“Do you think I deserved to die?” JC’s milky brown eyes stare at Matt reproachfully from where he stands a couple paces away, mist swirling around his feet as he and Matt face each other in the cold emptiness of the World Between Worlds. JC’s torso is torn open from the sheer number of knife wounds stabbed into it, his embroidered shirt stained red and hanging in tatters.
No. Of course not. Matt doesn’t think anyone deserved to die, not now that he knows how it feels.
“No, I didn’t– I never thought–” Matt stammers, but JC doesn’t let him finish.
“Then why did you let me, Matthew?” JC blinks slowly. His skin is pale and stretched taut over his face. “Why’d you let me die? You could have saved me, and you didn’t.”
Matt tries to back away, but it’s like he’s rooted to the ground. “I didn’t– I tried–”
JC’s voice gets louder. “You let me die! You let me die, Matthew! You should have tried harder.” Louder. “You should have made an effort instead of being the slow, weak idiot you know you are.” Louder. He’s shouting now, and he takes a step into Matt’s space, his movements jerky and uncanny. “You should have saved me! I should have lived!”
His voice echoes like a nuclear shockwave, rattling inside Matt’s skull as other voices cry out in agony, joining in with the desperate plea.
I should have lived! Manny.
I should have lived! Safiya.
I should have lived! Ro.
I should have lived, Matt thinks to himself, dazed, as Joey dabs at the gash across the bridge of his nose and smooths Matt’s hair back from his clammy, cold forehead.
Swearing, Matt wakes up.
His hands go to his chest, rising and falling in quick, shallow pants, just to feel his heart racing underneath his ribs as he stares into the darkness on the other side of his bedroom as if JC is going to come shambling out, dead and bloodied with Matt’s failures. So what if there was no guarantee JC would have survived? He still died because Matt couldn’t pull himself together. Matt reaches up to rub his hands over his face. He can still see JC’s betrayed look, the way he stared at Matt, silently begging the person he chose to keep him alive to save him. And what did Matt do? He stood there. Like a fucking idiot.
Matt checks the clock. 03:18 AM. No point in trying to go back to sleep; every time he blinks he sees JC’s dead face staring back at him. He’s awake, and he’s going to stay awake. Matt crawls out of bed and slides a sweater over his shirt. Hugging his midsection, he heads downstairs. Maybe some more children’s cartoons will help take his mind off his nightmares.
He’s surprised to hear noise already coming from the living room, and slows as the TV comes into view. There’s a cartoon playing, and the ever-changing light from the screen illuminates Joey, sitting on the couch, the blanket around his shoulders as he stares blankly at the screen. It appears Joey had the same idea as Matt.
Matt carefully walks forwards, and Joey starts, scrambling for the remote to pause whatever he’s watching – Lady and the Tramp – and look up at Matt worriedly.
“Did I wake you up? I can turn it off if I woke you up–”
“No, it’s fine. I didn’t even know you were down here.” Matt has noticed Joey’s sudden need for reassurance, his assumption that everything he does is something wrong, and he hates whoever made Joey feel that way. “Lady and the Tramp, huh?”
“I like dogs.” Joey watches as Matt sits down. “Couldn’t sleep?”
“I keep a weird schedule,” Matt says, his voice guarded. That’s a lie. His schedule is late nights, early mornings. Is it a healthy schedule? Definitely not. But it’s consistent. This, his seeming ability to fall asleep any time and simultaneously never sleep, is new, and he doesn’t like it one bit. But what else did he expect?
“Right,” Joey replies, seemingly accepting this answer. “Three channels and a company to run.”
Matt hums in acknowledgement. “Well, Jason runs GTLive more than I do. I’m just the schmuck in front of the camera.”
Matt can’t imagine getting in front of a camera right now. He hasn’t even tried to record any voice overs since Everlock. How does he expect to sit on a livestream and pretend that nothing happened, when Ro is gone forever, and a part of Matt is, too? What if he’s never able to do that ever again? Matt takes such pride in his stage presence. He’s worked hard on it, and it’s one of the most valuable things about him – he can get a lot done by being good at public speaking. What if that’s what Everlock took from him? Matt’s stomach clenches uncomfortably with fear at the thought.
“When’s your next stream? I should probably be gone before then.” Joey presses play on the movie again, lowering the volume.
Matt’s kind of amazed Joey still wants to talk to him. But he’ll take his chance. “Um, well, technically today. But I told the team that I’m sick, so…later this week, sometime.”
Joey doesn’t say anything. On the screen, the two Siamese cats wind their tails around each other, their large eyes glowing like Skip’s do when he stares at the occasional spider that manages to make its way into Matt’s house. Eventually, Joey sighs.
“I guess I have a fresh start now,” Joey says thoughtfully. “I wonder how much money I have.”
“Probably more than me,” Matt replies. “Your book sales got a big boost with the whole ‘disappearing without a trace’ thing.”
Joey looks surprised. “I didn’t know you knew I wrote a book.”
“I haven’t read it, if that’s what you’re asking.” Matt watches the screen instead of Joey’s face. “I…saw a headline or two about it.”
He read Joey’s Wikipedia page, actually.
Joey really does have a fresh start. He could make his comeback and find a new job and eventually the 24-hour news cycle would forget about Joey Graceffa, LGBT+ activist YouTube star turned missing person. The 24-hour news cycle will forget about all of them, eventually. It had already forgotten about Shane and all the rest from last year before this year’s disappearances. With a flash of pain, Matt wonders how long Ro will stay in the news.
“Maybe I should just go to the cops now,” Joey says, looking up at the clock. “Probably less busy…”
Matt doesn’t really think that’s a good idea, but he just gives a vague grunt as he pulls his phone from the pocket of his sweater. Suddenly, all he can think of is the news, and whether his friends have made the headlines yet. So what if looking at it will just make him feel worse? He’s going to feel like shit no matter what he does. He might as well see what they’re saying about the people that he allowed to die. He guesses CNN will probably have something to post about a bunch of new missing people, and he goes to their page, at this point completely ignoring the movie.
CNN is running its Sunday evening stories, but a couple lines down are Sunday morning’s, one day after Everlock, and Matt guessed right. Safiya, Ro, Manny, and Colleen all made the front page news. Matt doesn’t think this is how they’d want to do it. The TV fades into meaningless static in the background as he stares at the picture of Ro, one of her nice professional marketing photos of her in her pristine white kitchen, wearing a tastefully elegant pastel blouse and soft pink lipstick with her long hair falling curly and dark around her shoulders. Her hands are folded on the counter in front of her, and Matt remembers suddenly how her hands felt in his, the skin soft and marked with occasional small burns, small just like the rest of her.
They’ll never know what happened to her. Mike will never know what happened to her. He’ll just think she ran off somewhere to go join a cult or got lost in the wilderness or got sunk into the harbor by a psychopath. They’ll never know that her last moments were filled with Matt’s voice, because he wasn’t alone when he died and he couldn’t let Ro be, either, that the last thing she saw was the moon and the stars and the gleam of three knives raised high above her. Matt hopes she died quickly, that she was at least spared the agony of a slow, aching death, of a drawn out end where the only thing to think about was the pain and the knowledge that it was going to be over soon. He wishes he had stayed with her – either in death or in life. He wishes she had stayed with him.
Matt’s never asked how Joey died. He looks up at Joey, watching him watch the screen, and wonders if it was slow for him. Matt doesn’t really know what he wants the answer to be. Part of him feels like Joey deserves a slow death, but then again, he died before Everlock, before he truly chose to kill people. He was just a person trying to survive before the Society offered him that deal. Isn’t Matt the same thing? A person trying to survive?
The Society. Matt looks down at his phone again, Ro’s smiling face, and scowls at the thought of them. The Society Against Evil – real original name, folks, really great – is not an organization that Matt trusts. Why the hell were they willing to let Joey sacrifice eight people to save himself? That sounds pretty evil to Matt. Even if they did give Joey the harp, a society supposedly dedicated to protecting people from evil shouldn’t be willing to trade seven lives for one. What’s so special about Joey? Why’d they want to protect him?
It doesn’t really matter. They should have let Joey die, and none of this would have happened, and Ro and Safiya and Manny would still be alive, and Matt would still be living his normal life.
Matt doesn’t want Joey to be dead. Matt wants to have his cake and eat it too, because Joey should be alive, and Ro, and Manny, and Safiya, and all the rest of them. None of them deserved to die. Not even if they got voted in. Not even if they lost the challenge.
“Who lived?” Matt asks suddenly, before he gets too angry at the unfairness of this.
Joey starts. “Huh?”
“This – Everlock – it happened before. The 1920s manor, and the Victorian mansion.” Matt can guess who died, based on the lists of missing people, but he wants to know if there are any other survivors. “Did anyone else live?”
“Oh.” Joey shivers, pulling the blanket tighter around his shoulders, and Matt almost feels bad for asking. “Um, the first time, in the manor, it was Oli White and Eva Gutowski. Do you know them?”
The names sound vaguely familiar, but Matt can’t picture them. He looks them up, and yeah, he’s seen them around a few times at conventions and events, but he doesn’t think he’s ever really said hello to them. “Not really.”
“They’re good people. Then, the mansion, it was Andrea Russett…” Joey pauses, and his voice gets quiet. “And Tyler.”
Right. Tyler. Joey had said Tyler was with him when he died. Once again, Matt wonders how exactly that happens. He considers asking, but Joey speaks before he opens his mouth.
“I should…call him. Tell him I’m back.” Joey traces his palm with the opposite thumb, absentminded and surprisingly endearing. “I can’t imagine… He watched me die.”
As Joey speaks, Matt switches over to YouTube, looking up Tyler’s channel. Just as he guessed, Tyler hasn’t uploaded in a couple days. It seems Matt isn’t the only one that’s come down with a bad case of the flu.
If Matt wants to ask, there won’t really be a better time than now. “How did you die?”
Joey actually jumps at that, giving Matt a reproachful look. “How’d I…? Matt–”
“Come on,” Matt presses, an evil part of him eager to know just because he wants to see Joey squirm. “I just wanna know. You know how I died.”
Joey falters. Then, with a sigh, he says, “The Sorceress, the one who controlled the mansion, she…stabbed me. The scars… They’re still there. The resurrection magic didn’t get rid of them.”
So, Joey died like Ro did, and like JC, too. Matt wonders if he has scars of his own inside him, if his ribs are covered in bumps and healed fractures from the magic of the harp fusing them back together. It certainly hurt enough when he woke up from death to make him think that. They say a healed broken bone is stronger than one that was never broken, but Matt’s pretty sure that’s not true, because his body still aches and everything about him feels fragile. He puts a hand to his chest as if he’ll be able to feel the fractures that aren’t there anymore.
The air has shifted, and now Joey has a look on his face that Matt can’t describe, the blanket clutched tight around his shoulders. He almost looks scared, and Matt thinks that maybe he shouldn’t have pressured Joey.
It’s too late to take it back now, though. Just like it’s too late for Joey to take back the deal, and too late for Matt to take back the kiss.
It feels like everything Matt does these days is something that he can’t take back.
Sometime around 8 AM, Joey pushes himself up off the couch and heads to the bathroom, mumbling something about getting dressed. Matt pulls himself out of the daze that comes with watching movies for any lengthy period of time, having cycled through Lady and the Tramp, 101 Dalmatians, and finally Aristocats. He’s having his Disney animals era, he supposes.
Joey reappears from the bathroom a few minutes later dressed in one of the plain white shirts, the blue hoodie, and the black pants Matt got him. He’s managed to smooth his hair back, probably with water from the sink, but it doesn’t really do much to hide the pure exhaustion that’s settled into the hollows of his cheeks and the darkness under his eyes. There’s a second where Matt wants to forbid Joey from going anywhere, and instead force him to lay down and get some rest and make sure he’s eating.
Instead, Matt tries for something a little more subtle. “You should eat something before you go.”
“So should you,” Joey says shrewdly. “I haven’t seen you eat a single thing since I got here.”
So Joey’s noticed, then. Matt hoped he wouldn’t. “I just…haven’t been very hungry.”
He’s starving, actually. In the past two days, he’s consumed three things: a bowl of cereal, a cup of coffee, and a piece of toast. In fact, the steadily worsening brain fog and body aches probably have something to do with the fact that he’s barely eaten anything. But the prospect of eating sends his stomach into a gymnastics routine that rivals an Olympic athlete’s, and Matt doesn’t really want to tempt fate. He’d rather not throw up again anytime soon.
Joey narrows his eyes. “Bullshit, unless you’re used to a starvation diet.”
“I guess you’d be an expert on those,” Matt bites back, because now Joey’s got him cornered and Matt doesn’t know what else to do. It’s too far, and Matt knows it. As soon as the words are out of his mouth he regrets them.
Joey physically flinches, taking a step back, but after a second he opens his eyes and glares at Matt. “No. I’m not gonna let you blow me off again because I know you know you need to eat. I’m not eating unless you do.”
Matt…didn’t expect that. He stops, his words failing, and there’s a long minute where he and Joey just stare at each other. Joey crosses his arms defiantly. There’s a little bit of the savant that Matt saw in Everlock, a little bit of the old Joey. A little bit of a new Joey, too, and Matt can’t help but wonder why Joey is so worried about him after the things Matt’s said to him.
“Fine,” Matt says, after the silence stretches out uncomfortably. “Fine. I’ll eat.”
“Good.” Joey relaxes. “How about some fruit?”
“Yeah, that's…that sounds fine.” Slowly, Matt walks to the fridge and pulls a container of grapes off its shelf, opening it and grabbing two bowls. He hands Joey’s over first, then takes one or two for himself. Joey stares at him, unimpressed. Matt rolls his eyes and gives himself a few more. Joey nods to himself and sits down at the counter. Matt leans against the other side, suddenly feeling off-balance with Joey’s concern for his well-being. “You’re insufferable, Joey.”
“Mm.” Joey’s mouth is full, but he narrows his eyes at Matt again, and Matt can just imagine the colorful things that old Joey would have said. This Joey just swallows and shrugs. “You need to eat, too.”
Matt takes a slow bite of one of the grapes. He can taste a vaguely sweet edge, but it’s still bland like the cereal was, mostly tasteless and heavy in his mouth. Still, Matt’s not going to let Joey win. He finishes the fruit as fast as he can make himself, wanting to get it over with, and then rinses his bowl and sticks it in the dishwasher to avoid looking at it and thinking about the fact that he just ate. His stomach is rolling unpleasantly, and Matt gets a sudden, vivid thought of the toilet in the clowns’ tent, his hand disappearing into brown muck as he looked desperately for the piece of the artifact.
To distract himself from the nauseating memory, Matt grabs the bottle of multivitamins and hands them over to Joey. “Here. Take them. I’m sure your body needs it.”
Joey obediently tears open the safety seal and opens the bottle, shaking out a pill and swallowing it with the glass of water Matt hands over. As he sets the glass back down, Joey says, “You know, you don’t need to be my nurse, Matt. I can take care of myself.”
“Since last summer, you came into possession of a cursed mansion, nearly died twice, got trapped by vampires for a year, and then actually died once,” Matt says drily, counting the events off on his fingers. “Forgive me for thinking you can’t really take care of yourself.”
Joey grumbles something Matt can’t make out, but there’s a pretty flush on his cheeks that almost distracts Matt entirely from the pain in his expression at the reminder of his death. Still, he doesn’t seem too upset. He crosses his arms and meets Matt’s eyes.
“Thank you, Matt.” Just like right after they left Everlock, there’s something trusting in Joey’s voice, something almost…affectionate.
Matt instinctually wants to crush it. He looks down at the counter. “It’s nothing.”
It’s not nothing. He wants to beg Joey to kiss him again, to spend the rest of his life somewhere that Matt can keep him safe, but he can’t have Joey and he won’t let Joey have him. Matt just has to let him go, just like he’s going to let him go to the police and get his life back, start his journey back to the real world. Soon, Matt will let him go, and that’ll be it.
Joey’s still looking at him, Matt knows, and he wants to reach out, grab Joey’s face, and kiss him without the stench of death and blood hanging around them. He could do it. He did it in Everlock, when he thought it was the end. But it’s not the end now. It’s just his normal life in his normal house and Joey is just a friend, a guest who needs a place to sleep.
Could he have had Joey, if none of this had ever happened, if Tyler hadn’t gotten him first? Would they have met? Would Joey have fallen for Matt as hard as Matt has fallen for him? Maybe they could have been together. Maybe they could have been happy. Or maybe Matt would have lived with his hopeless affection for any man that shows him the slightest bit of attention and they would have lived their separate lives forever, just like they will after Joey gets his life back.
Matt doesn’t want to, but he steps away, rubbing at the back of his neck self-consciously. “I should go do some work.”
Joey looks a little crestfallen. He doesn’t try to stop Matt, though. “Oh…right. Yeah, alright. I’m…I’m gonna go, I guess. I’ll be back…soon. Hopefully.”
“Are you sure you don’t want me to go with you?” The words are out of Matt’s mouth before he can really think about them, but Joey just gives him a thankful look.
“I don’t think that would look very good – for you, I mean. I’ll…I’ll do it alone.” Joey seems unsure, but Matt has to give him credit for trying to keep his voice steady. “I’ll…be okay.”
Matt went out in public and had a panic attack. If he’s being entirely honest, he doesn’t think Joey will do much better, and he wishes Joey would accept his help even if he knows Joey’s right about how that would look to the cops and the reporters. Still, he gives Joey one last awkward nod and heads upstairs so he can go sit at his desk and stare at his scripts without writing a single word on them.
The front door opens about an hour later, and Matt’s getting up from his chair with shameful speed and hurrying downstairs to greet Joey, ending up a few stairs above the floor as Joey closes the door behind him. Immediately, he realizes his worries were warranted. Joey’s face is red and he’s carrying a wadded up tissue, his eyes puffy as he looks up at Matt. Matt steps down the last few levels and resists the urge to reach out for Joey.
“Joey…” Matt starts, unsure of what to say. “Joey, what’s wrong?”
Matt hates how cliché and tired it sounds, because honestly, it would be quicker for Joey to list what isn’t wrong. But Joey sobs, stumbling forward and falling right into Matt’s arms.
Oh. Oh, fuck.
This is… Fuck.
Carefully, Matt’s arms come up around Joey’s body, holding him loosely as Joey cries helplessly into Matt’s shoulder. Oh, no. What happened? Is Joey in trouble with the law, now? Did someone else get hurt? Did someone hurt him? Possibilities race through Matt’s mind, each one more outlandish and terrifying than the last, and he hugs Joey a little tighter, reaching up hesitantly to cup the back of Joey’s neck.
“I don’t have anything,” Joey whimpers, and Matt’s heart drops to the pit of his stomach. “I don’t have anything. My house– my– my pets– I don’t– I can’t get into my bank accounts, I can’t get my license back, I don’t–”
Matt squeezes Joey tight, and the way he can feel Joey’s spine underneath his hoodie and his shirt is painful. “Joey, Joey. Shh. Breathe. It’s gonna be okay.”
“I can’t–” Joey whimpers again, his voice choked. “I can’t do anything, Matthew, it’s all– it’s all gone, my life is gone and it’s–” His voice breaks. “I just want it back.”
“I know,” Matt soothes, and he’s suddenly reminded of crying into Joey’s shirt as Joey whispered soft things to him – I love you, Joey had said softly, and then Matt’s world went dark. “I know. It’s gonna be okay. Just breathe. You’re gonna be okay. You’ll get through this, we’ll– we’ll get through this.”
At what point did this become a ‘we’ kind of situation? Matt supposes it was around the same time he took responsibility for Joey, letting him into his house that day after Everlock, when all he wanted to do was sock Joey right in the face. It’s hard to want to hurt Joey right now.
Matt raises his hand to pet Joey’s hair softly, gently guiding him to sit down on the stairs and lean against the banister. It hurts to let go of him, but Matt comforts that part of himself by keeping one hand on Joey’s shoulder as Joey wipes his face and sniffles.
“Come on. Breathe. You’re gonna be okay. You’ll figure this out, this isn’t the end,” Matt says, even though he feels like it is. He’s trying to get Joey to have hope for the future, even though the entire time that Joey was gone he looked at his calendar and thought about how feeling like this for the rest of his life is going to kill him. “Look, just try to focus on something else for a second. Let yourself breathe. How did it go with the police?”
Joey stops, swallowing thickly and blinking away fresh tears as he manages to look up at Matt. “Um… It went… It was fine. I just– I just signed a statement saying that– that I was me, and– they took me to a room where I could call my– bank and my landlord and–”
Joey’s voice is getting panicked again, and Matt panics a little, too. He’s never been the best at comforting people – despite his gregariousness, he’s always wondering if whatever he’s going to say will sound stupid or just send them into worse tears. Still, he makes his best attempt. He reaches up to catch Joey’s chin in his hand and forces Joey to look him in the eyes. It’s a tender gesture, too intimate for two men who are just friends, but Joey’s seen Matt during the worst part of his life, so Matt thinks they’ve probably moved past first base by now.
“Joey,” Matt says, his voice gentle but leaving no room for argument. “Hey. Hey, come on, breathe. You’re gonna figure this out. You’re gonna be okay.”
Joey has to be okay. He has to be. Matt didn’t go through the things he went through for Joey to not be okay.
“I don’t have anything, Matt,” Joey croaks, and the sight of his blue eyes full of tears sends Matt’s heart into a tight, painful thump-thump in his chest. “Anything. I’m– I’m no one. I’m–”
“You’re my friend,” Matt says fiercely, and that word doesn’t even begin to describe what Joey is to him, but it’s the only word he’ll allow himself to use. “And I’m not going to let you break down just because you don’t have a house or aren’t rich anymore. You are going to figure this out. This isn’t permanent. Bank accounts can be reinstated, you can– you can find another house, and until then, I’m right here, and I’m not going anywhere.”
Joey stares at him, wide-eyed, his lower lip trembling. When he blinks, tears roll down his flushed cheeks. He doesn’t attempt to wipe them away. Matt expects Joey to ask about money, or about his pets – the poor guy loved his animals so much, and Matt can’t imagine having Skip taken away from him after everything else he’s endured, but Joey doesn’t.
Instead, Joey blinks again and then says, his voice soft, “I’m your…friend?”
Matt has to pause, because Joey looking at him like that, asking that question so hopefully, so cautiously, sends his already racing heart into agonizing overdrive. “You’re not my enemy,” Matt manages, after a few beats of silence.
Joey’s not his friend. Joey’s not his enemy. Joey is the person Matt wants to kiss, to marry, to love, to kill, to scream at, to fuck so hard Joey cries. But he can’t say any of that, so friend, or at the very least, not enemy will have to suffice.
Joey doesn’t seem to know what to make of this, but eventually he reaches up to wipe his face with the crumpled tissue, dabbing his tears away. “I… Okay.”
“Okay,” Matt repeats, and it’s time to let go of Joey. He has to force himself to withdraw, but he manages it, motioning towards the bathroom. “Here, you should go clean yourself up. I’m…going to make some coffee.”
Matt’s lack of sleep is catching up to him, and he wants something to pull him back from the sensation of Joey’s scruffy jaw underneath his hands or the memory of those big blue eyes looking at him like he’s the only thing that matters. He helps Joey stand, then watches as he walks numbly to the bathroom, bumping into the doorframe as he does, and closes the door behind him.
Matt walks to the kitchen and stares at the coffee maker for a long minute. Skip comes into the kitchen as soon as the bathroom door is closed and the sink is running, pawing at Matt’s ankle pathetically with sheathed claws to show his displeasure with not having his bowl refilled yet today. Matt looks down at his cat as if Skip is an alien, then he laughs softly and gets Skip his breakfast.
“You’re gonna have to get used to Joey,” Matt tells Skip wryly, setting his bowl down for him. “You’re stuck with him until he finds a new place to stay.”
Skip would roll his eyes if he was a human, but he’s a cat, so he just settles down on the ceramic floor and starts eating, twitching an ear at Matt as if telling him to piss off, he’s fulfilled his duties. Matt checks that Skip has water, then begins to clean out the coffee machine and starts a fresh batch.
Skip isn’t the only one stuck with Joey. Matt’s also stuck with him. Even with what Joey’s done. But isn’t that partly why Matt’s stuck with him? They’ve both done terrible things. Matt knows how it feels, both to die and to want to live, to know you can’t and to wish you could, that aching, freezing cold certainty of dread that comes with the certainty of death. Matt can’t blame him for wanting to go on. Matt did, too.
Joey comes out of the bathroom a little while later, his hair damp at the temples and a few droplets of water on the front of his sweater. He’s changed out of the blue hoodie Matt bought and is instead once again wearing the Game Theory one, huge on his skinny frame like he’s wearing a burlap sack. Still, if Joey is comfortable in it, Matt won’t say a word.
“Sorry,” Joey says, looking down at the counter as he takes a seat in his now-usual spot, his hands in the sleeves of the sweater. “I don’t…know what happened there.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Matt replies. At least Joey broke down in private. “I get it. I mean…it’s gotta be a lot.” He crosses his arms, rubbing his hands along his forearms self-consciously. “But I meant what I said. We’ll figure it out.”
Joey shakes his head, running his hands over his face. “It’s just… I need my identification back. To get my identification back, I need identification. And I need my bank accounts back to get my identification back, but I need my identification to get my bank accounts back. And I don’t have a house anymore, because my family didn’t pay my rent past a couple months, and all my pets got rehomed, and I can’t even talk to my family because I don’t know what I’d say to them–”
“Joey,” Matt says, trying to keep his voice calm and head off Joey’s panic before it takes over.
Joey falls silent again and sighs heavily. “I…I know. I just don’t even know where to start.”
Matt thinks for a moment. “Well… Getting your license back will probably take the longest, so you should do that first. Do your parents still have your birth certificate? Your SSN?”
Joey is right, this is overwhelming. How do you become an un-missing person?
“The police say that last they checked, my dad had possession of all my accounts and certificates,” Joey says. He folds his arms on the counter and lets his head fall forward onto them. “Fuck. That means they’re in Boston.”
“So, you’ll need to call your dad, and have him mail them to you,” Matt says, though he knows that’s probably easier said than done. “Then you can go to the DMV and get a license.”
“But I don’t have proof of residency,” Joey says helplessly, propping his chin up on one hand to look at Matt. “I don’t– I don’t live anywhere. I can’t get any mail because I don’t have any ID, and I can’t get any ID because I don’t have any mail.”
Matt falls silent. This is a problem, and Matt loves solving problems, and he’s even more motivated to solve the problem when solving it would mean Joey’s life got a whole lot better. “Maybe they’d be willing to send you some mail at this address. I certainly don’t mind.”
Joey looks a little bit less miserable at that. “You’d really let me have here as my address for a while?”
Matt spreads his hands as if welcoming Joey into his admittedly not too grand home. “What’s mine is yours.”
That earns him another smile out of Joey, small and shaky. Then Joey sighs, his face falling again, and looks down at his hands. “Fuck, I’m tired…”
“You’re malnourished,” Matt says simply, and he’s tempted to try and convince Joey to eat more food, but the prospect of Joey forcing him to eat again puts him off the idea. “You’ve been through a lot.”
“So have you,” Joey says softly.
Matt doesn’t want to think about what he’s been through. He drops his gaze as well, tracing the patterns in the marble countertop with his eyes and listening to the coffee machine bubble behind him.
“You should call them,” Matt suggests, his voice hesitant, after what feels like a long time of silence. “Your family. They really missed you. They didn’t stop looking for you.”
“What would I tell them?” Joey asks, an edge of sharpness to his voice. “They’re going to ask me where I was, and I can’t–” He swallows again, shaking his head. “I can’t tell them the truth. They’d never believe me.”
Matt doesn’t respond. He can sympathize with that. At least he was only gone for one night – no one’s asking questions about where he was. He doesn’t have to make up lies about a whole year spent out of the public eye. Joey will, and Matt doesn’t envy him one bit.
“You’ll figure something out,” Matt says once he finds the words, because he’s not sure what else to say. There’s not exactly a script for a situation like this.
“Yeah,” Joey replies. He doesn’t sound convinced. He watches as Matt grabs two mugs and starts preparing coffee for both of them. “Honestly, I just want my testosterone prescription back.”
“Makes sense…” Matt tries to think of the most tactful thing to say. “I guess going off it for a year probably wasn’t fun.”
“The withdrawal certainly wasn’t,” Joey says bitterly. When Matt turns back around, he sees Joey’s got his arms wrapped around his midsection as if to protect it, his eyes distant. “The vampires didn’t care. They just…kept…they kept hurting me. My head hurt, and I was so hungry all the time, and–”
Joey blinks, his voice breaking. Matt almost reaches out to comfort him, but before he gives himself the chance, Joey takes a shuddering breath and shakes his head again.
“I just want to go back to my old life.”
“You will.” Matt’s going to see Joey get his old life back come hell or high water after what he did to get Joey out of Everlock.
He wishes he could say more. Something about how this isn’t the end of the world, even if it feels like it is, or something about how they’re going to heal from this, but saying things like that would make Matt feel like a dirty liar, because he doesn’t believe them, either. His world ended in Everlock when Joey told him he loved him and Matt’s eyes closed for what he thought was the last time, because even if Joey brought him back from the dead, Matt doesn’t think anyone can really be brought back from the dead. Dying breaks you open, in a way, fractures you until your soul is leaking from your mouth along with your blood, and Matt wonders if his soul was what got left in that goddamn town.
He clears his throat and gives Joey his cup of coffee and the little container of sugar he keeps on the counter.
“Back to work?” Joey asks, forced lightheartedness, and Matt nods.
“Yeah, I should probably at least try to get something done today.” Joey doesn’t care about his struggles with work, but Matt doesn’t really want to leave his kitchen and Joey in it, and he’s trying to find anything to say to avoid doing that. He waffles for a moment, shifting his weight, then clears his throat. “Yeah. Um, if you get hungry, there’s salad from last night in the fridge, or cereal, I don’t really care what you eat as long as you don’t eat all of it. I’ll just be in my office if you need anything. If I’m not at my desk, I’m in the closet.”
“Okay.” Joey watches him leave, and Matt tells himself he’s imagining the wistful look in Joey’s eyes. “See you, Matt.”
“See you, Joey,” Matt says, and then he’s hurrying himself upstairs to his office with his coffee clutched in his hand like a lifeline.
Matt hasn’t gotten any work done an hour later when his phone, set out on his desk, rings.
There’s a brief sense of annoyance as he looks over at the unknown number. Who the hell calls him? Don’t people know he has an email? He has several emails, actually. And a cellphone that can receive texts. What an amazing invention text messages are. Still, Matt has to answer unknown phone calls because it could be some client calling from their mistresses’ phone instead of their own (another true story), and so he swipes to accept the call and tries to flatten his voice into its usual businesslike professionalism.
“Who is this?”
“Is this Mr. Patrick?” The voice on the other end of the line is low but feminine and vaguely familiar from somewhere Matt can’t quite place. “Mr. Matthew Patrick?”
“Who is this?” Matt repeats, already prepared to end the call and report this as spam. “Look, if this is a telemarketer, I suggest you hang up now because I am really not in the mood to—”
“Calling the Society Against Evil a telemarketer is a bold move, Mr. Patrick.”
Jael. That’s Jael’s voice on the other end. What the fuck? Matt didn’t even know the Society Against Evil used phones. He kind of assumed they stuck with the ancient papyrus scrolls and carrier pigeons. The annoyance turns to suspicion in the blink of an eye. These people killed his friends.
“Jael? What do you want?” Matt asks, and now the flatness of his voice is distrust, not professionalism. “Why are you calling me?”
“We need to talk,” Jael says, and if that’s not ominous Matt doesn’t know what is. “You, Mr. Graceffa, and Ms. Nguyen. We’re already contacting Ms. Nguyen; but we understand Mr. Graceffa is currently staying with you, so we’d appreciate it if you could get him on the line as well.”
It takes him a second to register who ‘Ms. Nguyen’ is, before he realizes that must be Nikita’s last name. The suspicion just grows stronger. How the hell did they know Joey’s staying with him? That’s creepy as fuck, Matt thinks, and it just reinforces his decision to not trust these edgy assholes one bit.
“What if Joey is…predisposed?” Matt’s pretty sure Joey’s napping, but he doesn’t want to give the Society any more information than they seemingly already have.
“Then you can tell him afterwards,” Jael says pleasantly. “The Society doesn’t conduct business over the phone. Can you get to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in one hour?”
Matt checks the time, distrust mixing with a healthy dose of curiosity. “...I might.”
“Ryu and I will be at the Satan sculpture. The one by Jean-Jacques Feuchère.” And with that cryptic, vaguely sinister message, Jael hangs up.
Matt stares at his phone for a moment. Then he gets up, his work completely forgotten, and quickly makes his way downstairs, skipping steps like a kid on Christmas as he hurries to tell Joey about this new development.
Joey isn’t napping. He’s actually watching a cooking show and eating a bowl of cereal dry, and he looks up worriedly as Matt comes bursting into the living room.
“The Society Against Evil just called me,” Matt says, and it sounds absurd when he says it out loud like that.
Joey’s eyes widen, and he sets his bowl aside, focusing wholly on Matt. “What?”
“Jael. She called me. She wants to meet in an hour at the art museum. And— somehow, they know we’re living together.” Oh, shit, nice job, Patrick. “Um, that you’re staying with me, I mean.”
“That’s…” Joey trails off, which is fine, because Matt has his own adjectives to describe it.
“Creepy?” Matt finishes for him. “Invasive?”
“I was going to say weird, but sure.” Joey glances down at himself. “Well…are we going?”
Matt actually hasn’t thought about if he’s going or not. He’s been too focused on how strange it is. But if Nikita is going to be there, he can’t let her deal with the Society on her own. Not because he thinks she can’t take care of herself — he knows she can take care of herself — but because he doesn’t trust the Society to play fair. And if Joey is going, that feeling is doubled. Who knows what they want?
“I’m going.” There’s no way Matt’s letting either of his fellow survivors face Jael and Ryu alone. “I just need to get dressed.”
This is the most direction he’s felt since he bought Joey those clothes, and he’s surprised by the amount of motivation he feels. He actually is almost looking forward to it, if only because he’s curious about what the Society wants. Matt goes back to his bedroom, putting on the jeans from yesterday and a slightly wrinkled button down that’s been sitting in his laundry basket since before Everlock. Then he slips his ball cap over his messy hair and slides his sunglasses on. With the five o’clock shadow, he looks like an entirely different person, which is exactly what he wants. He’s still not in the mood for anyone to recognize him.
My voice is annoying enough to give me away, though, Matt thinks to himself, and though he finds it amusing, it hurts a little, too.
Enough. He tucks his phone, wallet, and keys into the pockets of his jeans, then hurries back downstairs, where Joey has managed to drape the blankets across the back of the couch and is putting his shoes on.
“You, uh…you have any extra hats or sunglasses?” Joey asks hopefully. “It felt like everyone was looking at me. It was awful.”
“I might have a beanie or something.” Matt goes to his closet, his muscles twinging with fresh aches as he reaches up to grab the plastic box that he keeps his hats and other cold-weather clothing in for when he travels out of the blistering hot city he lives in. “It’s gonna be warm, but…”
“No, I don’t mind.” Joey catches the beanie that Matt tosses to him and puts it on without complaint. Having his hair hidden just makes his face look even more gaunt, lacking any softness to break it up. Matt finds an old pair of light sunglasses he used for night driving and throws those over to Joey, too, and when Joey puts them on, he looks passable as another random citizen. “Thanks, Matt.”
“It’s nothing.” Matt grunts in exertion as he heaves the box back up into the top of the closet. Then he turns the kitchen light off and shuts the TV down. He’s antsy to get going, to see what excuses Jael and Ryu have for him as to why they allowed eight people to die just to save one life. A life that Matt is glad the person is still living, but…still.
“Are you ready?” He asks Joey, and Joey nods. Matt sets his shoulders and opens the front door. “Then I suppose we’re off to see the wizards.”
This time on a Monday, the art museum isn’t very crowded, and Joey and Matt get up to the ticket counter half an hour before they have to meet Jael and Ryu. Upon seeing Matt’s ID, the cashier gives him a knowing look. “Ah. Jean and Roy are expecting you. Go ahead.” They motion him through the rope-lined walkway without any further ado, and Matt, at a loss for words, silently follows their direction. It’s only after they’re in the lobby proper and the ticket counter is behind them that the cashier’s words catch up to him. Jean and Roy…?
He knows the approximate layout of the museum, and thinks he remembers the general area of the statue Jael told him about. Joey follows him like a lost duckling, close behind Matt every step of the way, glancing around like danger is lurking around every corner. Honestly, for Joey, it might as well be. They’re lucky the museum is relatively empty, with only a few older couples wandering around, clutching the little guide booklets and pointing at sculptures and paintings as they talk softly amongst themselves. The last thing Matt or Joey needs is someone recognizing them in a crowded public place. It would be like yelling fire in a theater — especially now that Joey is officially back.
The French exhibit is even more dead than the rest of the museum, with most people gravitating towards the new Greek additions that have been made to the collection, and so as Joey and Matt cross the threshold of the cold black floor, they realize they’re alone. Standing amongst the sculptures, Matt can’t help but feel like their unseeing marble and bronze eyes are boring into him, perched on their pedestals and staring directly into his soul. Once again, he wishes he was back in his closet. He suddenly doesn’t feel so brave, and all he wants to do is leave Jael and Ryu to whatever weird Society business they have and get out of here.
But Mama Patrick didn’t raise no quitter, and so Matt takes a deep breath, tries to keep his shoulders high, and continues through the first part of the exhibit to the room lined with paintings that has the sculpture in the center. For a moment, Matt isn’t sure who the person standing in front of it is. Then they turn, and…
“Nikita?” Joey asks, and Matt understands the incredulity in his tone. Nikita looks so wildly different that Matt didn’t recognize her, either.
Nikita’s wearing a short white skirt and a long-sleeved white top, with a black corset over it that tightens her waist such that Matt wonders if she can even breathe. Her hair today is black and shiny, falling in nearly-iridescent waves around a perfectly done-up face with the classic smokey eye and a dark, neutral lipstick. Matt can’t help but notice the complete lack of pink anywhere on her outfit.
The gun is a bright, shocking pink against Nikita’s white straitjacket.
“Look who showed up,” Nikita says, but when Joey goes in for a hug, she returns it. Then she looks at Matt and puts a hand on her hip. “You didn’t call.”
“Yeah, I…I got side-tracked.” After a moment, Matt opens his arms for a hug, too. Nikita rolls her eyes, even though she accepts it. Matt pulls away and swallows, his mouth suddenly feeling dry. Seeing Nikita is just bringing it all back, the zombies and the challenge and Manny’s face as the bullets tore through him—
“Did you two come here together?” Nikita asks shrewdly, motioning at them both.
Matt should have known she’d figure it out. Nikita isn’t stupid. He shares a glance with Joey, who looks a little panicked, before he says, “Joey’s…staying with me.”
“My house is…” Joey catches himself, stops, tries again. “The house I was renting isn’t mine anymore.”
“Oh. Well, you were gone for a year,” Nikita says, though she gives Matt and Joey a look from skeptical eyes. “Can’t blame the parasites for wanting a renter that actually gives them money.”
Joey laughs weakly and Matt cracks a smile. If neither of them are functional, at least Nikita seems to be managing. She’s certainly able to put more effort into her appearance than Matt is.
“Did they let you in without tickets, too?” Nikita asks, and Joey and Matt both nod.
“They said ‘Jean’ and ‘Roy’ were expecting us.” Matt frowns. “I’m assuming those are some kind of cover names or something.”
“That’s what I figured,” Nikita replies, turning back to the sculpture. Matt and Joey walk up next to her as she examines it. “I’ll just say, he is not pretty here.”
Satan is hunched on a rock, holding a broken sword in one hand with his chin resting in his other one, his great bat wings curled around his body. He’s depicted here with horns, and Matt is abruptly reminded of the Carnival Master, the ram horns curling from his head, sharp and stained with splashes of blood from victims that Matt doesn’t want to think about. For the first time, he feels a bit of sympathy for the Society. Facing the Carnival Master, Matt was terrified. He thought he was going to die again, and he wanted to run as fast and as far as he could when he stared into the monster’s cold, dead eyes. He could never do what the Society does and willingly stand his ground and face something like that. Matt isn’t brave like Jael and Ryu — even if he doesn’t trust them, he has to admit that they are most definitely brave. Him? He’s just some guy.
“Yeah, not his finest depiction,” is what comes out of Matt’s mouth, and Joey nods in agreement, staring at the sculpture.
The Devil can take a lot of forms. A little red being with horns. A beautiful fallen angel. A person with the head of a goat. A blue-skinned demon with a crystal in his chest.
A tall man with platinum blonde hair and bright blue eyes.
“Interesting, isn’t it, now that you’ve seen what evil really looks like?”
The feminine voice takes all three by surprise, and Matt and Joey jump, with Nikita starting and whirling around so fast her hair whips Matt in the face. As Matt and Joey turn, too, they see two people stroll in as though they don’t have a care in the world.
Just like with Nikita, Matt very nearly doesn’t recognize Jael and Ryu. They’re dressed in normal clothes, with Ryu in a gray button-down and dark pants, the sleeves rolled up to expose the dragon tattoos curling up his muscular forearms. His hair is styled neatly back from his face, and he’s even wearing jewelry, a jade bangle carved to look like a dragon wrapped around his tanned wrist. Jael is dressed in a white blouse and black slacks, her hair tied back in a braid, and she’s switched out the bold kohl for simple, clean winged eyeliner that makes her look like a businesswoman instead of a magical agent of a secret society.
Jael smiles at them. “I’m so glad to see you all.”
“Jael,” Joey says, sounding relieved. “Ryu. Hi.”
Ryu gives a nod of acknowledgement. Christ, that guy’s quiet. Jael walks in front of them, looking over them before focusing on Joey.
“Well, Mr. Graceffa,” Jael says, looking him up and down. “You’re free now. How is your new lease on life?”
Joey seems to shrink a little bit, looking first to Matt, then to Nikita. “Um…I’m glad to be back.”
He had a breakdown this morning and is sleeping on my couch watching Hell’s Kitchen, Matt says silently. Out loud, he cuts in, “Why are we here?”
“You’re bold,” Jael says with a laugh. Still, she seemingly answers willingly. “We want to make you an offer. All of you.”
Matt’s immediately on alert. The last offer the Society made got him and seven other people killed. He looks suspiciously down at her — she’s short, he realizes, even in her businesswoman heels. He’s about to ask what kind of offer, but Nikita beats him to it.
“Yeah? What do you want from us?” Nikita asks, narrowing her eyes again.
“It’s not what we want from you. It’s what we can offer you.” Jael’s voice is patient, and Matt gets the sense she’s given this pitch before. “We want all of you to join the Society Against Evil.”
Matt can’t help it: he laughs. Oh, right, okay, sure. That makes total sense. The Society Against Evil just recruits idiots off the street — that explains why they’re so damn bad at their job. Jael doesn’t flinch. Matt stops laughing when he realizes she’s being serious.
“Wait, you’re serious?” Matt asks, and Nikita echoes the sentiment.
Ryu moves his hands, motioning to him and Jael before putting his pointer finger to his chin and rotating it 180 degrees with his brows furrowed. It takes Matt a moment to realize the man is speaking sign language. That…explains why he’s quiet.
“We are indeed serious, as Ryu says,” Jael translates for him, looking at her partner and then back to the three. “You all fought well in Everlock. You showed yourselves to have great bravery. The Society could always use people like that.”
“Absolutely not,” Matt says, before anyone else can speak, stepping forward to get closer to Jael. “Absolutely not, I’m not letting you recruit my friends—”
Ryu signs something else, moving forward as well, and Matt can’t help but step right back once again, wanting to get away from the muscular secret agent.
“Ryu is advising that you let your friends decide for themselves,” Jael says icily, staring Matt down. Then she seems to make an effort to soften her voice. “We don’t expect an answer now. This is a big decision, after all.” She reaches into her pants pocket and pulls out three business cards. They’re velvety black, with the Society Against Evil symbol embossed on the front. Discomfort prickles down Matt’s spine at the sight of it. Jael hands one to each of them, and Matt takes it, even if he doesn’t want to. “Here’s my card with my number. Think about it, and then call me.”
“What if we say no?” Matt asks, stuffing the card into his pocket without looking at it. “What if we don’t want to be part of your weird society?”
“Then you say no,” Jael replies simply. As she pulls her hand back, Matt sees tattoos on her palm, writing that he thinks is Hebrew, and he struggles to recall the story of Jael from the bit of the Bible he remembers. “We are not a cult or a kidnapping ring. If you don’t wish to join us, then you don’t wish to join us. But I encourage you to truly consider it.”
Matt has to resist scoffing out loud. No way. All he wants to do is leave all of this — magic and demons and cursed towns — behind him. He wants to forget all of it ever happened, even if he knows he won’t ever be able to. He wants to go back to his old life, before any of this becomes any more of his problem to deal with. But as he looks at Nikita and Joey, he’s dismayed to see a lack of the same in their expressions. Are they seriously considering this?
Ryu signs something again, and Matt doesn’t know sign language but he gathers that it probably boils down to something along the lines of, We should go, because Jael sighs and nods, checking around for a clock. “Yes, you’re right. We have the debrief in a short while. Just one more thing to give them.”
Oh, great, what now? Matt looks on with even more skepticism as Jael pulls something else from the pocket of her pants: slips of paper with neat, loopy handwriting on them. She hands one out to each of them again, but this time, Matt catches something that makes him stop and pay attention.
Psychiatry:
Kit Combe
Eloise Rose Atkinson
Blossom Psychiatry
-
Psychotherapy:
Elena Bowen
Peter Foster
Sydney Lloyd
There’s also columns for physiology, trauma recovery specialists, general practitioners, and several other disciplines, all with names and phone numbers underneath them. Matt realizes what it is almost before Jael speaks.
“That’s a list of all the doctors affiliated with the Society in Los Angeles, Anaheim, and Riverside. Therapists, psychiatrists, GPs. Any medical care or medications you might need, go through them. They take any insurance, and they won’t ask questions.” Jael looks at Ryu when he presses a hand to her shoulder and gives her a meaningful look. “We have to go. Call us with your answer.”
Without anything further except a dip of the head from Ryu, the two Society agents leave, Jael’s heels clicking on the floor. From the back, they look like two completely normal people. One would be forgiven for thinking they are normal.
They turn the corner, and Joey, Matt, and Nikita are left alone.
Joey is the first to speak. “That was…interesting.”
“You better not be thinking of joining them,” Matt spits out. He turns to face Joey and Nikita, his tone unexpectedly harsh. “We know what their deals do. Joey only got brought back to life because he killed people.”
Joey flinches, but Matt can’t find it in himself to feel bad. He won’t let his friends sign their lives and souls away to some creepy society, no matter what he has to say to get them to listen to him. He knows Joey isn’t going to fight back anyways.
Nikita, however, is not as conflict avoidant as Joey now is. She tosses her hair and gives Matt a defiant look. “What if I am?”
“Are you kidding, Nikita?” Matt glares at her. “You’ve seen what kinds of things they’re okay with!”
“Like you’re so much better!” Nikita fires back, giving an accusatory jab of her finger towards him. “Don’t even try to pretend that you’re not—”
“I’m not trying to pretend shit,” Matt snarls, stepping up to get in her face, unwilling to let her give her rights away to the Society Against Evil that’s so against evil they were willing to let eight people die. “I don’t trust them and neither should you.”
“Matt—” Joey starts, but Matt and Nikita both ignore him.
Nikita laughs bitterly. “You think I trust them? I don’t! That’s why I want to join them!”
“Oh, sure, that’s going to go over well—” Matt says, and there’s something about Nikita that makes his words feel like molten lava just dying to escape him, and he’s reminded of Safiya’s blood on his hands as Nikita snapped at him—
“She voted for me to die, and she got what she deserved!”
Nikita was happy Safiya died, and for that, Matt will never forgive her. But then again, if Manny had been the one to die in the Strong Man’s challenge, or if it had been Joey who had bled to death out there in the cold…
Matt can’t say he wouldn’t have celebrated, either.
“Stop it!” Joey’s voice is loud now, and Matt and Nikita both shut up abruptly, looking at him. He looks back at them, slightly apprehensive but still obviously trying to put on a firm face. “Just…just stop it, okay? Look, Matt, it’s not— she can make her own decisions—”
“I can defend myself, Joey,” Nikita says sharply, but Joey keeps going.
“—and Matt, I— I get it, okay. But we can’t have this fight in the middle of a public museum. Please?” Joey holds his hands out placatingly, and somewhere Matt realizes he’s right. They shouldn’t have this fight in the middle of a public museum.
Matt wants to leave, anyway. The statue in the center of the room still feels like it’s staring at him, and even if there’s no people around right now, there’s no guarantee it’ll stay that way. He seethes for a moment before turning away from Nikita and jerking his head at Joey.
“Come on,” Matt says sharply. “Let’s go.”
He half-expects Joey to resist, but Joey just sighs and follows behind him as he heads out of the exhibit. As they cross the threshold, Nikita catches their attention.
“Hey!”
Matt turns around to look at her coldly.
She stares back at him, refusing to back down. “I can take care of myself.”
That’s exactly the attitude Matt’s afraid of.
Matt tosses Jael’s card in the recycling as soon as he gets home. He already knows his answer: a final and empathetic fuck no. Joey, however, seems to share Nikita’s attitude, because he stares at the card thoughtfully, turning it over in his hands as Matt angrily makes himself another cup of coffee.
“I know where you’re coming from, Matt,” Joey says after a moment, and Matt can feel Joey staring at him. “But…they’re not all bad. They didn’t have to let me live—”
“And yet they did, at the cost of eight lives,” Matt bites out, wrenching the fridge door open with more force than necessary. He can’t see Joey, but he’s sure the man flinched again. “You don’t owe them anything. You already did your part. You saved Everlock. Your work for them is done.”
Joey doesn’t respond for a while. Matt’s hands are shaking as he mixes creamer into his cup, nearly sloshing it over the side with how furious his movements are. He hates himself for feeling this angry. He doesn’t like being angry. It makes him feel…ashamed. Still, the thought of Nikita or Joey with a Society badge on their jacket makes him so pissed off he wants to cry. He can’t let them do that to themselves, no matter how mad they get at him for it.
“Why are you so angry about this?” Joey asks, and though it might sound flippant, Matt can hear an undertone of genuine concern in Joey’s voice.
“Does it matter? They’re a bunch of untrustworthy weirdos.” Matt glares at his coffee as if it’s personally offended him, then picks it up and grips the handle of the mug tight to try and stop his hands from shaking as he turns around to face Joey. “That should be reason enough.”
“Sure,” Joey says, the tone of his voice suggesting he’s not buying Matt’s explanation. “But you’re not usually like this.”
“How do you know what I’m usually like?” Matt retorts, flatly questioning. “You barely know me. Before Everlock, I think I can count the times we talked on one hand.”
To his surprise, instead of snapping back, Joey flushes a light pink as he looks down at the counter and Jael’s card, still held in his hands. “Well, I…it felt like more.”
Matt goes quiet, too. It did feel like more. It feels like the meetings he had with Joey outsized everything else, all the other one-off introductions he shared with YouTubers and streamers at conventions, handshakes and high-fives in the few moments between panels and meet-and-greets. He remembers his meetings with Joey, for one, in nearly perfect detail, remembers what they talked about — World of Warcraft one time, Minecraft another — and he remembers liking Joey, being immediately drawn to him in a way that’s become familiar to a person like Matt. It’s the feeling of his stupidly big heart latching on to someone like a fucking lamprey, and Matt doesn’t want to encourage it any more than he already has.
The anger ebbs away as quickly as it came as Joey looks up at him, his face still flushed that pretty, soft pink. “You know…I watched your videos.”
“Really?” Matt asks, unsure what to make of that. “I didn’t realize they were…your type.”
“Some of them were,” Joey says carefully. He sounds like he’s going to add to that, but then he just goes quiet, looking down at his hands once again.
Matt blinks at him, wondering if Joey is going to elaborate on that suspiciously vague statement. He does not. “I see.”
Matt doesn’t see anything at all. He doesn’t know what’s happening here. He doesn’t know why Joey is looking at him like that, soft and hopeful.
Matt’s going to die, oh, God, he’s going to die—
His body seizes, neurons firing at random just to make sure they still can, his torn muscles clenching as a desperate, agonized whimper is torn from his throat. It hurts, everything hurts, his whole body is an open wound, and he wishes he could sob but he doesn’t have enough air for it.
Joey shushes him, running a thumb across Matt’s bruised, swollen cheekbone, pressing a kiss to his bloodied forehead.
“You’re okay, it’s okay,” Joey whispers, broken with tears. “It’s okay. It’s just like falling asleep. Just close your eyes and relax, Matthew, you’re okay.”
It wasn’t okay. Matt was dying, and Joey could do nothing but watch, and hold him, and give him soft, sweet kisses that Matt wanted so badly to return.
Matt feels such an absurdly strong flash of emotion that it’s all he can do to avoid crumpling to the floor. He has to get away from Joey, from those blue eyes and that trusting expression that Matt doesn’t think he’s ever seen before.
“I have to go and…do something.” Matt leaves the room without a glance back to Joey.
Joey seems to have learned by now not to call after him.
Matt avoids Joey, and by extension, the entire downstairs area of his home, for the rest of the day. Something about the way he felt this morning, staring at Joey across the kitchen counter…to be entirely honest, it scared the shit out of Matt.
Matt is a bachelor. Lifelong, in case anyone hadn’t noticed; he hasn’t held a steady relationship since his best friend Stephanie in college, and he broke up with her when he realized heterosexuality wasn’t in his future. For a while, he just didn’t care. Then there was YouTube, and then the company, and he was so busy and so caught up in his own head all the time that he just didn’t want a relationship. And as for now, he’s always a little too worried of what would happen to the person he’s dating to really seek someone out — the internet fucking hates him sometimes, and he’s seen what happened to innocent significant others of hated YouTube celebrities. Why would he want to risk exposing someone to that?
Besides, Matt has never needed a partner to feel loved. He’s got his friends, his family back east, an entire community. He was surrounded by love. Somewhere, he knows he still is, even if Everlock has made it hard to feel anything but grief and guilt and anger. Not only is he surrounded by love, he’s full of it. Matt loves everyone just a little bit. He just has one of those personalities. One of his friends once told him he rolled ridiculously high on charisma, and loving everyone else is the price for everyone loving him, and Matt was willing to accept that. Before Everlock, there wasn’t a person he knew who he didn’t love, at least in some way.
But the way he loves Joey is more than just a little bit. The way he loves Joey fucking hurts, sharp enough to sting, and Matt isn’t sure if that’s just because he’s fallen ass over teakettle for someone who might not really, truly love him back, or if it’s because the person he’s fallen ass over teakettle for was willing to let him and his friends die.
Does Joey love him back?
Matt stares at the ceiling. He’s back in bed, giving himself a break after staring at his computer for so long gave him a stress headache behind his eyes, his hands folded on his stomach and still fully dressed as he lays on top of the sheets.
Joey said he loved him. Matt almost didn’t remember it at first, the memories of his death too sharp to get close to, but the edges have dulled slightly and now he remembers it with picture-perfect clarity.
Matt can’t breathe. He can’t breathe, and his whole chest feels heavy and burns like he’s got a bed of embers inside him. His ribs scream with agony with every gasping movement in search of air and he can’t keep his eyes open anymore as the lights of the town blur and smudge into bright streaks against the cold, velvety sky, and Matt blinks as fresh tears roll down his face.
“Matthew, I love you,” Joey whispers, so soft Matt thinks he might have imagined it. “I want you to know that I love you.”
He loves Joey, too.
It was the last thing he heard, one of the last things he remembers, right next to Joey’s blue eyes and the stars high above them and the lights of the city fading into warm darkness. Death felt like being held, Matt realizes, just like Joey’s arms felt around him, warm and agonizing from the pain the touch caused. In the end, everything hurts. Even love. Especially love. It’s only afterwards that nothing hurts at all.
If Matt could choose not to love Joey…being entirely honest…
No. Matt can’t be entirely honest with himself about something like that. Matt does love Joey, with all his flaws, and he’s loved Joey since before Everlock, attached to him in a way he can’t quite describe. Matt has always thought that soulmates aren’t found, they’re made, and Joey makes him feel like a higher power is pointing with a giant neon arrow and saying, Well? Start making him, then!
But does Joey love him? Joey said he did, but Matt was dying, and Matt knows he’d probably say just about anything to make a dying person feel better, so that doesn’t prove shit. Joey kissed him, too, but again, see Point Number One. Matt blinks up at the stucco. This. This is why he doesn’t have a partner. This is why he’s 30-something and single. Because he asks himself if people really love him, analyzes every move they make, breaks it down into a million moving parts and at the end of it all decides that no, they’re just a friend, or no, they’re just a fan, or no, they’re just being nice. He loves everyone — but no one really loves him.
How could Joey love him? Joey barely knows him.
Matt checks the time. Early evening. Dinnertime. He hasn’t eaten since before Joey left, and his stomach is growling faintly, showing its displeasure with being forced to run an adult man’s body on a few grapes. Hmm. Maybe if Matt actually made an effort to eat, he’d be able to get some work done. He should make sure Joey is eating, too.
He swings himself out of bed, still stiff but moving a lot faster than he was right after Everlock, and walks downstairs to where Joey is apparently already in the kitchen. Matt softens his footsteps and slows down so as to not alert Joey to his presence. He just wants…to see him, for a moment. To see a glimpse of what he’s like when no one’s around. He wants to see what Joey was like before Everlock, before going missing, before being willed an evil manor house. Joey’s cutting up cucumbers — also with a butter knife, Matt notices, and he recalls that Joey was stabbed, too — and the container of hummus is next to him on the counter. So he is eating. That’s good. Matt almost retreats back upstairs, but Joey catches him out of the corner of his eye and jumps about a mile high.
“Jesus Christ!” Joey’s voice goes high pitched on the exclamation, surprisingly cute, and then he shuts his mouth quickly, slapping a hand to his chest. “Fuck. Matt. I didn’t know— I didn’t see you.”
“Sorry,” Matt says sheepishly, and he means it. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Well, you did,” Joey snaps, and though Matt expects to feel angry at Joey’s sassiness, instead he just feels…fond.
“I know. I won’t do it again.” Joey obviously expected Matt to get angry, because he looks vaguely surprised at Matt’s bland answer. Matt moves forwards, into the kitchen, and says, “Dinner?”
“Um, yeah.” Joey goes back to cutting the cucumber, his hands trembling a little. “I finished off the salad earlier. I hope you don’t mind.”
“No, that’s okay.” Matt runs through a few quick recipes in his head that he could make to keep easily accessible food around for Joey. It’s better if the man can make his own meals, because Matt certainly won’t remember to. “I made it for you.”
“Here,” Joey says, pushing the plate of cucumber spears towards Matt along with the container of hummus. “You should have some.”
Matt reaches for a piece, but stops halfway there. The flesh of the cucumber is glistening with moisture, slick in the light of the kitchen, and it’s easy to imagine it feels the same as torn-open skin underneath his hands. He pulls back, suddenly feeling cold, and shakes his head at Joey’s curious look.
“I’m not really a fan of cucumber, um, on its own.” It’s the best excuse Matt can come up with, and Joey gives him a weird look. Matt prickles, expecting a fight, but Joey shrugs and rolls his eyes.
“Alright, whatever.”
Matt sits down in one of the chairs and half-heartedly pulls out his phone to give himself something to do. Really, he’s just looking for anything to make this less awkward than it is — if that’s even possible. It does remind him of something, though.
“Have you called Tyler yet?”
Joey raises an eyebrow at Matt. “On what phone?”
Oh. Duh. But there is an easy fix for that. Matt holds out his phone, the dial pad already pulled up. “Here. Use mine.”
Even faced with the offer, Joey hesitates. Matt pounces on that.
“He really missed you, you know.” Matt sets his phone down where Joey can see it. “Went on the news a few times to ask for information about where you might have gone. I’m pretty sure he’s the one that put most of the billboards up, and paid for the first few rounds of the missing posters.”
Joey just looks guilty at Matt’s words, looking away from the phone and keeping his eyes somewhere else. “I… That sounds like him.”
Matt presses harder. “I’m sure he’d be elated that you’re alive.”
“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you’re trying to get rid of me,” Joey says, and though he tries to sound playful, Matt senses genuine hurt in there, too. “If you want me to leave—”
“I don’t want you to leave,” Matt says quickly, though he’s unsure if that’s really true. “I just want… I mean, he’s your boyfriend. He deserves to know you’re safe, doesn’t he?”
Matt doesn’t think he wants Joey to leave. Really, all he wants is a built-in excuse for why he can’t have Joey, and Joey already having a goddamn boyfriend is a pretty good one. Him and Tyler were a great couple — one of the gay power couples of YouTube, possibly even the gay power couple of YouTube. All Joey has to do is go back to Tyler, and it won’t stop Matt loving him, but it’ll stop Matt from thinking that maybe he has a chance.
“I’ll call him, okay?” Joey says, annoyance coloring his tone. “Just…not right now. But I will. And— and I’ll call my dad, too. Apparently he’s the one who the police released all the evidence to, so he has my electronics and my paperwork and stuff…”
Matt backs off, holding his hands up in surrender and taking his phone back. There’s a new headline, about Manny this time, and Matt stares at it for a moment before swiping it away. Just out of curiosity, he checks Twitter. As expected, Joey Graceffa is trending. He clicks through to it and scrolls through a few pages of emoji-filled tweets, people exclaiming and tagging their friends in response to the news stories that have started running since Joey officially came back.
“People are excited you’re back,” Matt says after a moment. Well…some people. Some people are decidedly not excited that Joey is back. He tries not to focus too much on those tweets, and exits the app. He’s excited that Joey’s back.
Joey looks like he might smile, then it falls into something wistful. “I…I don’t know how I’m gonna make videos after this, not with everything that…”
His words trail off into silence. Matt can certainly relate to that more than he’d like to. He still has no idea how he’s going to invite Jason and Chris into his home and sit down in front of a camera and stream himself live for the entire internet to see. In a way, it reminds him too much of the challenge, everyone watching him, their eyes on his every move, every mistake. Matt shivers involuntarily at the memory, thinking of the statues at the museum, their blank, ever-watchful eyes, and of the cold glass lens of a camera looking at him. Everyone will be watching him again, as soon as he sits down to stream, which he’ll have to do sooner or later if he wants to keep up his appearance as MatPat, the Game Theory guy.
He doesn’t want to think about that right now. He shakes his head, sighing to himself, then checks the time. It’s still early evening, but Matt’s pretty much lost all sense of time and all of his obsessions with social norms about when to go to bed, so he gives a vague motion towards upstairs.
“I’m gonna get ready for bed.” Matt needs to brush his teeth, and he should probably take a shower, too. Even the thought is exhausting, but he’s gone long enough. He’s traumatized, not incapable. “I’ll be upstairs if you need me.”
Joey nods in acknowledgement, and Matt heads up to his bathroom, where he goes through the motions of getting ready for bed in a state of near-numbness. He just wants to stop thinking. He just wants to go to sleep and not have dreams of his friends, not have dreams of anything, just close his eyes and that’s that. Like he’s dying, except he’s not.
Matt very nearly reaches for his razor, but then he realizes how long that would actually take and abandons that idea as quickly as it came. In the end, he sticks with just washing his face, looking up at himself in the mirror as he pats his cheeks dry. He doesn’t look like the person he did before. In the time since Everlock, it feels like he’s aged ten years, and Matt wouldn’t be surprised if he found a few gray hairs next time he finally manages to work up the energy to brush and style it. Afterwards, Matt puts on a fresh pair of sweatpants and an old graphic tee, something with Mario Kart, as if dressing like his old self can make him become that old self again.
Briefly, Matt considers actually going to bed. But then he remembers JC’s milky, dead eyes, and abandons that idea, too. If he falls asleep, it’ll be by force, not by choice. Matt turns to head downstairs, and nearly runs into Joey, heading up.
“I thought you’d be in bed,” Joey says, looking mildly surprised to see Matt up and about.
“I decided I’d rather watch TV instead.” Matt glances down behind Joey. The kitchen light has been turned off, and the downstairs is dark and quiet. “Are you going to bed?”
“Um…maybe. I’m gonna take a shower, too,” Joey says. “If— if that’s alright.”
“I don’t care. It’s fine. Just don’t spend three hours in there.” Ooh, now is not the time to imagine Joey in the shower. That’s…Matt cycles through a few adjectives, then settles on uncomfortable. Yeah. Uncomfortable. “Well, good night, I guess.”
He starts to head past Joey to go downstairs.
“Wait, Matt… Um…do you think it would be okay if I came down and watched TV with you, afterwards?”
Matt’s about to say it doesn’t matter. They’ve watched TV together before; it feels like it’s all he’s done since he got back from Everlock. Well, that and stare uselessly at his work. But Matt gets the sense that this is more than just a question about TV.
He manages to look up at Joey from halfway down the stairs and nod at him. “Sure. Do you like the Great British Baking Show?”
Joey almost smiles again. “Yeah, it’s alright.”
“Good.”
Matt hears Joey’s footsteps on the stairs about 45 minutes later, already into his second episode, and looks up to find him approaching. He’s dressed once again in the Game Theory sweater — did he ever really take it off? — and a new pair of sweatpants and socks. Seeing Matt settled in one corner of the couch, Joey takes the other one, once again hogging the entire blanket.
“Cold?” Matt asks, slightly amused, but Joey just nods quickly.
“Freezing.”
Joey’s hair is still wet, and he did just get out of what was probably his second hot shower in over a year. Makes sense that he’d be cold. Matt watches him shiver for a few minutes, then, with a sigh, motions Joey closer.
Is he doing this? Is he really doing this?
“Come here, Joey,” Matt says, with another impatient wave of his hand. “Don’t just sit over there and look pathetic.”
If kissing is first base, kissing someone while you die in their arms is at least fifth base. Matt thinks they’ve probably gone past the point where casual cuddling is weird. Joey hesitates for a second, then he practically dives into Matt’s side and curls up close to him, wrapping the blanket around them both.
Matt blinks. Okay…he didn’t expect Joey to accept that quickly.
Seeing Joey’s head resting against his chest is giving Matt the strangest urge to kiss him. It would be so easy to just dip his head and press a kiss to the bleached-blonde hair falling messily around Joey’s face, or tip his chin up to cover his soft, pink lips with Matt’s own. God, the thoughts are self-indulgent, and they make Matt fucking hate himself, but he can’t exactly turn them off.
“Better?” Matt asks instead, looking to the TV screen again, where Paul Hollywood snobbishly rates snobbish desserts.
“Better,” Joey says sleepily.
Matt loops an arm around him, ignoring the alarm bells starting to rattle in his brain at the knowledge that this just means he’s giving in to his attraction for Joey. He’s not giving in to anything. He’s just making sure Joey doesn’t freeze what little ass he has off.
Joey sighs, and the contentment in the noise sends Matt’s heart into overdrive. Joey sounds so…peaceful. Is this what it was like for him and Tyler, before all of this? The thought of Tyler leaves a bad taste in Matt’s mouth, but he can’t push Joey away, not now.
He makes an effort to relax, ignores the part of himself telling him to kiss Joey silly, and watches his stupid reality TV show.
