Chapter Text
It started at a party. Not the most conventional place to do research, but a fruitful one nonetheless. And there were pretty girls, too. So that was a plus, in Mattis’s opinion.
“You really wanna go there?” an attractive brunette was asking him now. “It’s haunted, supposedly.”
“Well, yeah. That’s kind of the point,” Mattis said. “So do you think you can get us permission to spend the night?”
“I mean, I can ask. Like I said, it belonged to my grandfather. Once he passed away, my mom inherited it. She hasn’t maintained the property in years, though. Maybe not ever, now that I think about it,” the girl continued.
“Is the house stable enough for us to walk through?” Mattis asked.
“It should be. There’s been some damage over the past decade, but from what I’ve seen, the interior looks okay. It’s mostly the outside that could use some work.”
“Awesome. Just email me the details, then,” Mattis said.
The girl nodded and then returned to the group of people she was talking to before Mattis pulled her aside to ask his questions.
“Hey, I didn’t know you were gonna be here,” a familiar voice said from somewhere behind Mattis.
“It was kind of a last minute thing,” Mattis replied with a shrug as his friend moved to stand across from him.
Thornbury nodded, then pointed at the glass in his hand. “Looks like you’ve been here a while,” he observed.
“Nah, just an hour or so. You should get yourself a drink, too. If you’re planning to stay for a while…?” Mattis said hopefully.
Thornbury looked conflicted for a moment, but finally he shrugged. “Ah, what the hell. It’s the weekend.”
A couple drinks turned into several, and soon enough Mattis had reached the stage of slurring his words and swaying on his feet. He discovered slightly too late that he probably should’ve gone home a while ago. Next to him, Thornbury looked similarly intoxicated.
“I think I need to leave,” Mattis informed his friend. “But this was fun. We should do it again.”
Thornbury grinned at him. “Definitely.”
Mattis turned to find his way out of whoever’s apartment he was in, but Thornbury put a hand on his shoulder to hold him back for a moment.
“By the way,” he said, his words also sounding a little slurred. “I have something to tell you.”
“Okay,” Mattis said. “What’s up?”
The other man smiled wide and nearly dropped the beer bottle he was holding. “I got this super cool job offer today.”
Mattis raised his eyebrows. “Yeah? Like a promotion?”
“Something like that. It’s, like, kind of different from what I do now, but it would open up a lot of doors for me, I think,” Thornbury said, nodding to himself.
“That’s super awesome, man,” Mattis congratulated him.
“Yeah.” Thornbury’s expression fell for a moment. “It would require a lot more traveling, though. I don’t think I could keep up with the channel.”
“Oh,” Mattis frowned. “You don’t think you’d have time for editing?”
“I don’t think I’d have much extra time for anything,” the other man said, a sort of forlorn look on his face. “And they want me to move out to LA, so I wouldn’t be able to help with filming videos.”
“Wait, are you actually considering it?” Mattis asked, feeling slightly more sober.
“Taking the offer?”
“Yeah.”
“I mean, it would be an amazing opportunity,” Thornbury said, perhaps a little wistfully. “The pay isn’t that much more than what I make now, though.”
“So…you’re not gonna do it?”
Mattis was not sober enough to understand what his friend was trying to tell him.
“I would have to quit the channel, Thornbury said. “There’s just no way I could do both.”
Now that was something Mattis’s alcohol-infused brain could make sense of. The phrase “quit the channel” was pretty self-explanatory.
“You wanna quit working with me?” Mattis asked.
Thornbury’s eyes widened. “No! No, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m just explaining that this new job would require me to move and that would basically make it impossible for us to run the channel the way we do now. So I think I’d have to quit altogether.”
“Yeah, I gathered that much,” Mattis said. “Have you responded to the offer yet?”
Thornbury shook his head. “Like I said, I just got it today. But it doesn’t pay that great, so I can’t see a reason to take it,” he said. Then, “Not that I’d take it, anyhow. I like what I do now—both of my jobs.”
That made Mattis feel marginally better.
“Glad to see you’re not ready to ditch me yet,” he joked. “It’s only been two years.”
“Oh, you know I couldn’t ditch you, Aidan. You’d be lost without me,” Thornbury teased.
That was probably true, to some extent. He couldn’t run the channel by himself, certainly. And he’d rather not have one of his best friends move across the country.
Did that make him selfish, Mattis idly wondered. Well, maybe. But hopefully he’d never have to find out.