - are you going to believe that as well?"

The boys made quite a show out of shaking their heads.

Matty drew in a sigh and desperately tried to imagine a world in which he hadn't also managed to sincerely fuck things up with George - he couldn't quite manage it.

"What happened with you and Charlotte?" Ross' eyes softened, yet his words did not: remaining rampant and fierce in manners Matty didn't care to explore.

"She decided that she loved me. She didn't. I decided that I didn't want to put up with that anymore. Be some pretty boy she could string on her arm at parties. I decided I wanted to think for myself, so I went to a party with George instead, and we got drunk, and we had a great time."

Adam couldn't help but snort at Matty's use of the term 'pretty boy'. Ross raised his eyebrows: unsure what to make of it.

"Pretty boy sounds..." He trailed off: uncertain, nervous - Matty could see it.

"A lot like something George Daniel would say." Adam finished, snorting; Matty grimaced a little, dreading where this could be going. "You know rumour is he's queer?"

"Yeah." Ross added, clinging to Adam's point rather desperately. "He fucking tell you that when you were unravelling your entire life story for him?"

Matty drew his lips out into a smile: forced, and thin, and generally so very unpleasant.

"Yes." He clarified, eyes boring holes into Ross' resolve. "He did."

Neither Ross nor Adam really knew what to say to that, or to the entirely unfazed look in Matty's eyes.

"He's bisexual, actually." Matty thought it best to correct them, perhaps just to break the silence.

"Bisexual?" Ross raised an eyebrow, glancing at Adam, and then back at Matty. Adam only shrugged.

"You sure he's not hitting on you?" Adam raised the point, leaving Matty to consider how he might answer that without downright lying.

Because the truth was that Matty was sure - very sure, in fact, that George Daniel was absolutely hitting on him. He just wasn't sure whether he was hitting on him back, and quite whether he had the guts to do so at all. He didn't even have the guts to give him an answer; Matty reckoned that said an awful lot about him.

Matty gave a very Adam like shrug, eyes cutting holes into Ross' chest.

"What are you gay or something?" Ross snapped, posing it less like a question and more like an insult; Matty shivered a little, feeling more like George than ever.

Matty shook his head 'no', too uncertain of himself to bring the matter to words.

"Or bisexual?" Adam offered, considering Matty with the same kind of curiosity as before - there seemed to be significantly less insistence to his words; Ross, however seemed rather adamant to make his own mind up about Matty's sexuality.

Matty shook his head once more, because truthfully, he wasn't bisexual, he wasn't gay, but just as much as he wasn't straight. For Matty simply didn't have a clue anymore; his head was fixed on George's eyes in the moonlight, golden ripples of waves across his bare chest, his voice low and muffled in the morning, on the world he'd left behind, on the answer he'd omitted, on what George could possibly think of him anymore.

"Come back to school tomorrow." Ross relented in the end, dropping everything else, despite how much it seemed to pain him.

Matty shrugged: a silent maybe.

"Please." Adam offered. "We've missed you, and I've got history tomorrow, and I really don't think I could cope with it by myself."

It was perhaps, for that comment, and that comment alone, that made Matty give in, with a smile, hesitant, but so very much there, and gave a nod. For it seemed to frame itself as something like a last hope that his friends could indeed view him as more than a self-destructive charity case, who owed himself to them, simply just for existing.

Because if Matty Healy was anything at sixteen, it certainly wasn't that.

He'd ushered them away in the end, on the excuse of having to go out to work, although actually seeing his shift through to the end was perhaps the last thing Matty intended to do that afternoon.

Guilt took him down the journey at least, dragging unwilling footsteps down deserted lanes. It was going to kill him, he reckoned - living in this town any longer, living with these people any longer, looking bullshit in the eye and letting the world accept it as truth.

What did it matter anyway? What was this all worth anymore? It wasn't even that Matty's heart wasn't in it - it was instead that Matty's heart was long gone entirely.

It had vacated his chest and set up camp elsewhere, and Matty just wasn't quite sure how he ought to go about coaxing it back between his ribs. He wondered for a brief moment, for a terribly dangerous moment, whether he'd simply left his heart back in that house with George.

He was unsure as to whether it could have been George himself that had pried it from Matty's chest as he slept, preparing to tuck it away or perhaps fashion it onto some sort of chain to hang around his neck. Or perhaps it had been the house, with all of its will and its frenzy; Matty doubted that a house could steal his heart, but he came to recollect how he had indeed doubted just about everything before he had crossed the its threshold.

The third option was the most intriguing of all, and that was of course, the possibility that he, himself, had simply dropped his heart, leaving it behind him upon the pillow when he'd left so early that morning. As much as the idea did concern Matty, he certainly couldn't doubt its prevalence, as through everything that they'd endured, that sounded an awful lot like something Matty would do.

He stared inside the bookstore through the shop window, searching for someone on the other side, someone whose silhouette just might fit George's, but instead the shadows lay vast and shapeless. He couldn't find it within himself to bother; to work a shop that hardly anyone came to - the world could survive without him for that evening.

It was as Matty turned away from the shop and set off back home that his head began to hammer, almost as if his brain was rocking back and forth inside his skull. For the realisation dawned upon him with urgency - this was not the way home.

Matty had lived here, in the same shitty little house, all sixteen years of his life, and yet where his feet were so determined to take him was not at all in the direction of home. It took a while before it hit him, and longer before Matty thought to stop himself; he was content, it seemed, with simply walking in no particular destination.

Of course, however, his feet knew exactly where they were going, and exactly what he was ought to do. Matty wondered, sometimes, if he ought to just hand his body over to his subconscious, for it had consistently seemed to have a much better grasp on what to do with himself than he did.

Really, it made sense. The kind of sense that came crashing with the realisation of it all; the kind of sense that brought you to laugh at yourself for somehow skipping over it; the kind of sense that had forever eluded Matty.

He was going, of course, to get his heart back. From George, or from the house itself, his chest was beginning to feel rather lonely.

Matty didn't escape without worry, free from concern that meeting George again might not be the best of ideas, considering the circumstances upon which he had left that morning. In earnest, such worries plagued his mind for the entirety of the journey, yet his mind seemed to be anything but in control that afternoon. And his feet, they certainly held no such concern.

Despite the trust Matty had put into the house, despite the sort of relationship he found had formed between himself and the disheveled, unruly, mismatched building (he'd found they had a lot in common), things seemed to frame themselves rather differently that evening.

Hesitance wasn't something he hadn't expected, it was just nothing he'd prepared for. In truth, however, Matty hadn't prepared a thing; he knew not what to say to whoever might open the door, he knew not what to make of himself, or what George had made of him. Perhaps the only knowledge Matty could cling to was the fact that just as he had last night, and that morning, he didn't know what he ought to do with himself anymore.

Matty's fist moved of its own accord in the end. It seemed his body had gotten rather tired of waiting for him; as much as Matty was startled by the gesture, he couldn't find it within himself to blame it.

The knocking of his knuckles against the chipped wood of the front door seemed to echo around his head for time immeasurable. Matty could have counted centuries in the time it took for him to knock, and then pull his fist back down to his side, curling it into the pocket of his jeans.

It was perhaps millennia until someone, anyone, saw fit to answer the door.

Matty was in two minds regarding who he hoped to see on the other side, for as much as he desperately wanted avoid George for the rest of his life, he knew that wasn't at all possible, and secondly, he couldn't avoid the fact that if anyone had the answers he needed, it would be George. And these questions, these eternally tormenting questions, the absolute last thing they would do was answer themselves.

"No fucking w- Oh..." The harsh, unfriendly tone was a burden hardly lessened by the amusement that followed. "It's you."

Matty knew in that moment that he ought to have wished for George, if only upon the basis that the alternative was certainly a much less bearable possibility.

"Jesse." Matty drew out a sigh; it took his all not to retreat immediately, to bury any lost hope of retrieving his heart, and what else was left of himself, deep inside his chest, to never be seen again.

"He's not here." Jesse didn't need to clarify just as to who he was referring to, in much the same manner that Matty hadn't needed to state who he was looking for.

"Oh...?" Matty bit his lip, not at all sure as to where he might go from here; he'd been so determined, at least down in his toes, and then, with the crashing realisation, with the crippling truth of everything, Matty wasn't quite sure what to make of himself anymore.

"You've set him off, you have." Jesse couldn't help but snort at the prospect; Matty was unsure whether it was more to do with George or more to do with him, yet, despite this confusion, he didn't at all intend to ask.

"Right..." Matty trailed off: unsure as to what he was ought to say to that.

"Never actually seen him give that much of a shit about anyone at all... ever..." Jesse shook his head, as if entirely bewildered by the mere concept. "What the fuck did you say to him?"

"I didn't say anything." Matty hung his head low. "I think that was it."

Jesse didn't quite seem to get the gist of what Matty was saying, but it appeared that he had sufficient humanity in him as not to press the matter. "He's told me he was going out to 'your place' whatever that means- fucking hell, he's absolutely, he's fucking head over heels, he is-"

"My place?" Matty curled his expression up into one of confusion.

Jesse shook his head. "Your place. You two's. I think the word he used was 'ours'."

Matty's eyes grew wide.

"Said that'd mean something to you if you came round with something else to say." Jesse could see that it clearly didn't, but still, he offered Matty a little half hearted wave and closed the door.

Matty stood there, this time just for minutes. Uncertain, lost up inside his own head, desperate to place just what could have possibly been theirs.

It hurt him - the truth. That he didn't know. That this was all he had to say for himself, to say for the way George had hurt, and the way he'd caused it.

As the skies darkened, Matty stood alone as minutes passed him by, and thought, or at least his subconscious did, as he allowed his mind to wander, and come to recall the boy George had told him about the previous night. The one that broke his heart.

Matty had promised, if only himself, that things wouldn't be like that, not for them, that this wouldn't end, not like this. Still, his head hurt, and still, things ceased to find sense, for he stared upon George, and caught the rise of fall of his chest, and the spark in his eyes, and the lines upon his lips, and still, he didn't know what he ought to feel at all.

Yet however, this didn't have to be the end.

George meant so much more than the way he smiled, or the taste upon his lips, or the all encompassing warmth that had wrapped around him in bed that weekend. Matty did miss that, he missed that George, but that was not all. Matty missed the George that had caught him, the George that laughed with him and not at him, the George that had made him see sense, the George that always followed his heart, whether or not the world deemed it as right, the George that had shoved a bag of weed into his hands one morning, the George that had changed his life.

Matty missed the George that made him feel alive.

For this boy, whatever lay inside that head of his, made Matty rise above the rest of the town, above grimey, derelict streets, above cursed smiles upon strange ashen faces, above the hatred and fear that ran through people, like a brother to the blood in their veins.

Matty reckoned, that first time they'd kissed, in that kitchen, with George's cheeks - messy and tear-stained, they'd truly risen above everything else, with hearts on fire, burning with a never flickering flame, desperate to light up the darkness of the forever winter of the town.

He'd longed for summer, and George had given it to him. He'd longed for meaning, for comprehension to his heart and his feelings, and George had handed it over without qualms. He'd longed for someone, for something to mean more than the falsified shit he trawled through everyday. George had offered him it - no questions asked.

The truth, of course, was simple, not in words, but in emotion, for the forest, the bridge they'd fallen from, was entirely theirs - they'd made it so. And Matty's heart - this was not a quest to get it back, for George had never stolen a thing from him. It was obvious now, he'd given it - willingly.

-

It was the scent that hit him first. Weed.

With the familiar odor snaking through the trees, Matty found himself certain of George's presence before he'd even laid eyes upon him. That ought to have left Matty to prepare himself for their encounter, to at least think of something to say before hurtling himself towards George. Of course, however, Matty did no such thing.

Minutes traipsed on for hours as George met Matty's gaze through the trees. Sat atop the bridge, he didn't say anything. Slowly approaching him, Matty offered just as little. They could have perhaps pretended that the silence was calming, or even that it was necessary, but they couldn't have made themselves believe it.

George outstretched a hand to a shaking Matty, stood tentatively before the bridge; he still regarded it with distrust, however such feelings were not at all misplaced, for the events of the fall had never once left either boy's mind.

Matty didn't take it; he didn't trust himself enough to, but he clung to George's gaze instead as he staggered out across the bridge, collapsing into George upon a rather clumsy descent.

George couldn't help but smile, watching as Matty kicked his legs out over the edge, seemingly with no concern for the danger that came with it. Matty smiled back, even if just for a moment.

The truth of the matter was that someone was going to have to speak eventually: sense was going to have to be made eventually. But Matty's favourite thing about eventuality was that it never had to be now.

He cast moment after moment aside to the matter of simply watching the trees sway in the wind, or the way the trees cast shadows throughout the forest below, or the way the water beneath them began to flow as if forced along by a million, invisible oarsmen. Most of all, Matty spent his moments watching George - from his smile, to the tarnished boots upon his feet, he was beautiful.

Not beautiful like Charlotte. Not beautiful like girls at school. Not beautiful in the way that Adam or Ross might point out a girl and proclaim she was the most wonderful thing they'd ever seen.

George was beautiful the way a swamp was beautiful. In that, mostly he was rather off putting, and never particularly pleasant, and a constant annoyance, but he was the way a swamp was beautiful to an ecologist.

Matty felt these thoughts burn right through him, for he knew he dared not speak them aloud. They might have gotten him somewhere, but not in the way he would have liked, for still, he was terrified, of the glimmer in George's eyes, and the heavy thudding of his heart.

The silence was broken not with choice, but with misfortune. For, as George passed the joint into Matty's hand, it had slipped from his grasp and tumbled between them and down into the water below.

Both boys watched, eyes just as wide, as the river swept up the joint, instantly extinguishing it, and pulling it away with the current. Matty wondered what would have happened if George had somehow managed to drop his heart, or if George had for some reason decided to - if he'd managed to fuck this up enough to the extent of such a gesture.

"Fuck." George muttered aloud, before he'd really had much chance to register what he'd done.

Matty curled his lips up into a smile: amused by the moment, or at least just glad to hear George's voice again.

"Fuck, indeed." Matty concurred.

Matty's voice seemed to have put George in a similar state: all brash, compensating laughter, and gaze flickering like a dancing flame. They were hopeless, truly, out there like that.

Two minutes drew out in passing, as a cold breeze snaked between them, before George managed to gather enough courage to face Matty directly. Beside him, Matty remained curled up inside himself: far more terrified than he ever cared to admit.

"So what is it?" His tone seemed to be falling apart to some degree, as if his inner resolve was tearing at the seams. Matty wished he could reach inside of his chest, to his heart, put it back in place, and fix him. Or at least, Matty wished for a world in which people worked like that.

"What do you mean?" His words made more of a stumble from his lips than a swan dive: tripping over their own metaphorical feet, as they descended through the air and down into the river below.

"This morning... that..." It hurt him - at least to speak it aloud. Matty could see that, clear as day, in the lines upon his face, and the dulling shine to his eyes. "That seemed a lot like a no. And I was okay with that-" George cut himself off.

Matty didn't quite dare to look him in the eyes.

"No. Fuck, no. I really wasn't okay with that, but still, I knew it was your decision, so I was prepared to live with it." George trailed off, chasing the treeline with his eyes. "But, then there's this, and this... this doesn't seem so much like a no. What's going on, Matty? Don't leave me fucking guessing."

Matty wished to bury a hole deep inside his chest, a grave to lay himself in, or at least to throw out his heart and lock something else up inside. He glanced down at the river below and thought about falling - in a way that he really daren't speak aloud. Still, it seemed as if George had read it all from his lips.

"I'm sorry." He muttered, as if it bade Matty any comfort. At least, he had to respect the fact that he was trying.

"I don't know." Matty spat out the truth, for it was simply all that was left to him. "Fucking hell, George, I don't fucking know, I-"

"Slow down." George told him, reaching his fingertips out to brush against Matty's arm; it had been intended as a comforting gesture but it only sent shivers down his spine.

"I like you George." It pained him to say it, but it had to be done. "I like you but I don't know how. I don't understand it. Because I don't like you like I liked Charlotte-"

"You never liked Charlotte." George interjected, chasing more than just the truth.

Matty didn't find it within himself to disagree.

"What I mean..." He trailed off, not at all sure of himself. "What I mean, is... I don't think you're... you know... pretty, in the way she's pretty."

George drew out a sigh. "Probably because she's a girl, isn't it?"

Matty gave a shrug. "I... I don't mean I don't like-"

"Matty..." George held his head in his hands, just for a brief moment. "As a bisexual, I can tell you that I'm not attracted to boys in the same way I'm attracted to girls, but that doesn't mean my attraction's less valid, it's just... like... girls have nice tits, and boys are still nice even though they don't have tits-"

"George, I think I..." Matty choked on his words. "I'm terrified, honestly." He stared at the water below.

George followed his gaze.

"I think I'd rather drown than talk about it." The words had left his lips before he'd given himself ample opportunity to consider them.

"I wouldn't let you drown though, and I'd only make you talk about it more afterwards." George offered, voice as stern as he could muster.

Matty only laughed.

"Charlotte broke up with me." He drew out a sigh: unable to manage laughter that time. "I was right." He offered, as if to lighten up the situation somehow.

"So you're crawling back to me as a last resort?" George stared Matty down, his eyes burning with a tarnished, half-hearted type of malice.

"No." Matty insisted, staring George down, wondering if he even knew him at all. "I'm... I'm confused, fucking hell, George, I'm so fucking-"

"Are you going to find yourself another nice bullshit girlfriend so people won't, god forbid, call you queer?" George snorted, as if to curse the part of himself that had ever put any amount of trust in this beautiful kind of ethereal bookshop boy.

Matty grew quiet. The silence rang louder than it ever had before.

"I think I am..." He trailed off. "Queer." His cheeks flushed red; it sounded wrong on his lips. "Or something like that- fucking hell, George, I don't know if I like girls at all, I don't know if I like boys, or if I just like you- I don't know fucking anything."

George caught his breath in his throat. "Surely you know something."

Matty, insistent, shook his head. "Fucking, I don't-"

"Something. Anything. Whatever comes to mind. Talk to me. Don't focus on what you don't know, but what you do."

Matty stared at George and dared to let something spring to mind.

"I know I want to kiss you." Matty spoke without thinking.

"I know I do too." George uttered, voice raw and broken, lips moving to Matty's, amidst the cloudy skies, as the world around them painted itself a little less grey.

Pulling away, eyes dark, hesitant, George pushed soft words into Matty's skin. "Is that not enough?"

Matty drew his doubts back inside himself. "Is it?"

"If you don't go back to her, it is. I'm not being the boyfriend, or some bullshit like that." George swallowed hard.

Matty shivered. "I promise."

And like that, as the skies opened up for rain, George kissed him again.

And they pretended, although they didn't believe, that truly everything was as okay as they wanted it to be.

-

hope u liked this chapter lmao lov u

votes and comments would be very appreciated

does anyone wanna yell about ronan lynch with me because I'm really unstable

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