Fic: Pillar of Salt
Title: Pillar of Salt
Rating: PG (language, adult themes)
Characters: Matthew Morrison, Cory Monteith, Lea Michele, various others
Word count: ~4,000
Summary: Cory doesn’t know how they got here, but it was always going to end this way.
Notes: This story follows on from ‘The Strong and Silent Type’, and is even less of a happy story.
“You know they’re going to find out eventually.” That is Jane’s statement of doom, and it makes Cory look down at his feet.
“Yeah, but who believes tabloids anyway?” Matt replies. It isn’t uncommon to see him sprawled out when he’s on set, looking tired and holding a bottle of water with both hands but never drinking from it. “You waste time denying anything and people start to wonder what you have to hide.”
“Why are you hiding it?” Jane asks. “Why not just come out and say ‘Yeah, I’m sick. Be nice to me or I’ll haunt you’?”
Matthew pulls a face. “I don’t want to be put up on some pedestal,” he says. “Not for this.”
But the honest truth is that people are starting to notice. Little snippets are cropping up in the trashy magazines, an odd editorial lamenting the lack of Schuester and wondering if there is any truth in the rumours that Matthew is burning out, is sick. It’s like waiting for a bomb to drop, for one person to come out and finally say it. Matthew isn’t doing any press, Ryan is keeping tight lipped (for once).
But they’re waiting for it. Waiting with nothing to say, because Matt still won’t talk about it.
*
Lea takes it upon herself to keep Matthew company when he’s on set, though he won’t let her help or run errands. “Don’t do that,” he says when she brings him food, or a bottle of water, or stands to relay a message for him. “There are people whose job it is to do that. Come on, tell me more about your boy or something.”
Cory sits around with them, not really sure where he fits in this new order of things. Not that he had known where he fit before. But Matt will look at him sometimes and smile, and Lea will look grateful when he chips in with something. And neither of them have any issues with sending him to go to the catering table and stock up. Not that Matt’s eating much these days.
*
Pictures start circulating. Matt looking thin. Matt looking tired. Matthew Morrison looking sick, sick, sick. They bombard Matt with the tweets they would make if he gave the word.
“MattyFresh had another late one, IMHO. No dates on school nights.”
“Matt’s practicing for Halloween. He’s going as Charlie Sheen.”
“Who ever told Matt that scrawny and pale was a hot look needs to be arrested for crimes against hotness.”
“Sick Matt makes him easier to catch - don’t tell the fangirls.”
Matt smiles, and sometimes laughs. But eventually Chris schemes and plots, and is the one to break the radio silence.
*
The t-shirt is white, and has printed on it in big, black letters all down the front, “I DON’T HAVE CANCER AND I’M STILL NOT GAY.” Chris tweets a pic of Matt wearing the shirt, and Darren’s pink sunglasses, with a big grin showing teeth that are still white and perfect. The caption is “Only one of these statements is true...”
It’s Matt’s last day on set.
“Don’t cry,” he says. “No one is allowed to cry. Because if you cry, I will, and my tears are probably radioactive.”
Ashley wraps her arms around Matt, her eyes bright. “Bring on those superpowers,” she replies.
And, like glass hitting a marble floor, everything starts to break.
*
When Cory and Lea pull into Matt’s driveway they have to skirt around a white rental car already parked there. The front door is open, and there is a woman with long dark hair and her fists balled by her sides. Matt is standing by the foot of the staircase, his grip on the banister tight and Cory is hit by a wave of anger at this person for making Matt stand up for so long, for not yelling at him with more consideration.
And then Cory sees Matt’s face and realises that Matt would never sit down, not for this. Some things have to be met face on, and Matt is the kind of person to take on the whole world standing tall and strong, even if his legs have been cut off at the knees.
“Why do you always have to do this?” she asks.
“Do what?” Matt replies, and his voice is hard and sarcastic, but he looks so damn wrecked.
“Why do you always push people away?”
“Because I don’t need sympathy, I don’t need pity, and I sure as hell don’t need ‘help’.”
Cory pulls his phone out of his pocket, and sends a text to Lea. *Who is this person?*
Lea, standing next to him, pulls her phone out of her bag when it vibrates a minute later. She taps out a message and passes her phone to Cory without hitting send. *Ex-finacee*
She turns, and Cory sees that she’s pretty, and feisty, and probably a good match for Matthew given the way she composes herself in front of them. She shakes her head, and rolls her eyes as if to say “Can you believe this guy?” and brushes past them.
Cory and Lea watch her climb into her car, and when they turn back Matthew is already padding his way into the living area. “Sounds like we missed a show,” Lea says, following him.
“There’s always a show on at Casa de Matt. BYO popcorn.”
“We did,” Lea replies. “And movies. Just in case you weren’t up to entertaining us.”
When it finally occurs to Cory to follow, Matt and Lea are on the couch, him tickling her and her fighting him off with a wide, laughing smile of her face. Cory scoots into the space behind Matt and wraps him in a bear hug, pinning his arms to his sides.
“Ah-ha! You are at our mercy, now!” he says is his best super villain voice.
“And your torture?” Lea reaches into her handbag and pulls out a DVD. “The Hanna Montana Movie!”
“Nooo,” Matt cries, throwing his head back and it’s all so normal and playful that Cory squeezes his eyes shut, trying to memorise every single moment, to imprint the shape of them as Matt slumps back against him and puts his feet in Lea’s lap, as Cory keeps one arm wrapped around Matt’s shoulders, and Lea plays with Matt’s bare toes, making him twitch and kick at her occasionally. The warm feeling as he and Lea tug the blanket draped over the back of the couch down and around Matt, the commentary they run over the movie and those moments where Matt is laughing so hard that he starts to cough, and gasp, and Cory’s grip tightens and Lea stares straight ahead at the television because her brave face is starting to crack...
Cory wants to remember it all, everything.
*
There are days where Matt can’t get up off the couch. *I should have set my bedroom up on the ground floor* he texts to Cory.
*I’ll come round and build you a pillow fort tonight* Cory replies.
The taping goes later and later, and Cory never hates the long hours with the passion that he does when something is going wrong and he can’t be there to fix it. He’s never before resented loving his job until it got to be so hard for him to share that.
It’s past two am when they wrap, and Cory sits in his car for long moments debating with himself, before driving out to Matt’s. Matt had given him a key weeks earlier, and Cory isn’t really sure what that means, if it’s an invitation into Matt’s life or an emergency thing... but he goes. He drives through the nearly-deserted streets of LA, and pulls up slowly along the gravel drive in front of the home that Matt hasn’t finished decorating yet. The home that’s still too white and barren.
Matt is asleep on the couch, twisted in the blanket and looking fitful. He wakes for a moment as Cory straightens out the layers bundling him up, as he smooths his hand over Matt’s forehead and worries because he feels so warm. Because Cory has been reading all kinds of websites and he’s petrified that Matt will get sick and not tell anyone. Because he hates that Matt is still living alone, too stubborn to accept anything that looks like help. But then Matt stills, and falls back into a deep sleep that won’t refresh him at all.
Cory sinks into an armchair that isn’t as comfortable as it could be, and stares at the angles of Matt’s face as they are bathed in the little glowing lights of tiny electronic things, soft blue washing over cheekbones that are sharper than they should be. He dozes with his arms crossed over his chest and his eyes half open, keeping watch, tracing the play of light and shadow when Matthew’s lips part soundlessly.
*
Matt still calls through to the set, still makes people laugh and eggs them on when they play up and prank each other. It’s become a joke to place a post-it note with “Matty was here” at the site of any joke or damage. They take photos, and send them to Matt, and sometimes he replies. Sometimes it’s photos of himself, pulling faces. Once it was a photo of his feet, toenails coloured with sea-green nail polish and a post-it reading “Chris was here”. Once it was a photo of Matt’s bed, the sheets mussed and pillows strewn around, with a note held in frame reading “Chord’s mom was here.”
“If there was a way to lack the smack down via phone,” Chord yells, “I would be doing it right now!”
“Doing it like I’m doing your mom,” Matt calls back over speaker phone. “Zing!”
And Mark and Kevin are there, hooting and snapping their fingers and laughing like everything is fine, like Matt’s just on holiday and they’re keeping him in prime teasing-shape for when he gets back.
That’s the big divide on set, those who think that Matt will be back eventually, and those who think...
Cory stays out of those conversations, and he knows that his silence gives him away.
*
Cory starts leaving things at Matt’s place. A change of clothes that multiply into several changes. Books that he never has the attention span to finish, DVDs that are never played all the way through because Matt is finding it harder to concentrate these days, because the painkillers affect his memory and he can never quite remember if Cory has just arrived or is just leaving.
“There’s a spare bed upstairs,” Matt says one day.
“No there isn’t,” Cory replies. “You still haven’t put anything in the empty rooms up there.”
Matt stares at the television like it’s the most fascinating thing on the planet, like he’s completely wrapped up in whatever the hell it is that they’re watching even though he’s asked Cory four times who the main character is. “Use the master bedroom,” he says, not tearing his eyes away. “No one else is.”
And that’s how Cory moves in, spending his nights in a bed that’s cold and smells stale because the bedroom window has been closed for over a month, before giving up in the small hours of the morning and padding downstairs in boxer shorts and bare feet, trying to curl his too-large frame into that arm chair he has a love-hate relationship with. Watching as Matt’s hair gets oily and tangles, as his skin dries out and flakes across his knuckles. As he gets so skinny and restless. Watching as Matt sleeps, and breathes with uneven rises and falls of his chest. Watches, and holds his own breath until his lungs burn.
*
“It hasn’t been a bad life,” Matthew says.
“It’ll get better,” Cory replies, cutting the sandwiches into halves, quarters. Cutting the crusts off because that what his mom did for him when he was sick.
“I’ve slept with a lot of girls,” Matt says, his head lolling back on the couch. He looks lost in memory for a moment, and then his head rolls to the side, fixing Cory with a gaze that hurts because it is so focussed and aware. “Slept with a lot of guys, too.”
Cory laughs awkwardly, not sure what to do with the moment. “You just saying that because you only want one of those things on your shirt to be true?”
Matthew shrugs a shoulder, and lets his head fall back again. “I’ve got cancer,” he says. “Why waste the time I’ve got lying?”
Cory puts the plate of sandwiches down on the couch beside Matt, because the coffee table is suddenly too far away for Matt to reach. “You should eat up,” he says.
“Yeah,” Matt replies, staring up at the ceiling. “I should.”
*
Cory and Lea takes turns driving Matt to his various appointments. Sometimes Jane’s wife will take over, if they can’t get the time off. Once Mark did, and took Matt for a drink out afterwards, and was banned from any further assistance by the rest of the cast.
It’s probably the most stressful thing that Cory has ever had to do. There’s... there’s always a crowd outside the hospital, because somehow this isn’t old news, for some reason there are still people sick enough to want this story on page thirteen, want a page of pictures and small text in a yellow box that reads “Breaking News, Mr Schue is still dying slowly!”
Lea punches a paparazzo.
She punches him, and smashes his camera on the ground, stamping on it until pieces break off even as twenty more people snap photos, even as Matt has to slump back against the wall of the clinic, laughing so hard that he’s crying and gasping. Trying to pull himself back up to his feet even as people close in to fire questions at him, trying to pull himself up even though Lea is slinging one of his arms around her shoulders and is hauling him up the steps, her head held high and fierce.
Cory fucking loves her for that. Loves her as much as he hates the photos, the way they show up everywhere - every news site, every magazine. The internet. Cory now hates the internet. People shouting their support or damning her actions, or even just thinking that their opinion somehow means something.
The photos aren’t allowed on set. Cory shreds every single one that he can find. Tears them into a million pieces even though he isn’t exactly sure why.
“Of course there’s no public apology,” Diana says at a red carpet interview - what was it for? Cory can’t even keep up with what everyone is doing any more - “We all think Lea is amazing for what she did. We all love Matt so much. We catch anyone trying to exploit him, or what he’s going through, we will tear you down.”
Cory watches the interview in Chris’ trailer, because Chris has taken to giving Cory a crash-course of gossip to take back to Matt every few days, and he starts crying. He doesn’t know why, exactly, just that he’s so proud and so angry and so scared. He’s so fucking scared and he doesn’t know what to do. Chris is hugging him, and petting his hair, and saying “It’s okay,” and Cory is saying “It’s not, it’s never going to be okay.”
*
“I’m sick of the couch,” Matt says. It’s one of the days where he’s down to making statements, where he has no filter. Cory has already responded to comments like “It’s because of people like you that there are midgets,” and “It hurts. Why does everything hurt?” and “Cheese is such bullshit.”
This one is easier to answer.
He gently pulls Matt up to a sitting position, and picks him up. It’s hard, because Matt is still a grown man even with the weight he’s lost, and because he feels pain now in a way that Cory doesn’t quite understand, and Matt won’t elaborate on. He carries Matt upstairs, and into his bedroom, and lowers his legs enough for Matt to stand and sway, looking nauseas, before sitting down on the edge of his own bed.
“You need to vacuum in here,” Matt says.
“Sorry.”
“I’m sick of being tired.”
“I know.”
Matt sinks back against the pillows, his movements halting and uneven.
“I’m sick.”
“Yeah. I know.”
“It’s the chemo.”
Cory swallows. “When did you start chemo?”
“Nothing’s working.”
“Chemo will work,” Cory replies. He climbs into bed beside Matt, kicking his shoes off and trying to curl around Matt without jostling him.
“You don’t have to be so careful.”
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
“I hurt anyway. Don’t bother.”
Cory pulls Matt close, and cards his fingers through Matt’s hair, untangling curls and running fingernails over Matt’s scalp. “I’ll always be here to bother you.”
Matt laughs, a huff of breath that feels too hot against the skin of Cory’s neck.
*
Cory is down to two days a week. He feels guilty, because he knows it’s screwing everything up. They only have one day to shoot his scenes with Lea because she takes over Matt-sitting for one of the days. Finn has stopped having solos, because he just can’t keep his head in the zone. He was never that good anyway. It helps the Sam storyline. It helps that there are so many people around to pick up his slack. It helps that his mom calls early in the evening when Matt’s asleep and sings to him like she used to when he was little and upset.
It helps that sometimes Naya and Heather will come around and one of them will take him out for coffee, or a meal, and the other will sit with Matt. Naya reads to him, Heather rubs Lubriderm into the skin at his joints. One day he comes back from lunch with Heather and Naya has shaved Matt’s head.
“He asked me to,” she says and she looks so devastated to have been trusted with the task. So Cory hugs her, and puts on a brave face for one more person because that what they do these days, this Glee family. They trade moments of strength and weakness, try to ease the odd ache of mourning someone before they’re gone, the guilt of even thinking like that.
*
Sometimes Matt and Cory sleep together. Either because Matt is waking up disoriented and distressed, or because Cory is worried about what will happen while he’s sleeping. Two bodies on sheets that are crisp and clean, Cory’s fingers at the nape of Matt’s head, not brave enough to stroke an inch higher to where curls used to brush at his knuckles. Matt is asleep, and every now and then he’ll cough, he’ll sniff because his nose is running.
He needs to go to a hospital.
He’s refusing, and Cory just doesn’t have the heart to call an ambulance. Doesn’t have the heart to put Matt somewhere foreign and dangerous no matter how serious this is. Cory has his phone in his free hand, ready to make the call as soon as he’s strong enough, as soon as he’s brave enough. Matt shifts in his sleep, a hand coming up to rest on Cory’s curled fingers, sitting heavy on Cory’s phone. He coughs, hard enough to make his shoulders shake, to make his brow furrow in his sleep.
Cory pulls his phone free, and calls Lea.
“I need you to make a phone call for me,” he says.
“I’ll meet you both there,” she says, her voice still thick with sleep.
Neither of them have the energy to cry, not yet.
*
Matt will be in hospital until his fever goes down. Until his lungs clear as much as they can. Doctors are asking questions about hiring a full-time nurse, about moving him to someplace where people can look after him. But Matt hasn’t filled out any paperwork about next of kin or right of attorney, and his parents aren’t picking up their phone because they’re flying down, so the questions are directed at no one, hanging in the air.
Cory and Lea sit in the waiting room, holding each other’s hands so tightly that their knuckles are white. They don’t say anything, not for a long time. Not until the dark parking lot through the sliding glass doors starts to glow with the sunrise, not until a nurse gives them polystyrene cups of horrible coffee and Lea lets go of his hand long enough to take the flimsy cup, long enough to wipe the tear tracks off her face with her other hand.
“You should go be with him,” she says, wrapping both hands around the cup.
“I don’t... I don’t know what to do.”
Lea looks down at her coffee. “There might not be a lot of time,” she says. It’s the closest she’s come to acknowledging that Matt won’t get better. “I know that you...”
Cory sighs. Matt has always been an efficient machine for flirting, and dating, and sex. This thing isn’t any of those three. It’s not anything, doesn’t have the chance to be.
Cory stands, slow and stiff, and heads into Matt’s room.
*
Cory’s holding Matt’s hand when he wakes up, when green eyes open and look confused for a long moment, when he fights for a moment against the air being pushed into his lungs by a tube going up his nose.
“Sexy look,” Matt says, lifting a hand to examine the needle stuck into a vein on the back.
“Free pyjamas,” Cory adds.
“The only thing I have that fits.”
Cory has to swallow a few times before he can reply. “You always look fit.”
Matt tries to laugh, and Cory closes his eyes, pressing his forehead against Matt’s hand where it’s clasped in his own.
“Oh no,” Matt says. His voice is wrecked. From the cancer in his lungs, from the treatments. He sounds nothing like he used to, and Cory is too familiar with the sound to notice. “You can’t go giving up. Not yet.”
“I can’t,” Cory replies. “I don’t know how to give up on you.” He brushes his lips against one of Matt’s knuckles. “I can’t give up when I want so much.” And he feels like the shittiest person alive, dumping this on Matt when he’s in hospital on painkillers and antibiotics and anti-inflammation drugs and has a fucking tube shoved up his nose. Feels like shit when he sees the recognition and realisation in Matt’s eyes, because he would have been happy to skirt close to the issue and then hide it away again, to keep being whatever Matthew needed.
“You don’t... you don’t want this,” Matt says. “You don’t want me, not like this.”
Cory holds Matt’s face between his hands, staring into eyes that are green, so obviously green when they’re highlighted by the smudges of purple and blue beneath them, skin that’s growing pale and a little dry across his cheeks.
“I want you,” Cory says. “I want you and I’ve wanted you and...” Cory’s voice cracks, and he clears his throat, the noise loud and awkward in their small, private moment. “And I don’t think I can wait anymore. I don’t... We don’t have that option anymore.”
Matt closes his eyes, and it’s easy then, with them so close and so raw for Cory to lean that little bit further and press his lips to Matt’s. Dry and gentle, and even when their lips part a little the kiss remains slow, and sad, and chaste. The taste of one another ghosting across skin, and when Cory licks his lips after they’ll taste like lips, like skin and like salt, and nothing more.
All of their kisses will be that way.
Rating: PG (language, adult themes)
Characters: Matthew Morrison, Cory Monteith, Lea Michele, various others
Word count: ~4,000
Summary: Cory doesn’t know how they got here, but it was always going to end this way.
Notes: This story follows on from ‘The Strong and Silent Type’, and is even less of a happy story.
“You know they’re going to find out eventually.” That is Jane’s statement of doom, and it makes Cory look down at his feet.
“Yeah, but who believes tabloids anyway?” Matt replies. It isn’t uncommon to see him sprawled out when he’s on set, looking tired and holding a bottle of water with both hands but never drinking from it. “You waste time denying anything and people start to wonder what you have to hide.”
“Why are you hiding it?” Jane asks. “Why not just come out and say ‘Yeah, I’m sick. Be nice to me or I’ll haunt you’?”
Matthew pulls a face. “I don’t want to be put up on some pedestal,” he says. “Not for this.”
But the honest truth is that people are starting to notice. Little snippets are cropping up in the trashy magazines, an odd editorial lamenting the lack of Schuester and wondering if there is any truth in the rumours that Matthew is burning out, is sick. It’s like waiting for a bomb to drop, for one person to come out and finally say it. Matthew isn’t doing any press, Ryan is keeping tight lipped (for once).
But they’re waiting for it. Waiting with nothing to say, because Matt still won’t talk about it.
*
Lea takes it upon herself to keep Matthew company when he’s on set, though he won’t let her help or run errands. “Don’t do that,” he says when she brings him food, or a bottle of water, or stands to relay a message for him. “There are people whose job it is to do that. Come on, tell me more about your boy or something.”
Cory sits around with them, not really sure where he fits in this new order of things. Not that he had known where he fit before. But Matt will look at him sometimes and smile, and Lea will look grateful when he chips in with something. And neither of them have any issues with sending him to go to the catering table and stock up. Not that Matt’s eating much these days.
*
Pictures start circulating. Matt looking thin. Matt looking tired. Matthew Morrison looking sick, sick, sick. They bombard Matt with the tweets they would make if he gave the word.
“MattyFresh had another late one, IMHO. No dates on school nights.”
“Matt’s practicing for Halloween. He’s going as Charlie Sheen.”
“Who ever told Matt that scrawny and pale was a hot look needs to be arrested for crimes against hotness.”
“Sick Matt makes him easier to catch - don’t tell the fangirls.”
Matt smiles, and sometimes laughs. But eventually Chris schemes and plots, and is the one to break the radio silence.
*
The t-shirt is white, and has printed on it in big, black letters all down the front, “I DON’T HAVE CANCER AND I’M STILL NOT GAY.” Chris tweets a pic of Matt wearing the shirt, and Darren’s pink sunglasses, with a big grin showing teeth that are still white and perfect. The caption is “Only one of these statements is true...”
It’s Matt’s last day on set.
“Don’t cry,” he says. “No one is allowed to cry. Because if you cry, I will, and my tears are probably radioactive.”
Ashley wraps her arms around Matt, her eyes bright. “Bring on those superpowers,” she replies.
And, like glass hitting a marble floor, everything starts to break.
*
When Cory and Lea pull into Matt’s driveway they have to skirt around a white rental car already parked there. The front door is open, and there is a woman with long dark hair and her fists balled by her sides. Matt is standing by the foot of the staircase, his grip on the banister tight and Cory is hit by a wave of anger at this person for making Matt stand up for so long, for not yelling at him with more consideration.
And then Cory sees Matt’s face and realises that Matt would never sit down, not for this. Some things have to be met face on, and Matt is the kind of person to take on the whole world standing tall and strong, even if his legs have been cut off at the knees.
“Why do you always have to do this?” she asks.
“Do what?” Matt replies, and his voice is hard and sarcastic, but he looks so damn wrecked.
“Why do you always push people away?”
“Because I don’t need sympathy, I don’t need pity, and I sure as hell don’t need ‘help’.”
Cory pulls his phone out of his pocket, and sends a text to Lea. *Who is this person?*
Lea, standing next to him, pulls her phone out of her bag when it vibrates a minute later. She taps out a message and passes her phone to Cory without hitting send. *Ex-finacee*
She turns, and Cory sees that she’s pretty, and feisty, and probably a good match for Matthew given the way she composes herself in front of them. She shakes her head, and rolls her eyes as if to say “Can you believe this guy?” and brushes past them.
Cory and Lea watch her climb into her car, and when they turn back Matthew is already padding his way into the living area. “Sounds like we missed a show,” Lea says, following him.
“There’s always a show on at Casa de Matt. BYO popcorn.”
“We did,” Lea replies. “And movies. Just in case you weren’t up to entertaining us.”
When it finally occurs to Cory to follow, Matt and Lea are on the couch, him tickling her and her fighting him off with a wide, laughing smile of her face. Cory scoots into the space behind Matt and wraps him in a bear hug, pinning his arms to his sides.
“Ah-ha! You are at our mercy, now!” he says is his best super villain voice.
“And your torture?” Lea reaches into her handbag and pulls out a DVD. “The Hanna Montana Movie!”
“Nooo,” Matt cries, throwing his head back and it’s all so normal and playful that Cory squeezes his eyes shut, trying to memorise every single moment, to imprint the shape of them as Matt slumps back against him and puts his feet in Lea’s lap, as Cory keeps one arm wrapped around Matt’s shoulders, and Lea plays with Matt’s bare toes, making him twitch and kick at her occasionally. The warm feeling as he and Lea tug the blanket draped over the back of the couch down and around Matt, the commentary they run over the movie and those moments where Matt is laughing so hard that he starts to cough, and gasp, and Cory’s grip tightens and Lea stares straight ahead at the television because her brave face is starting to crack...
Cory wants to remember it all, everything.
*
There are days where Matt can’t get up off the couch. *I should have set my bedroom up on the ground floor* he texts to Cory.
*I’ll come round and build you a pillow fort tonight* Cory replies.
The taping goes later and later, and Cory never hates the long hours with the passion that he does when something is going wrong and he can’t be there to fix it. He’s never before resented loving his job until it got to be so hard for him to share that.
It’s past two am when they wrap, and Cory sits in his car for long moments debating with himself, before driving out to Matt’s. Matt had given him a key weeks earlier, and Cory isn’t really sure what that means, if it’s an invitation into Matt’s life or an emergency thing... but he goes. He drives through the nearly-deserted streets of LA, and pulls up slowly along the gravel drive in front of the home that Matt hasn’t finished decorating yet. The home that’s still too white and barren.
Matt is asleep on the couch, twisted in the blanket and looking fitful. He wakes for a moment as Cory straightens out the layers bundling him up, as he smooths his hand over Matt’s forehead and worries because he feels so warm. Because Cory has been reading all kinds of websites and he’s petrified that Matt will get sick and not tell anyone. Because he hates that Matt is still living alone, too stubborn to accept anything that looks like help. But then Matt stills, and falls back into a deep sleep that won’t refresh him at all.
Cory sinks into an armchair that isn’t as comfortable as it could be, and stares at the angles of Matt’s face as they are bathed in the little glowing lights of tiny electronic things, soft blue washing over cheekbones that are sharper than they should be. He dozes with his arms crossed over his chest and his eyes half open, keeping watch, tracing the play of light and shadow when Matthew’s lips part soundlessly.
*
Matt still calls through to the set, still makes people laugh and eggs them on when they play up and prank each other. It’s become a joke to place a post-it note with “Matty was here” at the site of any joke or damage. They take photos, and send them to Matt, and sometimes he replies. Sometimes it’s photos of himself, pulling faces. Once it was a photo of his feet, toenails coloured with sea-green nail polish and a post-it reading “Chris was here”. Once it was a photo of Matt’s bed, the sheets mussed and pillows strewn around, with a note held in frame reading “Chord’s mom was here.”
“If there was a way to lack the smack down via phone,” Chord yells, “I would be doing it right now!”
“Doing it like I’m doing your mom,” Matt calls back over speaker phone. “Zing!”
And Mark and Kevin are there, hooting and snapping their fingers and laughing like everything is fine, like Matt’s just on holiday and they’re keeping him in prime teasing-shape for when he gets back.
That’s the big divide on set, those who think that Matt will be back eventually, and those who think...
Cory stays out of those conversations, and he knows that his silence gives him away.
*
Cory starts leaving things at Matt’s place. A change of clothes that multiply into several changes. Books that he never has the attention span to finish, DVDs that are never played all the way through because Matt is finding it harder to concentrate these days, because the painkillers affect his memory and he can never quite remember if Cory has just arrived or is just leaving.
“There’s a spare bed upstairs,” Matt says one day.
“No there isn’t,” Cory replies. “You still haven’t put anything in the empty rooms up there.”
Matt stares at the television like it’s the most fascinating thing on the planet, like he’s completely wrapped up in whatever the hell it is that they’re watching even though he’s asked Cory four times who the main character is. “Use the master bedroom,” he says, not tearing his eyes away. “No one else is.”
And that’s how Cory moves in, spending his nights in a bed that’s cold and smells stale because the bedroom window has been closed for over a month, before giving up in the small hours of the morning and padding downstairs in boxer shorts and bare feet, trying to curl his too-large frame into that arm chair he has a love-hate relationship with. Watching as Matt’s hair gets oily and tangles, as his skin dries out and flakes across his knuckles. As he gets so skinny and restless. Watching as Matt sleeps, and breathes with uneven rises and falls of his chest. Watches, and holds his own breath until his lungs burn.
*
“It hasn’t been a bad life,” Matthew says.
“It’ll get better,” Cory replies, cutting the sandwiches into halves, quarters. Cutting the crusts off because that what his mom did for him when he was sick.
“I’ve slept with a lot of girls,” Matt says, his head lolling back on the couch. He looks lost in memory for a moment, and then his head rolls to the side, fixing Cory with a gaze that hurts because it is so focussed and aware. “Slept with a lot of guys, too.”
Cory laughs awkwardly, not sure what to do with the moment. “You just saying that because you only want one of those things on your shirt to be true?”
Matthew shrugs a shoulder, and lets his head fall back again. “I’ve got cancer,” he says. “Why waste the time I’ve got lying?”
Cory puts the plate of sandwiches down on the couch beside Matt, because the coffee table is suddenly too far away for Matt to reach. “You should eat up,” he says.
“Yeah,” Matt replies, staring up at the ceiling. “I should.”
*
Cory and Lea takes turns driving Matt to his various appointments. Sometimes Jane’s wife will take over, if they can’t get the time off. Once Mark did, and took Matt for a drink out afterwards, and was banned from any further assistance by the rest of the cast.
It’s probably the most stressful thing that Cory has ever had to do. There’s... there’s always a crowd outside the hospital, because somehow this isn’t old news, for some reason there are still people sick enough to want this story on page thirteen, want a page of pictures and small text in a yellow box that reads “Breaking News, Mr Schue is still dying slowly!”
Lea punches a paparazzo.
She punches him, and smashes his camera on the ground, stamping on it until pieces break off even as twenty more people snap photos, even as Matt has to slump back against the wall of the clinic, laughing so hard that he’s crying and gasping. Trying to pull himself back up to his feet even as people close in to fire questions at him, trying to pull himself up even though Lea is slinging one of his arms around her shoulders and is hauling him up the steps, her head held high and fierce.
Cory fucking loves her for that. Loves her as much as he hates the photos, the way they show up everywhere - every news site, every magazine. The internet. Cory now hates the internet. People shouting their support or damning her actions, or even just thinking that their opinion somehow means something.
The photos aren’t allowed on set. Cory shreds every single one that he can find. Tears them into a million pieces even though he isn’t exactly sure why.
“Of course there’s no public apology,” Diana says at a red carpet interview - what was it for? Cory can’t even keep up with what everyone is doing any more - “We all think Lea is amazing for what she did. We all love Matt so much. We catch anyone trying to exploit him, or what he’s going through, we will tear you down.”
Cory watches the interview in Chris’ trailer, because Chris has taken to giving Cory a crash-course of gossip to take back to Matt every few days, and he starts crying. He doesn’t know why, exactly, just that he’s so proud and so angry and so scared. He’s so fucking scared and he doesn’t know what to do. Chris is hugging him, and petting his hair, and saying “It’s okay,” and Cory is saying “It’s not, it’s never going to be okay.”
*
“I’m sick of the couch,” Matt says. It’s one of the days where he’s down to making statements, where he has no filter. Cory has already responded to comments like “It’s because of people like you that there are midgets,” and “It hurts. Why does everything hurt?” and “Cheese is such bullshit.”
This one is easier to answer.
He gently pulls Matt up to a sitting position, and picks him up. It’s hard, because Matt is still a grown man even with the weight he’s lost, and because he feels pain now in a way that Cory doesn’t quite understand, and Matt won’t elaborate on. He carries Matt upstairs, and into his bedroom, and lowers his legs enough for Matt to stand and sway, looking nauseas, before sitting down on the edge of his own bed.
“You need to vacuum in here,” Matt says.
“Sorry.”
“I’m sick of being tired.”
“I know.”
Matt sinks back against the pillows, his movements halting and uneven.
“I’m sick.”
“Yeah. I know.”
“It’s the chemo.”
Cory swallows. “When did you start chemo?”
“Nothing’s working.”
“Chemo will work,” Cory replies. He climbs into bed beside Matt, kicking his shoes off and trying to curl around Matt without jostling him.
“You don’t have to be so careful.”
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
“I hurt anyway. Don’t bother.”
Cory pulls Matt close, and cards his fingers through Matt’s hair, untangling curls and running fingernails over Matt’s scalp. “I’ll always be here to bother you.”
Matt laughs, a huff of breath that feels too hot against the skin of Cory’s neck.
*
Cory is down to two days a week. He feels guilty, because he knows it’s screwing everything up. They only have one day to shoot his scenes with Lea because she takes over Matt-sitting for one of the days. Finn has stopped having solos, because he just can’t keep his head in the zone. He was never that good anyway. It helps the Sam storyline. It helps that there are so many people around to pick up his slack. It helps that his mom calls early in the evening when Matt’s asleep and sings to him like she used to when he was little and upset.
It helps that sometimes Naya and Heather will come around and one of them will take him out for coffee, or a meal, and the other will sit with Matt. Naya reads to him, Heather rubs Lubriderm into the skin at his joints. One day he comes back from lunch with Heather and Naya has shaved Matt’s head.
“He asked me to,” she says and she looks so devastated to have been trusted with the task. So Cory hugs her, and puts on a brave face for one more person because that what they do these days, this Glee family. They trade moments of strength and weakness, try to ease the odd ache of mourning someone before they’re gone, the guilt of even thinking like that.
*
Sometimes Matt and Cory sleep together. Either because Matt is waking up disoriented and distressed, or because Cory is worried about what will happen while he’s sleeping. Two bodies on sheets that are crisp and clean, Cory’s fingers at the nape of Matt’s head, not brave enough to stroke an inch higher to where curls used to brush at his knuckles. Matt is asleep, and every now and then he’ll cough, he’ll sniff because his nose is running.
He needs to go to a hospital.
He’s refusing, and Cory just doesn’t have the heart to call an ambulance. Doesn’t have the heart to put Matt somewhere foreign and dangerous no matter how serious this is. Cory has his phone in his free hand, ready to make the call as soon as he’s strong enough, as soon as he’s brave enough. Matt shifts in his sleep, a hand coming up to rest on Cory’s curled fingers, sitting heavy on Cory’s phone. He coughs, hard enough to make his shoulders shake, to make his brow furrow in his sleep.
Cory pulls his phone free, and calls Lea.
“I need you to make a phone call for me,” he says.
“I’ll meet you both there,” she says, her voice still thick with sleep.
Neither of them have the energy to cry, not yet.
*
Matt will be in hospital until his fever goes down. Until his lungs clear as much as they can. Doctors are asking questions about hiring a full-time nurse, about moving him to someplace where people can look after him. But Matt hasn’t filled out any paperwork about next of kin or right of attorney, and his parents aren’t picking up their phone because they’re flying down, so the questions are directed at no one, hanging in the air.
Cory and Lea sit in the waiting room, holding each other’s hands so tightly that their knuckles are white. They don’t say anything, not for a long time. Not until the dark parking lot through the sliding glass doors starts to glow with the sunrise, not until a nurse gives them polystyrene cups of horrible coffee and Lea lets go of his hand long enough to take the flimsy cup, long enough to wipe the tear tracks off her face with her other hand.
“You should go be with him,” she says, wrapping both hands around the cup.
“I don’t... I don’t know what to do.”
Lea looks down at her coffee. “There might not be a lot of time,” she says. It’s the closest she’s come to acknowledging that Matt won’t get better. “I know that you...”
Cory sighs. Matt has always been an efficient machine for flirting, and dating, and sex. This thing isn’t any of those three. It’s not anything, doesn’t have the chance to be.
Cory stands, slow and stiff, and heads into Matt’s room.
*
Cory’s holding Matt’s hand when he wakes up, when green eyes open and look confused for a long moment, when he fights for a moment against the air being pushed into his lungs by a tube going up his nose.
“Sexy look,” Matt says, lifting a hand to examine the needle stuck into a vein on the back.
“Free pyjamas,” Cory adds.
“The only thing I have that fits.”
Cory has to swallow a few times before he can reply. “You always look fit.”
Matt tries to laugh, and Cory closes his eyes, pressing his forehead against Matt’s hand where it’s clasped in his own.
“Oh no,” Matt says. His voice is wrecked. From the cancer in his lungs, from the treatments. He sounds nothing like he used to, and Cory is too familiar with the sound to notice. “You can’t go giving up. Not yet.”
“I can’t,” Cory replies. “I don’t know how to give up on you.” He brushes his lips against one of Matt’s knuckles. “I can’t give up when I want so much.” And he feels like the shittiest person alive, dumping this on Matt when he’s in hospital on painkillers and antibiotics and anti-inflammation drugs and has a fucking tube shoved up his nose. Feels like shit when he sees the recognition and realisation in Matt’s eyes, because he would have been happy to skirt close to the issue and then hide it away again, to keep being whatever Matthew needed.
“You don’t... you don’t want this,” Matt says. “You don’t want me, not like this.”
Cory holds Matt’s face between his hands, staring into eyes that are green, so obviously green when they’re highlighted by the smudges of purple and blue beneath them, skin that’s growing pale and a little dry across his cheeks.
“I want you,” Cory says. “I want you and I’ve wanted you and...” Cory’s voice cracks, and he clears his throat, the noise loud and awkward in their small, private moment. “And I don’t think I can wait anymore. I don’t... We don’t have that option anymore.”
Matt closes his eyes, and it’s easy then, with them so close and so raw for Cory to lean that little bit further and press his lips to Matt’s. Dry and gentle, and even when their lips part a little the kiss remains slow, and sad, and chaste. The taste of one another ghosting across skin, and when Cory licks his lips after they’ll taste like lips, like skin and like salt, and nothing more.
All of their kisses will be that way.