Work Text:
closerrrr.
it feels like a death sentence.
really? okay.
it does hurt his heart.
perfect.
the smile is forced. these are all true facts.
it’s a job and a task and an act for mikey. these are all actions, performances. they’re a job and a task and a means to an end.
because matty deserves that.
what mikey has learned on his self exploration is that he’s being a shitty friend because he’s scared, and he’s messing stuff up, and he feels stupid.
so he’s walking with gay-ass greg ( who said that was actually kind of funny, to him, but don’t run around making that your thing ) through prom, shaking like a leaf, because matty deserves better.
he thinks seeing matty with em is the worst thing that could possibly happen ever, entirely, forever. he thinks his heart will shatter and he knows this was how it probably was going to always have had to be, he thinks this was an inevitability, but for a second he felt his heart race while he was laying in bed at the though of matty getting to do his thing and get his world rocked by someone who could rock his world. how he wanted.
mikey saw matty with em and every go kart ban hurt, every baking bonanza, jam sesh, high chatter, video game showdown hurt because it meant mikey really did fuck this one up, huh. that wasn’t the plan. the plan wasn’t to be scared or confused- it was graduation! he had done all the stuff right and he and matty were going to rock high school and he fucked it like some butt or vagina. whatever the plan was, he didn’t get it right.
and matty’s mad. matty’s pissed off because it’s an attack because mikey’s best option was gay-ass greg and he doesn’t even like greg, hes too cleaned up and pretty, he doesn’t have history and his experience isn’t in mikey, even if he likes cool stuff he didn’t like it with mikey, the go-kart employees don’t remember mikey and greg, this sucks and matty’s mad.
mikey does not register when he feels like a girl missing her limo to prom, because mikey is on a tipping point of actualization.
mikey does register that he’s not the talk of the town. people are busy. confused, in moments, but busy. which is fine, because this is still an intro. a means to an end. but it’s funny, greg being nice to him, the touches, the support- if this is supposed to be a date, greg’s really good at it, and mikey feels better.
greg is not getting a call back. his dad will politely suggest over the phone that he send a thank you card, and it will include a small, questionable brownie. mikey is not good at showing an appreciation he will never forget.
mikey is thinking about moments of solidarity while onstage. mikey is thinking about moments of solidarity when matty walks over and they’re looking at each other.
the breathy which i am not very good at catches in his throat like a confession from years ago. i think i’m learning has the acrid taste of a first bowl, to be better at it is a cough with a hand on his back that curls into a fearful smile of realization. mikey does not smile now because he is sober because he sings better sober, but he does not talk good, ever, actually, so it’s all a kind of a disaster.
when i was born, i had a thousand legs
soon, i’ll be dancing on a different stage
i’ll go to sleep inside a silk cocoon
and be reborn in the afternoon
when i have wings, i’ll fly into the sun
up in the sky, i’ll be the only one
deep down i know, i have to turn the page
but i wonder-
will i miss my legs?
matty likes it.
will i miss my legs?
and good god, no one else does.
he saw the tiniest quirk of a smile from matty but that didn’t stop the whole sober-also-never-had-a-well-formed-thought-in-eighteen-years thing. it took a whole lot of sharp glass under bare feet, but the justification that follows is a public bandage because he planned this before the dumbass boy reminding him of flying in the air in a butterfly costume after saying he had performed some ‘good shit’ made him feel like the absolute garbage dogshit he just performed was just as good.
so it’s all kind of frantically retrieved mental index cards and he wasn’t expecting an open-closet final.
it doesn’t bother him.
one bit.
because he did have the balls to do it yeah yeah sure whatever he’s busy. everything keeps being more and more fine and the air he needs is actually a search and rescue mission for his heart and soul and his legs, too, actually. when he kisses em it’s a test and it feels real but it feels real for an instance he doesn’t see as a forever-
it’s cool, yeah, but it isn’t an eternity of memories and time and energy and- dude the brownie is getting staler every second you test a theory you’re pretty sure you solved, like, a month ago.
so he beelines for it because this brownie has been through more than any brownie should go through, emotionally, and then matty’s there and he’s amazed mikey brought it and mikey’s sick of the thing he’s sick of it. mikey’s sick of a confused brownie thats had to have 1000 different iterations to be real and he’s tired of all the this and that and fixing and of course mikey iced dicks on it for dude, it’s our brownie. of course it’s here. that’s his baby.
that’s our baby, matty. that’s our end goal we made together.
and matty kisses him. matty kisses him and mikey gets it, mikey gets boys and mikey gets love. mikey understands why he had to go through this, because coming out is a scary journey because loving is a scary journey and matty went through this too, he knows it, because mikey knows matty, mikey knows that if he was formulating an intricate surprise plan while navigating his own understanding behind his friends back, that’s what the car on the hill was, just matty’s smarter than mikey, and a better kisser.
this is one of those instances of eternity that mikey sees in movies and will look back on fondly but wish that heterosexuality wasn’t so dominant in media. it doesn’t hold a candle to the fact that they’re eating a formulation of a past understanding, they’ve consumed the mythos of friendships and stopped lying and used its energy and memories and terrifying thc content to realize laughing and joking is twice as fun when you’re not pretending you’re in love. mikey is now cherishing the gentle touches, mikey now laughs twice at hard at the lonely island’s peak capability at irony. mikey is holding matty in his arms because matty has always appreciated everything he does and mikey has tried so hard to do the same but it’s scary to do that, huh.
and now it isn’t, so much so, he supposes. maybe in some ways, in some communications, it will be. maybe it will be a process. maybe matty will go away and maybe it will be scary but matty said something that “costs-me nothing” so they’ll still be in contact. maybe mikey will see how stuff goes with a girl, he liked em and he can talk to matty about that, it’s not scary to talk to matty, ever, at all.
what should we do now? i mean, we cannot go back into prom like this isn’t scary or paranoia inducing because mikey doesn’t actually want to or care to, because that feels like something he can forget. mikey realizes that high school is a blip and he’s not peaked, he’s barely started. there’s universes ahead of him.
there’s only one place you can go when you’re this high.
he likes exchanging kisses in the bubble pit. not even sexually, he still thinks this shit is weird.
mikey likes that this has all, fucking finally, fallen into place.