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David didn’t know how they ended up here, screaming at each other in the middle of the afternoon– That’s not true. He did know. He was just confused how it ended up like this, how it ended up with Matteo face getting hotter and hotter as he pulled at his hair, how it ended up with David feeling like he was suffocating in his own home.
He scrubbed at his face. “I told you. I was only looking at your phone to check when we were supposed to meet the-“
“My voicemail isn’t where you would have checked that!”
“I accidently hit it! I wasn’t snooping in your phone, Matteo. I wouldn’t. You know I trust you, but the fact still stands that you didn’t go to your appointment today. And I know you haven’t been taking your medication-“
“Oh? You know that?” Matteo spat back. “You just said you weren’t snooping! What were you doing? Counting my pills or something?”
David threw his arms up. He felt like they were talking in circles, that they weren’t getting anywhere at all. They were just working each other up, making themselves more and more upset, and there wasn’t an end in sight, not one that David wanted, ending in apologies and soft smiles and forgiveness. He pressed at the sides of his temples, hoping that the sensation would lessen the pounding he felt on the inside of his skull.
The walls of the room started pressing closer and closer together until David’s palms were itching with the need to get out, get some fresh air, get to a place where the room wasn’t closing in on him. Matteo’s words started to fade out as the ringing in his ears got louder and louder, like David was standing in the cymbal section of the Berlin orchestra during the opera’s big crescendo, and David knew that he didn’t want to know the ending of this one, the one where the lover reveals himself to be the vile, terrible man all along, watching his heart’s horrified reaction.
“I have to go,” David said suddenly, thinking about Mozart and coffins and bite wounds. He grabbed his jacket off the hook and was out the door in seconds. He thinks he heard Matteo calling his name.
He ends up wondering around for an hour, trying to get image of his bedroom walls crumbling at his feet out of his head, before going to Laura’s apartment. She lets him wallow for about fifteen minutes before she tells him that he has to go back to his home, his apartment and talk to his boyfriend like a real adult.
It’s dark by the time he gets back. The apartment is dark too, not a single light turned on. The air feels cold as he pushes his way into the bedroom, chilly in a way that makes David think that it wasn’t just the winter air following him from outside.
Matteo is sitting in an armchair by the window, his face lit up by moonlight, and David wonders how he could even leave him alone for a second looking so beautiful, looking so sad. He feels like a prince in the stories his sister used to read to him as a kid, watching the princess up at the top of the tower that he had already fallen completely and totally enamored with before she even got a chance to open her mouth. Matteo is picking at the loose threads on the arm, and David can vaguely make out angry, red lines under the collar of Matteo’s sweater and up his neck.
“Hey,” David says quietly, afraid to break the spell that has been cast over the room.
Matteo doesn’t look up but he goes to pull a thread hard.
“Matteo,” David says just as quietly as he gets closer.
“You can’t–“ Matteo cuts himself off, and goes to pick at his fingernails.
“Can’t what?” David drops to the floor in front of him and pulls his hands apart before he makes himself start bleeding. Matteo doesn’t look at him. “What can’t I do?”
“You can’t keep leaving every time it gets messy.”
Matteo goes to pull his hand free, but David just holds on tight. “I know. I’m sorry. I’m just not good at this- this talking thing, but we’re working on it, right? Together? Should we try again?”
Matteo is quiet for a second. He’s still looking out the window, up and at the sky, with a dazed out look that makes David think of dreamers and maidens and returning from sea. David runs his fingers in between Matteo’s knuckles to distract himself to keep silent until Matteo said something.
“I,” Matteo takes a sharp breath, shakes his head, and then pulls his hands free to rub at his eyes. David pulls them back when they inch too close to pulling at the roots of his hair. “I don’t like it when you leave. And I don’t like feeling like you don’t trust me. It makes me… sad or whatever.”
“I’m sorry. For leaving and for looking at your voicemail. I should’ve just closed it out when I hit it,” David presses himself closer until Matteo’s knees are around his ribs. He holds onto Matteo’s waist in hopes that the pressure will make him look down, look at him. Matteo grips at his elbow, and David thinks it’s a start. “I trust you. I do. It’s just really hard seeing the person you love most in the world be so mean to the person you love most in the world, and knowing there isn’t anything you can do to help.”
“You do help. It’s just… it’s still hard,” Matteo pauses. “I’ll call them tomorrow.”
“Okay,” David says and fiddles with a hole in Matteo’s sweater.
“Will you-“ Matteo stops. David hums and grips onto Matteo’s knee. “Will you come with me? To the appointment?”
“Of course. Of course, Teo. I’ll go with you every week if you want.”
“Okay,” Matteo says and closes his eyes.
“Okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Can I have a hug?”
“Yeah.” Matteo collapses on top of David and shoves his face into his shoulder. It was slightly uncomfortable with the way that David had to lean up on his knees and Matteo was slumped over in the chair, but as David ran his nose under the soft spot of he thought they were going to be alright.