twelve steps.
Playlist.
Matt is rubbing the marker off the back of his hands in the sink when Vinny walks into his apartment without knocking. He’s just about ready to hit the sack, but the look on his best friend’s face says that Vinny has other plans for them. He scrubs at the skin with his fingernails, trying to get more of the ink off his hand before it gets absorbed, but all it accomplishes is that it makes his skin look angry and red. Vinny sticks his hand under the tap - Matt figures he’s probably realized it would be a good idea to wash his hands after the skanky venue they were just at - but then instead of meticulously scrubbing his hands as expected, he sticks a wet finger in Matt’s ear and howls with laugher when Matt squeaks and flaps his arms around in surprise. The water on his hands sprays across the mirror; he’s going to have to clean that later or there will be water spots everywhere.
“That... was gross,” Matt gasps when he’s finally stopped laughing so hard he can’t breathe, hanging onto Vinny for support. Vinny snorts and pokes his side, tugging on the hem of his shirt hard before pushing him away. “You’re such an asshole,” Matt scolds him, wiping his hands on his jeans instead of looking for a towel to dry them with. Vinny flops down on his bed despite the clean laundry lying there waiting to be folded because he sort of, uh, forgot to do it. “What.”
“’s a new guy that moved in down the hall, seems cool. You should go say hey.”
Matt looks at his sweat-stained shirt and grimaces. “Don’t you think I should change my shirt first...?” Not that he’s shallow, or anything. It just doesn’t make for a very good first impression when he’s got pit-stains that extend halfway down the sides of his shirt and he smells like ass. Vinny shakes his head. His eyes are still a little glassy; apparently doing merch for Underscore also translates to doing shots between sets every time someone buys a t-shirt from him. It doesn’t bother Matt as much as it used to - at the back of his mind, the thought is there, but he pushes it away. He swallows hard, takes a deep breath. That’s in the past. “Okay, details first so I don’t make an ass of myself.”
Vinny lifts his head slightly. “You’ve met him before. His name is Alex, he was at one of the shows in December? I think that’s when you were still on and off with Kendra so you didn’t really pay attention to him or something. Anyway, he likes the band so you should totally go talk to him.”
“What am I even supposed to talk to him about?” Matt asks. “Also, no passing out in my bed or I’m going to piss in your shoes.”
He ducks a somewhat questionably clean sock when Vinny throws it at him. “Stop being shy and go talk to him. You’ll like him, I know it. I am your best thing and I know these things; now get out of here so I can throw up in your bathroom in peace.”
Matt slips his feet into his Vans and - after seriously reconsidering changing his shirt - throws on a hoodie over his grungy t-shirt before poking his head out the door to see if anyone is in the hall. Thankfully the weird man that wears a leather jacket with fringes all over it is nowhere to be found; that guy always grabs him by the arm and calls him Skip and tries to tell him stories about the war. Matt has decided that he’s probably... not right. Vinny throws another sock at him that is definitely dirty. “That was uncalled for,” he sighs. He’s also really not sure why he’s supposed to go talk to this guy when it is like two in the morning, but he trusts Vinny’s judgment and he wouldn’t have said something without a really good reason for it. He steps out the door of the apartment.
&
The first time Matt met Zack, they were sixteen years old. He was awkward and lanky and basically unprepared for the events that would follow. Zack emerged from his bathroom in nothing but a towel, flashed him this really smooth grin and said, “Hey, come on, you can hang out in my room with me.” And Matt, he hadn’t fully come to terms with his sexuality yet but there was something about the other boy that attracted him. He followed closely behind; half of him was praying that the towel would sort of accidentally slip and the other half of him was a terrified mess of hormones and anxiety because things like this totally happen in pornos.
Before he could even sneak a peek or anything, Zack had pulled on a pair of boxers. Not that they were doing much for him in terms of modesty; they were the clingy type that put everything on display anyway. Then Zack pulled out a bottle of vodka, took a drink straight from the bottle and offered it to Matt. “I um,” Matt stammered, “I don’t drink, I’m not like. I’m not... I can’t, I.”
Zack shook his head. “It’s okay,” he said. “One sip won’t kill you.”
With shaking hands, Matt took the bottle. He curled his fingers around the neck and tipped it carefully into his mouth - the bottle was almost full so it was very heavy - and took some of it into his mouth. The taste wasn’t what he expected it to be; it was horrible and he wanted to spit it out but Zack was watching him expectantly and he felt so anxious he might actually throw it up anyway. It burned his throat on the way down; it had the surprising effect of calming his nerves and numbing the anxiety down to a manageable level. He took another sip, this time smaller, more carefully. “Not bad,” he tried to say, but then he coughed. The taste was so bad.
“That’s my boy,” Zack told him reassuringly, patting him on the back and letting his hand linger for just long enough at Matt’s waist to make him feel flushed and pleased. His boy, Zack had said. Well, Matt had never been anyone’s anything before, so he kind of craved that approval again. Zack took the bottle again and downed some more vodka; Matt watched him swallow with a mixture of jealousy and maybe kind of also arousal. When the bottle was handed back to him, he drank some more. They traded off on the bottle for about an hour, until the point where everything Zack said to him was unbelievably funny and interesting and he was all but hanging off of the other boy.
“You’re so awesome,” Matt slurred, putting his hand on Zack’s bicep. “Did I already tell you how awesome you are? Because you are. You are totally awesome and I admire you so much.”
Zack smiled at him, which made his heart race so hard he thought he might be dying. “I’m going to kiss you now,” Zack said. Their lips collided with no warning; Zack tasted like alcohol and something else Matt couldn’t name, tongue slipping into his mouth almost immediately even though it was only his first kiss and he wasn’t exactly ready for it to be happening. He let himself be pushed down onto the mattress anyway, moving his hands over the planes of Zack’s back because he didn’t know what else to do with his hands. Zack pushed his hands up over his head, held them there. It was all a blur. Matt walked home by himself in the rain with a burning, aching pain in his lower back that sparked all through his body with each step he took. With his clothes soaked through, he didn’t feel particularly special. He felt scared and hung-over and vaguely dirty.
&
Matt hesitates before knocking on the door of the apartment that has been vacant for the past several weeks. The last time he had been in it - he’d agreed to help the landlords paint because he is a nice person - it had smelled badly of body odour and marijuana smoke. He finally decides for what he hopes is a friendly-sounding knock and stands back a bit, awkwardly fumbling with the pockets of his hoodie while he waits for someone to answer the door. Why he feels this anxiety about someone he’s met maybe once in his life, he doesn’t know. Maybe it’s residual guilt for not remembering a guy Vinny is very obviously trying to get him to become friends with for some reason; it’s that same knot of nervous energy in the pit of his stomach that he felt before.
The door swings open, revealing a very frazzled yet very attractive guy. Matt swallows hard again, forcing himself to breathe through his nose. It would have really helped if Vinny had warned him that the guy he’s supposed to be making friends with is a total babe. And it’s not even that he’s traditionally good-looking or whatever; the guy just has that air about him that oozes attractiveness. Then Matt remembers that he’s actually supposed to be introducing himself now. “Uh,” he says, moving his lip ring around with his teeth, “I’m Matt. Vinny’s friend? Apparently we’ve met before but I am really sorry I don’t remember meeting you but anyway he told me to come say hey so, um, hey.”
“I’m Alex,” says the guy. They shake hands and it’s that awkward type of handshake that lasts a second too long; their eyes meet and Matt feels that instant pang of attraction that he knows he is not going to be able to shake. It’s like the air catches in his lungs on the way down. Because without even needing to know anything else about the guy, Matt just instinctively knows that Alex is his type and that scares the shit out of him. He hasn’t felt this strongly attracted to someone straight away since... well, since Zack. Which is not a thing he likes to think about because it puts him into some very negative headspace that his therapist says it’s not healthy to dwell on. “So I’ve heard, like, every song your band has ever written and I think you guys are really great and talented, so um...”
“Wow, um, thanks,” Matt says, looking awkwardly at the floor instead of making eye contact. He can feel the flush creeping up the back of his neck to the tips of his ears. “So you... just moved in. That’s. Cool? I mean, obviously I live down the hall if you ever want to hang out and Vinny is around a lot since you guys are friends or whatever so...”
Alex smiles. The thing is that he’s barely even got what qualifies as an upper lip, but it works on him. He says, “Y’know, I’d settle for hanging out with just you if you’re down for that sometime.” Their eyes meet - and Matt knows he’s blushing for sure now, can feel it all the way down to his toes - and then Alex clears his throat. “I should probably head to bed, but thanks for dropping by and saying hi. I’ll see you around?”
Matt nods and pulls the sleeves of his hoodie down over his hands. “Yeah. We’ll... we’ll see each other.” He goes back to his own apartment, where Vinny is still sprawled out on his bed, half-passed out on the clean laundry. If he pukes in it, Matt is going to seriously strangle the guy. Once he’s out of his jeans and shoes, Matt crawls over Vinny’s stationary form and lies down on the side closest to the wall. “That was... interesting,” he sighs.
Vinny looks at him and grins stupidly. “You like him,” Vinny says excitedly, prodding him in the arm and shoulder quite violently. “I knew you would like him. I am always right about these things.” The sad thing is that it’s true. It’s really very true.
&
The first time Zack snuck Matt into a bar, he was sixteen and a half. One day Zack picked him up and handed him a driver’s license with his picture on it, but someone else’s name and birthdate. Matt didn’t want to ask where it came from, didn’t want to know. There were fifty dollars in his wallet that were just about burning a hole in his pocket and he needed this. He didn’t know the guy who was driving and never gets a chance to ask his name; as soon as he was in the car Zack started kissing his neck and palming him through his jeans for the entire half hour drive out of town. At least they were smart enough to pick somewhere away from home; if they got caught out there it wouldn’t turn up in the local papers so they wouldn’t have anything to be embarrassed about.
Matt was kind of expecting Zack to hang out by his side that night, but once they got past the bouncer - and seriously, if it were any easier to get into the place toddlers would be doing it - Zack went off with a group of people he didn’t recognize for a while and came back with bloodshot eyes. When Zack moved in to kiss him, Matt could feel his heart racing the second their lips touched. Something was just slightly off about the whole situation - not just the drinking in a strange bar half an hour from home, but everything - but Matt was really too drunk to figure it out and he also thought that he didn’t care as long as the people they were with kept buying him drinks.
Zack touched his face and said, “You know I love you, right?”
“I know,” he said. “I love you too.” And he was kind of expecting a kiss or something, so it was kind of upsetting and surprising when some guy grabbed Zack and danced with him for a few songs before they disappeared, leaving Matt sitting by himself at a table full of people he didn’t know.
Matt got the sense that they were talking about him by the pitying glances thrown his way, though he didn’t understand why. Since he didn’t have anything useful to add to their conversations, he continued working on his drink even though it tasted awful and burned his throat. Every sip brought him a step closer to that beautiful feeling of numbness, almost like he was floating on the wind without a care in the world. Someone brought him another drink, this time one that tasted sweeter, and he finished it in five minutes flat. He didn’t want to be there anymore; he wanted to go home with Zack and maybe get a blowjob before the end of the night.
When Zack came back the next time, his hair was messed up and he was rubbing his nose. Maybe he’d been throwing up. That was a distinct possibility, maybe. “Come on,” he said gruffly. “We’re leaving now.” Then he handed Matt a plastic shopping bag with the handles tied shut and said, “Put that in your bag and hold onto it for me until we get home.” He was silent the whole drive home - more silent than usual, anyway. Zack never really talked about things much, but then again there weren’t really that many opportunities to strike up a conversation when all they ever did was have sex. Matt threw up out one of the car windows and thought his head was going to explode if it didn’t stop pounding. They hadn’t eaten anything before they’d left Zack’s house; when they got back no one was awake and Zack asked for his stuff back. He disappeared into the bathroom with his bag and when he came back he was freshly showered, smelled like shower gel and shampoo and comforting things, and instead of having sex that night they both passed out within a few minutes of each other.
&
The thing about hanging out with Alex turns out to be that Matt is always a little bit in awe of him. He can’t really understand how he could have met this guy once already; the more they hang out and get to know each other the more he finds himself liking Alex in ways that he probably shouldn’t. Matt is acutely aware of his issues and he knows that most people aren’t going to want to stick around once they know about all of them. So he’s hesitant to say anything about them to Alex, because he kind of likes the guy a lot and it would be really awesome not to frighten him off with all of this scary baggage from past relationships.
One day, he’s hanging out with Vinny and waiting for Alex to come over and they talk about his crush a little bit. “Come on, dude, it’s so obvious you have a thing for him,” Vinny says. “You should just get over yourself and ask him out since he’s clearly crazy about you too.”
Matt covers his face with his hands and says, “Don’t say that,” before slumping forward and burying his face in Vinny’s stomach. “You don’t even know that for sure, you’re speculating to try and make me feel better. And I haven’t admitted that I like him yet, thank you very much.”
He doesn’t even need to be looking to know that Vinny’s making his ‘I’m going to pretend to agree with you even though I know I’m right’ face. “Matthew. Come on. You two are so blatantly obvious that I don’t know how you haven’t already hooked up. I see the way he looks at you and frankly it makes me kind of jealous how much of your time he’s taking up because it feels like you’re replacing me with your boyfriend.”
“I am not replacing you with him and he is not my boyfriend.”
Vinny flicks him in the earlobe. “Just tell him how you feel, jerk-off. Trust me on this.”
Matt looks up at him, says calmly, “You can’t even keep track of how much float we give you at the start of the night when you sell merch. I hardly think you can be trusted to be an accurate judge of other people’s feelings for me, especially someone like...” He gets cut off by the door opening; none of them ever bother to knock. “Alex,” he says awkwardly. “Hi.”
Vinny pushes him off and goes, “I’m going to let you hang out with your boyfriend now, you guys don’t need me to be an awkward third wheel.”
It’s hard to say which one of them is more embarrassed. There’s a lot of awkward dancing around the topic for about the next hour while they’re playing video games and stuff, but eventually Matt resolves that he is going to say something, even if it is the most painfully awkward moment of his entire life. Finally, he sits up and goes, “So. We should probably talk. Um. About stuff.”
Alex says, “Um. Okay. This is awkward.”
“I, um. Yeah. Okay. So I maybe. Kind of. Like you a lot. So that’s... a thing.”
“Like... um. What?”
Matt sighs and runs his hands through his hair. “Just... I kind of maybe have a huge crush on you? And um. Yeah. Vinny has been making fun of me for like a week about it so this is really awkward because you’re, like, really amazingly cute and just... awkward. This is awkward. I’m gonna go die now or something because. No. I’m really bad at conversations.”
“But um. I, yeah. Am kind of the same. About you. We say ‘um’ and ‘okay’ a lot.”
“We really do,” he agrees. “So um. We’re good?”
Alex rests his head on Matt’s shoulder. “Yeah. We’re good.”
&
Matt had found out one night when he was staying at Zack’s and Zack had passed out on the bed. He was too drunk to sleep, so he had played a bunch of video games on the computer until he got bored of them; it wasn’t that much fun to play them when he was seeing two of everything and kept losing no matter how hard he concentrated. Then he remembered the bag of stuff Zack had asked him to put in his bag on the way home so he decided that it would be a good idea to find out what exactly it was that Zack had that he wasn’t allowed to know about. That decision would turn out to be his downfall. Very quietly, he crept out of the room and downstairs to where he had dropped his bag along with his shoes. He turned on the light in the front hallway, sat down and crossed his legs before unzipping his backpack and feeling around for the plastic bag. He fished it out and carefully untied the knot - which took a lot more concentration than it should have - but eventually he gave up and just ripped a hole in the bag with his fingers. In the bag were various Ziploc bags. Some of them had pills in them, some of them didn’t. There was one that was just weed, which he’d had dealings with before but never actually smoked. Then he found the coke. And it wasn’t exactly a small quantity, either. Suddenly everything made sense. Zack, going off with strange people and coming back looking totally wrecked. Zack, sneaking off to the bathroom and coming back with extra energy and unable to sit still. Zack, sometimes not wanting anything to do with him and sometimes being all over him.
Well, obviously Matt was pissed off. He was pissed off and he was drunk and he felt used because obviously Zack didn’t care about him at all and was using him as a fucking drug mule. Suddenly he didn’t care that his boyfriend was passed out in bed. He stormed back up the stairs, shopping bag clutched tightly in his hand, and shook Zack awake. “Wake the fuck up,” he growled, practically shaking with rage.
“Wha-what the fuck?” Zack yawned sleepily.
Matt couldn’t even form words. He just screamed. “What the fuck is this?” he shouted, showing Zack the open bag. In an instant, Zack’s face changed from sleepy indifference to utter terror. “Don’t give me any bullshit,” he said, clenching the fingers of his free hand into a tight fist. “Tell me what you’re doing with this shit or it’s over.”
“It’s not what it looks like,” Zack pleaded. Except that it obviously was. He rubbed his nose absent-mindedly. He was always fucking doing that, and every time he did he said it was allergies, but now Matt knew not to believe him anymore. “Please, Matt, you’ve got to believe me.”
“I don’t know what I should believe anymore,” Matt hissed. “I thought you loved me, but obviously I was wrong about that so I shouldn’t even bother to hear you out.”
Zack reached for him desperately. “Please. I love you.”
Matt pulled away. He didn’t want to be touched. “How are you paying for this shit?” he asked. The nights at the bar were flickering through his mind in rapid progression - Zack going off with strange man after strange man and never the same guy twice, Zack hanging around and sometimes arguing with the nameless guy who picked them up and dropped them off at the bars. Matt had assumed that the money Zack gave the guy was for transportation, but now... “How long?”
“What?”
Matt had to fight the urge to punch him in the face. “How long have you been fucking doing this?” He couldn’t believe it. His boyfriend - someone he had honestly believed had loved him - had been sleeping around behind his back the whole time for a fucking profit. His boyfriend. Had been. Fucking strangers. To buy drugs. If he hadn’t felt like vomiting before, he definitely did now. When Zack reached for him again, he pulled away and growled, “Don’t fucking touch me ever again,” before whirling around and storming off to Zack’s bathroom to try and confirm his last suspicion.
Sure enough, there was the proof that had been sitting in the bathroom cabinet this entire time. Little vials of thick yellow serum and packages of hypodermic needs along with a bright yellow sharps container. He didn’t need to read the labels to know what was in the vials. It explained how Zack had managed to bulk up so quickly, anyway. But Matt was fucking angry. He was angry and he was still carrying the bag with all of his boyfriend’s drugs in it, so he locked the door and sat down cross-legged in front of the toilet. First he opened the bag of white powder and dumped it into the toilet. Then he flushed. He did the same with each baggy of pills and finally, when he had run out of things to flush, he smashed each vial of steroids, leaving it all in a wet mess of broken glass and liquid on the bathroom floor.
Zack had been banging on the bathroom door the entire time. “Baby, don’t do this,” he pleaded. “Matt, please, we can talk about this, we can make this okay.”
Matt looked at himself in the mirror. Red eyes, puffy from crying, lips swollen from being kissed too roughly and a scared expression that didn’t even register as his own face staring back at him. It sucked. He unlocked the bathroom door with shaking hands, looked Zack in the eye and said, “It’s over.”
&
When Matt finds out about Alex, he cries. It’s the first time he’s felt like this since he got sober and it’s completely fucking awful. Because it feels like he’s about to lose his entire world; it feels too much like what happened before and it’s terrifying. He can’t even do anything. They’ve been dating a month. It’s not like he can show up now acting all heroic and try to save the day. He’s been alive long enough that he’s learned he can’t fix everybody, no matter how hard he tries. The thing is that he’s not even angry this time. It just makes him sad. He gets home one day and suddenly his entire world is thrown on his axis. All these feelings of confusion and guilt sink in quickly, his paranoia getting the better of him almost immediately as he sits there trying to call Vinny over and over until Vinny is finally done work and can come to be with him.
Quietly, Vinny says, “You’re not going to be able to help him if you’re freaking out.”
Matt curls up and pushes his face into his best friend’s shoulders to hide his tears. “I want a drink so badly right now,” he whispers. He feels so ashamed of himself for having to admit that. It’s been a year. He has been sober for a year and it shouldn’t be this hard. All he wants to do is go to the nearest bar, start drinking and not stop until he can’t feel anything anymore. He wants to stop feeling like he’s about to lose one of the most important people in the world.
And it sucks because he knew Alex’s history with this sort of thing but he hadn’t known it was that bad or he would have done... something. He would have said something. If he had known. If he had known, there would have been something he could do and then he could have fixed everything. Vinny rubs his back. “It’s okay. He’s going to be okay. It’s not the same as it was with Zack; he knows he has a problem and he’s going to get better.”
“I know. I’m just scared.”
He’s shaking so hard. He curls his hands into Vinny’s shirt and cries until he can’t anymore and they stay like that for a long time, sitting in his bed waiting for news. To his credit, Vinny does not say what he’s thinking at the time, even though Matt knows anyway. He knows Vinny wants to tell him he needs to take care of himself, that he’s allowed to back out if he can’t deal with it, but the thing is that he really wants to. That’s the most legitimately fucking terrifying part about this. He wants to be there through all of it, even though it’s hard as hell and everything sucks and he knows he’s probably going to end up significantly more jaded at the other end of the tunnel. Once he’s calmed down a bit, Vinny says, “He wasn’t doing it to leave you. He wanted help. You can’t do anything besides be there for him.”
Matt knows that. He also remembers what it felt like when he stopped drinking and how fucking hard it was; he remembers sleeping for days and not knowing what time it was, much less which day of the week and how nobody trusted him for months afterward. Nobody laughed at him when he started making self-deprecating jokes about it and they always looked at him a moment too long, squinting at him to see if his eyes were bloodshot or not; they listened too intently to his speaking patterns to see if he was slurring his words or whether it was just the lisp caused by his lip ring. It was awful. No one should have to go through that. “I’m scared for him,” he sighs.
Vinny tells him to lie down and go to sleep. He can’t. He stays there lying in bed just staring at the ceiling for hours, trying to process the whole thing. It almost feels like his body has gone into shock all over again; he feels hollowed out, numb and over-stimulated all at the same time and his concentration is shot. He doesn’t even want to play his guitar or anything. He just wants... to stop feeling. At two or three in the morning, Vinny rolls over, looks at him and says, “Go to sleep, Matt. You can’t help anyone if you haven’t had any sleep. You’ll feel better in the morning.”
When he wakes up in the morning, he still wants a drink. Vinny takes him out for breakfast and it distracts him enough that his hands stop shaking from it. They go to the mall and don’t buy anything. They go to the movies and halfway through Matt forgets the name of the shitty B-movie they’re seeing. It works well enough but it’s not quite good enough to distract him from the thoughts constantly cycling through his mind while he tries to work through his emotional baggage to decide whether the relationship is worth working for anymore or not.
&
Matt was sitting in class when the call came. Actually, he was writing an exam and his phone was vibrating futilely in his bag halfway across the room. It was math, and he really needed to pass the exam to finish the year and not have to repeat the class. But there was only one person who would ever call him in the middle of the day like that, so immediately his stomach dropped. He was almost finished with the test booklet. Five questions left. And so he sat there shaking through the last lines of the equation he was solving, wishing he had a drink or something to take the edge off before he turned his exam in to the teacher and spent the last twenty minutes of the period sitting there trying not to shake too violently. There was no reason for him to be that anxious about it, but he had this awful feeling that something bad had happened. He’d had this bad feeling every time the phone rang for about a week.
As soon as he was outside, Matt checked his voicemail. And, as expected, the message was from Zack. He was tempted to delete it but something in him - that little part of him that was still convinced they could have a future together - forced him to listen to it instead.
“Listen, um,” it began. “I know you said we were over but I was just wondering how over we are? Because I kind of need to borrow some money to pay off some stuff I owe and I was hoping you would spot me something until, like, Friday. And I can take you out for drinks or whatever, it won’t even be weird but I really need you to do this for me. So can you please call me back? I... I need this. You, I need you. Whatever.” Click. Dial tone. End of call.
The next one was worse. “I’m really high right now,” Zack said. “I need you. And I know you hate me and it’s okay because I’m probably going to die soon anyway. But I just wanted you to know that it was nothing personal, okay, I just needed someone and you just needed someone and it worked. I’m sorry you love me. I’m sorry. I am really, really sorry. None of it ever meant anything to me, you know? I just wanted to feel something and you were something and I’m sorry I used you but, fuck. Matt. I - you had so much potential and you just... I took so many of them and so it’s all going to be okay because you won’t have to deal with me anymore. I promise. I’m going to go away and leave you alone now, I just wanted to say that I’m sorry for everything and that... okay.” In the background of the message, Matt could hear the sound of sirens approaching. It cut off suddenly and then that was it. Message over. Life over.
He listened to it again three times and by the time he was done he was so drunk he couldn’t stand up. He sat on his bedroom floor and cried. Eventually his mother came home and found him like that, lying on his bedroom floor next to a bunch of empty cans of beer, and that was it. “I’m not mad at you,” she said, “but I am disappointed.”
“He used me,” Matt slurred. “I thought he loved me and he was just using me.”
“Once you’ve sobered up you’re grounded for six months,” his mother said. He threw up on her shoes. The next week of his life was sheer hell; he woke up in a cold sweat when he could sleep at all and he cried a lot. He threw up a lot and he shook almost constantly. He didn’t know what day of the week it was and his mother made him go to school every day even though it felt like he was going to die. But eventually it got easier; he stopped feeling sick every time he saw one of Zack’s friends and he graduated on time. He very carefully did not ask what had happened that day when Zack called him. He didn’t want to know.
&
When Alex comes home, the first thing Matt does is hug him so tightly it’s probably a little bit uncomfortable to be on the receiving end of it. He doesn’t want to let go. “Don’t ever do that to me again,” he says, sounding a little more desperate than he’d intended but getting the point across all the same. He’s probably about to cry - because that’s all he has done lately - but he’s never felt this relieved in his entire life.
That’s not to say that everything is going to be perfect now. They still have a long way to go, both of them, but it’s so fucking reassuring when Alex hugs him back and goes, “I never wanted to leave you. I love you. It’s not your fault, I’m just fucked up.”
Maybe a year ago Matt would have done the easy thing and broken up with him on the spot. But... he’s not such a huge fan of breaking his own heart anymore, so instead he sighs and says, “I love you too.” He’s finally stopped freaking out about it, which is good. Now he can sort of understand that not every situation is going to be the same and he does realize the difference between his past and current relationship: Alex actually acknowledges that he has a problem and he does want to change. Which is not going to make it any easier, but it’s a step in the right direction. And Matt knows those steps all too well; he still has the sheet of paper from AA with the twelve steps printed on it in the back of his desk drawer just in case. He knows how easy it is in those first few days, weeks and months to slip up despite having good intentions. He knows what a contentious beast addiction is to struggle with and he knows how hard it is to ignore those thoughts of self-loathing that can be completely overwhelming to deal with. “You’re not fucked up,” he says after a while. “If you were I wouldn’t love you so much.”
“Stay with me tonight?” Matt nods, knowing it will probably be a restless night for both of them, but at the same time he’s glad. It might be a little beyond his experience trying to understand what Alex is dealing with, but even if he never understands it he’s pretty sure that he’s always going to be there anyway. The first step to recovery is admitting that there is a problem. And as they walk down the hallway back to his apartment, Matt realizes that he’s finally taken the last step. It’s going to be a very long road nonetheless, even if he’s not walking it for himself this time.
Matt is rubbing the marker off the back of his hands in the sink when Vinny walks into his apartment without knocking. He’s just about ready to hit the sack, but the look on his best friend’s face says that Vinny has other plans for them. He scrubs at the skin with his fingernails, trying to get more of the ink off his hand before it gets absorbed, but all it accomplishes is that it makes his skin look angry and red. Vinny sticks his hand under the tap - Matt figures he’s probably realized it would be a good idea to wash his hands after the skanky venue they were just at - but then instead of meticulously scrubbing his hands as expected, he sticks a wet finger in Matt’s ear and howls with laugher when Matt squeaks and flaps his arms around in surprise. The water on his hands sprays across the mirror; he’s going to have to clean that later or there will be water spots everywhere.
“That... was gross,” Matt gasps when he’s finally stopped laughing so hard he can’t breathe, hanging onto Vinny for support. Vinny snorts and pokes his side, tugging on the hem of his shirt hard before pushing him away. “You’re such an asshole,” Matt scolds him, wiping his hands on his jeans instead of looking for a towel to dry them with. Vinny flops down on his bed despite the clean laundry lying there waiting to be folded because he sort of, uh, forgot to do it. “What.”
“’s a new guy that moved in down the hall, seems cool. You should go say hey.”
Matt looks at his sweat-stained shirt and grimaces. “Don’t you think I should change my shirt first...?” Not that he’s shallow, or anything. It just doesn’t make for a very good first impression when he’s got pit-stains that extend halfway down the sides of his shirt and he smells like ass. Vinny shakes his head. His eyes are still a little glassy; apparently doing merch for Underscore also translates to doing shots between sets every time someone buys a t-shirt from him. It doesn’t bother Matt as much as it used to - at the back of his mind, the thought is there, but he pushes it away. He swallows hard, takes a deep breath. That’s in the past. “Okay, details first so I don’t make an ass of myself.”
Vinny lifts his head slightly. “You’ve met him before. His name is Alex, he was at one of the shows in December? I think that’s when you were still on and off with Kendra so you didn’t really pay attention to him or something. Anyway, he likes the band so you should totally go talk to him.”
“What am I even supposed to talk to him about?” Matt asks. “Also, no passing out in my bed or I’m going to piss in your shoes.”
He ducks a somewhat questionably clean sock when Vinny throws it at him. “Stop being shy and go talk to him. You’ll like him, I know it. I am your best thing and I know these things; now get out of here so I can throw up in your bathroom in peace.”
Matt slips his feet into his Vans and - after seriously reconsidering changing his shirt - throws on a hoodie over his grungy t-shirt before poking his head out the door to see if anyone is in the hall. Thankfully the weird man that wears a leather jacket with fringes all over it is nowhere to be found; that guy always grabs him by the arm and calls him Skip and tries to tell him stories about the war. Matt has decided that he’s probably... not right. Vinny throws another sock at him that is definitely dirty. “That was uncalled for,” he sighs. He’s also really not sure why he’s supposed to go talk to this guy when it is like two in the morning, but he trusts Vinny’s judgment and he wouldn’t have said something without a really good reason for it. He steps out the door of the apartment.
&
The first time Matt met Zack, they were sixteen years old. He was awkward and lanky and basically unprepared for the events that would follow. Zack emerged from his bathroom in nothing but a towel, flashed him this really smooth grin and said, “Hey, come on, you can hang out in my room with me.” And Matt, he hadn’t fully come to terms with his sexuality yet but there was something about the other boy that attracted him. He followed closely behind; half of him was praying that the towel would sort of accidentally slip and the other half of him was a terrified mess of hormones and anxiety because things like this totally happen in pornos.
Before he could even sneak a peek or anything, Zack had pulled on a pair of boxers. Not that they were doing much for him in terms of modesty; they were the clingy type that put everything on display anyway. Then Zack pulled out a bottle of vodka, took a drink straight from the bottle and offered it to Matt. “I um,” Matt stammered, “I don’t drink, I’m not like. I’m not... I can’t, I.”
Zack shook his head. “It’s okay,” he said. “One sip won’t kill you.”
With shaking hands, Matt took the bottle. He curled his fingers around the neck and tipped it carefully into his mouth - the bottle was almost full so it was very heavy - and took some of it into his mouth. The taste wasn’t what he expected it to be; it was horrible and he wanted to spit it out but Zack was watching him expectantly and he felt so anxious he might actually throw it up anyway. It burned his throat on the way down; it had the surprising effect of calming his nerves and numbing the anxiety down to a manageable level. He took another sip, this time smaller, more carefully. “Not bad,” he tried to say, but then he coughed. The taste was so bad.
“That’s my boy,” Zack told him reassuringly, patting him on the back and letting his hand linger for just long enough at Matt’s waist to make him feel flushed and pleased. His boy, Zack had said. Well, Matt had never been anyone’s anything before, so he kind of craved that approval again. Zack took the bottle again and downed some more vodka; Matt watched him swallow with a mixture of jealousy and maybe kind of also arousal. When the bottle was handed back to him, he drank some more. They traded off on the bottle for about an hour, until the point where everything Zack said to him was unbelievably funny and interesting and he was all but hanging off of the other boy.
“You’re so awesome,” Matt slurred, putting his hand on Zack’s bicep. “Did I already tell you how awesome you are? Because you are. You are totally awesome and I admire you so much.”
Zack smiled at him, which made his heart race so hard he thought he might be dying. “I’m going to kiss you now,” Zack said. Their lips collided with no warning; Zack tasted like alcohol and something else Matt couldn’t name, tongue slipping into his mouth almost immediately even though it was only his first kiss and he wasn’t exactly ready for it to be happening. He let himself be pushed down onto the mattress anyway, moving his hands over the planes of Zack’s back because he didn’t know what else to do with his hands. Zack pushed his hands up over his head, held them there. It was all a blur. Matt walked home by himself in the rain with a burning, aching pain in his lower back that sparked all through his body with each step he took. With his clothes soaked through, he didn’t feel particularly special. He felt scared and hung-over and vaguely dirty.
&
Matt hesitates before knocking on the door of the apartment that has been vacant for the past several weeks. The last time he had been in it - he’d agreed to help the landlords paint because he is a nice person - it had smelled badly of body odour and marijuana smoke. He finally decides for what he hopes is a friendly-sounding knock and stands back a bit, awkwardly fumbling with the pockets of his hoodie while he waits for someone to answer the door. Why he feels this anxiety about someone he’s met maybe once in his life, he doesn’t know. Maybe it’s residual guilt for not remembering a guy Vinny is very obviously trying to get him to become friends with for some reason; it’s that same knot of nervous energy in the pit of his stomach that he felt before.
The door swings open, revealing a very frazzled yet very attractive guy. Matt swallows hard again, forcing himself to breathe through his nose. It would have really helped if Vinny had warned him that the guy he’s supposed to be making friends with is a total babe. And it’s not even that he’s traditionally good-looking or whatever; the guy just has that air about him that oozes attractiveness. Then Matt remembers that he’s actually supposed to be introducing himself now. “Uh,” he says, moving his lip ring around with his teeth, “I’m Matt. Vinny’s friend? Apparently we’ve met before but I am really sorry I don’t remember meeting you but anyway he told me to come say hey so, um, hey.”
“I’m Alex,” says the guy. They shake hands and it’s that awkward type of handshake that lasts a second too long; their eyes meet and Matt feels that instant pang of attraction that he knows he is not going to be able to shake. It’s like the air catches in his lungs on the way down. Because without even needing to know anything else about the guy, Matt just instinctively knows that Alex is his type and that scares the shit out of him. He hasn’t felt this strongly attracted to someone straight away since... well, since Zack. Which is not a thing he likes to think about because it puts him into some very negative headspace that his therapist says it’s not healthy to dwell on. “So I’ve heard, like, every song your band has ever written and I think you guys are really great and talented, so um...”
“Wow, um, thanks,” Matt says, looking awkwardly at the floor instead of making eye contact. He can feel the flush creeping up the back of his neck to the tips of his ears. “So you... just moved in. That’s. Cool? I mean, obviously I live down the hall if you ever want to hang out and Vinny is around a lot since you guys are friends or whatever so...”
Alex smiles. The thing is that he’s barely even got what qualifies as an upper lip, but it works on him. He says, “Y’know, I’d settle for hanging out with just you if you’re down for that sometime.” Their eyes meet - and Matt knows he’s blushing for sure now, can feel it all the way down to his toes - and then Alex clears his throat. “I should probably head to bed, but thanks for dropping by and saying hi. I’ll see you around?”
Matt nods and pulls the sleeves of his hoodie down over his hands. “Yeah. We’ll... we’ll see each other.” He goes back to his own apartment, where Vinny is still sprawled out on his bed, half-passed out on the clean laundry. If he pukes in it, Matt is going to seriously strangle the guy. Once he’s out of his jeans and shoes, Matt crawls over Vinny’s stationary form and lies down on the side closest to the wall. “That was... interesting,” he sighs.
Vinny looks at him and grins stupidly. “You like him,” Vinny says excitedly, prodding him in the arm and shoulder quite violently. “I knew you would like him. I am always right about these things.” The sad thing is that it’s true. It’s really very true.
&
The first time Zack snuck Matt into a bar, he was sixteen and a half. One day Zack picked him up and handed him a driver’s license with his picture on it, but someone else’s name and birthdate. Matt didn’t want to ask where it came from, didn’t want to know. There were fifty dollars in his wallet that were just about burning a hole in his pocket and he needed this. He didn’t know the guy who was driving and never gets a chance to ask his name; as soon as he was in the car Zack started kissing his neck and palming him through his jeans for the entire half hour drive out of town. At least they were smart enough to pick somewhere away from home; if they got caught out there it wouldn’t turn up in the local papers so they wouldn’t have anything to be embarrassed about.
Matt was kind of expecting Zack to hang out by his side that night, but once they got past the bouncer - and seriously, if it were any easier to get into the place toddlers would be doing it - Zack went off with a group of people he didn’t recognize for a while and came back with bloodshot eyes. When Zack moved in to kiss him, Matt could feel his heart racing the second their lips touched. Something was just slightly off about the whole situation - not just the drinking in a strange bar half an hour from home, but everything - but Matt was really too drunk to figure it out and he also thought that he didn’t care as long as the people they were with kept buying him drinks.
Zack touched his face and said, “You know I love you, right?”
“I know,” he said. “I love you too.” And he was kind of expecting a kiss or something, so it was kind of upsetting and surprising when some guy grabbed Zack and danced with him for a few songs before they disappeared, leaving Matt sitting by himself at a table full of people he didn’t know.
Matt got the sense that they were talking about him by the pitying glances thrown his way, though he didn’t understand why. Since he didn’t have anything useful to add to their conversations, he continued working on his drink even though it tasted awful and burned his throat. Every sip brought him a step closer to that beautiful feeling of numbness, almost like he was floating on the wind without a care in the world. Someone brought him another drink, this time one that tasted sweeter, and he finished it in five minutes flat. He didn’t want to be there anymore; he wanted to go home with Zack and maybe get a blowjob before the end of the night.
When Zack came back the next time, his hair was messed up and he was rubbing his nose. Maybe he’d been throwing up. That was a distinct possibility, maybe. “Come on,” he said gruffly. “We’re leaving now.” Then he handed Matt a plastic shopping bag with the handles tied shut and said, “Put that in your bag and hold onto it for me until we get home.” He was silent the whole drive home - more silent than usual, anyway. Zack never really talked about things much, but then again there weren’t really that many opportunities to strike up a conversation when all they ever did was have sex. Matt threw up out one of the car windows and thought his head was going to explode if it didn’t stop pounding. They hadn’t eaten anything before they’d left Zack’s house; when they got back no one was awake and Zack asked for his stuff back. He disappeared into the bathroom with his bag and when he came back he was freshly showered, smelled like shower gel and shampoo and comforting things, and instead of having sex that night they both passed out within a few minutes of each other.
&
The thing about hanging out with Alex turns out to be that Matt is always a little bit in awe of him. He can’t really understand how he could have met this guy once already; the more they hang out and get to know each other the more he finds himself liking Alex in ways that he probably shouldn’t. Matt is acutely aware of his issues and he knows that most people aren’t going to want to stick around once they know about all of them. So he’s hesitant to say anything about them to Alex, because he kind of likes the guy a lot and it would be really awesome not to frighten him off with all of this scary baggage from past relationships.
One day, he’s hanging out with Vinny and waiting for Alex to come over and they talk about his crush a little bit. “Come on, dude, it’s so obvious you have a thing for him,” Vinny says. “You should just get over yourself and ask him out since he’s clearly crazy about you too.”
Matt covers his face with his hands and says, “Don’t say that,” before slumping forward and burying his face in Vinny’s stomach. “You don’t even know that for sure, you’re speculating to try and make me feel better. And I haven’t admitted that I like him yet, thank you very much.”
He doesn’t even need to be looking to know that Vinny’s making his ‘I’m going to pretend to agree with you even though I know I’m right’ face. “Matthew. Come on. You two are so blatantly obvious that I don’t know how you haven’t already hooked up. I see the way he looks at you and frankly it makes me kind of jealous how much of your time he’s taking up because it feels like you’re replacing me with your boyfriend.”
“I am not replacing you with him and he is not my boyfriend.”
Vinny flicks him in the earlobe. “Just tell him how you feel, jerk-off. Trust me on this.”
Matt looks up at him, says calmly, “You can’t even keep track of how much float we give you at the start of the night when you sell merch. I hardly think you can be trusted to be an accurate judge of other people’s feelings for me, especially someone like...” He gets cut off by the door opening; none of them ever bother to knock. “Alex,” he says awkwardly. “Hi.”
Vinny pushes him off and goes, “I’m going to let you hang out with your boyfriend now, you guys don’t need me to be an awkward third wheel.”
It’s hard to say which one of them is more embarrassed. There’s a lot of awkward dancing around the topic for about the next hour while they’re playing video games and stuff, but eventually Matt resolves that he is going to say something, even if it is the most painfully awkward moment of his entire life. Finally, he sits up and goes, “So. We should probably talk. Um. About stuff.”
Alex says, “Um. Okay. This is awkward.”
“I, um. Yeah. Okay. So I maybe. Kind of. Like you a lot. So that’s... a thing.”
“Like... um. What?”
Matt sighs and runs his hands through his hair. “Just... I kind of maybe have a huge crush on you? And um. Yeah. Vinny has been making fun of me for like a week about it so this is really awkward because you’re, like, really amazingly cute and just... awkward. This is awkward. I’m gonna go die now or something because. No. I’m really bad at conversations.”
“But um. I, yeah. Am kind of the same. About you. We say ‘um’ and ‘okay’ a lot.”
“We really do,” he agrees. “So um. We’re good?”
Alex rests his head on Matt’s shoulder. “Yeah. We’re good.”
&
Matt had found out one night when he was staying at Zack’s and Zack had passed out on the bed. He was too drunk to sleep, so he had played a bunch of video games on the computer until he got bored of them; it wasn’t that much fun to play them when he was seeing two of everything and kept losing no matter how hard he concentrated. Then he remembered the bag of stuff Zack had asked him to put in his bag on the way home so he decided that it would be a good idea to find out what exactly it was that Zack had that he wasn’t allowed to know about. That decision would turn out to be his downfall. Very quietly, he crept out of the room and downstairs to where he had dropped his bag along with his shoes. He turned on the light in the front hallway, sat down and crossed his legs before unzipping his backpack and feeling around for the plastic bag. He fished it out and carefully untied the knot - which took a lot more concentration than it should have - but eventually he gave up and just ripped a hole in the bag with his fingers. In the bag were various Ziploc bags. Some of them had pills in them, some of them didn’t. There was one that was just weed, which he’d had dealings with before but never actually smoked. Then he found the coke. And it wasn’t exactly a small quantity, either. Suddenly everything made sense. Zack, going off with strange people and coming back looking totally wrecked. Zack, sneaking off to the bathroom and coming back with extra energy and unable to sit still. Zack, sometimes not wanting anything to do with him and sometimes being all over him.
Well, obviously Matt was pissed off. He was pissed off and he was drunk and he felt used because obviously Zack didn’t care about him at all and was using him as a fucking drug mule. Suddenly he didn’t care that his boyfriend was passed out in bed. He stormed back up the stairs, shopping bag clutched tightly in his hand, and shook Zack awake. “Wake the fuck up,” he growled, practically shaking with rage.
“Wha-what the fuck?” Zack yawned sleepily.
Matt couldn’t even form words. He just screamed. “What the fuck is this?” he shouted, showing Zack the open bag. In an instant, Zack’s face changed from sleepy indifference to utter terror. “Don’t give me any bullshit,” he said, clenching the fingers of his free hand into a tight fist. “Tell me what you’re doing with this shit or it’s over.”
“It’s not what it looks like,” Zack pleaded. Except that it obviously was. He rubbed his nose absent-mindedly. He was always fucking doing that, and every time he did he said it was allergies, but now Matt knew not to believe him anymore. “Please, Matt, you’ve got to believe me.”
“I don’t know what I should believe anymore,” Matt hissed. “I thought you loved me, but obviously I was wrong about that so I shouldn’t even bother to hear you out.”
Zack reached for him desperately. “Please. I love you.”
Matt pulled away. He didn’t want to be touched. “How are you paying for this shit?” he asked. The nights at the bar were flickering through his mind in rapid progression - Zack going off with strange man after strange man and never the same guy twice, Zack hanging around and sometimes arguing with the nameless guy who picked them up and dropped them off at the bars. Matt had assumed that the money Zack gave the guy was for transportation, but now... “How long?”
“What?”
Matt had to fight the urge to punch him in the face. “How long have you been fucking doing this?” He couldn’t believe it. His boyfriend - someone he had honestly believed had loved him - had been sleeping around behind his back the whole time for a fucking profit. His boyfriend. Had been. Fucking strangers. To buy drugs. If he hadn’t felt like vomiting before, he definitely did now. When Zack reached for him again, he pulled away and growled, “Don’t fucking touch me ever again,” before whirling around and storming off to Zack’s bathroom to try and confirm his last suspicion.
Sure enough, there was the proof that had been sitting in the bathroom cabinet this entire time. Little vials of thick yellow serum and packages of hypodermic needs along with a bright yellow sharps container. He didn’t need to read the labels to know what was in the vials. It explained how Zack had managed to bulk up so quickly, anyway. But Matt was fucking angry. He was angry and he was still carrying the bag with all of his boyfriend’s drugs in it, so he locked the door and sat down cross-legged in front of the toilet. First he opened the bag of white powder and dumped it into the toilet. Then he flushed. He did the same with each baggy of pills and finally, when he had run out of things to flush, he smashed each vial of steroids, leaving it all in a wet mess of broken glass and liquid on the bathroom floor.
Zack had been banging on the bathroom door the entire time. “Baby, don’t do this,” he pleaded. “Matt, please, we can talk about this, we can make this okay.”
Matt looked at himself in the mirror. Red eyes, puffy from crying, lips swollen from being kissed too roughly and a scared expression that didn’t even register as his own face staring back at him. It sucked. He unlocked the bathroom door with shaking hands, looked Zack in the eye and said, “It’s over.”
&
When Matt finds out about Alex, he cries. It’s the first time he’s felt like this since he got sober and it’s completely fucking awful. Because it feels like he’s about to lose his entire world; it feels too much like what happened before and it’s terrifying. He can’t even do anything. They’ve been dating a month. It’s not like he can show up now acting all heroic and try to save the day. He’s been alive long enough that he’s learned he can’t fix everybody, no matter how hard he tries. The thing is that he’s not even angry this time. It just makes him sad. He gets home one day and suddenly his entire world is thrown on his axis. All these feelings of confusion and guilt sink in quickly, his paranoia getting the better of him almost immediately as he sits there trying to call Vinny over and over until Vinny is finally done work and can come to be with him.
Quietly, Vinny says, “You’re not going to be able to help him if you’re freaking out.”
Matt curls up and pushes his face into his best friend’s shoulders to hide his tears. “I want a drink so badly right now,” he whispers. He feels so ashamed of himself for having to admit that. It’s been a year. He has been sober for a year and it shouldn’t be this hard. All he wants to do is go to the nearest bar, start drinking and not stop until he can’t feel anything anymore. He wants to stop feeling like he’s about to lose one of the most important people in the world.
And it sucks because he knew Alex’s history with this sort of thing but he hadn’t known it was that bad or he would have done... something. He would have said something. If he had known. If he had known, there would have been something he could do and then he could have fixed everything. Vinny rubs his back. “It’s okay. He’s going to be okay. It’s not the same as it was with Zack; he knows he has a problem and he’s going to get better.”
“I know. I’m just scared.”
He’s shaking so hard. He curls his hands into Vinny’s shirt and cries until he can’t anymore and they stay like that for a long time, sitting in his bed waiting for news. To his credit, Vinny does not say what he’s thinking at the time, even though Matt knows anyway. He knows Vinny wants to tell him he needs to take care of himself, that he’s allowed to back out if he can’t deal with it, but the thing is that he really wants to. That’s the most legitimately fucking terrifying part about this. He wants to be there through all of it, even though it’s hard as hell and everything sucks and he knows he’s probably going to end up significantly more jaded at the other end of the tunnel. Once he’s calmed down a bit, Vinny says, “He wasn’t doing it to leave you. He wanted help. You can’t do anything besides be there for him.”
Matt knows that. He also remembers what it felt like when he stopped drinking and how fucking hard it was; he remembers sleeping for days and not knowing what time it was, much less which day of the week and how nobody trusted him for months afterward. Nobody laughed at him when he started making self-deprecating jokes about it and they always looked at him a moment too long, squinting at him to see if his eyes were bloodshot or not; they listened too intently to his speaking patterns to see if he was slurring his words or whether it was just the lisp caused by his lip ring. It was awful. No one should have to go through that. “I’m scared for him,” he sighs.
Vinny tells him to lie down and go to sleep. He can’t. He stays there lying in bed just staring at the ceiling for hours, trying to process the whole thing. It almost feels like his body has gone into shock all over again; he feels hollowed out, numb and over-stimulated all at the same time and his concentration is shot. He doesn’t even want to play his guitar or anything. He just wants... to stop feeling. At two or three in the morning, Vinny rolls over, looks at him and says, “Go to sleep, Matt. You can’t help anyone if you haven’t had any sleep. You’ll feel better in the morning.”
When he wakes up in the morning, he still wants a drink. Vinny takes him out for breakfast and it distracts him enough that his hands stop shaking from it. They go to the mall and don’t buy anything. They go to the movies and halfway through Matt forgets the name of the shitty B-movie they’re seeing. It works well enough but it’s not quite good enough to distract him from the thoughts constantly cycling through his mind while he tries to work through his emotional baggage to decide whether the relationship is worth working for anymore or not.
&
Matt was sitting in class when the call came. Actually, he was writing an exam and his phone was vibrating futilely in his bag halfway across the room. It was math, and he really needed to pass the exam to finish the year and not have to repeat the class. But there was only one person who would ever call him in the middle of the day like that, so immediately his stomach dropped. He was almost finished with the test booklet. Five questions left. And so he sat there shaking through the last lines of the equation he was solving, wishing he had a drink or something to take the edge off before he turned his exam in to the teacher and spent the last twenty minutes of the period sitting there trying not to shake too violently. There was no reason for him to be that anxious about it, but he had this awful feeling that something bad had happened. He’d had this bad feeling every time the phone rang for about a week.
As soon as he was outside, Matt checked his voicemail. And, as expected, the message was from Zack. He was tempted to delete it but something in him - that little part of him that was still convinced they could have a future together - forced him to listen to it instead.
“Listen, um,” it began. “I know you said we were over but I was just wondering how over we are? Because I kind of need to borrow some money to pay off some stuff I owe and I was hoping you would spot me something until, like, Friday. And I can take you out for drinks or whatever, it won’t even be weird but I really need you to do this for me. So can you please call me back? I... I need this. You, I need you. Whatever.” Click. Dial tone. End of call.
The next one was worse. “I’m really high right now,” Zack said. “I need you. And I know you hate me and it’s okay because I’m probably going to die soon anyway. But I just wanted you to know that it was nothing personal, okay, I just needed someone and you just needed someone and it worked. I’m sorry you love me. I’m sorry. I am really, really sorry. None of it ever meant anything to me, you know? I just wanted to feel something and you were something and I’m sorry I used you but, fuck. Matt. I - you had so much potential and you just... I took so many of them and so it’s all going to be okay because you won’t have to deal with me anymore. I promise. I’m going to go away and leave you alone now, I just wanted to say that I’m sorry for everything and that... okay.” In the background of the message, Matt could hear the sound of sirens approaching. It cut off suddenly and then that was it. Message over. Life over.
He listened to it again three times and by the time he was done he was so drunk he couldn’t stand up. He sat on his bedroom floor and cried. Eventually his mother came home and found him like that, lying on his bedroom floor next to a bunch of empty cans of beer, and that was it. “I’m not mad at you,” she said, “but I am disappointed.”
“He used me,” Matt slurred. “I thought he loved me and he was just using me.”
“Once you’ve sobered up you’re grounded for six months,” his mother said. He threw up on her shoes. The next week of his life was sheer hell; he woke up in a cold sweat when he could sleep at all and he cried a lot. He threw up a lot and he shook almost constantly. He didn’t know what day of the week it was and his mother made him go to school every day even though it felt like he was going to die. But eventually it got easier; he stopped feeling sick every time he saw one of Zack’s friends and he graduated on time. He very carefully did not ask what had happened that day when Zack called him. He didn’t want to know.
&
When Alex comes home, the first thing Matt does is hug him so tightly it’s probably a little bit uncomfortable to be on the receiving end of it. He doesn’t want to let go. “Don’t ever do that to me again,” he says, sounding a little more desperate than he’d intended but getting the point across all the same. He’s probably about to cry - because that’s all he has done lately - but he’s never felt this relieved in his entire life.
That’s not to say that everything is going to be perfect now. They still have a long way to go, both of them, but it’s so fucking reassuring when Alex hugs him back and goes, “I never wanted to leave you. I love you. It’s not your fault, I’m just fucked up.”
Maybe a year ago Matt would have done the easy thing and broken up with him on the spot. But... he’s not such a huge fan of breaking his own heart anymore, so instead he sighs and says, “I love you too.” He’s finally stopped freaking out about it, which is good. Now he can sort of understand that not every situation is going to be the same and he does realize the difference between his past and current relationship: Alex actually acknowledges that he has a problem and he does want to change. Which is not going to make it any easier, but it’s a step in the right direction. And Matt knows those steps all too well; he still has the sheet of paper from AA with the twelve steps printed on it in the back of his desk drawer just in case. He knows how easy it is in those first few days, weeks and months to slip up despite having good intentions. He knows what a contentious beast addiction is to struggle with and he knows how hard it is to ignore those thoughts of self-loathing that can be completely overwhelming to deal with. “You’re not fucked up,” he says after a while. “If you were I wouldn’t love you so much.”
“Stay with me tonight?” Matt nods, knowing it will probably be a restless night for both of them, but at the same time he’s glad. It might be a little beyond his experience trying to understand what Alex is dealing with, but even if he never understands it he’s pretty sure that he’s always going to be there anyway. The first step to recovery is admitting that there is a problem. And as they walk down the hallway back to his apartment, Matt realizes that he’s finally taken the last step. It’s going to be a very long road nonetheless, even if he’s not walking it for himself this time.