shadowed [four]
Shadowed
Status: completed
Warnings: LOTS of them; see tags
Rating: R
Word Count: 102k
Early the next morning, Matt's father wakes him up by pounding on the door for five minutes, then barging into his room and pulling him out by the hair. "Your school closed again this morning," he says, almost angrily, but drops Matt's hair once he's off the bed. "So, I called River-" River? What the hell? "-And he said that he's very willing to take you earlier today and return you tomorrow evening. If he likes you, he might keep you until Thursday morning." His face contorts into a manic grin.
"River?"
His father stares down at him, then snaps, "Heath. River Heath? Christ, kid, you'd think that you'd remember a little more…"
Heath. Dallas. Matt nods once and allows himself to relax on the floor. It's just Dallas.
But when the thought of just sitting around in Dallas' apartment or house or whatever hits him, Matt wonders if he should even trust the guy. There's nothing to say that he should, even if he's different than the others, and immediately gave his father a fake first name. At least, he seems different than the others. His hesitance in touching Matt, how he followed him home, how he paid for the dog food when Matt was on the edge of a panic attack...
Regardless, Matt doesn't know. The idea of someone actually taking him out for something other than sex is a little jarring. He almost doesn't want to believe it.
"He'll be here in fifteen minutes, so shower and get your ass ready, I'm going to work." With that, his father leaves his bedroom, slamming the door behind him. Matt drops to the floor. Just Dallas. Nothing to be worried about. His relief floods over him in waves, and he doesn't know he's fallen asleep until someone's saying his name loudly.
"Matt? Matt!" When he opens his eyes, Dallas' face comes into focus slowly. "Are you all right?"
After a quick check, Matt nods. "Sorry, I guess... I fell asleep."
Dallas sighs softly and helps Matt up to his feet. "No, don't worry about it. Are you ready to go?"
Go? "I'm not going anywhere with you."
With another sigh, Dallas sits Matt onto his bed, settling down beside him. Matt absently wonders if it's supposed to be a 'equal-man' sort of thing, so that Matt isn't intimidated. Hell, Matt's intimidated by a lot of men, regardless of size. What matters comes down to their psyche, their ego, and the amount stuffed into their bank account. "I have four thousand dollars a night riding on getting you out of here and away from any of his... friends... and I'm not going to just let you stay here so that he can come home early and, I don't know, send you off to somebody else."
"I can't stay with you. He'll know."
Matt doesn't miss the grimace on Dallas' face, or the flash of emotion that courses through his eyes. "Yeah, I know. Just... Humor me, all right? Don't give into him, please."
It's the first time any of the men paying for his time have used the word 'please', and Matt finds the six-letter word more endearing to him than anything he's ever heard. "Yeah, okay. Do I need to bring anything?"
A slow shake of the head and Dallas stands to his feet. "No, I'll give you a change of clothes there. You don't... You do normally come home with a change of clothes, don't you?"
Matt shrugs, the muscles surrounding his shoulder blades tightening. Dallas doesn't press the issue, just gestures Matt out of the room. "Your dad said you're not supposed to touch anything when he's not here."
"Except for anything in my bedroom. Which, you know, isn't much."
"It's a hell of a life."
Matt knows it's just bait to try to get him to go to the police, to child services, anything, but he's not going to, not while things stay the way they are. He's not happy with his life - he hasn't ever been, not really - but he's not going to screw it up more. He either needs Dallas to keep doing what he's doing, or to get out of his life completely.
Instead, he bypasses Dallas' comment and asks, "Why didn't you get me on Thursdays, too?"
"I figured he'd catch on." He carefully treads around saying Matt's father's name, but Matt doesn't blame him. It isn't a name Matt particularly likes for himself anymore. "I didn't want it taken away from you just because your dad got a little suspicious."
"He's not my dad," Matt says immediately. When Dallas gives him a confused look, he continues with, "'Dad' implies that we do stuff together, and not this kind of stuff. ' Dad' implies that we're family, that he actually cares about what happens to me, not because I rake in money but because he actually cares. That man hasn't done any of that for over two years. Hell, even before my mom got sick, he wasn't that kind of a guy. He was better at faking, but..." He stops talking. Dallas silently urges him to continue, placing a hand on his shoulder, his neck, anywhere he probably thinks is safe, but Matt ducks out of his reach. "Come on," Matt says dully. "Let's get this over with."
Dallas' Volvo is even nicer on the inside than on the outside; heated seats give Matt's nerves more feeling than they've had in a long time, and the stereo plays some sort of modern classical music softly. When Matt first hears it, he sends Dallas a look that's almost appalled. "It's a long story," is all he offers, then lets Matt play with it until they arrive at his house.
"Wow," Matt can't help but utter when they pull up in front of a three story house. It's in a part of town he's never seen before, probably in the high-end neighborhood, and the closest house is a probably a block away. "And you live here alone?"
Dallas goes tense, but still manages to answer, "I do now," and continues up the walkway to his front door, pulling out his keys as he walks. "Come on, I'll show you your room for when you're here."
Matt pushes away the triggered memories of his room at Bill's house and Harlan's house and rushes to catch up with Dallas. He isn't the same, he desperately thinks, and prays that he isn't.
Dallas leaves the door open behind him, muttering to himself about wet shoes and Matt takes his time following him in. He feels out of his element; he's never allowed to do what he wants when he wants to. It's always an order of some sort.
After a few moments, Dallas, as he's taking off his shoes, asks, "Could you get the door, please? It's getting kind of cold with all that winter weather, you know…" It's a suggestion, and Dallas seems like he's a relatively cool-tempered kind of guy, but Matt can't really help feeling like he's being ordered. He shuts it quickly, but when he turns back around to apologize, Dallas is already walking towards the kitchen as though Matt has been there for years. Like he trusts Matt.
Keeping in mind that Dallas doesn't outwardly seem like the rest of his father's clientele, Matt follows Dallas, and says, "Why d'you want to help me so much?" Before Dallas has had the chance to think about responding, or even fully comprehend what he'd been asked, Matt regrets it. "Never mind," he mutters, turning around to return to the entryway to take off his shoes.
Dallas' voice echoes as he answers, loudly but not angrily, "You started to have a panic attack at a supermarket. Something was up." Matt easily catches on to Dallas' avoidance of the word 'wrong', but he won't comment on it. He's still bursting with questions, but he knows he won't ask them. He's not allowed, he's never allowed, and just because Dallas seems to be a loving, caring kind of person doesn't mean that he always is the loving, caring kind of person and it doesn't mean that he likes or appreciates being interrogated.
"Come on, your room's upstairs." He turns around and leaves the room again, and Matt's heart ticks slowly as he follows. Dallas has an easy smile as he backs out of the room towards what Matt can only imagine is a staircase. "You know," he starts as they walk up the stairs, "I know you still have a lot of questions to ask. Why aren't you asking them?" Matt's muscles tense, and as a result, his bad knee locks up and he trips over the next stair. Dallas catches him just in time.
"Can't send you home with a bloody nose," He shudders, and Dallas immediately lets go of his arms. "Fuck, I'm sorry, I-"
"It's okay," Matt interrupts, then apologizes for it. He feels like he's going to throw up. The room is spinning and Dallas is just standing there, watching him like he's a bomb that's about to go off, and-
"Are you all right?"
He grips the railing tightly, takes a few deep breaths, and counts backwards from ten in Spanish. "I'm fine."
Dallas drops the subject and steps into a hallway. The rise in his shoulders suggests that something's wrong, but Matt doesn't think he's close enough to him, in any way, to ask what's wrong. "It's just here," Dallas says, his voice a little thicker than normal. Matt must be imagining it. "It's not much, but… We can always have it fixed up if you'd like it done that way."
It's already larger and more welcoming than his room at his father's house, but Matt can't imagine changing it. Fixing it up. That just implies that he lives here, that Dallas wants him here full time, and he knows that a full-time arrangement would be far too much for Dallas to pay for. Beyond that, having him here full-time wouldn't mean anything. It wouldn't be helpful at all, in any way. Matt would just take up space. Expensively; more expensive than a dog or a cat or a roommate or an adopted child…
"Matt?"
"Sure," Matt replies without turning around. "Whatever you want." He doesn't want to become attached. He already has to return to his father's house in less than two days, and appreciating the freedom while he's here will only make him want it more while he's not. He'll become restless, angry, and he'll bite back at his father when he's been perfecting the act of passiveness for the last two years.
Dallas sighs behind him but he doesn't say anything. He just turns around and leaves the room.
Matt feels like an ass.
"What is this?" Matt says as he walks back downstairs when Dallas calls him.
"Drinks," Dallas says, leaning back on the couch with a generic cola. "Help yourself to whatever you like."
Matt studies the mountain of drinks for a moment, carefully, then says, "There's no water."
Dallas grins. "Nope," he says, almost happily. "I haven't had the chance to buy any. I'll write it on my list, though, make sure some of it's here for you…" The grin slips off his face, and he stops talking. Matt wonders how much of Dallas' silence is for his own sake, and how much of it is for Matt's.
Matt sits on the edge of the empty chair and picks up the same cola as Dallas: safe, secure. He watches him with an expression that Matt used to see on his mother's face. It looks like sadness, but at the same time, it isn't. "I haven't had anything to drink but water for the last two years," Matt says, voice void of emotion, but he can tell through the corner of his eye, that Dallas feels enough for him to make up for it. He opens the can and takes a drink before Dallas can nudge him into doing it.
It's sugary - like corn syrup but worse, and tastes like Daemon's dog food. He sputters and it drips down onto his jeans. "Take another one," Dallas says offhandedly. "It's not like there's a shortage."
Everything tastes too sweet, as though the manufacturers added sugar to sugar and marketed it. Even the apple juice tastes like sugar.
"All right," Dallas says after watching Matt suffer for a few more moments, leaning forward to grab one of the bottles of alcohol. "I know this is… really illegal, but you look like anti-sugar, so if you're going to drink anything while you're here, I think this is the only way to do it." He juggles around, mixing liquids from cans and bottles and jugs until he gives Matt a glass - of what looks like carbonated water. "There's ice in the kitchen if you need some," Dallas offers, leaning back in his seat. Tentatively, Matt takes the glass.
"I'll be fine," Matt says. "What is this?"
With a shrug, Dallas takes a drink of his soda. "A mix my mom taught me after-" He pauses, then gestures to the drink in Matt's hands. "Just try it."
It's definitely a step up. Matt doesn't feel like he's eating pure sugar anymore. It has a bitter kick to it that Matt finds himself grateful for, and he raises his glass in thanks.
"You've been drunk before, right?"
"No." But he's been drugged. In a desperate attempt to differentiate between decision and force, Matt doesn't call it getting high because he's never done it willingly. And, after his sessions with Rick, he imagines he never will. "Why?"
Dallas stands up and heads back into the kitchen. Matt watches him curiously out of the corner of his eye. "You're going to need something to eat," he calls back over the sound of cupboard doors opening and closing. "I mean - yeah. With your body weight, no way will you be able to hold your liquor."
For a few moments, Matt sips at his drink and listens to him rummage around in cupboards. He comes back in with something similar to trail mix - but with more crackers and less dried fruit. "Here. We'll start with this, then move on to… I don't know. Pizza or chicken maybe? Your call."
Matt's vaguely aware that this will interfere with his weekends with Bill and Bill's anger at Matt ever being allowed to eat, but right now, he doesn't care.
The next time Dallas looks at him, he frowns and says, "You're not allergic, are you?" Matt doesn't answer, too intent on continuing his drink. "Slow down! You have to pace yourself! Drinking like that all night just gives you a nasty headache in the morning."
He sets the glass on the table and sits back. "Sorry."
"No need to apologize. It's just some words of advice from somebody's who's gone through it thousands of times." With that, Dallas leans forward and takes a remote off of the table. He doesn't have to think and wonder about it for very long, because Dallas presses a button and a whirring noise sounds from the other side of the room. The button opens to a wall of DVDs, a TV positioned in the middle of it.
"Let's watch something. Pick anything. I've seen it all." When Matt looks at him skeptically, he shrugs and says, "For about three years, all I did was watch movies and do voice-overs for movies from the studio in my basement."
Matt chooses not to comment and picks one of the brighter colored movies from the far left - "The right is all the ones that suck enough to only watch a few times, and the ones on the bottom right are the ones that should never be seen by human eyes" - and settles back onto the chair. Dallas flips through what looks like movie menus that he has stacked underneath the coffee table, until he evidently finds what he's looking for and nods.
"Always an excellent choice," he says.
The movie isn't dull, boring, over-the-top or sub-par by any means, but Matt doesn't find himself very invested in it, even as Dallas' eyes never leave the screen except to make more drinks.
"I worked with him," Dallas says half-way through the movie, pointing to the screen at one of the protagonist's best friends. "He's actually really, really nice. Kind of adorable, actually, the way he treated some of the women on set." Matt keeps forgetting Dallas' profession - or used-to-be profession.
Dallas has to bring him to bed by the time they finish the sequel - a straight-to-video movie Matt finds on the right side of the shelves - literally bring him up the stairs to what he still calls Matt's room, bridal style.
"Why are you doing this?" Matt asks, rubbing at his eyes as Dallas is walking out the door.
The pause before Dallas answers is lengthy - he knocks against the doorframe a few times before he answers, "Because I wanted to," his voice barely audible. "Lights on or off?"
Matt swallows, then nods his head. "Uh, on."
Because I wanted to.
Matt doesn't remember anybody being that kind to him because they wanted to be kind.
Status: completed
Warnings: LOTS of them; see tags
Rating: R
Word Count: 102k
Early the next morning, Matt's father wakes him up by pounding on the door for five minutes, then barging into his room and pulling him out by the hair. "Your school closed again this morning," he says, almost angrily, but drops Matt's hair once he's off the bed. "So, I called River-" River? What the hell? "-And he said that he's very willing to take you earlier today and return you tomorrow evening. If he likes you, he might keep you until Thursday morning." His face contorts into a manic grin.
"River?"
His father stares down at him, then snaps, "Heath. River Heath? Christ, kid, you'd think that you'd remember a little more…"
Heath. Dallas. Matt nods once and allows himself to relax on the floor. It's just Dallas.
But when the thought of just sitting around in Dallas' apartment or house or whatever hits him, Matt wonders if he should even trust the guy. There's nothing to say that he should, even if he's different than the others, and immediately gave his father a fake first name. At least, he seems different than the others. His hesitance in touching Matt, how he followed him home, how he paid for the dog food when Matt was on the edge of a panic attack...
Regardless, Matt doesn't know. The idea of someone actually taking him out for something other than sex is a little jarring. He almost doesn't want to believe it.
"He'll be here in fifteen minutes, so shower and get your ass ready, I'm going to work." With that, his father leaves his bedroom, slamming the door behind him. Matt drops to the floor. Just Dallas. Nothing to be worried about. His relief floods over him in waves, and he doesn't know he's fallen asleep until someone's saying his name loudly.
"Matt? Matt!" When he opens his eyes, Dallas' face comes into focus slowly. "Are you all right?"
After a quick check, Matt nods. "Sorry, I guess... I fell asleep."
Dallas sighs softly and helps Matt up to his feet. "No, don't worry about it. Are you ready to go?"
Go? "I'm not going anywhere with you."
With another sigh, Dallas sits Matt onto his bed, settling down beside him. Matt absently wonders if it's supposed to be a 'equal-man' sort of thing, so that Matt isn't intimidated. Hell, Matt's intimidated by a lot of men, regardless of size. What matters comes down to their psyche, their ego, and the amount stuffed into their bank account. "I have four thousand dollars a night riding on getting you out of here and away from any of his... friends... and I'm not going to just let you stay here so that he can come home early and, I don't know, send you off to somebody else."
"I can't stay with you. He'll know."
Matt doesn't miss the grimace on Dallas' face, or the flash of emotion that courses through his eyes. "Yeah, I know. Just... Humor me, all right? Don't give into him, please."
It's the first time any of the men paying for his time have used the word 'please', and Matt finds the six-letter word more endearing to him than anything he's ever heard. "Yeah, okay. Do I need to bring anything?"
A slow shake of the head and Dallas stands to his feet. "No, I'll give you a change of clothes there. You don't... You do normally come home with a change of clothes, don't you?"
Matt shrugs, the muscles surrounding his shoulder blades tightening. Dallas doesn't press the issue, just gestures Matt out of the room. "Your dad said you're not supposed to touch anything when he's not here."
"Except for anything in my bedroom. Which, you know, isn't much."
"It's a hell of a life."
Matt knows it's just bait to try to get him to go to the police, to child services, anything, but he's not going to, not while things stay the way they are. He's not happy with his life - he hasn't ever been, not really - but he's not going to screw it up more. He either needs Dallas to keep doing what he's doing, or to get out of his life completely.
Instead, he bypasses Dallas' comment and asks, "Why didn't you get me on Thursdays, too?"
"I figured he'd catch on." He carefully treads around saying Matt's father's name, but Matt doesn't blame him. It isn't a name Matt particularly likes for himself anymore. "I didn't want it taken away from you just because your dad got a little suspicious."
"He's not my dad," Matt says immediately. When Dallas gives him a confused look, he continues with, "'Dad' implies that we do stuff together, and not this kind of stuff. ' Dad' implies that we're family, that he actually cares about what happens to me, not because I rake in money but because he actually cares. That man hasn't done any of that for over two years. Hell, even before my mom got sick, he wasn't that kind of a guy. He was better at faking, but..." He stops talking. Dallas silently urges him to continue, placing a hand on his shoulder, his neck, anywhere he probably thinks is safe, but Matt ducks out of his reach. "Come on," Matt says dully. "Let's get this over with."
Dallas' Volvo is even nicer on the inside than on the outside; heated seats give Matt's nerves more feeling than they've had in a long time, and the stereo plays some sort of modern classical music softly. When Matt first hears it, he sends Dallas a look that's almost appalled. "It's a long story," is all he offers, then lets Matt play with it until they arrive at his house.
"Wow," Matt can't help but utter when they pull up in front of a three story house. It's in a part of town he's never seen before, probably in the high-end neighborhood, and the closest house is a probably a block away. "And you live here alone?"
Dallas goes tense, but still manages to answer, "I do now," and continues up the walkway to his front door, pulling out his keys as he walks. "Come on, I'll show you your room for when you're here."
Matt pushes away the triggered memories of his room at Bill's house and Harlan's house and rushes to catch up with Dallas. He isn't the same, he desperately thinks, and prays that he isn't.
Dallas leaves the door open behind him, muttering to himself about wet shoes and Matt takes his time following him in. He feels out of his element; he's never allowed to do what he wants when he wants to. It's always an order of some sort.
After a few moments, Dallas, as he's taking off his shoes, asks, "Could you get the door, please? It's getting kind of cold with all that winter weather, you know…" It's a suggestion, and Dallas seems like he's a relatively cool-tempered kind of guy, but Matt can't really help feeling like he's being ordered. He shuts it quickly, but when he turns back around to apologize, Dallas is already walking towards the kitchen as though Matt has been there for years. Like he trusts Matt.
Keeping in mind that Dallas doesn't outwardly seem like the rest of his father's clientele, Matt follows Dallas, and says, "Why d'you want to help me so much?" Before Dallas has had the chance to think about responding, or even fully comprehend what he'd been asked, Matt regrets it. "Never mind," he mutters, turning around to return to the entryway to take off his shoes.
Dallas' voice echoes as he answers, loudly but not angrily, "You started to have a panic attack at a supermarket. Something was up." Matt easily catches on to Dallas' avoidance of the word 'wrong', but he won't comment on it. He's still bursting with questions, but he knows he won't ask them. He's not allowed, he's never allowed, and just because Dallas seems to be a loving, caring kind of person doesn't mean that he always is the loving, caring kind of person and it doesn't mean that he likes or appreciates being interrogated.
"Come on, your room's upstairs." He turns around and leaves the room again, and Matt's heart ticks slowly as he follows. Dallas has an easy smile as he backs out of the room towards what Matt can only imagine is a staircase. "You know," he starts as they walk up the stairs, "I know you still have a lot of questions to ask. Why aren't you asking them?" Matt's muscles tense, and as a result, his bad knee locks up and he trips over the next stair. Dallas catches him just in time.
"Can't send you home with a bloody nose," He shudders, and Dallas immediately lets go of his arms. "Fuck, I'm sorry, I-"
"It's okay," Matt interrupts, then apologizes for it. He feels like he's going to throw up. The room is spinning and Dallas is just standing there, watching him like he's a bomb that's about to go off, and-
"Are you all right?"
He grips the railing tightly, takes a few deep breaths, and counts backwards from ten in Spanish. "I'm fine."
Dallas drops the subject and steps into a hallway. The rise in his shoulders suggests that something's wrong, but Matt doesn't think he's close enough to him, in any way, to ask what's wrong. "It's just here," Dallas says, his voice a little thicker than normal. Matt must be imagining it. "It's not much, but… We can always have it fixed up if you'd like it done that way."
It's already larger and more welcoming than his room at his father's house, but Matt can't imagine changing it. Fixing it up. That just implies that he lives here, that Dallas wants him here full time, and he knows that a full-time arrangement would be far too much for Dallas to pay for. Beyond that, having him here full-time wouldn't mean anything. It wouldn't be helpful at all, in any way. Matt would just take up space. Expensively; more expensive than a dog or a cat or a roommate or an adopted child…
"Matt?"
"Sure," Matt replies without turning around. "Whatever you want." He doesn't want to become attached. He already has to return to his father's house in less than two days, and appreciating the freedom while he's here will only make him want it more while he's not. He'll become restless, angry, and he'll bite back at his father when he's been perfecting the act of passiveness for the last two years.
Dallas sighs behind him but he doesn't say anything. He just turns around and leaves the room.
Matt feels like an ass.
"What is this?" Matt says as he walks back downstairs when Dallas calls him.
"Drinks," Dallas says, leaning back on the couch with a generic cola. "Help yourself to whatever you like."
Matt studies the mountain of drinks for a moment, carefully, then says, "There's no water."
Dallas grins. "Nope," he says, almost happily. "I haven't had the chance to buy any. I'll write it on my list, though, make sure some of it's here for you…" The grin slips off his face, and he stops talking. Matt wonders how much of Dallas' silence is for his own sake, and how much of it is for Matt's.
Matt sits on the edge of the empty chair and picks up the same cola as Dallas: safe, secure. He watches him with an expression that Matt used to see on his mother's face. It looks like sadness, but at the same time, it isn't. "I haven't had anything to drink but water for the last two years," Matt says, voice void of emotion, but he can tell through the corner of his eye, that Dallas feels enough for him to make up for it. He opens the can and takes a drink before Dallas can nudge him into doing it.
It's sugary - like corn syrup but worse, and tastes like Daemon's dog food. He sputters and it drips down onto his jeans. "Take another one," Dallas says offhandedly. "It's not like there's a shortage."
Everything tastes too sweet, as though the manufacturers added sugar to sugar and marketed it. Even the apple juice tastes like sugar.
"All right," Dallas says after watching Matt suffer for a few more moments, leaning forward to grab one of the bottles of alcohol. "I know this is… really illegal, but you look like anti-sugar, so if you're going to drink anything while you're here, I think this is the only way to do it." He juggles around, mixing liquids from cans and bottles and jugs until he gives Matt a glass - of what looks like carbonated water. "There's ice in the kitchen if you need some," Dallas offers, leaning back in his seat. Tentatively, Matt takes the glass.
"I'll be fine," Matt says. "What is this?"
With a shrug, Dallas takes a drink of his soda. "A mix my mom taught me after-" He pauses, then gestures to the drink in Matt's hands. "Just try it."
It's definitely a step up. Matt doesn't feel like he's eating pure sugar anymore. It has a bitter kick to it that Matt finds himself grateful for, and he raises his glass in thanks.
"You've been drunk before, right?"
"No." But he's been drugged. In a desperate attempt to differentiate between decision and force, Matt doesn't call it getting high because he's never done it willingly. And, after his sessions with Rick, he imagines he never will. "Why?"
Dallas stands up and heads back into the kitchen. Matt watches him curiously out of the corner of his eye. "You're going to need something to eat," he calls back over the sound of cupboard doors opening and closing. "I mean - yeah. With your body weight, no way will you be able to hold your liquor."
For a few moments, Matt sips at his drink and listens to him rummage around in cupboards. He comes back in with something similar to trail mix - but with more crackers and less dried fruit. "Here. We'll start with this, then move on to… I don't know. Pizza or chicken maybe? Your call."
Matt's vaguely aware that this will interfere with his weekends with Bill and Bill's anger at Matt ever being allowed to eat, but right now, he doesn't care.
The next time Dallas looks at him, he frowns and says, "You're not allergic, are you?" Matt doesn't answer, too intent on continuing his drink. "Slow down! You have to pace yourself! Drinking like that all night just gives you a nasty headache in the morning."
He sets the glass on the table and sits back. "Sorry."
"No need to apologize. It's just some words of advice from somebody's who's gone through it thousands of times." With that, Dallas leans forward and takes a remote off of the table. He doesn't have to think and wonder about it for very long, because Dallas presses a button and a whirring noise sounds from the other side of the room. The button opens to a wall of DVDs, a TV positioned in the middle of it.
"Let's watch something. Pick anything. I've seen it all." When Matt looks at him skeptically, he shrugs and says, "For about three years, all I did was watch movies and do voice-overs for movies from the studio in my basement."
Matt chooses not to comment and picks one of the brighter colored movies from the far left - "The right is all the ones that suck enough to only watch a few times, and the ones on the bottom right are the ones that should never be seen by human eyes" - and settles back onto the chair. Dallas flips through what looks like movie menus that he has stacked underneath the coffee table, until he evidently finds what he's looking for and nods.
"Always an excellent choice," he says.
The movie isn't dull, boring, over-the-top or sub-par by any means, but Matt doesn't find himself very invested in it, even as Dallas' eyes never leave the screen except to make more drinks.
"I worked with him," Dallas says half-way through the movie, pointing to the screen at one of the protagonist's best friends. "He's actually really, really nice. Kind of adorable, actually, the way he treated some of the women on set." Matt keeps forgetting Dallas' profession - or used-to-be profession.
Dallas has to bring him to bed by the time they finish the sequel - a straight-to-video movie Matt finds on the right side of the shelves - literally bring him up the stairs to what he still calls Matt's room, bridal style.
"Why are you doing this?" Matt asks, rubbing at his eyes as Dallas is walking out the door.
The pause before Dallas answers is lengthy - he knocks against the doorframe a few times before he answers, "Because I wanted to," his voice barely audible. "Lights on or off?"
Matt swallows, then nods his head. "Uh, on."
Because I wanted to.
Matt doesn't remember anybody being that kind to him because they wanted to be kind.