caught on your coat again - matty healy
soundtrack: fallingforyou by the 1975 summary: when your boyfriend admits to cheating on you, you fall into a depressive spiral. luckily for you, your best friend, matty, is there for you, just like he always is. the only problem is that you're hopelessly in love with him. tags: best friends to lovers. matty and reader are in their early 20s. weed and alcohol consumption. references to cheating. references to past toxic relationships. brief references to mental health struggles. making out (and like two seconds of dry humping.) self-imposed cockblocking. EXTREMELY suggestive but no actual smut, mostly just sappy as hell. word count: 8773
The past few hours had gone by in an agonizingly slow blur.
Your boyfriend — or rather, your ex-boyfriend — had called you in tears. Your heart had dropped as you listened to him gasp for breath into the phone, struggling to even speak to you. Instantly, every nerve of your body had told you that something was horribly, horribly wrong.
You’d known that he was on a weekend trip with friends — he’d told you about it weeks ago. That was completely fine. You knew the friends. You really liked most of them. You trusted them and him. So when he called you, you expected him to say that one of his friends had been in an accident, or they had gotten too wasted and gotten into a fight and ended up in the hospital or in jail. Or, even worse, that it was your boyfriend who had ended up in the hospital or in jail.
What you weren’t expecting was for him to tell you that he had cheated on you the night before with some girl he had met at the bar, and now he was calling to confess his sins and plead for your forgiveness.
And he had tried. He begged you to forgive him, gave you every excuse in the book, told you he had been drunk and stupid and made a mistake, and that he didn’t even want it; she’s the one who initiated it, and he just went along with it. He told you it meant nothing. He told you he loved you.
With every word that he said, you could feel the pit in your stomach grow deeper and deeper until you wished for the ground beneath you to open up and swallow you whole.
“Please, baby,” he cried into the receiver. “I’m sorry. It didn’t mean anything. It won’t happen again. I love you, you know that, right? I love you fucking much, and I feel terrible about what happened. I don’t know what I’m gonna do without you. I can’t be with anyone else. I need you in my life. I love you.”
You’d stayed silent as he poured his heart out to you over the phone, listening to him beg and cry and promise. But nothing that he said could change the fact that you had given two years of your life to this man, and he threw it away in the course of five minutes over a pretty face and a couple of pints.
“Don’t call me again” was all you had to say as you hung up the phone.
And that was that.
His words reverberated through your head like a drum. You’d packed up all of the shit he’d left in your flat in a frenzy, haphazardly throwing his belongings into a cardboard box. The anger had kept you going long enough to shove it into the back of your closet, where you couldn’t see it, as though that would help with the grief you were feeling. But once you had shut the door, the finality of the situation had sunk in, as had the anguish that you had been trying so hard to fight off.
You’d spent the past few hours alternating between sobbing violently and drinking yourself numb. The floor around your couch gradually became littered with used Kleenex as you lay on it, clutching a nearly-empty wine bottle like it was your lifeline. It was ironic — you’d actually gotten the wine for a date night with your ex that he’d cancelled at the last second, saying that he was feeling under the weather. Now, you were beginning to question if that had actually been the truth.
You were beginning to question everything.
You’d thought he loved you, but someone who loves someone doesn’t treat them like that. Though, in all honesty, he hadn’t exactly treated you the best for most of your relationship. You’d put up with it because the good moments were really good, but that didn’t make up for all of the nights you had spent crying yourself to sleep because you had gotten into yet another fight over something stupid. He had always made it feel like it was your fault, like you were the one who wasn’t good enough, wasn’t doing enough. And now, lying here in your wine-induced haze, you were beginning to wonder if he had been right. Maybe if you had tried harder, he wouldn’t have sought out comfort in another girl’s bed.
Maybe you weren’t enough after all.
A knock on your door made you jump, abruptly pulling you out of your self-loathing spiral. Your first thought is of your ex, who may have come by to apologize and ask for forgiveness. The thought fills your mouth with a bitter taste that is only amplified by the aftertaste of the wine, and you want to hurl. You freeze in place, suddenly unable to move, unable to do anything except fight down the feeling of bile rising in your gut.
But then, a voice that’s familiar in a different sort of way speaks through your door, saying your name in a soft tone.
“Shit,” you say loudly as a completely different panic overtakes you, and for the second time that night, you wish the floor would open up, and you would fall through.
You had made plans to hang out with Matty last week, and you had completely forgotten about them until now. You’re sure you had written down a reminder somewhere, but clearly, you hadn’t put it somewhere prominent enough. You had been looking forward to this, too — it had been a few weeks since you’d seen your best friend. The band had been taking up most of his spare time, and your then-boyfriend had been especially time-consuming as of late, so you needed to pick a night where he was out of town, and Matty wasn’t locking himself away in a recording studio all weekend. So you had decided on tonight, and what was supposed to be a calm, casual evening of catching up, eating some mediocre takeout food, and getting stoned together was quickly turning into your worst nightmare.
He knocks again, which only serves to amplify your frantic state. You take in the space around you, the mess, the way you haven’t changed out of the clothes you slept in, the fact that you probably look like shit.
You could always tell Matty you’re sick. That would make him go away… maybe. But knowing your friend, he’d probably insist you let him in anyway so he can make sure you’re okay.
You’re busy racking your brain for an excuse when your phone starts vibrating in your pocket. You pull it out and, unsurprisingly, it’s Matty. Your heart thumps violently against your ribcage, like it’s trying to escape. Panic overtakes you, and before you know what you’re doing, you’ve accepted the call, and you instantly regret it.
“Hey, I’m outside your place,” you hear him say over the phone. You can hear the smile in his tone — he’s clearly excited to see you. But he’s the last person you want to see right now. “You gonna let me in or do I have to keep standing out here like a complete moron?”
Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.
Instead of replying to him, you throw a pillow over your face and let out a frustrated scream. Obviously, it isn’t as muffled as you like, because a couple of seconds later, Matty’s voice is back in your ear.
“You good?” he asks in an unreadable tone, as though he wasn’t sure if he should actually be concerned or not.
You don’t reply. You can’t face this right now. You can’t face anyone right now, and certainly not Matty. You know how he’s going to react — he’s going to look at you with those fucking puppy dog eyes and tell you everything is going to be okay and make sure you don’t drink yourself to death. He’s going to treat you like you’re something to be treasured, something to be taken care of.
He’s always been good at that — too good — better than all of your exes combined. But you don’t feel like you deserve that, and he shouldn’t have to fill that role. Not tonight. Not when he was expecting a fun night with you.
A few seconds must have passed, because Matty says your name into the phone gently, like he’s afraid of scaring you off. He knocks on the door again, more urgently this time.
“Look, I know something’s up,” he says, his voice laced with that characteristic concern and tenderness that is exactly the kind of thing you cannot deal with tonight. “Just... let me in, yeah? You can tell me all about it. Don’t care how long it takes.”
It suddenly becomes clear to you that Matty has no plans of leaving until he’s sure you’re alright. Unfortunately for you and your ego, you are categorically not alright, and too exhausted from crying and drinking to make up a convincing lie. You know you can’t bullshit him — he can tell. Matty can always tell.
You remove the pillow from your face and let out a low sigh. You rise to your feet, unsteady but still sober enough to walk.
(Too sober, in your opinion. After all, you can still feel. You don’t want to feel. Not right now. Maybe not ever again.)
The short trek to your front door feels like a marathon, and with each step you take, you can feel a lump growing in your throat. What are you even going to say? My boyfriend cheated on me because I wasn’t enough for him? That’s fucking embarrassing. The last thing you want is for Matty to pity you, to look at you like you’re some wounded little creature who got her heart broken again by some dickhead.
You steel yourself the best you can and open the door slowly. Matty’s eyes meet yours immediately, and only then does he hang up his phone, hastily shoving it into the pocket of the leather jacket he always wears. In one hand, he’s holding a plastic shopping bag with a big yellow smiley face printed on the side and the words THANK YOU plastered on it in big, bold lettering. The smell of cheap takeout food hits your nose, but instead of making your mouth water, you feel your stomach flip.
“You look like shit,” he says.
You know it’s supposed to be playful, an innocent jab to lighten the mood. Under any other circumstances, you’d laugh, tell him to fuck off, and invite him in. But instead, the words cut deep, and you can feel your chest tighten as you try and fail to stifle a sob. You watch as Matty’s face contorts from an expression of confusion to panic as you begin crying all over again, sobs suddenly racking your body. In an instant, he’s crossed the threshold into your home, dropped the bag on your floor, and wrapped both his arms around you, pulling you into a tight embrace.
You bury his face in his shirt, clutching at his jacket and digging your fingers into the leather with a grip that is so tight it almost hurts. He reeks of stale cooking oil, cigarettes, and the cologne he put on to try to cover up the other two smells, but most importantly, he smells familiar. He smells like a friend. And God knows, you really need one of those right now.
You feel him press his lips to the top of your head as you dampen his shirt with your tears, before he presses his face into your hair. You feel a pang of embarrassment, knowing that your hair was probably due for a wash, but he doesn’t seem to care. Not with the way he’s rubbing your back and speaking comforting words like it’s a mantra.
“Oh love — it’s alright. You’re alright, yeah? I’m here. You’re alright. You’re okay. Shh… I’ve got you. Just breathe, sweetheart. Just breathe.”
You lose track of time, standing there in the doorway. Matty doesn’t rush you, doesn’t try to encourage you to go sit down on the couch, or let go of him, or stop ruining one of his precious band tees. He just holds you like you’re the only thing in the world that matters. He holds you until you’re pretty sure your tear ducts have dried up, and you are physically incapable of crying anymore. And he holds you as you melt into him, too exhausted by your own sadness to do anything else.
You’re the first to break the silence.
“We broke up.” Your voice is muffled by his shirt, but you can’t bring yourself to look at him, not yet, not right now. Still, Matty hears you loud and clear. You can feel his grip on you tighten ever so slightly.
“Oh, love — I’m sorry.”
You spit out the next words before you can stop yourself.
“He cheated on me.”
You’re practically choking on the severity of your words, and Matty seems to be having a similar reaction because he doesn’t say anything, not for a long while.
You expected him to cuss your ex-boyfriend out, to threaten him, to insult him. What you didn’t expect was this silence. Matty’s usually all fire and impulse, so why is he choosing this moment to suddenly be quiet? You begrudgingly pull your head away from his chest and look up at him. You assumed you’d see the gears turning behind his eyes, the muscle ticking in his jaw as he considered what to say. But for once, Matty looks genuinely shocked, like he doesn’t even know where to begin, as though the concept of someone cheating on you is so far-fetched he can’t even bring himself to believe it. His breath hitches almost violently as he stares at you, his eyes softening. When he finally speaks, his voice is barely more than a whisper.
“What do you need?” he asks. “Whatever you need, you’ve got it. Don’t care if it takes all night.”
He reaches for your hands, pressing his thumbs into the palms of your hands as he rubs small circles into the skin. He’s not really holding them, not quite — but that doesn’t stop electricity from surging up your arms like you’ve just touched a live wire instead of a man. You can feel your heart skip a beat. If he notices the change in your demeanor, he doesn’t say. He just repeats himself, his voice a little firmer than before.
“Tell me what you need.”
“I just… I need it to stop hurting.”
“Okay.”
That’s how the two of you end on your balcony, sitting cross-legged against the door, knees nearly touching as you pass a joint back and forth. While the alcohol had just served to make you more miserable, the weed was actually having the intended effect — it was evening you out. All of the events from the day were starting to feel far away, and you felt like you could look at them with clarity for the first time. Best of all, talking about it didn’t make you want to jump off your roof anymore.
Matty had been hesitant to suggest smoking, mumbling something about how you were probably already dehydrated and in desperate need of some electrolytes more than anything else, but once you forced yourself to drink a full glass of water in front of him, he seemed to soften.
The joint seemed to have loosened Matty’s lips, too, because now, he’s not holding back. He lets you talk as much as you need to, vent, rant, but he’s also sure to get in his own insults here and there.
“You were always too good for him, anyway,” he says at the end of one of your particularly heated rants, joint hanging carelessly between his index and middle finger. “He was a piece of shit. Never liked him.”
This information doesn’t exactly come as a surprise. Your ex didn’t really care for Matty, either. It was a mutual distaste that only intensified the longer the relationship went on. Hell, Matty had been the source of a fair amount of your arguments in recent months, but you’d never told him that. You hadn’t wanted him to know how possessive and jealous your ex could get because you didn’t want him to worry. But now, you didn’t really have anything to lose. It’s not like you need to try to maintain your ex’s reputation anymore — he ruined it himself.
You laugh. Even though it’s bitter, you can see a smile tug at the corner of Matty’s lips at the sound.
“Yeah, well, the feeling was mutual,” you say, extending your hand towards him. He passes you the joint wordlessly.
“Why?” Matty asks after a few seconds of silence, waiting for you to take a drag and exhale the smoke into the night air before speaking.
You shrug in response.
“He thought you were a pretentious asshole,” you say, a small grin forming on your lips. “Which — he was right about, for the record.”
Matty turns his head and smiles at you, all teeth and boyish charm, and suddenly, you’re fifteen again and sitting across from him for the first time in that God awful math class. You barely passed — your parents had been furious and blamed him for your bad grades rather than your shitty teacher. But Matty had been the only part of that class that you actually enjoyed, and if it hadn’t been for him, you’re pretty sure you would have dropped it altogether. In a weird roundabout way, Matty is the only reason you actually got through the class… even if you two had spent more time talking about music and poetry than actually taking notes.
The memory makes something warm rise in your chest, and you quickly suppress it by taking another drag of the joint before passing it back to him.
“Everyone knows I’m a pretentious asshole. Matty’s fingers brush against yours as he takes the joint off your hands. “Including — last time I checked — people who like me.” He tilts his head at you with a coy grin.
You laugh. “And?”
“And…” Matty leaves you in suspense as he breathes in the smoke, holding it in his lungs for a couple of seconds before tilting his head up and blowing it out. Your eyes linger on his throat for a second too long, noting how his Adam’s apple bobs as he exhales. “You don’t hate me. So your ex must’ve not liked me for a different reason.”
He’s right, of course. There’s more to the story. But you’re not sure how much you want to tell Matty, not right now, not like this.
“Yeah, I guess so,” you reply. It’s a weak response. You know it is. Matty’s face lights up at the sound of it, suddenly inquisitive. Too inquisitive.
“Yeah?” he asks conspiratorially, like he’s just stumbled upon classified information that he isn’t supposed to have access to. “You wanna share with the class?”
His wording makes you roll your eyes and scoff, but that only seems to encourage him more. Matty turns his entire body towards you, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees. The joint’s still suspended between his lips.
“Come on,” he whines. “I could list off a million reasons why I hated the scumbag. Number one —“
“Oh my God,” you reply with a laugh, but Matty’s already committed. He begins listing off your ex’s undesirable traits, counting them on his fingers as he does so.
It’s ridiculous.
It’s adorable.
“Number one,” he resumes, “he never took you out. Ever. You deserve to do shit, like… proper, fun shit. Not just sit in your flat every time he comes over.” He pauses. “No offense to your flat.”
“None taken.”
“Two — I never saw him hold your hand.”
That observation causes you to raise an eyebrow. You hadn’t actually considered that — but now that you’re thinking about it, yeah, Matty’s right. Your ex barely ever held your hand, at least not in public.
How did Matty realize that, but not you?
“I dunno,” you reply. “He wasn’t big into PDA.”
“Riiiiiight,” he says sarcastically. “Like that’s an excuse. Bullshit.”
You frown. “What do you mean?”
“I mean…” Matty clicks his lighter, reigniting the end of the joint with a hiss. “I just don’t get how someone could date you and not want to show you off.” He says it dismissively, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, and he takes another hit. “That dickhead should’ve been so fucking flattered that you even wanted to be with him.”
You don’t know what to say to that. Thankfully, Matty speaks before you have to.
“Three — his favorite band was fucking Imagine Dragons.”
The unexpected vitriol in his voice makes you laugh, and before you can stop yourself, you’re reaching out to snatch the joint away from him. Matty frowns playfully at your actions but doesn’t protest, parting his lips slightly to make it easier for you.
“What’s wrong with Imagine Dragons?”
“What isn’t wrong with Imagine Dragons?” Matty exclaims, throwing his hands up. “They just say words.”
“You just say words,” you counter. Matty’s eyes narrow.
“Yeah, but my words fuck,” he says smugly. (Of course, he’d say some shit like that.) “They mean something. Dan Reynolds just repeats himself and thinks he’s saying something important.”
“Radioactive is a catchy song,” you say, taking a hit.
“Yeah, if you’ve never heard music before,” he counters, and the intensity with which he says it makes you laugh hard and — oh shit.
You quickly lower the joint as you feel the smoke begin to irritate your throat. You blow out as much as you can before you start coughing, and you can hear Matty chuckling next to you. You shove him in the shoulder, hard, but that only makes him laugh more.
“Sorry,” he says in a tone that makes you very confident that he is actually not sorry at all. But despite that, he wordlessly hands you a water bottle, and you quickly take a few sips from it, trying to soothe your burning throat. Once you stop coughing, you turn back to him, noting the amused expression on his face.
“Dick.”
“Lightweight,” Matty replies, but there’s no bite to his words. Instead, that same boyish smile is plastered across his features. You tell yourself it’s probably tied to whatever strain you happen to be smoking at the time, but for some reason, it makes your chest ache.
You sit like that for a little while, soaking in the soft sounds of the city after dark. It’s getting late, but you can still hear the distant rush of cars and the occasional blare of a siren. It’s a bit windy out tonight, and you can hear the soft rustle of the trees planted on the street down below. And if you really focus, you can hear the sound of Matty’s breathing, low and grounding.
(You could get lost in that sound if you’re not careful.)
Predictably, Matty is the first one to shatter the serenity of the moment.
“Alright. I showed you mine, now show me yours.”
“What?”
“I gave you three very good reasons why I didn’t like the guy,” Matty says. “Now I want you to give me three equally good reasons.”
That feels like faulty reasoning, but you have no intention of backing out now, and you’re sure Matty knows that too. You think back to some of the unpleasant conversations you’d had with your ex. It doesn’t take long to come up with the first thing.
“He didn’t like that you smoked,” you say. Matty reacts about as well as you were expecting — he scoffs and rolls his eyes, stealing the joint back just to prove a point.
“What a fucking loser.”
“He was asthmatic.”
Matty takes a hit and tilts his head to the side, unimpressed. “Just because he was asthmatic doesn’t mean he wasn’t a loser.”
You can’t exactly argue with that.
“He called you an attention whore.”
“Was that before or after he called me a ‘pretentious asshole?’”
“Hm,” you say with a smirk. “Depended on the day.”
Of course, you’re joking — you never let your ex get away with insulting Matty to your face. You’d always push back against it, always defend him, remind your piece of shit ex that you’d known Matty for way longer than you’d known him and that if he wanted to date you, that meant respecting your friends, including Matty.
Unfortunately, your defense of him had a tendency to start more arguments. You don’t know what set him off — you never did. Maybe he had seen you and Matty lean in a little too close, laugh at each other’s jokes a little too hard. Whatever the reason, your ex had seemingly woken up one morning and decided that Matty was public enemy number one.
That was really the beginning of the end of the relationship, if you were being honest. The cheating was just the straw that broke the camel’s back.
“Okay, that’s two,” Matty said, suddenly sounding impatient. “C’mon, tell me something I don’t already know. Something deep.”
Jesus. You forgot how annoying Matty could be when he wanted something.
“You gave me fucking Imagine Dragons as your third reason.”
“That was deep, thank you very much,” Matty replies, offended.
“Whatever.”
You expect him to bite back a reply, but Matty falls silent, and with that silence comes a tight feeling in your chest. He wants deep? You can get deep. You can address what you’ve been avoiding talking about for the entire night, tell him the real reason your ex despised him so much. Open up about the devastating, dangerous truth that neither you nor Matty would ever speak out loud because that isn’t how your friendship works, and it will never be how your friendship works.
The two of you thrive in the gray. You always have. The space between the said and the unsaid is where you and Matty do what you do best. It’s why you don’t call him out for holding your hand when he gets drunk, and he doesn’t ask you why you let him.
The gray is safe. It’s easy. It’s noncommittal. It’s a silent pact the pair of you have spent years carefully crafting into something that is mutually beneficial and still entirely undefinable if anyone else asks you about it. And God knows, your ex asked a lot about it.
‘Are you in love with him?’ he’d asked you angrily one night a few months ago. You were already in the middle of an argument, and he’d brought Matty into it, like he always did. And you’d made the mistake of defending him, like you always did.
‘What are you talking about?’ you’d responded, trying to stay calm even though you could hear the blood pounding in your ears.
‘Are you in love with the asshole?’
‘What? No.’
(A part of you had known it was a lie then. You know it was definitely a lie now.)
‘Yeah, well, he’s in love with you. I know you think everyone’s too dumb to see it, but I’m not.’
And then he’d left your flat in a fit of rage, slamming the door shut with so much force it made the walls shake.
The memory fills your veins with ice, and you begin to fidget with the sleeve of your shirt, trying to distract yourself from the emotional discomfort through some physical, tangible means.
Fuck it.
Fuck him.
“He didn’t like how close we were.” Your words don’t sound like your own — they slip from your lips before you can stop them.
Matty doesn’t respond — he just passes you the joint, as though he can tell you’re gonna need it for this.
You take your time lifting it to your lips and taking a drag. It’s beginning to taste bitter — nearly burned out entirely. Might as well make the most of it. You exhale without looking at Matty.
“Uh… he was worried I was gonna leave him for you,” you say, head foggy enough from the weed to not feel like you’re going to die if you keep talking about this. “We had a lot of fights about it, actually. I guess he saw you as a threat.” You shrug, rubbing at your eyes with your free hand. God, when did it get so late? “And I think he was afraid that I was gonna wake up one day and realize what a shitty boyfriend he was and run to you. I don’t know. It — it was stupid. Plus, he ended up cheating on me, so I guess I should’ve been the one worrying about him.”
You take another drag, breathing in the smoke slowly, trying to focus on the feeling of it settling in your lungs instead of anything else. You hold it there until your chest feels tight, and only then do you exhale shakily. Then, you stub the joint out on the balcony railing, heart racing.
“He thought you were in love with me.”
You regret it the second you say it. You can hear Matty’s breath hitch, and you suddenly wish you hadn’t just finished the joint so you’d have something, anything else to focus on but him.
When you finally bring yourself to look back over at him, the expression on Matty’s face makes your heart stutter in your chest. At some point during your monologue, some of his curls had fallen into his face, partially obscuring one of his eyes. Even in the dim glow of the distant streetlights, you can see the way his hands are nothing more than white knuckles, digging into his thighs. You notice the tension in his jaw, the way his nostrils flare as he seems to be going out of his way to take deep, even breaths.
And then there’s the way he’s looking at you. There’s nothing soft about it —it’s piercing, strained, as if he can barely fucking stand to even hold your gaze. You’ve seen Matty look at you in just about every way possible during the years you’ve known him — with kindness, with concern, with laughter in his eyes. (And, of course, that one night early on in your friendship where you guys got a little too drunk and a little too close to crossing a line you couldn’t come back from. That night, he had stared at you like he wanted to eat you alive.)
But you’ve never seen him look at you like this.
You’ve never seen him look at anyone like this.
When Matty finally speaks, his tone is calm and measured in a way that doesn’t match his physical demeanor.
“Would you have?”
His question confuses you. “Have what?”
“Left him for me.”
His question hangs in the air between the two of you, thicker than any smoke. You can practically taste his words; the hope, the fear, the unspoken tension contained in them. How are you supposed to answer a question like that? How can Matty even expect you to answer?
“Matty.” Your tone is pleading, practically begging. For what, though, you’re not sure.
Don’t make me answer this?
Don’t make me tell you the truth?
Don’t force me to put my feelings for you into words?
Your own gaze drops to your hands and the awkward, uncomfortable way they’re folded in your lap.
“If something was gonna happen, it would have by now,” you say matter-of-factly, as though that’s the end of the conversation… as though Matty would ever allow it to be.
But despite how rational you’re trying to sound, you know the situation between the two of you is anything but. Because, if you were actually being honest, then you’d remind yourself how you’ve had feelings for Matty on and off for the entirety of your friendship, feelings that you did your best to switch off whenever he was dating a new girl, or you were dating some loser. The alternative stung too much, especially when Matty seemed to go out of his way to remind you that the feelings weren’t reciprocated. You’d walked in on him making out with a random girl enough times for you know that he wasn’t the least bit interested in you in that way, and you’d made peace with that.
Really. You had.
(Except for those nights where you would find yourself alone in your bed and your mind would inevitably begin to wander, conjuring up visions of pure, unfiltered desire. You’d think about Matty’s hands, the way you’ve seen his fingers masterfully move along the fretboard of his guitar in a way that has always felt almost sensual to you. You’d wonder what they’d feel like — wrapped around your throat as he kisses you, digging into your thighs as he pushes you apart for him, pressing inside of you as he fingerfucks you and makes stars explode behind your eyes.
You’d imagine what he’d feel like pushing inside of you, taking his time, stretching you out ever-so-carefully as he kissed you and swallowed your moans. You’d picture him on top of you, underneath you, holding your hips tightly as he makes you come on his cock again and again and again.
And you’d hear his voice as clear as day as you made yourself come with your own fingers in a way that never felt like enough, telling you how beautiful you were, telling you how good you took him, telling you he loved you.
And then you’d lie there in your shame and disgust and force yourself to go to sleep.)
“Did you hear what I just said?”
Matty’s voice startles you and you jolt, head turning back to look at him. His expression is just as intense as you remembered and your stomach flips.
“What?” you ask, mouth suddenly feeling dry, and not just from the weed. His brow furrows.
“Are you feeling alright?”
Fuck.
“Yeah,” you reply, shaking you head. “I’m fine.” Matty begins to open his mouth like he’s going to challenge you on if you’re actually alright, which you can’t deal with right now, not when you just had a waking wet dream about your best friend, so you cut him off before he can. “What were you saying?”
The corner of his mouth twitches and he shakes his head. “Forget it.”
“No, I want to know,” you insist. You desperately need a distraction. “Sorry. I’ll listen this time. I promise.”
Matty pauses, worrying his lip between his teeth as though he’s fighting some sort of internal battle you don’t know about. But eventually, your answer seems to convince him.
“Alright.” He lets out a low sigh. “You’ve gotta stop doing this to yourself.”
“Doing what?”
“Dating guys who treat you like shit.”
And suddenly, you wish you hadn’t asked him to repeat himself.
Matty says it like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, but it’s not. It’s not like you seek out these men. All of your relationships always begin well… it’s just the endings that are shitty. Now that you think about it, you don’t think you’ve ever had an amicable breakup. Maybe that’s your fault for not getting out of bad relationships sooner, but for some reason, you hate the way Matty says it, like he thinks you’re stupid, like you’re some kind of masochist who enjoys having your heart broken over and over again.
Something ugly twists in your chest, and your fingers tighten, nails biting into your palms.
“Like you have a better track record,” you snap. You sound more hurt than you intended, and Matty’s eyes widen ever so slightly at the harsh tone of your voice. His lips part, like he wants to say something, but you cut him off before he can. “Don’t act like you haven’t dated any shitty people. I’ve seen plenty of your relationships crash and burn too, Matty.”
One secret that you’ve picked up on in your years of knowing him is that Matty has never had a good poker face, especially when you call him on his shit. This time is no different. You can tell he’s fighting the urge to apologize, but his ego — always his fucking ego — won’t let him. You watch as the muscle in his jaw twitches, frustrated.
“Like who?”
The question makes you want to laugh. Jesus. There are so many to choose from.
“Like that cute blonde girl you were dating.”
“Which one?” he asks pointedly. You genuinely can’t tell if he’s trying to tease you or if he truly cannot remember. Either way, you’re not in the mood.
“The one with the cat that hated you,” you reply, and recognition suddenly floods Matty’s expression.
“Oh. Her?” He sounds more confused than you were expecting, seeing as they were together for nearly a year. (You would know. You’re the one who drove him to pick up his shit from her place after they got into the relationship-ending fight that you’d always known was coming.) “She just wanted to date a guy in a band,” Matty says, waving his hand dismissively.
“And you wanted a hot girl you could show off at gigs.” Your voice has an edge that you weren’t expecting. Matty’s body jerks back ever so slightly, lightly thudding against the balcony railing. He’s behaving like your words physically pained him.
“I was nineteen,” he replies, his tone betraying the fact that you’ve hit a nerve. You feel an ounce of regret. “I didn’t know what I wanted.”
“And now you do?” You mean to sound sarcastic, maybe even a little bitter, but the comeback falls flat. At anything, it sounds almost hopeful.
What the fuck is wrong with you?
Matty doesn’t dignify you with a response. Typical. He looks too sober to be having this conversation. You feel too sober to be having it. The cool night air suddenly feels stifling as you become aware of just how close the two of you are, how you’ve been unconsciously leaning in this whole time, even when he moved back. You see the way his chest rises and falls with every breath he takes, how his hands twitch against his sides, and how his mind appears to be racing a thousand miles a minute.
You’d love to know what’s going on in that head of his, but it seems like for once in his life, Matty’s chosen this moment to shut up, and that makes you angry.
“Oh my God,” you finally say, letting out a frustrated groan. “What do you want me to say, Matty? That you’re right? That I keep dating dickheads because, what, because I don’t know how to do anything else?”
You can feel your throat tightening the longer you go on, but you can’t stop yourself. It’s like you’ve just ripped the bandaid off of a wound that has been festering for a very, very long time, and it needs to breathe.
“Jesus Christ. I’m sorry I’m so… so pathetic, and I have such a shitty taste in men, okay?” you spit. “I’m sorry I need you to come save me every time something goes wrong. I’m sorry I’m such a lost cause that I’m stuck taking dating advice from… from…” You trail off, letting out a frustrated sigh. “Fuck, Matty. Why can’t you just…”
Fuck off?
Leave me alone?
Tell me you love me?
“Fuck.”
You fall silent and bring your hands up to your face, hiding behind them. Your head hurts. Everything hurts. You close your eyes and feel like crying again, but you fight off the urge because you can practically feel Matty’s eyes burning a hole through you. He always has a way of making you feel seen, even at your worst moments. (Especially at your worst moments.)
When he speaks, his voice is louder than you expected.
“I’ve never thought you were pathetic.”
You crack open your eyes and realize with a start that he’s moved closer to you. He’s kneeling now, leaning towards you, and you watch as he hesitantly extends a hand, bringing it to rest ever so carefully against your ankle. His touch is featherlight, as though he’s afraid that if he touches you any more than that, you’ll push him away. You can feel his thumb run along the tendon at the back of your ankle, caressing the bare skin where your pajama pants have ridden up from the way you’re sitting.
You can’t tell if he’s trying to ground you or himself.
“I’m not –” Matty’s voice cracks, and you can tell he’s struggling so hard to stay calm, to pick his words carefully so nothing that he says can be misunderstood and get him into trouble. “I’m not here cos I have some hero complex. You – you do know that, right? I need to know you know that.” The desperation in his voice breaks your heart all over again. “I’m here because I care about you. Cos I… I…”
He cuts himself off before he can finish that sentence, eyes dropping down to where his hand is resting against your skin.
“I always thought you were gonna find someone better,” he says softly. “Someone more stable, I guess? I dunno. Fuck.” He runs a hand through his hair, pushing the messy curls out of his face as though they’re suddenly an annoyance. “Someone who could actually give you what you deserve. But every time I’ve seen you cry cos some dickhead has broken your heart because he doesn’t realize how fucking lucky he is, I’ve always thought – or known, I guess? – yeah, I’ve known.”
Matty’s eyes meet your own again, but he stares at you with an uncomfortable stiffness that suggests even looking at you right now is a behemoth task for him. You’re not sure you’ve ever seen him look this frightened. You don’t like it.
“Matty –” you start, trying to talk him down, but he cuts you off.
“Let me finish. Or else I’m never gonna get this out, okay? Please.”
You shut your mouth.
“I hated seeing you wasting your time with those assholes,” he continues. “I knew you were unhappy, and I tried – God, I tried so fucking hard to be there. Be a shoulder to cry on. Be a good… be a good friend. And the whole time, the only thing I could think about was how… how that should’ve been me. How I wanted to be them. How I always wanted to be them.”
Matty’s words slice through your like a dagger. You can feel your heartbeat pounding, frenzied and strong. The sounds of the night have faded into the background, replaced by the sound of Matty’s voice and of blood pumping in your ears. A part of you expects your alarm clock to go off at any minute and for you to be woken up from this dream with a jolt. But the nervous pit in your stomach reminds you that this is painfully real.
Matty is real, and the feelings that he is telling you about, feelings that have been years in the making? Those are real, too.
They’ve always been real.
But before you can even attempt to formulate a response, to tell him you feel the same way, Matty’s abruptly pulling away from you, shaking his head, running his hand through his hair. The sudden lack of contact fills you with a sense of intense loss, and your heart protests painfully in your chest.
“Shit,” he says, sounding panicked. “Shit, I’m sorry. Uh, I – forget I said anything, yeah. Fuck, just fucked everything up, didn’t–”
“Stop talking.”
Your hand closes around his arm before he can move any further, and he freezes in his tracks, eyes darting down to where your fingers have wrapped around the cool leather of his jacket. Your grip is firm but not painful – he can get out of it if he wants to. Hell, he could get up right now and leave your flat without a word and never talk about this again, never speak to you ever again.
You’re terrified that he will.
But he doesn’t.
Matty stays anchored to the spot, lets out a shaky little breath, and whispers your name like it’s a prayer.
Something in you snaps.
You close the distance between the two of you in an instant, pressing your lips into his with a kiss that has been nearly a decade in the making. Your mind fizzles as your lips slot against his, and you immediately know that this isn’t a dream, because this feels better than kissing Matty ever did in your dreams.
You’re not sure anything in your entire life has ever felt this good.
He tastes exactly how you expected – like weed and cigarettes. His lips are slightly chapped from the cold air, but you can’t bring yourself to mind because it’s Matty and you love him and you always have.
You feel a pair of strong arms instantly wrapping around your back, pressing you forward. You feel Matty shift, stretch out his legs, and then you’re scrambling to be as near to him as possible, crawling into his lap like you can’t bear any sort of distance between the two of you. Not anymore.
One of his hands moves up to your cheek, tilting your head back ever so slightly as he deepens the kiss with a sweet desperation that makes your head spin.
You kiss him until you physically can’t anymore, and when you pull away, both of you are panting. He looks like he just had his entire world turned on its head as he stares at you, pupils blown wide and lips still parted. Some of his curls have fallen back into his face, and without thinking, you reach up to push them back, and you can feel Matty’s breath hitch when your fingertips brush against his skin.
“Should’ve done that a long time ago,” he says breathlessly, and lets out a nervous little laugh.
You think it’s the sweetest noise you’ve ever heard.
You go back in for another kiss and Matty responds by hooking his arm around the base of your spine and kissing you like a starving man. When his tongue swipes across your lower lip, you let out a soft keen at the dizzying sensation, and you can feel Matty practically shudder underneath you. Your hips press flush into his, and when the seam of his jeans catches against your core just right, the noise that escapes your lips is borderline debaucherous.
You’re suddenly possessed by a desire to touch him, to feel more of his skin, and your hands scramble to get his jacket off. You get about halfway through pushing the sleeves down his arms before he pulls away, bringing one of his hands up to cover your own.
Your heart drops and you immediately withdraw your touch.
Oh fuck.
You’ve just ruined it, haven’t you? Either that, or he’s come to his senses. You’ve seen him practically shove his tongue down a stranger’s throat more times than you can count. You’ve never seen him turn down sex. So… what’s wrong with you?
“You don’t want to…?” Your own voice sounds small. It’s pathetic. You’re pathetic. No wonder he doesn’t want you.
Maybe it was just the weed that was making him say all those things.
Maybe he doesn’t actually give a fuck.
Maybe you just threw your friendship away over nothing.
But when Matty smiles at you and looks at you like you’re the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen in his entire life, your racing mind calms itself, and you realize you don’t have anything to worry about. His hands close around yours, pressing his thumbs into the top of your palms just like he had earlier on in the evening. God, that felt like forever ago.
“Oh, I want to,” Matty groans. “Fuck, I’ve wanted to for so long. Thought about it more times than I can count.”
He swallows hard and you feel your cheeks heat up at the implication behind his words. You can’t help but wonder how many nights he’s stayed awake doing the exact thing you were so ashamed of, wishing you were there, only to finish in his hand with a stifled groan and a deep sense of self-loathing.
Matty’s releases one of your hands and brings it up to cradle your cheek. His thumb strokes against your skin, tracing your jawbone as he stares at you with a softness that makes your heart skip a beat.
“But I wanna be sober,” he says. “And I want you to be sober, too, love. Want you to remember every second of it. Want it to mean something.”
This is a new side of Matty, one that you’ve never seen before. His sentimentality surprises you. It’s not behavior that you’re used to seeing on men. You don’t think any of your boyfriends have ever cared about making your first time with them particularly meaningful – you’re suddenly reminded of the months or even years it took to coach them to actually care about someone else’s pleasure besides their own. And here’s Matty – who, if you’re being honest, is notorious in your friend group for being a little bit of a whore – being the only man whose ever actually treated you like this before. He’s not looking at you like he’s expecting anything more out of this, out of you. He’s just staring at you like you’re the most precious thing in the entire world.
You love him for it.
“Stay with me,” you whisper, squeezing his hands. “We don’t have to do anything, I just…” You trail off. The thought of sleeping in an empty bed tonight makes your heart sink. “I just want you to stay. Please.”
Before you even finish your request, you know his answer, but that doesn’t mean your heart doesn’t stutter in your chest when he agrees.
“Of course I’ll stay.”
It’s that same hand that wraps around your waist a few minutes later as the pair of you settle beneath the blankets of your unmade bed. Matty’s fingers splay against your stomach as he pulls you tight against him, holding you close. You can feel his breath tickle the back of your neck as he tucks his nose into your hair, breathing you in.
You think about how badly you need to take a shower.
He doesn’t seem to mind.
(You’re still going to take one as soon as you wake up in the morning.)
As you lay there wordlessly, you can feel his fingers tracing indiscernible patterns onto your skin. You consider asking him what he’s doing, what it means, but you decide against it as your eyes flutter shut. The question almost feels almost too personal. Still, you press your hand against his wrist, ensuring that he continues etching his secrets into the thin fabric of your shirt.
Matty’s body is lithe and warm against yours. The faint smell of tobacco invades your senses, just enough to remind you of his presence as you feel sleep slowly begin to overtake you. You want nothing more than to turn to him, to tell you that you’ve loved him for as long as you’ve known him, but you’re painfully aware that you can’t even say those words when you’re sober, so how exactly are you supposed to get them out when you’re stoned?
“You’re thinking.”
Matty’s voice cuts through the dark of your bedroom like a blade. It’s deeper than usual – rough from exhaustion, you assume. The night has taken just as much out of him as it has taken out of you.
You smile, not that he can see it.
“Yeah.”
“Wanna share?”
When you speak next, it’s a mumbled whisper, muffled by your pillow. “Not right now.”
You almost add, ‘it’s not important,’ but that would be a flat-out lie, and you know he’d see right through it.
You feel Matty shift ever so slightly against you. You can picture the small frown on his face that he gets when he’s not fully satisfied with something. But if he has something to say, he keeps it to himself, and you feel him relax once more against your back.
You’re not sure when sleep finally claims you, but the last thing you feel is his arms tightening around you ever so slightly, like he’s afraid you’ll slip out of his arms if he’s not careful.
It feels like all you’ve ever wanted.
