"There's this boy."

His words were a gentle beginning. Soft spoken in the evening light. It was just the two of them. A night like every other: almost routine. Yet it was far from the kind of monotony that chilled Matty to the core. This was comfortable, this was good. These were the nights that made him feel safe. Whether it was the slow conversations and the understanding look in her eyes, or just the endless glasses of wine.

"There's always a boy." Gemma looked at Matty knowingly: her best friend of now coming close to five years. There was little questioning the fact that she knew Matty inside and out. She was pretty sure she'd heard this story a thousand times over already, but still she'd listen, because that was what she was here for.

"He's different." Matty continued: shaking his head: insistent. Gemma did wonder if this conversation would go the same way if they were entirely sober, but Matty never did talk about anything of importance when he wasn't drunk enough to believe it was in some way a good idea. In the absence of the bottle of red opened on her coffee table, she doubted they'd be having such a conversation at all.

"Every boy is different." She assured him, a slight roll to her eyes. "Trust me. I've been there. We all have."

"He's really different this time around." Matty did a better job of convincing himself than he did in convincing Gemma. Despite the fact that he was already very much sold on the idea, as he was with everything. Because if Matty could be described as anything, it had to be impulsive. There was little doubt in that.

"How?" She let out a sigh, accepting that Matty was set on his own conclusions about this boy; there was hardly much else she could do to change that after all. "What makes him different? What makes you sure of that?"

"I just know." Matty looked away, biting his lip. He was the kind of boy who couldn't help but feel like he knew an awful lot about the world, even at eighteen: a charming kind of pretentiously self-obsessed. The type that aimed to make a mountain out of every molehill just to climb to the top of them.

"Gut feeling." He added, doing all he could to rationalise the conclusion he'd come to.

"Gut feeling." She scoffed. "Should try thinking with your brain and not your gut, though, how about that?" Gemma's response was dry: evident that she was already growing tired with the glassy, dazed look in Matty's eyes.

The whole situation did seem harmless enough, and perhaps she should have felt warmed by the fact that Matty was comfortable enough to talk so openly about his sexuality with her. But it was the same story nearly every night; after all, Matty was the type to fall in love with everyone he passed down the street.

"Very funny." Matty rolled his eyes, placing his empty wine glass down onto the coffee table with a satisfying kind of clink. He eyed the bottle next to it almost playfully: his mind stocked with a good hundred reasons as to why another glass of wine could only do him more harm than good. Yet more than anything, he just yearned for any kind of aid in tearing away at the mess of feelings inside of his chest.

Within seconds his hand was curled tightly around a second glass of wine. However, he found himself stopping for a moment: somewhat hesitant to bring the glass up to his lips. Instead he became rather fixated on the glossy black polish on his nails. It was chipping away already, despite the fact that he'd painted them just last night.

Gemma watched him with an all too familiar look in her eyes. It was a recurring thing: Matty and the thoughts that chased him back around his head, but he wasn't nearly drunk enough to talk about them yet and they were both far too well aware of that.

"So there's this boy." Matty snapped out of it, starting again as if the past few minutes had never even taken place. He downed the glass in one go, setting it back down on the table with something closer to a slam: knuckles growing white as his fingers curled in around it.

"Matty..." Gemma became suddenly very conscious of the fact that the glass might shatter. Not that Matty really was the kind of guy that looked physically capable of something like that, but he had this odd kind of look in his eyes, the one he got when things started to completely overwhelm him.

They sat there in silence for a minute: so painfully aware of everything unspoken, of the messes and monsters up inside their respective heads, but there wasn't enough wine left in that bottle to touch upon even a fraction of it that night.

"So there's this boy." Matty tried for the third time, pulling his arms back to his chest, eventually resorting to biting at his nails to relieve some of the tension that had curled itself up inside of him.

"He comes into the shop a lot. Like more than just 'I really like coffee a lot'. Like we're not even Starbucks, what exactly is so enthralling about a shitty little latte with dodgy value cream on top? But he comes in a lot. Especially over the past two weeks - I think I've seen him everyday I've been in. And he always looks at me, you know? I guess you've got to look at a barista when you're ordering coffee from them, but... I just like to think... I don't know. He's hot. I like to think that there's no real reason for him to keep coming in all the time. I like to think he comes in for me."

Matty shook his head, almost forcing himself to laugh aloud at how ridiculous it all sounded. He took a moment to properly compose himself before continuing.

"I mean, it's probably bullshit but, he's hot. Not even just hot exactly. He's beautiful. He's got these dark eyes and this wild hair and he's got this denim jacket, and dear fucking god, he looks so good in it, and sometimes..." He trailed off, his voice softening a little as the truth became slightly less comfortable to deal with. "I lie in bed at night and think about him and that jacket. I think about him out of that jacket. Out of all of his clothes. Sometimes I even think about getting down on my knees and sucking his cock."

Matty swallowed hard, forcing his teeth down into his bottom lip in a desperate attempt to push that image out of his mind - for the time being at least. "So, yeah." He finally turned back to Gemma. "There's this boy."

There was a part of Gemma that felt that she ought to be at least a little startled by just how blunt all of this had been, but she'd known Matty long enough to ensure that nothing he said could really surprise her anymore. It was, after all, the very close to the same story every night, and the fact that there were very few boys that Matty wouldn't jump at getting down on his knees for wasn't exactly very much of a secret.

Still, this time around, there did seem to be something else. She wondered if it was a cause for concern, something to chase around her mind for days, or something so irrelevant it would be gone in the morning. It didn't seem to be quite like that though. Not this time around. For real.

"So..." Gemma let out a sigh, stretching her legs out onto the coffee table: well aware of the fact that it was something her mum would kill her for, but what occurred when she wasn't home wouldn't hurt her. "He's different?" She posed the question again, finding that this time around she was perhaps more inclined to listen to what Matty had to say for himself.

"Yeah." Matty let out a sigh, closing his eyes for just a moment, fingers shaking in his lap. Really, he was shaking all over. It was going to be one of those nights, and then one of those mornings. Still, the ache in his chest remained persistent, dragging him down like an anchor, but with no desire to keep him safe at all. He let himself wonder, just for a second, if this ache, this emptiness inside of him, was just nothing to do with this boy at all.

"Then ask him out." She shrugged, suspecting that really it just wasn't something that Matty was going to do; he fell in love with half of the world, but only ever fucked the boys that meant nothing at all.

"No." Matty felt his voice almost curling up and dying inside of his throat; the worst kind of stomach butterflies growing inside of him: the ones that seemed an awful lot like they might be inclined just to eat him alive.

"Then talk to him." Gemma tried again, drumming her fingertips against the side of her empty glass. This was the part of the night where everything faded out, when they didn't laugh anymore, when they were just drunk and tired. Drunk and tired with nothing to do, but chat shit and feel everything fall to pieces and crumble in the palms of their hands, believing that it was the perfect solution, until the morning could tell them otherwise.

"What am I supposed to say?" Matty was beyond the point of proper annunciation. Words were no longer words: just a messy drivel. But it was the look in his eyes that took to commanding the room like it was a stadium packed full of love and open ears.

"Hi. My name's Matty and I really want to suck your dick." Gemma offered, snorting a little as she did so. Matty didn't seem to find it quite so funny; he was past the point of giggly drunk, he was just bitter, and everything hurt - inside and out.

"Somehow." He let out a sigh, shaking his head. "I don't think that's going to do down that well."

"Well, I'm sure you'll think of something." Gemma announced, letting out a sigh as she got to her feet and grabbed the empty bottle and glasses, pausing just for a moment before she took them back to the kitchen. It was in that moment that she held Matty's gaze with an almost patronising look in her eyes.

"What?" Matty's voice was a muffled demand: hardly convincing, and all too short of inspiring.

"Or maybe not. Maybe you just won't talk to him at all. Like every other guy. Like you always do." She did try to make her tone somewhat pleasant, but it was just far too late and she was in anything but the right kind of mood. "Come on, Matty, this is the thousandth time. This is the thousandth boy."

"But maybe he is different." Matty insisted, eyes falling to the floor, defeated somehow, perhaps just by the truth to it all. "Maybe I will talk to him." He paused for a moment, pulling his gaze back up to meet Gemma's; this time, there was a sense of determination hidden in his eyes. "No, you know what? I will."

-

Never had rainfall felt quite so vindictive, so purposefully spiteful, almost filled with the malice of a life long enemy, as raindrops fell from the sky in hordes upon that Thursday afternoon.

George had pictured a peaceful kind of afternoon: slow, not particularly eventful, but at the very least, one in which he got something done. Namely the coursework he'd been putting off for weeks. It was getting pretty ridiculous at this rate, perhaps as if the world truly hated him; there wasn't a doubt about the fact that George wasn't going to make it home in this.

There was no other word for it than torrential: pounding against shop windows with force enough to ensure that the buildings seemed to shake. George reckoned he might actually drown if he took his twenty minute walk home through this. He decided that it was for the best if he didn't let that happen.

The simple fact of it all was that he had no other options. Although, part of him might have rather drowned than let himself retreat inside that cosy little coffeeshop on the end of the street. The one with the sofa in the corner of the room with the view of the highstreet, where he could stretch his feet out across the seat. The one with the free wi-fi, and the extra large cups of coffee, and the boy that smiled at him from over the counter every single time he went in.

Eventually he formally declared the afternoon as useless and condemned himself to his faith: making a quick dash for the welcoming interior of the coffeeshop as, somehow, the rain did manage to worsen. He breathed a sigh of relief as he pulled down his hood once he stood safely inside the building, the warm glow of golden light beaming down on his face: doing wonders to highlight the fact that he looked just an awful lot like a particularly overgrown, and perhaps mutated, drenched rat.

The boy behind the counter smiled at him nonetheless. There was something about his smile though. George tried not to think about it too much as he ordered his coffee. Tried. There was absolutely no guarantee that George had succeeded at all.

George left the boy with a meaningless comment about the weather, because he was mindless, and boring, and British. He caught that same smile before he retreated across the room to what he'd come to declare as his booth. He then set his coffee down on the table in front of him, stretched his legs out across the seat, pulled out his phone and took a moment to watch the rain. George spent a moment desperately promising himself that he'd absolutely leave the very moment it cleared up.

But if there was anything George was renowned for, it had to be breaking promises he'd made with himself. He found himself still spread comfortably across the sofa as four o'clock became five, and still as five became six. By which point, the skies outside had settled into a dry, cloudy overcast. Still, it didn't look particularly pleasant outside, and try as he might, George just couldn't quite motivate himself to actually get up and leave.

He was, in fact, just awfully content with the idea of staying there, lost up in his own head for the rest of his life. That was until the moment that he became almost painfully aware of the presence of someone stood just over his shoulder, and the slow, steady footsteps that had led them there.

Almost as if hand in hand with that realisation, the world seemed to stop for a moment. It was a moment that almost seemed as if it might span on forever, with ever persistent looks held tightly behind ever forever hesitant eyes. But then, like all silences, it was broken.

"Hi." His voice was squeaky, tentative, and in all the wrong places at all the wrong times. "Uhh... My name's Matty."

George jumped a little, turning his head over his shoulder all too fast, not really at all sure what it was that he might even expect to see, but before he could quite figure that out, he found that he was faced with the boy from behind the counter.

And there was that smile, just as it had been before, and it was like everything inside of George had just stopped for a moment, cold and still: like the glass on the windowpane behind them, and the world outside. It was so distant somehow from that moment. The one that seemed to have pulled them in with all the force in the world.

"Hi." George pulled his lips into a smile: nowhere near as bright as Matty's, but a smile nevertheless. He introduced himself rather plainly, not quite sure what else it was that he could possibly do. "I'm George."

And that was how it all began.

"Hi." Matty could do very little to stop the blush that flooded his cheeks, hovering nervously for a moment before he took the initiative to perch himself down on the end of the sofa across the table.

"You come here alot." Matty began in really the only place he could think of, wondering if his conversation and company was little more than a bore to George. But if he was being entirely honest in the matter, regardless of that, he just couldn't help himself, not at all.

"Uhh..." George cursed to himself, stretching back against the wall and letting out a groan. "Yeah. I do. I know. I really shouldn't. I hope it's not weird or anything, like I'm stalking you or something, because I always see you, I just... I come here after college, because I don't want to go home and get on with my work really. Things like that. And the coffee's nice. The coffee's really nice."

George pulled his lips into a smile, and tried not to think about how he wanted to tell Matty that he thought he was really nice too. He reckoned that might come across in the wrong way.

"It's not weird. I don't mind." Matty mumbled, drawing his eyes to the floor: finding his heart plummeting in his chest at George's affirmation of the fact that this just wasn't about him. After all, he'd been so sure of it all. That he was different. That he was the one, or something like that.

But he wasn't.

Matty found the courage to look up again and instead saw a tall boy with slightly greasy hair and a denim jacket. Just a boy. Nothing special. No golden halo, no glistening crown. Just a boy. Like any other.

"College..." Matty latched desperately onto the only available topic of conversation George had thrust upon him, as after all, he'd sat down now. This was a conversation, this was a thing, and his shift was over; he had nothing else left to do with himself.

"Yeah." George nodded across at him, folding his arms, and meeting him with a kind of look that Matty couldn't even begin to decipher: it almost seemed to be challenging somehow. "I go to college. You know, the one down that way." He gestured vaguely out of the shop door with his hand.

Matty tried not to think about his fingers. His long, thick fingers. He bit his lip, silently cursing at himself and did did his best to focus back up on George's face. He took aside a moment just to really appreciate how normal George was, how sickeningly ordinary. How he was far from his saviour, or any kind of prince, or spectacle of the human race, or a god, not even really in his eyes. George was just another boy from down the street. But Matty would still fall for each and everyone.

He wished that just once that he could make an exception. It was exhausting, and there was something in George's tone that made it explicitly clear that he just wasn't interested in him. There was something more in those ugly trainers on his feet; the ones that looked almost exactly as if to be the posterchild for straight boy apparel.

"Oh." Matty gave a nod, looking anywhere but George's hands, avoiding those long fingers at all costs. Finding himself only chasing the worst kind of thoughts out and around his head. "What course do you do?"

"Music." George told him rather plainly, but almost as if he expected that might capture Matty's attention, like he was the kind of boy who went around flaunting the slightest bit of musical talent for undeserved recognition and love from anyone with the few brain cells needed to take him seriously. Matty took a moment to remind himself that he hated those boys.

"Oh. Nice." Matty did try not to sound particularly bored out of his mind by George's response. He reckoned however that it might not have worked awfully well.

"Yeah." George bit his lip, looking a little worse off, like there was a certain element of regret hidden away behind his eyes, and really, Matty had never intended to properly upset him at all. Really, this whole mess wasn't so much about George at all - he was just yet another boy. This was about Matty, this was about sorting his head out, this was about how he couldn't help himself, this was about how he'd willingly let anyone fuck him, no matter how plain they were, no matter how boring they were, even if they were the most despicable person he'd met. He'd let them.

Matty reckoned there was something innately, well, fucked up, about that, but it was really not the kind of thing he was going to delve into at seven minutes past six on a Thursday, especially in front of someone he'd just met.

"Are you alright?" George asked, leaning forward a little and forcing what was easily the most excruciating eye contact Matty had ever had to endure.

Matty found that he just really wasn't sure how he was supposed to answer that, especially with what looked to be a genuinely concerned look in George's eyes. He shook it off. He insisted however that he was kidding himself, and did all he could to remember that he could find a boy like George on every street corner, and maybe half of them might even be vaguely interested in him. As logical as it was, his brain didn't quite seem to take him seriously.

"Uhh... yeah." Matty nodded, almost frantically. George was likely more than well aware of the fact that he was lying to him, but Matty told himself that didn't matter. It wasn't as if the truth would go down very well at all either.

"Alright." George nodded to him; it was evident in his voice that he didn't believe a word. But then again, they were just strangers, and this was just the most useless conversation: this was just the collapse of everything in over Matty's head. This was reality finally coming to catch up to him.

"Yeah..." Matty dragged himself to his feet, avoiding looking George's way as he did so. "I... uhh... I've got to go. See you around... George."

"See you around." He nodded, watching Matty go, and somehow, Matty left with no regrets, with no other thoughts tying him down, utterly convinced that this was the right thing to do. That had to be progress in some way; he had to be getting better at least. The only problem lay in the fact that he just hadn't the slightest idea what it was that he could be recovering from: what it was that had made him that way in the first place.

However, as Matty reached the door, he made the fatal mistake of glancing back over his shoulder, only to find George meeting him with the most beautiful smile from across the room. He stopped for a moment, almost paralysed, caught in the warm, golden glow that seemed to radiate all around him.

It was with that smile that Matty came to realise that he still felt the same inside: he realised that George wasn't anything he'd thought he might be. He wasn't different, he wasn't special, he was perhaps even the definition of average and ordinary, but, fuck, he was still beautiful. And he had what was easily the world's most beautiful smile.

Despite that, Matty couldn't shake a horrible kind of sinking feeling in his stomach as he made his way down the street, walking at twice his normal pace, almost as if he lived in fear that the harsh reality behind his own feelings was in a perpetual state of just very nearly catching up to him. Instead, all that Matty allowed to govern his head for that evening was an overwhelming sense of confusion, one that ended up panning itself out into one of his worst headaches. It was unpleasant, but at least it was something that he was sure he could deal with.

But Matty did wish that it was all he had to deal with, as in reality, he instead found himself lost up inside the sickening sensation that he just didn't quite fit up inside his head. Like he was all too big for his bones and all too small for them at the same time. Clear facts and writing had become smudged, like soaked ink, as he struggled to trust in anything he'd once knew. George was just the tip of the iceberg, really, and Matty just wasn't quite ready to take a chance over whether or not he might sink.

-

When Thursday night became Friday, it became perhaps exceedingly obvious that certain feelings inside him refused to fade away: that time wasn't the perfect healer, or perhaps he just didn't have nearly enough of it.

George hadn't spent any time at the coffeeshop that day. Matty couldn't really blame him. He might have even imagined that he'd done enough to scare him off with that mess of an awkward conversation: strewn amidst his struggle to decode all that lay up inside his head. Matty decided that it probably would be for the best if he just stopped thinking about George. That would have been all well and good if he actually had the brains to listen to his own advice.

Instead, the very first thing Matty did when he got home that night was get into the shower and have a wank. He was quick to take advantage of an empty house, relishing in his parents' absence. He did wonder just for a brief moment where his brother was, before brushing it all quickly from his mind. Somewhere, beneath all of his own mess, he was sort of vaguely aware of the fact that he might have been supposed to be looking after Louis tonight. But he found himself comfortable to settle on the conclusion that if his brother wasn't here then he just couldn't possibly be responsible for babysitting him.

Matty wasn't really a bad brother. Just perhaps a bad person. Maybe not even that. He was much more unfortunate than anything else. Regardless, the questionable morality of the situation wasn't something he allowed himself to dwell on in the brief minutes it took him to find his way into the upstairs bathroom.

He reached to switch the shower on before he took his clothes off, leaving a moment for the water to warm up properly as he faced his reflection in the bathroom mirror. It wasn't narcissism, but he couldn't quite take his eyes off himself; he held his reflection's gaze rather firmly as he pushed his hair back away from his face and tied it up into a bun. He proceeded to stand there motionless for a good moment more, listening to the water hitting the shower floor, allowing himself to relax as the heat of the water vapour flooded the room.

Maybe it was narcissism. All this staring at his own reflection. That did sound an awful lot like narcissism, after all. Narcissism, however, had an awful lot to do with being in love with yourself, and as Matty faced his reflection in the bathroom mirror that Friday evening, he felt perhaps anything but admiration.

It wasn't that he hated himself. It wasn't quite like that. He wasn't exceedingly fond of himself either. It was just something else. He found that he was uncomfortable more than anything, like his reflection knew something he didn't, and like it was looking back at him with disgust, like it was all his fault. Or perhaps it wasn't disgust, instead just the overbearing sense that something was wrong: something he ought to have maybe figured out by now. Something he ought to have maybe even fixed by now. But Matty was clueless, the horrible kind of clueless: clueless verging on guilty.

He didn't tear his eyes away from the mirror until it had completely steamed up. In the absence of his own reflection to serve as a distraction, he became increasingly aware of the fact that anyone could come home at any minute, and with that, he stripped his clothes off and stepped under the water.

Instantly, he knew that it was too hot. Scolding, in fact. Matty felt stupid to have expected any less. He slumped against the shower wall, letting each and every droplet burn a hole into his skin. It didn't matter, really, or at least it just didn't feel like it did. At least not in the scheme of everything, as there was a far worse kind of ache unravelling itself inside of his chest.

Not to mention his cock. But that was definitely the easier of the two problems to solve. Matty did really wish he could wank away the heartache too, but life just didn't quite work like that. He'd figured that out first hand.

Matty could vow never to think about George again later. He could promise it to himself but only starting tomorrow, only after that night, after he'd curled his fingers around his hardening cock and finally let himself relax, his mind immediately directing itself to where it really wanted to go.

That was of course, George's fingers. Matty didn't even try and stop himself from thinking about them grasped tightly around his cock in place of his own. He thought of George's hand: so much bigger than his own, with fingers that he didn't doubt could wrap halfway around his waist.

He thought of George's hand covering his cock completely. He let the hot water burn into his shoulders, turning them an unattractive shade of pink, as he lost his mind with thoughts of himself growing hard against the palm of George's massive hand. He thought of the other, wrapped around his waist, nails digging into the slope of his back as he pulled him closer. He thought of shuddering and shaking in that grip as he'd cum, with those nails leaving red marks across his back, and the image of his cock leaking out over those fingers of George's that had burned into the back of his mind.

Then he made his worst mistake yet. He let his mind wander to George's cock, where it would lay hard between his legs. He let himself ponder those long fingers and massive strong hands, and within seconds, Matty lost his mind just to the image of George's fingers stretched across his own cock, not even managing to hold it all in the palm of his hand.

Matty tore his eyes open as he steadied himself against the shower wall: a desperate hand left an almost sinful mark in the condensation, as he'd grasped the wall for dear life, feeling like he might just collapse under the water, now feeling as if it might physically drill into his skin to lodge itself under his bones. Matty let his eyes flicker down to the drain, watching as the remains of his own lack of self control washed away with the water.

Suddenly, that was all so much for never thinking about George again, as there was no doubt, even the moment after it had all happened, that it was just something he'd never be able to get out of his mind.

-

He was only twenty minutes late after all, ending up around Gemma's house no later than half past seven. Perhaps more like seven thirty five: just half past was pushing it. Admittedly, however, it wasn't entirely Matty's fault; it had an awful lot to do with the fact that he hadn't been able to find his keys again, having so frantically dumped them after first getting home that night.

What definitely was his fault, though, was the good fifteen minutes he'd spent sat on his bed with his head in his hands, wondering just when, if ever, he might be able get George out of his mind again. He really had fucked that one up for himself.

He'd hardly even had enough time to make himself look decent before he'd had to rush off out of the house, not so much in fear of what Gemma would say to him when he eventually turned up a good half an hour late, but the instance that someone might come home and stop him from going out. By this point in the day, Matty needed this. He needed to see his friends, he needed to have a drink, maybe a bit more than a drink, and he needed everything that had been so caught up inside of him just to go away.

Gemma met him with an over-dramatised roll of her eyes the very moment she pulled open the front door. She had grown unfortunately accustomed to the fact that Matty tended to be late for near enough everything, and pretty much lacked the capacity to keep any part of his life in check. In moderation, it was mildly amusing, perhaps vaguely charming, but a solid twenty five minutes late was nothing more than tiring. Still, Gemma didn't press the issue: reading enough off of the look in Matty's eyes. Regardless this had never been a night intended for talking.

"So you did finally turn up." Amber called out, her tone oddly smug, as Gemma led Matty through the hallway and into the kitchen.

"Yeah." Matty bit his lip, not bothering to figure out just what it was that Amber might have found so amusing about the situation, and instead reaching immediately for a bottle of wine from the cupboard.

"Marika bet me that you wouldn't." Amber explained, disregarding the fact that Matty really hadn't asked. She smirked across at her girlfriend, who was attempting to make some sort of shitty cocktail out of whatever she could find around the kitchen, which amounted to a few bottles of wine, a couple of vodka, and a six pack of beer that had been abandoned at the back of one of the cupboards, coupled with a litre bottle of Ribena, and half a carton of Tropicana - with bits.

Amber and Marika had been dating for a year now. They were that kind of disgusting cute couple that acted like they'd been married for fifty years, which was all lovely and well and good, but didn't half serve as a blatant reminder to how shit your love life was in comparison. Still, Matty regarded them as two of the very few people he had the patience to stand: two of the very few people he'd happily spend this kind of Friday night with.

"What did she bet?" Gemma asked, watching Amber and Marika share a momentary glance: there was something innately mischievous about it, and Gemma really didn't want to trust them at all.

"My jacket." Marika answered her, opening and closing the fridge door for the fourth time, seeming incredibly disheartened by the lack of stuff inside of it. "Have you not got any proper juice or anything?" She turned back to face Gemma, but found instead that Gemma didn't quite get the chance to respond to her.

"My jacket." Amber corrected her, rather insistently. "The one you keep stealing from me. I've had it since I was fourteen - that's four years. How can it be yours? Gem can prove it, she's got that really dumb photo of us from like year ten-"

"It's in my wardrobe, it's my jacket." Marika was determined not to listen to her girlfriend, simply rolling her eyes instead. "Whatever, you're going to come and steal it anyway- Gemma, do we have any proper juice?"

"What's wrong with that Tropicana there?" She gestured vaguely across the room towards the fridge. "That's orange juice. That's proper juice."

"It's got bits in." Marika pouted, hoping to gain any kind of sympathy from just about anyone, but found instead that things really weren't going her way.

"Deal with it. It's not like you have to drink it." Gemma rolled her eyes, reaching for a glass to get herself a drink: deciding that she nearly wasn't drunk enough to deal with anything quite yet.

"Why would you ever get juice with bits in though?" Matty came to conclude that this part of the conversation was important enough to ensure that his opinion was entirely necessary. "That's fucking disgusting." He took a swig of wine straight from the bottle: it had been a trying week.

"You're fucking disgusting." Gemma snapped; her initial idea of the night hadn't involved practically babysitting Matty. At the very least, he'd seemed to be in a better mood since he'd arrived. She decided just not to question just how much that had to do with the wine. "Use a fucking glass."

"Does it really matter?" Matty's voice was much more of a whine than anything else, shooting Gemma a pleading kind of childish look from across the room. He even glanced across at Amber and Marika for sympathy.

"Yes." Gemma insisted, sliding a glass across the counter towards him. "Can you try to at least have some common sense until I'm drunk enough not to care?"

Matty nodded, almost politely, not questioning anything in her words as he reluctantly poured himself a glass of wine. Amber, however, didn't seem quite so sold.

"Exactly how drunk are you planning on getting?" Her eyes widened a little, glancing around the room, unable to stop herself from rolling her eyes at the fact that she was the only one who didn't currently have a drink in their hand. "I thought we were making a point of not going out. If you want to get absolutely pissed then why are we staying in?"

"Because I'm lonely and bitter." Gemma supplied rather readily. "I don't want to deal with stupid clubs or stupid parties or stupid boys. I just want to get drunk and have a laugh."

Matty found that he very much agreed with her, deciding that the very same could be the best medicine for whatever mess was going on up inside his head. "Yeah. I don't want to have to go out and make an effort. I look like shit, I feel like shit. That's that."

"Right... what's going on? With the both of you." Marika seemed to immediately give up on whatever kind of cocktail she'd been attempting to mix out of a glass of ribena and what was indisputably far too much vodka. "I'm not having the both of you being pissy and whiny for the rest of the night. Just get it out, get it out of the way and then just leave it behind."

Gemma grimaced for a moment, finding that she wasn't entirely convinced, but held Amber's gaze for a second, catching the slight gesture across towards Matty, and the already empty bottle of wine beside him. She knew that was a problem they really did have to deal with, or the cause of it at the very least, as much as Matty was determined to never talk about anything of value ever.

"Yeah, alright, let's go upstairs and I'll tell you at great length about this fucking dickhead of a boy."

"Great. Can't wait." Marika rolled her eyes, knowing that when Gemma got started, it really took her quite a while to stop.

"You literally asked for it. Shut up." Gemma shot her a grin, grabbing a bottle of vodka before she lead the way upstairs.

-

Gemma had been on the subject of the boy who'd stood her up the night before, or something like that - admittedly, Matty wasn't entirely listening, for fourteen minutes now. Matty had been counting. Well, rather, watching the clock, following the second hand round and round from the foot of Gemma's bed. He was sat a little further away from the three girls, who'd positioned themselves in a circle on the floor around a bottle of wine.

In those fourteen minutes, Matty had found that he'd drank a disgustingly large proportion of the bottle of vodka Gemma had taken upstairs with her. Matty thought about stopping, about putting the bottle down. But he didn't. Like he'd thought about forgetting about George. But he couldn't. Even now, as he struggled to remember where he'd been for the earlier portion of the day, those thoughts he'd gave into in that shower seemed to be permanently burned into his mind. Matty took a chance with a little more to drink: desperate for any kind of relief.

He wasn't quite sure how it had happened, how he'd come to this point, but very suddenly, the loud conversation from the three girls had fallen into silence, the ticking of the clock on the wall seeming to reverberate around the room with the force of an earthquake. Perhaps more notably than that, he'd ended up stretched out across the bed, laying on his front, with a horrible kind of ache all over, and even more notably than that, all eyes upon him.

"What...?" He stumbled for any kind of grasp on what it was that had happened, but found nothing that came to mind. He could fixate on anything beyond the all too bright colours that surrounded him: blurring as he looked around too fast, and the thoughts he'd had of George earlier that evening: stark and untouched amidst everything else.

"You should stop drinking." Gemma's response was instant, and perhaps a bit rich coming from her and the wine glass she held in her right hand. Matty, however, was beyond drunk - instead just absolutely wasted.

"Mmm...?" Matty struggled to sit up, letting Gemma pry the bottle from his hands. Admittedly, he didn't particularly want to drink very much at all, especially not anymore. He just wanted his head to stop. He wanted every persistent thought to leave him alone, because everything was just so very wrong. Matty felt as if he just might drown in an ocean of everything he couldn't fix nor escape from.

"Matty, what's wrong?" Amber's tone was candid, having abandoned pleasantries entirely in favour of meeting him with an insistent look held firmly between her eyes.

"I'm fine." He groaned, his voice muffled and his words slurred slightly, but regardless of that, he almost seemed to believe it himself.

"This is not fine." Marika added, glancing to the almost empty bottle that Gemma had taken away from him. "You blacked out. Honestly, you look like you're going to be sick. What's wrong?"

"No." Matty continued to insist. "I'm fine. I don't feel sick, I just... I feel everything, you know, there's too fucking much of everything. I still can't escape it." He groaned, wishing for just one instance in which he could close his eyes and not immediately flash back to thoughts of George's hands, coupled with the worst kind of fantasies.

"Talk about it." Gemma told him, persistent in her tone. "It helps, trust me. What's bothering you? There was something up since the moment you arrived - I noticed."

Matty shook his head, stumbling to his feet, and somehow managing to make it safely across the room. "I'm getting some water."

"And then you'll talk about it?" Gemma continued, determined not to let this go for anything in the world.

Matty bit his lip, hating the notion of it, but seeing no way out of this one. "Yeah. Alright." He gave in, taking his chances, thankful for the slight confidence boost the alcohol had given him at the very least. As in the way of positives, it really hadn't given him very much else at all.

-

It wasn't until around forty five minutes later that Matty finally began to speak. He was in a notably better state than he had been before; still, he was just anything but sober, and the same thoughts were yet to leave him alone. He wasn't sure if he had managed to get a better grasp on himself in the time, or if he'd just gotten to the good stage of drunk - the perfect balance between out of it and in control of himself. The stage where everything started to feel a little better.

Gemma had spent the time watching him intently, yet to give up on the promise she'd forced out of him. However, Amber and Marika seemed to have lost interest, worrying themselves so much more with their own drinks, and looking entirely too invested in each other, very much like they'd almost gone and forgotten that Matty and Gemma were also in the room.

Matty wasn't sure what brought him to do it in the end. He knew for sure that it wasn't the persistence of Gemma's gaze, or the inviting silence in conversation that panned out in intervals for several minutes at a time, or even anything inside of him that longed to have it out in the open. If he had to put it down to anything, he'd go for the alcohol and the stupidity: the mess he longed to make, as if his drunken mind had simply grown tired of the safe and calm.

"I talked to him." Matty began, voice louder than normal in order to ensure that he caught the attention of the room over the soft hum of music that seemed to be serving much more as just background noise that anything else. He turned and properly faced the three of them, although left his gaze to linger upon Gemma for that little while longer.

"Who?" Amber asked, her face making her confusion rather blatant.

Matty bit his lip: hard, harder than was entirely necessary. He found that there was some kind of control in that: breaking through the hazy trance of drunkenness, of the faded state he'd fallen into. "The boy from the coffeeshop." He directed his words at Gemma, leaving it up to her to explain if she saw fit.

"Wait? Who's this? What's going on?" Marika leaned over, glancing between Gemma and Matty almost frantically. She was all too curious but Matty just couldn't blame her.

Gemma let out a sigh, hating the expectant look in Matty's eyes, as if he'd deemed it appropriate that only she explained. "Matty- look..." She took a deep breath, extending her gaze across to Amber and Marika for just a moment. It was just as she began to contemplate just doing it and laying the situation out for the two of them, that she came to the abrupt realisation that neither Amber nor Marika knew anything much at all in regards to Matty's sexuality.

It wasn't that he was keeping it from them. Why would he? Especially as they weren't straight either. It was just down to the fact that he only ever did speak to Gemma about these things. Really, it was something they should have known, and never something Matty had ever made a serious effort to hide around them, but something that had slipped and faded away with the rest of everything else.

"What do you want me to say?" Gemma prompted, unsure if Matty was really sober enough to have a proper grip on the situation. She wasn't particularly sober herself either, but she was sober enough to wonder if maybe she should suggest that they revisited this another time. Matty didn't quite give her time to consider it, though.

"Nothing." Matty told her, taking a sigh, and despite better judgment, reaching for her drink, downing it before he could stop her. "There's this boy at the coffeeshop." He flickered his gaze away from Gemma and instead towards the other two girls. "He comes in all the time. He's like really tall, with messy blonde hair, and he's got... he's got the most beautiful smile."

Matty looked away, unable to stop a similar smile from creeping across his face and spreading itself wide across his cheeks. "I told Gemma about him and she told me just to talk to him. Even though she thought I'd never do it, but I did." He turned back to Gemma, meeting her with an almost smug look in his eyes. "I did. His name's George. He's nice."

"So what happened?" Gemma continued, glancing only momentarily towards Amber and Marika, who seemed yet to have much of a grip on what it was that was really happening here. She decided it might be best if their questions came later. "Something did, didn't it? That's why you're all... weird. What did you do, did you...?" She trailed off, becoming suddenly very aware of the fact that this wasn't just a conversation between the two of them, despite the fact that those conversations had just always been.

"No." Matty's tone grow irate, coming closer to snapping at her, as he too avoided the whole Amber and Marika situation. "I didn't fuck him. Thank you very much. Oh come on, I knew that was what you were getting at. Nothing fucking happened, alright?"

"And why's-" Gemma did try to respond, but this time around, Amber and Marika really did refuse to just sit quietly and listen.

"I'm sorry but what?" Amber was the first to speak, her gaze flickering frantically between Matty and Gemma in the hopes of some form of explanation.

"Did you say 'fuck him'?" Marika added, a look on her face as if she didn't quite believe it.

"Yeah, he did." Amber assured her, nodding, before immediately turning her head back to Matty. "What's-..." She paused for a moment, biting at her lip as everything finally began to sink in. "Fuck, this is why... why you're all off, because we-... you wanted to tell us that you're... gay?"

Matty swallowed hard. Neither Gemma nor himself had ever quite so directly addressed anything relating to his sexuality. He'd never once properly defined it and she'd never asked him to. He'd always found himself more concerned with the actual emotional logistics involved in his attraction to men as opposed to fitting himself under a label.

The word 'gay' echoed around his head for a good minute before he began to properly comprehend just what it meant in relation to himself. It wasn't right. None of it was right. He couldn't quite explain it, but it just didn't fit, and instead found himself innately rejecting the term. That wasn't him at all.

"I'm not gay." When Matty eventually spoke up, his voice was calm, quiet, and in very much of a manner that had not been expected.

"Bi?" Marika asked, figuring that it was more likely for Matty, who she knew had been with a few girls in the past.

But again, Matty shook his head. The whole sexuality explosion still going off in the back of his head as he struggled to deal with the issue so full on. It was as if there was something else that prevented him from making sense of it, like something over complicating it: a whole other mess that he was just yet to figure out. Whatever it was, the pieces just couldn't fit right, perhaps as if he'd been stuck with half of the pieces to the wrong puzzle in the first place.

"No." He shook his head, growing quieter once more. "It... I don't know. I'm not... I don't know... I guess? I just... I'm not gay. Like I'm not... that's... not me... I don't know. It just doesn't."

"Matty, look, I don't mean any offence by it but talking about fucking guys can be considered pretty gay." Amber did attempt to phrase it the most pleasantly she could, but there was no avoiding the startled look Matty met her with. It came across almost as if he was simply yet to realise that, but that really wasn't the case at all.

"I didn't fuck him. Nothing even happened. I didn't even get his fucking number, you know?" Matty bit his lip, folding his arms across his chest as he struggled to pull himself out of the pit he'd suddenly been somewhat pushed into. "I mean... I guess it doesn't matter, because he's not interested in me, I don't think. And I mean, he is just... average. I guess. He's really not like the gay second coming of Jesus or something? He's just... a guy. He really is nothing special, but I don't... I don't know. I keep telling myself that but I still keep thinking about him, you know?"

"Just a guy." Gemma echoed, somewhat inquisitive. "I told you that. He can't be the be all or end all of everything. There were other guys before, there'll be more in the future."

"Wait... uhhh...." Marika interjected, unsure if it was really appropriate for her to ask, but found that she was drunk enough to do so anyway. "How many guys before? How long has this been a thing, really? I mean, of course, coming out is difficult, you definitely didn't have to tell us, I just... I'm curious."

"I don't know." Matty bit at his fingernails as he attempted to draw some form of answer out of himself. "I mean... I never really, woke up one day and suddenly wanted to get fucked in the ass. It doesn't work like that, of course. It sort of happened gradually. I mean... I guess I've always been sort of attracted to guys, but I didn't really think anything of it, until I was like really attracted to this guy. And I guess yeah, then there was a day when I did wake up and want him to fuck me. That did kind of happen like that, but it was weird and confusing, and I didn't want to deal with it, but now it's just a thing. It's just me. It's just natural."

"So was this about the coffeeshop guy? That you were suddenly really attracted to?" Amber asked, doing her best to get her head around the situation in her current state of mind.

"No." Matty shook his head, even going as far as to laugh a little. "This was like a good year and a half ago. There have been lots of guys since."

"Lots." Gemma added, nodding her head in agreement. "And he's gone on in great detail about every single one of them, and just what he did with them, you know in the same graphic detail."

Matty blushed a little. Well, maybe more like a lot. "I say stupid things when I'm drunk. I'm drunk now, and I'm saying stupid things and you're letting me. You're letting me mope on and on about this guy from the coffeeshop. Like he's called George. That's such a boring name, like who the fuck is called George? Never let me mope about someone called George."

"It's not stupid." Marika told him, her voice softer than it had been before. "Matty, look, none of this is stupid. We want you to talk to us about these sorts of things. They're important. Your sexuality is important, and look, you shouldn't just ignore it."

"I don't want to deal with it." Matty insisted, his voice growing harsher. "It doesn't fucking make sense, and I don't want to have to think about that as well as thinking about trying to not think about George even though I've already fucked that up for myself because he's got these fingers that are so long and so thick that it's just fucking sinful, and I don't even want to think about how that relates to his cock, but trust me, I have. And none of this is going to leave me alone. No matter how fucking 'average' or whatever he is, or no matter how much he's not interested in me at all."

"How do you know?" Gemma asked, trying not to dwell on the slightly less appropriate subjects that Matty had brushed over there. "That he's not interested. You didn't even ask for his number, so it's not like you even gave him a chance to reject you."

Matty shook his head. "I don't want to deal with it. I don't want to deal with him. I just want it all gone, I want my fucking head back, but that doesn't look like it's going to happen, especially not now there's all this sexuality bullshit. It doesn't matter. But I've made it matter for myself now, because it should fit. It shouldn't be too hard, should it? But it just feels all fucking wrong. Like it makes me sick, and no that's not just the drink, even though I am stupidly drunk, and stupidly sick, and stupidly sick, I'm not stupidly gay, because I'm not even gay."

"Okay..." Gemma trailed off, finding that, as a straight girl, this was where the line of things she could and couldn't offer advice on was drawn.

"So, are you attracted to girls?" Marika began, now desperate to sort this for Matty as she'd appeared to have caused him so much strife in the first place.

Matty bit his lip for a moment, somehow finding that he just wasn't entirely sure what to say. "Not like with boys. It's... I don't... different. I very much prefer being with guys. But I mean... it's not like girls aren't hot, I just... I don't know. They are, I'd definitely kiss girls. I mean, I just... I don't really think I'd fuck a girl again. I mean, I'm not like put off by it or anything. It's not like I find them unattractive or anything. I definitely could, but I don't really... I don't know... right now. I just don't want to."

"That's fine. You don't have to worry about that." Marika continued, even going as far as to break into a smile. "It's sort of how you'd define attraction, isn't it? Like, I guess whether you'd date a girl."

"I don't really do relationships anymore." Matty admitted, feeling the whole stupidly drunk speech take over again. "I just like getting fucked. Honestly. Maybe I don't know... I could be gay. But I'm not. If I was... if it was different. I would be gay, but I'm not gay."

"Why not?" Gemma asked, struggling to make sense of Matty's train of thought anymore.

"Well... I don't know." Matty let out a sigh, falling back onto nothing before finally giving into his worst idea yet, and that was trusting the entirety of his feelings into the much more inebriated side of his brain. "Being gay is being... like... a guy who's into guys. And that's... that really could be me, I'm into guys. I don't know, it's weird, but I just don't really feel like a guy myself."

"Matty, I-" Amber was the first to speak once the room had suspended and almost froze in what Matty thought might have turned out to be a perpetual state of silence.

"No. Ignore that." He insisted, shaking his head. "It doesn't matter. I'm alright. It's just... something I think about sometimes. It doesn't make sense, I think talking about it, you know, making it real, it's only going to make it worse."

"Since when has that ever been true?" Gemma's tone was stern, almost forceful. "Matty, come on, don't be ridiculous-"

"Fucking leave it alright?" He raised his voice to a yell. "Will you ever just give up acting like you know everything going on in my brain? Because you really don't, you know that?" With that he got to his feet and stumbled out of the room. "Leave it alright? For once?"

-

Amber had been the one to go after him in the end. Someone had to. Gemma had desperately wanted to, as that was the kind of thing they just did for each other, but it pretty clear that Gemma maybe wasn't the person that Matty most wanted to see that night.

A couple of minutes passed before she found him: stood out in the garden with a cigarette grasped loosely between trembling fingers, looking up at the stars. It had gotten pretty late, the evening seemed to have faded out around them, and collapsed in on itself, as the tone of everything had quickly made its true identity known. This just hadn't been the best of nights for harmless fun and stupid homemade cocktails; instead it had been something else entirely. That, however, didn't necessarily have to be bad. It was left to them to make something of it.

"What?" Matty's voice took the form of a shaky grasp for breath. He didn't even bother to turn around, relying enough on the steady footsteps across the grass behind him, forever getting closer and closer. "I'm fine." He continued to insist, hand still shaking despite his claims.

Amber didn't try to argue with him. She knew very well as to just how stubborn Matty could be, and this really wasn't the kind of night for any more arguments and mess. This felt like it all did mean something - a kind of something she'd have a much better grasp on if she wasn't really quite drunk. Matty storming out had seemed to sobered everyone up a decent amount, but still, Amber couldn't help but regret the state everything was in; it had hardly turned out to be the most pleasant of nights.

"Are you cold out here?" She asked, changing the subject in the hopes that with it, Matty might loosen up a little, or at the very least, just stop scowling at her like she'd burned his whole house down and physically shat on everything he'd ever loved.

"I'm fine." Matty persisted, his teeth sinking down into his bottom lip as he attempted to find something to say: something more than 'I'm fine', something that Amber might actually listen to.

"You're shivering." She told him, lightly pressing the tip of her index finger against Matty's shaking fingers. Amber was unable to entirely distinguish as to whether it was down to the cold night air, or if it was more so to do with what had gone on inside.

"I'm not." Matty argued back, despite the fact that he clearly was, and seemingly couldn't do anything to control it. He brought his cigarette up to his lips, perhaps just in an attempt of distracting Amber from his fingers, and inhaled deeply.

"Then why are you shaking?" Amber couldn't help but laugh a little; Matty's argument was ridiculous - she couldn't avoid that, and really, she was too drunk to stop herself.

"Because I keep thinking about what I said." Matty seemed to speak his words entirely to the ground, averting his gaze from Amber as much as possible. "To Gemma mostly. But to you and Marika as well. I can't stop thinking about that, and I can't stop thinking about the sudden idea of sexuality and fucking labels, and every label and every idea about it seems so fucking forced, and you know what? I still can't stop thinking about George."

"So you're not fine?" Amber gathered, raising her eyebrows slightly as she wondered as to just how Matty had managed to come to that sort of conclusion with everything going on inside his head.

"No, I'm fine." He assured her, deadly serious. His tone however, was forced, strained, and choppy: cut into with the kind of serious emotion that made it seem as if he just might cry at any moment.

"You don't sound-" Amber began, arguing despite better judgement. Much as she had expected, Matty cut into her words before she could even finish her sentence.

"I'm f-..." Matty trailed off, shaking his head. "No, you're right, I'm a fucking mess."

Amber couldn't help but giggle at that, despite the fact that she knew she shouldn't. Thankfully, however, Matty did too.

"So kind of you for taking my problems so seriously." Matty rolled his eyes, his tone overly sarcastic and somehow much more tolerable out of seemingly nowhere. It seemed as if a switch had just flicked in his head somewhere, and that one switch had just gone and triggered a whole mess of everything.

"Matty." Amber shook her head, watching as he finished his cigarette and discarded it to the ground, putting it out under the heel of his shoe. "Literally all of us want to take them seriously. You're the one that's not letting us."

Matty grimaced, shaking his head, looking an awful lot like the situation did something to physically repulse him. "You're not helping though. Gemma's always going on like she knows absolutely everything that's going on in my head, and she's always just telling me what to do, and then Marika thinks she's got my whole fucking identity figured out for herself and can just force it all on me, and it's giving me a fucking headache. Or maybe that's just the drink. Maybe both. I don't fucking know."

"They don't mean you any harm. They're trying their best. Come on, you know that they both love you and that they'd never want to upset you." Amber met him with an insistent look in her eyes: this was something she was very prepared to argue over.

"I know." Matty let out a sigh, his tone seeming somewhat reluctant. "It's just... it's making everything worse really. It's like, suddenly everyone's throwing me all kinds of questions that I didn't even know could be questions, let alone what their answers might be."

"No one's pressuring you or expecting you to entirely have yourself figured out. Don't think that we are. We just want to help you." Amber met him with a smile, hoping desperately that she might get somewhere with all of this.

"I want help. Fuck, I have no idea what I'm going to do about anything, about any of this, but I just. I just don't want help like that." Matty bit his lip, suddenly speaking more quietly than ever before.

"Then what do you want?" Amber spoke slowly, perhaps even tentatively, as she struggled to imagine just what Matty's response could be.

"I want it all to fucking go away." Matty choked out, unsure even himself if he was closer to laughing or crying. It was all a fucking mess and he needed another fucking drink, but he was drunk enough as it was.

"Problems don't tend to just go away by themselves, Matty. You'd probably have to solve them for that." Amber could tell that her words weren't going to go down very well; they were, however, the truth, and that was something Matty was just going to have to deal with.

"How?" He shook his head and reached into his jacket pocket, lighting himself another cigarette, before offering the packet across to Amber.

"I know you'll want to kill me, but talking it through with someone usually helps." She avoided his gaze as she placed a cigarette between her lips, reaching to borrow his lighter and struggling to get it working for a few moments. "Why is it so stiff?" She grumbled, clicking at it frantically.

Matty gave way to a small smile, shoving his lighter and the, now nearly empty, packet back into his pocket. Proceeding that, he took a drag of his cigarette before he even thought about responding, know all too well, that he was going to need it.

"Alright. Whatever." He exhaled a cloud of smoke into the night air. "Just not, not with them, not now. You're the only one not trying to force your own opinion down my throat, really."

"Are you actually agreeing to talk about my problems with me?" Amber almost took a step back: astounded.

"Yeah." Matty rolled his eyes, able to find just a little bit of amusement in the situation. "I'm drunk. Look at me, this is the night of bad decisions, this."

"Definitely not the best night is it?" Amber nodded in agreement.

"Not the worst either. Not by a long shot." Matty only came to wonder if that was really something he should have said until after it had slipped his lips. Amber did look at him oddly for a good few moments but she didn't press the matter, and for that, Matty was thankful.

"So... I said something back there... I... I guess I said I'm... not a guy, and that's... that's weird, because I don't know where that's come from. I mean... I obviously am a guy, but I... it didn't feel wrong. Saying it didn't feel wrong, it didn't feel wrong like those ideas of sexuality did."

"What do you mean? That you're obviously a guy." Amber took a moment before she responded, trying her best to take in and fully understand everything Matty had told her, even in her current state, which she reckoned was definitely improving; she could feel the oncoming headache, so she really did have to be sobering up.

"Well... uhh..." Matty stumbled, gesturing towards himself. "I have a dick."

"That's not how gender works though, is it?" Amber met him with a questioning look, unsure just how much of a grasp Matty had on the logistics of gender overall.

"Is it?" He scrunched up his face in confusion. Amber nodded. "How does it work then?" He continued to ask, his hands beginning to shake again, and this really couldn't be passed off as just the cold.

"It's..." Amber trailed off, giving herself a moment to prepare herself to properly explain it. "It's much more mental than physical. I mean, if you think about it, it makes sense that way, doesn't it? Gender is how you feel you identify. Matty, your dick is irrelevant."

"That's a first." Matty commented, unable to help himself.

"Shut up." She rolled her eyes, shoving him slightly, waiting a moment until the silence settled back in over them before continuing. "Gender's like... a spectrum, really. That's how I've best heard it described. There's point A, and let's say that's male, like entirely male, the most manly macho man in the world."

"Obviously me, that." Matty snorted, glancing down at the chipped remains of polish on his fingernails.

Amber rolled her eyes. "And point B is female, the most feminine, girly, girl in the entire world. So like, most people don't sit exactly on point A or point B, do they? Typically, people fit closely to one end of the spectrum, they're comfortable there, but really, you can be anywhere on that line between A and B. You could not even fit on it at all, or you could fluctuate on that spectrum. Nothing's fixed about it, it's not putting things into boxes at all."

"I like that." Matty admitted very quietly. "I'm scared of it, but it makes sense."

"Scared of it?" She asked, a little concerned for what kind of mess this could have spewn throughout Matty's head.

"Yeah. It's a lot to think about really." Matty bit his lip, trying to properly regulate his breathing. "But I like it. It makes sense. That was the problem. I was thinking in terms of two boxes with everything, and nothing ever did fit in either. I guess that's why everything's such a mess."

"I mean, you obviously don't have to know exactly how you identify immediately. I mean, really there's no pressure to know at all ever, but I guess it's nice that. To know. Don't you think? It goes the same way with sexuality." Amber offered him what she hoped came across as a comforting smile.

"Thanks, but can we stop talking about it? I'm drunk and I can just... feel this being a bad decision." He blushed, quickly averting his gaze. "I just... it's a lot to think about, and a lot that I don't want to have to wrap my head around right now."

"Alright. We can talk about something else." Amber gave a nod, taking a moment to herself to think before she continued. "Is this boy still bothering you as well? What was his name again? George?"

"Yeah. George." Matty nodded, biting his lip in a furious attempt not to allow himself to think about anything to do with George at all. He didn't quite see how this conversation could possibly help with that, but Amber had been right so far, and he really didn't have much of a better idea.

"What's he like?" She prompted, sounding noticeably more interested than she had when Gemma had spoken about the boy she was currently caught up with. Admittedly though, Matty was hardly in the position to be rambling on forever about it; Amber was rather thankful of that.

"He's... uhh... tall. He's really tall, literally looks like he could be double my size, honestly. He's nice. I mean, we haven't really spoke very much, well not properly, he's come in for coffee like nearly everyday for the past three weeks, so like we talked but it was like just him ordering coffee, that's kind of different, isn't it? But then like... yesterday... I properly spoke to him. After my shift I went up to him. He's nice. But it was like really fucking awkward, and really I don't think he's as hot as I thought he was. He's kind of average really. And his hair's kind of weird, it's a fucking mess, honestly. I guess it does work for him, but it's like sticking up everywhere, with like random patches of brown and blonde everywhere, like honestly, he had to have dyed it himself. But he's... I don't know. He's got this beautiful smile, but I guess it doesn't matter. I like thought it'd be magical and everything, you know, like I go up to him and suddenly there's fireworks or something, but it was just... you know... kind of boring. A bit shit maybe?"

"Were you actually expecting fireworks and shit? You know that doesn't happen in real life. It was average and awkward and boring because you're real people who just met. It was real, that was what it was." Amber almost went as far as to roll her eyes, but Matty looked a little too emotionally crippled by that point for it to be a good idea.

"Well it's not like there's anything I can do about that now, is it? Chances are he's going to never come into the shop again because I scared him off or whatever, and it's not like he's going to want to talk to me is it? It was fucking awkward. It was fucking weird. I don't think he's worth particularly worrying about though... I just..." Matty trailed off, seeming at a loss for words.

"You can't stop thinking about him." Amber finished for him, finding herself deep in thought - there was definitely something she'd missed in all of this. "That means something by itself, don't you think?"

"Well, it's not like I'm going to creepily talk to him again if he actually does come in again, so guess, I'm just going to have to get over it. I mean, Amber, honestly, he's not even that hot."

Amber found that she didn't really believe Matty just as much as Matty just didn't really believe himself.

"You know..." She trailed off, desperately trying to pinpoint something at the back of her mind. "This George. George. George. George." She repeated to herself. "You don't know his last name do you?"

"No, Amber, we didn't introduce each other with our whole life stories, surprisingly not. His name's George. I know that. I actually don't know how old he is either. Could be like thirty, he could be my sugar daddy or something."

"Thirty?" Amber's eyes widened in disbelief. "Did he look thirty?"

"No." Matty shook his head, laughing. "He looked about our age, I guess. Maybe a bit older, I don't know. Shit, wait- he said he goes to college, so he has to be our age."

"College?" Amber repeated, somewhat astounded. Matty nodded. "What? The same college that I go to?"

"Shit. Yeah. Probably. Yeah. Shit." Matty's eyes widened, staring at Amber in disbelief. "Fuck, do you know him?"

"I actually think I do, yeah... I... not very well, but I've seen him around I think. Like literally six and half feet tall, all this messy hair, brown eyes, I'm pretty sure he sells weed, but I don't know that for certain. But he's definitely the kind of guy you go to for weed, I just don't know if he specifically sells-"

"Fucking hell, Amber, I..." Matty was speechless, suddenly finding that he just didn't know what to think at all. "You could have told me earlier, you know-"

"I was a bit preoccupied honestly, I mean I only just found out you were into guys like maybe two hours ago, it's been one hell of a fucking night, Matty." Amber let out a sigh, unsure just where Matty wanted to go with all of this.

"Come on, though, honestly. Did you not guess? It's not like I'm the posterchild for heterosexuality at all, is it? I guess it's kind of obvious. I look like the kind of person that likes getting fucked. I mean, yeah, there's no type of person like that, like you don't have to look a certain way to like it up the bum, I know that. I'm just saying, if there had to be a type... I'd be it, wouldn't I?"

As mangled and distorted as it was, Amber had to admitted that Matty sort of had a point somewhere amidst all of that.

"Alright." She let out a sigh, letting Matty force whatever stereotype on himself that he wished. "So... this George... George Daniel-"

"George Daniel?" Matty repeated, grimacing a little. "That's two first names. Come on, that's not a proper name. I can't actually fancy him he doesn't even have a proper lastname. This is ridiculous. Fucking George Daniel. Who the fuck calls their kid George? Who's ever looked at a baby and gone, 'oh yeah, that looks like a fucking George?'"

"A lot of people." Amber told him, shaking her head in disbelief. "Look, Matty, let's be honest here. This sounds an awful lot like you're just making excuses now. You do fancy him, even if only just a little bit."

"I just don't want to deal with it." Matty groaned, finding in someway, this had just made the whole situation worse. "It's just... not worth the bother, is it? I've already kind of fucked things up."

"Come on, Matty, you said it yourself. You can't stop thinking about him, and it's pretty obvious that you fancy him quite a lot." Amber's eyes seemed to bore into him as she spoke. Matty hated that she seemed to know more about him than he did, but it seemed like he just had to deal with it.

"Fine. I fancy him a bit. Whatever." He snapped, finishing his cigarette and stumping it out into the grass. "Are you happy now?"

"Are you?" Amber turned the question back onto him. "I think you might be. I can get you his number pretty quickly. I could probably even talk to him for you, explain all of this mess of emotions for you. If you asked me nicely."

"No." Matty shook his head. "Fuck no. I mean, that's lovely of you, but fuck no. I can't deal with this. I couldn't actually deal with him again, I don't want to put myself through having another conversation with him and trying not to think about getting off to him."

"Matty-"

"No, Amber, absolutely fucking not. It can only go wrong, look come on, he's probably straight, for a start. I don't want to deal with that. I need to figure myself out first, I mean, I wouldn't want to spend a first 'date' or whatever trying to explain whatever kind of mess my gender could possibly be? Not that we're going to have a date or anything like that, because he's probably straight and I'm probably going to die because of the hangover I'll have tomorrow, and it's just... it's not going to happen."

"Just give-"

"Not going to happen." Matty repeated, shaking his head at her, before making his way back up towards Gemma's house, deciding that he'd much rather deal with what Gemma could possibly have left to say to him than arguing with Amber over this.

Amber would have liked to have run back in after him, but she reckoned she'd done enough of running after Matty for one day. She'd helped him as much as it seemed like he was going to let her, and that was definitely something. Instead, she took a few minutes to finish her cigarette before following him back inside; everything else would just have to fix itself, as she was definitely done for the night. And really what a rollercoaster of a night it had been.

-

hey guys

so here's this fic

you might have heard me mention it in my rant book

let me tell u now this shit is gonna be good its gonna have like 12 chapters, i got all the shit planned out its gonna be good trust me

pls vote and comment i need attention and praise

I'm sorry this is so long it just happened like this i have actually removed a good 500 words of this but like I'm trying I'm sorry I'm a rambling mess

lov u guys !!!

hope u enjoyed !!!!!