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The stench of probably day old chips-fat lingered in the room so dominantly, he was really surprised he couldn’t see literal traces of it floating through the air. Chips-fat and cigarette-smoke, a lethal combination, bound to make anyone sick within seconds. He took a bite of the burger that sat on a paper plate on the table in front of him and grimaced in disgust before forcing himself to swallow it down. It was dry, the mayonnaise clearly sour and the cheese so sticky it got stuck on his palate. Disgusting. Fucking disgusting. He forced himself to take a sip of the diet-coke sitting next to the burger on the table. It was stale, had been ever since he ordered it but at least the sugar would outdo the taste in his mouth and help him wash the pieces of bread, meat, cheese and lettuce down. A squeaking sound caught his attention and when he turned his head in curiosity, he could see a rat running away from under the counter. He shivered in disgust and pushed the burger as far away from him with his free hand as possible. Not giving it another try would turn out to be the best decision he took. One would not think that it would be this hard to find a decent fast-food-place in London in the middle of the night but here he was. His fingers brushed over his phone while he pulled his hand away from the burger. He couldn’t really tell whether it was intentional or not. 11:28. Half an hour left. Obviously. Oh how much he would have wished for being sure that the sickness that was creeping up on him was a result of him eating that burger. But realistically it wasn’t. And, furthermore, it wouldn’t really explain why the panic that kept increasing again made him feel like The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived either.
He had deleted almost everything from his phone around his birthday. Instagram. X. Facebook. Reddit. Because that was when the harassment started. Again. Because fucking Melissa didn’t stay out of his business. „Blind item, Editor’s Submission. Subject: This boy only broke his favorite toy. I have it on very good authority that this Enfant Terrible of Brit-pop is a very huge subject on this A+++ American singer’s upcoming album, but in a different way than people might think. He was a muse for way more than the two songs already known and the album is not going to tell the story of how they fell in love but mostly how he was The Bolter and chickened out of it. Word is, he is absolutely not happy with some things that are said about him in some of the songs and feels like he’s unfairly portrayed as the villain, when in his opinion he is the one who got his heart broken in the process. Funny though when according to timelines, she wasn’t the one who went off The Manuscript first.“
She hadn’t been subtile in the slightest and with a bang the fucking Swifties were back in his business. Death-threats, AI-pics of him overdosing, people encouraging others to show up at his house, the same blatant lies all over again. Who is afraid of little old me? The answer was clear. They were. And the impact of this had been so much more huge than he anticipated. Still, he knew the deal by now and it didn’t bother him nearly as much anymore as it had around the same time last year. Funny, wasn’t it, given that back then, a mere twelve months ago, he had so much more to loose. Then again, what he had lost indeed was not funny to think about. Not funny at all. He reached for the burger again, took another bite and forcing it down his throat, more of, before clearing the taste out again with another sip of coke.
He should have gone to a bar, really, somewhere where he could drown all those feelings, all those memories in alcohol. But he knew himself too well to not anticipate what was going to happen then. Although not deleting her number was a choice, it was one he regretted from time to time. At times like this, that was. He took another look at the clock on his phone. 11:39. Twenty minutes left. He downed the rest of the coke like it was a shot. So long, London. Goodnight, Vienna.
George had told him to not listen to it. To just ignore it. But if the past months had taught him anything, it was that ignorance wasn’t an option. Literally. It was impossible to ignore her because she was everywhere. On the news. On social-media. And in his head. Way too often. He thought he had been further down the road by now when it came to her. He wished he had been further down the road by now when it came to her. That she was not the subject of his dreams as often as she was, that she was not what made a bitter taste appear on his tongue all of a sudden, that the wound inside of him would not start bleeding again every time he heard her name. It had been better already. So much better. And it was frustrating seeing himself circle back to that place he thought he had left for good by now. But he hadn’t.
The door of the restaurant opened again and a bunch of twenty-somethings stumbled in, half of the group visibly drunk. They made a hell of a fuss but he directed his attention back to the table with the burger and the coke sitting in front of him. Going no-contact on somebody only worked so far when there was literally no escaping them, giving your bruised heart a reason to scream „But daddy I love her“ over and over and over again. And it took a lot of effort to keep it quiet sometimes. Still, it had been easier the months before because he had the only distractions in place that worked for him. He had the boys around and a crowd to entertain most of the days. People to worship him, hanging on his lips for every word he said, every note he sung. It had been like this when she announced her re-recordings. It had been like this when her love-life started to become a daily media-subject. It had been like this when the Slut!-lyrics leaked. It had been like this when she announced TTPD. He had always something to do, something to distract him. To keep him from doing something profoundly stupid like responding to the 400th „Oh I can’t imagine M*tty being any inspiration for that album, he was way too insignificant for that, I’m sure it’s about Travis since M*tty didn’t mean anything to her anyway“-post. In their eyes he was in fact Guilty as Sin. Guilty of seducing and morally corrupting their little perfect popstar-girl.
The fact that they even censored his name had made his blood boil to such an extent that he had in fact been dangerously close to create a burner account just to be able to reply something along the lines of „Oh well last time I checked it was not his head between her legs, eating her out when she wrote the bridge for loml“ but he didn’t in the end. Still, he knew the days to come were to be brutal. They would come for him. Again. She fed him to the wolves with this record, him and Joe alike and the worst part about it was that there had been a point in time, a moment where all of this could have been different. Where The Tortured Poets Department would not have been the story of how he got blessed with what he had been dreaming of for so long and then loosing a part of himself in the process of it being taken away again. It could have been a love-story straight out the movies, where years of sneaking around each other led to finally getting what you wanted. What you deserved. What you considered your ultimate place of happiness. Two poets, one tortured with the failure of a relationship she considered endgame, one tortured with the general burden of his own existence, finding understanding in each other. Finding comfort in each other. Finding love in each other. Oh they had been down bad when it all began. But this was not a love story. They decided otherwise. Both of them had. Although wether or not he really had a choice was debatable, he thought. He liked to tell himself he didn’t. At some point it had really just been about self-preservence. The screen of his phone lit up again. A message from Gabbriette. 11:59. He turned off his phone.
The chips were cold by now. Cold and only half-way fried. He dipped them in so much ketchup that it dripped down onto his sweater when he brought one to his mouth, eating like a man Fresh Out The Slammer. Disgusting, it rushed through his mind, there was no other accurate way to describe it. Him, her, this entire situation. The way she would really put this album out that consisted of songs that would have been supposed to stay in the vault forever, telling everybody how Joe and him had allegedly wronged her, was disgusting. He thought he knew what was coming since he had been around for when she wrote most of the songs that she would later redeem unfit to be released on Midnights. The problem about it, however, was that he was not able to control the perception of it all. That he knew that there were people who would happily search for clues, real ones or not, that would fuel their narrative that had been around ever since the last summer. That he was the worst thing that had ever happened to her. Dating him was the worst thing she ever did. That her thinking I can fix him (No I really can) was her biggest misjudgment of all time. But they were wrong. Oh so wrong. It wasn’t her who did the worst thing ever by dating him. It was him who did the worst thing ever by dating her. Letting her in on him when he knew she wasn’t in a state for it, opening up his heart and soul when he knew she didn’t have the capacities to take care of them, letting years of locked-away feelings and desires burst out at once when he knew he would ask too much of her by expecting her to reciprocate them properly. It had been clear from the very start that this absolute fuck-up things between Joe and her ended up in had left her so bruised time itself would not be able to heal it, but it would be needed nonetheless. Time and bringing a bit of Clara Bow to her love-life. And he should have known better then to fall for it.
Nonetheless, he let her engrave her name in his heart, six letters that dripped with blood ever since he had to leave her. It was a small part of his heart that belonged to her and sometimes in the darkest of all hours he wished he would just have left it with her, because he was convinced living without it would have been the easier solution. But he didn’t, instead, she left her mark on him and him to his devices to deal with the aftermath of it. The aftermath. Oh how severely unfunny it was that what was to become their future once with shared art and a shared life and even some children, maybe, at some point, had imploded and shrunk down to „The aftermath“. Their promises of supporting each other, emotionally, artistically, in any way needed, their shared prospect of wanting to leave an impact with their art, of touching people with what they did, their mutual promise to protect each other no matter what. „The aftermath“. He felt sick in an instant.
The tears running down his cheeks couldn’t wash away neither, the letters in his heart, nor the stain on his sweater. As to the first he had real doubts about wether they were ever going to go away again. Maybe them going pale was the most he could hope for, but he even doubted that. Worse, he was convinced that the wound they caused would become even deeper once this album was out. Causing him pain, torturing him further, like they had the past months. The worst thing was though that there was no poetry coming from this pain. None whatsoever. He knew. He had tried way more than once in the months that passed. He couldn’t. Every word seemed too small, every breaking layer of irony out of place when describing how he felt. He was a poet indeed, tortured way beyond the point where he could make art out of it. And maybe that was what made him so angry now, had been making him so angry the past few days that he couldn’t sleep. That she got the poetry out of it. He only got the torture. The fact that it was this way was not Alchemy, he was absolutely sure of that. It was dark magic, the darkest of them all. He balled his hands into fists, his fingernails leaving half-moon-shaped marks on the palms of his hands, in an of course fruitless attempt to put the energy the hurt provided him with somewhere. He wished it was anger but it wasn’t. It was pain and he had unfortunately been to therapy long enough to distinguish between the two of them. The pain of loosing. Of loosing her, the one he had been hoping for, dreaming of for so long. Who he had loved for so long. And still, it wasn’t enough in the end. And this had been the most scarring realization of it all. That loving someone as much as he loved her, loving her so deeply and honestly that she got to engrave her name in his heart, had not been enough for him to stay through all of this. Still. Had not been enough for her to fight for him more. Still. While taking a deep breath, he unclenched his fists and he wiped his cheeks. He shoved one last ketchup-dripping chip in his mouth. Then he got up from his chair.
He had been prepared to be as quiet as possible when he got home, but right after he had opened the door, he knew it was no use. A song he didn’t know but he figured being by Spanish Lovesongs blew over to him and he ditched his efforts of being quiet quite quickly. While he took off his shoes, he noticed a tiredness sink in he didn’t feel in days. No, not tiredness. Exhaustion. Maybe the anticipation that had built up inside of him leading to the album-release finally leaving him. For good, as he hoped. He went over to the living room where, as he figured, the music came from. Gabbriette sat on the sofa, back turned on him, her long hair falling down the cushion like a black waterfall from a rock. A not-so-common-sight given that she usually tied it up in a high-bun when she was at home, keeping it from falling in her face. She had her eyes fixed on her phone, at least as concentrated as he usually was when playing Fortnight and for a moment he did nothing more than to stand where he was, halfway through the living room and to look at her. Drink the feeling in of how he didn’t have to come home to an empty room now and allowing himself to aknowledge how much of an relief that was. He was out of the restaurant. He was home now. With a few steps he crossed the room, greeting her shyly and the sight of her whole face lighting up when she saw him made a smile form around his lips.
„Great to know you’re alive“, she stated, a mocking smile lingering around the corners of her mouth. „Was already considering calling the police or something.“
She reached out for him and pulled him into her lap before he could even reply. So he didn’t, at first. Instead he kissed her, leaning back into her arms, enjoying her presence.
„Forgive me“, he murmured, his voice way more hoarse than he had anticipated. „I should have left a note or something.“
She lifted her hand and put it on his cheek, her long, beautiful fingers caressing the skin under them carefully. He wondered if she could feel the traces of salt the tears he cried earlier left there.
„Or replying to my text, at least…“, she added and he lowered his gaze. The worries in her words made guilt built up inside of him. While he had so far been convinced that she was up because she had just come home from her photoshoot, it became increasingly hard to fight the feeling now that there might have been another reason for that. Her clothes at least - one of his T-shirts and a pair of sweatpants - didn’t really speak of that she had come home minutes ago.
He had just opened his mouth to apologize when she stole the words from his lips by kissing him again.
„You’re forgiven“, she whispered when she had let go of him again. „Was my fault anyway for leaving you alone tonight. Bad timing, sorry, I totally forgot about the fucked-ass album.“
„No!“, he jumped in, „No, no, no, no, no, darling, not at all it’s…it’s alright. Don’t worry about me. No reason for that.“
She exhaled audibly. „Well, I do consider spontaneous late-night-walks a reason to be worried. Where have you been anyway?“
Her dark eyes scrutinized him in an affectionate way as if the answer to her question was hidden somewhere between the dried, invisible lines of salt on his face.
„Out…“, was his reluctant reply. „I just…you know…wanted to get my mind off things. Keeping myself from sitting here, starring at the clock and waiting for the gates of hell to open beneath me at midnight.“
According to the pitiful expression in Gabbriette’s eyes, his attempts to put an encouraging smile on failed miserably.
„You should have stayed here…“, she said, her voice suddenly way darker than it had been before, „I bet I could have distracted you better.“
She kissed him once more and nothing in these past hours had felt as good as her fingers getting lost in his hair now, as the taste of her lips on his. When she pulled away from him again, her hand rested on his cheek and her look was so intense it almost feel like a touch.
„I’m glad you’re back…“, she murmured, „And I’m proud of you for how you’re holding up.“
It was moments like these when he wondered if she knew. If she ever saw the bruised, bleeding part of this heart of his. Of course they had talked about it, a lot, actually, in the beginning. It had been impossible not to, given where they came from. But he always assumed she believed him to be way more over it then he actually was. Than he ever had been. But he never asked her about it. And he wouldn’t now.
„I’m glad I’m back too“, he said in absolute certainty. „Although I’m not so sure how proud you’re going to be of me tomorrow when the food-poisoning kicks in and I’m going to spent the entirety of the day puking my guts out.“
Gabbriette frowned. „Now, seriously, Matty, where have you been?“
And he told her about the burger-place he went to, about the rat he saw and about how horrible his food was. Her eyes became wide before she let out a long sigh.
„Ok. Alright. That’s it.“
Too confused to even know what happened he noticed how she pushed him off her lap and got up from the sofa.
„W-what are you doing?“, he stammered, too perplexed to react at first. She was already halfway out of the room when she turned back to him again.
„Making you a proper burger“, she stated, „Like I would have before if you asked me about it in fact.“
He heard the accusation in her voice. The subtext. The „You could have talked to me about it. I could have helped you, before it got this bad.“ But he knew she wasn’t mad at him. That she knew he was trying to the best of his abilities. But in this very moment he took a decision. One day soon, he thought, one day soon I’ll be able to show her. I will show her, that I can do it with a broken heart. And then he got up and went right behind her into the kitchen.