In the few weeks that had passed, Matty found his life slowly curving back around into what he might call normal. In Matty's mind, though, 'normal' was of course, bullshit. As most things were.

Gemma had taken him back in that Friday night, she'd give him a questioning look, which eventually had grown into a series of questions themselves. Matty had been hesitant about answering them, something inside him holding him back from telling her exactly what had brought him back home, and exactly how that was the guy from the shop a few days ago - the very one that Matty had managed to piss off to a whole new extent. The one named George.

In the end, Gemma did never really learn what had happened in full throughout the course of that Friday, but as time came to pass, she came to accept that there were would always be things about Matty that she wouldn't know. That Friday night had simply gone over to join the others in their hundreds. Or thousands, perhaps.

The shadow of himself that Matty had let slip through it all, on the one night that George happened to notice him, had now faded out into the version of himself that Matty was much more comfortable with. Fucking George. He didn't mean a thing at all, not anymore, not as the days turned into weeks, and his number remained unused, hidden away at the back of Matty's phone.

Of course, it wasn't like George had insisted that they texted everyday, and Matty was okay with that, and in some regard, a little comforted by the presence of his number, by the opportunity, if things ever came down to it, but as things were looking, they just wouldn't end up like that. And that was okay, Matty as had assured himself. He just hated the fact that it took some convincing.

Matty, however, wasn't exactly the best judge of anything at all, because he was certainly sure that when he was younger he wouldn't find himself technically homeless at nineteen, but here he was now, sleeping on Gemma's sofa for far too long now.

Gemma was nice. It was better than the alternatives, and Matty sometimes doubted that he really deserved her company, let alone her kindness, but Gemma was nice, and she seemed to like him for one reason or another, despite everything else, and Matty just didn't feel as if he was in a position to question that.

The two had met a few years ago - when they were fifteen. Gemma had been the new girl at school, the kind of pretty one that instantly caught everyone's attention. Matty had seemed to make somewhat of a point about not giving the slightest shit about her, yet somehow in this all, they'd ended up wrapped in one hell of a mess together. Matty couldn't quite explain it himself - he was sure that Gemma hadn't liked him when he was fifteen, and telling her to fuck off when she'd asked him for cigarette, and he was sure that Gemma still couldn't be too fond of him at all, when they were nineteen, and he continued to tell her to fuck off, in response to just about everything. He stopped meaning it that much though, at some point down the line. Perhaps that was just where things had changed.

Perhaps she just felt sorry for him. Perhaps she was secretly one of those good people that you end up hearing all too much about. Perhaps, either way, Matty didn't give all that much of a fuck. Or perhaps he did, but perhaps that lay, with the thousands of others, as one of those things that he couldn't quite bring himself to voice.

Matty had a very sure idea of what person he had to be, and it was self-deprecating little questions like that which held no place in the ideal version of himself. It was the one he'd painted up in lights at the forefront of his mind, and indeed the very one that bore so very little resemblance to what was left of his genuine self, that he'd locked up away inside his head. The thing however, with Matty's very sure ideas about things, were that they certainly were not subject to change. Not in Matty's mind, at least.

Gemma lived in a tiny one bedroom flat on the outskirts of town, awfully close to the shittiest neighbourhood in town, but honestly, it wasn't too bad, all in all. It was by no means the nicest of places to live, but it was comfortable, even with all the furniture shoved too close together, and the odd crack or dent in the walls. Even with the creaky, horrible floorboards, and an off white, chipped paint on the walls, there was just something comforting about it: homely in spite of itself - perhaps homely to spite itself, and perhaps it was that which had Matty so drawn to the place, and indeed that, which kept him around.

He didn't live there, not properly, he just sort of vaguely inhabited the place a sizeable amount of the time. It was somewhere he'd let himself be dragged back to - it was a familiar space, somewhere comfortable, somewhere warm, somewhere else to let himself waste away in spite of himself. Somewhere to sleep some nights, when things got colder, and when he hadn't ended up elsewhere after letting himself getting wasted and letting people convince him to do slightly questionable things. A lot of people had sofas, after all, a lot of people had shitty little flats, after all. Perhaps it wasn't just the sofa, or the flat, or the convenience, that made him stay, but Matty had never really been one for admitting things to himself.

Come half nine on a Saturday morning, Matty found himself struggling to keep his eyes open, and in turn, struggling to pinpoint just why he'd felt the need to do so in the first place. It was early - too early - Saturday morning early, and the sun was too bright, and not bright enough all at the same time, and the breeze coming in through the window, he'd accidentally left open the night before, was cold - all too much and all too little at the same time. He turned his head over, burying his face into a cushion, and wishing the world away from him in an odd kind of desperate, muffled, half spoken, half thought plea.

He managed to escape the world for a little while longer, hiding away under closed eyelids and the guise of sleep, as the sun rose in the sky, hitting the flat with a warm kind of summery glow - something that felt worthy of the time of year, something that was perhaps worthy of waking up to see. Of course, only if Matty hadn't seen the sun not far off just a thousand in times in his life before.

It was only with the sound of footsteps and the closing of a door that Matty began to stir, turning over, and forcing his eyes open once as Gemma made her way over to the kitchen. She returned just a minute or so later with two mugs of tea, placing one down on the coffee table in front of Matty, and grasping her own in her hands as she sat down at the other end of the sofa that Matty had curled up on.

"You made me tea." Matty noted, stretching out into what could only be a more uncomfortable position.

"Yeah." Gemma gave a nod, sipping at her own mug, stretching out and putting her feet up on the coffee table.

Matty sat up, yawning, and then attempted to fix his hair to some degree: brushing stubborn curls, which had stuck up at all angles, back down and behind his ears with his fingers. He rubbed his eyes, stretching out against the back of the horrible mustard coloured sofa. He then turned back to look at Gemma, sending her a somewhat apprehensive kind of look as he glanced between her and the mug.

"What?" She came to ask, meeting Matty with wide, sleepy eyes, that still in all their earnest, couldn't quite disguise the glimmer of something else hidden behind this all. "I've not poisoned it." She broke into a laugh, gesturing to the cup of tea, so far untouched on the coffee table, with her eyes.

"Maybe that would have been better." Matty gave a shrug, still a little hesitant in regards to the whole situation, and what was likely to come of him approaching it, but regardless, he came to reach forward and take the mug of tea into his hands. He then curled back up on the sofa, sipping at it slowly.

"Matty, you're being a dick." Gemma told him rather cooly. The act didn't do much to faze either of them. As always, Matty was quite aware of just when he was and when he wasn't overstepping the line. It was just as always, Matty was yet to find something that might cause him to care, and to think twice about doing so.

"You're being too nice to me." Matty explained, although, it was hardly much of an explanation on its own. "So you have something you want to say - but you're too scared to say it. Too scared of what's going to happen, because it's going to be something that pisses me off." Matty shot her a look: suddenly impatient and viciously so. "So cut the bullshit, Gem, just tell me."

Gemma let out a sigh, leaning forward and placing her tea back down on the coffee table, taking a moment to remind herself as just to how much of a dick Matty was, and would always be. Perhaps, however, he wasn't so much of a mean person, just blunt - incredibly so. Or perhaps he was, but the fact of the matter was that he meant a great deal to her - regardless of what he perhaps was or wasn't.

"It's Mother's Day next weekend." Gemma just came out with it, letting Matty put the pieces together for himself, daring to watch as his face suddenly grew pale.

"And what does that mean?" Matty snorted, brushing a hell of a something off, as he turned back to Gemma, his eyes even seeming to hold something vaguely comedic about this all. "What does that mean? It's just a day."

"I know it's just a day." Gemma muttered, turning to Matty with an agitated kind of look in her eyes - one that neither of the two had particularly come to anticipate. "But you know. You should call her - your mum."

Matty shrugged, throwing his gaze off to the corner of the room. "Doesn't matter what you think I should do. The whole idea of moral obligation is bullshit. It's fucking bullshit. So's Mother's Day - it means nothing, it's just commercialisation, it's just bullshit, and marketing and capitalism, and pink pieces of card with same generic message inside - it's meaningless. It's all fucking meaningless." Matty's tone soon grew sour, uncomfortably so, as he raised his voice, and turned his head to shoot Gemma an unnecessary kind of spiteful look. "Like it fucking matters." He shook his head.

Gemma couldn't help but let out a sigh, knowing too well of the argument she'd cause with all of this, but the fact of the matter was that there were just some things she had to say, and regardless of Matty's attitude, of his particularly ignorant, finely tuned worldview, this was one of them. "It doesn't matter if you think getting your mum a card and maybe some fucking flowers, or you know maybe just ringing her up is a whole load of meaningless bullshit. The fact of this all is that it's going to mean a whole load more than doing nothing."

Matty rolled his eyes, putting his mug of tea back onto the coffee table, turning to fold his arms across his chest in a manner that couldn't help but scream childish. "I'm not doing it. It doesn't really fucking matter - not at all, not really. What's a piece of fucking pink folded paper do to change anything?"

"It's not the card itself - it's the thought, the sentiment-"

"Well, looks like I'm all out of fucking kindness and sentiment, doesn't it?" Matty raised his voice, getting up from the sofa. "That's just one hell of a fucking shame, isn't it?"

"You know what?" Gemma began, raising her voice to much the same level. "Shut the fuck up and get out of your own fucking ass for just one fucking minute to think about someone else, think about some other than you on this planet for one fucking minute? You're not that special, you're no better than the rest of us and you need to get to fucking grips with yourself."

"I never said I was special." Matty snapped, making his way towards the door. "I just have shit that I'm not afraid to say."

"Matty." Gemma shot Matty what was now a pleading look as he stood by the door, pulling his boots on. "Just fucking call her. Please."

"Why?" Matty scoffed, shaking his head. "What's the fucking point? It's not like she doesn't have another son." And with that, Matty slammed the flat door behind him, headed out for god knows where. He was just headed somewhere where he didn't have to think, especially not about his family, and bullshit kind of things that he should have done.

-

Matty wasn't there to argue that it had been one of his best days, but there was definitely that stubbornness within him that came to vouch for it meaning something at all. It hadn't been the worst, it hadn't been the best, but despite the kind of thoughts running rampant through his head, he hadn't come to rely on his less than favourable coping mechanisms. Or at least, he hadn't gone and snorted any cocaine - not quite yet anyway. He'd smoked a pack of cigarettes in the space of a few hours, along with a sizeable amount of weed, but that was besides the point.

He'd spent a few hours on some guy's sofa. He'd been called James, but that didn't really matter all that much. Matty had originally just come for the weed, but he'd found himself rather reluctant to get up and leave after a while. Of course, in the end, he'd gotten kicked out, and found himself walking aimlessly around town for a while, looking for someone to talk to, something to give a fuck about.

It was later that day, coming around to two in the afternoon, and Matty found himself down at the park, sat before a cluster of trees on the outskirts of the grass. He sat with a bottle of cheap off brand vodka by his side - something he'd taken on his way out of James' shitty little shed of a house, without asking, of course, because Matty was just kind and considerate like that. He hadn't made much of a start on it, and in his own admittance, he didn't much care for vodka, because there really was no avoiding the fact that it fucking tasted like shit. But then again, who drank vodka for the taste?

He was well aware of how much of a sight he looked: bags under his eyes, yesterday's clothes, hair still sticking up in all of sorts of places, and sat alone with a bottle of vodka to himself at the beginning of the afternoon. To top it all off, he was sat just metres away from the kids park, from happy families, toddlers, and mothers of three eyeing him cautiously from where they sat with pushchairs and baby bottles and all kinds of bullshit. Matty didn't much care for them judging him, as after all, he was coming to judge himself, coming to reassess just where he was in life, as the high started to drift off, and everything just turned that awkward kind of sour.

He reckoned he could fix it with a drink, but as he sat and thought, he couldn't deny that he didn't much care for getting drunk, at least not in his current circumstances, at least not alone - at least not alone and sad in a public park on a Saturday afternoon. He came to conclude that he'd likely feel a little better in someone else's presence, someone to bitch to, someone to lose himself in - anyone really - someone to share the vodka so he didn't look like such a pathetic waste of space to that one particular mother with dark brown hair that seemed rather unwilling to take her eyes off him. Even if Matty was as bad of a person as she likely thought him to be, he still wouldn't have made the effort to get up and stab her kids all the way at the other end of the park, in the ten seconds that she'd neglect glaring at him, as she likely thought him capable of.

As the minutes ticked past, and Matty found himself weighing up various possibilities in his head: each perfectly viable ways to waste away an afternoon, to let himself fade out of everything until things came back to normal, until Gemma stopped bothering him, until Mother's Day passed, and they went back to forgetting, and not speaking about the things that they both knew weren't to be spoken about. Matty never did doubt that it was unhealthy, but Matty never did doubt the fact that he just didn't fucking care.

It was as he drew close to turning a bad day into one of his worst, that he came to give up, give up on his pride, give up on holding the gaze of a middle aged mother of three for the pure hell of it, and turn to his phone, checking through his notifications to find a few texts from Gemma - something to make a point out of ignoring, as he scrolled through his contacts in search of someone who could come and sit bitterly with him and maybe get more drunk than they should be for the time of day.

The issue in this was simply that a good half of the people in his contacts were people he didn't actually like all that much, and they were of course out of the question. Then of the half that remained, a good half of them were more so Gemma's friends than his, and the kind of people she'd have told all about what had happened that morning, leaving them with very little to say to him that Gemma hadn't already detailed as he'd left. There were a few people he considered, although he was sure that the half of them had much better things to do with their Saturdays, and Matty came to realise very quickly that he really didn't have much in the way of anyone just to waste time away with.

Everyone asked questions, and everyone knew Gemma, and everyone didn't really give that much of a shit about Matty, at least not nearly as much as they might say that they did. It was as Matty came to conclude that he'd pretty much ran out of options, that he happened upon George's contact saved in his phone.

He hadn't spared him much in the way of thought at all over the past few weeks, but as he sat there in the park, staring at the name displayed on his screen, that Friday night and everything he'd said came back to him like a slap across the face, and in this all, Matty came to accept that although he might not particularly care for George, he was perhaps his best bet under the circumstances, and of course, what was life if it wasn't for badly made decisions?

It was with that in mind, which Matty typed out a message to him, not even bothering to wonder if tall, somewhat annoying, George, from the secondhand shop several weeks ago, could even remember who Matty was anymore. Maybe he drove home lots of people he found sat feeling sorry for themselves in the corner of parking lots - maybe he'd made quite the habit of it, but maybe, Matty just didn't care enough to think that through before pressing send.

-

With a few badly worded text messages, and fifteen minutes having passed, Matty came to spot an irrefutably George shaped figure making its way over the horizon. Now having downed just a bit of the bottle of vodka, perhaps just to pass the time as he waited, Matty concluded that inviting George to spend time with him was better than the alternative, which was of course sitting around and spending time regretting the decision he'd made to involve him in his life again in the first place.

"No offence, but you look like shit." George chose what was evidently the kindest greeting he could muster as he sat down beside Matty, stretching his legs out across the grass, and taking a moment to glance over at the vodka, perhaps questioning it for a moment or two, but coming to conclude that asking about it perhaps wasn't so much worth his while.

"Well..." Matty let out a sigh, finding that in all honesty, he didn't know quite what to say in response to that, because for a start, George was right, and he saw no way around that. "Nice to see you too."

George let out a snort, watching as Matty rolled his eyes, turning his gaze over towards the skyline, fixating on the way the sky folded into the world: the two joining one another like there was never any separation between them, and yet, of course, despite this all, the two were so very much apart.

"Are you going to tell me what's wrong? Are you going to let me ask what's wrong? Or are you going to just tell me how everything is bullshit, or are we just going to sit in silence, or make comments about how shit we both look?" George came to ask, cutting everything in two just as the silence had seemed to settle in around them comfortably.

"You don't look shit at all." Matty looked up at George, noting that, admittedly, his hair was kind of messy, but the kind of messy that seemed as if it might have been somewhat intentional. He definitely however, looked as if he'd put a bit of effort into putting together an outfit that day. Unlike Matty. "There'd be no point in that, and then I could sit in silence by myself so what would be the point in bothering you for that?"

He finally thought to maybe stop staring at George, just for a little while - the guy was good looking but that didn't detract from the fact that Matty had already made a decision not to like him. Still, however, he found himself choosing to spend time with him, but admittedly, he hadn't had much in the way of choice.

"So I guess you're going for bullshit, then?" George tossed him a hesitant, awkward looking smile. "What could it possibly be that has ruined your entire worldview today?" He let out a half-hearted, breathy kind of laugh.

What caught George entirely by surprise however, was the way that, suddenly, out of nowhere, Matty just shook his head. "Ask me what's wrong."

George was a little thrown by the way Matty had come to phrase his request, and in turn, found himself hesitant in obliging without question. "What? So you can tell me to fuck off and feel better about yourself?"

Matty rolled his eyes, shooting George the kind of look that he felt ought to be accompanied by a 'fuck off' or a middle finger at least, but there was something about Matty that didn't seem up to it. In fact, George very quickly came to recognise the Matty he found before him to be some sort of awkward mix between the Matty he had first met on that Tuesday, and the Matty he had driven home that Friday night.

"Maybe. I don't know." Matty gave a shrug, his eyes straying over to the bottle of vodka beside him, and without a moment's thought, because Matty was nothing if not for rash decisions, brought it up to his lips and took a swig. He grimaced, doing his best to swallow it the quickest he could.

It was then that George let himself fall into an awkward kind of giggle, not really sure if it at all appropriate, and not really sure if he at all meant it. "So..." He began, taking the bottle from Matty's hand and taking a drink himself, face mirroring Matty's as he placed it back down on the ground between them. "What exactly is it that's wrong?"

"Hard to pin it down to one exact thing, if I'm quite honest." Matty stretched out, letting himself fall back onto the grass, coming to watch the white wisps of clouds traverse the great expanse of blue sky - it was almost too blue, and yet not quite blue enough.

George watched Matty for a moment - skinny little arms behind his head, and legs bent upwards at the knee, but of course, in all of that, George couldn't help but focus on the way Matty's shirt had ridden up slightly and exposed the pale skin of his hips. In George's defense, Matty was still awfully pretty, regardless of everything else.

"What about today?" It was a good minute or so before George managed to focus on something that wasn't Matty's hipbones, and really just how low his jeans were riding on them. "What was it today?" He moved closer to Matty, ending up half sitting, half lying there on his side, facing Matty.

There was a brief moment in which Matty's eyes flickered away from the sky, from the rest of the world, from everything else, and settled on George. It was a brief moment, but it was a moment they shared, and a moment that seemed, despite itself, to hold all the power in the world.

There was something. It was an odd kind of something - the very same something that George had felt initially that very first Tuesday, but it was now something that Matty could feel too, or at least he'd finally shut up long enough to pay attention to. There was no denying that it was something different, something special, but Matty was hesitant to label it anything but the bad kind of special: something he couldn't understand, or something he just didn't want to.

"Had an argument with Gemma." Matty began, turning his attention back up to the sky, taking a moment to wonder why he was telling George this, and in turn wonder why he hadn't just deleted George's number in the first place. He couldn't help but pin it down to the very same something that Matty was so hesitant to put a name or any kind of characteristics to.

"Oh..." George began, his eyes giving way and letting slip notion of the whirlwind of assumptions he was quick to make in his mind. "Was it do with... cocaine?" George couldn't help but hush his voice a little as he asked. Matty couldn't help but laugh, turning on his side to face George, and to George's great disappointment, and relief, his shirt falling back down to properly cover his stomach. "What?" George blushed, desperate to avert Matty's gaze, but he found himself with no such success in the matter.

"Told you." Matty's tone grew a little bitter. "Not a junkie." He held George's gaze with a degree of stubbornness: an arrogant insistence that perfectly characterised Matty as a whole. "Not everything in my life's about bloody cocaine."

"I..." George stumbled to recall the details of what Matty had told him that one Friday, that to the both of them, just seemed so distant now. "You said you had an argument with her over it then, so I assumed. Sorry." He flashed Matty an awkward kind of apologetic smile, that Matty did try not to roll his eyes at, but in the end, didn't quite succeed in doing so.

"She gets pissed at me for other things too." Matty assured him, pulling his gaze elsewhere, following his fingers down to the blades of grass he had entangled between them. "I mean, hard not to, isn't it? I'm quite the colossal dickhead." George couldn't hold back a snort, and with a flicker of his eyes up towards him, Matty soon broke into laughter.

All in all, it was quite the odd situation, because suddenly they were smiling, properly... grinning at each other, and there was something inside Matty's chest that wasn't quite so insistent upon disliking George anymore. He never second guessed himself; he relied on instinct, kept to himself and his own judgement. If he didn't like someone - he didn't like someone, and he knew that early on. That was how it had always been, and there was nothing inside Matty that viewed change in much of a positive light, but suddenly there was something different, and honestly, Matty didn't quite know what to think.

He took a moment to combat his whole worldview tumbling on itself in the presence of George, who maybe wasn't so much of a dickhead as Matty had once thought that he was; George, with the pretty smile, and nice hair. Somehow so much prettier than he'd been that last Tuesday, and that Friday too.

He found himself holding the words so carefully - poised between his lips, running them through his mind for the hundredth time, but there was just something within him that couldn't do it, and perhaps for the first time in his life, Matty found himself with a real lack of something to say. He dared not admit it, but there was something, deep inside his chest, something he'd done his best to lock away and hide, but something determined to show its face again - determined to speak of fear, the awful kind of fear that George would react the same as Gemma, and that he'd find himself so very alone, back to the bottle of vodka, and back wasting an afternoon up inside his own head.

"You don't have to." George seemed to sense Matty's hesitance, eyeing him with the kind of concern that Matty would vouch for the fact that he didn't deserve. "We can talk about something else." George suggested, watching the way Matty instantly seemed to calm, and finding himself not at all sure what to think of him at all. "I'll tell you about my day, if you want?"

Matty gave a shrug, admittedly not all that bothered about whatever the fuck George had done with himself for the past few hours, but so very bothered about his voice, and the calm way that he spoke, so slowly and gently, but not as if he was scared of setting Matty off, because Matty had come to accept that George really had no qualms with arguing with him. He spoke this way for something else. Perhaps for that very same something that Matty felt. Or perhaps not.

"I woke up at like noon, I spent last night at my friends Ross and John's house, so I woke up in the middle of their living room, little bit hungover, only a little bit though - I'm alright now. Made myself a sandwich at theirs, and well I discovered the horror that is the fact that they stick post it notes to items of food in their fridge." Matty raised his eyebrows, failing to see what was quite so extraordinary about that - a little weird, perhaps, but whatever. "It's what they write on them, though, and like I read one, on the ham, it was like 'I need this for my lunch on Thursday' but then it's like 'If you eat it all I'm not touching your dick for two weeks. Lots of love Ross xxx'." It was then that Matty couldn't prevent himself from bursting into a fit of laughter.

"Honestly, that is traumatising when you just wake up and just want a sandwich. Maybe I should have just left it at that, but there were sticky notes on practically every item of food in the entire fucking fridge, and you know how you shouldn't look at something and it's like your brain just wants to fuck with you? I ended up reading a lot, and honestly I wasn't sure they could ever get any more disgusting, but they really do out do everyone's expectations." George let out a sigh, shaking his head as he came to recall what more there had been to the morning.

Matty couldn't help but find himself much more interested by the details of George's life than he anticipated being, waiting with wide eyes as George continued. "Then my friend Ellie started texting me about this girl she hooked up with last night, and honestly I was still traumatised from the sticky notes and I needed to recover, so I went home and just went to sleep for a bit more, then you texted me, and I got scared that maybe Ross had noticed that I'd moved his ham and wanted to hunt me down for knowing their disgusting secrets, so really, this was a welcome surprise."

Matty paused for a moment, running George's words through his mind. "Are all your friends gay?" He asked, genuinely not coming to mean anything by it, but still it caught George by surprise.

"Not all of them. I have quite a few, I mean. I'm bi, so that makes sense. My flatmate, though, Adam, he's straight. Ellie's bi as well." George turned to Matty, raising his eyebrows slightly. "Why do you ask?"

Matty shrugged, snorting a little. "Honestly, don't give a shit who your friends are fucking, just thought it was a more discreet way to ask about you." Matty wasn't at all sure why he'd said that - especially quite so directly, and in admittance, he hadn't thought it through even slightly until it was all too late, and George was staring at him: wide eyed and hesitant.

"Oh wow..." George trailed off, biting his lip for a moment, because in all honesty, he didn't quite know how to feel about dickhead pretty boy Matty from that one Tuesday and that one Friday... well... hitting on him. "Well... I mean I've called you pretty at least seven times by now - I thought that would have cleared things up."

"You could have called me pretty objectively." Matty argued, absentmindedly pulling at blades of grass with his fingers. "Like, Gemma's pretty - I know that, but I don't want to fuck her."

George nodded, struggling to come to terms with just what exactly was going on between them, and just exactly where it was going, and of course the insinuation that he wanted fuck Matty. Which he totally didn't. Totally. "So are you gay... or?"

Matty shrugged, picking a daisy from amidst the mess of grass and green leafed weeds, before sitting back up again. "Sexuality is bullshit, really." He twirled the daisy between two of his fingers. George couldn't help but smile - the bullshit talk had been inevitable, and here they were at least. "I'm not going to conform to one specific label that society's picked out for me, I'm not something to put into a box, not something to stick by a solid set of rules. I'm free of all that bullshit, I'm attracted to whoever I am attracted to, and that's just how it works. The imposed ideas of sexuality and gender and conforming to them are just bullshit. Love and self expression exists freely outside of those boxes. I don't understand how I could be myself and live the way I would be happiest with forcing labels and expectations onto myself - it just doesn't fucking make sense."

George nodded, sitting up properly to face Matty. "You're pretty much right on that one, I'd say. I mean, it's a spectrum, more than anything else, isn't it? No boxes or whatever. I'd say I'm somewhere in the middle on that spectrum kind of thing."

Matty looked up, meeting George's gaze, with a less than pleasant look in his eyes.. "Fuck the spectrum. Fuck anything. Fuck putting myself down as anything, honestly." He let out a sigh, reaching up and putting the daisy held between his fingers into his hair. Of course however, it happened to fall out the very moment Matty moved his head. "Fuck." He cursed, picking it up again.

"So..." George trailed off, watching Matty attempt to fix the daisy back into his hair. "Are all your friends gay?"

He let out a laugh as the daisy fell from Matty's hair for the second time. "Do you want me to help you?" He picked the flower up from where it had fallen between them, and with a quick nod of Matty's head, and George's inability to properly think about anything before he did it, he reached forward, one hand steadying Matty's head, placed on the back of his neck, and the other, tying the daisy carefully between two curls to the right of Matty's head.

Matty let out an awkward kind of choked off sigh, attempting to answer George's question, but finding himself very suddenly aware of just how big George's hand was on the back of his head, and just like that, that something he found himself desperate to suppress had taken over entirely. "A few of my friends are gay. Not so many really. Gemma's straight, though."

George pulled away, admiring his expert work in fitting the flower into Matty's hair, but generally, just admiring Matty, really. "So why wouldn't you fuck Gemma?" George asked, for the sake of curiosity more than anything else.

"I've known her since we were fifteen." Matty shrugged, not at all that sure himself. "I mean, she's just Gemma. I mean, things get complicated after you've had sex, and I've... I've really got nowhere else to go that isn't... yeah... Gemma's." Matty bit his lip, coming to very suddenly realise that had very little idea as to just where he was going to go tonight, because regardless of whether Gemma would have him back or not, Matty didn't want to see her, not right now.

George seemed to catch Matty's train of thought. "So tonight you've got nowhere to stay?" There was this voice at the back of his mind yelling to ask about Matty's home, about Matty's family, about stuff like that, but he managed to convince himself that it was easily the worst thing he could bring up at that moment.

Matty shrugged, "I'll be alright. Figure something out."

It was just then, that another one of those infamous worst ideas came to George. It lingered at the front of his mind for a while, growing rapidly, and in all honesty, he couldn't help but be intrigued by it, because although it seemed innately bad, it was perhaps just the right thing to do.

"You can stay at mine if you want." George offered, looking up at him with wide eyes. The notion seemed to catch Matty entirely by surprise, as he looked up at George for a good while, almost in disbelief of quite what he'd said. "Adam won't mind." He added, wrapping his words up with a small, tentative kind of smile.

And again, somehow, in spite of everything else, Matty smiled back.

-

In the end, Matty spent more than one night at George's. Perhaps he simply had a slightly more comfortable sofa, perhaps it was that his flatmate, Adam, really didn't mind, although had been a little questioning of just who the fuck Matty was and what he was doing there at first, but that was understandable. But perhaps, it wasn't to do with that at all. Perhaps it was to do with the fact that it Wednesday evening and Matty was yet to come to terms with what happened between him and Gemma, and really what it might mean.

Four days had passed since that Saturday morning and Matty was still yet to respond to any of her messages. They'd slowly grown less and less frequent - Gemma was well aware of the fact that Matty could take care of himself, and also that in the end, he'd always come back to hers. He was a bit like the world's biggest dickhead of a cat really. He was clueless as to why Gemma might actually prefer him over a cat, but then again, she was a dog person, like Matty.

Of course, also in those four days, Matty was still yet to actually mention to George what it actually had been that had caused that argument, and with the passing of each day, Matty could see George getting more and more concerned for him, and of course, with the passing of each day, Matty conjured a thousand reasons why he shouldn't stay with him any longer, but with the passing of each day, Matty conjured a million reasons why he should.

Matty had slept through half of the day, and spent the other half doing very little at all. He felt a little awkward in George's flat: a little out of place, and in general, so very nervous at the prospect of the inevitable moment when George gave up and kicked him out, and he'd have to figure out what to do with himself from then on, because by his own admittance, Matty had gotten rather attached to it all. Rather attached to George, in an odd kind of way, or perhaps just the familiarity of his presence, perhaps just the smell of the place, perhaps just the the view out of living room window, perhaps just the pattern on the shower curtain, perhaps just the little homely kind of bullshit like that. Or perhaps not.

It didn't feel as comforting as Gemma's place, and as much he did kind of miss it, he still couldn't bare to face her, to face up to himself, and to the four days he'd wasted. Really, though, it wasn't about Gemma, not at all. It was about how he didn't want to admit it, but she was right. And she'd always been. And how Matty just didn't know how to deal with that.

Eventually, George came home from the shop come quarter past four, and Matty so much as barely looked up from his phone as George kicked his shoes off by the door, and went straight over to the sofa, sitting down perhaps unnecessarily close to Matty. Funny thing was that neither of the two really minded.

"Adam's out tonight." George told him, watching as he continued to scroll through Twitter with a faked kind of interest.. "Texted me on the way home." George came to recount to himself what was easily the dullest day he'd spent at the shop, and in all honesty, he might as well have not been there, having served only one customer throughout the six hours he'd spent watching the place.

"Is he trying to get away from the curly haired piece of shit his dickhead of a flatmate invited over to stay for one night? That guy who still hasn't fucked off?" Matty raised an eyebrow, putting his phone down on the coffee table, and turning to face George properly.

George had to laugh at 'curly haired piece of shit', because in all honesty, he wasn't that far off at all. "He likes you. It's fine." George assured him with a smile.

"I can never be sure with straight guys, because I mean, I'm pretty - that's the only thing I have going for me, and I've not even been looking that good lately." Matty was always sure to be exceptionally modest about his appearance, but of course, really for George at least, there was no arguing with him.

"Stop trying to seduce my flatmate." George shook his head in disbelief. "I'm not letting you do that." George was maybe a little bit jealous at the notion of it, but of course, he wasn't going to admit that - it'd be almost as uncomfortable as the moment Adam had taken him aside, looked him dead in the eyes and asked him if he and Matty were fucking.

"I'm not." Matty promised him, leaning closer to George, coming perhaps dangerously close to resting his head against his chest. "If I was going to seduce anyone to have a better chance of spending more time here, it'd be you." George's breath caught in his throat. "You're into dick, after all. Just would make sense, wouldn't it?" Matty shook his head, "don't look at me like that. Don't tell me I'm not allowed to seduce you either. That'd be no fun."

George smiled, turning to Matty, heart fluttering in his chest. "Honestly, if you tried to seduce me, it wouldn't make all that much difference."

Matty's head cocked up at that. "And what's that supposed to mean?"

George shook his head, smiling. "I don't know, Matty, what do you think?"

And there it was - that odd, overwhelming urge of something in Matty's chest, and the unavoidable truth that he just really didn't dislike George, not at all, not anymore. The horrible thing about this all was that Matty just didn't know what to do with it at all, and in turn, what to do with himself. What to do with George, what to do with the two of them.

"Can we order pizza?" Matty chose to break the silence that followed with anything but something that might actually answer George's question, because there was just nothing like avoiding the overwhelming, looming inevitability of what would have to tear either himself, or the two of them apart.

-

Come ten that night, as darkness had settled in, Matty and George still found themselves sat in much the same position on the sofa - just far too close to one another for anyone's good, but of course, just far too comfortable with that too.

They'd ordered pizza, as Matty had suggested, and ended up watching a shitty film on Netflix - something that had come up in their recommended, that neither of them had watched before, or even heard of, or in the end, much enjoyed, and had spent the two hours mostly taking the piss out of it as opposed to anything else. It had been nice pizza though.

It was as the film finished, and with the sudden realisation of how close that they'd moved to one another in the space of the past two hours, that Matty finally came to break. It had been a long time coming: looming over his head for the past few days, and perhaps in his current state, perhaps with everything as it was, he felt himself blanketed up inside this falsified sense of security, as George was suddenly more than just some asshole, but someone that meant something, despite what Matty might have argued to himself.

"It's my fault really." He broke the silence rather suddenly, catching George's attention with a slight gasp of breath in the dim light of the room.

"What?" George came to ask, unable to piece together quite what Matty was referring to. "What's your fault?"

"What happened with Gemma." Matty bit his lip, holding out back at the tip of his tongue, something in him having flicked the other way, because all of a sudden, it was like the only thing he needed to do with his life was tell George. "It's Mother's Day on Sunday." Matty let out a sigh, and George took a moment to thank everything that this had been the one year he'd managed not to forget, but more importantly, he struggled to piece together just how this could relate to Matty.

"I don't..." George trailed off, unsure if he was just missing something somehow. "I don't get it."

"So I don't have a home. Well, I guess technically I do, but I got kicked out when I was seventeen. I haven't spoken to my family since. It's kind of complicated, I guess." Matty let out a sigh, absentmindedly twirling a strand of hair around his finger. "Gem told me to call my mum on Sunday, get her a card, whatever. I told her to fuck off. I guess maybe I should, but she can fuck off. She doesn't get it. She doesn't know what it's been like for me."

"What has it been like for you?" George found the question slipping his lips before he could quite stop himself.

Matty's face soon fell into a scowl. "None of your fucking business. I shouldn't have to do shit that people don't deserve. I'm not doing shit. Gemma can't keep going on around like she knows everything about me and what I should do with my life - it's my life, it's my family, and she needs to fuck off."

George suddenly felt rather cautious in regards to how quickly Matty had raised his voice, but he liked to think that he'd gotten an idea of how to deal with him when he got too full of himself.

"No, Matty, I mean from what I can understand, she's right, and you should call your mum if you haven't spoken to her for... two years..." The notion made George feel a little uncomfortable inside, but there of course had to be a reason, there was always a reason with Matty, and it suddenly became so very apparent, from the look in Matty's eyes, that George just wouldn't ever get to hear it.

"You don't know shit, George." Matty got to his feet. "You don't know fucking shit. You know what? Maybe I thought you were different, maybe I just thought you were pretty. Maybe it doesn't fucking matter, because you know what, George? I think you should just shut the fuck up, because you're so very pretty, but whenever you open your mouth, it just ruins everything."

Before George could quite respond, or even fully comprehend just what was happening, and what Matty was doing, he'd shoved his feet into his boots, grabbed his jacket and made it out the door. Regardless of the hour, regardless of the whole fucking world, and regardless of how everything had crumbled down into nothing in the space of no time at all.

-

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