Chapter Text
Ross meant it when he said that Matty didn’t break his heart when they were younger. Because what Ross remembers from that time is mostly a sense of thrill, of discovery, and yes, of longing but the good, teenage kind of longing that everyone writes songs about. It wasn’t a burden to him. It wasn’t a curse. What Ross remembers is having a best friend he loved maybe more than he fully understood back then. What Ross remembers is how every stolen moment with Matty felt like something precious, something to be prized, something he held carefully in his hands.
**
Like the summer Ross turned seventeen and had just gotten his driving license and was in the driver’s seat of his dad’s car. He picked Matty up at his house, watching the way he came jogging down his front stairs and then came crashing into the passenger seat, already laughing.
“Fucking joyride,” Matty said, bouncing in his seat. “Let’s go!”
Ross gave him a pointed look. “Seatbelt,” he said rather primly.
Matty rolled his eyes, but reached back for his seatbelt. Before he’d clicked it into place, Ross put his foot down on the gas pedal and peeled off.
“Fucking hell!” Matty exclaimed, giving a small whoop as they sped down the street. Ross looked over at Matty who had one hand braced against the ceiling, the other holding onto the door handle, and a huge toothy smile on his face.
Ross kept speeding down quiet streets, taking turns a little too quickly, blowing through intersections. He loved the feeling of being recklessly in control. He loved the way Matty kept yipping like some kind of deranged puppy in the passenger seat next to him. He rolled down all the windows and he loved the warm summer air whipping around their heads, the way it sent Matty’s hair all over the place.
Matty reached forward and turned on the radio. Shakira blared through the speakers and Matty sang along about how his hips don’t lie. Ross allowed his eyes one second to look down at Matty’s hips as he gyrated ostentatiously next to him and then looked back at the road, narrowly missing a curb that’d come out of nowhere.
Ross braked hard when they came to a four way intersection. Matty got thrown forward in his seat just a bit, hands catching himself on the dashboard. The radio was even louder now that they’d stopped. Panic! At the Disco blasting loudly into the quiet summer afternoon.
Ross turned in his seat to look at Matty. He felt out of breath as if he’d been exerting himself even though he’d only been driving. Matty seemed to be catching his breath too, pushing his hair back from his face and laughing gently to himself. “You’re fucking crazy, mate,” Matty said. “I’m not sure they should’ve given you your license.”
Ross shook his head and grinned. “Need for speed and all that,” he said, then looked at the different roads in front of them. “Which way shall we go now?”
Matty peered through the windscreen. “Straight’s gonna turn into a dead end. Left takes us back where we started. I think. Right–Fuck if I know honestly.”
“You’re not known for your sense of direction,” Ross nodded.
He was absently thinking about the dead end street. About flying down it at top speed with Matty next to him. About not stopping, about never stopping. It sounded morbid, but he wasn’t thinking about dying. He was thinking about the opposite. He was imagining that high just before, that moment when you are the most alive you’ll ever be. He was thinking about how being with Matty always felt like that to him, at least these days.
Ross turned right and they kept driving, sometimes he went way too fast and other times he slowed down. Matty sang along to Kelly Clarkson and asked Ross totally random questions like, “Would you rather never be allowed to eat Red Vines again or have to eat one piece of dog shit every day?” or “Do you think aliens would like our band?” Ross tried to keep his eyes on the road, but there was something about Matty leaning back against the passenger door, his seatbelt completely disregarded by that point, his hair in the wind, the green of summer behind him, the way he laughed with his face scrunched up whenever he fucked up the words to the song on the radio.
Ross pulled the car over at a turn off on a street where there were just a few houses and not much else. He turned off the car, radio going silent, everything going silent.
After a beat, Matty asked, “What’d you stop for?”
Ross unbuckled his seatbelt so he could twist in his seat and face Matty. “No reason,” he said, rolling up the windows right as it started pouring rain.
The drops beat heavily down on the roof of the car and made little rivers that trailed down the windows. The sound of it was loud static and they sat and listened to it together, looking at each other and then looking out at the rain and then looking back at each other.
Matty pulled out a cigarette and Ross took it from his hands before Matty could light it. “My dad will actually kill me if this car comes back smelling of Bensons,” he said and tucked the cigarette behind his ear.
Matty frowned and folded his arms, pouting like a child. Then he stretched his skinny legs out across the center console, putting his feet in Ross’ lap and leaning his head back against the window. Ross watched as Matty closed his eyes, leaving Ross alone there to just look at him– his collarbone, his throat as he swallowed once and then twice. Ross let his hand rest on one of Matty’s narrow ankles, circled his fingers around it, feeling all of the small bones, the tendons and muscles, these mechanical parts of Matty moving just under his skin.
Ross realized something then. The feeling suddenly unable to be pushed aside or categorized as strictly friendship or just a small crush. The constant urge he had to touch Matty, to be closer and closer to him. The way every single thing about Matty–even the delicate bones in his ankle–made Ross feel something warm and good in his gut. The way he wanted these moments with Matty to stretch on forever. Ross felt the feeling crawl up from his heart and burrow into his mind. He watched Matty open his eyes and look out to where the rain was finally slowing down, lightening up, and said the words to himself: I’m in love with him.
“Let’s go back,” Matty said, pulling his legs back to his side of the car, his ankle slipping from Ross’ fingers.
“Let’s not,” Ross said.
“If we’re not going back, you gotta let me smoke,” Matty said, reaching for the cigarette Ross still had tucked behind his ear.
So Ross let Matty smoke, rolling the windows down and running the air conditioning to try and keep the smell out. Matty leaning over and putting the cigarette in Ross’ mouth, watching him inhale, and then taking it back out while Ross drove. Matty’s fingers close to his mouth with their bitten down nails and nicotine stains. Ross sticking his entire head out of the window to blow the smoke out.
Ross turned the radio back on because he wanted to hear Matty sing some more and when that Snow Patrol song came on, Ross belted right along with him about just forgetting the world. When they came to a steep hill, Ross gunned it up one side, paused for a second, and then sent them barreling down the other side, his foot off the pedal, Matty laughing next to him and holding on for dear life.
Back at Matty’s house, Ross pulled up slowly and cautiously. It was nearly dark by then. They’d been driving aimlessly for hours. Ross’ face ached from smiling too much and Matty had smoked half his pack of cigarettes. Ross had stopped caring about the smell after a while. He’d take any punishment his dad would give him in exchange for the hours he’d gotten to spend with Matty.
Matty unbuckled his seatbelt and reached for the door handle, but then stopped and sat back in his seat. “We should do this, like, all the time,” he said, looking over at Ross with a half smile on his face.
“Yeah, definitely,” Ross answered.
And then Matty opened the door and climbed out of the car. Ross sat there for a moment to watch Matty get through the front door. Matty looked over his shoulder and gave him a small wave before the door closed behind him. Ross sat there for another moment, watching the upstairs window until the light came on in Matty’s room. Matty pulled the curtain back and waved again before letting it fall back.
Finally, Ross turned the car back on and drove back home. He rolled the windows down and the air was cooler now from the rain and it felt damp against his skin. He looked over at the empty passenger seat and smiled to himself, catching his reflection in the rearview mirror.
He was in love with his best friend. He didn’t know if anything felt better than that.