Matty had to admit that it was anxiety that kept him awake - kept his mind whirring, turning itself inside out and on its head, as it struggled in systematically worrying about every single thing that it was physically possible to be concerned with.

George had been surprised when Matty had told him the night before, and in a weird way, although Matty had expected him to be, he wished that it wasn't like that. He wished that he could begin pretending now - properly put everything together in his mind like his was living a proper life, like they were a proper family, like there was just one thing in his life that he hadn't managed to fuck up.

But things just didn't work that way. His mind kept him awake, thrown back elsewhere, thrown back to when he was sixteen, to the very moments in which everything had all gone wrong. In those very moments in which he'd let it, because as much as he'd tried to avoid that fact all along, this was just his fault, and it had always been so. It was in that, however, that he knew he had to fix it, because there was just nothing else he could do.

George had spent last night looking at him a little differently. Only when he reckoned Matty hadn't noticed, or wasn't looking at him, but Matty had picked up on it in the end. Matty couldn't quite pinpoint what it was, but again, something had changed, and Matty just wasn't sure if he wanted to figure out what that was immediately, as he would have before. It wasn't that he wanted to prolong it, postpone it to the point of nonexistence, but just let it happen, let it naturally come to take its course, as it eventually would.

There was also the part of him that lay assured that it couldn't be much of a bad thing anymore. This was the part of him that had come to trust George more than he'd ever imagined to be possible, and of course, this was likely the most fragile part of him, but perhaps at that moment in time, it was the part that spoke louder than the rest.

They'd gone to bed at around one in the morning - perhaps later than they should have done, but neither of the two had really minded: letting themselves make the mistake of a late night, and dealing with the regret of it in the morning. At least, George would do so, as he'd managed to get to sleep within fifteen minutes or so of lying there, but come half four in the morning, Matty still lay awake: now on his back, gaze fixated up at the ceiling, trying to focus on the slight crack in one corner of it in the low light of the room, and indeed anything but what was really at hand.

He spent a good ten minutes focusing on his own breathing - the steady rise and fall of his chest as he took breath in and then out. When that failed, he spent a good ten minutes focusing on George's: holding his own breath for varying amounts of time in order to align their breathing patterns, because that was the kind of stupid shit that Matty did now apparently. He then turned over, watching the clock on the wall for a while, watching the minutes tick by, and wondering just what time would be appropriate to properly wake up.

It was apparent to him by now that he just wouldn't be getting any sleep that night. Perhaps that wasn't exactly for the best, perhaps there he was, making another terrible decision, but he found that there was just so very little he could do about it, and to some degree, maybe that was okay. To some degree, however, it wasn't, but regardless of degrees and opinions, and all that kind of bullshit, he still lay awake, sleepless, his mind creeping back to his seventeen year old self and focusing in on every single mistake he'd made.

Ten to five in the morning was far too early to wake George up, because that had been his first call - the one thing on the back of his mind for the past few hours. As much as George was there physically, he did miss his company in the form of conversations and smiles, and the presence of something in the silence to pull his mind back away from his younger self and the hole he'd dug for himself in all of this.

He hadn't been sure of it the night before, but it was by the time that four in the morning rolled around that he'd come to accept that this was the day. Despite the fact that the day had hardly begun, despite the fact he was far from the appropriate state of mind, this was when it had to happen. It was just that the more he thought about it, the more he couldn't avoid it, and the more he couldn't avoid it, the more he just couldn't bear it.

He had to fix things. He had to fix things while he still could - before things got worse, and things would, even if not directly, but just as easily as today could turn into tomorrow, two years could turn into three, and with the sudden weight of understanding and responsibility that Matty had allowed to press down fully on his chest, he came to accept that it had to be today. He wasn't sure if he could bare it otherwise.

He let eventuality dance around his head for a few minutes more, glancing towards the window and watching the sun begin to rise: watching the way the skies grew just that little bit less darker, and with that, the world was brought everything. The warm heat of the day, the glow that sunflowers would turn to catch, the warmth that people would reach out to feel upon their skin, was of course quite a way off, but it was coming - riding through the world as if it had been secured on the back of inevitability.

It was around five when he pulled himself together enough to get out of bed. The thoughts no longer coming like tiny daggers to his mind, but like a dull force, perhaps kinder, gentler than before, but much less intermittent - permanent in its place, and in an odd way, Matty found a comfort in that.

The fact of what he was going to do didn't quite sink in until he'd gotten dressed, grabbed his phone, spent a good minute glancing back at George - he lay peaceful and yet to stir, sound asleep, and seemingly so content with the world. It was then still not until he made it through the flat, making an effort to tread lightly, despite the fact that he was confident in his assumption that both George and Adam were asleep. Of course, however, he'd been over-confident in that belief, and found himself rather lost for words as he caught Adam peering at him from the kitchen.

The two held each other's gaze in the low light - both of them unable to quite figure out just exactly what it was that the other was doing awake at such a time. It was then that Adam came to notice how Matty was fully dressed and headed towards the front door.

Adam shook his head, making his way towards the kitchen doorway. "You're not leaving again." He let out a sigh, struggling to come to terms with what might be happening before him in the three minutes he'd gotten out of bed to get a drink. "I won't let you. He loves you."

Matty nodded, struggling to put it all into words, especially for Adam who knew nothing about Matty further than what he looked like, how much of a dickhead he could be, and the fact that he was fucking George. It wasn't like the two had never shared a word since Matty had 'moved in', but they'd found themselves sharing a conversation alone on perhaps only one other occasion, and in that case, the subject was much more trivial. "I'm not leaving."

Adam didn't seem convinced, and just gestured at Matty's clothes, and attempted just for a moment to think of any logical reason why he'd be dressed to go out at five in the morning. "What are you doing then?"

"I..." Matty trailed off. "I guess I am leaving. Not permanently. I... I'm not leaving George. We've talked about this. I have to go see my family." Matty bit his lip, praying that Adam wouldn't push it any further, because as awkwardly put together as it was, it was still the genuine truth.

"At five in the morning?" Adam raised his eyebrows, glancing back into the kitchen and towards the clock on the wall.

"Yeah." Matty told him, holding his gaze a little more sternly. "It's kind of complicated, I guess. George knows why, he understands what's going on, though. Don't get your hopes up, you are going to see me again."

It was then, before Adam could respond, that Matty made his way out of the door and into the street.

-

It was rapidly growing lighter, nearing conditions that he probably could see in, and in an odd way, he felt as if the morning was racing against him as he made it through the streets, turning towards the little twenty four hour Tesco on the end of one.

He found himself being silently judged by a cashier as he made his way inside, because really, what was any 'normal' person doing awake at this hour, and really, what was Matty doing with his life? Just trying and struggling to fix it, because things never quite worked out as they planned.

Within two minutes, he emerged from the shop with a bouquet of flowers - yellow and orange tulips - and a packet of cigarettes, because he figured that he needed a little extra help in all of this. It was then just a minute or so later, that he found himself sat on the bench outside, plastic bag on the floor between his legs, and eyes fixated up on the sky and the orange tones to the sunrise, as he fumbled with the packet of cigarettes, doing his best to get one alight between his shaking fingers.

He sat there smoking, watching the sky, watching the quiet and calm of the world go by, as he came to consider just quite what he'd do when he got there, when he made the way across town, when he made his way back home. When he stood on the doorstep at not far past five in the morning, holding a cheap bouquet of tulips, hoping that all in all, he couldn't make too much of a bad impression. Or at least one that was worse than what he'd already made.

In truth, he had very little idea at all, and found that he'd come to obsessively think over perhaps everything despite the most important detail of it all. There had to be some sort of an explanation to this all - it wasn't like his mum would just welcome him inside like nothing had happened in the past few years, because as much as Matty would have liked that, it just wasn't how the world worked.

She'd want an explanation - both for why he'd come so early, and why he'd come at all, and really all Matty had to go on was the fact that he'd let someone into his life enough for them to actually be able to tell him just how the fuck to sort it all out, and how that had been helped by the fact that this person was just pretty enough that he was inclined to listen to him.

Or perhaps she wouldn't want to see him at all. Matty just wasn't sure what he'd do then, because of course, he'd just have to go back to George's, and maybe cry a bit, and then maybe get on with his life, because suddenly despite the years he'd spent locked up inside himself and so very desperate to ignore his family completely, he found that he just couldn't face being turned away by them. Perhaps that was hypocritical of him, but perhaps there just wasn't an awful lot he could do about that.

It was closing on half past five when he finally made it: down a road that felt the very kind of familiar that sent shivers down his spine. He'd made quite the point of avoiding this part of town for so very long now, and as he walked up the road, towards his house, situated right on the end, he could almost see himself: age seventeen, storming right back out and closing that front door for the last time.

Matty was here to make sure that it wasn't the last. He was here to make sure that he put himself together properly again, that maybe he'd live the kind of life that wasn't just worth it for him to ensure that he could feel better than everyone else, but the kind of life that mattered deep down. The kind of life that really did mean something, because Matty was through with falsified meanings, and living your life in the image of who you felt you had to be and not who you really were. After all, how could he have thought that it was he alone who had the power to save the world, when he was still yet to save himself?

As he turned down into his driveway, he inhaled sharply, suddenly finding himself a little dizzy with it all, and came to reconsider, to view turning back now as the much more favourable option. Perhaps just a phone call would do it in the end, and as he began to convince himself of that, he looked down to the bouquet of flowers in his hand, and came to just think for a minute. It was just the very something deep inside his mind that didn't want to let the flowers die that made him question everything again, and there was an odd moment in which he came to consider that, and leave it as the only thing pushing him forward.

He stood on the doorstep for a few minutes more, glancing at the sun rising in the background, watching the day truly begin, and then turning back to the doorbell, to that little button beside the front door, that really wasn't so much his anymore. He felt his heart doing backflips in his chest, and himself growing suddenly lightheaded as he reached out, hand shaking frantically as the tip of his index finger hovered above the doorbell. He let out a sigh, and with everything he had previously known breaking apart inside of him, he pressed it down.

That was when everything stopped.

There came the first silence in his head for hours. The world stopped spinning, and everything seemed to focus back in on itself again, and suddenly Matty was so much younger, and so much less caught up in himself, but with so much less of an idea as to what kind of person he was going to end up being.

It was as Matty came to wonder if he should ring again, despite the time, despite the generally poorly planned nature of the situation, that the sound of footsteps reached him from inside, and with the sound of a key in a lock, the door opened before him.

And there she was.

His mum.

With tired eyes and a dressing gown, and Matty suddenly couldn't help but feel guilty about getting her out of bed. Guilty in a much different way, as it was the kind of guilty that he'd never really felt when he'd left in the first place. In a way, everything really had been turned on its head, but perhaps there was just nothing wrong with that, after all.

"Matty?" Her eyes widened as she took him in, just stood there, silent, eyes meeting hers. "I..." She blinked rapidly, almost as if she began to suspect that he might fade away into nothingness the very moment she looked away, that he could never possibly be back, but of course, he was.

"I brought you flowers." Matty began, offering the bouquet ratherly awkwardly to her, finding them to be perhaps the first thing he could think of to talk about - the flowers being perhaps the one thing he could explain. "I'm sorry I missed Mother's Day. I missed a few. Maybe I should have bought you more-"

She didn't let him finish, pulling him into a hug: a proper mum hug that left Matty speechless, and a little bit squashed, but with this warm kind of feeling in his stomach that really did wonder if everything was going to be alright in the end.

They finally pulled away after what had been something close to two minutes, and Denise came to find tears dwelling in bottom of her eyes, it was of course, however, something that Matty couldn't help but share, feeling his body going limp all over as he stood there in the first rays of morning light.

"Will you come inside?" Her voice cracked a little as she spoke, trying her best not to break out into a full blown fit of tears in front of her oldest son - the very one she hadn't seen in two years, and had almost come to accept might not ever be coming back.

"Yeah." Matty nodded, glancing behind her into the house - his house, after all. "Please."

He found his body going slightly numb all over as he followed her back inside, placing the tulips down on the table by the door and taking his shoes off. Looking around was like a punch of nostalgia to the gut, and in all honesty, Matty just didn't quite know how to deal with it at all, and honestly, he felt just that little bit sick, but if there ever was a good kind of sick, this certainly had to be it.

After a minute or so, he found his way through to the kitchen, catching his reflection in the hallway mirror as he walked past, and for just a moment, seeing his seventeen year old self, seeing the person that the house once knew, but soon enough that faded away, and he saw himself there, perhaps just as tired, perhaps just as torn up inside, perhaps always bound to ultimately be the same person, but finding that time had put them worlds away from one another.

It was however, after that, that the floorboards seemed less inclined to creak under his feet, and the hallway just seemed a little bit less dark, and it all felt just a little bit more like home.

"We should have something to eat." When he closed the kitchen door behind him, he found that she'd set two mugs of tea out on the table, and was in the process of filling the toaster. "It's around six now, anyway. I guess you haven't had breakfast yet?" She turned to him, awaiting a response.

There was just something so much easier in the meaningless, kind of idle, waste of time questions, than there was in actually facing what had become quite the elephant in the room. As much as Matty was happier to answer those kinds of easy questions, that just wasn't what he'd come back for.

"No I haven't." He began, sitting down at the kitchen table, taking his jacket off and putting it over the back of the chair. "I'm trying to be a better person." He continued, focusing his gaze in on the cup of tea sitting down just in reach of his arm. "Fix things properly. It's kind of a long story, but I guess that's what I'm here for. I want to be in your life again. I want to be a better son."

Denise took a moment, finding herself just focusing in on breathing for a while, finding that she perhaps hadn't been quite as prepared when it came down to what Matty had actually come back for. "It wasn't your fault. Things weren't easy for you. I didn't think about how it had all made you feel nearly as much as I should have." She began to butter a few slices of toast for them, spending perhaps much longer than necessary doing it, and taking far more care than she should have done in arranging them across two plates.

"That's..." The word Matty had leapt to was 'bullshit', but he became so very suddenly aware that this was his mum, and the fact that he was nineteen just didn't count for anything at all. "Rubbish." He finished, watching as she placed the toast down on the table, and finally took the liberty of sitting down across from him and facing the situation at hand.

"Things were hard for all of us after your dad and I separated." She continued, letting out a sigh as she couldn't help but slip back to that time.

"I shouldn't have left, though. I never should have left, and I most certainly never should have shut you out of my life for two years." Matty looked up at her, really meeting his mother in the eye. "Stop phrasing things nicely, tell me how it is. I'm not going to leave again, that's not going to happen this time. I'm not the same person I was when I was seventeen."

Denise leaned forward, placing her elbows onto the table and her face into her hands. "Jesus, you're an adult now, aren't you now? You're nineteen." She looked up at him. "You're... you're... nineteen. Jesus Christ, Matty, where have you been for two years?"

"With Gemma, mainly." He let out a sigh, tracing patterns into the tabletop with his fingertips. "She let me stay with her. Do you remember Gemma? The nice one. Pretty, skinny, curly hair."

"The nice one." Denise repeated, letting out a sigh.

"Well, it's not like all the rest of my friends weren't dickheads." Matty found himself speaking before he'd really thought about it. He pulled his gaze awkwardly up to his mum, who just smiled, shaking her head, because as much as he really was, Matty just didn't feel nineteen at all: sat there, at the kitchen table, with his mum. In admittance, he hardly felt seventeen either. He felt much younger than that. Maybe thirteen, before everything had all turned on its head, but there was just no way of going back now.

"Yeah." She nodded, taking a sip of her tea. "I know who you mean. Gemma's nice. Very nice to let you stay with her for two years."

Matty nodded, smiling. "She is. I'm not friends with any of the others anymore. I was at first, but then they got bored of me, I guess people always do. I guess I just wasn't that interesting anymore after I stopped snorting coke everyday." He let out a sigh, finding that it trailed off into an awkward kind of nervous laughter that really just wasn't necessary at all. "I ended up in quite a bad mental state, and then I don't know, I just built on top of that with arrogance and fake confidence and that kind of... shit. Gemma was just nice enough to put up with that, I guess."

"And what changed that?" She asked, her voice shaking slightly, "because something has changed. I know that."

"There's this guy called George. I met him once in a shop, came across as a real twat - something I guess I'm just particularly good at, but then I saw him again when I was alone in the rain one evening, and he offered me a ride home despite the fact I'd basically verbally attacked him the other day. Ended up saying that he cared about me, and really... that surprised me a lot, because really, who does? He gave me his number, and in the end I ended up calling him, and then I... I don't know. I stayed with him for a while. He's really lovely, but he tells me when I'm being a dick. He tells me when I'm wrong, and that's I guess why I didn't like him at first. I couldn't face being wrong, but I think everything's different now. He made me think differently about things. He made me change my mind."

Denise's lips folded up into a smile. "You're a whole new kind of stubborn, Matty. What kind of person could possibly make you see sense when you're wrong? I have to meet him, you know?"

Matty blushed. "He's very pretty. I guess that helps."

"Oh, so he's...?"

"My boyfriend. Yeah."

Matty smiled, leaning back in his chair, and watching through the kitchen window as the sky grew to a lighter shade of blue. He caught sight of the flowerbed in the garden, sunflowers already beginning to turn up towards the sun.

As Denise came to share that smile, he found that perhaps things had just always been easier than he'd thought. Perhaps he'd never needed to leave that one day two years ago, but even if he could, Matty didn't think he'd do things differently at all, because here he was in the end of it all, finding himself with hopes of ending up happier than he could have ever been.

-

George had spent the whole evening blushing. Matty had spent the whole evening with his face lighted by a smile. George's friends were lovely - a whole new kind of lovely - properly lovely. Even if though, Matty hadn't been quite been able to make it inside Ross and John's house without immediately thinking back to that one day George had told him about the individually and disgustingly labelled items of food in their fridge. There was a part of him that wanted to see it for himself, but overall, he knew that just some things could never been unseen, and maybe it was for the best.

It was a sort of vague gathering/party kind of thing, that really had only been orchestrated as an excuse for George's friends to meet Matty, and really, despite coming to learn that so very quickly, Matty found that he didn't quite mind at all.

The two ended up sat on the floor in Ross' living room, some shitty kind of indie music on in the background, and Matty's head in George's lap as they talked shit and passed a spliff between them. George could feel Ross watching them from the other side of the room - not in a weird way, but in a protective friend kind of way, and as slightly uncomfortable as it did make George feel, his heart was certainly in the right place.

He'd seemed to have taken a really awkward half discreet approach in making sure that Matty wasn't actually the worst person alive earlier, which involved asking Matty just what his opinions on Donald Trump were as he walked in through the door. Despite this all, however, Matty still insisted on telling George that his friends were lovely, and really, George had to admit, they were.

It was eventually Ellie that approached them first, sitting down opposite the two of them with a glass of wine held in her left hand. "Hey." She smiled across at Matty, who made the effort to get his head out of George's lap. "I'm Ellie. I've heard a lot about you, although, admittedly mainly from Ross in the kitchen. I think he's concerned that there's been another contender for most disgusting couple."

George rolled his eyes, letting out a sigh. "We are nowhere near as disgusting as they are. Go tell Ross he can go fuck himself- no, go remind Ross of the housewarming party he made everyone go to. Remind him of that card Joel brought him. Tell him Joel will buy another one. Then tell Joel to buy another one."

"Ross is lovely." Matty shook his head at George, shoving him gently. "Shut up. You're horrible, you are." He grinned up at him, leaving George to roll his eyes once more.

"He is, isn't he?" Ellie let out a laugh, before sipping at her glass of wine. "Are those real flowers in your hair?" She turned to Matty, fully engaging him in conversation, because that was something Ellie was good at.

This left George to drift off back into his own head, scanning the room, attempting to pick out something worth looking at amidst the sea of vaguely drunk, vaguely high people. There was certainly quite the calm to the room - a shared acceptance of one another, and a happiness felt fully, like blood in his veins.

He shared a look with Ross from across the room, finding that Ross blushed, looking away, embarrassed, when he smiled at him, and really, Matty was right, because Ross was lovely. George was just suddenly overwhelmed with the feeling that everyone was so lovely, and everything was just so nice. Everything felt in its right place, he felt at home, even as he sat in someone else's living room. He just wondered however, if home was less in the physicality of the four walls that surrounded you, and much more in the way you felt inside: the people around you, and that one person, curled up with his knees to his chest, right by your side.

George came to conclude that he really loved Matty quite a bit, when he thought about it. This felt like a whole new kind of love - something much stronger than he'd felt before, and he just couldn't avoid the fact that it counted for a hell of a lot, even if it was just in a way that he was quite yet to understand. George just wasn't in a rush at all, and instead found himself rather content with coming to terms with himself and the world he lived in at his own place.

Suddenly, everything was good, a whole new kind of good. The kind of good that really meant it, and not just the kind of good that really meant 'not bad'. All it had really taken was for him to become content within himself and his own life, and not so fussed with waiting it out towards the weekend, and other people's problems, and that girl called Laura, who he'd once considered vaguely pretty, who he'd spotted across the room.

It wasn't that she wasn't pretty anymore, because really she'd always been pretty. She just didn't matter to him anymore, and perhaps that was fair, because all along, George hadn't been able to help the feeling that he simply didn't matter to her awfully very much.

He was pulled back into the present with the gentle tapping of Matty's fingers against his shoulder. He came to notice that as he'd gotten lost off elsewhere: halfway in his head, and halfway at the other side of the room, that Ellie had gotten up and made her way back to the kitchen, maybe for another drink, or something like that.

"She's lovely." Matty let out a sigh, letting his head fall back into George's lap, and George briefly considered pretending to mind, just for a moment. "I don't deserve to know this kind of people, you know that?"

"Shut up. Course you do. You're lovelier still." George's fingers found their way into Matty's hair, twirling it around, and generally making a bit of a mess. Matty briefly considered pretending to mind, just for a moment. "I think the whole world is going to end up thinking you're lovelier than me. What happened to dickhead Matty? What happened to him?"

Matty laughed a little, shaking his head. "There's no dickhead Matty, there's no lovely Matty. It's just me. I'm a bit of both, I guess." He let out a sigh, gazing up at George, just because he was beautiful, and just because he could. "You know I reckon there's one person who thinks you're lovelier than me."

"And who's that?" George raised his eyebrows, unable to avoid coming off unconvinced.

"My mum." Matty explained, having gone into quite a few extensive conversations about George with her, now that he technically was staying at home again. He had reckoned that living with his mum when he was nineteen was something that he'd never enjoy, but Matty just couldn't avoid the fact that as he was right now, he'd just never really been happier.

"She wants to meet you, you know? Proper little family dinner. Proper little invite your boyfriend over kind of thing. Proper disgusting, isn't it?" Matty groaned a little at the thought.

"Personally." George announced, grinning. "I think it's lovely. And personally, I'm sure your mum's lovely."

"Yeah." Matty nodded. "She is. I mean, everything's just so..."

"Lovely?" George finished for him, giggling a little.

"I'm not sure what it is, but... I just... hey..." He met George's gaze, something suddenly changing in his eyes. "George, I love you. You know that, right?"

George couldn't help but grin. "It's the weed, babe." He reached and took Matty's hand in his. "I love you too, though."

Matty grimaced. "Whatever you do. Don't ever call me babe again."

George let out a snort. "Whatever you say... babe."

That time, however, Matty didn't bother considering pretending to mind. Not even for a moment. This felt like everything he could ever possibly need, and he'd finally given up trying to argue with himself. It was a long time coming, really he should have given up that very first moment in the shop, when he'd glanced over at George, and thought him to be the most beautiful person in the world, but found something else inside him so desperately protesting against that.

Perhaps getting rid of that something else had just been the best thing that he'd ever done, because now, through and through, with his hand on his heart, he could finally, honestly, say that he was happy. And he knew that George could say the same for himself.

Matty had finally figured it out - that was what mattered.

-

hey guys i really hope you liked this fic !!! your votes and comments would be lovely as always. i really enjoyed writing it. thank you very much for reading. love you :)