Work Text:
If Matt asked Jay to have sex with him seventeen years ago, Jay very likely would have said yes. Not that Matt would have asked Jay to have sex with him back then, but, it was something he learned recently and it quite frankly put some things into perspective. Okay, the big S-E-X was a strong word, but you can’t blame Matt for taking what just happened to its logical conclusion in his head.
Matt learned this fact today, which was technically seventeen years ago because of some accidental time travel bullshit that he really needed to figure out soon.
He crept up the stairs and down the hallway of their old apartment, which was their current apartment in 2008, as quietly as he could. He did his best to try and soften his heavy steps, even choosing to step ball-before-heel on his feet. But, of course, because life wasn’t fucking fair, and his plans never fucking worked, Matt noticed that the door to their old bedroom was left slightly ajar. Matt was certain that Young Jay would be asleep if the younger version of himself was clocked out on the sofa downstairs, but to his chagrin, he heard a very faint voice call out his name from inside the room when he tried to tiptoe past.
“...Matty?” The voice sounded sleepy and just slightly off; slightly brighter, younger, but it was unmistakably Jay.
Matt stood, frozen in the doorway of the bedroom. His eyes widened and his lips slightly parted in an almost-gasp. After a moment, he squinted to try and spy Young Jay through the darkness. It was so fucking weird that he had to make that distinction, but he couldn’t exactly call him “2008 Jay” in his mind because that was somehow worse. Matt’s eyes adjusted to the darkness and he finally got a solid look at the man on the other side of the threshold. Young Jay was sprawled out underneath a big, fluffy comforter. He propped himself up on his left arm, and his other was draped across his body. His bedhead-toussled hair was wild and jutted out in every direction. Some locs tickled the skin on his forehead, breaking up the expanse of pale flesh. Jay’s rich curls were longer and a bit thicker here than in the present.
His Jay had more flecks of grey sprinkled in his beard but Matt had the passing thought that it looked good either way. Jay wasn’t wearing a shirt, either, not that he went out of his way to check, but it was hard not to notice the way his pale shoulders glowed in the early morning light. Matt filed that thought away under Gay Shit I Should Never Think Again. In the darkness, Jay’s skin color almost blended with that of the comforter; he kinda looked like a floating head. Matt made himself huff a breath of air out of his nose in amusement. Jay’s thick, dark hair and pronounced nose combined with how his body sprawled across the bed made him look like a tableau of those old Roman paintings on museum advertisement posters; the ones they would sprint past while executing one of Matt’s perfect plans. Young Jay looked good. Matt had no problem recognizing that his friend was an attractive guy, they both were, obviously. That was part of their charm, a key ingredient to what would make their band successful after they finally played the Rivoli. Whatever, Matt filed away the thought. He wasn’t a history guy anyway, but maybe he can come up with a museum-related plan later.
Matt didn’t really know what to do. He could feel it, he was so close to finding a bottle of Orbitz. He stood literal feet from the last place he had to look. He just had to get to the end of the hallway and then things could get back to normal. They could do a new plan that didn’t have the potential to shake the multiverse and they could pretend this never happened. Matt wanted to make a list of different ways they could bury the evidence of a real time machine so the government couldn’t get to it. So they could prevent this from happening again. But he had to say something because Young Jay stared at him with a dumb look on his face like he was expecting something. He couldn’t waste time, or risk Young Jay getting out of bed and finding the scene downstairs. His Jay was still distracting Young Matt. God, he even had to refer to himself in the third person. Anyways, he had to get Jay to go back to sleep or else they were royally fucked; they were on a serious time crunch and to top it all off, this whole thing just felt wrong in every sense of the word.
“Hey, Bird, uh- what’s up?” What’s up? Are we serious?
Matt heard the piano downstairs; a familiar tune he had heard His Jay play before. Were His Jay and Young Matt rehearsing? This name stuff was getting confusing.
“What’re you doing, man? Why’re you just hanging around in th’ dark?” Young Jay slurred. The fog of drowsiness clearly clouded Jay’s brain and he squinted his eyes to try and see Matt better.
Matt suddenly realized something. If it was dark enough that Jay had to strain his eyes to see, especially having just woken up, he probably couldn’t tell Matt looked any different than he did in 2008. Well, Matt had gained a bit of weight with age– and muscle– but in the dark, it would be harder for Young Jay to notice the way his skin started to wrinkle and sag in certain places. Matt didn’t think he looked bad at all, yeah he was pushing forty but he was only pushing forty in the grand scheme of things. It’s just that there are some inevitabilities of life. When he saw his younger self, it really illuminated just how much the two of them changed over the past seventeen years. The funny thing was, though, that he never would have noticed that time passing had he not been here, now.
To save himself, Matt came up with the only logical excuse that he thought Young Jay might buy.
“This is, uh- a dream! Yeah, you’re dreaming and I was sent to give you this song!” It was a total Hail Mary, but it was all he could think of. Matt gestured to the empty space around him, giving Young Jay a moment to notice the faint tune being played in the distance. He didn’t need to know it was himself, almost two decades older, on the piano downstairs.
“Woah, a lucid dream. I don’t think I’ve had one of those before…” Young Jay said, probably to himself, but just loud enough for Matt to hear. He looked off into the distance and stared at the nothingness over Matt’s shoulder. He kind of looked constipated, honestly. With his brows furrowed, eyes squinted, and a tiny pout pulling his lips outward. Jay loved to pout at Matt. Just the sight of his expression sent a familiar tugging feeling through Matt’s chest. A moment passed. A release, and Young Jay relaxed. A lazy grin stretched across his face, “...nice” he said.
“Yeeup,” Matt reaffirmed. He bought it, the damned idiot. God, Jay was his best friend for a reason. Maybe one of his plans would work out this time.
The younger man refocused and looked at Matt with a lingering, unreadable expression. There was something behind his best friend’s eyes that Matt just couldn’t place, an unfamiliar energy that was directed entirely at Matt. The muscles of Young Jay’s arm tensed under the weight of propping his body up, which was incredibly distracting. The comforter slowly shifted down Young Jay’s chest, reminding Matt that he wasn’t wearing a shirt– or clothes at all for that matter. Matt just remembered: Jay only started sleeping with boxers on after they moved out of the apartment and got that bunk bed (Matt insisted on the bunk bed when they moved in. He told Jay that sleeping closer to each other would help strengthen their subconscious “mind-link.” Some twin telepathy shit). Matt’s face heated up, and he suddenly had a hard time meeting Young Jay’s gaze. It was overwhelming Matt knew he had his own staring problem, especially when it came to Jay, but he could identify when shit was getting weird. He just wanted Young Jay to go back to sleep so he could grab the Orbitz and get the heck out of Dodge and Back to the Future.
Why did that sound like a proper noun? Matt thought.
He shifted his sights back up to Young Jay. It was surreal to see him like this. Obviously he knew Jay in 2008 and he knew Jay in 2025, but to see him like this now was like being reunited with the memory of an old friend that you haven’t seen in forever. Like, yeah, you know that person is two decades older now and looks completely different and has a completely different life. But, you can’t help imagining they look exactly the same as they did when you knew each other, just kinda taller. Like a bad Photoshop or a movie that does that new uncanny AI de-aging thing.
Enough time had passed; it was beyond an acceptable level of awkwardness at this point. Matt knew Jay was weird, he was weird a decade ago and he was weird in the present, but this was weird as shit.
“So, uh, are you gonna go back to sleep- to dream sleep, now?” Matt filled the silence.
“I don’t think so,” Jay said. His tone was weirdly flat, and that lazy grin still tugged at his mouth.
“Okay, well– that’s fine, you don’t have to sleep in your dream, that’s totally understandable actually,” Matt said, “I don’t even know why I would suggest that. Anyways, uh– why um– why are we playing eye tag right now? Like, what’s up with this?” Matt gestured between the two of them.
Jay sighed loudly and rolled his eyes. His shoulders drooped and the sudden noise and movement caused Matt to flinch as if a spell was broken. “Well, I thought I could use my mind to will you towards me, but I guess even here you have to communicate like a normal person,” Jay said, and the pout was back. Matt looked at him quizzically. So… what? Does he want me to go over there? As if he read Matt’s mind, Jay lazily swung his arm in a beckoning motion and sort-of-whined, “come he-ere!”
Something was definitely off with Young Jay. Then again, the guy did just wake up, and he did have a bit more of an edge to him when they were younger. And to be fair, Matt did just time travel in a real time machine that he accidentally built, so who was he to judge the strangeness of a given situation at the moment? Matt hesitantly passed through the door’s portal and strode across the room until he stood with his knees touching the bedframe. At the exact moment that Matt felt the soft comforter touch the exposed skin of his knees, Jay reached with the arm he wasn’t leaning on and grabbed at Matt’s sleeve. He gave it a soft tug and Matt took that as an invitation to sit on the edge of the bed. The comforter slipped down a bit more, exposing more of Jay’s chest and now the little trail of hair that would lead down to his crotch. Matt swallowed.
Jay was a very needy person. He often whined, groaned, or just pouted in silence to get something he wanted. If he wanted Matt to play GoldenEye with him, he’d tug on Matt’s blazer or cock his head to the side and beg with his big, brown eyes like a puppy. When he was sick, no matter how tiny the cold, he would refuse to function, instead wanting Matt to shovel soup into his mouth and change the channels on the TV. The craziest part? Matt would always give in. At this moment, Young Jay acted in very much the same way. Like a needy, bloodsucking girlfriend, he communicated in vague phrases and loaded facial expressions, expecting Matt to just get it. Matt laughed internally. Yeah, he’s totally the girl. He’d completely shrivel up without me. And Matt liked it that way; he liked to feel needed. There weren’t many people, if any at all, besides Jay, that made him feel that way. So, being beckoned over felt completely natural to him.
He trailed Young Jay’s face with his eyes and down his arm and noticed that Jay’s hand was still firmly gripped onto Matt’s sleeve. His classic Matt Johnson Blazer was already a bit tight around the bicep (because of all his hard-earned muscle), and Jay’s grip started to cut off some circulation.
Matt sucked in a breath. Before he could question Jay about why he was called over to sit in bed with him, Jay hoisted himself on his arm until he was fully sitting up, Matt practically in his almost-naked lap. He looked at Matt for a moment with a determined glint in his eyes; the same look he got when he was about to agree to a plan that was so crazy it just might work– Jesus, again with the staring– and suddenly leaned forward.
If Matt didn’t have the instincts of a jungle leopard from decades of training with the motion capture of the Wii, Young Jay would have planted a wet one square on his lips. Instead, he landed just shy of them, on his left cheek, and barely grazed the corner of Matt’s mouth.
Holy Fuck, this is insane. Was the only thing Matt could coherently think at the moment. He didn’t expect Jay’s lips to be so soft, like a girl’s. But the guy did carry chapstick with him all the time. Not chapstick– Vaseline. Gross, but kind-of hot if it weren’t for the scruffy stubble that reminded Matt that his Best Friend was kissing him. When Jay’s lips hit Matt’s skin, Matt felt an electricity. Not quite a Static Shock (sick reference, bud), but something that sparked deeper and spread through his veins in an instant. As soon as the feeling began, it was over.
In one swift movement, Matt kicked off the bed and jumped up, away from Jay, leaving the other man looking shocked and offended. Like he wasn’t the one that just tried to kiss his best-friend-from-the-future-but-he-doesn’t-know-that-yet. Jay had just kissed him. On purpose.
A million thoughts raced through Matt’s mind. The main one: he’d won. It was a little disingenuous for Matt to call what he and Jay had a competition, but there was a throughline that threaded their relationship in which Matt felt he had to prove himself to the other guy. No matter what he may have said to other people in the past about his friend, Matt thought Jay was cool. Yeah, he was a bit of an idiot, but he could play the piano, speedrun GoldenEye, and pull off a Han Solo costume really well. Among other things, he was also pretty cute, not that Matt would say that out loud to him. He would be ashamed to admit to having a number of unsavory, invasive thoughts about his friend. It was inevitable when you lived with one other dude for almost two decades and you both had spotty romantic histories. He tried not to let that get to him, though. But, because of Jay’s good looks and his natural charm, things felt like they came easier to him. Matt wanted to impress him. The crazy thing to Matt was that Jay stayed. After all those years together– after Jay dating his sister and the times he tried to quit the band, and that whole thing with the bank, he always came back. Young Jay kissing him, on the mouth, proved that he was Matt’s for much longer than he could have ever predicted. It was the culmination of decades together.
It was weird, to feel like he had possession over someone, but Matt truly believed that Jay was his now. He liked it. The twisted, possessive, obsessive part of his brain hummed with warmth to know that his plans to keep Jay tethered to him had worked. It tickled him a bit more to think that he may not have needed them in the first place. And, if Matt wanted to be truthful with himself, a naked Jay giving him a sleepy peck on the lips was an image that may have graced his own subconscious once or twice. Honestly, kissing Jay was a literal dream-come-true.
That didn’t make the fact that this Jay was almost twenty years younger than him any less weird, though.
“Hey man, what the fuck!” Matt squeaked. He remembered that his younger self was asleep downstairs and tried his best to control his volume, “What the hell was that!” he whisper-yelled. He felt his cheeks burn with shock and embarrassment and he would not be surprised if Jay could feel it radiating off of him like a space heater.
“Wha- come on, man! You were supposed to like it! Shit, dude, nothing fucking works out with you, not even in my dreams. Fucking bullshit.” Young Jay flung his arms into the air.
Oh my fucking God. Matt thought. Jay thinks he’s dreaming, how could I forget that? Matt tried to put a bandaid on the situation.
“No, man, it’s not that I didn’t like it, it’s just– you, uh– you can’t spring something like that onto a guy all willy-nilly, yeah? Especially not me, man,” Matt was certain he sounded frantic. His breathing was so heavy and rapid it felt like he was going to pass out, “you know me well enough to know I would freak if you did that shit! You have to, uh, play it chill.”
“Uhg,” Jay groaned, “you’re right. I know you so well that I can’t even have an unrealistic fantasy about you. Curse my natural perception and perfectionism. What a boner-killer.” Jay looked dejectedly at his lap under the covers. Matt almost felt bad for him. What the fuck was going on today?
Mat waved his hands in an attempt to get Jay to look at him, “No, no no no! Think about this as a, uh, a lesson! Yeah, ruminate on this, spend some time with it, let it stew, and then you’ll be better prepared to,” Matt had to force the words out; they sat like a lump in the back of his throat, “put the moves on ol’ Matty next time.” Fucking Christ.
Jay looked up at him like he had just been given the opportunity of a lifetime. “You’re right. Thanks, Dream Matt!”
“Yeah sure, whatever man. Sit with that and, uh, I’ll see you when you wake up I guess.” Matt took that opportunity to swiftly make his exit. Before he could, though, Jay piped up one more time.
“But, I do have a question…”
“Yeah?”
“Why were you fatter in this dream?”
Matt didn’t answer that.
Wait, in this dream?
The time travel bullshit was sorted, finally, and things were back to how they should have been.
Matt and Jay sat on the couch, gorging themselves on bags upon bags of Cheezies and barely paying attention to the movie on TV. Jay watched Matt graphically suck orange powder off his index finger and thumb and sort of smack his lips together.
Jay’s friend turned towards him and gestured across his own face.
And his name is John Cena!
“Hey, Birdie, do I have shit all over me?”
“No, man, you’re good,” Jay looked down at his own orange fingers, “um– do I?”
“No, no,” Matt assured him. Suddenly Matt’s eyes lit up and an amused grin crept across his face, “Jay, what if we were both lying to each other just now, and– and our faces were just fucking covered in dust. Like, wouldn’t that be terrible of us, we’d be total assholes! So fucked up.” Matt had worked himself up into almost hysterics; he laughed so hard that Jay was almost worried he’d choke on a Cheezie. While Matt laughed, Jay turned to the window and looked at his own reflection. His face was completely clean.
“Yeah…” Jay jerked his head to the television screen and groaned, “Oh shit– awe, we missed the best part!”
“Oh! Yeah,” It was like Matt snapped out of a trance and locked his attention to the movie, “when the evil scientist uses the claymation goo to fuse the misogynist dude with the feminist? Good stuff, man. You know, if you think about it, it’s actually a really interesting social commentary about–” Matt rambled. They had seen this movie together like ten times already and Matt delivered the same rant every time. Jay tuned it out like he usually did. Matt wasn’t wrong, per se, he actually had a lot of interesting points to contribute most of the time, it was just that he said things in such a quantity that it was hard to keep up, so Jay stopped bothering.
“Mhm…”
Jay tuned in again when he noticed Matt was asking him a question.
“Y’know what, if we were fused together by an evil scientist, would you be cool with it or would you be totally pissed? Imagine needing to drink twice the liquid but piss out the same dick. Honestly, I’d be pretty annoyed at first but I think I’d get used to it,” Matt proposed. Jay seriously considered it for a moment. Having two heads and one of them was Matt. Eating the same food. Sharing the same clothes. Going everywhere together. Sleeping next to each other every night.
Jay looked around at the carcasses of finished Cheezies bags around the couch and the matching orange tint that colored their fingers. The more he thought about it, the more he realized that they kind of already were fused together. Matt had taken some of Jay’s things in the past, and Jay remembered Matt’s Han Solo costume with a slight spike in cortisol. And, when Jay tried to do his own thing at the musician party, he just kept wishing Matt was there. Socializing was hard. He would have made things easier. When Tony showed up, it did make things easier. And when he found out Tony was actually Matt in disguise, it made total sense; as if Jay were crazy for expecting anything else. And, no matter how much space they had in their apartment, Matt still insisted on the bunk bed and Jay still had zero objections. The domesticity of it all made his stomach turn. This arrangement hadn’t changed in how long? Almost two decades? All Jay could muster in response was,
“How would I play the piano?”
Matt barked out a cartoonish-sounding laugh. Like he was enunciating the word Ha-Ha over and over. Hearing Matt laugh like that, and knowing he was the reason why, caused something in Jay’s chest to squeeze in a pleasant sort of way.
Jay enjoyed these moments; when they just got to hang out together. Nobody else to ruin the vibe and no plan to get in the way of spending time with each other. Of course Jay wanted to play the Rivoli; he loved the plans, Matt and Jay wouldn’t be Nirvanna the Band without them, but it was nice when Matt was focused on only him and their little life together. A part of him wished it could last forever. But he would never say that to Matt’s face.
Jay watched Matt get off the couch and bound over to the piano.
“Hold on- Hold on Bird, I have an idea for a rehearsal! Come here,” Matt said. Excitement tickled his voice. Jay hit pause on the remote and apprehensively joined Matt on the stool. It was a tight fit, their shoulders squished together and thighs pressing against each other. Jay quirked an eyebrow at his best friend, “hear me out, Bird. Conjoined Twin Plan. The piano in the middle of the stage. You. Me. We’re wearing one giant shirt with uh- um- with our legs tied together like in a three-legged-race! We play the piano together. The audience thinks ‘ohh woahhh what’s going on with these guys, it’s disgusting! Ew! They have two heads!’ and they, like, totally can’t look away. The Rivoli couldn’t possibly pass up an opportunity like this! A real Freak Show, baby!”
“Matt, that’s a real condition, I don’t think you can say th-”
“Quick, Bird, play with me!” Matt hooked his left arm around Jay’s right arm, pulling them even closer together, and slammed his other hand on the piano keyboard. He started to play something that almost sounded like music.
Jay reached out with his left hand and slowly started playing something. He tried his best to ignore whatever was happening next to him. Eventually, the tune he played sounded familiar. Never Come Down. Jay silently cursed the world for that bit of cruel irony. For making his mind wander to the one song that could have actually gotten him what he wanted. He didn’t regret the choices he made, not at all, but there was still the tug of a heavy longing for what could have been that pulled at his heart sometimes. Since the whole thing with the RV that he didn’t really like to think about.
It was funny, he could have sworn that Matt had something to do with that song. Jay was reminded of a dream he had a long time ago. Like a flashbulb, Jay could almost see the dream play out in his mind. Oh, shit. Yeah, he remembered this one.
It had to be something like seventeen years ago. Around the same time they did the RV shit. Jay had just woken up. Matt stood in his doorway. Matt looked a bit stupid just standing there in silence. It was definitely an ominous start to a dream, but Jay had seen weirder things come out of his subconscious, so whatever.
He remembered Dream Matt saying something about the song playing in the background of the scene, Never Come Down. A weird coincidence in hindsight, but Jay didn’t think about it too hard.
This was where it got embarrassing. Jay, being younger and hornier and way more impulsive at this point in his life, had a specific goal in mind for this dream. It was lucid, he remembered. Awesome. He only knew a couple people at this point who had told him about having a lucid dream. Guys who just wanted to brag about getting to fuck whoever they wanted; celebrities, girls they knew in real life, whoever. Ew. But what a concept.
He was gonna fuck Matt. It was an impulse, Jay would swear by that now. Doing… that sort of thing with his Best Friend was something that had terrifyingly crossed his mind on more than one occasion. It was probably because they spent so much time together. Totally natural. And this was a totally natural time to take the opportunity to explore that intrusive train of thought. A dream? Who would find out!
The worst part of it all, Dream Matt rejected him.
The scene played out in slow-motion. Every horrible detail.
Matt slapped Jay across the face, like he was swatting a bug, and jumped up.
“Hey man, what the fuck! You just kissed me!” Matt squeaked. His eyes were as wide as saucers. Jay looked at him, a mortified expression on his face.
“Matt, I can explain-”
“What’s wrong with you, dude! You can’t just attack someone with your mouth completely unprompted!” Matt got back in Jay’s space and lowered his voice to a stern whisper, “that’s rapist shit, buddy! Who are you, the Queen Street Strangler? Are you gonna steal all my shit and do penis stuff to me? You used to be good, Bird. And now, I just don't know.”
“Wha- come on, man! You were supposed to like it!” Jay sputtered in retort. It was his dream for God’s sake!
Matt stood straight– he looked like a robot resetting– and his tone flattened. “Dude, of course I would like it. You just need to ask first. What do they say on college campuses? Oh yeah! ‘Consent is Sexy’ and all that, Bird.”
“Oh,” Jay sat there, dumbfounded. Called out by his best friend. In his own dream. A lucid one, at that.
Matt didn’t stop talking,“You just know the campus has some pretty sinister activity happening behind the scenes when they start hosting seminars like that,” he gestured wildly, seeming to forget where he was and what he was even mad about, “Like, it's actually really sad and victim-blamey– notice how it’s all self-defense stuff. You know what they should say? They should just say ‘don’t rape.’”
Just like that, the memory ended.
Dammit, he was a sick pervert in his own dreams. Of course. But, it did teach him a valuable lesson.
Normally, Jay wouldn’t want to spend another moment of time ruminating on such an embarrassing situation, but something about that dream was different. He just couldn’t place why. Regardless, the memory stirred something within Jay, and he felt emboldened to try something crazy. Matt always complained about his lack of confidence. This was his chance to reignite that impulsive flame that used to blaze inside him when he was a much younger man.
Matt’s voice pulled Jay back to the present, “–and then, Bird, we take off the giant shirt, revealing that we aren’t stuck together at all, and confront them with their ableism. Conjoined twins can play the piano! It was a ruse the whole time. Egg on their faces, eh?”
“Matt, would it be weird if I kissed you?”
“Wha- like, for the plan? I don’t know how that would help, but I mean-”
“No, like, right now. For real.”
“Buh– I– uh– whuhhh…” Matt sputtered and licked his lips, “yeah- yeah, ok–” he nodded fiercely. Jay’s eyes were glued to the grotesque way Matt’s lips flapped as they tried to form coherent words.
Alright, sweet. College campuses, and all that.
Jay tugged at Matt with the arm that was linked with his friend’s and lurched forward to capture Matt’s lips with his own. Matt sucked in a breath before their skin made contact. It was pretty messy, all things considered. It was clear that Jay was more experienced than Matt. A guilty feeling bubbled in his stomach when he remembered why. He wondered how Emily was doing. But whatever they had going on, and whatever he experienced with the few girls he brought back to the house, had nothing on what Jay experienced in the moment. Jay felt like his heart was going to leap out of his throat and cover the both of them with a mixture of blood and the type of body glitter that drag queens cover themselves in. Matt and Jay tugged at each other with their linked arms. Like they were trying to fuse themselves together. Jay knew he would have to be bold; Matt wasn’t likely to initiate, so Jay reached across himself and awkwardly wrapped his arm as far around Matt’s shoulder and tried to pull him as close as he could.
They had never done anything like this before, hell, the only time they seriously considered kissing each other was for a Plan, and it didn’t even work, but somehow this felt familiar. It felt natural.
Matt pulled away after a few moments, “I meant to say ‘no, it wouldn’t be weird’ not ‘yeah’ because ‘yeah’ implies that I did think it would be weird, but, like, I clearly don’t,” he said, sounding like he hoped Jay wasn’t offended.
“Come on, shut the fuck up! Obviously I got it.” Jay laughed; the mood kind-of killed.
“I hope you’re not drunk right now, bud. I remember that shit you pulled with my brother during our Magic night and this can’t be the same thing,” Matt almost sounded worried.
Jay brought his hand to his cheek and felt the pulsing warmth, “I’m not drunk, Matt. We’ve been hanging out all day, you would have seen me drink something. Plus, that Magic night was like a million years ago, and it was one time. You gotta stop bringing it up.”
“It feels pretty relevant now, Bird.”
Jay shifted awkwardly at Matt’s side. He had an itch on his arm that he really needed to scratch, but his nails weren’t long enough to feel anything through the shirt and the packing tape.
“Uh, Matt?”
“Yeah, Jay?” Matt’s head snapped in Jay’s direction, a fiery glint in his eye.
“...Are we sure the Rivoli is gonna buy it?”
Matt shifted his body– as much of it as was physically possible– and put his free arm on Jay’s shoulder. A deflated attempt at a reassuring gesture. Jay felt their bare legs rub against each other underneath the hastily sewn fabric. Where did Matt even find a sewing machine? And how did he convince Jay to do all the work for him?
Matt’s tone was determined, “relax, guy, we just have to sell it,” Matt yanked Jay toward himself and planted a wet kiss on Jay’s forehead. Jay froze and Matt swung in the other direction, pulling Jay along and causing him to stumble a bit. Jay managed to steady himself and prevented them from both going down. They were out the door in a matter of seconds,
“This is gonna be the one, Bird!”