Matty couldn't deny that he'd felt his whole world turned right on its head in the space of the past few days. He didn't want to put himself down as the kind of person that let people change him, but as the days came to pass, he found that perhaps more than anything else, he just didn't want to be the person that never let anyone change his mind. Perhaps it was all a long time coming: the ability to see the world from someone else's eyes, or perhaps it wasn't necessary at all. Perhaps that wasn't up for him to decide.

Perhaps he didn't need to have everything figured out, perhaps he wasn't here to change the world, but just indeed himself. The latter even sounded so much more plausible as he came to ponder it. The fact of it all, however, was that it had turned everything over, it had brought about a horrible sickening feeling that was set deep in his stomach, because if he'd been wrong about one thing, then what was to say that he hadn't been wrong all his life.

What was to say that his life was any more than a seriously planned and co-ordinated series of mistakes that he'd just decorated over, hidden away - like icing on a burnt cake - something like that. What was to say that he'd never been anything but wrong? What was to say that he hadn't just been an idiot for years, yelling bullshit about bullshit? What was to say that he wasn't exactly the kind of person he'd always so despised?

It cut into him, like a knife, twisting around inside him, between his organs and right into his ribcage. It was an unsettling, lingering feeling - uncomfortable, hanging over him, and so desperate to break him in two, but if Matty found that he came to stand for anything at all anymore, it was keeping himself afloat and putting himself back together again, even if it was with slightly different pieces.

Perhaps George had been right all along, perhaps George had known more than he ever could have, and despite everything else, George had stayed with him - George had taken him home, George had given him his number, George had sat with him that one day in the park, George had offered him a place at his flat. Most of all, George had only gone to tell him the truth for him to throw a fit and fuck off for a few days. Further so, after that, George had waited for him to return, George had worried, and George had let him back in. Not just to his flat, but to his life again.

It was George that had understood kindness and compassion, and with that, Matty did wonder if George would understand more about the world around them than Matty ever could.

The thought did unsettle him; it was down to uncertainty and the way it had been so swiftly brought upon him. Matty wasn't sure as to just what it was in him, but there was something so very determined to figure it all out - what was behind this all, who put them here, if anything, if anyone. Just what it meant to live, just what it meant to be happy, and indeed, whether he'd been wrong in the series of rash, perhaps less than considerate decisions he'd come to make, because as much as he came across as the arrogant kind of confident, idiotic kind of brave, kind of beautiful, dickhead, in that all, he so desperately feared being wrong, and so desperately feared everything he'd done that had ended up hurting the people he cared about.

It was of course, the more that he thought about it, the more he came to accept that he'd done nothing more than fuck things up for himself. He'd left home, he continued to ignore his family, to put them away, back out of his mind, and it most certainly wasn't that he didn't care about them, because dear god he did, it was just the way that things had turned out. In reality, he just couldn't face the fact that in all honesty, he doubted his mother would much like her son anymore.

He'd left Gemma, he'd left George. He'd left the whole world behind - not running from them, but running from himself, running from the parts he'd kept up inside, and how desperate they seemed to tumble right out of him, how desperate they were to expose him for all he really was: for the pathetic excuse for someone who might have meant something, and Matty just couldn't face that. Not the look on Gemma's face, not the look on George's, and especially not the look on his mother's.

Perhaps it was easier this way, easier to let it all get worse, easier to lock it all up inside of him, where no one could find who he really was, where no one could quite figure him out. In all honesty, Matty did nothing but fear the opinions of others, the judgement of those around him, but still, he couldn't quite bring himself to admit it.

They could judge the side of him he might show off: the bullshit and arguments, the dickhead moves, the arrogance, the overcompensating - they could judge that side of him all they liked, because in judging that, they just weren't judging him at all. And in truth, Matty found himself so desperate to hide this away, not just from the world, but from himself too.

Perhaps he could go on that way. Perhaps he could let the word pass him by: coming too close, right up against his skin, but never really getting under it. Perhaps he could have done. Weeks ago, before this all, before things had changed, before they'd had that conversation that Thursday morning - him and George. Before they'd had another the day that followed, before the doubt had set in, before everything changed.

Perhaps he could have continued in the way he had always so blindly favoured, perhaps he could fulfill the shoes he'd set out for himself, but that was before George.

Matty had never wanted to be one of those people - soppy and pathetic, the kind who owed their whole lives, the air they breathe, their fucking everything to someone else. He'd thought it was all bullshit really - thought that there could never really be much more to it than just a person you can appreciate in regards to both personality and appearance.

Yet, of course, he'd never found himself to be quite so wrong, because although he didn't owe his entire being and life to George, he was certainly coming to get half way there: sitting on Gemma's sofa once more, letting his eyes close momentarily as he came to listen to the sounds of her making tea from the kitchen. There were surely much better things to do with his Friday, especially in the scheme of things, but the fact of the matter was that just nothing had come to mind anymore, and that definitely had much more to do with George than he could ever care to admit.

Gemma had sensed the change in him the very moment he'd made it through the door: coming in with the intention of treating the place as if it was just as much of his home as it had been before: coming in as if he hadn't spent every night since he'd come back at George's; coming in as if he hadn't spent those not just at George's flat, but with George himself. Funnily enough however, he hadn't quite managed it - missing the table entirely as he'd so very casually attempted to throw his jacket down onto it, all partnered with a certain awkward look hidden at the back of his eyes.

Although Gemma hadn't yet come to mention it to him, Matty was just as aware of her observation as she was herself, and he only began to wonder just what she'd draw from that as she made her way back in from the kitchen, carrying two mugs of tea. Gemma was good at tea, good at hospitality, good at making Matty feel like he meant something, like he was understood, like he wasn't just little piece of dust - unwanted, floating about from place to place in the wind.

She joined him on the sofa, kicking his legs slightly to get him to make room for her, as Matty had found himself taking up the whole expanse of the sofa: stretched out, limbs sticking up in odd places. "Budge up." She gave him a look, eventually resulting to pushing his legs back so they grew to a peak at his knees, his body curling up in on itself. "I know you aren't asleep, Matty, you can go ahead and open your eyes."

Matty let out a disappointed kind of groan, stretching upwards as he obliged: letting the light through his eyes, and unable to stop himself grimacing as he did so - it was too bright, perhaps brighter than it had been before. He came to focus on his surroundings - how Gemma's flat looked considerably cleaner once he wasn't coming back to it every night, but how in the same way, it looked much less lived in. He doubted that was so much so of a reflection on Gemma, but on himself, who'd definitely taken more of an advantage of her hospitality towards him than he perhaps should have.

Matty came to gesture towards a vase that had once sat centerpiece on the coffee table; Gemma had now pushed it into the corner on an end table, and it lay there looking uncomfortably empty. "What happened to the flowers?" He glanced back to Gemma, watching her glance across at the vase with a certain confusion, almost as if she wasn't quite able to immediately figure out what Matty was referring to. "They were pretty."

"They're flowers, Matty." Gemma told him, stretching out in the sofa, the sleeves of her sweater falling down as she did so. "They die."

Matty shrugged, tucking a strand of hair behind his ear, feeling through the curls and finding a certain absence of something in them, and with that he couldn't help but recall that one Friday at the park when George had offered to help fix the daisies in his hair, and the way he'd held Matty's head still with his hand on his neck. Followed by the way something had gone off inside him right then, in the way it was that very same something that had consumed him completely.

"Only if you don't water them." Matty prompted, not entirely sure why he was so fixated on the sunflowers that Gemma had once kept in a vase on her living room coffee table, but there was something within him that was just drawn to them. "I mean, yeah, they do eventually, but you'd forgotten to water them."

"I kind of had better things to think about when you'd disappeared for so long, don't you think?" Gemma bit her lip, almost as if she was on the verge of saying something else, before seeming to give up on it entirely, and resorted to hiding her face behind her mug as she took a drink of her tea.

"Maybe I shouldn't have been such a stubborn dickhead about things if I didn't want the flowers to die." Matty let out a sigh, bringing one knee up to his chest as he stared down at his own mug of tea - still on the coffee table, untouched.

"Maybe." Gemma offered him a smile, following his gaze down to the tea. "I've not poisoned it, you know?" She shook her head teasingly.

Matty offered her a smile in response. "Yeah, maybe." He came to avoid her comment about the tea almost entirely, which was perhaps a little rude, but he just couldn't deny the fact that he had other things on his mind. "I think I have to change. I think I already am changing. That scares me. A fucking hell of a lot."

Gemma raised her eyebrows, the use of the word 'scares', immediately catching her attention, because all though Matty was somewhat renowned for his honesty, it definitely wasn't that kind of honesty at all. "Why?" She prompted for him to elaborate as she placed the mug back down on the coffee table, desperately trying to read it all off his face before a word even escaped his mouth.

"Why does it scare me or why am I changing?" Matty came to ask, knowing that she wasn't at all bothered as to which of the two it was, but found himself using it as an excuse to waste the time away: hold the moment in which she'd come to understand everything back just a little while longer, because as comfortable as Matty was with Gemma, he was still so desperately uncomfortable with himself.

"Both." Gemma nodded at him, watching the way his face grew pale, seemingly at the prospect of explaining it all to her.

"It scares me because I'm getting this feeling that through everything, I was wrong, I was narrow-minded, I was arrogant, I was naive, I was stupid. I was exactly the kind of person I'd come to hate, because if I start to accept that maybe I'm wrong about something then what does that say for everything else?" He let out a sigh, letting his gaze flicker around the room, finding himself too tense to focus on one single thing for very long at all. "I'm... I guess... I guess it's down to George."

Gemma's face gave way to a smile, having deemed the idea of George changing everything to be this pathetic kind of hopeless romantic ideal that just wouldn't happen, but here it was before her, and in a weird way, she found that she'd never even considered that it'd be anything else to do it. But in all honesty, she had never even found herself entirely certain of the inevitability of change in Matty, or at least the inevitability of willing change - everyone had to change in the end, as situations did and life kicked them down to the curb, but this was just something different entirely.

"There's nothing bad about being wrong, about making mistakes. What matters is that we change. That we grow, that we become better people." Gemma concluded, so very desperate to ask in detail just what it was that George had said to change it all, but finding that maybe now wasn't the time.

"I'm not entirely sure I know how to be a good person." Matty came to admit, a sullen kind of distant look in his eyes.

"Not necessarily good, but better. You know how to be better." She moved closer to him, reaching her fingers around his wrist. "Course you do."

"Yeah." Matty nodded, swallowing hard, because there were just two things that immediately came to mind, but the fact of it all was that just neither of them were particularly easy things to do. There was definitely an easier one of the two, though, and Matty came to lean towards that one first, putting the second off, but still keeping it there, at the forefront of his mind, always. "I'm scared, though. I'm scared of changing, I'm scared of leaving a part of myself behind."

"Then take your time." She offered, face folding over into a smile. "You shouldn't have to push it. It's going to have to happen in the end, so let it happen when it feels right. Let it happen when it should."

-

Matty did end up taking his time indeed, letting in one week, closing in on a second, pass. It was in that time that Matty came to appreciate that perhaps what he'd gotten himself so concerned with didn't mean so much at all, because upon every opportunity in which he attempted to explain it, and in particular the way it made him feel to Gemma, he found that he just couldn't get it out right, because it just didn't make so much sense to mean that much at all, but for his situation, for the way that things were, there was little avoiding the fact that it seemed to count for everything.

However, what Matty had managed to explain to Gemma was the whole George situation. At first she'd been surprised that they'd come down to what they had quite so quickly, but she had found that the more she thought about it, it just didn't make much sense any other way. There was just something about what Matty and George shared between them that Gemma couldn't quite understand - she, of course, wasn't alone in that, as both Matty and George themselves were still struggling somewhat on that front. Matty, however reckoned that he was perhaps getting there, eventually.

They'd only gotten more and more comfortable with one another, and Matty found himself at times disgusted by his own thoughts, because although he didn't quite love George, not yet, not properly, he was definitely well on his way there.

Things had only gone full circle with Adam, who had now just come to accept Matty sat in George's lap as just as much of a given as walking into the living room and seeing the coffee table. It was quite odd, really, at least on George's part, who had found himself coming to miss his accusations and largely unsolicited conclusions about the nature of their relationship - in a weird way really.

George had come to an odd kind of breaking point late Wednesday afternoon, when Adam returned from work to see the two of them pretty much making out, right in plain view, in the middle of the kitchen. Only, of course, seemingly desensitised to it all, to hardly even bat an eyelash as he squeezed past the two of them, who stood there stammering and blushing, as he made himself a cup of tea.

It was as the silence dragged on between them that George eventually just met Adam's gaze, and came to tell him rather bluntly, that yes, he and Matty were fucking. Adam hadn't reacted quite as much as George had expected, which at first had been oddly disappointing; he'd given them little more than a smile and a nod, making his way back out of the kitchen, only to stop at the doorway, turning back, looking George right in the eyes, and letting out a sigh, followed by an extraordinary calm: 'I know. I heard you,' before walking straight out through the door.

It had perhaps been that, and the way that had at first seemed to hold the whole world inside it, but within very little time at all, faded out to the normal, faded out to jokes and smiles, that brought Matty to the easier of the two things he'd outlined for himself that Friday at Gemma's. It of course, wasn't until the second Monday that followed until he actually came to do it.

He'd ran it all through his head a thousand times, and perhaps the more he thought about it, just the more he came to accept that maybe there really wasn't all that much to it, but still, he couldn't keep his natural anxiety at bay, and couldn't stop the way his stomach turned over inside him - doing backflips as he sat in George's bedroom, waiting for him to come home from the shop, having little more with his day then wash the dishes left in the sink, watch a bit of shitty daytime TV, and water the vase of flowers that had appeared on the kitchen table the other day, seemingly out of nowhere.

At six minutes past five, the front door slammed shut, and Matty found himself listening to the sound of George's footsteps as they made it inside, through the flat, seemingly in search of Matty, and slowly growing louder until they reached his bedroom door.

Matty only really came to explode with anxiety however, as George made his way inside, offering a quick smile to him as he sat with his knees up to his chest on the end of the bed. George then proceeded in taking his phone from his jeans pocket and plugging it in on his bedside table to charge. At that point, however, Matty came to accept that what lay on the tip of his tongue was perhaps better out there, eating away at the silence, at the looks shared between the two of them, than eating away at his insides.

"George." Matty began, getting to his feet, and making his way over to George's side.

"Mhmm?" It was as if George could sense a hint of something else in his eyes, and really, Matty didn't doubt that he could, yet, he didn't doubt that it scared him either. There was a certain degree of trust that Matty had come to place in George, and it was perhaps trust to a degree that Matty had previously found himself largely unable to imagine.

Matty wasn't at all sure how to phrase it - wasn't at all sure how to catch up with what it was exactly that was so rampantly running through his own head, and how to put it the best way possible, but perhaps the more he tried to do just that, the more he came to realise, and the more he came to accept that life just didn't work out quite like that at all.

Life was messy, life was broken in places, but life was true and honest, regardless of nerves, of anxiety, of the awkward little 'what if' thoughts holding you back. It was with that which Matty finally came to a conclusion, not just to whirlwind of thoughts locked up inside his own head, but to the silence too.

"Be my boyfriend?" He looked up at George, words coming out perhaps too nonchalantly, but he could certainly vouch for the fact that it just didn't echo the way he felt inside.

George's eyes grew wide, heart skipping a beat, and he found his fingers wrapping tightly around Matty's, desperate to prove to himself that this was real despite what lingered at the back of his mind, desperate to argue otherwise.

In all admittance, George wasn't quite sure entirely what to make of the situation and where to begin to put together Matty's thought process, and to figure out just where this had all come from. That was what delayed his response, not the actual response itself, as that was perhaps something that George had come to decide weeks ago.

Eventually, managing to get a grip on the situation, George let out a sigh, face falling into a smile, because fuck, he wasn't sure what it was that had changed, but he found himself so incredibly thankful for it. He wasn't entirely sure why, because it wasn't so much the label of 'boyfriend' itself, but everything that came with that, everything hidden behind the look in Matty's eyes - everything that he really meant.

"Course." George watched as Matty's eyes lit up, his cheeks growing pink, and the atmosphere of the whole room seemingly to relax considerably. "Fuck." George let out a sigh, running his mind over possible topics of conversation, possible pathways on which they could depart from that moment on, but finding himself settling on nothing that meant quite as much to him as kissing Matty, right then and right there.

Kissing was easier than talking, and the both of them knew that there lay quite the something between them: untouched, but almost begging to break the silence of the room. That, however, could wait half an hour more. It wasn't that they'd particularly intended to end up kissing for thirty five minutes, it had just sort of happened. As most things involving Matty and George's relationship had.

The two ended up stretched out across George's bed, that had maybe, at some point become Matty's too. They were curled up next to each other, with Matty's head curled into George's chest. George had been eager to break the silence that had fallen around them like a gentle blanket of snow, but had found that the minutes had dragged on, and the silence as had remained just as it was.

In the end, it was Matty that did it. "My parents got divorced when I was sixteen." He let out a sigh, letting his gaze drift across the room, his mind fixated upon that very moment, so vivid in his memory. "I guess things hadn't exactly been brilliant before, but things had gone wrong from there. I mean it affected everyone, but I guess I'm just worse at dealing with things."

"That's not your fault." George added: voice slow, calming, and with a good intent. Matty didn't see it quite that way, though.

"No offence, George, but... just..." He let out a sigh, "not now, okay? You can tell me how 'beautiful and perfect' I am in a bit. I need to say it right now, properly, don't let me get scared and change my mind again."

"Again?" George's eyes widened, coming to wonder just what had been plaguing Matty's mind, and of course, for how long.

Matty simply nodded. "Again." He let out a sigh, taking a moment to remember just where he'd been a minute or so before. "I mean, I guess I had kind of shitty friends, I mean I was sixteen, we've all been there, but I don't know. I started drinking quite a bit. I mean I had before, but... quite a lot. You know, drinking just to blur everything out and find yourself passed out somewhere that you couldn't remember how you'd even got to in the first place. And then that just started more shit after my dad left, and my mum had to work more, and so she got me to help more, or she wanted to, or really I needed to, but I just couldn't be fucked with it, because I was always in a state, always out, always drunk, always there to fucking waste my life, because I thought it all was bullshit, and it was easier to write everything off like that. To tell the whole world to fuck off than to really deal with things. I just wasn't there to help, to look after my brother and stuff. That caused fights, and I just didn't want to spend time at home anymore."

"Didn't know you had a brother." George glanced across at him, but then again, he came to recall that whenever George had talked about his family, Matty had just always listened.

"Yeah." Matty gave way to a sigh. "I do. His name's Louis. He's twelve. I haven't seen him since I left." He shook his head, sitting up in bed. "I fucked up. I fucking fucked up big time, but I just I couldn't accept that, I couldn't deal with myself, and then I fucked off from school after my exams finished. I really started to do a whole fucking lot of nothing, and then I guess I got bored with that, so I started to do cocaine." Matty let out an awkward choked off kind of laugh that was half way to a sob. "I told people that my mum kicked me out when she found out, but she didn't. She was pissed, but she didn't, but she wanted me to get better, she wanted to make it work, she wanted to help me, but I didn't want that. I just wanted her to fuck off. I wanted everyone to fuck off. So in the end, it was me that fucked off." He let out a sigh. "Funny that."

George leaned forward, reaching for Matty's hand, and giving it a reassuring kind of squeeze that had Matty glancing back to him, and offering up an awkward kind of pretty smile: half hearted, and falling apart in most places.

"I ended up sleeping on someone's sofa for a few weeks, then someone else's, then winding up back with Gemma, who had ended up as perhaps the one person that didn't entirely hate me, and I guess, back then, I was a junkie, a little bit." He let out a sigh, shaking his head: unable to stop the thoughts screaming at him that he should stop talking, screaming at him in certainty that he was ruining everything. However, they just meant nothing, nothing at all when he felt George's fingers, curling tightly together with his own.

"Gemma's too nice to me, I guess. I had this... this... there was this guy, though, back when I was seventeen. I liked him a whole lot more than he liked me, but that's that. I stayed with him for a while, but he was a bit of a dickhead. Bit of a proper dickhead. It didn't last. He helped me ease up on the coke, though... there was that."

Matty let out a sigh, moving back into George's chest, pulling his hand away from his, but beginning instead to trace patterns into his palm with his fingertips. "Thank you for not being a dickhead. Not even a little bit."

George let out a laugh - honoured but not entirely convinced. "I'm pretty sure I'm just a tiny little bit of a dickhead. I mean, aren't we all?"

Matty shook his head: certain in his words, and unwilling to let George change his mind for him. "No. Not you. You're different. You're special." George smiled, not entirely convinced of the truth behind Matty's words, but figuring that perhaps it had been less so about factual honesty, and more so about kindness, about sentiment.

"I fucked up everything. With my family, with everyone that matters. I haven't spoken to any of them since I left. It's got to the point where they stopped trying, and it's gotten to the point where I just don't blame them at all." Matty let out a sigh, voice growing quieter and quieter. "That's why I have to change. Things have to change, I can't keep losing people I love, people I care about. I can't. Not anymore." Matty's voice grew quieter still. "I can't lose you."

George's chest tightened suddenly, instinctively moving in close to Matty and pulling him further into his chest with his arm around his shoulders. "You've not fucked it up completely." George assured him, letting Matty press his face into his side, hiding away from the world, hiding away, perhaps from himself. "Promise you. You can always change things. They don't have to be the family you no longer talk to forever."

Matty shook his head, desperately trying not to cry, as he'd come to conclude that perhaps he'd cried into George's chest just far too many times already. "I don't think they'd want to hear from me very much anymore."

George paused for a moment: words resting on the tip of his tongue, held with a degree of uncertainty to them. "You know what I think?" Matty gave a nod, very much without thinking it through. "I think that's just some bullshit you've told yourself - convinced yourself of to avoid facing up to them."

Matty fell into silence after that, turning it over in his head, finding himself rather quickly coming to know George to be right, but finding that it took him so much longer to accept that. He couldn't help the way it tore away at his mind, digging itself deep up in there, and making itself much more at home than Matty would have ever liked it to be.

"You know?" George began, finding a certain something in Matty's eyes, and coming to dig them both back out of the silence and perhaps even cover over the hole it had made.

"Yeah?" Matty looked up at him, a little on edge, as he was quite unable to push away everything that fell back to what George had said, because despite everything, George always just seemed to be right, and to know the best for him in absolutely the worst kind of way. Perhaps Matty didn't quite want someone to look out for him in that kind of way, but despite that, perhaps it was just exactly what he needed.

"What was it that made you change your mind?" Perhaps George's question wasn't the best thing to start everything over again, but after what Matty had said about his family, something had changed in him, and it brought George back to wondering just what it was that had changed his mind about it all. "The boyfriend thing."

Matty smiled - it was a genuine smile, faltering slightly, but definitely having the right heart about it. "Because you are different, and I think you matter to me a hell of a lot more than being pretentious and free without labels, and all that bullshit, because those are just ideas, and you're a person. Of course you matter more."

"Ideas and philosophies count for a lot." George reminded him, however finding himself unable to halt the fluttering of his heart in his chest. "You remember the invention much more than the inventor, don't you, after all?"

Matty shook his head. "That doesn't count for shit. I don't want you to leave. I don't want what we have to suddenly stop, and this gives things permanence, to a degree, I guess. This ties everything down. I guess I'd been so scared of that for such a long time, but it doesn't scare me like it used to anymore. I think what scares me more is losing you again. I have to put myself back together. It was what you said that unravelled it all - my entire mentality, and everything I knew, but that was for the better, because now when I put myself back together I can use different pieces. I'm not scared of losing myself anymore - I am myself, always will be. That self just has to change - that's only natural."

"I get where you're coming from." George admitted, taking a moment to delve down into his own head. "It's not just you that's changed, you know? You gave me a different perspective on things, you made me want to do more than sit around here my entire life. Vaguely satisfied, somewhat at peace. That counts for a hell of a lot, and I guess I've lost quite a part of me in all of this, but I guess it just has to be for the best."

"I want to be more like you." Matty let out a sigh, avoiding George's gaze. "Don't tell me I'm wrong for thinking that, because you're the best thing in my life, I wish I could be that kind of person for somebody else."

George let out a sigh. "You are." He thought back to that first Tuesday, to how this had all begun. "Weirdly enough, you are."

"Shut up." Matty rolled his eyes. "Why the fuck would you ever admire or ever want to be like me? Or even like me for that matter?"

George shrugged, finding that to some degree, he wasn't fully sure of it himself. "How about, maybe I don't want to be fully like you, and you don't want to be completely like me? How about we just take a part of ourselves and meet each other in the middle? You shouldn't let people change you - you should let people make you want to change yourself."

"Honestly, you need to stop always knowing exactly what to say to me." Matty's face faded out into a grin. "Makes me think that you're not real sometimes. Like, logically, you know? You can't exist? Because who the fuck can put up with me? But no, you're here, with your stupidly cute messy hair, and your fucking beautiful smile, and your knowing exactly what to tell me, and your massive heart, and your massive fucking arms, like when do your arms even stop? And your massive dick-"

"Matty." George rolled his eyes. "Shut the fuck up, alright?"

"Honestly. You're worth so much more than some shitty little shop, in a shitty little town, with your shitty little boyfriend." Matty continued, finding that once he'd started it was actuallykind of hard to stop.

"You're not shitty, but yeah, okay, you're pretty little." George broke into a fit of laughter as Matty's eyes grew wide. "What? You said it yourself."

"Ugh..." Matty let his head fall down into George's lap. "But you are. You know that? You are."

"I guess." George shrugged, finding that he'd come to accept and welcome the idea of there being something more for him in life. "I don't quite know what I'd do, though."

"Male model?" Matty suggested, more serious than his tone let on.

"Fuck off. I was thinking something more like going to uni than standing around half naked in front of a camera."

Matty shook his head, doing his best to hide his slight disappointment. "You should, though. If you wanna go, then you should."

"Not right now. I can't exactly abandon the shop, you know? As shitty and little as it is." George came to imagine just how things could possibly change in a matter of months, and how things really already had.

"Don't be rude about it - great things do come in small packages." The smirk on Matty's face was clearly recognisable in his tone of voice.

"Matty, if that's a reference to your dick, I swear to-"

"George." Matty shook his head in mock disbelief. "Don't be so ridickulous."

"Stop or I'll kick you out." George groaned, his tone evidently humorous, but there was something about it that seemed to stick with Matty for just a moment.

"Would you?" Matty glanced up at him, eyebrows slightly raised, not really convinced that George would, but unable to combat a slight doubt in his mind.

"Course not." George brushed Matty's hair from his face and pressed a kiss to his forehead. "You can stay here as long as you like. Adam can fuck off if he thinks otherwise, but honestly, I do think he really does quite like you."

Matty smiled, not for a moment doubting that George's offer did comfort him, and in admittance, he really didn't want anything more, but there remained something always at the front of his mind, having grown and changed: spiralling slightly out of its confines as the two had spoken. It brought Matty this odd kind of tingling sensation that he felt throughout his entire body, but the thing was that he was coming to realise that it just wasn't necessarily bad.

And the thing was, that with the first of two things out of the way. Matty needed to tackle the second. "No." His voice was much calmer than he was on the inside. "I need to go home. To my family. I have to fix things before they get worse."

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