Chapter Text
It all began with a loophole in a devil's contract and a hospital. With the smell of a toast. The taste of its crunchy cheesiness seeping into my consciousness, tinkling my senses and dragging out part of me that always was hungry.
I opened my eyes. The ceiling above me was as white as most of the ceilings I had slept under. I blinked, and the feeling of not knowing where I was - and the possibility of being anywhere in the world - washed over me.
Something creaked beside me and I turned my head.
It hit me like a wave - buckling my knees and turning my stomach into goo. Relief.
Matt leaned above me, freckles a dark splatter on his inconsiderately attractive face. Pale. For a moment he hovered, one hand outstretched, frozen in the half-movement like a cartoonish character caught in motion. Then his shoulders hunched and he fell back on a worn-out chair.
I stared at him. My groggy mind sharpened into one, dread-inducing thought - Matt has never hesitated to reach out to me. And if a green screen behind him was something to go by, I was in a hospital room.
What did happen?
"Sharing is caring." My gaze skimmed over the crumbles on his blue hoody, the one he usually wore for lookouts with hours of alert watching stretching into dawn.
"What happened?" My voice cracked as if going through puberty again.
Matt's face was a collection of tight features, starting with a cutting line of his mouth. "Not much. You just almost died."
A sharp sensation flared in my chest then vanished just as quickly. Where did it come from? I wiggled my fingers and my toes. I could move them, and stretching my limbs didn't send me into spasms of pain. That didn't warrant this - this. This tense silence and Matt's refusal to touch me as if I was about to break apart upon the touch.
"The keyword is almost. In a manner typical of every hero." My trademark smile found its way onto my lips - the one that usually made Matt roll his eyes, soften the taut line of his mouth or grumble something incoherently.
Usually.
Matt stared at me with a blank face. "Don't." He clenched his jaw with a click of his teeth, and a hot flame burst in my chest.
Anger. Out of a place, isolated from any notion. A sudden thought dawned on me - could it be coming from him?
"Hey, Matt, I'm okay." I lifted my hand - to tug him on a sleeve, to poke him into ribs or rub his shoulder - I would never know as he scooched his chair away, its legs scraping against the floor.
I could only gawk at him, feeling like a fish out of water gaping for air. What kind of alternative universe was this? I let my hand drop and tugged the blanket tighter around me.
"Is it just me or someone woke up on the moody side of a bed?" Talk to me, asshole, lay between the lines.
Maybe it was the hurt in my voice that broke Matt's facade. His face crumbled and he ducked his head, looking at his hands twisted in his lap.
"I'm sorry." His voice was all but a whisper but he went on, folding into himself even more, his glorious messy hair falling over his face. "I didn't know what else - You were bleeding all over the ground, and the ritual had started- "
"Matt, It's okay now." I kept my hands to myself and pulled on the sheet instead. Matt almost never apologized, one magnificent stubborn jerk. "I'm alive, you are alive, our client is alive and kicking, it's a beautiful day." I frowned. "He is, isn't he?"
Matt threw me an unreadable look from under his hair. "How well do you remember our last case?"
A student from Matt's faculty was scammed into signing a contract that normally could be voided. He was in a tight spot though, and I got a genius idea to take his debt upon myself.
"Transfering the debt didn't free us from forfeiting a soul?" I guessed.
Matt shook his head. "No, they only set their sight on your soul."
A crazy thought occurred to me - both of us were dead and we haunted each other with gibberish stories. Because how was I still talking to Matt and not being dragged into hell? Not that I was complaining.
"Cool cool cool. The pains of being handsome and popular. What did happen again?"
Matt didn't answer right away. His gaze slid to a heart monitor beside my bed and he shuffled his feet. "I stopped them with a spell."
A wide smile stretched my face. "Matt the Great saves the day once again."
A haunted look on Matt's face didn't change. "They would suck your soul away. The contract called for the immediate extraction of one soul. So..." He bit on his lips, his fingers digging into each other, "I bound our souls together."
I bound our souls together. The words seemed to fall flat in the silence that stretched between us like an icky potato puree from the high school cafeteria.
What did it mean? I have read about it in Matt's grimoire - an unpredictable spell anchoring two souls together, the sensations meshing and feelings overlapping, intensifying with near and physical contact-
Oh. Gosh. No. Please no. I wasn't ready. It wasn't supposed to go like that. Me bruised in the hospital bed, and Matt angry, upset, and sorry.
I looked up at him. And my heart stopped.
Matt stared at me with an unguarded, fragile look in his eyes. As if I had just twisted a knife into a wound in his side while laughing manically. What did I say? What did I miss?
"Matt, you doofus, what- "
The door behind him burst open. Before I knew it, there was Rion, Lila, Sionna and Beth between us, and a flow of concerned words leaping on each other, building a buzz, a wall-
I didn't notice when Matt slipped away. And he kept doing that, slipping further and further from my reach.
It all started with slowly losing my best friend.