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It’s 1:00 in the morning on a Wednesday when Matteo, quite spectacularly, falls off his bike.
He wants to say this has never happened before, but that would be a lie. He wants to blame it on alcohol, or it having been a long day, but those would be lies as well. He’s stone-cold sober and he got up at 3:00 in the afternoon that day.
He just tried to jump on his bike and take off, but instead he kind of overestimated the leap and straight out fell to the ground.
The icing on the cake is definitely that, on this otherwise deserted suburban street, there just so happened to be another guy passing by on his bike. Just Matteo’s luck that his swan dive was witnessed. He feels even luckier when this guy actually takes the time to stop and ask him if he’s okay, instead of leaving him and his embarrassment be.
“Uhm,” Matteo says from where he’s still lying on the asphalt. “Yeah.”
He isn’t sure though, something in his wrist feels kind of wrong. And with that he means that it hurts.
Apparently, he doesn’t sound reassuring enough, because now the guy is getting off of his bike and coming over to inspect Matteo’s ungraceful sprawl from up close.
“I’m fine,” Matteo tries to make it more believable, but he can’t even put any weight on his right arm cause it hurts like a motherfucker. He drops the it’s fine act and hisses in pain instead.
“Let me help you up,” the guy says and Matteo does. Dignity down the drain anyway.
The guy gets him to sit on the sidewalk and even moves his bike off the street for him. Matteo now notices that he ripped his jeans and skinned his knee as well. Amazing.
“Does your leg hurt?”
“Just a little, it’s mostly my arm,” he says.
“This one?” The stranger gently takes his right arm and carefully moves his wrist. Matteo hisses again.
“I’m not drunk,” Matteo feels a need to point out. “Just an idiot, I guess.” It gets him a little laugh from the stranger, if nothing else.
“I think you need to go to the hospital,” the guy says.
“Oh, no,” Matteo protests. “I think it’s just sprained, it’s fine. I’ll just go home.”
“I think this is past the rub some dirt on it phase, sorry,” the guy says, sounding insistent.
The thing is that Matteo really doesn’t like hospitals. He tries to avoid them as much he can, which, luckily he’s been pretty successful at so far in his life.
“Fuck,” Matteo swears. It does hurt. He isn’t sure he could get back on his bike either, and he’s a good couple of kilometers away from home.
“Come on,” the guy insists. “I’ll take you, we’re really close anyway.”
“No, I couldn’t ask-“
“You didn’t ask,” he shrugs. “And it’s not like I’ve got anything better to do.”
“Sleep, maybe,” Matteo suggests, awkwardly getting up from the sidewalk without using his right arm. The guy is there within seconds to help him up.
“I’m an art student, we don’t sleep,” he jokes. “Come on.”
They lock Matteo’s bike and start the thankfully short trek to the nearest hospital. Matteo is just grateful his knee doesn’t hurt too bad and that walking is going just fine. The last thing he needs is having a handsome stranger carry him to the hospital in the middle of the night.
“I’m Matteo,” Matteo tells him. “In case you want to tell your friends about the idiot who fell off his bike later.”
“Oh, I could’ve told them without knowing your name as well, no worries,” he smiles. “I’m David. In case you want to tell your friends about the guy who saved your life later.”
“Saved my life?” Matteo asks.
“Well, I mean. I’m imagining you’re gonna embellish a little when you tell the story. I know I am.”
“Yeah, but you can get a laugh out of it and embellish it so you’ve saved the day. If I’m going to change the story when I tell it to my friends, I’m not telling them I fell on my face coming home from visiting my mom, after I fell asleep on her couch during a Married at First Sight marathon.”
---
When they get to the hospital, they have to go through a special night entrance to the emergency room. Matteo’s never had to go to the emergency room before, especially not at night. Luckily David seems to know the way though.
“Some of my friends have penny boards,” he says by way of explanation. “I’ve been here a couple of times before.”
“Is that why you were so insistent on taking me?” Matteo asks. “You have a thing for ER rooms at night or something? Some sort of fetish?”
“Nah,” David grins. “I am having an affair with one of the doctors though.”
Matteo is pretty sure he’s joking.
---
They check in at the front desk and Matteo is given some paperwork to fill out. They sit down in some spectacularly uncomfortable seats in the waiting room and wait for someone to call Matteo in.
“Is it that one?” Matteo asks when a doctor walks past them.
David eyes the middle-aged woman with the dark hair and shakes his head. “No.”
A younger, male doctor walks by and David whispers: “That’s more my type.”
Matteo’s eyes follow the doctor and yeah, that’s more his type as well.
“Or her,” David says, subtly pointing out a young nurse, probably in her early to mid-twenties. Her blond hair is up in a bun.
“How many affairs are you having in this hospital?” Matteo asks.
David shrugs. “It’s becoming complicated. Almost time to move on to the next hospital, I'm guessing.”
“Mr. Florenzi?” The nurse they were just talking about looks up from the clipboard in her hands and says his name.
Having David there had almost made Matteo forget about the pain in his arm and his general anxiety at having to be here. It all rushes back now though, which is probably why, when he tells David: “Thanks for waiting with me, man,” and David asks: “Do you want me to go in with you?” He says: “Yes.”
“Hi, I’m Esme,” the nurse introduces herself when they’re ushered into a tiny examination room.
“Hi,” Matteo replies. The nurse’s eyes go to David and before anyone can say anything, Matteo blurts out. “That’s my husband. David uhm Florenzi.”
She doesn’t say anything, just smiles at him, and motions for Matteo to take a seat on the examination table. David, for his part, looks a bit wide-eyed and confused. Luckily he doesn’t speak up to call him out on his lie though.
“It says here that you had a fall and now your arm hurts?” She asks and Matteo nods. “I also see that you hurt your knee,” she goes on, taking a seat and rolling her chair up to Matteo to take a look at his knee.
While she’s busy examining him, Matteo mouths “Sorry,” at David. He wants to say: “I panicked!” Or: “Please don’t think I’m crazy, I’m not,” but he isn’t sure he could be very stealth about it.
“I’ll go and get you a hospital gown to change into so we can take care of this wound, and then a doctor will be in to see you soon and they’ll probably take some scans of that arm.”
“Okay, thank you,” Matteo tells her, watching her leave.
“Fuck, sorry,” he whispers as soon as they’re alone again. “I panicked, I should’ve told her you’re my cousin or something.”
“Why do I have to be your anything?” David asks. He doesn’t look angry though, just amused. And maybe still a bit confused.
“Because, don’t you have to be family to be able to stay with me?”
“This isn’t an American movie,” David laughs. “I’m pretty sure whoever can be in here with you.”
“Oh,” Matteo says, feeling pretty stupid now. “Fuck. I can’t take it back now, that would be weird, right?”
“Weirder than pretending to be married to someone you met twenty minutes ago?” David asks.
“Probably?”
Before David can say anything else, the nurse has returned with the hospital gown. “You can change into this, and then we can go from there.”
She leaves them again, to give Matteo some privacy to change, but that still leaves his husband in the room with him.
Matteo toes out of his shoes, happy that he wore a matching pair of socks that day, as well as a decent pair of boxers, they’re a deep maroon. It could’ve been much worse. Just yesterday he was wearing the Tweety boxers Jonas got him for Christmas last year.
David turns around while he changes, and doesn’t turn back until Matteo says: “Okay.”
“Alright, how are we doing in here?” The nurse asks, setting up for the task of cleaning out the wound on his knee and bandaging it.
“My husband was just telling me,” David says, grinning at Matteo, “that he hopes you have fun bandaids.”
“Sorry,” she says, looking up at Matteo apologetically. “I’m afraid they're just these boring ones.”
“That’s fine,” Matteo says, looking down at what she’s doing so he doesn’t look at David and give him the finger.
“I might be able to get you guys some lollipops though. If you sit still and are good, of course,”
“Oh, he can be very good if lollipops are at stake,” David assures her.
Matteo does roll his eyes at him for that.
---
When the doctor finally arrives, he introduces himself and asks: “What seems to be the problem?”
“My dumb husband fell off his bike,” David pipes up.
It’s the attractive doctor they saw while they were waiting earlier, and Matteo can feel himself blushing. This has been an extremely embarrassing night.
The doctor looks at them and back down at the file in his hands. “Husband? You got married young, huh?”
“Well,” Matteo mumbles. “When you know, you know.”
For all that David’s been giving him shit, and using every opportunity to make fun of him, Matteo does feel like he deserves it for springing the husband thing on him. And David, who really doesn’t have to be here, who didn’t have to go along with it, and who doesn’t have to take Matteo’s hand when the doctor starts poking and prodding at his arm and it hurts, still does it all for whatever reasons.
“We’re gonna get a scan taken,” the doctor tells him. “So we can see what we’re dealing with here.”
Matteo nods, relieved when the doctor stops touching him.
“The nurse will be in to get you in a sec, and then we’ll see each other again when I have the scan,” he reassures Matteo before leaving again.
“You okay?” David asks, still holding his hand.
Matteo shrugs. “I hope it’s not broken.”
“Yeah,” David says. “We’ll see, yeah? And even if it’s broken, you’ll just get a cast and I’ll be the first to sign it.”
“You gonna sign it as Hubby?” Matteo asks.
“Okay, never say that word again,” David says. Then: “I can sign it as Mr. Florenzi. Though I don’t remember us talking about me taking your name.”
“Well, I don’t know your last name, do I?” Matteo asks. “So I had to say something.”
“It’s Schreibner,” David says.
“What’s better then?” Matteo asks. “Matteo Schreibner or David Florenzi?”
“We can always hyphenate,” David says just as the nurse walks back in.
“I’ll take you to your scan now,” she tells him.
“Can my husband come?” Matteo asks, fingers tightening around David’s again.
“He can come to the room, but he can’t come inside with us,” she says, but that’s good enough.
---
They have to do some more waiting before the scan. The chairs here are slightly more comfortable than the ones in the original waiting room though, which is something.
“I hate hospitals,” Matteo admits into the quiet of the hallway. It’s been weird seeing the hospital so deserted. There’s hardly anyone around, and even the lights in the hallways and in the rooms seem dimmed somehow. The whole building seems to be in night mode, which is making this whole experience even stranger.
Maybe that’s what prompts him to say: “My mom.”
He never really talks about these things with anyone, except maybe Jonas, back when it was all happening and at its worst. But there’s something about being here, and there’s something about David that makes him want to tell. “She’s been admitted a couple of times. So in my head, it’s like... Even if it’s just a wrist injury, I still don’t like being here, you know?”
“Yeah,” David replies gently, smiling at him. “Good thing I’m here then, huh?”
“My hero,” Matteo laughs softly.
“Exactly,” David grins. “As I said, remember this when you’re telling your friends!”
He’s quiet for a while and then he asks: “Is your mom okay?”
“Yeah,” Matteo says. “She’s a lot better now that she’s on medication.” He doesn’t really want to elaborate on that right now. Maybe some other time.
“Good,” David smiles at him softly. “I’m happy she’s better.”
Matteo takes a deep breath and leans his head against the wall. He’s getting pretty tired. He can only imagine how David is feeling, as he doesn’t even have to be there. He’s just about to tell him again that it’s totally fine if he wants to leave. Or he’s about to gather all his courage to do so at least, when the nurse gets back.
“Okay, Matteo,” she smiles at him encouragingly and Matteo gets up to follow her. When he looks back, David shoots him two thumbs up.
---
It doesn't take that long and it's not that bad.
David holds his hand on the way back to the room.
---
They’ve been waiting for the doctor for a while when David suddenly says: “I know the best vending machine in this place. It’s got chocolate chip cookies.”
Matteo wonders if maybe his foot tapping is driving David a bit crazy, or if he can just tell that Matteo is getting a bit overwhelmed and ready to go home. Whatever it is, he’s happy for the distraction.
“Oh yeah?” He asks.
David nods.
“Well, I could do with a cookie,” Matteo admits.
And so they go exploring.
David takes them to a vending machine in the middle of a deserted hallway. Matteo has no idea how he’d know it’d be there, but he was right, there are chocolate chip cookies. Matteo’s wallet, and everything else, is with his clothes in the examination room, so David pays for his.
David has to help him open the wrapper as well. It should be a bit uncomfortable but it just feels nice. David is sweet about it, is the thing. Has been sweet about anything, really.
“I used to come here a lot,” David says on their way back to their examination room. “I still have to come in from time to time but not as often anymore.”
Matteo takes another bite from his cookie. “Nothing serious, I hope?” He asks carefully, unsure for a second how to ask, or if he even should ask.
“No. I’m not dying or anything,” David reassures him. “I’m not even sick.” He’s quiet for a moment before he adds: “I’m transgender and my therapist and doctor have their offices in this hospital, so.”
They continue in silence for a bit until Matteo asks: “So you know where the good vending machines are?”
“So I know where the good vending machines are,” he agrees.
When they get back to their hallway, Esme has been looking for them. “You’re not supposed to wander off,” she tells them. She looks a bit cross and Matteo feels a bit guilty.
“Sorry,” David says. “My husband really had to pee.”
“And the toilets right there were no good?” She asks, pointing at the toilets a couple of meters away. She’s smiling at them again though, so she must not be that angry, Matteo reasons.
“He’s very particular,” David says.
“Okay, okay,” Matteo mutters.
“And here I was thinking about giving you two a lollipop,” she says, taking two green lollipops from her pocket.
“Nice,” Matteo grins.
“But I said you had to be good in order for that, so,” she says, ruthlessly putting them back into her pocket.
Matteo can’t really say that he minds though, he got some cookies out of it after all.
---
“What time do you think it is ?” Matteo asks. They’ve been waiting for the doctor for a while.
“I don’t think. I know,” David says, taking his phone out of his pocket. “Almost four.”
“Fuck,” Matteo groans.
“Are you getting tired?”
“It’s literally the middle of the night,” Matteo laughs. “Aren’t you tired?”
“A little,” David shrugs.
“You’ve got nowhere to be?” Matteo asks. “Someone to go home to…?” He fishes.
“I live with my sister,” David says. “But I sent her a message, so she knows I’m safe and sound.”
“Oh,” Matteo says. “You know you can still leave though, right?”
“I can leave?” David asks, putting his hand to his chest. “And here I was, thinking this was a hostage situation.”
“Ha ha,” Matteo mumbles. Pleased.
There’s a knock on the door and the doctor arrives.
“Okay, so, good news,” he says. In a flurry of practiced motion he has the light on the wall turned on, and is showing Matteo a picture of his actual bones. Weird. “There’s no fracture, so we’re looking at a bad sprain here. So you won’t be needing a cast. The painkillers we gave you when you got in work anti-inflammatory, so we’re gonna prescribe you some more. Make sure you rest up and don’t use your wrist for at least 48 hours.”
Matteo is so relieved that he zones out a bit during the doctor’s lecture on how long to rest up for, and when he should come back if the pain gets worse or whatever. David, next to him, is nodding along to everything though so hopefully he’s paying attention.
“Okay, so you’re free to go then,” the doctor tells him. “David, take good care of your husband. Make sure he rests his wrist,” he shakes David’s right hand and Matteo’s uninjured one.
“Fuck, you don’t think that was a sex joke, do you?” Matteo asks when the doctor’s left the room again.
“No. That would’ve been highly inappropriate and unprofessional," David says.
They make eye contact and burst out laughing.
“Okay, get changed, other people who are way more injured than you and your sprain might need this room.”
David turns around again while Matteo changes back into his gross, bloody and ripped jeans.
“I can’t wait to go home and take a shower.”
---
When they get outside Matteo thinks: this is it, but David surprises him again by saying: “Do you think you can stay upright on a bike if I’m the one steering it?”
“Huh?” He asks, watching David unlock his bike.
“Hop on and I’ll drop you off at home.”
“No,” Matteo says. “You don’t have to do that.”
“What kind of a husband would I be if I let you roam the streets at night all alone?” David asks.
“A pretty lousy one,” Matteo grins.
“There we go, so hop on.”
“If I take the both of us down,” Matteo says, trying to get himself onto the rack on David’s bike. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“At least we’re already at the hospital,” David says, getting on the bike after Matteo is seated and somewhat stable.
When they take off, Matteo puts his good arm around David’s waist. If Matteo’s worried that it’s a bit of a forward move, his doubts are gone when, once they’re riding off in a straight line, David leans back and puts a hand over Matteo’s arm to keep him secure.
Matteo gives him directions to his flat, and David gets him there in one piece, or as close to the one piece he was in after his tumble, at least.
“Thank you,” Matteo tells him. The sun’s started rising now, painting the sky a beautiful orange. Matteo desperately wants to invite David in and keep him a bit longer, but he’s afraid that’d be a bit much.
“Definitely no problem,” David smiles.
“You’re the best fake husband I’ve ever had,” Matteo lets him know.
“And when you tell the story…” David prompts.
“I’ll make sure to describe you like the hero you are,” Matteo promises.
“Uhm,” David says, looking away for a second. “Gimme your phone for a sec?”
Matteo does.
“Text me an update on your wrist tomorrow, or like later today, depending on when you wake up,” David says, saving his number to Matteo's phone.
“I will,” Matteo promises. He can’t stop smiling over getting a boy’s number. This one he will blame on it having been a long day.
“And then maybe I can ask you out on a date,” David says. “When you aren’t on painkillers and sleep-deprived.”
Matteo’s full-on grinning now. “And then maybe I’ll say yes.”
He kind of wants to demand David ask him now so he can say yes. Instead, he leans in and gives David a kiss on the cheek and says: “Thanks,” again.
When Matteo gets up to the flat Hans is having breakfast at the kitchen table.
“Are you only now just getting in?” He asks.
“Yeah,” Matteo says. “I fell and hurt my arm, so I went to the hospital.”
“What? Are you okay?” Hans asks, putting down his cup of coffee with a frown.
“Yeah, it’s all good, my husband was with me the whole time.”
“Okay, Matteo. They gave you the good drugs, didn’t they?” Hans chuckles.
Matteo gives him a little salute and makes his way to his bedroom. He falls on the bed, in his gross, bloody jeans, and sleeps eight hours straight.
When he wakes up around 2:00 in the afternoon there’s a new message on his phone.
From: Hubby
How’s your arm? Hope you slept well.
To: Hubby
Like a rock, gonna take another painkiller now.
From: Hubby
Good :)
From: Hubby
Hey, Matteo?
To: Hubby
Yeah?
From: Hubby
Want to go on a date with me?