Arguably, the best thing about the shop was the fact that it was buried so deep in a mess of little, dimly light, yet somehow warming, and indeed to some degree, homely, alleyways. The shops in general were packed far too tightly together; they consisted of small, awkwardly shaped buildings, that due to the general lack of space, the owners had resorted to expanding their shops upwards into less than adequately sized upstairs spaces.

It was the part of town that remained somewhat hidden away from the industrial front of everything else, away from the eye of a casual passerby - not so much the kind of place you could accidentally end up in. Although, in truth, the very same awkwardly cramped, quaint, trying its best kind of feeling radiated through the whole town. It was just drowned out in some places more than others: on the high street, for example, which was paved ten metres wide with cobbles, as opposed to the metre or so room you had between shops in the alleyways, at best.

It wasn't the most desolate of places - certainly full of life, and in some regards, much more so than the bleak, grey, finely tuned structure and formalities of bigger cities, fitted with brand name high street shops and department stores. Of course, however, it was by no means a hub of excitement - a great expanse of life and unique culture, or particularly much of note at all, but still it wasn't like they were tucked away in some hamlet in the middle of the countryside or something like that. They had three different supermarkets - a Tesco, a Sainsbury's, and an Asda. A Mcdonald's and a Burger King. A little, squashed in Primark on the end of the high street, and a Costa Coffee. It was by no means the worst place, yet by no means the best - perhaps mind-numbingly average, or just perhaps comfortably so. It was really all up to opinion.

There were, however, quite the selection of home businesses, smaller shops, little establishments with more character to say for themselves than anything else, which although they lay tucked away, in less frequented corners and streets, were at times visited far more frequently than the other parts of town.

To the left was a place that specialised in handmade jewellery run by a woman in her fifties who tended to offer every single customer a cup of tea, even if they never ended up buying anything. To the right was a bakery, a family business kind of thing, that did everything from plain white loaves to weird artisanal pieces that seemed much more for display and serving as the establishment's facebook profile pictures, as opposed to actual food.

The shop itself, buried so deep amidst everything else, with very little to say for itself, was a secondhand shop, not really specialising in anything: racks of clothes over to one side of the store, shelves of books directly opposite the checkout, an old bicycle in the corner, propped up against the window, alongside an old style kind of vintage dollhouse, faced outwards as to angle the chipped and broken side of the roof away from the public eye.

It wasn't visited all that frequently, hidden away with little unique to say for itself, and George, who sat behind the checkout, for hours at a time on most days now, was so very okay with that. It wasn't that he didn't care, because he did care, very much so, about lots of things, just less so about the secondhand shop that his dad's friend owned, and just less so about the job he'd gotten at it as his dad's friend, Andy, spent some time with his mother, who wasn't all that well, and didn't look like she'd be getting better.

Really, at nineteen, George ought to have been able to think of a million better ways to spend his time, a million better ways to waste away the summer, a million better ways to waste away his life. The fact was, however, that he didn't quite mind it, not at all. It wasn't that he was lost out there, in the great expanse of life, or alone, or fed up with everything, or anything like that at all. He just found himself content, content with little advance on mediocrity, and finding no reason to change that. He quite liked the place, after all, and George was living the kind of life where quite liking something was enough.

He spent the days listening to music, scrolling somewhat mindlessly through social media on his laptop until a customer happened to come inside. Then, of course, he'd actually do the job that he was probably being paid too much to do, and smile at them, making light conversation as he rang up their items, which was something he found himself good at, for what little it meant.

He quite liked talking to people. He quite liked a lot of things really, and found himself awfully impartial to the rest of it. In all honesty, his life didn't quite amount to all of that much, but he'd never felt the looming presence of a weight balanced precariously upon his shoulders, declaring that it needed to amount to something more. He'd simply grown past the childhood phase of thinking that his life was something special, and that he'd grow up to be someone famous, someone remembered for something, or something like that.

In his mind, and by his own way of thinking, things did happen for a reason, but that reason was that they just did. That was how the world worked, things kept happening, people kept living, and maybe one day they wouldn't, but that was much beyond his concern. He was content in living his life without much fuss, and letting the rest of the world get on with theirs.

It wasn't that he didn't care, it was just that he was happy and didn't see the need to ask for much else. He had a job that required him to do very little, that he found himself vaguely satisfied with. The more he thought about it, he was just doing very much the same stuff that he'd be doing if he was sat at home in his room, except usually he was wearing more clothes, not that he made much of a habit of sitting around stark naked, but he was lazy, and he was making the best out of having moved out from his parents' house.

George wondered if his parents had expected him to grip this new found freedom with everything he had and run around every night at all hours, going to parties and getting beyond wasted, having sex with absolutely everyone, things like that. He wondered that if they had, whether or not they'd be so supportive of him moving into a flat with his friend Adam, who wasn't the most responsible of people in the world, but at least wasn't, well, a massive fucking idiot. George liked to think he wasn't a massive fucking idiot too, but sometimes he kind of was.

It wasn't that he was the most boring person in the world, or at least he hoped that he wasn't, and he'd make quite the claim against it, probably, if he felt like it at the time. He had interests, he had friends, he did things, but they didn't amount to all that much, in his own admission. Yet then again, in his mind, that was fine.

They went to parties sometimes - the smaller kind of parties though. The kind that someone's friend's boyfriend's brother holds in a rented one bedroom bungalow that looks more like a garage or a shed or something like that than an actual house. The kind where you bring your own store brand alcohol that you bought on the way there - in previous years having hoped they didn't ask you for I.D. The kind where you sit around getting stoned and listening to the kind of music that just about one person there actually enjoys, and another six claim to like because they think it makes them seem cooler, whereas the rest of the people there are just a little too out of it to give much a fuck otherwise.

He got properly wasted sometimes, although just stoned more often. George smoked quite a lot of weed, actually - not enough for it to be a problem, but regularly. He just wasn't quite so excited by getting so drunk that he had to be dragged to A&E at four in the morning, because that just wasn't fun for anyone involved. He was however, much more comfortable with getting drunk to an extent. Fun drunk, happy drunk, bubbly drunk, knowing responsibility and when to stop drunk, because he sort of had his life together more so than he might like to have admitted.

And of course, he had sex sometimes - as most people did. Sometimes a lot, but that was exclusively when he was with someone - he wasn't much for casual sex - something that he felt just didn't mean a great deal at all. It wasn't like he was the soppy romantic type, he just felt like it should maybe mean something more than just a one night stand. Maybe he was just a bit uncomfortable with getting fully naked around strangers he'd known for barely a few hours - there was that too.

He was single now, but he'd had girlfriends before, boyfriends before too. His last relationship had ended with his girlfriend going off to university in Birmingham, because that was of course, a thing that people were doing at their age - getting up and getting on with their lives, moving out further than into a block of flats a fifteen minute walk away from their parents' house.

George wondered if it should bother him, or at least bother him more than it did, because it did bother him just a little, and maybe more than just a little on occasion. However, in all honesty, he wasn't quite that drawn to much outside of his town. As pathetic as he felt it sounded, he just didn't feel like there was anything much for him to go to university for. After all, he had a slightly drowned out sense of aspiration, and a pliant blanket of complacency to wrap himself up in - what more could he want?

The thing was, that in all of this, he was happy, things were good, things were alright. Things were just about how he'd quite like them to be; he'd finish his shift at the shop in an hour and a half's time, and then he'd go out and meet Adam by the Waterstones on the corner of the high street. He'd drag Adam into the Tesco so he could buy some more cigarettes, having finished his last pack on his lunch break, sort of just for something to do - Laura hadn't been replying to his texts, and he needed something else to waste the time with.

Laura was this girl he liked, sort of, vaguely, something like that. She was kind of pretty, she had a boyfriend though, and that was that, because George held not being an asshole about things very highly - not to feel better about himself, just because it was the right thing to do. He had never liked her all that much to begin with anyway. She was just nice to talk to, and that was that.

They'd then go over to the house Ross and John had bought together three weeks ago and sit around and talk shit. Three weeks prior, there'd been a stupid kind of housewarming party, that wasn't much of a party at all - there'd been about fifteen people in total, but at least there'd been a decent amount to drink. No one had been at all sure what to buy them in the way of housewarming gifts, because who the fuck has a serious housewarming party who isn't a forty five year old housewife and mother of two?

George found himself able to very vividly recall the journey to the home and living section of Asda that he'd taken with his friend, Ellie, just a few hours before. No one had initially thought that they'd been at all serious about the whole housewarming gift thing, but the reality had come crashing down all too late. The two had however, still struggled to take it very seriously at all, and had nearly gotten kicked out of the shop for bursting into a fit of manic, hysterical laughter in front of a teapot with a face painted onto it.

In the end, Ellie had gotten them a value multi pack of scented candles for £2.50 (they smelt like shit, but what else had they expected?), and George had seriously considered buying them the somewhat disturbing looking teapot with a face, but instead settled for a series of largely unnecessary kitchen utensilsthat he either straight out laughed at the existence of, or couldn't name off the top of his head. He reckoned those were the kind of things they'd actually value and appreciate, funnily enough.

Those had not been the worst gifts at all. Really, they should have thought through what kind of people they had as friends before they organised the whole thing. Joel had gotten them a happy 50th wedding anniversary card - one of those ridiculous waste of space ones that are all in all about the size of an A3 piece of paper. He'd then gone and gotten everyone to sign it exactly ten minutes before he'd given it to them, along with a bouquet of red roses, which on its own, was probably one of the nicer gifts they'd received. It was the fact that he'd presented it to them with the card, and then proceeded to pick off petals and throw it over the two of them like wedding confetti, that ruined it.

Really though, they'd gotten to the stage of coupley and disgusting that they'd gone and moved in together, so they kind of deserved it. Like seriously, they'd made a trip to Ikea together, and come back with possibly the ugliest looking items of furniture possible, but that was besides the point. They probably would end up getting married by Christmas at this rate. Not that anyone genuinely minded, they were happy together, it was cute, just kind of overly so at times.

-

It was roughly an hour before the shop closed, and George had just about given up on keeping his eyes open for an extended period of time. He found himself wondering if he could get away with just putting his head down on the desk and drifting off for a while, because really, it was getting late now, most of the shoppers had gone home, and being a Tuesday, the town was hardly buzzing with life.

However, it was of course on the exact moment that George found himself seriously considering just doing so: letting his head fall down onto the counter and close his eyes, that the shop door opened. He took a moment to restrain himself from letting out a groan as a skinny, sort of just effortlessly pretty kind of girl made her way inside.

She gave George a small smile from where she stood, tucking a curly strand of her golden blonde hair behind her ear as it fell forward into her face when she turned her head. She seemed to be around George's age, and the kind of pretty that made him want to start up some form of conversation with her, but George was getting tired, and she didn't seem all that interested really.

George came to realise rather quickly that it appeared as if she was waiting for someone: peering impatiently out of the shop window, and then glancing back down at her phone with a troubled look on her face - held between a furrowed brow and pursed lips. He considered asking her if she was alright, disregarding what he'd previously told himself about making conversation with her, but it was just as he came to seriously consider it that she seemed to relax completely.

A few seconds later, the door opened again, and this time a boy with curly hair that was sticking up in places, and rather skinny little limbs, stepped inside. It was immediately apparent that they knew one another, and George came to piece together that she'd been waiting for him or something like that. It really wasn't his business, and there was really no point in him watching her, or the two of them anymore, but he found that there was just something in the boy's appearance that had captivated him immediately.

George wasn't at all sure how he had captivated him at all, and whether or not it really mattered all that much, but there was definitely something special about him. It was perhaps in the three daisies he had in his hair, half tied, half tucked in there messily, but somehow giving off a sense of beauty that George couldn't quite explain. However, beyond the flowers in his hair, admittedly, there wasn't all that much more to him - he was dressed in blue dungarees, had a few vaguely shitty looking tattoos across his arms that he might as well have done himself at home. He might have also been wearing a little bit of makeup, but with the distance between them, George couldn't quite tell.

George soon came to conclude, that it wasn't just his appearance, but something about him as a whole that had captured his attention. He was just yet to pinpoint what that was exactly, before coming to accept that maybe he was just another pretty boy. He certainly wasn't the first, and he certainly wouldn't be the last. It was with that in mind that he turned his attention away from the two of them as they began to look around the shop, and went back to his laptop instead.

A good ten minutes passed before George found his attention brought back to the two: their conversation having grown loud enough for him to catch from the other end of the room.

"It's bullshit though, Gemma." The boy had been the first to raise his voice, leaning back against the wall beside the rack of clothes, arms folded across his chest as he watched the girl, Gemma, look over various items of clothing. "It is." He went on to insist, Gemma seeming to take very little interest in what he had to say, and George came to wonder if he was paying him more attention than she was.

"You say everything you don't personally like is bullshit." It took a moment or two: the weight of his eyes glaring into her side from where he was stood, until Gemma finally found it within herself to respond. "Matty, come on, you burnt your toast this morning and you blamed that on capitalism-"

"Yes, but..." Matty began, stepping forward as he let out a sigh. "It is. It's the capitalist bullshit, it's how they keep selling us broken products at higher prices, it's how they keep the poor poorer and force them into a worse quality of life because the ones at the top of this all, at the top of this great pyramid, are benefitting from the suffering of everyone else. Your cheap broken toaster never works, because although it is possible to manufacture a fully functional toaster for the same price, the capitalist bullshit powering our society will keep selling us this broken shit, and it's only going to get worse."

"Or maybe..." Gemma trailed off, inhaling deeply as she seemed to begin to lose her patience, "you should just learn how to make a slice of toast without burning it? How about that?" She smiled at him, seeming not to be quite as fazed by what Matty had splurted out with as George found himself. "It's just toast."

Matty shook his head, walking away and glancing around the shop for a moment. "It's not 'just toast', because it's just nothing. Everything contributes to everything else, we're all tied into this great communal being that society is, and everything matters, everything contributes, and we need to change. Things need to change. Society is bullshit. Money is bullshit. It's a flawed system and we can't keep up with it anymore."

Gemma picked up a denim jacket off the rack, and made her way over to Matty, shaking her head slightly. "You're not going to change the world. And you're especially not going to change it by yelling about your toast in a secondhand shop." She glanced across at George, who was watching the both of them with a sense of intrigue and captivation that he couldn't quite explain, and tossed him a quick kind of apologetic smile.

"I'm not going to change anything by keeping silent, though." He followed Gemma's gaze up to George, and shot him an odd kind of look, as if he'd not yet come to notice him at all, or simply managed to forget that they weren't alone in the midst of everything else. "I mean no offence, mate," He began to talk to George more directly now, "but money is bullshit. Business is bullshit."

George just shrugged; he sort of had a point hidden down there underneath the mess of arrogance and self-righteousness. "Money is unfair - how we have people starving and then billionaires, but you're not going to stop money from existing, nobody is."

"You have a shop. You're not supposed to agree with me." Matty laughed at him, raising his eyebrows a little, as he walked over to the counter. Gemma just turned back to glancing around, hoping Matty'd know at least when to shut up. "What's the point in supporting it all? Hypocrisy and all that?"

George sighed, leaning back in his chair. "It's not my shop. My dad's friend's, I'm just here because it's an easy job really. Not a bad way to spend my time." He explained, not at all sure why he felt like he should, or why he felt like offering up his whole life to story to this random guy was at all necessary. George just hated the fact that it more than likely had something to do with the fact that he was pretty. He was an odd kind of pretty - iit was largely drowned out by the arrogance he conducted his every breath and move with, and of course the egotistical sense of self he wore like a crown, but it was prominent, still very much there.

"It's bullshit, though, and you're contributing to the bullshit. What is the point in supporting something you don't believe in? You're contributing, you're supporting it all-"

George cut him off, shaking his head, and growing increasingly irritated, as pretty as Matty was, and as much as that seemed to matter in George's head, because apparently he was pretty shallow. "The only thing I'm supporting is myself, because you know what? I'd rather be able to pay my rent. You thought of that?"

From the silence that followed, it appeared that perhaps Matty hadn't thought of that. However, as George had very much suspected, he found that the silence didn't last for very long at all.

"Course I have." Matty insisted, biting at his bottom lip. "Not just a fucking pretty face, you know?" He then turned back to Gemma, seeming to make a point out of being as indiscreet as possible. "Are you done so we can leave, or not?"

George rolled his eyes, leaning back in his chair, thinking back to how he'd viewed Matty when he'd first walked into the shop, and struggling to piece together how this was the same person. Of course, however, you could never judge people based solely off of their appearance.

"Matty, you're being a dick." Gemma told him, but proceeded to make her way over to the counter to pay. It was likely that she just wanted to get out of there before Matty decided that he was going to physically fight George or something like that, especially as George was something close to twice the size of him.

"I'm being honest." Matty made a point out of correcting her. "Honesty is important, honesty frees us from the bullshit. Who are we without honesty? We are nothing, we are useless society of nothing and bullshit and lies-"

"Look." George cut him off, taking a sharp intake of breath, meeting his gaze with an abrasive kind of look set deep within his eyes. "Just shut the fuck up, oh my god, just shut up. You're very pretty but every time you open your mouth you're just fucking ruining it. Do yourself a favour, okay? Shut up."

George wasn't quite sure if Matty had actually come to listen to what he'd said, or if he'd just not been expecting anyone to speak back to him like that, but whatever it was, it left them in an astounding kind of silence. George took a moment to himself just to breathe, and perhaps calm down a little, before smiling and turning back to Gemma, and beginning to scan the tags on the clothes.

The silence remained unbroken as he finished the transaction, skipping the usual small talk and goodbyes he'd say to customers for the sake of being polite, as he was pretty certain that they'd gone past the state of politeness. George then proceeded to watch as they walked out of the shop; Matty seemed to have been taken down a notch or so, biting nervously at his fingernails as Gemma led him outside again. His eyes remained fixated on the two of them until they disappeared down the street and out of view of the shop window, and then, that was just that.

Just an asshole customer, because it wasn't like George hadn't experienced a few before. It had never been anything quite like this though, but it wasn't that which kept George so fixated on the matter. Instead, there was just something about Matty - with flowers in his hair, and far too much to say - that just wouldn't leave George's mind.

Even as he closed up for the day, and made his way through town to meet Adam, ready to listen to a great and overly detailed description of his friend's day, George couldn't quite get Matty out of his mind. He wasn't sure why or what it all could mean, if anything at all, or if it all just related back to the fact that he was pretty, and George couldn't help imagine how things would have been if he hadn't been such a dickhead. In the end, however, it didn't matter all that much, because even as it plagued his mind for the remainder of that day, it would all fade out into nothingness soon enough.

After all, nothing was ever permanent, nothing ever did last, and in time there'd be another pretty boy, and maybe that wouldn't be quite so much of a dick. George could count on that, or at least, so he thought.

-

There was just no better way to spend a Friday evening than trudging through what wasn't far off a rainstorm to make it back to your car and sit in traffic in the cold, because you can't afford a car without broken heating, hoping maybe you'd get home before your flatmate ate all the pizza left over from last night. And, of course, George found himself absolutely blessed with the honour of being stuck in just that very situation.

It hadn't been a bad day at all, especially in regards to the weather - it had been something resembling sunny and pleasant earlier around noon, something that might have even been convincing of the fact that it was actually summer. Of course, things had gone south pretty quickly, and as George had closed up the shop and attempted to make his way home, he'd come to wonder if, from the way the weather was looking, he'd stepped right back in time to November.

It wasn't even summer rain - there was nothing pleasant or summery about it at all. It was bordering on being sleet: unpleasantly cold, and certainly anything but expected, let alone wanted. That was just George's luck, though, wasn't it? He'd have something to grumble to Adam about later though. He could even use it as an excuse to blackmail him into being nice to him for a while, because George was a lovely person like that. It was questionable as to whether it would work, but George found that convincing himself of its brilliance as an idea held the best hopes of getting him through the rainy streets and down to the carpark with a sound state of mind.

The rain had come near enough to be the most exciting part of George's week - what had happened on Tuesday melting away in the back of his mind, soon to become nothingness and faces he could no longer recall. Tuesday night had gone on to end with George getting a little drunker than he'd anticipated on doing, and had then led to Wednesday morning leaving him to tell himself that it had nothing to do with with what had happened in the shop. By Thursday, however, nearly every thought of the encounter had vanished.

It was his sister's birthday in a week, and he'd turned to Ellie for advice in what girls actually wanted to receive as gifts. She'd told him that he was being sexist for thinking that she'd want anything different just because she was a girl, to which George had apologised, and she'd taken him out to feel out of place and confused as she pointed at various pieces of overly expensive makeup that his sister might like. And then vaguely pretty Laura had started texting him again.

Things had happened, the world had moved on, George had moved on, finding that he hadn't spared a single thought for Matty for two days now, because as pretty as he was, as much of a dick as he was, he just didn't matter.

The rain only worsened as George made it towards the carpark, almost as if it was determined to thoroughly soak him and generally ruin his day as much as possible before he could get to the safety of his car. It was a shitty little thing, painted a shade of dark blue - not the worst colour it could have been, but by no means the best. It had been fairly cheap however, and got him from place to place successfully. So it did its job, and George was happy with that.

The skies had very quickly turned a rather unpleasant shade of grey - the kind that seemed to yell foreboding. The very same grey reflected upon on the town, dulling everything else down into similar shades of grey. Even the trees to the side of the pavement looked somewhat limp and washed out, despite having once held the life in this particular pathway through town. George wondered how such a shade of vibrant green - full of life, meaning and passion, and perhaps everything someone might aspire or simply despise to be, could fade out into something resembling a shadow of itself, and only in a matter of days. That was the thing though, some things just never made sense, they just happened, and as far as George was concerned, it wasn't his place to question them.

He kept his eyes on the trees until he reached his car, finding his attention captured in the world around him, and the ever looming presence of change. It was only as he really felt the rain worsen however, that he came to move with more urgency to his car. It was as he did so, that his attention came to be drawn to something else: a small, skinny figure of a person, sat shivering on the curb.

The white shirt he was wearing was evidently too big for him, and fell most of the way down his thighs, which George couldn't help but feel were awfully skinny: fitting badly inside the pair of ripped black jeans he wore. As George continued to look, he came to notice his hand stretched out in front of him, holding a cigarette, which was seeming to wash away somewhat in the rain, as it was held loosely between two similarly skinny fingers.

George found that his attention was immediately drawn to him, likely in concern, or just down to something he was yet to explain. He didn't quite have time to contemplate just which of the two it was before the boy's head turned, as if he'd felt the presence of George's gaze on him. It was with that, which the two came to lock eyes.

Then the moment of understanding came. It came for the both of them: for George, and for Matty, because that's who the boy sat on the curb was, no question about it.

First of all, George couldn't help but feel somewhat stumped by the contrast between the sad, lost look in his eyes, the way his body seemed to shake all over with the cold, and the loudmouthed arrogant dickhead he'd found himself acquainted with just a few days before. It was that which left him unable to look away.

As a minute passed, and the two still found themselves sharing the company of one another's gaze, George came to conclude that this was the part where he pulled himself together, got out of the rain, into his car, and went home, but despite himself, and despite everything he should know and do, there was something within him: a certain kind of misplaced sympathy for Matty. He just seemed to be so differently portrayed than he had been before, and in that, there was just this part of George that didn't want to leave him out there in the rain and in the cold alone.

George would have liked to think that he'd brush it off, get past it, get in his car, and get home. He'd get back to his life, get back home and wrap his sister's birthday present, well try to, and end up fucking it up and ask Adam to do it for him. He'd get back and text Laura, vaguely pretty Laura who he'd only ever seen a few times - he'd get back and maybe spend some time with her again. He'd get back and spend tomorrow doing something, maybe getting stoned with someone - maybe Ellie.

Maybe he would have been able to do that. Maybe there was a whole alternate reality in which he'd turned away and did just that, but the thing was, there was something in Matty's eyes: sad, apologetic, and lost, that was pleading 'I'm sorry' over and over again. There was something about him that was wrong, and George couldn't shake the feeling that he just wasn't in the state where he could be left out there alone. It was with that, with the beginning of the third minute they spent holding one another's gaze, that George gave in and let himself make a stupid kind of decision. It had been a while since his last big fuck up, after all.

It was on the rationale of decency and kindness that George came to approach Matty. It didn't take him long to reach the curb that Matty remained sat on: curled up in on himself. It took him longer to think of what to say, as he remained in silence, in fear of himself and the consequence of this all.

"Are you okay, Matty?" George eventually came to ask, leaning down slightly in an attempt to retain his gaze.

Matty looked up, a little in shock. It was as if he'd completely missed the minutes they spent staring at one another. All in all, he didn't seem quite with it: a little lost up inside himself, and spacing out again as he focused in on George's face. There was something in his eyes that confirmed that he did indeed recognise George, but George couldn't quite distinguish as to what that meant to him.

Matty shook his head in response before, burying it back down into his knees, and letting his cigarette fall between his fingers and onto the tarmac. George remained a little unsure as to quite what he should do - the thing was that he'd found himself at the point where walking away and going home just wasn't an option anymore. It was as he came to admit it, that he put Matty's cigarette out with the toe of his shoe, and reached his hand out towards him.

Matty seemed reluctant, or perhaps just yet to acknowledge it, and with that, George couldn't help but feel awkwardly kind of uncomfortable, desperate to say something, desperate to make sense of this, of everything, of what Matty had been before, and what had led him to this. There were a thousand questions he could ask, but he refrained from every one, keeping his lips shut, and instead reaching out and curling his fingers in around Matty's wrist. It was then that Matty let George pull him to his feet, stumbling a little as he did so, and as much as George was hesitant about the idea, he reached out and let Matty fall into his side, supporting him under his shoulder as the two made it back through the rain to George's car.

In all honesty, George didn't know what else to do other than take him home. After all, getting him out of the rain was probably for the best. George, himself, had also gotten halfway drenched in all of this, but as he helped Matty into the passenger seat, then proceeding to get in himself, he felt a horrible pang of guilt in his chest at the notion of driving off; the notion of driving home to other things, and writing Matty back off.

George leaned back in his seat for a moment, attempting to fix his hair the best he could before turning to Matty, who sat beside him, seemingly very focused on breathing: eyes distant, fixated off somewhere outside the car. However, as George continued to watch him, he found that their eyes came to meet once more.

"T-thanks." Matty's tone seemed so vastly different from what it had been a few days ago, suddenly so quiet and so scared. George couldn't deny that in the space of a few days, something had happened, but he had to admit that as much as he suddenly felt himself concerned with Matty and his state of mind, it just wasn't his business. Matty wasn't his friend - they didn't even like one another. He was just another pretty boy, pretty even now, as George sat there, looking an awful lot like a drenched rat.

"Should I take you home?" George eventually came to ask, glancing back outside to see the rain worsen: thundering down onto the windows and falling down them in streams of little droplets.

Matty let out a sigh, moving so he stretched his feet up onto the dashboard. The gesture was so much more 'arrogant, everything is bullshit Matty', and in a weird way, it had George just that little bit more at ease. "No." He declared, tone mirroring his posture.

"No?" George repeated, suddenly very unsure as to quite what he was supposed to do now. "What do you want me to do-"

"You can take me to Gemma's if you want." Matty gestured vaguely with his hands as he spoke. "I don't mind."

"Why not home?" George found the question escaping his lips before he could think twice about it. He considered apologising, taking it back, but this was still Matty, this was still the same Matty who had been such a dickhead on Tuesday, and he couldn't let himself forget that.

"Don't have a home." Matty's tone seemed far too nonchalant, far too at ease, far too comfortable in contrast with his statement, and with that, George couldn't help feel a little uneasy. "I'm staying with Gemma, it's fine, don't look at me like that."

"Like what?" George stumbled over his words, suddenly feeling the Matty he'd been familiar with taking control again.

"Like you know shit, because you don't know shit about me - you fucking don't, and you know that? Like who the fuck are we? No one, we're no one to each other." Matty turned to George, looking him dead in the eyes. "I don't even know your name. You're just some fucking guy."

George came to the rather sudden realisation that no, Matty didn't. "It's George, by the way." Matty gave a nod, not seeming to care much either way. "I just wanted to make sure you were alright."

"Thought you wanted me to shut up." Matty raised his voice, glaring across at him. "Thought you might have been able to figure out what you want, seeming as you know everything, and I'm so wrong-"

"I can not drive you to Gemma's." George cut him off, meeting him with a slightly less pleasant kind of look, and Matty's demeanour seemed to fade out a little after that.

"You don't have to." Matty came to speak a few moments later, his voice once more much softer, as he returned to watch the raindrops hit the window pane. "I'd like it if you did, though."

George nodded, biting his lip for a moment. "Would you maybe tell me what's happened to you? You don't have to." George came to repeat just what Matty had said prior. "I'd like it if you did, though."

Matty let out a sigh, stretching back out against the seat. "I'll give you the abridged version - did a bit of a coke. More than a bit. Had a fight with Gemma. Things are shit. Things are always shit. Did a bit more coke. Then it started raining."

"Wouldn't have put you down for cocaine." George couldn't help but comment on that instantly, feeling how he immediately began to view Matty differently, and hating that, because maybe, in this all, it just wasn't his fault.

"I'm not a fucking junkie, though." Matty insisted, meeting George's eyes, and coming to raise his voice. "I'm not. It's just when shit gets really bad." He let out a sigh. "Gem doesn't want me to do it at all. And she's right, because of course she's right. She's Gemma, after all."

"So you had a fight because she found out that you had?" George quickly grew just that little bit more comfortable with asking. A voice, however, remained at the back of his mind, asking just whether he really believed that Matty wasn't a junkie or not.

"Something else as well." Matty bit at his fingernails, shaking his head a little as he came to recall just exactly what it had been. "She'll let me back in, though - she's nice. Too nice for me. I'm an asshole, I guess we've gathered that."

"I didn't mean-"

Matty rolled his eyes, shaking his head. "I don't care. Doesn't fucking matter. If we were all up in everything everyone thinks about us then there'd be nothing left of us, don't you think?"

"I want to say that maybe I misjudged you." George avoided his question, his tone stern, suddenly hesitant to back away from it all.

"No, I'm usually that much of a dick." Matty promised him, pulling his knees up onto the seat. What Matty didn't expect though, was for George to just laugh. A proper laugh, with smiles and everything. "What?" He retorted, looking George over - suddenly not at all sure what to make of him.

"Doesn't matter." George sighed, thinking for a moment, turning another terrible kind of thought over in his mind for a while. "Hey... uhh? Would it be alright if I gave you my number?"

Matty widened his eyes at that, seeming to be the last thing he'd come to expect - really, George could see where he was coming from. "What? You've decided that maybe that my looks outweigh my personality? Some bullshit like that? That'd maybe you'd go for me anyway?"

George couldn't help but blush a little, but came to make the quite the point out of shaking his head. "I'm a bit worried about you."

Matty scoffed, shaking his head in disbelief. "Seriously. I'm not saying you have to talk to me or whatever, that's not what I'm saying at all, we have entirely different lives, okay? We're different people, but what I'm saying is that if you ever need my help or whatever, you can call me. If you need me to pick you up or something like that? You can call me."

"Are you saying this just because I'm pretty?" Matty rolled his eyes, but proceeded to take his phone out anyway, passing it to George to put his number into.

"No." George's face gave way to a smile. "Don't get full of yourself - you're not that pretty."

"Oh come on." Matty shook his head, taking his phone back. "If I wasn't that pretty, I'd just be an asshole. And who gives their number out to assholes?"

George turned to Matty, letting out a sigh. "Me, apparently."

-

dedicated to SeraphStarshine because it's his birthday and he's v cool and i shitposted a lot of this to him and he had to put up with that 

thank u for reading !! hope u enjoyed !! votes and comments would be v appreciated !!! lov u !!!