Fic: "the last good thing about this part of town 2/2" (RPF)

[inlovewithnight]

Part One


Once Ioan left, Matthew threw himself into his solo plans with dedication, working his way through a few more beers and some bad late-night telly. It was comforting, like being a child again, staying up late on a weekend as a special treat or because he'd lied to the babysitter. Not exactly the same gleeful feeling of getting away with something, but an echo of it. Only with beer, an excellent argument for adulthood in and of itself.

At some point he must have fallen asleep, because he found himself stirring slowly, clumsily awake. His head was fuzzy and blurred and his stomach twisted unhappily. Blinking, he squinted against the lights, turning his head toward the back of the couch in a futile effort to hide from the sullen whine of the television. Hadn't turned anything off, and there was still a bit of beer left in the bottle closest to him on the table. Dropped off right in the middle of everything, then.

He sat up slowly, cautiously, and his stomach heaved in protest and a warning that he really had drunk quite a bit and that dinner really had been quite some time ago. Dinner. Jenna. Fuck.

He closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the couch, then swallowed, fighting down the sour taste in his throat. Not going to think about that right now. Not going to think about it at all, if he could help it; he really thought the best idea might be to drag himself down the hall to his bedroom, crawl under the blanket, put the pillow over his head, and wait for either morning or death.

There, he had a plan. Lovely.

He fumbled blindly for the remote control, finding it shoved down between the cushions. Stabbing at the buttons at random eventually shut the telly off, thank God. Quiet made everything a bit more bearable, enough so that he suspected he might be more tired than drunk. Much less shameful and less likely to involve being sick in the morning.

He got to his feet cautiously, looking around the living room as best he could without moving his head. He couldn't see the kitchen clock, but it had to be past two, possibly even past three. He wondered if Ioan had made it back from the pub; it wouldn't be terribly unusual for Ioan to leave him out on the couch if he looked comfortable. And while he hoped Ioan would think to turn off the television and the lights, realistically it very much depended on how Ioan's own evening had gone, and how badly he himself felt the need to fall into bed and abstain from the world until some unspecified point in the morning.

Matthew had come to know Ioan rather well in the past few years. Or at least Ioan's drunken habits. Perhaps not the most useful or marketable knowledge in the world, but there was something rather warm and pleasant about it. It added a stable point in his life, with the reciprocal knowledge that Ioan knew about him in return. Just...nice, that was all, it was nice to know that he wasn't likely to get left unconscious in a gutter somewhere, because Ioan would know to drag him along back to the flat.

He heard familiar steps in the hall, uneven and stumbling. He paused his slow efforts to cross the room, grinning as he realized he was being given proof to his own idle thoughts. He would have to tell Ioan about this, that he recognized him coming home by the sound of his drunken steps down the hallway, and the way he muttered curses while he fumbled with his keys, and the muffled clicks and bumps of the two or three tries it took him to get the keys into the lock and convince the handle to turn properly.

Ioan stepped inside with exaggerated care, like he was trying to be quiet, and Matthew couldn't help laughing, the sound escaping as an embarrassing little giggle that made Ioan look up in surprise. Ioan's face was flushed and his eyes were terribly bright, his hair all rumpled and bunched over his forehead, clinging to his skin with sweat here and there. Matthew sat down again, on the arm of the couch, catching his elbow around the edge of the back and waving his free hand. "'lo, mate."

"You're awake," Ioan said, his voice low and blurry around the edges of the words. He shut the door, turning to face it and throwing the locks with the careful, excessive precision of a man who was very drunk, and knew it, and was trying to compensate to a degree entirely out of proportion with who was around to notice or care.

"I am," Matthew agreed, rubbing the heel of his hand against his eye. Seeing Ioan made him instantly reevaluate his own sobriety and decide firmly on the side of far more tired than actually intoxicated. Ioan was properly drunk.

"I thought you'd be asleep." Ioan gestured, vague and uncertain, taking in Matthew and the couch and also a bookshelf and the window. "Tried to be quiet, because I thought--"

"Good of you," Matthew said, smiling a bit to make cutting him off more gentle. Ioan rambled when he was drunk, especially as drunk as this. They very well could end up awake for another hour if Matthew didn't steer things a bit. "I did fall asleep for a while, but I woke up a few minutes ago. Before you came in."

Ioan smiled, broad and sudden, the smile that always threw Matthew off a bit. It was too quick, too impulsive, too unguarded, too real. Too real to be real, if that made any sense, which it didn't. It was Ioan. Write it off as such.

"Like you knew I was about to get home," Ioan said, sounding as delighted as if he'd won something.

Matthew laughed again, rubbing harder at his eye and looking down at the floor. "Something like that, I suppose. What time is it, anyway, I don't--" He cut off, puzzled, as Ioan had crossed the room all in a clumsy rush and was standing quite close in front of him now.

"Math," Ioan said, his voice low and urgent and a bit breathless. "Math, I--"

"What?" For all Matthew had been thinking about how he knew Ioan's moods and habits drunk and sober, he didn't recognize this version standing here in front of him, practically vibrating with some excitement, flushed and warm and smelling like he'd managed to spill at least one round on himself at some point.

"I--" Ioan shook his head with a sharp breath of either amusement or frustration. "I--"

"Calm down," Matthew instructed, reaching out to tug at Ioan's elbow. "You all right? Swear to God, Ioan, if you get sick on me right in the middle of the living room with the loo not ten steps away, I'll--"

"No," Ioan said, rolling his eyes and waving his hand sharply, dismissively. "God, shut up."

"Shut up?" Matthew raised his eyebrows and let his hand drop. "Right, then."

"No!" Ioan gestured again, his mouth twisting in a way that was oddly helpless, and Matthew took a breath to tell him again to calm down and get hold of himself and explain. But before he quite managed to speak, Ioan moved in close again, his hand curving against Matthew's jaw and his thumb sliding over Matthew's cheek, and Matthew lost his thoughts entirely.

"Matthew," Ioan said. His voice was less urgent now, more...sweet, really, was the only word Matthew could find for it. Ioan smiled again, warm and happy, his thumb moving again in a clumsy caress. "Fuck. Matthew."

Matthew opened his mouth again, this time to ask Ioan if he'd hit his head on something, but Ioan leaned in and kissed him.

It wasn't the sort of kiss Matthew would have expected, if he'd ever thought about kissing Ioan at all. This wasn't a light, clumsy, sloppy-drunk slide of Ioan's lips against his own; it was aggressive, Ioan's mouth almost frantic, demanding. Like he was seizing a chance that might very soon be taken away.

Matthew's first instinct was to pull away. Not in anger, but in confusion; he honestly hadn't expected this, had never had any reason to expect this. Ioan's body was too close, though, holding Matthew against the couch unless Matthew shoved him back, and he was both too tired and not anywhere near angry enough to do that. He wasn't angry at all. He just had no earthly idea what was going on here.

Since he couldn't pull away, he turned his head to the side, away from Ioan, so Ioan's lips trailed damp and warm across his cheek. He could feel Ioan's breath against him, too, shallow sips of air in that same near-frantic rush. "Ioan," he said, bringing his hand up to catch Ioan's wrist. "What are you--"

Ioan turned his wrist to evade Matthew's grip, more easily than it seemed like he should have been able to, as drunk as he was. "Matthew," Ioan said, his voice low and urgent in a way that Matthew didn't properly recognize at all, and it was beginning to scare him a bit, because this was Ioan and if Matthew didn't recognize him then he might as well not recognize much of anything in the world, any of the things he'd been so certain he knew. "Matthew, I--"

He couldn't seem to finish a thought aloud. Matthew looked at Ioan, at how he was backlit by the stupid lamp they'd lost the shade to ages ago so it was just a bare bulb glaring out too brightly across the sitting room. The way it threw the light made Ioan's face a mask, his eyes all but black. And yet Matthew could still see the wild, desperate hope there. In fact the light made it worse, threw everything into sharper relief and laid things bare until Matthew couldn't possibly look away and pretend he hadn't seen.

Whatever he had been about to say, he couldn't, not with Ioan looking at him like that. So he sat there, staring up at Ioan, and he couldn't blame Ioan at all for taking that as food for hope, as assent. It wasn't dissent, certainly; Matthew had no idea at all how he felt about this, hadn't a trace of a more coherent thought than I've obviously missed something, and it was quite significant. I entirely overlooked a great bloody elephant in the room, and how the fuck could I manage that except by being every bit the idiot Jenna said I was? Fucking hell.

Ioan's hand slid up Matthew's arm, gentle and tentative, and his other hand lifted to cradle Matthew's jaw again. His thumb brushed over Matthew's lower lip this time, and Matthew opened his mouth slightly by reflex, to draw in a deeper breath. Before he could exhale it, perhaps even with words attached, Ioan was kissing him again. Softer this time, less frantic, tongue teasing fleetingly against Matthew's lips.

Matthew didn't give way and Ioan stilled, then slowly pulled back, his eyes going to Matthew's and suddenly focusing. There was very nearly an audible click when they did. And perhaps some off-key violins of dawning horror.

"Ioan," Matthew said finally, a bit hoarsely. He had no idea what ought to follow, but confirming their respective identities suddenly seemed terribly important. "Ioan, what--" He licked his lips and could taste the ghost of whatever they'd been serving at the pub earlier. Beer no better than what he himself had been drinking, only different. "What in the hell--"

Ioan took a step back, pressing his fingers against his mouth, and without thought Matthew copied the gesture, catching himself at the last instant and turning his wrist, so that he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

Ioan's expression changed too fast for Matthew to identify, flickering through several iterations before settling into a kind of resolute nausea. Matthew was familiar with the look; it was that of a drunk man working very hard to talk himself out of vomiting through sheer force of will. Matthew dropped his hand to the couch again, mentally kicking himself as hard as he could. Too late, damage done, now good luck cleaning that up, Matthew.

He ought to at least apologize, but he couldn't think of a thing to say.

"I think I need to go to bed," Ioan said, his voice unsteady. He sounded as sick as he looked, like he was almost certainly going to lose the contents of his stomach all over the floor if he wasn't very lucky. Ordinarily Matthew would drag his silly arse to the toilet and then sit there with him until he got it out of his system, but he had a feeling that tonight that would not precisely be welcome.

"Yeah," he said instead, nodding rather stupidly and dragging his fingers through his hair. "Think maybe we both do."

Ioan folded his arms over his chest, a stiff and jerky motion that seemed to leave him even more pale. Matthew eased off the couch and onto his feet, watching Ioan warily. He still couldn't think of anything sensible to say, only meaningless words to patch over the awkwardness, but hopefully that would be better than nothing.

"See you in the morning," Matthew said, after a moment in which neither of them even attempted to move. A distinct flush was coming back into Ioan's face now, which might be a good thing or might very much not, and Matthew was no longer at all certain that he was qualified to make a judgment either way.

"Brand new day tomorrow, and all that," he offered, which was absolutely the wrong thing to say. Ioan gave him a wordless, mortified look and moved off down the hallway toward his bedroom. Matthew hoped he had a rubbish bin or some sort of basin in there with him, because by the great finality with which the door closed, Ioan was not planning to come out again for quite some time. Possibly ever.

Good work, Matthew. Textbook, really. Stellar. How to convince your slightly inappropriately drunk best friend that you hate him, instead of just shoving him off to bed where he could sleep it off and the both of you could work devotedly to pretend it never happened in the first place tomorrow. Because what else could you possibly be expected to do, when your best friend kissed you with no sort of warning at all, not in all the time you've known him?

Of course, there was always the possibility that there had been signs, of some variety or another, over all of that time, and Matthew had just overlooked or ignored or otherwise been off in an entirely different story than reality. Which was not anything like the way Matthew thought of himself as fitting into the world, and if he let himself get thinking on that path now he was going to be awake all night, turning things around and over in his head and second-guessing his own thoughts until he gave himself an aneurysm.

He switched off all of the lights and checked the front door, then started down the hall to his own room. He caught himself walking lightly, on his toes, trying not to break the careful, painful quiet that had descended and was completely alien to their flat. He shut the door carefully and flopped down on the bed, blinking up at the ceiling.

He could just see the clock out of the corner of his eye, showing four AM in serene digital lines. So he likely wouldn't venture out again until after noon at the earliest. Surely everything would be normal again by then. With any luck at all, it would be.
**
Noon turned out to be something of a pipe dream. It was nearly two in the afternoon by the time he quite managed to make it out of his bed and over to the door. The need for a piss was what finally did him in, otherwise he could have been very happy hiding under the covers for the entire day.

But beer that went in did demand to come out. He tugged the door open and stumbled out into the hall, tripping over something lying on the floor between Ioan's door and his. He caught himself on the wall and made his way blindly the rest of the way to the bathroom, took care of his business, and spent a few moments dousing his face thoroughly in water until he could open his eyes properly and manage something resembling coherent thought.

He looked at himself in the mirror. His face was puffy, his eyes were bloodshot, he had a spot on his nose the size of a pencil eraser, and his hair was sticking up in rebellious clumps. Gorgeous. This was obviously going to be a fantastic day.

He wet his fingers and ran them through his hair until it was at least lying down and staying off his face, then turned the water off and stepped into the hall again, looking for what he had stumbled over. It had been soft and lumpy when he kicked it out of his way, which didn't fit with anything one might expect to be in the hallway of their flat. Then again, he didn't expect anything to be in the hallway of their flat.

His brow furrowed when he saw it was a duffel bag, full to the point that the zipper didn't quite meet. Ioan's door was open, another similarly full bag peeking out at the edge of the frame. Matthew moved to stand in the doorway, blinking against the afternoon light streaming in through the window. "Ioan?"

Ioan looked up from the foot of the bed, where he was stuffing t-shirts into a third bag. "There you are. Was beginning to worry you might be dead."

"What's all this?"

Ioan shot him a puzzled look, the expression itself typical slightly-mocking Ioan but his eyes guarded and unreadable in a way that Matthew was not at all used to. "I'm packing, Math. What else does it look like?"

"Why are you packing?" Matthew leaned against the doorframe, rubbing at his eyes with the heel of his hand and wishing Ioan could refrain from these sort of surprises until Matthew felt slightly more awake and in proper control of the world. At least let him get some caffeine and a cigarette in himself first. "I mean, why would you need to..." His stomach twisted and dropped abruptly. "You're moving out?"

Ioan shook his head, scowling at the t-shirt in his hand. "No."

"You're just packing up all your things for fun, then." Matthew glared down at the carpet, kicking at the seam where it met the wood floor in the hallway. He was not feeling nearly strong enough to handle this situation with the care it called for, to handle Ioan with the care he called for. It was all painfully delicate, and he wasn't quite at half of his best.

"I've jot a job, remember?" Ioan's voice was flat, not mocking as it ought to be. "I need clothes to go film for three months or whatever the hell it is."

Oh. Right. "The boat movies."

Ioan shot him a murderous look, and Matthew actually felt relieved. It was a genuine reaction, a chink in the ice; it was a start. He just had to keep pushing at the opening.

"Is this even my shirt?" Ioan asked, waving it at him. Matthew squinted and then shook his head, taking a cautious step into the room.

"No. It's mine."

Ioan folded it very precisely and set it at the foot of the bed. "There you are, then."

Matthew bit his lower lip for a moment, trying to marshal something resembling nonchalance and rational argument. "I thought that you didn't start filming until the end of the month."

"Well. No." Ioan held up another shirt and glanced over at Matthew, who shook his head wordlessly. He'd never be caught dead in something that orange. "I'm taking the train back home. Visit everybody. Stay with my parents."

Matthew stared at him, feeling his eyebrows head up for a location somewhere around his hairline. "You're going to stay with your parents for three weeks?"

"Two and a half."

"Your brother and sister will be there as well, you know."

Ioan nodded slowly, folding another shirt and then tossing it aside. "They do live there, yes."

"For two and a half weeks."

Ioan clicked his tongue in irritation, stiffly reaching for another shirt. "Why the fuck do you keep repeating yourself?"

"The same reason you're going home, apparently, which is that we've both gone more than a little mad," Matthew said. "What convoluted reasoning are you using to justify doing this to yourself?"

Ioan threw down the shirt in his hands and stared at Matthew with an icy, incredulous look that killed off any and every thing Matthew was trying to gather as witty remarks to ease the tension. Ioan didn't look furious or hurt; he looked shut-down, unreadable. It was like a door had been slammed in Matthew's face.

"I need to leave in about twenty minutes," Ioan said finally. "So I'm sorry, but could you shove off and let me finish packing all of this?"

"Ioan." Matthew took a deep breath and braced himself a bit. "Don't you think we should talk?"

"You don't talk." Ioan zipped up the bag, hefted it experimentally, and unzipped it again. "You tell me that all the time, Matthew. You don't want to talk, you don't like to talk, you deal with things in your own way, and your own way doesn't involve talking. I can do the speech by heart, if you like."

"For this, I'll talk."

"Will you?" Ioan laughed and shook his head, shoving a pair of jeans into the bag, which brought it to the same overstuffed state as the other two. "That's wonderful. But this time I'd rather not, actually. Funny, really."

"It's not funny at all." Matthew swallowed and kicked at the carpet again. "Look, it's just..."

"I said I'd rather not."

"And you don't have the time."

Ioan looked up again, something sparking in his eyes at the heavy sarcasm in Matthew's voice. Matthew tried for a challenging expression, as near as he could manage; fighting was not his favorite way to spend an afternoon, but if they got in a fight, Ioan couldn't leave.

Apparently his plan wasn't as subtle as he'd thought. Ioan's expression cooled again and he zipped up the bag. "And I don't have time. Exactly."

"Ioan, I really think we ought to talk about this."

"Why? For fuck's sake, why?"

Matthew hesitated, very much aware that there was a correct answer and fumbling to find it. From the slow, eloquent lift of Ioan's eyebrow, that wasn't a subtle effort either. "Because I don't want to bugger up our friendship."

Points for the sentiment, but utter fuck-up on the wording, Matthew. He dug his fingertips into his palms and braced himself to see how that was going to go over.

Ioan's other eyebrow went up, but his mouth twisted in what Matthew was almost certain became a smile after Ioan ducked his head to shield his face as he pawed haphazardly through the clothing left on the bed.

"Our friendship is important to me," Matthew said, a bit desperately, and Ioan's hands stilled. When he looked up at Matthew, he looked serious, but Matthew's chest eased a little to see that it was honest. There was something in his eyes other than that slammed-door blankness that had slowed Matthew's brain to a panicked stutter.

"I think the best thing for our friendship," Ioan said quietly, "is to not talk about it, at all, until we've both got some distance."

"Distance."

Ioan nodded slightly. "I think three months ought to be just about ideal."

Matthew's throat was dry. "You know that's time, not distance."

Ioan's jaw tightened. "It's a metaphor, you miserable shit."

"No." Matthew shook his head. "It isn't. It's figurative language, but it's not--"

"Matthew, for fuck's sake." Ioan laughed, and Matthew finally took a full, proper, non-nauseated breath for the first time that day. "You're impossible."

Matthew shrugged a little, allowing himself a tiny smile. "And anyway, it's more like four."

"Four what?"

"Months."

"Oh." Ioan ran his hand through his hair and stared down at his bags. "I guess so."

"Don't go stay with your parents."

"They're rather expecting me now."

"They're used to you changing your mind every ten minutes or so." Matthew tried to say it lightly, but stumbled a bit as Ioan's smile faded and he shook his head.

"I need the space, Math. The break." Ioan rubbed his jaw, brow furrowing like he was trying to make a decision, then met Matthew's eyes. "I really do. It's not a whim, it's...I need some time, and some distance, just...some room to think."

Matthew badly wanted to argue, to tell Ioan that he was running off like a scared puppy instead of doing the proper masculine thing, which was of course to be utterly passive and not bring up the subject of kissing under any circumstances for a very, very long time. And to not bring up the subject of kissing each other ever.

But the look in Ioan's eyes was so genuine and on the edge of desperate that Matthew found he couldn't say a word. Apparently Ioan really needed this, needed time and distance to turn things around in his head and come to some sort of conclusion. Matthew wasn't sure what that might mean, or what conclusion there might be to come to besides ignoring the whole thing forever. But Ioan wanted--or needed--to do it, which meant...

Matthew kept shying away from what it meant. Or bumping up against a wall, perhaps, a wall made of discomfort and unsettled feelings and other things he typically anesthetized with booze.

And sarcasm. Sarcasm was useful. "Just promise me you're not going to vanish into thin air and stick me with the rent, then."

Ioan looked startled for a moment, eyes going all wide and ridiculous. That look always made Matthew want to touch him, punch him in the shoulder or ruffle his hair or something. Couldn't do that today, though, not hardly. Ioan smiled slightly, shaking his head, and for a moment he might have looked a bit sad. Matthew resolutely turned away from that idea before it could dig too deeply into his brain; overanalyzing Ioan's ever look and word and touch for the past however-long he could remember was nothing but an excellent way to drive himself insane. There were no hidden meanings. He was not acknowledging them.

Ioan gave him a mocking salute. "Wouldn't do that to you." He moved over to the closet, and Matthew found that having Ioan's back to him was a dozen times more comfortable. "Though it's not as if it would be difficult to rent out my room."

"Don't even joke about it," Matthew said sharply. "I'm not dealing with a new flatmate, I've only just managed to get you housebroken."

Ioan glanced back over his shoulder, raising an eyebrow at him, and Matthew shrugged defiantly, realizing he was parroting Ioan's own words back to him just slightly too late to stop himself.

"Thank you for the compliment. I think." Ioan's tone was painfully dry, which would be reassuring if Matthew had been permitting himself to interpret anything. "How many pairs of shoes do you think I need to take?"

Matthew blinked. "Er. One?"

"That's what I thought last time, but I turned out to be terribly wrong." Ioan frowned into the depths of the closet.

"How many pairs of shoes do you own?"

Ioan leaned farther in and squinted. "Six or eight?"

Matthew shook his head. "I'm not getting involved in this at all. I'm going to take a shower."

"If I'm gone before you get out--"

Matthew waited, but Ioan seemed to be caught in his moment of hesitation, looking down at his shoes with a pained expression and his mouth slightly open.

"I'm sure you'll call lots," Matthew said finally.

Ioan blinked and nodded, shutting the closet door without taking any of the shoes. "Yeah. Of course."

"And send your rent once a month."

"Absolutely."

"And I'll see you end of the summer." Matthew ran his hand over his hair and took the t-shirt from the end of the bed. "So...have a good trip, say hullo to your parents for me, and I'm sure you'll be absolutely brilliant on the boat."

He retreated down the hall without waiting for Ioan's response, which had an equal likelihood of being an obscene gesture or a hurt look and Matthew wasn't sure he could muster a proper response to either. He was entirely placed out of the proper-response category this morning, in general.

He went directly to the loo and turned the shower on high. It was a temperamental system of pipes that made a horrible amount of noise, so once it was on he didn't have to worry about hearing a fucking thing, and he fully intended to stay in it until he went deaf.

He only made it to the point that the hot water gave out, but that was good enough. He dragged his fingers through his wet hair until it stood straight up, the only way to keep the unruly mess from drying very oddly, then wrapped a towel around his waist and put his t-shirt on. Properly armored and looking absolutely foolish, he stepped out into the flat.

They were both fairly busy people, away from home significantly more often than they were there. That would seem to indicate, logically, that the sense he was having at the moment that the flat was very, very empty was ridiculous. It wasn't any more empty than usual. Why he might be feeling that way was a question that fell into the category of things he was ignoring.

He ignored all the way to the kitchen for a glass of water, and then back to his bedroom, where he found a note stuck to the door. He sat on the edge of the bed to read it, frowning at Ioan's cramped scrawl. Wanker had the handwriting of a serial killer. Matthew was fairly used to deciphering it, though, after all these months of phone messages and explanations of why the electricity was shut off or where his favorite jacket had gone off to.

I should have told you right off. I'm sorry I had more time to think about it than you did.

Matthew read it twice, then crumpled it up in his fist and lay back on the bed. The ceiling was dull and water-stained and he examined it with the passionate intensity of a man willing himself to be distracted.

Didn't take, of course.

"I've got three months to think about it now, don't I?" He bit his lip, blinking against the sudden blurring in his eyes. "You fucker."
**
If asked to describe his summer in the form of a primary-school essay, Matthew would have written about acting in a small play, doing a few auditions, a sincerely unpleasant bout of food poisoning, and spending a week camping in the highlands with his cousin.

If asked to sum it up with one activity, and required to be completely honest, he would have said lying on the couch, beer in hand, telly blaring on, trying very hard not to think until the point where he gave in to the inevitable and began thinking with a kind of rabid intensity. Runner-up would be the marathon cleaning binge, of which there were several over the course of the summer, where the entire flat was scrubbed to within an inch of its life and all of the furniture rearranged. By summer's end it was all back precisely where it started, but it took a wide route around the flat to get there.

If asked what single item of clothing best symbolized the three months and handful of weeks bridging late spring to the first hint of fall, he would grudgingly be forced to admit that he wore that fucking t-shirt Ioan had appropriated God knew when and then given back the day he left a noticeable amount. Once a week, roughly. Not for any particular reason, it just kept finding itself at the top of the laundry pile when he went looking.

If asked for a song, he couldn't give a title, but would hum a few bars of the pop smash of the summer, the one played loudly in all the clubs and bars he went to to try to either forget what he was thinking about or find something to replace it. His luck was mixed at best, but the song got all wound up in his head good and proper.

The mood of the season was confusion shading into irritation at one side and anticipation at the other. The taste was dozens of dozens of cigarettes and beers. The colors were the shades of paint on the walls of the flat, all streaked with a hundred kinds of sunlight as the days went long and then began to turn around again.
**
No shoot that relied on the cooperation of boats and the weather had ever been finished on time in the history of the world--or, well, of film, anyway. After the second message from Ioan on the machine about the wrap being pushed back, Matthew stopped actually listening to them, just hit delete after he'd heard enough to know that was the subject.

So it was something of a surprise the day he came home and nearly fell over the collection of duffel bags in the entryway.

"Matthew!" He heard Ioan bouncing down the hall, footsteps startlingly loud in the flat he'd gotten used to being quiet. Ioan was smiling when he came into sight, his broad and slightly ridiculous grin making Matthew's chest tighten unexpectedly. Matthew quickly glanced away, down at the bags, focusing on kicking them over by the wall and out of his way. He hadn't had the faintest idea it was going to be today, he hadn't had any time to prepare, he'd rehearsed any number of things to say but he hadn't decided on one--

Probably should've listened to those messages, eh, Matthew? Idiot.

"How'd you know it was me?" he asked, which absolutely was not part of any of the rehearsals. His voice sounded a bit brittle, close to their old easy mocking but not quite there. "Could've been anyone letting themselves in. You didn't lock the door."

Ioan hesitated a moment, his mouth still open, confusion flickering in his eyes, then smoothly rallied himself to reply in kind. He managed more of the ease than Matthew had; but then, he'd had time to practice, hadn't he? "Recognized you cursing all over the place as you came in."

"I nearly broke my neck on your luggage." He kicked at the bags again, shoving them into a messy pile. "You ever heard of a proper suitcase, mate? Meant to ask you that before you left, but I thought surely someone on that set would explain to you."

"We were a bit busy," Ioan pointed out, rolling his eyes and picking up one of the bags. He boosted it up on his shoulder, worrying the strap between his fingers. "Sorry I didn't lock up."

"Was teasing. It's still not exactly a dangerous neighborhood, you know." He looked Ioan up and down, studying him for changes. The most obvious ones were the easiest to call out aloud, but the least interesting, the least meaningful. "God, you got fucking tan. And your hair. What the hell did they do to your hair?"

Ioan flushed and laughed a little, running his free hand over the close-shorn bristle that now covered his head. "Cut the extensions off and it just looked like hell, it was awful, so I told them to take the lot of it. Start over. Maybe it'll grow in a bit more manageable this time, yeah?"

"Don't look like yourself," Matthew said before he could stop himself, his voice coming out oddly, a rough mutter. He shook his head and reached for another bag before he could be tempted to see Ioan's reaction to that. "It'll grow back even worse, you know. That's how it goes. Like if girls stop shaving their legs once they start."

"When did you become an expert on g--" The catch was almost imperceptible, but Matthew noticed. "The difficulties of shaving your legs?"

"You mean your sister doesn't piss and moan about it constantly every time she gets dressed to go out?" Matthew forced a smile and shook his head again, pointing toward the hall to the bedrooms. "Come on, let's get all this out of the way and have a drink."

"My sister doesn't go out," Ioan said, shifting the bag higher on his shoulder and leading the way to his room. "She's a perfect little angel of a homebody."

"I can't tell if you're trying to disparage my sister or if you're just deluded about yours."

"Mostly disparaging, but I guess it can be a little of both." Ioan smiled, not quite turning his head but darting his eyes sideways toward Matthew. Matthew didn't think it was entirely his imagination that Ioan was starting to relax a little. Apparently all they had to do was pretend that things were exactly the same as they had been, and they would be. That was...well, that was wonderful, obviously. That was exactly what they both ought to want. Exactly what Matthew ought to want in particular.

Fucking hell.

He threw the bag over in the direction of the closet and clapped his hands. "Right, well, you've got all the time in the world to unpack. Let's go down to the pub. You can tell me stories about getting drunk with Robert Lindsay, and if that ginger bloke they cast as your best friend was as much of a twat as he came off as at the auditions."

Ioan laughed, setting his bag on the bed and shaking his head. "Jamie? No, Jamie's brilliant. We got on fine." His smile faded a bit and he looked at Matthew intently for a moment. "Actually, I think you'd like him. The two of you would scare the hell out of everyone, but you'd be quite the pair."

Matthew shifted his weight, unaccountably irritated by the idea, and especially by the slight smile that crossed Ioan's mouth when he saw Matthew's reaction. "Yeah, I'm sure. Invite him round to the pub one night, I'll tell him embarrassing stories about you."

"I thought you might." Ioan rolled his eyes and then suddenly stepped forward and grabbed Matthew in a clumsy hug. Matthew's breath hitched and he leaned into Ioan, curving one of his arms loosely around his back. "Fuck, Matthew," Ioan muttered in his ear. "Missed you."

"You missed the cursing and the petty insults?" Matthew managed a slight laugh, patting Ioan's shoulder. "That's a bit sad, mate. Nobody on the set would make fun of you at all?"

"They didn't quite have your style." Ioan let him go and stepped back, with that almost-relaxed smile again. "It's not fair to make the comparison, since you've had so much more practice."

Matthew watched him for a moment, struck yet again by the utterly foreign discomfort of not being able to tell what Ioan was thinking. The slight smile on Ioan's mouth was almost sad, almost cruel, almost mocking. Matthew was used to settling the question by watching the rest of Ioan's face, all of the little tells in flickers of emotion and expression that spilled over Ioan's usual rather tenuous sense of self-control and self-censure and gave away his thoughts. Every reaction, his enthusiasms and hurts and sorrows and joys--Matthew was used to them playing out on Ioan's face like a light show, because if Ioan was terrible at checking himself in front of strangers--and he was--he'd never had a real reason to need to check himself in front of Matthew at all.

Right now, though, trying to read Ioan's face was like looking at frosted glass. Smooth and blank and maybe he could catch a ghost of what was on the other side, but it was too distorted to be reliable.

Most likely Ioan couldn't entirely keep his heart out of his eyes, but Matthew couldn't bring himself to meet them long enough to find out. From his fleeting glances, they were troubled, which was as good as meaningless. He knew Ioan was troubled. He was fairly fucking troubled himself and slightly afraid it might turn into an explosion if he wasn't careful.

"You said something about a beer?" Ioan said, turning away with an abruptness that made it clear that Matthew's halfhearted scrutiny hadn't gone unnoticed. "Could do with one, actually. Or a few."

"Course," Matthew said, touching his pocket. "Let's go down to the pub. First round's on me, then you're buying, since you're the one working and all."

"Don't we have anything here?" Ioan flushed slightly at Matthew's look. "I'm tired, all right? Traveled halfway around the bloody planet today. Or it felt like it, anyway. Tomorrow, I promise, I'll be ready to go out and buy drinks for everyone you know, but tonight I've a very strong desire to get reacquainted with the couch and my bed."

"That's perfectly understandable," Matthew said. "You didn't need the whole explanation, I was only going to agree with you."

"Then what was that look for?"

"The very idea that there wouldn't be any beer in the house. Who the hell do you think you live with, anyway?"

Ioan's smile widened, ending up broad and generous and honest. Matthew smiled back, relief easing the tightness in his chest again. Should probably sack up and admit that the tension was unhappiness at having Ioan be unhappy. He still wasn't ready for a detailed analysis of what that meant, but calling it what it was, that had to be worth partial credit.

"I'll get us both one, then," Ioan said, lifting his hand to push at his hair and stopping short when he didn't find it. "You want to find something on telly?"

Matthew was still looking at Ioan's hand, hovering just above his hair. "Not quite used to that yet?"

Ioan made a face, clenching his hand in a loose fist and letting it fall to his side. "No. It's all strange. After all that filming I'm actually used to it being long, really, so this is..."

"Wrong," Matthew finished, and they both blinked as the word lingered in the air with odd finality, like he'd inadvertently made a pronouncement.

Ioan recovered himself first, shooting Matthew a quick, crooked smile and moving past him out of the room, his footsteps still loud and startling as he went to the kitchen. Matthew looked at the duffels on the bed, two still closed up as eggshells, one bleeding bright colors out all over the sheets. He had a sudden flash of an image in his mind--Ioan standing there with his face closed and carefully blank, Matthew reaching out to touch his mouth, slowly and gently, pulling open an invisible zipper so words came out, spilling truth like those colors.

He shook his head and turned away, crossing the hall to his own room. He kicked off his shoes and tugged his t-shirt over his head; it had coffee all down the front, which was the whole reason he'd come home in the first place. Entirely an accident. Otherwise it would've been hours before he came home at all.

He grabbed a clean shirt from the top of his pile of laundry, then paused, rubbing his fingers absently at the fabric. Fuck, what if Ioan thought he'd changed his clothes for him, got all cleaned up as some sort of...

Not that Matthew didn't want to at least bring the subject back up, kicking and screaming if necessary. Unless Ioan was completely opposed to ever bringing it up again, which was exactly what Matthew couldn't tell. But if Ioan got the idea that Matthew was trying to be, what, seductive, or something, it might make him uncomfortable or awkward or--

"Have you gotten lost?" Ioan called from the kitchen, his voice perfectly, mockingly normal. Matthew closed his eyes and punched himself sharply in the leg.

"Fuck off, I'll be there in a minute," he called. He changed his jeans for a pair of sweats, then looked at himself critically in the mirror for a moment, trying to determine if he looked appropriately casual, unconcerned, not giving a fuck. Making a concerted effort to appear as if he wasn't making any kind of effort was precisely the level of absurdity that the day he was having called for.

When he turned away from the mirror, Ioan was standing in the doorway, looking at him with puzzlement, with a bit of affection unless that was Matthew's wishful thinking.

"I thought maybe you'd gone out the window and made a run for it," Ioan said, leaning against the doorframe.

"Don't be ridiculous," Matthew said, stepping away from the mirror and hoping Ioan hadn't noticed he was looking into it at all. "Why would I do that?"

Ioan ducked his head a little, hiding his face. "Because this is the most uncomfortable afternoon either of has had in quite some time?"

"Speak for yourself." Matthew balled up his dirty t-shirt and threw it in the general direction of the hamper. "I bollixed up three separate auditions while you were away. You want to talk about uncomfortable?"

That was supposed to throw Ioan off-track, get him asking about the auditions instead. For once it didn't take, because Matthew didn't have any kind of luck whatsoever.

"Math." Ioan rubbed his forehead with the back of his hand, looking down at the floor. "Look, I know you know what I mean."

"I'm sure I don't."

"Matthew!" That was the first time Matthew could recall Ioan shouting at him since...ever, really, including back at school when they were younger. Ioan didn't push back. He gave way, he moved over, he could be gently pressured into changing his mind.

Apparently not now, though.

"Come have a fucking drink," Ioan said, his voice going from pissed off to tired as if he'd flipped a switch. "One fucking drink, and then we'll sort what we're going to do about all this."

Matthew nodded. "All right. But that might take two drinks."

Ioan smacked the wall hard enough to make Matthew jump, then turned on his heel and walked out. For a moment Matthew thought that now he had pushed too hard and Ioan was going to be the one to make a run for it. He stumbled over the rubbish on his floor to get to the doorway, throat too dry to call Ioan's name as he hurried down the hall.

Ioan was sitting on the couch, slouched down with his legs stretched out in front of him, staring fixedly at the television. He had his drink firmly in hand, another sitting on the floor. Matthew sat down next to him in careful silence.

Ioan nodded down toward the floor. "That's for you."

"Thanks."

Ioan kept staring at the telly for a while. Matthew watched him out of the corner of his eye, finally picking up the beer and turning his attention to that, desperately wishing he could get some kind of a handle on the tension between them. It kept fluctuating madly, completely unpredictable, and he just wasn't very good at that sort of thing.

"I wish you'd stop making jokes," Ioan said suddenly, twisting his fingers around his bottle. "When you just pretend there's nothing, I can at least--but then you make jokes."

Matthew opened his mouth, then closed it. Couldn't argue that he hadn't been doing exactly that. "I'm sorry."

"I should be sorry. I am sorry. I shouldn't have done that. I got carried away. I didn't expect to see you when I got back that night, I thought you would have gone to bed. But you were there, and I was a bit drunker than I ought to have been, and--" Ioan stopped and swallowed hard, the glass squeaking a bit under the press of his fingers. "I'm sorry."

"You didn't--" Matthew took a drink, trying to find some kind of order for the jumble of words in his head. There wasn't one that made any sense, so in the end he just tossed something out at random. He couldn't possibly make things worse, at this point. "How long had you been wanting to do that?"

Ioan's brow furrowed, his eyes still fixed stubbornly ahead. "Does it matter?"

"The note you left said you were sorry you'd had more time to think about it than I did. How much time did you have, exactly?"

Ioan shrugged and took a drink, closing his eyes. "Don't know exactly. A while."

"I thought we were friends."

Ioan's eyes snapped open and he looked at Matthew, finally, even if it was in a mix of indignation and horror. "We are."

"So you weren't just being nice to me so I'd drop my guard and you could make your move while I was all unsuspecting and innocent?"

"How could you think I would--" Ioan stopped, his eyes narrowing. "Oh, you wanker, you're making a joke again. I ought to punch you, Matthew, I really should. I am seriously considering it."

"Not joking, exactly, more trying to provoke you into--" Matthew could feel his face turning a shade of red that actually hurt. He wanted absolutely nothing more than to bolt from the room. He always ran for it well before things got this uncomfortable. Always.

"Stop." Ioan took another drink and put his bottle down on the floor, then pointed at Matthew sharply. "Stop trying to provoke me. I don't like it and I especially don't appreciate it when I'm trying to apologize and offer to get the fuck out if that's what you want."

"Making you wander the streets for a few hours would be entertaining, but I'm not that petty, Ioan. I'm not even actually angry, actually, so that's really not necessary at all."

"I meant permanently, you impossible idiot."

"You mean move out?" Ioan nodded, his jaw clenched hard enough that it looked painful and his eyes white around the edges. Matthew waved his hands in frustration. "I told you before, that's out of the question. I'm not training up someone new. So just stop even bringing it up, would you?"

"I will when you stop joking and provoking." Matthew opened his mouth and Ioan snapped his fingers sharply in front of his face. "Yes, that rhymed. One comment and I really will hit you. And move out." Matthew nodded slightly in surrender and Ioan looked away again, picking up his drink and draining the last bit. "You know what, forget all of this. I'm tired. I'm going to bed."

"Ioan."

"Goodnight."

"Ioan, I don't think we can fix this by avoiding it."

Ioan stopped, staring at him incredulously. "What do you think I've been doing for the past half an hour, Matthew? I'm trying not to avoid and you're not having any of it. I give the fuck up. You win. All right?"

"It's just I'm not good at talking about things. You know that."

"What do you suggest, then?" Ioan asked with elaborate, painfully sarcastic courtesy. "Interpretive dance?"

"No, it's just--" Matthew took a rough breath, getting to his feet and making a slow circle around the couch. "Fuck, I need another beer for this conversation. The thing is, Ioan, you're trying your hardest, I'm trying my hardest, we're just going off in different directions, is all."

"I'm inclined to believe you're not trying at all."

"I am. I promise you I am. I'm just not--" He came to a halt and took another breath, then threw his hands up in frustration. "Look, will you just--"

"Just what?"

"Shut up for a minute."

Ioan shook his head irritably, opening his mouth to speak, but at Matthew's look stopped and waited with an expectant expression. Matthew took a deep breath and made another circuit around the couch, trying to keep his hands from twitching too badly with his desire to wave them in the air.

"All right," he said finally, looking at Ioan. "All right." He crossed over to him before he had any kind of a chance to change his mind, and caught Ioan's face between his hands. He kissed Ioan quickly, lightly, not trusting that he could do anything else without making a fool of himself.

When he pulled away Ioan stared at him for a long moment, eyes wide and face flushed. "What was that?"

Matthew let his hands fall to his sides, feeling his own face turning red again. "I'm a bit out of practice, but I would hope it's identifiable at least."

"I'm confused." Ioan had also apparently forgotten about keeping his face blank, because Matthew could tell he was confused, and also that he wasn't anything else, such as once again planning to punch him.

Matthew shrugged slightly, shoving his hands into his pockets. "I've had time to think about it now. Caught up to you a bit."

Ioan was still blinking, brow furrowed deeply. "But you've been being an obnoxious prat all afternoon."

"I can only hope that's not honestly a problem, or this is doomed from the start."

Ioan shifted his weight back on his heels, eyebrows going up. "And what, exactly, is this?"

Matthew shrugged again, hands curling into fists in his pockets. "We're best friends. That's...nonnegotiable, for me. So we'll be best friends who...do that. And if that doesn't work out, we'll be best friends who don't do that. But you're not leaving. You're not running off on me. You've tried that once now and it was...awful and you're not doing that again. Got it?"

Ioan was fighting not to smile now. Matthew could see it, and for some reason it was making the tightness in his chest increase instead of lessen. Or maybe it was an entirely different kind of tension he was feeling now. "I can't go off to work? That might be a problem when it comes to paying the rent."

"You can work, you just can't leave like you did last time." Matthew swallowed hard, his throat dry again. "Not like you might be leaving for good."

Ioan nodded slightly. "You're not allowed to either."

"Of course, all bets are off in case of fabulous Hollywood fame and fortune."

"In that case, I'll just follow you." Ioan's smile broadened for a moment, then he tilted his head and grew serious. "You're really sure? We can just drop it and never...I'm all right with that. You're sure?"

"I've had a bit of time to think about this, like I said."

"You keep just saying this and that." Ioan gestured vaguely. "What will those include, exactly?"

Matthew rolled his eyes. "Well, I don't really have a list, Ioan." He hesitated for a minute at the odd look that crossed Ioan's face. "Wait, do you have a list?"

Ioan shrugged, blushing again. "I've still had more time. I'm ahead of you."

"I really have no idea what to do with you." Matthew shook his head, glancing away toward the kitchen.

"That's where the list comes in handy." Ioan sounded so utterly serious that Matthew looked at him again, and Ioan laughed, reaching out to catch his arm and tug him close. Ioan rugged lightly at his arm and then kissed him, slowly and lightly at first but not for long, and Matthew closed his eyes and let himself feel it, taste it.

Ioan let him go after a moment and Matthew blinked slowly, catching his breath. "Does that give you a better idea?" Ioan asked softly.

Matthew nodded. "Yeah. Does. This...this is good. Let's do this."