Chapter Text
So long brother, what have you done to me?
It isn't the same as it was before,
It's a history.
Things almost seem to be going back to normal after Max is gone - a new normal, duller reality than the one before, but nothing Matt can’t handle. He got so close to throwing it all away, to give in to the doubts and lose his life and security over a passionate turn of events.
After some tumultuous weeks and some introspection on his part, he’d just declared this whole ordeal a misstep. A moment of confusion. It wasn’t this uncommon for two best friends, as straight as they came, to have a bit of a thing at some point, was it? After years and years of unequaled intimacy and understanding of each other, was it so strange to cross the line just this once?
(Or twice. And a half.)
As strong as it had felt then, at Shariff’s, isolated from the whole world, and as harrowing it had been to let him go at the airport keep a straight face in Frank’s car on the way back, this was nothing to sacrifice his whole life over for.
He meant his current, balanced life with Sarah, but his relationship with Max as well. Someone he’d known for nearly his whole life under a certain status. He got so close to messing up one of the very foundations of his existence for something he couldn’t even properly name. Something that wasn’t them.
Paradoxically, not having Max around proves to be easier. There’s no denying the best-friend-shaped hole in his life, but there’s also no awkward dancing around each other and knowing looks to deal with. There is also no risk, no temptation for him to fall down this rabbit-hole once again.
It’s not like Max is completely gone from their lives either: they make the most of the iPad they got for him to initiate a new Skyping routine. It’s Thursday and the whole gang is here over five different screens, five windows into their lives, that looks just like them.
Rivette’s there first, in his family’s reading room. In the background, Matthias can see tomes and tomes on Brutalist architecture, couple psychology, and Swedish expressionist art. Frank and Brass meet ahead of the call and share a screen of their own, not exactly well angled for the two of them as it cuts Brass out every so often. The light is yellow and you can catch the corner of a few festival posters Matt feels like he’s seen his entire life now. Sharif joins in 15 minutes late, the backdrop of his call a Lebanon flag. And Maxime.
Maxime sits on his mattress - on the floor, no bed frame - in the corner of his room. The wallpaper is plain save for three pictures he tacked to it, all of them of his friends, none of his family. This feels childish and bittersweet.
Matthias feels strangely self-conscious of the location he chose for his own call. It’s the same desk corner he settles in when he’s working from home and needs to call a client: simply white, empty, no distraction in sight. No indication of the person he could be once he’s not wearing a tie. These days, he’s not quite sure who this person is.
Despite what Matt predicted, they actually have quite some fun. Sarah pops up behind her early on to send a few kisses to the boys then waving them goodbye as she’s off for a few drinks with her girlfriends. Then they crack beer after beer, the call never getting any quieter even after they somehow found a balance in this strange communication.
They talked about all sorts of trivial things the way they always did, like nothing has changed. Rivette’s dissertation, which he will be partly writing remotely from Montreal, Frank’s romantic setbacks and how Brass nearly got run over by a hipster on a segway - and if calling people hipsters is a sign that he is indeed aging?
Inevitably, the latter eventually asks:
"So Max! Max, how are the girls there?"
With this, Matthias remembers a conversation he had with McAfee and how he had the best of times when he was sent in Sidney for work a while back; how all the surfer chicks were tan and obsessed with healthy bullshit, always walking around in bikini tops and could drink him under the table. Every conversation with Kevin sounded a bit more of the same. He assumed he could trust about no part of this description as well.
But whatever spectrum McAfee and Maxime shared, they were on opposite ends of each other.
"I don’t have time for that-"
The chat immediately hollers at him, save for Matt who smiles and takes another sip of his IPA. It doesn’t quite hit the spot though. He wishes he had something stronger and considers the average bottle of gin he keeps in their cart, but thinks nothing of it.
"You didn’t fuck off to the other side of the world to become a monk though," chips in Rivette
"Yeah you did that quite well here," adds Sharif, which earns him a middle finger from Maxime, only making him grin a bit wider.
"Ah - I don’t know, there’s this girl Aubrey, who works with me at the bar, she’s kinda sweet."
Leave it to Max to lead in with this description. Matthias misses that gentleness in him that all the other guys at his office lack completely, always bro-ing out and competing in everything in life.
"I mean I guess there’s also..."
The chat goes quiet, mimicking Matt who has not uttered a word in the past five minutes, but Max doesn’t finish his sentence. That’s about the worst thing he could do as all of his friend gang up on him in an incomprehensible string of shouts. None of it makes sense but the feeling is clear. Although he’s been somewhat disconnected from this subject, not really eager to hear about Max's dating experiences, but he finds their hubbub endearing.
Maxime, who is good at keeping to himself but one of the worst liars to walk this earth once the cat is out of the box, can see that he is cornered and sighs painfully. There’s no way out.
"I guess there’s like, this guy who seems quite keen. I don’t know he’s a regular-"
Matt can’t quite catch the rest of the sentence, because his ears start ringing and Brass and Rivette shout some more at him. It’s an alternating mix of surprise and excitement, he’s not quite sure of the specifics. He feels like someone has just dropped a bucket of warm water all over him. Everything is hot and slightly dizzy. Now would be a great time to get this gin, maybe even crack up the better brand.
"What the fuck? Since when do you fancy guys as well?" Brass lets out with his characteristic tactfulness. Frank punches his shoulder and everybody else piles on him as it often happens. Matt would have chimed but he doesn’t feel quite ,there.
"I don’t, or I didn’t, I don’t know." Max looks hesitant, like he doesn’t know how to even put words on this thing. Each new one is like a punch in Matt’s guts. "He insisted and I figured, why not, you know?"
"Well hey cheers to that!" says Sharif, who seems genuinely chuffed.
"New place, new Max!" Frank adds.
"Chill out guys, it’s just one date, it’s nothing."
More noise, and agitation. Rivette calls his name twice before Matt actually processes it.
“You ok there? Haven’t heard you in a while.”
He actually isn’t, and he hopes he isn’t making it too obvious to the chat - and to one of them in particular, whose troubled eyes seem to stare at him directly through the camera, although that’s not possible. It’s like August all over again, with the anger and the disorientation. He stands up and puts on his steadiest voice.
“Yeah all good, my beer’s just empty, hang on.”
In the kitchen, Matthias rubs his hand against his mouth. Although these feelings are now too familiar, there is a new sense of panic creeping into him that he can’t quite identify - or control. He is jittery, his heel knocking against the door of the kitchen counter where they keep all the baking tins. Back in the office nook, the shouts raising from his computer, no longer endearing, make him even more anxious.
No part of him wants to go back to socializing now, so he bends sideways to his screen to interrupt his friends who are now talking about something as trivial as australian cricket.
“Guys, Sarah just got home so I’m just gonna log off now ok?”
But she’s not, she actually wouldn’t be before an hour or so.
Before they can even express much of a protest, he gives them the most insincere wave and urgently slams his laptop off so he can’t even catch a glimpse of Max’s expression, which he knows must be disappointed. History just fucking repeats itself in his case, because apparently, he never learned. He separated himself from the group like he did back in August before Sarah forced him to go to the party - except she’s not there to do so now or to catch the mess of a boyfriend that he is, thank god.
He needs to calm down, so he does pour himself a first glass of gin, which he downs, and another one, which he carries around as he walks in a circle in his living-room.
This isn’t at all how this was supposed to be. This had just been a mistake, une erreur de parcours, something that couldn’t be explained but that didn’t need to make sense, because it wasn’t them. He’d said that back at the party, meant it, when Maxime had slipped his fingers in his unbelted jeans, a hot breath against him. They were straight, so this was nonsensical, no reason to trash their whole friendship over.
They would go their own way, not pacing at midnight over unsaid things, throat tight, cheeks flushed and a knot in their stomachs. There wasn’t supposed to be any regrets, any what ifs, no overbearing feeling of unfairness.
By the time he stands up to get himself another drink, his phone pings in his pocket with a notification from their group chat. Rivette has taken a screenshot of their conversation, probably some moment before it all went downhill for him. Mindlessly, his two fingers zoom in on the bottom right corner of the picture, where Max smiles in the australian late morning sun, contrasting with their own timezone.
Suddenly, he misses him just has much as he did when he hugged him at the airport, just as painfully as he did in the car. In contrast, the following weeks had felt like a trick, seemingly easy, like letting him leave wasn’t going to be such an unbearable pain in the end - yet here he is.
It wasn’t supposed to feel like this.
Fuck.