this is actually long like 27k words but this was my self-indulgent comfort blanket through exams fic here u go. intended less for my own happiness than actually being competent and well thought out but here we go its messy its clumsy but its sweet and i liked writing it

"It's broken."

George watched as the boy stared down hopelessly at his school bag - straps half torn off, and generally in state of disarray.

"It was Tommy, wasn't it?" George drew his lips out into a frown. "Come on, Isaac, tell me."

Isaac was hesitant to nod his head, pulling his gaze around the empty music classroom with worry, as if the world might jump out at him from behind an empty plastic chair.

"I'll talk to him." George offered him a smile: as warming and comforting as he could muster. "You've got to tell someone about this, you know? He's just going to keep doing this unless he gets into trouble for it."

"But everyone will laugh at me for telling..." He gave way to a sigh, looking much more disheartened than George felt that anyone should at seven years old.

"I'll make sure they don't." George folded his arms across his chest; he wasn't entirely sure that was a promise he could fully keep, but he'd definitely try as much as he could. Surprisingly enough, being six and a half feet tall and possessing the ability to frown worked absolute wonders in getting primary school kids to shut up when he needed them to.

"Thank you, Mr Daniel." He perked up, grabbing his bag from the table, pulling at the straps tentatively.

"Miss Larey can probably fix that up for you." He gestured down towards the school bag. "I'll go and find Tommy and sort him out for you."

And Isaac stared up at him with a smile so wide and genuine it seemed to mean the entire world. The kind of heartfelt and endearing that he'd felt as if the world had long forgotten: locked away only in the pockets of childhood innocence that George caught sight of from time to time.

He'd never really imagined himself being a teacher, especially not one in a primary school. He'd never sat down and set out to get there, but he didn't exactly imagine that anyone really sat down with a lifelong ambition of being a teacher. It was much more of something that just kind of happened - something he'd fell into, and with that instantly fell in love with.

George had even told himself that it would be more of a temporary thing when he'd first started at the school back when he was twenty three, but he still found himself there five years later, and with absolutely no desire to ever leave. He wondered what kind of reflection that had on him - Matty certainly teased him for it, but the thing was, here he was: happy.

-

Tommy had always been a difficult kid. George knew the type. The ones who'd wandered into school on their first day looking just a little lost - like people were entirely foreign and rules were nothing more than abhorrent. George reckoned he'd been one of those kids too.

It wasn't that there was anything up with Tommy - anything going on at home, any kind of thing to worry about, he was just... one of those kids. From what George had heard, he'd never had the most conventional upbringing, but it wasn't like things were unhappy at home, just a bit different. George had never been quite sure to what kind of different that had been; he'd never felt it entirely appropriate to ask.

"How are you doing, kid?" George found Tommy loitering around the edge of the playground, looking almost suspiciously like he was figuring out how he might climb over the fence, through the bushes and off the school premise. George cracked a smile - that was exactly like something he would have done.

Tommy gave a shrug, hardly bothering to glance up in George's direction. George didn't much blame him; he was a good two feet taller than this kid, after all.

"You don't want to talk to me, I'm guessing." Such an observation was hardly strenuous to pull together, with the look in Tommy's eyes considered.

Tommy gave yet another shrug, doing nothing but more to confirm what George had already suspected.

"Might that be because you're feeling... guilty?" George turned his eyes away from the boy, instead throwing his gaze out across the playground, focusing on several groups of children, some of which he'd been sure were Tommy's friends, not that Tommy had ever really been much of the sociable type.

"About what?" Tommy raised his voice, following George's gaze out across the playground. "I've not done anything, Mr Daniel."

George gave a shrug, just as Tommy had done before. "I'm not saying you have. It's just what somebody's told me."

"Who?" Tommy demanded, balling his hands into fists, as if that might just be the answer to everything - to physically throw his problems off and away from until they stopped being an issue. As uncouth as such a method had to be, George had to admit it - the kid had nerve.

"Does it matter?" George raised a question, catching Tommy's gaze for just a brief moment. "I think if I told you who said something to me, then you'd take it out on them. And then you'd maybe do something again, which would end us up having this same talk again, just this time next week. And that's not going to get us anywhere, is it?"

Tommy shook his head: unsure of what else to say.

"I want to know why." George's voice grew softer, forever treading carefully around Tommy, especially as the subject grew more personal. "Why do you do things in the first place? Things that upset other people? Things that get you into trouble? It's not like you want to spend lunchtimes inside, is it?"

Tommy, once again, fell into that all too familiar shrug. "I don't mind."

George knew that wasn't true. "Why do you want to upset people sometimes, Tommy?" He bit his lip, treading on the thinnest of ice. "You don't like it when people upset you."

"I only break people's things, I only hurt people, I only say things when other people have hurt me first." Tommy's voice was commanding amidst the chatter of the playground, boring into George's ears with the kind of resonance that stopped his whole world for a good minute.

"Who hurts you first?" He continued, keeping his voice as calm as he could.

"I'm not a telltale." Tommy snapped, pulling his gaze away from George as he folded his arms across his chest in defiance.

George could see there was no arguing against that; if Tommy was a person of anything, at seven years old, he was a person of principles, and standing his ground.

"Okay. How do they hurt you?" George bit his lip, almost coming to dread the response. Things like this were never easy to hear about. "What things do they do?"

"Say things." Tommy's words seemed laced with a level of distaste that George was left shellshocked as to quite how he could conjure at just seven years old. "So I have to hurt them harder. To make them stop."

"And do they?" George's eyes grew wide, running the situation back through his mind. "Stop? When you hurt them?"

"Not always." Tommy's voice was low, muttered, as if he so despised the prospect itself.

"If hurting them doesn't always work, then why don't you try something else?" George was moments away from crossing his fingers, so very desperate to actually get through to Tommy for once.

"Like what?" Tommy glanced up at George, almost like he even trusted him - just for the briefest of moments.

"Like letting someone else deal with it. Like me, or another teacher, or your mum-"

"I'm not a telltale." Tommy raised his voice, leaving George to grimace: the hope of everything falling back to pieces around him. "Anyway, I haven't got a mum."

"Oh... I'm sorry." George blushed, cursing himself for forgetting how it had always been Tommy's dad that he'd seen and heard of.

"People say things about that." Tommy leant back against the fence, drawing his gaze down to the ground.

"That isn't fair." George thought for a moment. "Trust me, Tommy, you're not the only kid in this school without a mum."

"Yeah." Tommy bit back, as if to directly tug at George's heart. "But I'm the only one with two dads."

-

Matty was cooking dinner when George got home. It was alarming on all kinds of levels, for a start, as much as George loved him, Matty absolutely couldn't cook to save his life, and secondly there hadn't been in an evening in the past few years where George hadn't had to drag Matty away from his laptop to 'sit down and eat, for christ's sake'.

"Alright...?" George dragged out a sigh, hanging his coat up as neatly as he could, but resorting to throwing his bag down at his feet. Matty shot him a glare.

"What's going on?" George dared to ask, kicking his bag further down the hallway before making his way over to Matty, setting the kettle onto boil as he watched Matty stir something in a pan - from a distance, it almost even looked like he knew what he was doing.

"What do you mean?" Matty arched an eyebrow across in George's direction, unable to bite back a smirk as he glanced down at the vegetables he was cooking.

"What happened in the eight hours I've been gone? When did you turn into... a..." George trailed off, not quite sure what he was even aiming for at all.

"A competent human being?" Matty raised his eyebrows, shooting George a quick smirk.

"Yeah." George let a smile twist over his lips. "That."

"They liked my article, didn't they?" Matty turned back to the hob, unable to bite back a grin: taking over his whole face, crinkling around his eyes.

"I told you." George seemed just as smug as Matty was. "Now, you promised, didn't you? Look me in the eye and tell me you're not a shit writer."

"George..." Matty flushed red. "I'm cooking. I can't."

George rolled his eyes. "So that's why you started cooking, isn't it? I see through you, Healy."

Matty smirked, tucking his hair back behind his ears. "Shut up and go feed Allen, will you?"

George rolled his eyes, pouring himself a cup of tea, and leaving it to cool on the side as he stumbled off in search of Allen - that stupidly overgrown dog of theirs.

-

"Right... come on..." They were curled up on the sofa after dinner, with Matty sat so very much in George's lap, with whatever kind of nonsense that was on TV blathering on in the background.

"Mmm?" George raised his eyebrows, curling an arm around Matty's waist in curiosity.

"Come on, George..." Matty trailed off, tilting his head upwards to meet his boyfriend's gaze. "Don't be stupid. I can see something's bothering you. What is it?"

George threw his head back against the sofa, letting out a groan as Matty managed a smile.

"Come on." He continued to insist. "Talk to me about it. I can offer you my words of wisdom and knowledge."

"Can't you just?" George cracked a smile, drawing out a sigh. "It's school stuff."

"Mmm..." Matty gave a nod; he wondered if at times he knew more about the school George worked at than half of the other teachers did. "Something you actually can't talk to me about?"

George thought for a moment. "Just something one of the kids said to me today. It's been bothering me a lot. It's bothering him too, I don't know if that's why it's bothering me, or maybe that's just the half of it. It's bothering me because I guess, it affects me too."

"What do you mean?" Matty pulled his lips into a frown.

"It's Tommy." George began, leaving Matty to nod: having heard the world about him before. "I was talking to him about why he feels like he needs to upset people. I really didn't think the conversation was going anywhere, but then he said that he needed to stop them saying things to him."

"Is he getting bullied, do you think?" Matty thought for a moment, watching as George tensed up a little.

"He didn't want to say who it was or what they were saying to him, but... I asked him about telling someone, like telling his mum, and he..." George bit his lip, dragging his gaze off to the other side of the living room. "He hasn't got a mum, you see. He's got two dads. And I'm pretty sure the other kids are giving him shit for that."

"Fuck..." Matty mumbled, reaching for George's hand. "You need, or someone needs to... talk to the other kids about that."

"I mean... it's not... it's not something you want to, like... when you're seven you don't want to know about people being discriminated against and hated for who they love. I mean, I don't even think I knew what gay was when I was seven."

"Yeah, but... George..." Matty drew out a sigh. "These kids obviously do. I mean, they must be getting it from shitty parents or something. You have to educate them otherwise, you know? Whilst they're still young enough to really think openly about this sort of shit."

"I don't know if Tommy would like that. You know, he gets weird about when people actually address his problems." George drew out a sigh.

"Not about him directly. Don't make it about him directly. Talk to these fucking kids, George, tell them that no one should be hated for something they can't change about themselves. No fucking... kid... should be getting shit for having two fucking dads, George, for fuck's sake... if not this what are you going to do about it?"

George folded his lips out into a frown. "I don't know."

"See." Matty buried his head back into George's chest.

"Love you." George murmured: words spoken like a promise against his chest.

"Love you too." Matty gave way to a sigh, squeezing George's hand tight.

-

"I know I really don't seem like the type, but..." Matty drew out a sigh, back pressed against the headboard, meeting George's gaze in the dim golden glow of their night light.

"Mmm?" George stretched his arms out across the bed, dragging them up the headboard, as he turned his head to hold Matty's gaze from where he lay, half way to sleep already.

Matty, however was perhaps anything but ready to go to sleep, as he sat there, even as the night dragged on, and the world closed in around him: skies growing darker, placing an unfathomable weight upon his eyelids. The fact of the matter was that, despite everything else, his mind was completely awake: alive with ideas and notions that chased each other through cerebral fields like foxes in the springtime.

"I always thought about it." Matty drew out a conclusion, world fading out into a still around him. It was unearthly: a rippleless lake, a silent forest, a still, sobre tundra of monotonous greys that stretched out for miles and miles.

"About what?" George's voice was a soft murmur in the dim light, looking up at Matty with the warmth and love of a thousand suns. He could sense the tightening of Matty's chest, and the way he'd spent several minutes just clenching and unclenching sweaty palms - something was bothering him. Something was really bothering him.

Matty lips parted as if to give way to a sigh, but what slipped through his lips elected to take the form of a gasp instead. Shaky hands reached up to brush messy curls out of a face: cast away in shadow, as if claimed by the late night hour.

"I always thought about it, you know?" Matty drew a breath, tearing his eyes away from George, and instead fixing his gaze out into the great nothingness: the inky blackness of the other side of the room, lay wait, as a whole world might fester inside of it. The more Matty stared, the more he lost his way in the darkness, the more it seemed to grow alive - to ebb and flow and breathe, reaching out towards them, reaching out towards the bed, with cloaked, diaphanous fingertips: fizzling and mutating in the light.

"Having kids." Matty almost felt his bones rattling from inside of him: heart clinging to the walls of his ribcage for dear life.

George gave way to a sigh, coming out in clumsy staccato breaths, as he pulled himself up and reached back towards the light switch. The room flooded with a golden kind of artificial light: vanquishing the darkness, and clearing Matty's head of a static buzzing that he'd never even been entirely aware had been there at all initially.

"Matty..." George pressed his back against the headboard, shuffling further across to Matty's side of the bed, and moved his arm in around Matty's shoulders. It took little more than ten seconds, before Matty gave in, and leaned in, burying his head into George's chest: listening for the steady rhythm of his heartbeat.

"More when, I..." Matty's voice was quiet, barely a murmur, making more of an impact in the vibrations against George's chest than anything else.

"Hey..." George moved his hand up to Matty's head, running his fingers back through soft, fawn curls. "It's alright. You can talk about it. I want you to talk about it."

Matty drew out a sigh, moving his hand over to George's knee, drumming his thumb gently against his skin as he lost his mind in the matter of articulating his thoughts: of drawing some sort of sense out of every discarded musing, things he chosen to keep at bay.

"I always thought about having kids. I guess, everyone does, don't they? Like it's one of those things. That they force on you, ever since you're like four years old, you know that one day everyone expects you to grow up, to go to university, to get a respectably boring office job, to meet someone equally as respectable and boring, have a wanky, old, heterosexual wedding, and settle down in a suburban three bedroom house and have two kids by the time you're thirty."

"That'd be a lot for you to accomplish in two years though, wouldn't it?" George grinned, shoving Matty gently.

Matty just rolled his eyes. "I know. That's the point. I did none of those things. We're here at twenty eight, being incredibly homosexual, in our tiny little rented house without a garden, you're a teacher, I barely even have a proper job. Fuck knows how I make any money at all." He managed a smile. "But that's the thing, I never wanted to do any of that bullshit, you know? I'm happy."

"But?" George raised his eyebrows, sensing what was to come. "Kids. You thought about having kids?"

"Yeah." Matty flushed red. "More when I was with girls, you know? But... yeah... don't take the piss, but sometimes I think about having kids with you - you of all people, you fucking weirdo. And I mean... maybe not kids, maybe just one. But I think about... you know... what Tommy said to you the other day. I don't want to have a kid with fucking anyone if I'm going to have to bring them up into a world where they could get shit for just who their parents are."

George swallowed hard, fingers gripping tightly around Matty's waist. "You're right. I need to talk to these kids."

"I know why you don't want to." Matty told him, as if on top of everything else, he too possessed the ability to read George's mind - amidst everything else, George wouldn't even doubt it. "Because if those kids take the piss, they're taking the piss out of you, in a way. And you love those kids."

George shrugged, not quite wanting to put a response into words.

"They're seven, though, George. I think you underestimate how impressionable kids are. They respect you - I know they do. You're weird and unfunny, but like funny enough for a seven year to think you're cool-"

"Thank you." George rolled his eyes, leaning in and pressing a kiss to Matty's cheek. "You're unfunny too."

Matty snorted. "No, but seriously. Sort this shit out for Tommy, alright? It's fucking bothering me. Can't imagine what he's dealing with. I mean, that's not the shit you'd want... you'd want to tell your parents about, that people at school hate you because of who they are. How the fuck do you deal with that as a child? How the fuck do you deal with that as a parent?"

"I know... it's fucked..." George trailed off, pulling Matty closer to him, and letting the silent pan out around them.

Eventually, the moment came to a close as realisation reared its ugly head. "You want kids, don't you? Like properly. I can tell. You don't have to lie to me."

Matty flushed red, giving a shrug.

"Matty, you can talk to me-"

"It's a bit..." Matty trailed off, struggling to quite find the right word. "Having a kid together is a bit final. It's a bit... like... terrifying. I think maybe I like it much more as an idea. I mean, people always get married before having kids, that's probably best, and I, mean, no offence George, but we probably shouldn't get married right now - for a start, we don't have the money, and then-"

"I thought..." George thought for a moment. "What's going on with you? Living your life a certain way because that's how people always do. I thought that went against, like all of your principles. We don't ever have to get married if you don't want to - it doesn't mean shit, does it?"

"Yeah... I don't..." Matty struggled to quite articulate his thoughts on a whole. "Marriage... I don't know. I don't like the religious aspect of it, and I don't like know that if we were born in some other country then we wouldn't even be able to. Or, you know, we'd get arrested for kissing, because like... the world's fucking scary, and fucking... fucked up."

"I know." George pressed a kiss to Matty's neck, letting Matty move further into his lap. "We don't have to get married if you don't want to. Doesn't matter what your mum says - I know she likes weddings, but you've got a brother - she can count on him, it's fine."

Matty snorted, leaning back against George's chest. "I worry about it though, sometimes. About having kids, because what if I'm a shit dad, and then what if we split up, because that's shitty, and no kid should have to deal with that. Like no kid should have to deal with homophobia because of their fucking parents. Like... I fucking hate straight people, you know?"

"Mmm..." George gave a smile. "Yeah, I think you might have mentioned that - just once or twice."

"Shut up." Matty rolled his eyes, letting his eyelids fall heavy against the gentle warmth of George's chest, and his arms wrapped tightly around him, as they sat there together, feeling more like one whole entity, as opposed to separate people.

"I'm just saying, love, you shouldn't not do something just because of what straight people are going to think about it, or just because of what straight people are going to say. You should never live your life a different way because of what straight people are going to do about it. That's bullshit, and you know it is."

George's words sunk deeper into Matty's chest than he could have ever really imagined anything could have. He pondered the mess, of truths, of finalities floating around his ribcage, and the way, like always, George's words tugged at his heart.

"I'd be a shit dad, though, me. Fucking, imagine me, like... fuck..." Matty's eyes grew wide and bleary: faced with just the notion.

"Poor kid, honestly, you called a dog Allen Ginsberg, you'd call the kid like... Juxtaposition Marijuana... or something."

Matty's eyes grew wide. "Have I ever mentioned that I hate you?" George snorted. "I know I'm a dickhead, but not that much of a dickhead."

George raised his eyebrows. "We'll see."

***

"Matty, I don't care if you think it's funny, I'm not having you naming my grandson Jesus Christ."

"I don't think it's funny, just... witty... having this kid called Jesus Christ raised strongly atheist." It had been less of an idea and more of a musing that had just slipped his tongue, as he paced through his living room, on the phone to his mum for what was easily the seventh time that week.

"You're not doing it. I'm not having a grandson, my first grandson named Jesus Christ Healy-Daniel." Despite the evident humour to the situation, and Matty's lighthearted tone, she didn't actually doubt that it was something he would do without some form of formal prevention.

"Healy-Daniel?" Matty raised his eyebrows, coming to a sudden stop in the middle of his living room: lungs shuddering against his ribs.

"Yeah..." Denise drew out a sigh. "Honestly, have you not even thought about what his surname's going to be?"

"We've not worked out his first name either, we're getting there." Matty flushed red, chewing down onto his bottom lip, as he stomach did all manner of soppy, complex acrobatics inside of his chest.

"I did say that you should have gotten married before deciding to have a kid together." Denise offered a passing suggestion, knowing far too well how Matty felt about the idea.

"Yeah, it was a bit hard to pick out amongst everything else - you were crying for like a solid week." Matty gave a groan, sitting himself down on the sofa, pulling his knees up to his chest, as his lip fell out into a pout and he really began to consider how the name 'Healy-Daniel' sounded on his tongue.

"It was an emotional moment, Matty. Honestly." Matty could almost feel her shaking her head down the other end of the phoneline.

"I'm not actually going to call him Jesus." Matty's voice was softer than it had been before, as if genuinely contemplating the issue this time around. "For a start, George wouldn't let me."

Denise gave a snort. "Of course."

"Healy-Daniel... sounds... weird..." Matty gave way to a sigh, picking at the hem of his shirt as he spoke. "Not weird, but... I don't know... it makes me feel funny."

"What like you've finally actually realised how serious having a child is?" Her tone was almost challenging, as if she didn't quite think Matty really knew what he was doing. And to be entirely honest, he didn't really, but what parent actually did?

"It's just... I'm having a kid with George. Fucking hell..." Matty took a moment just to breathe. "I love him, you know? So much-"

"Good, isn't it? Considering you're going to have a child with him. If you didn't that'd be a problem." Denise did try not to be overly condensing, but Matty really did push her at times. "I thought I was supposed to be getting emotional about all of this, not you."

"I don't really like double barrelled names." Matty almost ignored his mother's words entirely, instead opting for just verbal musings.

"There's time for you two to get married before he's born, you know?" Denise continued: reluctant to let go of her own idea about how she would have liked things to be.

"I just don't like marriage, as a concept. And maybe it's nice, having a big drunken party because you're in love. But I can get drunk and kiss George anytime I want at home for like significantly less money. And it's so... heterosexual, you know?"

Denise fell into a sigh. "Oh, here we go-"

"I wouldn't mind having George's last name though." Matty's cheeks burned red. "Don't tell him I said that. I just... what kid wants to be called Healy-Daniel?"

"I mean, I kept my last name, and you've got your dad's, so-"

"That's such a heterosexual thing, though, isn't it?" Matty frequently grew agitated with the concept of heterosexuality as a whole. "Kid can have the dad's name, but we're both the dads. Fucking hell, I need to talk to George about this, please don't tell him what I said."

"About having his last name?" Denise couldn't help but laugh: warmed by the prospect.

"Mum-"

"You'd marry him, wouldn't you?" The words left her before she had time to properly consider the impact they were bound to leave. "If marriage wasn't marriage."

Matty swallowed hard, heart thumping against his chest.

"Uhh... I've got to go, so like-"

"Matthew-"

"Yeah, sorry, mum, I've like... I've left the oven on, and also I've got a doctors appointment, and like also Ross is coming over in like thirty five minutes - can't talk, sorry love you - bye."

-

George was sat at his desk, half way through a halfway cold cup of coffee, desperately trying to finish an email to another teacher before the class finished the worksheet he'd set out for them to do.

Thankfully, it didn't seem like they were being awfully productive - if the level of noise had anything to say for the matter, anyway. And more often than not, it did.

"Is it true?"

George was only vaguely aware of the strands of conversation thrown across the room, as groups of seven and eight year olds sat chatting with their friends: seemingly intrigued by the most simple of mediocrities. In a way, it was charming. Nice to see - that kind of love and wonder they still had for the world.

"I don't know. It's just what Amy told me."

A grin attached itself to George's lips as he grew closer to finishing the email: far too pleased with himself for the most simple of tasks, but really, he'd been putting it off for the past week, and that was an achievement within itself.

Before he could quite finish, however, the general rubble of voices parted like the sea, giving way to one stronger, bolder voice above all.

"Is it true, Mr Daniel?" When George looked up, thirty-one seven year olds were all staring directly at him. Despite the fact that they were seven, and overall harmless, it was just a little unnerving.

"Is what true, Tommy?" George gave way to a sigh, placing his head down into the palm of his hand, elbows resting against the desk.

Tommy conjured a grin, glancing towards his friends before continuing. He'd regained a significant amount of confidence over the past few months, and as far as George could tell, none of the other kids were giving him trouble anymore. Even if he was being obnoxiously loud about it, George was more than glad to see him happily joining in with the class' conversation, and not just sulking off in a corner and shooting people distrusting looks.

"Amy from the other class heard from Leah in year four, who heard from Alex, who heard from Phoebe, who heard Mrs Martin talking to Miss Temples about you having a baby. So is it true?" Tommy meet him with a wide, almost incredulous glance. "Are you having a baby, Mr Daniel?"

George couldn't help but laugh, getting up from his desk and making his way to the front of the classroom. "Well, Tommy, I'm not having a baby."

"I told you." Ellie with the blonde curly haired shrieked from across the room. "Why would he be having a baby? Girls have babies."

"Yeah, obviously..." Jack - one of Tommy's friends, with the loudest and deepest voice George had ever heard from a seven year old - retorted. "He's not the one having the baby. Mrs Martin meant that he's going to be a dad."

"Are you?" Other Ellie, with short messy hair, that had been hacked off last month after some older boys had put gum into it, inquired with all the wonder in the world. As much as she had cried that day last month, there was no denying that she did suit short hair much more.

George took a moment just to breathe, because in teacher training, they'd never him how to respond when your class of seven year olds demanded that you tell them about the baby you were going to have with your boyfriend. The one that your mum was still crying over, constantly.

"Well... yeah. It's not exactly final, like one hundred percent, but like... a good... ninety five percent." George flushed red, slowly meeting the eyes of his students one by one.

"How can you be ninety five percent pregnant?" Came the general consensus of three girls sat in a huddle, at the back of the classroom.

George smiled. "Not ninety five percent pregnant, but like... ninety five percent sure it's happening."

"How can you not be sure?"

George gave a sigh, taking a moment to get his head in order before meeting those thirty one seven year olds, staring up at him so intently, with a rather fragile honesty.

"Because, I'm having a kid with my boyfriend. So, we're obviously... we can't get pregnant. So someone else is having our baby for us, because she doesn't want to keep it."

"You're stealing someone else's baby?" Jack's eyes grew wide, looking up at George like he'd just confessed to murder.

As the silence ebbed and flowed out into laughter, Tommy sat so very still, meeting George's gaze for just a moment, but meeting him with a smile.

"It's not stealing, Jack. She wants someone else to have it. It's called adoption."

-

"Is this kid going to hate us for making its last name Healy-Daniel?" Matty was mulling around the kitchen just for the sake of something to do with his hands.

"He's not going to care. For like the first three years of his life, he's probably not even going to know it anyway." Brushing long, dark hair aside, she gave a smile, staring down at her stomach.

"But..." Matty spun around, fixating too on the protruding stomach of the girl at the other end of his kitchen, because in there, that was his fucking child. "Delilah, I-"

"Matthew." She rolled her eyes, folding arms firmly across her chest. Delilah was the only person he knew that called him Matthew on a frequent basis - more even than his mum.

"I mean, what names go with Healy-Daniel? It's just a bit ridiculous." Matty drew out a sigh, opening and closing the fridge for the fourth time in the past five minutes.

"Last week you told me you were going to call him Jesus." Delilah arched her eyebrows across at him. "I mean, I don't really care all that much, but... I was happy to let you and George have my weird ugly unborn child on the basis that you didn't look too pretentious and stuck up. Not like some middle aged suburban couple that were going to argue over similar shades of wallpaper."

"Don't worry, George doesn't care that much about wallpaper." Matty added, as if was any form of real reassurance.

"What does George want to call him, then?" She briefly considered demanding that Matty just shut up and listened to George, but didn't reckon she'd get awfully far with that.

Matty gave a shrug. "I don't know. We've not really. Properly talked about it. I don't think he really knows."

"Prepared, aren't you - you two?" Delilah snorted, grinning tugging at the corners of her lips.

"Fucking hell, I-"

"You're going to be fine." She assured him, for what was already the thousandth time: eyes boring into Matty's side. "Matthew, come on, you want to have this kid with George, because you love him, and you're going to love this kid too. Don't chicken out on me. I don't want to have to find someone else who's tolerable enough to trust with my unborn baby."

Matty watched her carefully for a few moments.

"You're oddly calm for someone having a baby they hate, you know?" He gave way to an observation, eyeing Delilah curiously. "I mean, you're so... I'd never be able to deal with this sort of shit so easily when I was your age. I was a mess at eighteen."

"Good thing you couldn't accidentally get pregnant then, isn't it?" Delilah cracked a smile, facade faltering a little: her hands twitching against her thighs. Matty mirrored her actions almost exactly, and they shared a look, from opposite sides of the same room, with oppugnant worries plaguing their minds.

-

Matty had never been particularly good at with choosing the right place and time to have certain conversations. He tended just to let things stow away inside of his chest until they just tumbled out with little regard for the circumstances.

They were in frozen aisle of Tesco when it happened. George had flipped over a box of fish fingers to check their sell by date, and with his elbows pressed down against the handle of the trolley, mind lost up elsewhere, the words made a departure from Matty's lips of very much their own accord.

"You know our kid? Whose last name is he going to have?"

George's eyes dilated, his body shuddering slightly before freezing completely: box of fish fingers moments away from falling from his grasp entirely.

"Couldn't have picked a better moment to bring that up, could you?" George took a moment to compose himself before throwing the fish fingers into the trolley and hitting Matty with a snort.

Matty flushed red, biting as his fingernails as he did all he could to avoid George's gaze. He stared right past him, instead letting his attention be captivated by the rows of various frozen food.

"We could do with some more ice cream." Matty chose that, of all things, to add to the conversation.

George arched his eyebrows, leaning back against the cabinet, arms folded across his chest. "We've got that other tub of Ben & Jerry's."

"Yeah, but I was planning on stress eating that tonight." Matty explained, lips buckling down into a smile - pitiful at best.

"What? Because you're worried about our kid's name?" George narrowed his eyes, meeting Matty with the most sympathetic smile he could muster. "Come on, we'll talk about it when we're done."

"Can we still get the ice cream, though?" Matty chewed down onto his fingernails, pushing the trolley tentatively after George.

Something about being responsible with money was seconds away from rolling off George's tongue, but he caught Matty's gaze - properly that time, and knew he needed more than a fleeting smile that afternoon.

George would have kissed him. Then, right there, in the frozen aisle, in the hopes that would make him smile. If things weren't as they were, and he didn't just know that people were going to stare.

Instead, the ice cream had to do.

-

Matty was largely silent until they made it to the car, with shopping unloaded into the boot, and his feet stretched out onto the dashboard. He'd lit himself a cigarette, passenger window rolled down, in the minute it had taken George to go take the trolley back. Normally he would have made Matty do it, but things seemed a little bit different that day. George could feel it too.

"My mum said 'Healy-Daniel'." It was barely a second after George had sat back down, closing the car door behind himself, before, once again, the words came tumbling from Matty's lips.

"Mmm..." George's heartbeat increased, taking a sigh, head thrown back against the seat, before daring to glance across at Matty and hold his gaze, just for one fleeting moment.

"What do you think... of that?" Matty drew out a sigh, knowing that really he should have the guts to talk about their kid's fucking name, of all things. He was going to be a terrible dad; he could already feel it.

George gave a shrug. "I don't know, maybe give me more than thirty seconds to think about it." He fell into a laugh, leaning across to press a kiss to Matty's cheek.

"Sounds a bit..." Matty flushed red, keeping his eyes to the ground. "I don't know. I don't really like double barrelled names. But it's... fine, it'll do."

"You should like it, not just think... 'oh, it'll do'." George could feel his heart beginning to hammer inside his chest.

"I mean... it's just a name, I don't have to have the strongest affinity with it-"

"It's what he's going to be called for the rest of his life." George felt the need to remind him. "Like his first name is important too."

"Fucking straight people - they've got everything, haven't they? Know what fucking last name their kid's gonna have, universal marriage rights-..." Matty gave way to a sigh, catching George's eye. "I'm sorry. I know."

George's lips twitched up into a smile. "Ability to kiss each other in Tesco if they're feeling a bit shit, without being stared at."

Matty pressed his head back into the headrest, glancing across at George: eyes wide and intrigued. "Kiss me next time. I don't care if people stare."

George rolled his eyes. "Oh shut up. You do."

Matty took a drag of his cigarette, thinking for a moment. "Well, I do care, but... we should never not do something just because of what fucking straight people might think. Like, boohoo, some poor old middle aged man called Brian is gonna shit himself next to the fish fingers because you're giving me a quick peck on the cheek. Not exactly earth shattering, is it?"

George couldn't deny a smile the right to take control of his face in its entirety. "Brian." He snorted. "Should call our kid that. Brian Daniel-Healy."

"No." Matty buried his head in his hands. "That's worse - that actually is. Healy-Daniel is better than that. Much better than that. It's definitely Healy-Daniel. Definitely."

George thought for a moment, watching as Matty finished his cigarette, throwing the butt out of the window like the messy, irresponsible, soon-to-be parent he was.

"If you don't like double barrelled names, he can have your name. If you want."

Matty's eyes grew wide, locking onto George with a shivering pang resonating throughout his chest. "Honestly, I was thinking about him having yours."

"Oh." George chewed at his lip. "I don't know. Would be a bit weird that. Us two having a different last name to you."

Matty flushed red. "Oh, I don't know. I could have yours as well."

"Shut up." George turned an impossibly lurid shade of pink.

"I'm just-..."

"Matty, we are not having this conversation in the fucking Tesco's carpark - shut up." George gave a sigh in disbelief and turned the key in the ignition, hoping to god that he'd be able to get them home before Matty brought forth any other kind of colossal revelation that he might have had tucked up in his head somewhere.

-

George elected to pack away the shopping, under the pretence of a kind gesture, but with the real intention of just needing those fifteen minutes to himself, to try and remember which shelf Matty liked the yoghurts to go on, whilst he attempted to properly digest just what Matty had actually said to him in the carpark.

With Matty safely tucked up and busied in their room, George took out a packet of biscuits and emptied them into the tin, then proceeded to put the milk into the fridge, but didn't really get much further. He stared down at the bags of shopping for a good five minutes before giving up entirely and slumping down against the kitchen countertop.

Within the next minute, George was on the phone to Ross, who was still largely struggling to properly accept the fact that fucking Matty and George were having a kid together.

"Hey, is this inconvenient?" George drew out a sigh, praying that Ross would at least have the five minutes to try and calm him down.

"Yeah, I'm-"

"Look, doesn't matter." George decided that he just didn't care either way, interrupting Ross before he even had the chance to finish and George had the chance to feel guilty about keeping him from whatever it was that so desperately needed his attention.

"Fucking hell- Fine." Ross concluded: irate at best. Nevertheless, a grin couldn't help but tug at George's lips. "What is it?"

"Matty told me he wants our kid to have my last name, and then he went and said that he wouldn't mind having my name as well, I-" George choked out: the release bringing forth more than just words.

"Oh... wow." Ross took a moment to attempt to properly process that before he continued. "Is that just... that... or is... that a... Matty way of saying I wouldn't mind... marrying you?"

"I don't know." George gave way to a sigh, glancing doing at the shopping and so desperately attempting to compose himself.

"You're gonna have to talk to him." Ross spoke as if there wasn't a doubt that it was a truth that George was already just so very well aware of.

"I know he hates settling down and all that, but now we're having a fucking kid together... I-"

"George, if you want to have a kid with him you should really be able to have a conversation." George could feel the condescending glare plastered across Ross' face from down the phone.

"I know. Shut up. I know. I just... fucking hell." George took a moment before he got up from the countertop and tried to look down at the shopping like a responsible adult. "Yeah, look, we've just come back from Tesco, so I've got shit that's going to melt if I don't put it into the freezer-"

"What? Did he spring this on you in-"

"The carpark, at least." George managed a sigh. "It's been bothering him. We should probably talk about it."

"Yeah. No shit." Ross couldn't help but laugh.

"Dickhead." George didn't even attempt to keep his voice to a low mutter.

"Alright, bye, see you... at your wedding by the sounds of it." Ross knew well enough to put down the phone before George could possibly even complain.

-

"You are idiots - the both of you."

Delilah took a sip of her coffee, leaning back in her seat as she narrowed her eyes.

"Look, I know. I just... he talks to you a lot, doesn't he? Like babbles on, about whatever shit." George gave way to a sigh. "The kind of shit maybe he wouldn't say to me."

"Mmm?" Delilah raised her eyebrows: unsure as to quite what George was getting at. "Sort of?"

"Look, I tried to talk to him just about it properly, but I don't want to bring this thing up if it isn't actually the case, because that's just going to make him uncomfortable, and I'm going to sound like his mum."

"Right..." Delilah trailed off, wondering if really she should be trusting her unborn baby to these two great big fucking babies themselves.

"Just something he said last week." George trailed off, giving way to a shrug. "About the baby's name. About the baby's last name. About the baby having mine. And then about him having mine too... Not... like- just... an idea."

Delilah curled her lips up into a grin. "Oh really? He's doing this article. He wants to fucking interview me for it. Weirdo." She couldn't help but snort. "About... the sham and sanctity of marriage, but more about women in general, I think. He does waffle on about it from time to time but I don't really listen all that much. Maybe you should make him interview you for it."

George's eyes widened. "Hmm? Funnily enough, I don't think I really qualify as a woman affected by... marital pressures...?"

"Try him. He's got a weird way of thinking, hasn't he?" And with that, George couldn't disagree.

-

"So, this... article you're writing." It was the first thing on George's lips as he made it through the door that evening. And the only thing on his mind all day.

Matty didn't so much as look up from the book he was reading, curled up on the sofa with Allen in his lap.

"Delilah's told me about it." George dropped his bag down at his feet, perhaps even just to see if Matty would make a fuss out of it.

He remained silent, still, with eyes fixated onto the pages. Yet, of course, not actually reading or taking in a single word.

"Matty, babe, are you alright?" George squeezed himself onto the sofa, teasing Allen out of Matty's lap to make room.

Matty only seemed to acknowledge George's presence when his face lingered millimetres away from his own.

That acknowledgement, however, took little more than the form of a wide-eyed, almost startled gaze, taking in George's appearance as if he'd never properly seen him before.

Matty put his book down. Facedown, folded out, spine stretched, bookmarking his page, onto the coffee table.

"Matty..." George moved his arm to Matty's waist, hesitant to move his lips to Matty's, but struggling for what else to do.

"I'm fine." Matty exclaimed, snapping almost immediately as he leaned back into George's grasp. "I'm just... stressed. Because the article's shit - it's not going well, it's... I had this vision for it, as this insightful, provoking piece with like a real power and... passion to it. But it's just... it's like the literary embodiment of the colour brown."

"Brown's a perfectly nice colour." George did his best to offer any kind of support.

Matty scoffed, looking across at George like he was an idiot. Which, according to Matty, he was. "I mean, what was I thinking? Trying to write an empowering and insightful piece about women's lives as a man... that sort of defeats the point."

George gave a shrug; Matty was the one who wrote in great detail about these things, George taught seven year olds basic maths and how to play a C chord on the piano.

"It's not my article to write, I don't think." Matty drew out a sigh, turning to George for some sort of emotional support. "I want to write about marriage, about it's... I know. But it's fascinating. As a concept. Socially. Politically. Religiously. I want to explore that. I want to explore how that affects people. How that affects people of different backgrounds and viewpoints... I want to write that... but..."

"Well, here's a radical idea." A smile tugged at George's lips. "Men get married too."

Matty rolled his eyes. "But men are so boring... they're so... men."

George gave a snort, kissing him. "Write it about people in general then. Everyone. Men, women, whatever. Add your own views and opinions too. Then it's definitely your article to write."

Matty's cheeks flushed red. "Yeah..." He pulled his knees up to his chest. "Thank you... that's... yeah."

"You're welcome." George nudged him, pulling him closer into his chest.

"As nice and helpful as you've already been..." Matty trailed off, lips twitching in and out of a grin. "You're gonna need to put some dinner on - I've spent the past three hours stressing over this... sorry."

George rolled his eyes, reaching for Matty's hand. "Come on. We'll do it together. You can tell me all about your sociopolitical views on marriage and I'll tell you what happened with the kids at breaktime today."

Matty couldn't help but laugh, even just at the contrast.

-

"Personally, I think Ross is a lovely name-"

"Like fuck are we naming our kid after you - fuck off." George groaned, rolling his eyes across at his friends in disbelief.

They were really quite drunk - the five of them. And as it always did, in the most inconvenient of situations, the subject of naming George and Matty's child had reared its head.

"Are you going to give him a normal name or are you going to let Matty name him some random bullshit? Like... Avocado... or something?" John's words stumbled out between snorts: too drunk to properly contain either himself or his words.

"In what world would I call a kid Avocado?" Matty stared across at John incredulously, before glancing around to the others for support, but really, no one looked very much like they were on his side.

"A normal name." George concluded, leaving Matty to slump down into his chair, falling into a petulant frown.

"Yeah, because that's not boring, is it?" Matty didn't even look at George; instead folded his arms across his chest and began to sulk, eyes fixated off into the distance.

"Matty, look, if he's called fucking... Horticultural Wank Stain, or whatever shit you fancy on the day... he's going to get fucking bullied." George moved closer to Matty, pulling him against his chest in a desperate attempt to satiate him.

"Yeah, don't call your kind Wank Stain." Adam butted in, just in case Matty needed any more encouragement. "Wank Stain... wait what last name is he having?"

"Wank. Stain." Ross snorted, far too amused by the matter. "First name Wank. Last name Stain."

"Ross, I think that's child abuse-" John butted in, already beginning to feel rather sorry for Matty and George's future child, who Ross might just refer to as 'Wank Stain' for the entirety of his life.

Matty and George remained very silent. Stealing just one glance at each other, as their prior conversations regarding their child's surname ran rampant around their heads.

"Wank Stain... like... Daniel-Healy...?" Adam was still stuck on the matter, pulling his gaze almost painfully from George to Matty. "Wank Stain Daniel-Healy."

"It's got a ring to it." Ross couldn't help but laugh.

"Fuck off." Matty barked out, leaning back in his chair and staring across at Ross with what almost seemed to be a sense of menace to his eyes.

"A-Alright..." Ross raised his hands up in surrender. "You're not actually going to call your kid-"

"Yeah..." George added, stretching his arms out across the table. "Healy-Daniel." He avoided Matty's gaze. "Something nice and normal. He can have a bullshit middle name if he really must, but... yeah..."

Matty frowned, drawing his hands back underneath the table. Truthfully, he didn't quite know what to do with himself. That wasn't quite so much of a situational thing, but instead, a feeling that lingered.

-

They were sat out in the garden, because the world was already beginning to feign a warm summer atmosphere: giving up occasional gusts of warm summer air, and bright golden rays of sun at best.

Matty desperately wanted a drink: something to make it all go down a little easier. However, Delilah, of course, was a good few months pregnant, and Matty had made certain promises to himself about drinking alone.

"This feels formal." She got up from the chair Matty had set out onto the patio, shaking her head with distaste. "Honest isn't formal. I thought that was the angle you were going for."

"It is." Matty watched her with curiosity, biting at his bottom lip, as she sat herself down on the grass. "Does a chair really affect how honest you're going to be with me?"

"Yeah." Delilah decided, pulling her lips up into a grin. "Come on, Matthew, if you're going to interview me, then interview me." She gestured for Matty to join her on the grass.

"It's a discussion. Not an interview." Matty took the liberty of correcting her, but followed her command regardless.

"That's better now, isn't it?" She stretched her legs out across the grass, watching as Matty rummaged through several sheets of paper he'd placed down beside him.

"Mmm..." He gave a shrug - not really listening.

"Matthew." She raised her voice: her tone insistent.

"Jesus Christ, you sound like my mum." Matty shot back, staring up at Delilah like he didn't quite know how to look at her, even after months of acquaintance, turned rather rapidly into a rather peculiar friendship.

Delilah gave little more than a laugh in return.

"Matty... is like... really fine." He reminded her, relentlessly.

"No." She tucked her hair back behind her ears. "I think you're much more of a Matthew."

Matty couldn't say he could see where she was coming from, but Delilah was downright stubborn at the best of times, so they left it at that.

"So..." Matty gave a sigh, suddenly somewhat hesitant to begin. "Marriage. Weird one, you are, aren't you? Because here you are, you're eighteen, definitely not married, pregnant with a baby that's not mine, but is going to be me and George's kid."

"Baby is yours really." Delilah tugged her gaze down to the floor, picking at blades of grass absent mindedly. "He's not really mine. He's just inside me. I'm more... borrowing him... keeping him safe for you."

"Doesn't that mean something to you, that there's this life that's going to have grown inside of you for nine months, and... you created that life... from basically nothing... isn't that supposed to be kind of magical?" Matty watched Delilah with intrigue; she always had a knack for throwing him off his feet completely.

"It's... it's not magical. It happens everyday. Babies are born everyday. Babies are conceived everyday. Magic... is like... otherworldly, special, removed from everyday life. A pregnancy is just about as mundane as opening the fridge."

"But that's..." Matty gestured towards her protruding stomach. "That's going to be a person. He's going to have a life. He's going to grow up. And he's going to say things and have opinions, and live through life. He's going to have ideas, and emotions, grieve and fall in love, and... maybe he'll even change the world. You'll never know."

"You're saying that because you're his dad. Every parent is in love with their own children." Delilah brushed his words off with seemingly no lasting effect to her at all.

"And you don't consider yourself the mother- even just the biological mother. Which you are, because he's in your womb, he's, sort of a part of you, I guess-"

"You're spewing such... idealistic, fancy, magical, 'miracle of life' bullshit. You know what you sound like? You sound like my doctor did, proclaiming the scriptures of anti-abortion, telling me I absolutely shouldn't abort him." Delilah's breathing slowed a little, pulling herself back to a time she'd rather not dwell so much upon. "And I know you're not like that. This is just your baby. You love him. He's not mine. I don't. It's like that."

"Abort him...?" Matty trailed off, eyes growing wide.

"Mm." Delilah gave a nod, clearing her throat. "That's what I wanted to do. First thought I had when I realised I was pregnant - get this fucking baby out of me. I mean, I don't want a baby, I don't need a baby right now, I'm... I want to go to university. I want to study law, not push some screaming shithead around in a pram."

"Would it be different if you were older?" Matty wondered, trying to desperately put himself into her shoes.

"Not just if I was older, but if everything was different. Circumstances. It had been with someone I love. In a relationship. And we can support it. Then I'd think about it, but still I don't know. I'm not a massive fan of kids." Delilah stared down at her stomach, almost unfortunately.

"I said that when I was your age." Matty blushed a little. Delilah shot him a glare. "Sorry, I don't mean to sound condescending, I just... what I always thought when I was eighteen, and I thought I was going to be young forever, and alive, and everything was about being on top of the world, being the loudest, being the rowdiest, being the drunkest, being the highest, being the person with the most to say for themselves."

"And now you're playing happy families?" Delilah managed a snort. "Come punch me if I ever end up like that."

Matty grinned. "Alright. Sure." He wondered if he'd even know Delilah in a few years time. "I just settled down, you know? As bullshit and boring as it sounds, as it sounded to me when I was younger, and it still sounds to me now when I think about it. I'm happy, though. It's George, really. I mean... it's that point where we love each other so much we want to share that, I guess. We want to have this kid together."

"Aren't you glad I didn't abort him then?" Delilah gave way to a lazy smile, as if she just couldn't quite bring herself to regard the matter with the sincerity it likely deserved.

"Yeah." Matty drew out a sigh, taking in the almost complacent look in Delilah's eyes. "Why didn't you then? In the end? I mean, you sound pretty adamant about how you feel about things, so I..."

"To make something good out of a shitty situation." She turned her head away, leaving her gaze to rot down amongst the blades of grass. "Because, like this, you and George get to have a baby that you're going to love. I made you happy. And I'll make this kid happy because he'll have parents that are going to love him. It's better than just everything being shitty and painful and depressing all over. This sort of suppressed that shitty side. It's better, I think."

"Thank you..." Matty couldn't help but let the words slip his lips.

"What?" Delilah barely stopped herself from just laughing it off. "You'd find another baby, you know?"

"That's not the point." Matty shook his head. "It's about, those choices. The... cause and effect of everything. Because if I'd want anyone to give birth to my kid, I think it'd be you."

Delilah snorted. "Why? Does it really matter."

Matty gave a shrug. "I think it does. I mean... it's the conversations we have... it's those months up until he's born that have so much influence, especially on the first few years of his life, and you're... I don't think the same way about things as I did before all of this, you know? Maybe it's not this exact baby, maybe it's you."

Delilah stopped for a moment, facade finally beginning to fall. The moment was fleeting, however, and the world was brought right back onto its axis, as she snapped her head back towards Matty, meeting him with a grin.

"Oh fuck off. You're such a sop, you. You better not put this into your article - George is going to read it and get jealous, that's how soppy you're being."

"I'm not being soppy." Matty met her with a smirk. "I'm being emotional. I'm being honest. If you wanted this to be more clinical we should have stayed sat on the patio."

"Oh shut up." Delilah pulled her face into a glare she didn't even half mean. Truth be told, she'd grown to rather respect Matty over the past few months, as weird and over emotional as he was.

-

'The first time we ever laid eyes upon each other we came to the same, instantaneous conclusion. It was immediately so very much more than a moment. Something to remember - a great pillar holding the vast, incorporeal fabric of life high over my head.

Delilah's eighteen years old, and four months pregnant with the baby my boyfriend and I are going to adopt. It's certainly not the kind of situation you'd expect a friendship to blossom from. Yet, never once throughout my younger years had I really truly expected that I'd be in such a situation at all.

I don't think I'll ever be entirely sure as to what it is about her that was so captivating. What it was that had her standing out so starkly against the rest of the world. I don't think that Delilah's the kind of person who would let me find out.

When I sat down to talk to her, it was definitely her that commanded the conversation. Her, that had commanded everything since the word 'go'. She has this hard character to convey - with long, sweeping dark hair, and a kind of translucence to her skin that makes her look otherworldly at times. Yet, she's just about the most down to earth person I've ever met.

I think I see myself in her sometimes. That's the kind of thing she'd kill me for ever spelling out. She's terrified of seeing herself in me, I think. I'm her 'old and boring' - at twenty eight, with opinions for days. She's young, though, of course, with the kind of naive confidence with which you can look down at the world and smile, insisting that it has to be yours.

Never once have I seen her dampened by the reality of her situation. Our, now, shared situation. I do dare to wonder what really goes on in her head. What went on months ago, what caused this all to be, to place these words and thoughts into motion. This, however, is about the present, about the people I see around me, and not the past, not the people I once knew.

'To make something good out of a shitty situation'. Those are the words that have echoed around my mind for days. That was her abridged explanation to this all. To a mystery I have really yet to solve. But to a mystery remaining the answer to a question that's not mine to know at all.'

Matty tugged incessantly at the hem of his shirt, reading his work over for the seventh time as he sat curled up on the sofa: slowly traipsing towards an impossible conclusion.

He'd never necessarily considered the logistics of it all - that Delilah, was in fact, not exactly the kind of person that was easy to write about. Someone he couldn't quite put into words - it all lay down to the fact that she was just someone he was quite yet to understand.

Matty sipped at his cup of tea and wondered if that day would ever come. If Delilah might ever imagine that she owed him that right. He did wonder how things would go in the end, when the baby was finally born, and they might just drift onto two permanent separate paths.

He considered such a possibility with a bitter, solemn kind of distaste, as he finished his cup of tea, staring aimlessly into a blank screen.

-

The air almost seemed to taste sour.

The day itself was dismal. Bleak. Empty. Devoid. Lacking. Of any sort of substance or meaning: anything Matty could really call his own.

It was a day Matty had seen through to the end from under the cover of his sheets: curled up into a ball, with the world pushed away from him, laptop abandoned and firmly closed at the other side of the room.

The still of the air was broken only by Allen's occasional movements from beside him. He'd curled up next to Matty at about midday and stared down at him with wide sympathetic eyes, as if he might even have spent the afternoon desperate to figure what had Matty quite so adrift.

It hurt when George came home. The knowledge. The understanding. The broken still of the house. Allen's ears pricked up, but remained definite and complacent as he laid curled up by Matty's side.

Ten minutes drew themselves out into years in Matty's mind, before the bedroom door was pushed upon with a kind of uncertainty that Matty hadn't seen on George in years.

They shared a look: slow and simple, but speaking of so much more. And Matty's breathing grew shallow as George fought through the disquietude to make it to the bed.

"Love..." His fingers extended out through the air, heavier than it ought to be, coming to slowly rest on Matty's side. George hadn't expected a response.

Such circumstances had become few and far between, but it had all manifested with an insistent sense of permanence: locked away at the back of their minds, to forever bring out foreboding and memories they'd just rather forget.

"It's bad." Matty told him, words forced slowly through chapped lips.

George didn't push the matter any further, and instead scooped his arm around Matty and used his strength to pull his boyfriend into his lap.

Matty was content to sit like that. Looking so very thin between George's legs, with just an old t-shirt thrown over his torso.

George held his lips to Matty's. Not just to kiss him for the sake of kissing him. But to kiss him for the sake of helping him out of the mess he'd buried himself in. To leave an 'I love you' in the form of a permanent warmth, to hold his fingers tightly against his own and make promises about never letting go.

George carried Matty out of bed in the end. Sat him down onto one of the dining room chairs like he was a ragdoll: collapsing in on himself, limbs all over the place.

But the air grew warmer, and as George heated up a can of spaghetti hoops he told Matty stories about the kids from school, and Matty managed to smile in all the right places.

They didn't quite eat in silence, but with little more than quiet mutters between the two of them. It reminded George of how things had been before. When they had been young and stupid themselves, and Matty had always kept such a habit of getting his head stuck in entirely the wrong places.

Then with empty bowls and nothing else to consume themselves with, Matty shot George a fleeting glance, and gave himself up with honesty to the imploring look in George's eyes.

"I'm going to be a shit dad."

"That's not true." George told him, words digging in deep, as he reached for Matty's hand across the table.

Matty didn't say anything more. He just let himself be held like that for a while. Let the minutes tick by, taking the time, for in that moment, to just be alive.

-

When Matty was nineteen, he'd gotten the kind of drunk he dreaded. Drunk off spirits like everything was easy and simple, and emotions weren't anchors to tie the world down, but gusts of wind that might just pass us by.

They'd been at a party in the city. Friend of a friend's. Too loud and too bright. And George had taken Matty under his arm and pulled him out of a crowd of people, away from the colours and drugs and girls that painted the world as if it was truly lucid.

It was cold out on the roof top. Yet there, they were just people, and beneath them lay just another apartment building in the city skyline.

Matty looked at George like he was seeing him for the first time, and George gave him his jacket: watching the dark denim slope off thin, exposed shoulders. Matty had been thinner then than he was at twenty eight, as impossible as it did seem.

"You're not just off your head. You're out of it." George had told him simply. Like he understood Matty's world and everything in it. With the kind of over-compensating confidence that almost made sense at nineteen.

Matty had laughed. And told him he was probably right. Even then, George had always seen right through him.

"It's mad. I'm mad. I'm properly mad." Matty had looked up at George and laughed: the colours in his eyes dancing amidst the stars. George had struggled to fit the words into place in his head.

"You're out of your head. Your head's fine. Trust me." George had assured him, arm snaking protectively around Matty's shoulders.

Matty had shot him a glare and tugged away from his grasp. He'd taken two steps forward to the edge of the rooftop. George had watched him, heart thudding in his chest, as Matty's knuckles turned white around the railing.

He had looked down at the world rushing by and laughed. With the wind in his hair, and the world painted out in colours too bright for his eyes to ever truly comprehend. Matty laughed and laughed until there was nothing else.

George stilled with disquiet and concern. Looking back, he would have done more, he would have done the world. Twenty eight year old George would have kissed him until the sun came up.

But nineteen year old Matty laughed and laughed until he threw up over the railing and slumped down onto the rooftop. And in return, George had little more to say for himself than a 'well done'.

Then out of the silence, honesty was drawn from the haze. Matty looked up at George like the world was small and he stood right on top of it, and that his words could never mean a thing at all.

"Not mad? Just out of it? Bullshit, George - you don't know shit." Matty had laughed, limbs stretching out across the concrete: limb and useless. "I'd jump if you wouldn't stop me."

George's blood ran cold as he followed Matty's gaze back over the railing. With a strong arm around Matty's waist, he pulled him into his lap, securing him between his thighs with arms bracketed around his waist.

Still, Matty laughed. "I told you - I'm not going to."

George hadn't had a word to say for himself but, "why?"

Matty set his eyes back on the city below. Just one last time. "I don't really know."

"I think everything's just shit." Matty had come to a conclusion soon enough. "Permanently. Things have been shit before. They're shit now. And they'll be shit in the future. Whoever I grow up to be, I'll hate myself. I'll be shit, and stupid, and I-... I'm always going to be a shit friend, a shit boyfriend... a fucking... shit husband... or even a shit dad..."

He tore his gaze out to the sky, to watch the light continue to fade out into nothing at all. Part of him had wondered if they might just sit there for the whole night - watch the inky blackness dissipate into a golden summer shine, out into a peaceful blue, to then fade away all over again. Out there with him, all the lux in the sky could pass them by, and Matty wouldn't mind.

George's voice had been tentative, soft, slow, but omnipresent: forever echoing throughout the following years of Matty's life.

"Listen to me, Matty, trust me, because I know you. I know you better than anyone else does. Maybe sometimes I even know you better than you do. Because trust me, Matty. Look at me. That's not true."

-

Words came into motion late, two nights down the line, with a cup of coffee on the go, and neon lights of another era, held forever in Matty's eyes.

'George is my boyfriend of almost eight years. Although he couldn't tell you that because he's not the kind of person who remembers anniversaries, or is all that inclined to particularly open with his sexuality. Not that he's repressed it or anything; he's a lot more reserved in general. I'm the loud, annoying, over-opinionated one. Whereas George doesn't want to kiss me in the supermarket as to not make a fuss, and teaches primary school, and reminds me to drink cups of tea when I forget about them on the side.

We're at that point, where, in regards to marriage, when we think about marrying someone, we think about marrying each other. Or at least I hope we both do. Wouldn't half cause some problems if he was still thinking about his ex from when he was eighteen. I think that complicates our discussion slightly. I can have a perfectly frank conversation with my divorced mother about marriage, or with one of my friends, that I've known has had cookie cutter ideals about marriage since he was six.

I like to think I know exactly how George feels about marriage. Yet, in honesty. I don't. I know how I feel about marriage. Then I know how George tends to feel about things in relation to the way I do. I have a carefully planned and almost logically constructed prediction as to his view on the matter. That's ridiculous, thinking about it. We're having a child together - for christ's sake.

That's the thing, however, with me and George. We know each other, in ways we can never quite express. Our relationship is a co-dependent kind of thing - not in the way that it's unhealthy, but in the way that words he said to me once nine years ago still echo around my head today.

The truth of it is that I don't think I'd be in my current position without him. As much as I'd thought about it before, with ex-girlfriends, with cute shop assistants that had smiled at me on early mornings, I'd never have a baby with anyone else. It just wouldn't be fathomable. If I'd get married to anyone, it'd be him.

And we'd live together, as this great happy, dysfunctional family. And I'd properly have to settle down and accept adulthood as it is. I don't think I want that, I don't think I should have to prove anything. I don't think a certificate of love and happiness should be laid down with legality and two messy signatures.

Over the past few days at least, I've come to accept that I have this real problem with differentiating between what society tells me is going to make me happy, and what I know, down in my heart actually will.'

***

"Charlie Lux Healy-Daniel."

Matty was confident, beyond belief. "That's what he's going to be called."

Delilah stared down at her stomach: so very pregnant - eight months. "Lux?" She arched an eyebrow.

"I think it's pretty." Matty flushed red. "The name of the unit used to measure daylight. I feel like... that... It means something, to me, at least."

"So his middle name's going to basically be sunshine?" Delilah looked unconvinced by the prospect.

"No, not just sunshine, but sunset, sunrise, and midnight, combined all into one. I think that's... pretty. I think it's nice. Like those nights that never end. All that goes on forever in your head. Nights that start at nineteen and end at twenty eight."

Delilah met him with a smile, unsure as to quite what he really meant, but found it better perhaps not to press the matter.. "It's better than, like, Gerald at least." Matty just rolled his eyes.

-

It was always weird coming back to school in September. George had felt the very same through his younger years, yet of course, had never quite imagined that the feeling would carry on into his late twenties.

As much as George was glad to be back, he just couldn't help but find something bittersweet about it, as long gone was the lazy summer of days spent with Matty, sharing laughter and bickering mindlessly about the least important details of fatherhood.

However, with such change came the new, came a new class, thirty new kids, with eager smiles and impending judgements to be made. As much as he knew he shouldn't, George couldn't help but worry. For this new class would be comprised of kids he didn't know at all, with ideas and opinions he didn't quite want to face.

Early that first morning, George sat in his classroom and missed his class from last year - it wasn't as if they'd disappeared off the face of the earth, they had just gone into year four. George reckoned he was just being overly sentimental, because more than anything else, he wanted to ask Tommy about his summer, and see whether Ellie had grown her hair out or not. He'd grown awfully attached to that class - more than he really had before.

His class were quiet. Quieter than he was used to. He shouldn't have expected much more, considering it was their first day and they were barely seven years old. Still, it all tugged at the back of George's mind.

He caught Tommy's eye when he was stood out on the playground at break time, missing lie ins and sunny days, and the suddenly distant possibility of Matty dragging him out of bed.

George had to admit that he was startled by the fact that Tommy had walked away from his friends, leaving them to continue with whatever game they were playing, as he joined George by the railings.

"Did you have a good summer?" Additionally, Tommy was the first one to speak, seeming to have gained a whole new world of confidence over the summer.

George couldn't help but smile. "Yeah, I did. How about you, Tommy?"

Tommy smiled back, his eyes even glinting like he meant it. "It was cool. We didn't go on holiday or anything, but it wasn't boring. I like just being here, like going to Jack's house and playing."

"That's cool." George gave a grin, glancing across over the playground to Tommy's friend Jack - a tall boy, awfully skinny for his age, who over the summer, had come to look rather like he'd simply been stretched out vertically.

"Yeah. Jack's cool." Tommy followed George's gaze across the playground back to his friends. "When are you going to have your baby?" He flushed. "Well not you, but-"

"It's okay." George interjected, smiling down at him. "I know what you mean. He's due next month. October thirteenth."

"What's that like?" Tommy wondered, genuine curiosity behind his words. "Knowing that you're going to be a dad in a month and... six days?"

George took a moment to think, struggling to find the best way in which he might convert 'I'm shitting myself' into language appropriate for an eight year old.

"I still can't believe it, if I'm honest." George gave way to a laugh, butterflies erupting in hordes from his stomach.

-

September was still warm. They savoured it.

It was the end. The end of this very chapter of their life. The last month that things were going to be like this. With lazy nights stretched out across their lawn, Matty's head on George's chest, and a half empty bottle of wine beside them.

George missed summer nights. But September evenings almost seemed to be shaping up to be impossibly better.

"How's school?" Matty asked, eyes fixated up on the sunset: pinks and oranges collapsing in on one another in the sky.

"Weird to be back. I think everything's going to be weird and new and different from now on." George admitted, only allowing Matty the luxury of such blatant honesty.

Matty gave way to a grin. "You said that, you know?" He drew out a breath: leaving the moment suspended in mid air for a moment far too long. "Back when you first kissed me. That nothing was ever going to be normal again."

The lowlight did wonders in hiding the bright red tone to George's cheeks. "You're such a sop. I can't believe you remembered that."

Matty snorted. "You're such a dick. I can't believe you didn't."

George stretched his arms out into the air, letting his chest deflate into a sigh. "I'm sorry."

"Doesn't matter, I'm just saying. We thought this was going to be weird, that us being together would mean nothing was ever normal again, but now, this is normal. My head on your chest, our shared house, our shared bed, our shared bathroom, our shared clothes, our shared kisses, our shared lives. Anything else would be weird."

"Yeah..." George's breathing faltered for a moment, almost even just downright struggling to imagine anyone else in Matty's place. "The idea makes me uncomfortable."

Matty smiled. "It's going to be like that with him as well. Then in like a year, we're going to be sat here wondering how we could have possibly ever thought it was normal without it being the three of us."

"You're right." George mumbled, kissing him.

-

Fingers shook in the cold, clinging desperately to one another for warmth. It had been a cold winter eight years ago.

December had passed them by in seconds, but January had seemed to have dragged out for years, as they clung to each other for warmth, just for the air to breath, for a fleeting look shared in dark brown eyes that might once mean something.

There was no conversation. Only whispers. Under blankets. With the heating on. And the world out there, behind the window pane. And the two of them tucked up away from all of that.

George had first kissed Matty on January fourteenth. Breaking the ice, like they were strangers once again. The days dragged on with eternal moments, and they told each other lies to keep their hearts at rest.

Matty had wanted the world to be bright again; he craved release from the winter, he needed to feel that kind of alive that summer had been with pills in every colour under the sun and girls with hair to match. Matty had gotten fucked up over the summer. This had been his penance.

The truth spread out across icy days. Meals consisting of little more than jam on toast. Avoiding his family. Looking at George on frosty mornings like he didn't know him at all.

George's flat had been small and shitty. Matty had never officially moved into it. They'd never even had a proper conversation, but in those months, they never did.

George had picked him up from the floor, kept him away from certain substances and certain people, and kept him on the sofa, curled up under four blankets with the TV on for days, and their eyes going square as the silence rang out like a toll, and Matty swore he could never again eat a lukewarm bowl of baked beans.

It was the come down. It was all he'd been deserving. And as weird as it had been. It was their new normal. Shitty flat. Shitty jobs. Meals in a can, and Matty sleeping where George's girlfriend had once been.

It had been a one bedroom flat. Funnily enough, maybe it was just that which had started it all. Because George didn't have the heart to let Matty sleep on the sofa, and Matty was far too stubborn to let George kick himself out of his own bed.

Cold nights grew warmer, but George had held Matty just as close, only whispering different words. It shocked them both that Matty was still there by the time the summer came around.

With life and colour back into the world, back into him - with a smile on his face, and pigment to his skin, hair growing out into a mess of curls from the short cropped style he'd worn before.

They shared a bottle of wine in June and with his fingertips, Matty had etched his first 'I love you' underneath George's shoulder blades.

-

"It's too hot." Matty had somehow managed to take up the entirety of the bed.

George rolled his eyes at him.

"Open the window." He demanded, gesturing wildly off to their bedroom window. George thought about telling him to do it himself, but Matty was not quite drunk off red wine, just tipsy, with his head all over the place, and curls strewn out above his head like a fawny halo.

George opened the window, staring off into the garden, into the September night, wondering what to make of their world anymore.

"Come on." Matty rolled onto his side, gesturing for George to come back to join him in bed. "I miss you." He pressed the words into the air like he really meant them, like George was barely a metre away.

Matty's lips were on George's neck the moment he was close enough in proximity.

"Mm- Matty..." George drew out a sigh, reaching his arm around Matty's waist.

"Mm... George..." Matty mimicked in response, pulling away with sore, red lips.

"Shut up." George told him, crashing his lips into Matty's with all the force he had, pressing Matty's small frame back down onto the mattress.

Matty laughed up at him, even on his back, bracketed entirely by George - arms either side of his head, and knees pressed down either side of his thighs.

Matty's eyes dilated, arm reaching up to tug at George's hair. "Make me."

-

Late September thirtieth, over a glass of water. An evening George had to stay late to help out at school. An evening Matty that had jittery and on edge.

Calm and collected as ever, Delilah stared across at Matty with bemusement.

"Matthew." She dragged her words out: folded up and disguised inside a sigh.

He stilled, eyes settling on Delilah with intrigue, and gave a nod.

"Sit still, will you?" She couldn't help but grin, watching as his cheeks flushed red. "What's up?"

"I am going to be an abysmal father." Matty pushed his back against the wall and gave way to a sigh. He almost felt sorry for her, having to listen to this, but it wasn't his fault that George wasn't home that night.

"What makes you think that?" Delilah wasn't the person to tell him otherwise for the sake of helping his feelings, and for that, Matty was unexplainably grateful.

"I mean, look at me!" Matty exclaimed, gesturing his hands back in towards his chest. Still, it did very little to convey anything of any particular meaning.

"What do you see then?" Delilah thought for a moment, teasing words from her lips after moments of contemplation. "What do you see when you look at yourself that makes you think 'bad father'?"

Matty wasn't quite sure how to answer that. It was less of a specific thing, but more of a general overwhelming feeling: something he'd spent the past few days drowning within.

"I don't know how to handle myself, how to look after myself. I don't know how that's going to equate to looking after someone else." Matty's eyes hit the floor: sullen, and dark against the bright kitchen light.

"I think it's always the bad parents that think they know exactly what they're doing." Delilah offered him a smile. "The people that are so conceited and stuck up in their own heads that are entirely complacent in the fact that they've got their whole world figured out."

"I'm hopeless, though." Matty wasn't quite sure how to properly articulate this great feeling locked up inside of his chest.

"You are a bit." Delilah couldn't help but grin.

Matty rolled his eyes. "Thank you." Still, he knew she was right.

"But no one's expecting that you've got your whole fucking world together..." She trailed off, watching her every word slip out and bounce right off Matty's skull, never quite making it through his ears and into his brain.

Relenting, just for a moment, she drew out her whole world into a sigh. She looked down at her stomach - so very pregnant. Everything was so very permanent now. So impossibly happening. It sat weirdly with her too.

"You've got George, though." She held Matty's gaze. "And look at him, he's going to be an amazing dad, isn't he?"

Matty nodded, knowing it had to be true.

"So, you'll be alright. Amazing dad and slightly hopeless dad. You'll do alright - the two of you."

"I guess." Matty hoped to mitigate the great mountain of worry building up inside of his chest, fixing his eyes on Delilah's stomach for a moment too long.

Delilah pressed a hand over her stomach. "Charlie... isn't he? You've not changed your mind again?"

Matty shook his head. "No, not yet anyway."

Delilah's lips parted into a grin. "Catch you the moment he's born, fucking changing your mind all over again."

"I won't." Matty insisted, cheeks flushing red.

"No, I call it. You're gonna see him for the first time, and you're gonna be like shit no, George, he looks like a Graham, we've got to-"

"What fucking new born baby has ever looked like a 'Graham'?" Matty struggled to contain his laughter. "I swear no one's actually been born as a Graham, it's just sort of something that happens when you turn sixty."

Delilah raised her eyebrows. "If you say so, Matthew."

"Matty." He corrected her, hopelessly. Simply as they were on the subject of names.

Delilah gave a feeble nod, saying little more.

"Why have you never called me Matty in like the six, almost seven months we've known each other?"

The air grew still, the world seizing up around them, as a question took a leap from the back of Matty's mind, crushing the two of them down to the ground.

"You're a Matthew to me-" Delilah's excuse seemed weak, half-hearted even on her part.

"No, really." Matty drew out a sigh. "I don't really mind it, I just... I wonder why. You're so insistent about it. Like it actually matters."

Delilah bit her lip. "I don't want it to."

"Then don't give it so much of your heart, don't feel the need to hide it away-"

"You're just saying that because you want me to tell you." Delilah snapped, rolling her eyes.

"Yeah." Matty's voice grew stern. "I am."

Delilah scoffed.

"Not just for the sake of it, though." He added. "I think it'd help you."

She stared at him like he was mad. "Fuck what you think."

"Yeah, alright." Matty buried his chest into a sigh. "Yeah, alright, fuck what I think."

-

October was one of those months. Forever on edge.

Matty couldn't sit still. Pacing around the living room, reciting words aloud.

Changing his mind over and over again. George sat from the sofa and watched, slipping in an 'I love you' every so often, from over the top of his laptop.

"And mum wants to come see us before he's born, and I don't know if there's time for that - I don't know if we've got time, I mean, I've got to finish this article, and I can't fucking concentrate on anything for more than four seconds, and you're busy, look at you, you're busy now, I don't know what you're busy with, you've told me like six times I know, but I just can't concentrate, so you're busy, and I'm stressed, and Delilah's like so pregnant that it's actually scary, and I think I need-"

Matty came to a stop.

George looked up. The silence felt so unnatural, like salt water in his lungs. He'd never noticed how warm the living room light was before. Matty's cheeks were pink under it. He wanted to kiss him until he made sense.

"What do you need?" George only spoke up when it became apparent that the second half of that sentence would never be coming of its own accord.

Matty flinched, as if snapping out of a trance, coming to stare down at George like he wasn't quite sure where he was.

"I need..." Matty was hesitant, mind twisting itself into knots as he struggled to answer that question for himself, as if he stood worlds away from what had brought him there in the first place.

"I need..." He tried again, but received just as fruitless a result.

George closed his laptop, setting it down on the coffee table, getting to his feet and pulling Matty into his chest.

Matty clung to him as if for dear life, arms curled tightly around his back, stretching up to press fingertips under his shoulder blades. He felt small. Smothered. Not by George, but by the rest of the world around them.

"I don't know what I need." He mumbled the words into George's chest, leaving them to vibrate through his ribcage, right through to his heart.

George moved one hand up to Matty's head, threading his fingers through soft, brown curls. "I think, what you need, love, is an early night."

Matty laughed, ruminations of the world falling from his head, out through his ears and mouth.

"It's eight o'clock." He pulled away just enough to angle his head up to hold George's gaze.

"Eight sixteen." George corrected him with a quick glance to the clock on the wall.

Matty rolled his eyes. "I'm alright, honestly."

"What then?" George blinked down placidly at him. "What do you need?"

Matty wondered for a moment, thoughts echoing too loudly around a cluttered mind.

"You." He pressed a finger into George's chest, settling on the only sense he could see in the end.

George chuckled, warm, open, and alive. "You've got me. Always. Idiot."

Still, Matty tugged at him as if he might crumble into nothingness in his hands. Matty held him that night. Forever hesitant to let go.

-

Seven days. October sixth.

Matty looked detached from the world, running laps around his own mind, as George slept soundly, head, for once, on Matty's shoulder.

Matty pressed his face against the glass, watching the world pass them by. Countryside stretching out around them. Traintracks beneath them. The sky a perfect blue grey. Yearning for October rain. To fill the void, to fill the afternoon.

They'd been here before. October sixth. Six years and seven days.

It had been more than just the two of them. Adam had busied himself with his phone, leaving himself unreachable from across the table. Beside him, Ross'd had headphones in, tapping his foot absentmindedly against the carriage floor. Reluctantly, he'd pulled his eyes from the window, catching Matty's gaze just for a moment. That moment had echoed around Matty's head for years: always saying more than it should have been able to.

Stupid still, into their twenties. With grins. And jokes. And tall tales about ex-girlfriends and one night stands, and last night's hangover settling in around them.

Matty missed Manchester.

Homesick was what it had been.

Matty missed little streets and alleyways, the world he knew like the back of his hand. He'd missed the world he'd grew up in, his childhood home, the shop down the road. He missed the walks to school. He missed smoking outside the gates. He missed getting caught. He missed getting grounded. He missed the mess he'd made for himself at sixteen. He missed it all.

George twitched in his sleep. Curling his fingers around Matty's own. Something he'd never gotten the chance to miss. The one constant amidst this all.

Matty caught himself smiling on the early morning train journey.

It said enough.

-

"You look so tired." Matty was instantly smothered: enveloped in his mother's arms.

"Yeah- hi." Matty struggled for breath.

George and Louis shared a smirk.

It was only for the weekend. Yet it felt like the world itself. Matty had been wrong. George always knew best. The difference between what he wanted and what he needed.

"Has he been sleeping okay?" Denise turned to George the very moment she let Matty go, leaving him to stumble past her and in through the front door. Louis laughed at him, like the massive dickhead he was.

"Yeah, it's just the journey." George assured her, letting Denise hug him too. They were practically family now.

She made them all cups of tea, and Louis skulked around, unsure what kind of a question would be too awkward to ask. Still, Matty could see the curiosity in his eyes. It was inevitable, really.

"What?" Matty barked at him in the end, from George's lap, from the armchair, with all the blankets, and the telly on low in the background; George struggling with the old remote, trying to flick through the channels to find something decent.

Louis flushed red, pressing his back up against the living room wall and shoving his phone back into the pocket of his jeans. "Does this mean I'm going to be his... uncle...?"

"Well... yeah..." Matty drew out a sigh, watching his brother with a smile. "That is kind of how it works."

"That's weird. I think I'm a bit young to be an uncle, really." Louis laughed, loud, echoing through the living room. "You still going to give him a stupid name?"

Matty rolled his eyes, almost offended.

"No, we're calling him Charlie." George answered, before Matty could get any kind of idea otherwise.

Louis gave a shrug. "That's alright. I'm surprised. Thought you were genuinely going to end up calling him Hercules or something."

Matty thought for a moment. "Thinking about it... that's a nice name-"

"No." George pressed a hand over Matty's mouth to shut him up. "Not in a million years." Matty grinned against the palm of his hand.

George kissed the back of his neck. Louis left the room before he threw up. They laughed. The both of them. In love.

-

Matty stared up at the ceiling. A ceiling he'd known so very well at sixteen, but something that seemed all so foreign now. Even with George laid by his side.

"Do you remember?" He mused aloud, stretching one tentative hand up to the ceiling.

George opened his eyes in the low light, squinting to make out Matty's arm in the darkness of the room.

"Remember what?" George mumbled, voice slow and sluggish. "How annoying it is trying to get to sleep next to you?" He chuckled into the darkness, pulling Matty into his side.

Matty grumbled in distaste. "Hate you." He didn't even half-mean it.

"Remember what?" George prompted, gaze fixating on the ceiling.

"Us." Matty's words were barely a whisper through the darkness. "Back when we were sixteen. Staring up at this same fucking ceiling."

"Yeah." George smiled. "You looked a right mess at sixteen."

"So did you." Matty insisted, cheeks flushing red. "You looked fucking weird as shit."

George laughed, cutting through the still of the room.

"I did." He couldn't help but admit.

"I loved you." Matty's words were softer still. "When we were sixteen and fucking weird looking and love was foreign. Before I could quite make sense out of feelings. It was just warm and safe and like blossom, like blossom growing on empty branches in the spring."

George kissed him, heart slowing in his chest. "Go to sleep, you sop."

Matty shoved George gently, pouting.

"Love you too."

-

"It's like birth you see. Rebirth. Over and over again."

Matty was sixteen again, up in his own head. Staring out the window in class. Absent minded, and lost.

Spring. Blossoms. Outside. Sky blue without rain.

Mind an empty garden, but Matty just wasn't sure if he had the seeds to sow.

He turned around to smile at George, sat on the back row. Doodling onto his science book.

"Face the front, please, Matty." Mr Stanley's voice still rang with the same shrill tone through his mind, even after all of these years. "As fascinating as I'm sure George is, you're not going to pass science by staring mindlessly at him."

The class laughed. Matty did too. George flushed red from the back of the room. Yet amidst everything, Matty had felt his stomach twisting inside of him. Butterflies shaking from inside their cocoons.

And the blue sky outside faded out to black, and then to white, and black all over again. Finally to an October. To an Autumn. To George. To a poster he'd tacked to his bedroom wall at fourteen. And still lay there fourteen years later.

For minutes by the dozen, Matty's gaze grew glassy - vacant. Content just to stare through his bedroom window, to take in the morning light. Absent minded once again, yet this time around, not lost, but found.

-

Four days. October ninth.

Back home again the world was quick and the days passed by in too many colours. Matty was besotted with this gnawing feeling deep down in his chest - one that for the life of him, he just couldn't quite explain.

The days were getting properly cold now. Matty looked out into the garden and watched the leaves turn golden brown. Autumn always felt so unfamiliar. Out of reach. He'd never been quite sure why.

Delilah preferred coffee over tea. Matty could never quite get that right. His mind was all over the place, especially as of late.

And Delilah, far too mature for her age, simply sat and smiled, sipping all that Matty gave her. It was quiet, content, in the warmth of the living room. But still the silence yearned for words to fill it. And the cracks on the handle of Matty's mug bore too much resemblance to the cracks across his mind.

He'd been worried the baby would have come during the weekend he and George had spent up in Manchester. Matty had even pleaded with George not to go. On the basis of that, amongst other things. But George had smiled like he always did, and assured Matty that everything would just be alright.

"Funny, I think..." Delilah drew out a sigh, her words hesitant as slender fingers curled around the handle of her mug. "One thing you never thought to ask in all this. I mean, you've gone to whole new levels of personal - whether for your articles, or just for your own innate curiosity, but..."

"But..." Matty drew the word out, barely more than a whisper.

"And I never... I... you know... the first time we met. I was scared it was the first thing you were going to ask. And the second time we met, I was scared it was going to come up then. And then the third, and the fourth, and... then... you never did."

Delilah placed her mug down on the coffee table, bringing her knees up to her chest as she stole a glance of the sky, of the afternoon light descending into the burnt embers of the evening. It was steady, familiar, even. And in some respects, comforting.

"I don't want to talk about it, you can probably guess. But... it... it's... you've managed to ask me everything under the fucking sun, except this." She held Matty's gaze, just for a fleeting moment, almost as if she didn't quite dare to make any form of proper eye contact.

"Oh..." Matty fixed his mind to placing just what it could quite be. "What is it?"

Delilah snorted. "I think the idea was that I didn't want to tell you."

"Yeah..." Matty chewed over his words, mind lost up in everything else. "Sorry."

"Doesn't matter." Delilah shook her head, the silence eager to ebb and flow out, mutating into a great beast before them, but was broken apart at the very roots, as the front door slammed open, shooting a gust of cold October air right through their chests.

"I'm home-" George slammed the door closed behind him, kicking his shoes off out the door, throwing his coat and bag down into the corner, before making his way into the living room, only to stop in his tracks at the sight of Delilah sat on the sofa beside Matty.

"Oh, hi." He offered her a quick smile, before turning to Matty, conveying a thousand words in just one glance. He looked back between the two of them. "Sorry, were you two in the middle of some-"

"No." Matty shook his head, chest falling down into a sigh. "How was your day, love?"

"Interesting." George couldn't help but grin. "Always is."

"Can imagine." Delilah leaned forward, struggling a little with how horribly pregnant she was, before taking a sip of her tea.

"Nothing out of the ordinary, though." George commented, watching Delilah for a moment. "You two been alright?"

Matty gave a nod, following George's gaze right to Delilah's stomach, feeling his heart fluttering incessantly in response. "Just... talking... really."

"Hope he's not been too annoying." George cracked a grin, leaving Matty to scowl at him in disbelief. "Can't imagine that's good for the baby."

"Course." Delilah grinned, watching Matty with amusement. "See, you've got to be nice to me now."

"I am nice." Matty protested, pushing his bottom lip out in insistence.

George laughed, leaning down to press a kiss to the top of his head.

-

Three days. October tenth.

Come nine p.m., the two sat in bed, eating last night's leftover macaroni cheese.

Matty stared down at his bowl, prodding the slightly decayed lump of macaroni tentatively. "I'm gonna have to learn how to cook. Like properly. When Charlie's born."

George laughed, reaching one arm around Matty's shoulders. "I love your cooking."

"Oh, shut the fuck up." Matty glared across at George incredulously, leaving George to half way cripple himself under a fit of laughter.

"You're such a fucking liar." Matty shook his head in disbelief, watching as George fell down into his lap, pressing his shoulder blade into Matty's knee. "Ow."

As Matty attempted to wriggle away, George only pressed the weight of his back further down onto Matty's skinny little legs. Cackling, still.

"Dickhead." Matty uttered, pulling at George's hair in an attempt to get him to move. But of course, to absolutely no avail.

"You're gonna have to stop swearing when he's born, you know?" George mused aloud, nothing but delighted by the prospect. Matty's face turned up into a scowl. "Good luck with that."

"Fuck off." Matty shoved George - one last ditch attempt to get him to move.

"Try again. You've got to be mature and responsible and fatherly." George grinned up at Matty like the dickhead he was.

"George, you're actually going to break my fucking legs in a minute-" Matty desperately kicked up against George's back.

"Ask me nicely and I'll move." George could help but smirk. The fucking dickhead.

"George... please, can you move?" Matty stared down at him: defeated.

"There we go." George sat back up again, pressing a kiss to Matty's forehead. "Wasn't so hard now, was it?"

"I hate you." Matty insisted, placing his empty bowl down on the bedside table and folding his arms firmly across his chest.

"Sure you do, babe." George uttered, kissing him again.

-

Two days. October eleventh.

Ten o'clock. Late start. Late breakfast. Hazy heads. Too much to think. Too much to say. But not enough for a simple phone call.

Delilah's voice sounded distant. Unreal, even. Through the static and distortion. She only sat at home, barely twenty minutes away. But still it felt like forever.

With his phone left on speaker, set down on the countertop as he spread butter onto a slice of toast, Matty began to wonder just what they'd do after the baby was born. As people. Who suddenly didn't have any reason to know each other anymore. People who'd get on with their suddenly separate lives. It tugged at Matty's heart in a way he couldn't quite articulate.

And the phone line went silent. In the end. Ringing out with nothing more than stomach butterflies and hesitance pretenses.

Delilah relented. Ten twenty four. October the eleventh. With great gusts of wind outside.

"You never asked who the father was." The air grew still.

Matty's veins froze up with realisation.

"I mean. You're the father. You and George are the fathers. Obviously." Delilah drew out a sigh, voice shaking as she spoke. "But who did I have sex with to... create your child. You never asked."

"I..." Matty trailed off, thoughts spinning like tornados around his head. "I never... I don't know..."

"You don't have to know. I don't really want you to know. It's just-"

"Who is the father?" Matty stopped her, eyes growing wide with curiosity. "I... you never mentioned, you..."

"Just some guy." She drew out a sigh. "Some fucking guy."

"Oh... I'm..." Matty struggled to backtrack, to calm the air, to do anything to placate the situation the best he could.

"I brought it up. I know." Delilah managed a laugh, although self-deprecating at best. "I guess I want to talk about it. I don't know."

"You don't have to-"

"Just shut up a fucking minute, alright?" Delilah's tone grew bitter, begging the silence to extend into her heart. "Sorry." She muttered: a pathetic reconciliation.

Matty remained silent.

"My friend's boyfriend's friend. He was a dickhead. Still probably is. Don't know him anymore. I don't know any of those people anymore. It was somebody's fucking birthday. Some stupid party. Too much to drink. Too much to say. Stupid lies and stupid boys that think they're the king of the whole fucking world just because they've turned eighteen. And they don't know shit. They don't know who they are. They don't know what they'll do, they don't even fucking know what they've already done."

She struggled over the words in her throat.

"Look, long story short. Mess avoided. Everything else... just. He wanted to have sex with me. I didn't want to have sex with him."

"Oh... I-"

The line went dead. The world turned still. Laced as if with intent. With purpose. Wanting to tear them apart.

-

February had worn thin on the world.

With headaches.

And girls with hair so blonde it didn't even look blonde anymore.

Artifical colours. World all wrong. Against the toilet seat.

From the back wall to the kitchen floor.

To make shapes in the dust.

To telling your friends that you love them for silence to echo for days. For nothing to echo with music ripping holes into your eardrums. Two hearts in the same room beating at the very same pace.

Young enough to think that was a connection. To think that meant a thing.

With hair longer than it had ever been before. Dressed entirely in the colour black. Sporting only red lipstick.

"You look like a slag." It was an odd way to get a girl's attention. To gain their admiration. But he'd never much cared for that.

Smiles were easy at eighteen. Lies were easy from the word go.

"So do you." She bit back because that was all she could do. Words a permanent weapon. Everything else behind her.

He laughed. Like boys laugh at girls. When they're young, dumb, and drunk. Heads heavier than hearts. Like boys laughed at girls with bad ideas in their heads.

"What's your name?" Barely audible over the music. Still. Smiles. Drinks. Them. Close proximity. Eager eyes. Memories like streaks of morning light through half closed blinds. The parts she could never escape.

"Delilah."

And taking his hand in hers, she committed herself as intoxicated enough to make such a mistake.

-

October. Twelfth.

One day faded out into nothing at all.

"The baby's coming."

Matty knew from that very moment that those were words that would never leave him.

The day was a whirlwind: a blur of hospital white, a panic a mess, forever waiting rooms, forever closed hospital doors, forever blue plastic chairs, forever vending machines.

He expected George to be tired: agitated, on edge, gaze set off into the distance as he concocted their future up in his head. But George sat and smiled at him, and called Matty sweetheart, and even went and got a bottle of water for him without him asking.

It was a weird day. Too warm. Too many thoughts. It had all come to a slow, to a turning point, where everything had just built up against this great mountain of a tomorrow. From where they sat, together, hands held, it seemed almost impassable. But life wasn't interested in what they thought of it. Life was life, and life would most certainly continue on regardless.

It wasn't until half nine that evening that they saw him for the first time. Somehow, peaceful amidst this all.

"I thought he'd be crying." Somehow, that was the only thing Matty had to say when he saw his son for the first time.

George scoffed, knowing that this very moment would be the kind of thing they'd laugh at ten years down the line. Such a prospect near brought him to his knees, the world lighting up with the warmth of a burning fire.

"Probably tired out, isn't he?" George offered Matty a grin. "I mean, can't be particularly pleasant - being born."

Matty rolled his eyes, half-hearted remark on the tip of his tongue before a nurse cut in: warm smile, easy eyes, dark hair pinned to the back of her head in a bun.

"He's doing just fine." She spoke, more to Matty than George. "We've checked him over - everything's absolutely fine. Some babies are just quieter than others."

George snorted, nudging Matty. "Can tell he's not actually related to you then."

The nurse stared at the two of them like she wasn't entirely convinced they should be trusted with him. Matty couldn't help but wonder if he agreed with her.

"Fuck off." Matty flushed red, avoiding George's gaze. "I actually was a quiet baby."

"What went wrong?" George kept it up, leaving Matty to glare at him across the room, because they were absolutely not about to have a domestic the first time they saw their son.

"Uhm..." The nurse butted in, unsure if they were intending to continue further. "You can hold him now." She reached down into the crib, holding him for just a moment, before rather tentatively passing him to Matty.

George had never been at all religious in any way or form. Yet, he just couldn't help himself from saying a quick prayer in hopes that Matty didn't immediately drop their son. Because as much as George did love him, that sounded an awful lot like something he'd do.

"Carefully." She warned him, reaching her hands out as if she shared George's concerns. "There you go, like that." She met him with a reassuring smile, leaving Matty to glance between her, George, and their son, like he couldn't quite believe the world, or the moment within itself.

"He's real, isn't he?" Matty's voice was breathy and tentative, question directed to George, but words muttered down to his son. He lay there, wrapped up: skin a stark pink against the white blanket.

Matty stared down at him, and had to teach himself how to breathe again. Had to redefine beauty, had to redefine the world, and all that lay in his hands. It was different. This was everything. This was a physical weight. And really, for the first time in his life, Matty was utterly speechless.

"Yeah." George murmured, catching the nurse's gaze for just a brief fleeting moment, before deciding that he shouldn't have to care anymore. "He is." And George leaned in and kissed Matty on the cheek.

Matty flushed red and smiled, staring up at George like this was everything, this was the whole world. Like he'd spent the past twenty eight years of his life without his heart ever beating.

"Hold him, George, I think I'm gonna cry." Matty thrust him into George's arms, watching for just a moment as George held his son, held their son. His arms curled around him with ease, with instinct, like this was something he'd done for years.

And Matty would argue that he wasn't a sop, but in the hospital that day he indeed shed a tear, in front of a slightly apprehensive nurse, just because he loved George, and he loved their son, so much.

And of course, George glanced across at him, like the dickhead he was, grin plastered to his face. "Thought he was the one who was supposed to be crying."

"Oh fuck off-"

"Language." George smirked across at him. "You've got to be all responsible and mature now. Can't have him picking up anything."

"George, he's been alive for about forty five minutes, he's not going to suddenly go around screaming 'the f word' because I said it once, is he?"

-

"Hello..." Matty couldn't wipe the grin from his face as he walked into Delilah's hospital room.

He thought he ought to have brought her something special. A thank you. But he hardly had the world at his fingertips in a hospital waiting room, so he brought her a Fanta from the vending machine instead.

"Matthew. How is he?" She asked, struggling to sit up in bed.

"He's beautiful." Matty flushed red, pulling his hair back, securing it up into a bun.

"You happy?" She watched him carefully, desperate to completely figure him out.

"Course." Matty assured her with a nod. "George too. He's a fucking natural, course he is." Delilah couldn't help but grin. "How about you? How are you feeling?"

"How do you think?" Delilah's eyes widened in disbelief. "I've just delivered your fucking child. I'm a bit tired - let's go for that, huh?"

Matty snorted. "Yeah, that. Course. But I mean... you happy now? You got rid of him now."

"I'm not happy that I... got rid of him." She arched her eyebrows across at Matty, shooting him a questioning look. "I'm happy that you're happy. And that you're going to love him, and he's going to have a good life."

"You're a sop - you are, as well." Matty snorted, far too smug for his own good.

"Yeah, alright, don't tell anyone though." She managed a grin, watching Matty for a moment, letting the situation, their circumstances sink in. "So..."

"So...?" Matty perked up, holding her gaze with curious intent.

"I mean... where do we go after this?" She gave way to a sigh. "We don't need to know each other anymore. And I think it's weird for me to see him, you know? But... I..."

"You'd miss me." Matty smirked, all too pleased with himself.

"Shut up." Delilah's cheeks flushed red. "I'm just, how does this continue...? Can it...?"

"We can be friends." Matty spoke more for his own sake than anything else. Truthfully, he'd miss her too. "Don't be stupid. Course we still can."

"Yeah, but I'm gonna go off and like live my life. Finish school and that." Delilah watched him for a moment, lost up in thought. "It's going to be weird. Different. Weird. Different-weird. I don't know. Both."

"Yeah, you're not going to be sat on my sofa listening to me waffle on about how emotionally crippled I am, and you're not going to deal with me making you tea instead of coffee every day. That's probably for the better. But like, I'll call you every once in awhile. Snapchat you pictures of Allen."

Delilah couldn't help but laugh. "You were going to do that either way."

"Course." Matty smiled back at her. "You've made an impact, you have. On me, on my life, on George, on our life. There's no undoing that."

"Are you going to have cringey suburban middle class white family barbeques that I'm going to have to make excuses not to come to?" She raised her eyebrows at Matty.

"Oh, definitely."

-

"Charlie..." Matty let the word slip his lips, wide eyed and baffled, just as he had been that very first day, now a week down the line.

"He's..." Matty trailed off, watching Charlie with awe, adoration, amidst the wispy mess of a Saturday afternoon.

They felt less like three people living lives intertwined, but so much more like three hearts beating in time, bound to the same rhythm forevermore. There wasn't question nor motive behind them, it was just the way things were. They were happy. In eternal summers, or ominously approaching winters.

"Beautiful." George finished for him, lips twitching up into a smile. "You have said. At least seventy times a day."

"It's just..." Matty trailed off, reaching out to touch him, sleeping there, soundly. At peace with the world and everything in it. "This is so surreal."

George pulled his arms around Matty's waist, pressing a kiss to the top of his head from behind. "Mmm... I know."

"No, you don't know." Matty exclaimed, tilting his head up to meet George's. "You're... you're... a natural. You know exactly what you're doing with him, you've like completely accepted being a dad, you've like completely accepted that now there's this tiny little baby that depends on us for everything, and, like how? How can you just... know how to deal with this beautiful, little, weird, tiny baby, that's completely silent when you're with him, but screams his fucking head off the moment you leave him?"

"Well..." George couldn't help but smirk. "Had a lot of practice. Putting up with you for eight years."

Matty stared up at George in complete and utter disbelief; really, he'd outdone himself this time. "A... weird, little, tiny screaming baby...? Me...?"

"Sounds about right, doesn't it?" He silenced Matty with the touch of their lips. "Beautiful, though. You're beautiful too."

"And you're a fucking sop as well." Matty snorted, pressing his head back into George's chest.

"Not being soppy, just being honest." George assured him, squeezing his arms in tighter around Matty's waist.

"Still don't see how I exactly resemble a weird screaming baby." Matty was quick to protest, looking down at Charlie, as if George's words were beginning to seriously bother him. "Not like I start crying my fucking eyes out the moment you leave me alone."

"You do." George told him, kissing the nape of his neck.

"How do I?" Matty narrowed his eyes, almost eager to hear what kind of conclusion George could possibly have for that.

"When you're still in bed and I get up in the morning, you're all - 'Georgie, baby, love of my life, handsome, George, please, come back I love-"

"When have I ever done that?" Matty flushed red, shaking his head up at George in disbelief.

"Every morning." George assured him. "When you're half asleep. That's what you sound like."

"I don't."

"Trust me, you do-"

"When have I? In all the years I've known you, ever called you 'Georgie baby'?" Matty feigned disgust at the concept.

"Okay, that one's only when you're drunk, but still-"

"You know I hate you, right?" Matty interjected, staring up at George with all the insistence in the world.

"You know I don't believe you, right?" George laughed back in his face, kissing him all over: the nape of his neck, his forehead, the tip of his nose, each cheek in turn, and then finally on his lips.

"You're disgusting." Matty told him, redder than a beetroot. "Properly disgusting."

And just like that, Charlie started to cry, tiny hands reaching in their direction with imploration.

"Look, you've upset him, can't have you thinking I'm disgusting, can we?" George shook his head in mock disapproval, taking Charlie into his arms and rocking him into a peaceful calm within seconds. Matty just stared in utter disbelief.

-

"You know..." It was late, Matty was sat in bed, shivering, even under the blanket.

George watched, amused, from the other side of the room, sorting through his text messages before putting his phone on to charge for the night.

"You should have put a shirt on." George bit back a smile: stupid and smug. Matty would have slapped him if he was within arm's reach.

"Sorry, didn't realise you were so against the notion of me being shirtless?" Matty raised his eyebrows, fixing his gaze onto George, boring into his skin until he was forced to turn his head in response.

"I'm not." George failed to bite back a smirk, taking the moment to admire Matty as he was: pale skin, seeming to glisten somewhat under the moonlight, streaming in from the window.

Matty flushed red, squirming under George's gaze: his eyes seeming to devour all of Matty's body he could catch under the moonlight.

"Trust me." George assured him, placing his phone back onto the side, and taking a step towards the bed. "I'm not."

He pulled his eyes up to meet Matty's, narrowing them with a certain kind of determination that made quick work of Matty's insides. Matty's adam's apple bobbed visibly in his throat. A smirk tugged at George's lips, soon to run away with them completely.

"So what's this about me putting a shirt on?" Matty pulled his bottom lip back between his teeth, forcing a slight barb into his voice in an altogether desperate attempt to form a decent retort.

George shook his head, laughing as he climbed over the end of the bed, perching himself down millimetres opposite Matty. "Nothing."

Matty tilted his head up to meet George's eyes, lips parting to give way to one desperately flaky breath. "But I'm cold." He whined, voice almost petulant.

George reached out, pressing his hand against Matty's forehead. "How about I warm you up?" He didn't wait for a response before pinning Matty back to the headboard and connecting their lips.

"Very smooth, George." Matty scoffed, attempting to retain any sort of dignity, even with George dragging his lips down over Matty's throat and taking skin between his teeth with the intent to bruise.

George snorted, rolling his eyes up to meet Matty's: gaze sending Matty's insides to crumble into ruin. He connected his lips back to his throat without even offering up a response.

"Very clever." Matty continued, reaching his hand up to George's head, twisting his hair between his fingers and tugging, as George continued in his plight to ignore Matty entirely.

George drew out no response, in fact, the only sign of acknowledgement bore the increased pressure with which he sucked at Matty's neck, tugging at the bare skin with intent and purpose: desperate to tear down Matty's resolve.

Matty tugged at George's hair: harder. Stubborn, forever, always. Still, no response. George was determined not to be the one to break.

"I'm still cold, you know?" Matty droned on, tugging at George's hair with enough force to pull him away from his neck, forcing George's eyes up to meet his own.

"Was that not warm enough?" George's lips twisted up into a smirk, moving his hand down to Matty's neck, dragging one teasing finger along his jawline.

"Yeah, George, I'm not sixteen, I'm not going to get all hot and flushed over you kissing my neck." Matty rolled his eyes, dismissing George's actions entirely, and of course, lying through his teeth.

George laughed; he couldn't help himself. "Sixteen?" He raised his eyebrows, unable to wipe the smirk from his face. "I had you like that at twenty one."

Matty dragged his gaze away, cheeks burning up horribly. "Well, that was... because you... that was circumstantial."

"And that was bullshit." George reached his hand up to tuck a stray curl behind Matty's ear. He pushed his thumb up against the underside of his jaw, forcing Matty to meet his gaze.

"It was because you're you." Matty grumbled, rolling his eyes back at George.

"Course." George was beyond smug, connecting their lips once more. "Now how do you suggest I warm you up?" He pulled away, dragging his teeth down Matty's chin and over his neck.

"Where's the fun in that?" Matty rolled his eyes down at George. "Surprise me, dickhead."

"Stop calling me dickhead." George pulled away, eyes far more serious than he actually was. "Or I might just go and get you that shirt instead-"

"Surprise me..." Matty trailed off, unsure quite what could fit the spot. "Babe..."

"Very cringey." George couldn't help but laugh. "I like it..." He paused for a moment. "Beautiful."

Matty brought his hands up to cover his cheeks, scarlet red, even in the evening light.

"Trust me." George grabbed Matty's wrists, pinning them up above his head. "I can get more embarrassing than that."

Matty glanced up at his hands, held high above his head, and struggled to conceal a smirk. He pulled his gaze back to George's. "Prove it."

"If you say so, angel." George continued, waiting a moment just to watch Matty blush, before crashing their lips back together.

"I hate you." Matty told him, far too plainly, eyes fluttering up at George.

"No." George shook his head, far too sure of himself. "No, princess, you don't."

"Princess?" Matty eyes widened in disbelief, kissing George back regardless.

"Mmm..." George nodded, pulling away. "Princess."

"That's honestly pushing it." Matty shook his head. "I don't want you to show... I don't know - adoration by feminising me."

George rolled his eyes, biting back a laugh as he pulled away, sitting back down opposite Matty and taking a moment to just appreciate how much of idiot he was, and despite that, just how in love with him he couldn't help but be.

"Sorry." He met Matty with a smile; despite how stupid he thought he was being, he still knew to accept his point of view. "Prince, then, how about that?"

"Better. Still disgusting." Matty rolled his eyes, thinking for a moment, and letting those thoughts drag him down a black hole. "Fuck. Sorry, I-"

"What?" George reached for Matty's hand, squeezing his fingers in attempt to calm his heartbeat, to ease the frantic look in his eyes.

"I'm ruining this, aren't I? Come on, kiss me, shut me up, shut me and my stupid thoughts and worries up-"

"No." George watched Matty with concern. "What are you worried about? Talk to me."

"You know, George, not to be rude, but I'd just rather you fucked me." Matty couldn't help but blush, simply about being quite so blunt about it.

George couldn't help but grin, kissing Matty quickly before holding his gaze with the kind of intent that set Matty's head astray. "Well, tell me what's worrying you and then we can just get on with it."

Matty sank down with a sigh, wishing he could avoid George's gaze somehow. "Don't laugh at me. I know you will. And I know you're gonna want to make some stupid bullshit comment, but... just don't, alright?"

"Mmm..." George's face softened significantly. "Course. Love you."

"Yeah, love you too." Matty nodded, staring up at George with those big, sad eyes. "I just... all this... heteronormativity, really. I just... I'm worried about Charlie, I'm worried about us, about us as a family, like, he's going to fit me into a maternal role in his life. But I'm... not his mum. And I don't want that to be weird for him, I don't want him to struggle with that. Because I'm his dad, we're both his dad, and that's... I'm obviously the most feminine one of us, but... I'm not the mum, because it's not about - oh, who's the girl in your relationship? Who's his mum? Like fuck off, that's the point, we're both boys, we're both dads, and that's... that."

George nodded, considering Matty's words carefully before responding. "You can be feminine without being the 'girl'. You can be maternal without being the 'mum'. Kids aren't stupid, you know? He's going to know he's got two dads. And he's not going to think that there's anything weird about that at all."

"Lucky fucking him." Matty gave way to a sigh. "But then, when he goes to school, and-"

"Matty, sweetheart." George pulled his lips into a smile, running a hand up through Matty's hair. "He's nine days old. I don't think we have to worry about what's going to happen when he goes to school quite yet."

"Yeah, I just... it's a lot. Feelings. Thoughts. Worries. And that." Matty gave a nod, desperate to repeal the mess from his mind.

"Then write about it. It'd make an interesting article, don't you think?" George watched with joy as Matty's lips twitched up into a smile.

"Yeah, alright. Fucking hell. Let's look forward to some fucking middle aged straight dickhead referring to it as this... great, groundbreaking, iconoclastic piece of literature."

Matty rolled his eyes. "I hate straight people, you know? It's not revolutionary, it's not heartbreaking - it's my fucking life. And it's that."

"Write one about straight people too." George offered, grin slipping over his lips.

"Somehow, I doubt that's going to be very well received." Matty rolled his eyes, leaning over into George's chest. "Can you fuck me now, before I get too tired and fall asleep on your dick-?"

"Matty." George's eyes widened in disbelief.

Matty cracked a grin, yawning as if just to prove a point. "I'm not kidding - you can get on with it."

-

"Not to be weird, but..." Ross struggled in biting back a smile.

"What?" Matty raised his eyebrows, staring him down, playing the picture perfect part of defensive.

"So which one of you is... dad... and which one of you is... daddy?" Ross flushed red, glancing between Matty and George, as Adam doubled over with laughter, clutching the living room wall for dear life.

Matty hated his friends. Wholeheartedly.

"We're not doing it like that." George stared Ross down, moments away from just down right telling him to fuck off.

"How then?" Adam struggled to recover, leaning back against the wall as he caught his breath. "Isn't it going to be confusing for him, like-"

"If I can manage having two friends called Adam." Matty bore his gaze into Adam. "I think he's gonna be fine."

"Matty, mate, I'm just wondering." Adam raised his hands up, as if in surrender. "I mean, he is like a baby, and you're twenty eight. So there's kind of a difference."

"Dad one and dad two?" Ross raised his eyebrows, glancing between the two of them.

"Oh, but they'd argue. Over who's one and who's two." Adam added, shaking his head at Matty and George like they were the children here.

"We wouldn't." Matty insisted, far too sure of himself.

"Alright." Ross raised his eyebrows, as if to challenge the two of them. "Who's one and who's two?"

"I'm one." Matty was quick to speak for the both of them.

"Hang on a fucking minute-" George cut in, unable to even finish his sentence before Ross and Adam were straight out laughing at the two of them.

"I should be dad one - I'm older. Chronological order is fair." Matty folded his arms across his chest.

"You know, this kid is probably going to call the both of you daddy anyway for like the first few years of his life." Ross grinned across at the both of him. "Honestly, if you can't say the word 'daddy' without laughing should you really have had a child?"

"Ross, I'm not the one with a fucking penguin tattoo, so you can fuck off." Matty shook his head in disbelief.

"I'm not the one with a child-" Ross protested.

"Shut up." George grinned across at him, not even half as invested in the matter at hand as Matty was, but defending him just to be a good boyfriend.

"We're both going to be dad." Matty decided, right then and there. "Because we're both his dad, and that's just that."

"See." George grinned. "We'll manage."

The claim was perhaps a little dubious that minute, but it would suffice in the long term. They were good parents, really.

***

'Family. Define it. Like you're just five years old all over again. Picture it in your head, that picture perfect family etched into our school books in crayon. We drew ourselves first, the centerpiece, with a great gaping red crayon mouth and stick legs drawn off to a wonk.

Then you draw a dad, tall and smiling, not quite even fitting on the page - cut off at the knees. And then a mum too, joyful and pretty - the three of you, all holding hands: stick fingers grasped together.

And that's - that's family. That's how it is. And then we grow up, and there are people with just a dad or just a mum, or people with two mums or two dads. And we have to redefine this idea of family we created when we were kids. We have to go back in time and look our primary school teachers in the eye and tell them they were wrong.

Family isn't so much a group of people, sat inside the same living room, making small talk over the same dinner: tied together in marriage and blood. Family is just who you love. Whether hundreds of miles apart, whether not related by blood at all, whether you exist just to contradict the world's every idea about family life and the way things should be. That's family. Like an awful lot of things, it seems, family is what you make of it.'

-

It was Christmas. Not quite Christmas itself. But late December. They'd made it - close enough.

This was happiness and smiles, and too many decorations, and their stupid little home, and their stupid little family, and long desperate phone calls from every distant aunt and uncle they hadn't seen in years.

This was Charlie's first Christmas. Yet, theirs too. Their first Christmas with more than kisses between them.

Matty had figured it out by now. What it was that forever tore him up inside. When he looked down at Charlie. When George insisted that he was smiling back at him, although it was physically impossible for him to smile just yet.

Charlie was Charlie, of course, barely two months old, the kind of peaceful, the kind of beautiful that Matty couldn't quite put into words, for all any type of self expression was worth.

Yet Charlie was them. The physical embodiment of love. The people they were. This winter, warmer than usual, and for once, not dragging them through a blizzard, but taking them by hand, and taking them skating across a frozen over lake.

Charlie was a reminder. Physical, and 'smiling' up at him. That things would work. That things would be okay. That love was stronger than words, stronger than hate, stronger than expectations.

They'd be alright in the end. The three of them.

-

'Love is what's important. Beyond anything else. Above over people. Above the rest of the world. Love and happiness - the meaningful smiles, not the one placed upon lips with purpose and intent.

It doesn't matter that my son has two dads, that he doesn't have a mother, as straight people will undoubtedly cry and recoil in horror. My son has two dads who love him and each other very much. That means so much more than having a mum and a dad who might not particularly like each other very much and just stick around because they'd had a child together accidentally.

Really, it plays on sexist ideals, on gender roles - on the mum in the kitchen, on the dad out at work. Masculinity and femininity as great pillars that define the upbringing of a child and the person they'll grow up to be. It's ridiculous - having two fathers isn't going to ensure that our son's going to be gay. That was decided when he was born, before we'd even first seen him. If such a thing was really so true, shouldn't you wonder how all of these gay kids came from straight parents?

Truthfully it doesn't matter. If he's gay we're going to love him. If he's straight we're going to love him. If he's bisexual we're going to love him. If he's anything else we're going to love him still. And that's just more than some straight parents can say.

I did worry. Of course I did. About everything and anything. But when I hold him in my arms I know in my heart that is natural beyond what nature can be.'

-

Matty cried. A lot.

At Charlie's first birthday party.

George cried too; he was just better at hiding it. His face never grew red like Matty's did.

Their mums cried too. Everyone sat around having a nice little sob in their living room, and really it was quite the scene - to see so many grown adults in tears with a little one year old baby sat perfectly still and content amidst it all.

Charlie was quiet still. George made jokes about it still. Matty worried sometimes: drawing thoughts out like raindrops against window panes - to trickle and pool together in a great gaping mess. Yet, forever, they'd clear in the morning. And George would feel nice enough to make them breakfast in bed. And Matty would wax some sappy rhetoric about being in love.

They were properly adults now. It had sort of hit him when Matty was drying his eyes - half-listening to Adam go on about this girl he'd met at work, as George carried Charlie around, properly introducing him to the more extended parts of their family. Their collective family.

Here he was, at a party, not shitfaced drunk, not entranced with colours and pills and boys and girls, and stupid ideas about jumping from the roof tops and dying young, not twisting words, not forming twisted ideals about going up to live in the stars. But happy. With George, with his son, with their family.

With everything he'd never thought he'd ever get within arms reach of. Back when he'd been young and stupid and told so many lies about feeling so alive.

The only constant, perhaps, was George, and that same smile. That same smile that would forever mean more than he could have ever grown to imagine.

-

'My only real concern in this all is how he'll grow up, when he can come to think for himself, when other people can come to influence his opinions, when he has to face people at school and tell them about his two dads back at home.

I can only hope the world will be a more accepting place five years down the line. As it's ridiculous, you know? How content straight people are with their ideals of equality. As, of course, we can get married in a proportion of countries around the world, so homophobia is non-existent, it's all the same, we're all people, love is just love.

I'm not in love with a man by pure chance. It didn't just so happen, out of the blue, against all my will and desire. Someone up in the sky didn't roll a pair of dice to bring us together. I'm in love with a man because he's a man. And I'm attracted to men.

There's no choosing how I was born. But there's choice in who I am. The person I live out every day as. I could have repressed my sexuality so much more, and focused solely on girls, and ended up married to a nice girl, to have a nice 'natural' baby, to live happily like that. But I didn't. I chose to accept myself. To accept love. I'm not with George by pure chance.

I'm with him because I chose bravery, I chose my own identity, I chose myself - over society, over the rest of the world and the placified ideas they seek to put into our heads.

I hope that if my son is gay. I hope that by the time he figures that out, the world will be an accepting enough place for him to not go through what I did.'

-

It was June.

A lazy Sunday afternoon, curled up watching TV together.

In the quiet, in the calm, in words like rippled waves, that was when the silence was broken, and Charlie, sat complacently in George's lap, said his first word.

"Dad..."

It was garbled, half-formed, and more of a general baby sound than anything else, but right there, on that Sunday afternoon, Matty felt as if he had the world.

He held George's gaze: speechless, stomach tying itself into knots. The whole world chasing patterns around his head.

George, although just as stunned, managed to retain his composure, pulling his arms around Charlie as he tossed him a grin. As always, with whatever the world might throw at them - George knew exactly what he was doing; George was a good dad, a natural.

"Charlie?" George held his gaze, patiently waiting to see what could possibly follow in response.

Charlie shook his head in response, leaving the two of them, really, beyond baffled. He folded his arms across his chest: clearly not fond of being misunderstood.

"Dad..." He tried again, with a much more distant emphasis to his words this time. As it became apparent that neither Matty nor George quite understood what they'd misunderstood the first time, Charlie stretched out his arm towards Matty.

Matty's eyes grew wide. "Yeah... dad? Yeah... that's me." Matty couldn't wipe the grin from his face.

"What about me?" George was just mildly offended - much more so at just how incredulously smug Matty looked.

Charlie stared up at George, watching him curiously for a moment, as if he wasn't quite sure what to make of him at all.

"Daddy." Charlie settled on, turning his attention back to the TV, as if the events of the past few minutes held no significance at all. As after all, it likely didn't in his mind.

Matty struggled to suppress a snort, holding George's gaze before passing him a wink. "Alright then, daddy."

George shot him a look, but Matty persisted - just to sit there and watch him blush. "Can you get me a drink, daddy?"

If Charlie hadn't been there, clearly in the age in which he was picking up things they were saying, George swore he would have killed him, but not before telling him to go fuck himself. But he was, of course, a responsible father now, so instead, moved Charlie into Matty's lap and ran off into the kitchen - not so much as to get Matty a drink, but much more to try and compose himself.

-

'I knew I never should have, but I always thought like there was something wrong with me. When I was sixteen and I couldn't help but stare at the other boys. After P.E. or the like.

I wasn't quite so naive as to assume it was nothing of any note, or that everyone felt like that. I'd like to think I was relatively smart for my age. Not book smart. Definitely not book smart. But intuitive. I knew people. I knew emotions. I knew that this was different.

So I observed. I didn't say a word. Because as loud and obnoxious as I always was, I never did have anything of real note to say for myself. I remained the silent observer to my own actions of those of others around me. I watched my friends, how they stared at girls. How my friend spent every single Geography lesson with his eyes fixated on some girl with blonde hair who sat in the front row.

I tried to do that too. Because I did like girls. I still do like girls. Just not in the way I like boys. It's much stronger with boys. It's a bodyache. It's not just in my head, it's not just in my heart - it's in my knees, in my fingers and toes.

And then everything fit into place, only for me to realise I'd been solving the wrong puzzle all along. Perhaps the question wasn't why I couldn't stop staring at boys, but why when it came to 'crushes' everything I'd felt for girls felt so much more manufactured and artificial than it had with boys. That had all come together when one of my friends was going on about this girl. The same one from Geography.

I was the only one listening that afternoon, sat out on the field, looking like we had the whole world beneath us, not just the grass and soil.

But all that I felt inside was rocks. Sticks and stones tugging at my insides, forcing my heart inside out in the form of my new self: a whole reinvention. An acceptance of new ideas. Because that was just how I was. I'd always known that. Yet, still, I'd desperately wished to fix it somehow.

I don't ever want my son to have to feel what I did. To lay awake at night with the kind of thoughts I did. To leave it all inside for so long. To let it bubble and brew until it destroys what sense of self you could have possibly constructed at sixteen.

That was the thing. I wasn't the problem. My sexuality wasn't the problem. Society was.'

-

"You don't want to go?" Matty eyed George warily across the living room. He was struggling through some last minute paperwork, as Matty sat with Charlie - supposedly reading a book to him, but they'd both gotten rather bored of the idea entirely.

"No..." George looked up, holding Matty's gaze for a seemingly fragile moment. From the look in Matty's eyes, he felt like he ought to, but the world didn't make sense to him in quite the same way anymore.

"Alright..." Matty rolled his eyes, thankful that Charlie was sat in his lap, as he knew he wouldn't have the self-control to keep his mouth shut otherwise.

"That's bothering you." George stretched out across the sofa, holding Matty's gaze with the kind of stern powerful look that he would have liked to have made any impact at all.

"It's not." Matty insisted, allowing Charlie to wriggle out of his lap and go flick through one of the magazines Matty had left on the coffee table.

"Matty, I know when you're lying." George rolled his eyes, not quite so eagerly awaiting Matty's response.

"I just think it's a bit... disrespectful of you to not want to go see her." Matty folded his arms across his chest; he was trying - not perhaps as hard as he should have been, but he was trying nonetheless.

"Why? It's been more than three years." George watched Matty for a moment, unable to quite figure him out.

"Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter how long it's been, she's still Delilah." Matty drew his gaze over to Charlie: sat innocent and unaware.

"I'm not opposed to seeing her, I'm just, you know? Really busy. And if you're going to go see her, I'll need to be home to look after Charlie."

Charlie looked up at the mention of his name. "Who's Delilah?" He asked. Entirely absent-mindedly. In that perfectly naive three year old voice of his.

George met Matty's gaze, eyes growing wide like saucers, foretelling an impending doom. Matty rolled his eyes, shaking his head.

"Delilah's my friend." Matty explained, the reality of the situation tugging at his insides a little, but the fact of the matter was that Charlie was only three, and far too long to have this all properly explained to him.

"What? After you've not seen her in three years?" George raised his eyebrows, as if clinging so desperately to a point that had long been buried.

"I text her like every other day. She lives on the other side of the country, you know - it's hardly convenient." Matty rolled his eyes, still far more stubborn than he needed to be.

"Do you actually?" George stopped for a moment; he'd always imagined that they'd stopped talking in general.

"Yeah..." Matty trailed off, holding George's gaze for an uncomfortably prolonged moment. "Stop looking at me like that. It's not weird."

"It is." George gave way to a sigh. "A bit."

"Oh shut up. We get on." Matty turned instead to look towards Charlie, who, understandably, looked quite a lot like her. "She's nice. She's done a lot for us."

-

She'd cut her hair short. Not short short. But to just below her ears. It suited her. So did the smile.

"You're old now. Aren't you, Matthew?" It was as welcome a greeting as any. Matty just laughed, because in a way, she was sort of right.

It wasn't until over steaming cups of coffee that any much more was said.

"How's being old then?" The smile was omnipresent: a weight forever upon her lips. She looked younger now than ever before.

"It's nice." Matty told her. Honestly. "George thinks I'm being weird about all of this. About seeing you again."

"Yeah, course he would be." Delilah gave a shrug - unfazed. "He would be. He's the sensible one. I mean, one of you has got to be somewhat sensible. And really, staying close friends with the surrogate mother of your three year old son isn't exactly the most sensible of decisions. Especially when she's trying to get on with her life and forget about the baby she ever had. But I do quite like you. Funnily enough. I've missed you."

Matty laughed, shaking his head in disbelief. "As mean to me as you are, I've missed you too."

"How sweet of you." Delilah leaned back in her seat, watching Matty from the same dark eyes. It was all very nostalgic. Bringing them down to way back when.

"He's not a baby anymore though." Matty noted, twisting a strand of hair around one finger. "He's three."

"That's still a baby though, isn't it? In the grand scheme of things. He's not exactly middle aged." Delilah gave a shove in his direction.

"Hey." Matty widened his eyes in horror. "I'm not there quite yet - you can fuck off."

Delilah couldn't help but laugh: unsure as to quite whether she did agree with him. "Alright, what are you then?"

"Alive." Matty went for in the end.

"Nice. Poetic." A grin tugged at her lips. "Very you."

"Isn't it just?" Matty let out a sigh. "I am a shit parent, though." He thought to add.

Delilah burst into a laugh, perhaps just at the nonchalance with which it was proclaimed. "You seem pretty content with that?"

"George like actually knows what he's doing one hundred percent of the time, so it's okay, we balance each other out." Matty couldn't bury his smile. "Can have too much responsible influence, can he? He's gonna turn out boring that way."

Delilah rolled her eyes. "You're a terrible parent."

"I'm not terrible I'm just unorthodox." Matty couldn't help but laugh at that one himself.

"If you say so, Matthew." She struggled in fighting back a smile.

"Tell me, though." Matty drew out his words, tentative despite himself.

"What?" She placed her head into the palm of her hand. Intrigued.

"Why you always call me Matthew." He watched her, forever hesitant, but forever wondering.

Delilah's chest caved in with a sigh, offering up a look in her eyes that Matty had always kept at the back of his mind, over the past few years.

"Because you're not a Matty, that's why." Delilah told him, far too simply.

"What does that actually mean, though?" Matty crossed his arms across his chest, looking over at Delilah and not believing for a single moment that she might actually answer him.

And the silence seemed to pan out for days, but just this once, leaning on the chance of three years, steadying hearts and nothing at all. This was all about getting older, about thinking not with hearts but with heads. This was the end of resentment, this was the start of making sense of the world. And not hating it on the principle of what it once did to you.

"He was a Matty, that's why." She drew in a breath. "And he was a fucking dickhead, let's say that. You're not like him."

"Who?"

Delilah swallowed hard, eyes fixated on the window pane, not the world outside, but on the raindrops running down it. Not on the big picture, but on the tiny insignificant details - forever always.

"The dad."

That was a story Matty never repeated, but one that served to echoed around his head until the very end of days. Along with the look in Delilah's eyes, and the integrity with which it had been uttered. She was something else. Really.

-

"Come on, you're half-asleep, don't be a fucking idiot. We're going to bed."

As George picked Matty up, and carried him into the bedroom, he began to wonder when George had started parenting him too.

It had him grinning from the bed: curled up under the covers as George got in beside him. The room was silent but a whole world was uttered in smiles.

"I love you. You know." George uttered, words barely audible, even in the silence of the room, with one hand stretched to brush Matty's cheek. Ridiculous. In love. Everything.

"I love you too. You know." Matty added, shuffling closer to George. "And it's okay. That you didn't meet Delilah the other week."

"Yeah, I just..." George gave way to a sigh. "Look, it's just... it's not anything against her, I just don't really want her to have a relationship with Charlie-"

"George, George. Here's the thing." Matty met him with a smile. "Neither does she. It's not about that."

"What's it about then?" George gave way to a sigh.

"It's about the fact that she's my friend. And okay, she's ten years younger than me, and okay, she was the surrogate mother of our son, and yeah, she..." Matty trailed off; the rest was better left unsaid. "She's my friend."

"Yeah." George nodded. "I get that. She's just not mine. Not that I don't like her, just-"

"I know." Matty assured him, rolling over onto his back. "I do know, George. I do. Honestly. I just... I want everything to be right and perfect and all smiles and I don't want to have passive-aggressive half arguments with you in front of Charlie."

"Mmm... wouldn't that make you the sensible parent, though?" George raised an eyebrow.

"Fuck off." Matty insisted, chest heaving with a sigh. "Bothers me. Too much. I worry if we're bringing him up wrong. I mean, I know I'm not a good parent, but I'm trying, you know? I think that definitely counts. And maybe it's a bit fucked, a bit broken, our little dysfunctional family, with fucking me and my bad cooking and irresponsible parenting and foul mouth and depressive episodes, and then you, the best dad in the world, best boyfriend in the world, actual angel, dickhead, weirdo, the fucking BFG, and all-"

"Shut up." George told him, pressing a hand over his mouth. "Doesn't matter what you think we are. We're good. We're happy. Doesn't matter. We've all got our flaws, everything's always going to be a bit mismatched, isn't it? I mean, not everything's yours to fix, you know? Sometimes things are just going to stay 'broken'. Sometimes things work out like that. Not everything lost has to be found."

"Mmm..." Matty rolled his eyes in disbelief. "Shut up, George, go to sleep."

"Dickhead." George muttered, pressing a kiss to his forehead.

"Yeah... my mum had this... this..." Matty mumbled, eyes closed, voice barely audible. "This... little fucking... sparrow ornament... always on the mantelpiece - favourite thing in the whole fucking house. Loved it more than she loved my dad really... no wonder they... yeah... fucking thing was like... tattered... broken... fucking ugly. It was so fucking ugly. I hated it."

"Mmm...?"

"We're a bit like that, aren't we?" Matty's eyes fluttered open.

"What? Ugly?" George laughed like the dickhead he was. "Yeah. You. Fucking atrocious."

Matty closed his eyes again, burying his face into the pillow. "Still in love with me, though, aren't you?"

George moved closer, pulling Matty into his arms. "Not if you don't shut up and go to sleep, but alright yeah."

"Well that's that. That's us. That's this." Matty murmured, heart thudding against his chest. "And that's okay. Because I'm happy. I'm really happy. Like the kind of happy you got on pills when you were nineteen and didn't think could possibly exist sober."

George flushed red, hiding his face in his hands. "That's nice and all, but what did I say about going to sleep?"

Matty would forever see through his facade. "Some bullshit to make you seem like less of a sop than you are."

"Yeah." George grinned up into the darkness, into their bedroom, into their little house, into their little world. "Something like that."

-