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The last time Jay tries this, Matt flips him and pins him in some kind of fucked up leg lock and crows, "Come on, Jaybird, when's the last time this worked out for you?"
Jay bucks at him and swipes, claws first, grappling blindly for purchase in Matt's clothes, his skin, preferably his fucking eyesockets so Jay can gouge them out.
"Fuck you, get off me, man, get off--" Jay snarls, lifting his face from their sticky, threadbare living room rug, when Matt -- one-handed -- takes his hands from him puts them on the floor above his head. He's easy about it, polite even, plucking up Jay's wrists and setting them down with the tenderness of placing a bouquet of flowers on a grave, and he's not even breathing hard, he's not even sweating, when something snaps together in Jay's head.
"Ow, Matt," he says plainly instead, and Matt rolls his eyes.
"That did not hurt you, you pussy," he sneers, but he shifts his weight to over Jay's hips and Jay's knees unbend from between Matt's thighs.
Jay shakes his head, lets his voice get mashed into the floor as he tells him, "Yes, it did." The angle muffles out the anger in his voice, makes him sound small instead, baby petulant, but that's what Jay remembers: aged twelve, before the growth spurt that would double his wingspan and shoot him into the sky, when him and Matt were the same size and Matt always played too rough. Rottweiler puppy with his big box head and too many teeth. Running after Jay and shoving him over into a brook, not even out of malice, just an overabundance of exuberance, and Jay -- spitting mad on the stumble, yelling on the fall, but landing in the spring melt in a shock of cold and wet, and the noise that came out of him.
The noise that came out of him, and Matt. Matt by his side instantly, picking him up, "Jay, Jay, are you ok? Don't cry, oh man, Bird, hey, hey," and on and on. Matt, giving him his Canada Goose to wear over his sodden sweater, bundling him back to his house, snapping at the twins until they made themselves scarce. The rest of the evening just everything Jay wanted, everything Jay wanted to do: Jay getting to win at MarioKart, Jay getting to order pineapple and ham on their medium two-topping, Jay getting to sleep in Matt's bed while Matt spread out with a sleeping bag on the floor.
He thinks about that, and all the times after. Thirteen: the time Matt threw a rock at his head. Fifteen: the time Matt pushed him off a skateboard. Seventeen: the time in the pool, where Matt caught him looking at girls in bikinis and dragged him under, held him under.
"Matt," he says now, twenty-four years old and sick with impotent rage, with never winning, never getting his way. No give as he strains against Matt's weight, Matt's fucking junior varsity, welterweight muscle, the gravity that always favoured him, kept him close and balanced when it let Jay get leggy and leaning. Something pops, deep in his spine.
"Matt!" he cries, like it's torn out of him, and he lets his pitch rise out of his chest, into his head voice. Like it hurts.
Matt goes scrambling. "Oh my god, Bird. Bird? Was that your arm? Your shoulder? Here--" Helping him sit up, getting him off the floor, flinching when Jay makes himself flinch, pushes out his lip, shutting his eyes tight. Jay can't believe it. He clutches vaguely at his elbow and Matt's on the floor, beseeching, "Is it your piano playing hand? Here, show me?"
Jay lets him pick up his limp left paw, hisses when Matt tests the joints. "Oh, Birdie," he says thickly, and Jay peeks through his lids at him. He looks like he's about to cry. "Do you think we need to go to the ER?"
Jay shrugs into himself to hide the giddiness; he tucks his grin into the collar of his shirt. He shakes his head, and he keeps his voice high. "I don't want to go out tonight, Matt, I told you."
Matt frowns. "But your finger," he starts, and Jay could pull away, but in a flash of inspiration, he wraps his hand around Matt's instead.
"I'm not as strong as you, MJ," he says, slouching into their sinking couch cushions until he's so small, until he's looking up at Matt through his drooping lids. "You can't be so rough with me. What if you really hurt me?" Bubbles rising in his gut as he watches Matt nod with his whole body, his colourless hair falling into his face.
"I wouldn't, Jay, I wouldn't," he chants, "you know I wouldn't, I'm sorry --" and he looks like he's actually gonna cry, he sounds like he's actually gonna cry, purple color creeping into his cheeks, his lower lip hanging off his face, he's shaking--
Jay gives in. "Ok," he says, before Matt starts blubbering into his lap. "Ok, it's ok man, come on, hey," he says and loops his free arm over Matt's shoulder, gives him two pats and a manly, sportsmanlike hug.
"Everything's ok," he tells him, but Matt's latched onto him like a lamprey, both hands wrapped around Jay's torso, squeezing.
Jay gives him five seconds, counts every one of them. "Ok, that's good, that's enough." Jay pries him off of him before Matt's face starts to wet his shoulder.
Matt scrubs at his cheeks with loose fists like a baby. "I'm sorry," he wails again, and Jay sighs. He might have pushed it too far.
"Ok," he says, beckoning. "Come here, come here." Matt climbs up onto the couch, his socked feet tucking under him, next to Jay's hip. Jay puts an arm over his shoulders and lets Matt tuck himself against him, wrap himself around him, like Jay's the bamboo and Matt's climbing into him, koala style.
"Ok," he says again, and it's ok like this, probably, because yeah, Matt's gross and damp and stupid and squeezing the life out of him, but this isn't the first time or even the tenth, the twentieth. It's just the thing they always do when Matt's amped up like this, to get him to settle down. It's the only thing that's ever worked. It doesn't mean anything. It's kid shit.
"Shh, shh." Jay hums the first couple bars of Zelda's lullaby, then leads it into the Chrono Trigger theme, then the combat music from FFX. A low effort, bottom of the barrel medley, but after a while, Matt's grip relaxes. He lifts his head, sniffling.
"There he is," Jay sings, and Matt snorts, shoves him, but gently, with soft hands. "You hungry?" he asks, and Matt nods.
"Pizza?" Jay asks, unwinding himself. He trips his way to the kitchen, whistling. "What do you want?"
Flipping through their drawer of takeout menus, he almost doesn't hear it: "Whatever you want, Bird."
Jay smiles to no one but himself.