Fic: "the last good thing about this part of town 1/2" (RPF)
The rpf_big_bang fic.
Pairing: Matthew Rhys/Ioan Gruffudd
Art: Here, by sionnain.
I can't really think of anything to say about this fic. So I'm just going to post it.
where is your boy tonight, I hope he is a gentleman/maybe he won't find out what I know/you were the last good thing about this part of town
They'd both been avoiding the kitchen for days.
It had started off as a kind of mildly belligerent standoff, each of them determined that it was the other's fault and he ought to give in first. By day four, though, it had started to veer into a distinct unease about what they might find if they did go in there. No way to predict. Might not make it out alive. Much better to just order take-away, again, or eat at school.
Anyway, they could keep the beer just about anywhere, and there really wasn't any other pressing reason to go into the kitchen.
When it occurred to Matthew that it had been a week since either of them had been in there, he started to feel kind of bad about the whole thing. Not bad enough to be the one to give in, but he stood at the edge of the tile and peered in there once or twice and thought about it. That had to count for something. Ioan was still acting like that entire side of the flat didn't exist at all, so that put Matthew ahead for virtue if nothing else.
Finally, on day sixteen--which was impressive, as well as disgusting, really, and maybe even more the one than the other, that they could go over two weeks without having to go into the kitchen at all, and Christ, they were a couple of complete and utter savages--Ioan came out of his bedroom, gave Matthew a slightly apologetic look, and said "Visit this weekend. My mother's coming."
Matthew tried to live his life with a firm grasp of the important practicalities. "Did she say if she's bringing food?"
"Of course she's bringing food, she's my mother." Ioan gave him a reproving look, then bit at his thumbnail, glancing sideways at the kitchen. "That means we probably should--"
"Means you probably should."
"Oh, come on."
"Your mother. And besides, it was your fault. Whatever it is, exactly. Whatever's happened in there. It was your fault."
"It was not."
"You left it all sitting there."
Ioan pointed at him with an air of pure triumph. "It was your party."
Matthew thought about that for a moment. Ioan bounced slightly on his feet, grinning like he'd found the solution to the mysteries of the universe, like why the two of them were incapable of finishing a loaf of bread before it went off, or what girls really wanted. Apparently the secret answer to all of that was "it was all Matthew's idea."
It actually had been his party, though.
Matthew sighed in defeat and put his book down. "I hate you."
"Liar."
"I'm going to need a change of clothes and a bucket."
"I've already got the bucket." Ioan held it up as proof and Matthew rolled his eyes, fighting a smile despite himself as he headed for his bedroom. One day, one day he would learn now to say no to Ioan, but apparently not yet.
**
Matthew wasn't really sure when or how that started, the not-able-to-say-no-to-Ioan thing. It was most certainly a new habit, not an old one; he hadn't given any thought to the wants or needs or feelings of Ioan Gruffudd at all until he decided to go to RADA, and then it was well, need a place to live, wonder if he's in want of a flatmate?
It was all a blur since then. Oh, there were classes, auditions, parties now and then, girls now and then-er, but mostly when he closed his eyes and pictured life since coming to London, it was a vague impression of the flat, the couch, beer, and bitching steadily back and forth with Ioan.
They'd blurred their way into being best mates more or less by default, because they saw each other all the damn time. Matthew couldn't say for sure that they wouldn't forget all about each other if either of them changed flats.
"No," a girl at a party told him, giving him a confused look over the edge of her glass. Her hair was an amazing shade of orange, and he couldn't stop staring at it. The number and variety of beverages he'd consumed helped with that. "It's actually not normal at all to just become best friends with a random flatmate."
"Really?"
"Really." She sipped her drink and shrugged. "I think you actually like him as a person."
The walls were rotating slowly. Matthew closed his eyes tightly to keep from seeing that. "Well, when did that happen?"
"Dunno. But it's a good thing, isn't it? Having a friend?"
"It's working out all right," Matthew said, nodding, eyes still closed. "We cleaned the kitchen last week."
"Oh." She sounded even more puzzled, and he had a hunch that if he opened his eyes, she would be edging away. "Well, that's nice."
"Mm. It was disgusting," he corrected her, taking a desperate gulp of his own drink. "'scuse me."
He found Ioan off in a corner talking to some other blokes from school, a terribly intense conversation that involved a lot of waving of hands. Matthew wasn't sure if they were as altered as he was or just a bit more enthusiastic about things.
"How's Eliza?" Ioan asked once he saw Matthew, smiling like there was a joke somewhere in the question.
Matthew blinked at him. "Who?"
"The girl you were talking to for the last half-hour."
"Oh." Matthew ran his hand through his hair and looked back over his shoulder. No sign of her. "I've no idea. Fine, I guess."
"Thought you were coming over here to tell me you were going home with her." Ioan took a sip of his drink, looking sideways at the conversation continuing without him.
Matthew blinked, utterly unable to even parse that for a moment. "No."
"Oh." Ioan took a sip of his drink, watching Matthew curiously. "Why not?"
"Why am I not going home with her? Mostly because she's not interested."
"She most certainly was interested." Ioan frowned and pointed at him. "Did you start talking?"
"I keep forgetting that's against the rules." Matthew took a drink and thought for a minute. "Oh, and you're an idiot."
"No wonder girls don't want to go home with you, you talk to them like that." Ioan poured half of his drink into Matthew's glass. "'s all right, though. Think I'm ready to leave when we finish this, if you are."
"Yeah." Matthew took a sip and choked, because whatever Ioan had been drinking was not the same as whatever was already in the cup, and they didn't mix well. "Christ, what did you--"
Ioan wasn't listening anymore and had turned back to finish his other conversation, so Matthew set the glass on a nearby table for someone else to choke on and waited. His head was throbbing and he had a terrible feeling that he was not going to make it to the next morning without vomiting. The joys of his life.
"All right," Ioan said after a bit, grabbing Matthew's shoulder and shaking him out of his reverie as he pushed him toward the door. "Let's go. I think if we hurry we can catch the end of the late movie."
"There is no fucking chance that I'm going to hurry."
"Fine." Ioan obediently shoved his hands in his pockets and checked his stride. "Have it your way."
"I just don't want to throw up on you."
"That's very considerate of you."
Matthew punched Ioan in the side, and they circled and scuffled down the sidewalk for a bit, until a lamppost and a passing crowd of older people just trying to get home set them subdued again. "Ioan?" Matthew asked when they'd fallen back in stride, rubbing his knuckles against his jeans to soothe where they'd met the lamppost.
"Yeah?"
"D'you like me as a person?"
It didn't occur to Matthew precisely how stupid that sounded until it was already clear of his mouth, and he closed his eyes to curse himself properly, which unfortunately sent him stumbling over a broken bit of the sidewalk. When he opened his eyes again, Ioan was giving him a puzzled, sideways look.
"That's a very odd question."
Matthew nodded. "It is. Forget I asked it."
Ioan looked at him for another moment, eyes narrowing slightly, and Matthew braced himself for whatever was coming next. But Ioan didn't say anything, just smiled a bit and resumed making his cautious, slightly weaving way down the sidewalk. Matthew followed after a moment, watching the wobbly shadows cast on the pavement by the streetlights. "You have any smokes?" he asked after a block or two.
"Gave them all away at the party." Ioan shoved his hands deeper in his pockets and glanced at Matthew, still with that little smile. "Got some at home. Think you can wait?"
"Don't see what choice there is."
"Could go to the shop," Ioan said solemnly, with just enough of a mix of wide-eyed innocence and sarcasm that it threw Matthew off his stride.
He looked at Ioan suspiciously, in the end deciding to hold on to his dignity. "No money with me." He took another step and abruptly changed his mind about the dignity. "You sarcastic fuck."
Ioan laughed, a positively delighted sound that always left Matthew a bit scrambled, especially when it came in response to something he didn't think was at all funny when he said it. "Take care of you when we get home, then. You're brilliantly pissy, Matthew. I like that about you. Makes life so much more interesting."
"I'm so glad I can entertain you," Matthew said with as much withering sarcasm as he could manage, though that was considerably cut down by the fact that Ioan had grabbed him by the arm and was dragging him down the street at a faster pace. "What are you doing?"
"It's cold and you walk too slowly."
"You're only cold because you insist on being a clotheshorse instead of dressing for the weather."
"No," Ioan said calmly, squeezing Matthew's arm and pulling him along faster still. "I'm cold because it's cold. Also, you're wearing one of my jumpers, so fuck off."
"I just wear them. You buy them."
"So I'm an upstanding member of society and you're a leech, is that it?"
Matthew paused for a moment, looking at him. "Are you trying to pick a fight, or are you being funny?"
"Being funny." Ioan missed a step, stumbling and catching himself heavily on Matthew's arm. "Why in the world would I want to fight?"
"Dunno." Matthew glanced at him. They really were ridiculously close together, Ioan leaning on him like that and the two of them stumbling down the street. "Just for something to do?"
Ioan shrugged, which nearly sent Matthew sideways into the street from the way Ioan was leaning on his shoulder. "I couldn't win a fight with you anyway. You would just smack me around like you did when we were kids."
"At least you wouldn't cry this time."
"I wouldn't put any large wagers on that." Ioan's voice was very dry, and Matthew frowned in puzzlement, suddenly unsure what the fuck this conversation was even about. Ioan was smiling again, so most likely they really weren't fighting, but it was a strange smile, like he was thinking of something funny and not sharing the joke.
"You're drunk," Matthew said finally. It was the best he could come up with.
"So're you." Ioan pulled away from him and climbed up the steps to the front door of their building. "I've not got my keys."
"Of course you don't." Matthew pushed past him, digging his own keys out of his pocket. "I found them in the refrigerator the other day. How on earth did you manage that, by the way? I was wondering."
"No idea," Ioan said, bouncing on his toes until Matthew got the door open. "But that explains why I couldn't find them when I went to retrace my steps."
There was no possible response to that, so Matthew didn't even try.
Ioan squinted at the clock and raked his hand through his hair. "I think we missed the end of the movie. Should've left earlier, I guess."
"You were having a good time."
"So were you. Or I thought so, anyway."
"I was." Matthew kicked his shoes off and hung his jacket up, closing his eyes tightly as the room spun a bit. The cold air had sobered him up on the walk, but apparently only temporarily. "Think I need to go to bed anyway. Overdid it a little."
"No such thing."
"This from the one who threw up all over the kitchen last month, and locked himself out on the fire escape in a fit of paranoia the one before that, and--"
"You're keeping a record book, aren't you?"
"I should. Sell it for millions once you get famous." Ioan grinned like that was the nicest thing Matthew had ever said to him, and Matthew made a mental note that apparently profiteering from their cohabitation was entirely acceptable, and so he was going to feel free to steal things from Ioan's bedroom the next time Ioan was out.
"I'm going to bed," he said, a declaration of intent to an uncaring universe. Or at least an uncaring flatmate, since Ioan was settling himself on the couch despite the lack of anything worth watching on the television.
"Goodnight," Ioan said, and Matthew walked back to his room, kicking dirty clothes and various discarded ephemera out of the way. Junk, to be perfectly honest, but cleaning was for weekends when his own mother was coming to visit, on general principle. Any more often than that and he would frighten himself. Besides, it was easier to find everything when it was all spread out like this.
He was babbling inside his own head, soothing disjointed drunken nonsense, and vaguely aware of it as he stripped down to his shorts and weighed the relative pros and cons of brushing his teeth versus just falling directly into bed.
He heard a knock at the door, which was rather puzzling as he didn't recall closing it. Upon turning he found Ioan standing in the doorway, rapping his knuckles against the frame. Matthew blinked at him, mildly surprised, and said the first thing that came to his head. "Could've just said hello."
Ioan held up a pack of cigarettes. "Did you still want these?"
"Oh." Matthew looked down at his hands, as if the answer would be jotted there in black ink like he used to do when spectacularly failing to cheat on his maths exams. "Nah, changed my mind, I think." Ioan nodded and stepped back, and Matthew snapped his fingers. "Wait." He grabbed Ioan's jumper from the floor and held it out. "Here."
Ioan smiled, like it was a gift instead of his own damn clothes. "Thanks, mate."
He took it and they stood there for a moment, looking at each other without saying anything, and Matthew became slowly, uncomfortably aware that he was nearly naked. "Well. Goodnight, then."
"Yeah." Ioan stepped back and Matthew breathed a bit easier. He had no idea what the fuck was going on, which was a feeling he suspected he should probably get used to. "Just going to smoke and then I'm for bed as well."
"Don't set anything on fire," Matthew said. Ioan shook his head, laughing softly like Matthew had said something very funny indeed.
"I like you living here, Matthew," Ioan said abruptly, glancing past Matthew out the window. "Like you as a flatmate. And to answer your question earlier--yeah, I like you as a person. Whatever that means. But I was rather under the impression that we're friends."
"We are." Matthew's chest felt unaccountably tight, and he nodded jerkily. "Of course we are. Was just rambling before. Too much to drink."
Ioan shrugged and tapped his fingers against the doorframe. He had ridiculous fingers, ridiculous hands, all long and fine-boned and always moving. Distracting. "Sleep well."
Matthew fell back onto the bed after Ioan left, blinking up at the ceiling. There was something very odd about...everything, but he had no idea what, and no energy or inspiration to figure it out. He breathed in and out slowly, watching the shadows move from the corner of his eye. He could hear the click-hiss of Ioan's lighter across the hall.
Ioan had always been a bit of an odd duck, though, all the way back. Intense and with his own plan for things, very different from the way everyone else at school saw their lives playing out. Still, Matthew liked him--he was nice, he was funny, he paid up his half of everything without complaining and was generous with his clothes and books and beer. Of course they could be perfectly comfortable flatmates and friends. They should be. Only right and good.
He exhaled slowly and wished the room would spin a bit less. It would be nice if he could just go to sleep and not feel like he might vomit.
He looked over at the door, seeing Ioan's silhouette against the light in his room. Ioan's head was down, taking a last drag on his cigarette before he stabbed it out on his dresser. He had stripped down as well, and Matthew blinked slowly, making the lines of Ioan's body blur as Ioan reached to turn off the light.
It was good to have friends. People who liked you as a person. It was just a good and lovely thing.
**
Matthew wasn't very good with time.
It wasn't so much the mechanics that were the problem, recurrences and showing up on time. Those were easy. He didn't, for example, overlook anniversaries too terribly often, or forget to pay the electric or the rent when it was his turn, which put him several considerably important lengths ahead of Ioan, to put it mildly. But the broader scope of time, the sense of change and progression and how long it had been since this or that...that gave him trouble. He wasn't good with it.
As he was somewhat rudely reminded when one day it occurred to him that there were only a handful of weeks before Ioan graduated RADA and was, quite possibly, done with the various nonsenses of London and residence in their flat, and ready to progress on to a vague and undefined something else.
It also occurred to him that it was rather odd that said prospective changes were only that short time away and yet they hadn't discussed the situation at all. Not a word. Not a single mention. That was really very fucking odd.
Important as that collective observation was, however, it got a bit lost under his sharp, crashing realization that they'd been living in the flat, muddling along through London, and generally liking each other as people for two years. And he'd had no idea that it was happening.
That realization was on another plane of odd from the first one. Supremely so. Ultimately so. Enough so that he sat for a good half an hour at the kitchen table, staring off into space and trying to make sense of it.
He stood up, went to the kitchen, considered a beer, and mixed himself something stronger for no better reason than a desire to exhibit a trivial control of his destiny.
He made a concerted effort not to think for a few minutes, sipping his drink and contemplating the discoloration next to the sink where a stack of paper plates and party leftovers had been allowed to dissolve without disruption or comment. Apparently at some point over the last two years, he had gone from thinking of Ioan as "that odd bloke from school that Mum and Da have decided I'm going to live with whether or not I express an opinion on the matter" to "someone I like as a person, according to a girl at a party." (What was her name for fuck's sake; Eliza, right, why had he never called her, and he should forget that question before his current girlfriend Jenna had a chance to suspect he was thinking it.)
All well and good. Except that now even that seemed to have changed and he saw Ioan as "an inextricably entwined part of my conception of my life, to the point where the notion that circumstances might change makes me stare blankly at the walls and start drinking more than a bit early and honestly, what is going on here, Matthew Evans, this is not what a plain reading of the facts would call sane."
He finished his drink and made another. He was getting a headache from trying to follow his own thoughts. Never a good sign.
The front door opened halfway through his glass, and Ioan came inside, brushing rain from his hair with a vaguely irritated expression that shifted to puzzlement as he saw Matthew through the kitchen door. "Matthew? What're you doing home?"
Matthew gestured vaguely with his glass by way of greeting. Ioan looked at his watch, dragged his fingers through his hair again in a futile effort to keep it from dripping in his face, and asked with the air of someone hazarding a long-held guess "Did Jenna break up with you?"
"What? No." Matthew frowned and took a drink. Then another. "No. What gave you that idea? Did she say something to you about breaking up with me?"
"No," Ioan said patiently, hanging his jacket over the back of a chair and grandly ignoring that it was going to drip on the floor. "I just couldn't think of any other reason you'd be standing in the kitchen in your undershorts with a drink when you're supposed to be in class."
Matthew blinked. "I don't have class. It's Wednesday."
"It's Thursday."
Matthew looked over at television and then at the clock, as if either of them would have any sort of information. Well. Fuck. "Guess I got a bit confused."
Ioan nodded. "Well, share the goods, then."
It took a moment before Matthew figured out that Ioan meant the alcohol, and he nearly handed him his half-full glass instead of the bottle. Ioan witnessed this all with the same thoughtful expression, his eyebrows rising toward his hairline. "You sure you're all right? Didn't get a bad call from home, or something, did you?"
"No. Nothing like that." Matthew shrugged a few times, aware that he looked more than slightly demented but apparently helpless to do anything about it. No control over himself at all at the moment. Probably a third drink would help with that, but unfortunately Ioan was putting the bottle away and sitting down on the edge of the table with the air of a man who was bracing himself to talk about it without the benefit of knowing what it might be.
"I'm just a bit off this afternoon," Matthew said in a last stab at heading off a horribly awkward conversation before it began. "Discombobulated."
Ioan nodded, a rebellious curl of hair sneaking down over his forehead again. "But not because you've been dumped or your mum's had a heart attack."
Matthew stopped for a moment, blinking slowly. "That's where your mind goes, right off?" Ioan shrugged. "You're genuinely fucking bizarre, you know that, right?"
"So I've been told." Ioan swung his feet, dragging his heels across the floor, and tossed his head in a vague effort to flip his hair back off his face. "All right, not those, moving on. You got Jenna up the duff and now you've got to marry her?"
Matthew's answer was delayed until he finished a furious bout of choking. Ioan observed the fit with serenity. "What is wrong with you?"
"Well, you're not helping, so I've got to use my imagination." Ioan dragged his hand through his hair yet again, looking far more tired than playful despite his words. The contrast left Matthew even more off-balance, like he was missing something, some subtle cue he should be able to see. "So what is it?"
Matthew looked down at his glass and saw it had gone empty without his notice. Instead of punctuating his words with a drink, he had to settle for putting the glass on the counter with a decisive clunk. "Are you aware that you're graduating in three weeks?"
Ioan stared at him with an expression he normally reserved for Americans who asked which team he was supporting in the rugby cup. "I'd heard a rumor, yes."
Matthew shrugged violently and folded his arms across his chest. "Well."
"Well, what?"
"I'd somehow not realized it, is all."
Ioan tilted his head slightly to the side, his eyes wide and guileless in a way that Matthew recognized meant he was about to be very, very annoying. "All the talking I've been doing about how thank Christ I'm almost fucking done? That didn't tip you off at all?"
"I mostly tune you out, honestly," Matthew muttered, unaccountably embarrassed, and Ioan smiled slightly, looking down at the floor.
"I suspected as much," he said dryly, then looked up again, meeting Matthew's eyes. "But really, Math, what does it matter? It's not got anything to do with you."
Matthew frowned. "Course it does."
"You're going to have to go on, because I'm not seeing it."
Matthew exhaled in a sharp huff of frustration. "I hate it when you make me explain things, you know, because I get halfway through and realize I sound like an idiot."
"That's why I go round sounding like an idiot all the time. It's easier when you don't raise anyone's expectations." Matthew scowled at him and Ioan shrugged, an easy, loose gesture that matched the faint smile on his face. "C'mon. We're all idiots here, and friends. Tell me what's so awful about me finishing up that it's worth staying home all afternoon."
Matthew scuffed his heel against the floor and then kicked it back against the cupboard. "Well, finishing up means you're going to leave, doesn't it?"
Ioan's brow furrowed. "Why would I do that?"
"You're always going on about Hollywood, aren't you?"
"Well, yes, but not yet." Ioan rolled his eyes and Matthew felt his hands clench, nails digging into his palms, though he couldn't have said why. "Math. I'm nineteen years old, ridiculous-looking, and I have a name that when people see it written out, they assume it's a phonetic representation of a noise made by ponies."
Matthew stared at him. "Where on earth did you get that one?"
"Girl at the pub." Ioan bit at his thumbnail and shrugged again. "My point is, I need to get a bit more steady on my feet before I try anything like that."
"But that doesn't necessarily mean you're going to stay here."
"It's in London," Ioan said with heavy, precise sarcasm. "That is where the jobs are." Matthew frowned, trying to think of a rebuttal. Ioan's expression turned to a smirk. "And I already broke in my flatmate. Would hate to have to train up a new one."
Matthew rolled his eyes and leaned back against the counter. "Well. As predicted, I feel like an idiot."
"It's not permanently damaging, I assure you." Ioan stretched his legs out in front of him. "And I won't spread it around."
"You're a real friend, you are."
"I do what I can." Ioan smiled loftily and glanced at the clock. "'m going to lie down for a bit, I think. Didn't get much sleep last night, what with you and Jenna moving the furniture."
"Fuck off."
"What? I'm not implying anything but enthusiastic redecoration."
"Christ, maybe I wouldn't be sorry if you moved out." Matthew's nails dug into his palms again even as he said it, and something twisted in his stomach for no reason at all as his face flushed hot. What in the world, Evans? Two drinks are turning your head around, now?
Ioan just smiled as he got to his feet. "Lucky you don't have to find out, isn't it, Math?"
**
Matthew had never considered himself to be particularly good with girls, but he was fairly sure he ought to be better than this.
"You bastard," Jenna said, clearly and distinctly, her voice climbing toward the ceiling. "You rat fucking bastard."
"Um," Matthew said, because he was not his most articulate when under attack. "I'm sorry, but I think if you try to understand--"
"Try to understand? Try to fucking understand my arse, you shit." She was off the couch by that point, looking for her shoes, while he continued to sit there and feel fairly certain that there ought to have been a better way to go about this. The conversation was nonnegotiable, it had to happen, but possibly they ought to have had it while still at dinner. With witnesses. And...plausible neutrality, for lack of a better term. Letting it wait until they were back at his flat, on the couch, and she'd taken off her jumper was probably a tactical error.
"Look," he tried, while she pulled said jumper over her head again, obscuring the lacy little top thing he had a sinking feeling she might have bought solely with him in mind. "You're very nice, and I like you--"
"Well thank you so very fucking much."
"--and I'm sorry," he said, his voice rising in annoyance despite himself. By the way her eyes narrowed, that was another tactical error. The count continued to go up. Fuck it. "It's really nothing to do with you at all, it's a matter of timing."
"Nothing to do with me?" She grabbed a book off the table and threw it at him. Hell of an arm that girl had; how had he never noticed that she was a bloody Amazon? "I would hope that breaking up with me could at least be about me. It's only decent, you miserable fuck."
"It's nothing to do with decency," he snapped, realizing that he was dangerously close to shouting but not quite able to catch himself. "Stop being so dramatic."
That was, without question, the wrong thing to say. Couldn't even count as a tactical error, it was past that, it was...blowing up his own tank. He had a sister, he knew better than to say that sort of thing. Fuck-all.
"Dramatic," Jenna said icily. "I'm being dramatic."
"I didn't mean it like that."
"For one thing, we met in acting school, you absolute idiot." She shook her head and started lacing up her shoes. "But I believe you didn't mean it like that. You never do, do you? You have no idea what you mean and you never have."
Matthew frowned, turning that over in his head. "I don't follow."
"See, that's precisely what I mean."
"No, I doubt it, as what I was trying to say is that you're not making any fucking sense, Jenna."
She shook her head and pointed at him, hand trembling slightly, and if he hadn't recognized the gesture from a scene they did in class not more than two weeks before, he might have been quite affected. "You don't know what you want, Matthew Evans. You never will. It's your curse."
He stared at her. "My curse."
"The curse of an emotionally constipated fuckwit."
"Right." He nodded again and finally stood up, marching past her to the door. "So sorry to contradict you, Jenna, love, but I actually know quite clearly what I want. I want you to leave and I want a very strong drink to wash the taste of absolute batshit crazy out of my mouth."
"Go to hell," she snapped as she sailed out the door.
He slammed it shut behind her and threw the lock for good measure, then kicked the baseboard. "You're a terrible actress," he told the wall, then ran his hand roughly through his hair. "Fuck."
"I hope you didn't say that loudly enough for her to hear it." Matthew squeezed his eyes closed tight, but Ioan's voice continued to float down the hallway, cautious but unperturbed. "Because that's a bit of a low blow, is all."
"Keep your helpful input to yourself, would you?"
"Is it safe to come out now?" Matthew rolled his eyes and headed to the kitchen for a drink. After a moment he heard Ioan's bedroom door creak open. "Well, is it?"
He could just see the reflection of the hallway in the kitchen window. Ioan's head was poking out of his bedroom door like he was expecting Matthew to follow Jenna's lead and start throwing things at it. Which reminded Matthew to check his own face in the window, and of course where that book clipped him on his cheekbone it was going to bruise. Brilliant fucking night all around.
"Math?"
"Oh, for Christ's sake." He threw the cupboard open and grabbed a beer, popping the top off violently on the edge of the counter. "Yes, it's safe. I'm not a homicidal maniac. I would hope you'd know that by now."
A moment later Ioan stepped into the kitchen, hands shoved in his pockets and a certain wariness in his posture that paradoxically did make Matthew want to hit him. "Got another of those?"
"You know where they're kept," Matthew said sourly, slouching back against the counter. "You do live here, too, you know."
Ioan tilted his head in acknowledgment and moved over to the cupboard, watching Matthew from the corner of his eye. Matthew pushed off the counter and stalked back to the couch, glaring at where Jenna had been sitting--lounging--stripping--before things had taken that decided turn for the unfortunate. Absolutely perfect. He ought to set the building on fire.
Ioan leaned in the kitchen doorway and regarded him solemnly. "You all right?"
"You heard the whole thing." Matthew took a drink and stared challengingly at him. "What do you think?"
"I think possibly your timing needs work." Ioan brought his own bottle to his lips and took a slow swallow, then wrinkled his nose. "Also, I'm no expert on women, but I've got a sister and a mum and even that's enough to make me fairly sure that calling them dramatic is always a bad idea."
"Yes, well." Matthew glared down into his bottle and tried to think of a witty response. There was nothing, of course. Only sullen sarcasm. "Thank you so very much for your insightful genius."
"Especially when they're actresses, Math. They take it personally, you know?"
Matthew groaned and slumped back against the couch, closing his eyes tightly and wishing he could beat himself unconscious with the bottle. "God, shut up."
He heard Ioan crossing the floor and felt the couch dip when he sat down, but stubbornly refused to open his eyes. When Ioan's hand patted cautiously at his knee, he kicked him.
"Ow. Fuck. Look, Math, I'm not going to judge you for being petulant." Mathew considered kicking him again, much harder. "I'm just going to sit here with you until you're ready to talk."
"I don't talk, Ioan." He realized he was walking into a pun-laced conversational trap and jabbed a finger blindly in Ioan's direction. "Not in the sense you mean, anyway."
"What went wrong? I thought you quite liked her."
There was something slightly odd in Ioan's voice, a questioning note that didn't quite fit with the question he was actually asking, but Matthew was in no mood to try to sort it out. "Does it matter?"
"Did something happen?"
"Like what?" Matthew gave up and opened his eyes, glaring at Ioan fiercely enough that Ioan put his hands up in surrender. "It wasn't working out. It happens. I lost interest."
Ioan tilted his head slightly. "It wasn't working out, or you lost interest? Those are different."
Matthew glared at him some more, taking a long drink. "Both."
Ioan nodded and looked down at the floor, tapping the edge of his bottle against his knee. "Right."
"Look, I appreciate your concern, but I'm not a talker, Ioan. You know that." He shouldn't have to justify that to his best friend, he ought to be able to feel safe and at ease in his own home--though he couldn't for the life of him explain what about this conversation was unsafe or uneasy. Unwanted, certainly, but not the rest. Fuck, he was losing his mind.
Ioan nodded again, shooting Matthew a slight smile that made his stomach dip again in that inexplicable kind of intensified unease. "I know." He finished his beer and turned away to reach over and set it on the box they used as an end table. "Just seemed only right to try."
"Stop trying." Matthew laughed sharply and killed his own drink. "Please."
Ioan went still for a moment, facing away, his shoulders tightening. Matthew bit his tongue, wondering just what this impulse was that had him saying all the wrong things today. Some sort of self-destructive need to set off every relationship in his life at once like firecrackers. "Sorry. I'm...I'm just being a prick, Ioan, it's not personal, don't take it to heart."
"Don't worry about it." Ioan straightened up again and gave Matthew another quick, edged, not-quite-sincere smile, and Matthew's stomach tightened again, the beer threatening to go sour. "I understand."
"Don't be mad." It was a strange thing to say, and it felt strange in his mouth, but somehow he felt he needed to say it, needed to request just that much grace between them before he would be able to fuck off and drink his sorrows to sleep in peace.
Ioan blinked at him in mild surprise, one eyebrow arching. "I'm not, Matthew. Promise." He smiled again, still bittersweet and edged but oddly it didn't feel like it was aimed at Matthew himself, this time. "It's a fairly safe bet that I'm never mad at you. For the record."
Matthew swallowed down a sudden catch in his throat. "Even when you probably ought to be?"
"Even then." Ioan shook his head and his smile eased a bit, became more like he was responding to a real joke, though a private one. "Especially then. You want another beer?"
"Please." Matthew set his own bottle on the floor and pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes until it hurt. He felt smooth glass bump against his wrist and turned his hand, opening his fingers to take the bottle. "Thanks."
He looked up at Ioan as Ioan's fingers slid against his own. Ioan's eyes were guarded, his expression neutral, and that was unusual enough to nudge Matthew out of himself for a moment. "Are you all right?"
"'m fine." Ioan withdrew his hand, rubbing his fingers together like he'd got something on his skin. "Why wouldn't I be? No one broke up with me today."
Matthew smiled a little and shook his head. "Me either, actually."
"Well, I didn't break up with anyone. Yet more reason why I'm perfectly and in all ways fine."
Matthew glanced down the couch at him. "Sorry if we bothered you with all the carrying on."
"It's fine. Really." Ioan stepped back and scratched his side, glancing into the kitchen at the clock. "Look, I'm supposed to meet some of the lads at the pub. You want me to stick around here? Or you wan to come with? I'm sure you'd be welcome, and it might be good to get out for a bit."
Matthew took another drink, then shook his head. "Thanks, but I'm no company at all tonight, if it's not been obvious. Think I'm just going to stay here. You don't have to stay with me, though, not at all. Go out and have a good time, yeah? You're graduated. Liberated. Ought to have some fun in your life."
Ioan nodded and shoved his hands down into his pockets, ducking his chin and giving Matthew a serious look. "I'll be back later, then. Don't drink yourself sick. We never really got it out of the couch last time."
Matthew held up his bottle in a mild salute. "Got it. See you in the morning."
Part Two
Pairing: Matthew Rhys/Ioan Gruffudd
Art: Here, by sionnain.
I can't really think of anything to say about this fic. So I'm just going to post it.
where is your boy tonight, I hope he is a gentleman/maybe he won't find out what I know/you were the last good thing about this part of town
They'd both been avoiding the kitchen for days.
It had started off as a kind of mildly belligerent standoff, each of them determined that it was the other's fault and he ought to give in first. By day four, though, it had started to veer into a distinct unease about what they might find if they did go in there. No way to predict. Might not make it out alive. Much better to just order take-away, again, or eat at school.
Anyway, they could keep the beer just about anywhere, and there really wasn't any other pressing reason to go into the kitchen.
When it occurred to Matthew that it had been a week since either of them had been in there, he started to feel kind of bad about the whole thing. Not bad enough to be the one to give in, but he stood at the edge of the tile and peered in there once or twice and thought about it. That had to count for something. Ioan was still acting like that entire side of the flat didn't exist at all, so that put Matthew ahead for virtue if nothing else.
Finally, on day sixteen--which was impressive, as well as disgusting, really, and maybe even more the one than the other, that they could go over two weeks without having to go into the kitchen at all, and Christ, they were a couple of complete and utter savages--Ioan came out of his bedroom, gave Matthew a slightly apologetic look, and said "Visit this weekend. My mother's coming."
Matthew tried to live his life with a firm grasp of the important practicalities. "Did she say if she's bringing food?"
"Of course she's bringing food, she's my mother." Ioan gave him a reproving look, then bit at his thumbnail, glancing sideways at the kitchen. "That means we probably should--"
"Means you probably should."
"Oh, come on."
"Your mother. And besides, it was your fault. Whatever it is, exactly. Whatever's happened in there. It was your fault."
"It was not."
"You left it all sitting there."
Ioan pointed at him with an air of pure triumph. "It was your party."
Matthew thought about that for a moment. Ioan bounced slightly on his feet, grinning like he'd found the solution to the mysteries of the universe, like why the two of them were incapable of finishing a loaf of bread before it went off, or what girls really wanted. Apparently the secret answer to all of that was "it was all Matthew's idea."
It actually had been his party, though.
Matthew sighed in defeat and put his book down. "I hate you."
"Liar."
"I'm going to need a change of clothes and a bucket."
"I've already got the bucket." Ioan held it up as proof and Matthew rolled his eyes, fighting a smile despite himself as he headed for his bedroom. One day, one day he would learn now to say no to Ioan, but apparently not yet.
**
Matthew wasn't really sure when or how that started, the not-able-to-say-no-to-Ioan thing. It was most certainly a new habit, not an old one; he hadn't given any thought to the wants or needs or feelings of Ioan Gruffudd at all until he decided to go to RADA, and then it was well, need a place to live, wonder if he's in want of a flatmate?
It was all a blur since then. Oh, there were classes, auditions, parties now and then, girls now and then-er, but mostly when he closed his eyes and pictured life since coming to London, it was a vague impression of the flat, the couch, beer, and bitching steadily back and forth with Ioan.
They'd blurred their way into being best mates more or less by default, because they saw each other all the damn time. Matthew couldn't say for sure that they wouldn't forget all about each other if either of them changed flats.
"No," a girl at a party told him, giving him a confused look over the edge of her glass. Her hair was an amazing shade of orange, and he couldn't stop staring at it. The number and variety of beverages he'd consumed helped with that. "It's actually not normal at all to just become best friends with a random flatmate."
"Really?"
"Really." She sipped her drink and shrugged. "I think you actually like him as a person."
The walls were rotating slowly. Matthew closed his eyes tightly to keep from seeing that. "Well, when did that happen?"
"Dunno. But it's a good thing, isn't it? Having a friend?"
"It's working out all right," Matthew said, nodding, eyes still closed. "We cleaned the kitchen last week."
"Oh." She sounded even more puzzled, and he had a hunch that if he opened his eyes, she would be edging away. "Well, that's nice."
"Mm. It was disgusting," he corrected her, taking a desperate gulp of his own drink. "'scuse me."
He found Ioan off in a corner talking to some other blokes from school, a terribly intense conversation that involved a lot of waving of hands. Matthew wasn't sure if they were as altered as he was or just a bit more enthusiastic about things.
"How's Eliza?" Ioan asked once he saw Matthew, smiling like there was a joke somewhere in the question.
Matthew blinked at him. "Who?"
"The girl you were talking to for the last half-hour."
"Oh." Matthew ran his hand through his hair and looked back over his shoulder. No sign of her. "I've no idea. Fine, I guess."
"Thought you were coming over here to tell me you were going home with her." Ioan took a sip of his drink, looking sideways at the conversation continuing without him.
Matthew blinked, utterly unable to even parse that for a moment. "No."
"Oh." Ioan took a sip of his drink, watching Matthew curiously. "Why not?"
"Why am I not going home with her? Mostly because she's not interested."
"She most certainly was interested." Ioan frowned and pointed at him. "Did you start talking?"
"I keep forgetting that's against the rules." Matthew took a drink and thought for a minute. "Oh, and you're an idiot."
"No wonder girls don't want to go home with you, you talk to them like that." Ioan poured half of his drink into Matthew's glass. "'s all right, though. Think I'm ready to leave when we finish this, if you are."
"Yeah." Matthew took a sip and choked, because whatever Ioan had been drinking was not the same as whatever was already in the cup, and they didn't mix well. "Christ, what did you--"
Ioan wasn't listening anymore and had turned back to finish his other conversation, so Matthew set the glass on a nearby table for someone else to choke on and waited. His head was throbbing and he had a terrible feeling that he was not going to make it to the next morning without vomiting. The joys of his life.
"All right," Ioan said after a bit, grabbing Matthew's shoulder and shaking him out of his reverie as he pushed him toward the door. "Let's go. I think if we hurry we can catch the end of the late movie."
"There is no fucking chance that I'm going to hurry."
"Fine." Ioan obediently shoved his hands in his pockets and checked his stride. "Have it your way."
"I just don't want to throw up on you."
"That's very considerate of you."
Matthew punched Ioan in the side, and they circled and scuffled down the sidewalk for a bit, until a lamppost and a passing crowd of older people just trying to get home set them subdued again. "Ioan?" Matthew asked when they'd fallen back in stride, rubbing his knuckles against his jeans to soothe where they'd met the lamppost.
"Yeah?"
"D'you like me as a person?"
It didn't occur to Matthew precisely how stupid that sounded until it was already clear of his mouth, and he closed his eyes to curse himself properly, which unfortunately sent him stumbling over a broken bit of the sidewalk. When he opened his eyes again, Ioan was giving him a puzzled, sideways look.
"That's a very odd question."
Matthew nodded. "It is. Forget I asked it."
Ioan looked at him for another moment, eyes narrowing slightly, and Matthew braced himself for whatever was coming next. But Ioan didn't say anything, just smiled a bit and resumed making his cautious, slightly weaving way down the sidewalk. Matthew followed after a moment, watching the wobbly shadows cast on the pavement by the streetlights. "You have any smokes?" he asked after a block or two.
"Gave them all away at the party." Ioan shoved his hands deeper in his pockets and glanced at Matthew, still with that little smile. "Got some at home. Think you can wait?"
"Don't see what choice there is."
"Could go to the shop," Ioan said solemnly, with just enough of a mix of wide-eyed innocence and sarcasm that it threw Matthew off his stride.
He looked at Ioan suspiciously, in the end deciding to hold on to his dignity. "No money with me." He took another step and abruptly changed his mind about the dignity. "You sarcastic fuck."
Ioan laughed, a positively delighted sound that always left Matthew a bit scrambled, especially when it came in response to something he didn't think was at all funny when he said it. "Take care of you when we get home, then. You're brilliantly pissy, Matthew. I like that about you. Makes life so much more interesting."
"I'm so glad I can entertain you," Matthew said with as much withering sarcasm as he could manage, though that was considerably cut down by the fact that Ioan had grabbed him by the arm and was dragging him down the street at a faster pace. "What are you doing?"
"It's cold and you walk too slowly."
"You're only cold because you insist on being a clotheshorse instead of dressing for the weather."
"No," Ioan said calmly, squeezing Matthew's arm and pulling him along faster still. "I'm cold because it's cold. Also, you're wearing one of my jumpers, so fuck off."
"I just wear them. You buy them."
"So I'm an upstanding member of society and you're a leech, is that it?"
Matthew paused for a moment, looking at him. "Are you trying to pick a fight, or are you being funny?"
"Being funny." Ioan missed a step, stumbling and catching himself heavily on Matthew's arm. "Why in the world would I want to fight?"
"Dunno." Matthew glanced at him. They really were ridiculously close together, Ioan leaning on him like that and the two of them stumbling down the street. "Just for something to do?"
Ioan shrugged, which nearly sent Matthew sideways into the street from the way Ioan was leaning on his shoulder. "I couldn't win a fight with you anyway. You would just smack me around like you did when we were kids."
"At least you wouldn't cry this time."
"I wouldn't put any large wagers on that." Ioan's voice was very dry, and Matthew frowned in puzzlement, suddenly unsure what the fuck this conversation was even about. Ioan was smiling again, so most likely they really weren't fighting, but it was a strange smile, like he was thinking of something funny and not sharing the joke.
"You're drunk," Matthew said finally. It was the best he could come up with.
"So're you." Ioan pulled away from him and climbed up the steps to the front door of their building. "I've not got my keys."
"Of course you don't." Matthew pushed past him, digging his own keys out of his pocket. "I found them in the refrigerator the other day. How on earth did you manage that, by the way? I was wondering."
"No idea," Ioan said, bouncing on his toes until Matthew got the door open. "But that explains why I couldn't find them when I went to retrace my steps."
There was no possible response to that, so Matthew didn't even try.
Ioan squinted at the clock and raked his hand through his hair. "I think we missed the end of the movie. Should've left earlier, I guess."
"You were having a good time."
"So were you. Or I thought so, anyway."
"I was." Matthew kicked his shoes off and hung his jacket up, closing his eyes tightly as the room spun a bit. The cold air had sobered him up on the walk, but apparently only temporarily. "Think I need to go to bed anyway. Overdid it a little."
"No such thing."
"This from the one who threw up all over the kitchen last month, and locked himself out on the fire escape in a fit of paranoia the one before that, and--"
"You're keeping a record book, aren't you?"
"I should. Sell it for millions once you get famous." Ioan grinned like that was the nicest thing Matthew had ever said to him, and Matthew made a mental note that apparently profiteering from their cohabitation was entirely acceptable, and so he was going to feel free to steal things from Ioan's bedroom the next time Ioan was out.
"I'm going to bed," he said, a declaration of intent to an uncaring universe. Or at least an uncaring flatmate, since Ioan was settling himself on the couch despite the lack of anything worth watching on the television.
"Goodnight," Ioan said, and Matthew walked back to his room, kicking dirty clothes and various discarded ephemera out of the way. Junk, to be perfectly honest, but cleaning was for weekends when his own mother was coming to visit, on general principle. Any more often than that and he would frighten himself. Besides, it was easier to find everything when it was all spread out like this.
He was babbling inside his own head, soothing disjointed drunken nonsense, and vaguely aware of it as he stripped down to his shorts and weighed the relative pros and cons of brushing his teeth versus just falling directly into bed.
He heard a knock at the door, which was rather puzzling as he didn't recall closing it. Upon turning he found Ioan standing in the doorway, rapping his knuckles against the frame. Matthew blinked at him, mildly surprised, and said the first thing that came to his head. "Could've just said hello."
Ioan held up a pack of cigarettes. "Did you still want these?"
"Oh." Matthew looked down at his hands, as if the answer would be jotted there in black ink like he used to do when spectacularly failing to cheat on his maths exams. "Nah, changed my mind, I think." Ioan nodded and stepped back, and Matthew snapped his fingers. "Wait." He grabbed Ioan's jumper from the floor and held it out. "Here."
Ioan smiled, like it was a gift instead of his own damn clothes. "Thanks, mate."
He took it and they stood there for a moment, looking at each other without saying anything, and Matthew became slowly, uncomfortably aware that he was nearly naked. "Well. Goodnight, then."
"Yeah." Ioan stepped back and Matthew breathed a bit easier. He had no idea what the fuck was going on, which was a feeling he suspected he should probably get used to. "Just going to smoke and then I'm for bed as well."
"Don't set anything on fire," Matthew said. Ioan shook his head, laughing softly like Matthew had said something very funny indeed.
"I like you living here, Matthew," Ioan said abruptly, glancing past Matthew out the window. "Like you as a flatmate. And to answer your question earlier--yeah, I like you as a person. Whatever that means. But I was rather under the impression that we're friends."
"We are." Matthew's chest felt unaccountably tight, and he nodded jerkily. "Of course we are. Was just rambling before. Too much to drink."
Ioan shrugged and tapped his fingers against the doorframe. He had ridiculous fingers, ridiculous hands, all long and fine-boned and always moving. Distracting. "Sleep well."
Matthew fell back onto the bed after Ioan left, blinking up at the ceiling. There was something very odd about...everything, but he had no idea what, and no energy or inspiration to figure it out. He breathed in and out slowly, watching the shadows move from the corner of his eye. He could hear the click-hiss of Ioan's lighter across the hall.
Ioan had always been a bit of an odd duck, though, all the way back. Intense and with his own plan for things, very different from the way everyone else at school saw their lives playing out. Still, Matthew liked him--he was nice, he was funny, he paid up his half of everything without complaining and was generous with his clothes and books and beer. Of course they could be perfectly comfortable flatmates and friends. They should be. Only right and good.
He exhaled slowly and wished the room would spin a bit less. It would be nice if he could just go to sleep and not feel like he might vomit.
He looked over at the door, seeing Ioan's silhouette against the light in his room. Ioan's head was down, taking a last drag on his cigarette before he stabbed it out on his dresser. He had stripped down as well, and Matthew blinked slowly, making the lines of Ioan's body blur as Ioan reached to turn off the light.
It was good to have friends. People who liked you as a person. It was just a good and lovely thing.
**
Matthew wasn't very good with time.
It wasn't so much the mechanics that were the problem, recurrences and showing up on time. Those were easy. He didn't, for example, overlook anniversaries too terribly often, or forget to pay the electric or the rent when it was his turn, which put him several considerably important lengths ahead of Ioan, to put it mildly. But the broader scope of time, the sense of change and progression and how long it had been since this or that...that gave him trouble. He wasn't good with it.
As he was somewhat rudely reminded when one day it occurred to him that there were only a handful of weeks before Ioan graduated RADA and was, quite possibly, done with the various nonsenses of London and residence in their flat, and ready to progress on to a vague and undefined something else.
It also occurred to him that it was rather odd that said prospective changes were only that short time away and yet they hadn't discussed the situation at all. Not a word. Not a single mention. That was really very fucking odd.
Important as that collective observation was, however, it got a bit lost under his sharp, crashing realization that they'd been living in the flat, muddling along through London, and generally liking each other as people for two years. And he'd had no idea that it was happening.
That realization was on another plane of odd from the first one. Supremely so. Ultimately so. Enough so that he sat for a good half an hour at the kitchen table, staring off into space and trying to make sense of it.
He stood up, went to the kitchen, considered a beer, and mixed himself something stronger for no better reason than a desire to exhibit a trivial control of his destiny.
He made a concerted effort not to think for a few minutes, sipping his drink and contemplating the discoloration next to the sink where a stack of paper plates and party leftovers had been allowed to dissolve without disruption or comment. Apparently at some point over the last two years, he had gone from thinking of Ioan as "that odd bloke from school that Mum and Da have decided I'm going to live with whether or not I express an opinion on the matter" to "someone I like as a person, according to a girl at a party." (What was her name for fuck's sake; Eliza, right, why had he never called her, and he should forget that question before his current girlfriend Jenna had a chance to suspect he was thinking it.)
All well and good. Except that now even that seemed to have changed and he saw Ioan as "an inextricably entwined part of my conception of my life, to the point where the notion that circumstances might change makes me stare blankly at the walls and start drinking more than a bit early and honestly, what is going on here, Matthew Evans, this is not what a plain reading of the facts would call sane."
He finished his drink and made another. He was getting a headache from trying to follow his own thoughts. Never a good sign.
The front door opened halfway through his glass, and Ioan came inside, brushing rain from his hair with a vaguely irritated expression that shifted to puzzlement as he saw Matthew through the kitchen door. "Matthew? What're you doing home?"
Matthew gestured vaguely with his glass by way of greeting. Ioan looked at his watch, dragged his fingers through his hair again in a futile effort to keep it from dripping in his face, and asked with the air of someone hazarding a long-held guess "Did Jenna break up with you?"
"What? No." Matthew frowned and took a drink. Then another. "No. What gave you that idea? Did she say something to you about breaking up with me?"
"No," Ioan said patiently, hanging his jacket over the back of a chair and grandly ignoring that it was going to drip on the floor. "I just couldn't think of any other reason you'd be standing in the kitchen in your undershorts with a drink when you're supposed to be in class."
Matthew blinked. "I don't have class. It's Wednesday."
"It's Thursday."
Matthew looked over at television and then at the clock, as if either of them would have any sort of information. Well. Fuck. "Guess I got a bit confused."
Ioan nodded. "Well, share the goods, then."
It took a moment before Matthew figured out that Ioan meant the alcohol, and he nearly handed him his half-full glass instead of the bottle. Ioan witnessed this all with the same thoughtful expression, his eyebrows rising toward his hairline. "You sure you're all right? Didn't get a bad call from home, or something, did you?"
"No. Nothing like that." Matthew shrugged a few times, aware that he looked more than slightly demented but apparently helpless to do anything about it. No control over himself at all at the moment. Probably a third drink would help with that, but unfortunately Ioan was putting the bottle away and sitting down on the edge of the table with the air of a man who was bracing himself to talk about it without the benefit of knowing what it might be.
"I'm just a bit off this afternoon," Matthew said in a last stab at heading off a horribly awkward conversation before it began. "Discombobulated."
Ioan nodded, a rebellious curl of hair sneaking down over his forehead again. "But not because you've been dumped or your mum's had a heart attack."
Matthew stopped for a moment, blinking slowly. "That's where your mind goes, right off?" Ioan shrugged. "You're genuinely fucking bizarre, you know that, right?"
"So I've been told." Ioan swung his feet, dragging his heels across the floor, and tossed his head in a vague effort to flip his hair back off his face. "All right, not those, moving on. You got Jenna up the duff and now you've got to marry her?"
Matthew's answer was delayed until he finished a furious bout of choking. Ioan observed the fit with serenity. "What is wrong with you?"
"Well, you're not helping, so I've got to use my imagination." Ioan dragged his hand through his hair yet again, looking far more tired than playful despite his words. The contrast left Matthew even more off-balance, like he was missing something, some subtle cue he should be able to see. "So what is it?"
Matthew looked down at his glass and saw it had gone empty without his notice. Instead of punctuating his words with a drink, he had to settle for putting the glass on the counter with a decisive clunk. "Are you aware that you're graduating in three weeks?"
Ioan stared at him with an expression he normally reserved for Americans who asked which team he was supporting in the rugby cup. "I'd heard a rumor, yes."
Matthew shrugged violently and folded his arms across his chest. "Well."
"Well, what?"
"I'd somehow not realized it, is all."
Ioan tilted his head slightly to the side, his eyes wide and guileless in a way that Matthew recognized meant he was about to be very, very annoying. "All the talking I've been doing about how thank Christ I'm almost fucking done? That didn't tip you off at all?"
"I mostly tune you out, honestly," Matthew muttered, unaccountably embarrassed, and Ioan smiled slightly, looking down at the floor.
"I suspected as much," he said dryly, then looked up again, meeting Matthew's eyes. "But really, Math, what does it matter? It's not got anything to do with you."
Matthew frowned. "Course it does."
"You're going to have to go on, because I'm not seeing it."
Matthew exhaled in a sharp huff of frustration. "I hate it when you make me explain things, you know, because I get halfway through and realize I sound like an idiot."
"That's why I go round sounding like an idiot all the time. It's easier when you don't raise anyone's expectations." Matthew scowled at him and Ioan shrugged, an easy, loose gesture that matched the faint smile on his face. "C'mon. We're all idiots here, and friends. Tell me what's so awful about me finishing up that it's worth staying home all afternoon."
Matthew scuffed his heel against the floor and then kicked it back against the cupboard. "Well, finishing up means you're going to leave, doesn't it?"
Ioan's brow furrowed. "Why would I do that?"
"You're always going on about Hollywood, aren't you?"
"Well, yes, but not yet." Ioan rolled his eyes and Matthew felt his hands clench, nails digging into his palms, though he couldn't have said why. "Math. I'm nineteen years old, ridiculous-looking, and I have a name that when people see it written out, they assume it's a phonetic representation of a noise made by ponies."
Matthew stared at him. "Where on earth did you get that one?"
"Girl at the pub." Ioan bit at his thumbnail and shrugged again. "My point is, I need to get a bit more steady on my feet before I try anything like that."
"But that doesn't necessarily mean you're going to stay here."
"It's in London," Ioan said with heavy, precise sarcasm. "That is where the jobs are." Matthew frowned, trying to think of a rebuttal. Ioan's expression turned to a smirk. "And I already broke in my flatmate. Would hate to have to train up a new one."
Matthew rolled his eyes and leaned back against the counter. "Well. As predicted, I feel like an idiot."
"It's not permanently damaging, I assure you." Ioan stretched his legs out in front of him. "And I won't spread it around."
"You're a real friend, you are."
"I do what I can." Ioan smiled loftily and glanced at the clock. "'m going to lie down for a bit, I think. Didn't get much sleep last night, what with you and Jenna moving the furniture."
"Fuck off."
"What? I'm not implying anything but enthusiastic redecoration."
"Christ, maybe I wouldn't be sorry if you moved out." Matthew's nails dug into his palms again even as he said it, and something twisted in his stomach for no reason at all as his face flushed hot. What in the world, Evans? Two drinks are turning your head around, now?
Ioan just smiled as he got to his feet. "Lucky you don't have to find out, isn't it, Math?"
**
Matthew had never considered himself to be particularly good with girls, but he was fairly sure he ought to be better than this.
"You bastard," Jenna said, clearly and distinctly, her voice climbing toward the ceiling. "You rat fucking bastard."
"Um," Matthew said, because he was not his most articulate when under attack. "I'm sorry, but I think if you try to understand--"
"Try to understand? Try to fucking understand my arse, you shit." She was off the couch by that point, looking for her shoes, while he continued to sit there and feel fairly certain that there ought to have been a better way to go about this. The conversation was nonnegotiable, it had to happen, but possibly they ought to have had it while still at dinner. With witnesses. And...plausible neutrality, for lack of a better term. Letting it wait until they were back at his flat, on the couch, and she'd taken off her jumper was probably a tactical error.
"Look," he tried, while she pulled said jumper over her head again, obscuring the lacy little top thing he had a sinking feeling she might have bought solely with him in mind. "You're very nice, and I like you--"
"Well thank you so very fucking much."
"--and I'm sorry," he said, his voice rising in annoyance despite himself. By the way her eyes narrowed, that was another tactical error. The count continued to go up. Fuck it. "It's really nothing to do with you at all, it's a matter of timing."
"Nothing to do with me?" She grabbed a book off the table and threw it at him. Hell of an arm that girl had; how had he never noticed that she was a bloody Amazon? "I would hope that breaking up with me could at least be about me. It's only decent, you miserable fuck."
"It's nothing to do with decency," he snapped, realizing that he was dangerously close to shouting but not quite able to catch himself. "Stop being so dramatic."
That was, without question, the wrong thing to say. Couldn't even count as a tactical error, it was past that, it was...blowing up his own tank. He had a sister, he knew better than to say that sort of thing. Fuck-all.
"Dramatic," Jenna said icily. "I'm being dramatic."
"I didn't mean it like that."
"For one thing, we met in acting school, you absolute idiot." She shook her head and started lacing up her shoes. "But I believe you didn't mean it like that. You never do, do you? You have no idea what you mean and you never have."
Matthew frowned, turning that over in his head. "I don't follow."
"See, that's precisely what I mean."
"No, I doubt it, as what I was trying to say is that you're not making any fucking sense, Jenna."
She shook her head and pointed at him, hand trembling slightly, and if he hadn't recognized the gesture from a scene they did in class not more than two weeks before, he might have been quite affected. "You don't know what you want, Matthew Evans. You never will. It's your curse."
He stared at her. "My curse."
"The curse of an emotionally constipated fuckwit."
"Right." He nodded again and finally stood up, marching past her to the door. "So sorry to contradict you, Jenna, love, but I actually know quite clearly what I want. I want you to leave and I want a very strong drink to wash the taste of absolute batshit crazy out of my mouth."
"Go to hell," she snapped as she sailed out the door.
He slammed it shut behind her and threw the lock for good measure, then kicked the baseboard. "You're a terrible actress," he told the wall, then ran his hand roughly through his hair. "Fuck."
"I hope you didn't say that loudly enough for her to hear it." Matthew squeezed his eyes closed tight, but Ioan's voice continued to float down the hallway, cautious but unperturbed. "Because that's a bit of a low blow, is all."
"Keep your helpful input to yourself, would you?"
"Is it safe to come out now?" Matthew rolled his eyes and headed to the kitchen for a drink. After a moment he heard Ioan's bedroom door creak open. "Well, is it?"
He could just see the reflection of the hallway in the kitchen window. Ioan's head was poking out of his bedroom door like he was expecting Matthew to follow Jenna's lead and start throwing things at it. Which reminded Matthew to check his own face in the window, and of course where that book clipped him on his cheekbone it was going to bruise. Brilliant fucking night all around.
"Math?"
"Oh, for Christ's sake." He threw the cupboard open and grabbed a beer, popping the top off violently on the edge of the counter. "Yes, it's safe. I'm not a homicidal maniac. I would hope you'd know that by now."
A moment later Ioan stepped into the kitchen, hands shoved in his pockets and a certain wariness in his posture that paradoxically did make Matthew want to hit him. "Got another of those?"
"You know where they're kept," Matthew said sourly, slouching back against the counter. "You do live here, too, you know."
Ioan tilted his head in acknowledgment and moved over to the cupboard, watching Matthew from the corner of his eye. Matthew pushed off the counter and stalked back to the couch, glaring at where Jenna had been sitting--lounging--stripping--before things had taken that decided turn for the unfortunate. Absolutely perfect. He ought to set the building on fire.
Ioan leaned in the kitchen doorway and regarded him solemnly. "You all right?"
"You heard the whole thing." Matthew took a drink and stared challengingly at him. "What do you think?"
"I think possibly your timing needs work." Ioan brought his own bottle to his lips and took a slow swallow, then wrinkled his nose. "Also, I'm no expert on women, but I've got a sister and a mum and even that's enough to make me fairly sure that calling them dramatic is always a bad idea."
"Yes, well." Matthew glared down into his bottle and tried to think of a witty response. There was nothing, of course. Only sullen sarcasm. "Thank you so very much for your insightful genius."
"Especially when they're actresses, Math. They take it personally, you know?"
Matthew groaned and slumped back against the couch, closing his eyes tightly and wishing he could beat himself unconscious with the bottle. "God, shut up."
He heard Ioan crossing the floor and felt the couch dip when he sat down, but stubbornly refused to open his eyes. When Ioan's hand patted cautiously at his knee, he kicked him.
"Ow. Fuck. Look, Math, I'm not going to judge you for being petulant." Mathew considered kicking him again, much harder. "I'm just going to sit here with you until you're ready to talk."
"I don't talk, Ioan." He realized he was walking into a pun-laced conversational trap and jabbed a finger blindly in Ioan's direction. "Not in the sense you mean, anyway."
"What went wrong? I thought you quite liked her."
There was something slightly odd in Ioan's voice, a questioning note that didn't quite fit with the question he was actually asking, but Matthew was in no mood to try to sort it out. "Does it matter?"
"Did something happen?"
"Like what?" Matthew gave up and opened his eyes, glaring at Ioan fiercely enough that Ioan put his hands up in surrender. "It wasn't working out. It happens. I lost interest."
Ioan tilted his head slightly. "It wasn't working out, or you lost interest? Those are different."
Matthew glared at him some more, taking a long drink. "Both."
Ioan nodded and looked down at the floor, tapping the edge of his bottle against his knee. "Right."
"Look, I appreciate your concern, but I'm not a talker, Ioan. You know that." He shouldn't have to justify that to his best friend, he ought to be able to feel safe and at ease in his own home--though he couldn't for the life of him explain what about this conversation was unsafe or uneasy. Unwanted, certainly, but not the rest. Fuck, he was losing his mind.
Ioan nodded again, shooting Matthew a slight smile that made his stomach dip again in that inexplicable kind of intensified unease. "I know." He finished his beer and turned away to reach over and set it on the box they used as an end table. "Just seemed only right to try."
"Stop trying." Matthew laughed sharply and killed his own drink. "Please."
Ioan went still for a moment, facing away, his shoulders tightening. Matthew bit his tongue, wondering just what this impulse was that had him saying all the wrong things today. Some sort of self-destructive need to set off every relationship in his life at once like firecrackers. "Sorry. I'm...I'm just being a prick, Ioan, it's not personal, don't take it to heart."
"Don't worry about it." Ioan straightened up again and gave Matthew another quick, edged, not-quite-sincere smile, and Matthew's stomach tightened again, the beer threatening to go sour. "I understand."
"Don't be mad." It was a strange thing to say, and it felt strange in his mouth, but somehow he felt he needed to say it, needed to request just that much grace between them before he would be able to fuck off and drink his sorrows to sleep in peace.
Ioan blinked at him in mild surprise, one eyebrow arching. "I'm not, Matthew. Promise." He smiled again, still bittersweet and edged but oddly it didn't feel like it was aimed at Matthew himself, this time. "It's a fairly safe bet that I'm never mad at you. For the record."
Matthew swallowed down a sudden catch in his throat. "Even when you probably ought to be?"
"Even then." Ioan shook his head and his smile eased a bit, became more like he was responding to a real joke, though a private one. "Especially then. You want another beer?"
"Please." Matthew set his own bottle on the floor and pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes until it hurt. He felt smooth glass bump against his wrist and turned his hand, opening his fingers to take the bottle. "Thanks."
He looked up at Ioan as Ioan's fingers slid against his own. Ioan's eyes were guarded, his expression neutral, and that was unusual enough to nudge Matthew out of himself for a moment. "Are you all right?"
"'m fine." Ioan withdrew his hand, rubbing his fingers together like he'd got something on his skin. "Why wouldn't I be? No one broke up with me today."
Matthew smiled a little and shook his head. "Me either, actually."
"Well, I didn't break up with anyone. Yet more reason why I'm perfectly and in all ways fine."
Matthew glanced down the couch at him. "Sorry if we bothered you with all the carrying on."
"It's fine. Really." Ioan stepped back and scratched his side, glancing into the kitchen at the clock. "Look, I'm supposed to meet some of the lads at the pub. You want me to stick around here? Or you wan to come with? I'm sure you'd be welcome, and it might be good to get out for a bit."
Matthew took another drink, then shook his head. "Thanks, but I'm no company at all tonight, if it's not been obvious. Think I'm just going to stay here. You don't have to stay with me, though, not at all. Go out and have a good time, yeah? You're graduated. Liberated. Ought to have some fun in your life."
Ioan nodded and shoved his hands down into his pockets, ducking his chin and giving Matthew a serious look. "I'll be back later, then. Don't drink yourself sick. We never really got it out of the couch last time."
Matthew held up his bottle in a mild salute. "Got it. See you in the morning."
Part Two