Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There is a spot on Matteo’s window that has been there ever since he moved in over a year ago. No, he has not tried to remove it. Because of reasons. Two reasons, to be exact. One, he is a lazy fucker. Two, if he leans back in his desk chair just right and shuts his right eye, the spot aligns perfectly with the branch fork of the oak in front of his window. That is true at every time of the year, and he finds that it is one of the few things that remain stable over time. These few things being him, and his spot, and his branch fork, stuck in time, while the world keeps moving around them.

All of his friends have gone off to college, started internships, volunteered, spent time abroad, started taking dance lessons or bought a turtle (Nobody would have expected Abdi to be the first of the group to become a father, but he has, and he has done so with great enthusiasm. Turtle Dagmar is now his most prideful possession). Which is great – Matteo doesn’t like to think of himself as an envious person. Greedy and selfish, yes – but he genuinely does feel happy for the people around him. He just can’t help but feel stuck in comparison.

Which he is, quite literally, since he’s failed his Abi spectacularly, ruining every chance he had seen to start college with Jonas (which would have been slim anyway if he is being honest – and studying whatever his best friend is studying just so he won’t be left behind alone sounds dumb in hindsight, even to him). So he is objectively stuck, studying for the same exams for a second time. Or, staring at the same spot on his window, as it is.

He picks up his phone, scrolling past messages from Sara and his mother to open the ok.cool chat that has been blowing up with messages earlier.

Jonas              Party at Marie’s house, byob

Jonas              Where can we pregame? Luigi?

Abdi                Who’s Marie?

Carlos             Why the hell do you care? It’s a party!

Abdi                Maybe she’s hot?

Carlos             Alter! Aren’t you still into Sam?

Abdi                Sam’s in Peru, man

Carlos             Wasn’t she going to that other country? Equator-something?

Abdi                Sam’s not at the equator?

Carlos             The country?

Abdi                Ecuador!

Abdi                Nein man, Peru!

Jonas              Jungs! Pre-game?

Matteo            I’m out, need to study

Jonas              But Abi’s not until in a few weeks? You’re coming out, stop ditching us!

Matteo sighs. Jonas is right of course, but fact is that he doesn’t really want to go out. The boys alone are fine most of the time. Nothing has changed between them, even if their lives have drifted apart a little, and Matteo knows he can count on that, if not forever, then at least for now. But going to another one of Jonas’ college parties, just to be asked about his major every time someone new crossed his path? Small talk isn’t his favourite pastime on a normal day, but explaining that he is still in high school because he’s fucked up his last year has gotten old really quick.

Jonas              Okay pregame at mine, still have the booze from last time. Be there at 8!

He sends back a thumbs-up, already regretting his life. Maybe if he gets drunk enough, he won’t even make it to the party. Or at least not remember much of it.

The apartment the party takes place at isn’t much unlike the one Matteo lives in with his flatmates in that if you don’t know your way around you can easily get lost in a five-room apartment with all its corners and alcoves. The magic of Berliner Altbau. Him and Jonas lose the others after three seconds and make their way through people who Jonas seems to know from his studies, some of which Matteo has probably met before but forgotten immediately.

One especially condescending guy offers some fancy-ass peach coconut whatever vodka (that Matteo downs without saying thank you), asks him how his Abi is going and then proceeds to reminiscent over his own high school experience when everything was easy and carefree. Matteo tries to get the timing of his nods and his laughs right, to concentrate on his facial expression, on his breathing. On the burning in his throat when he downs the next shot.

‘Anyway, Stefan here might actually be able to get me an internship at Greenpeace next year. He knows some people from his own FSJ,’ Jonas says.

‘Wow, look at you saving the whales, cuddling with pandas, cleaning the atmosphere!’ Matteo grins, his words a little blurry, but at least they come out in the right order. He thinks.

‘Fuck you, at least I’m not a lazy fucker who ditches the Friday for Future marches to eat kebab with Abdi!’

‘That was once! And Mia says I’ve upped my recycling game a lot since last year, I’ll have you know!’

‘OhHh, your recycling ga-‘

Matteo is pulled from the conversation by cold hands wrapping around his wrists.

‘Dance with me!’ Sara slurs over the beat of the music. She seems to have forgotten that he has been ignoring her for a few weeks straight or at least chosen to ignore the fact.

Matteo really, really wishes he was as drunk as her. 

Her arms are around his neck and she stumbles more than she dances, her hips pressing into him like they are fucking supposed to, he has to remind himself. This is good. A nice, beautiful girl in his arm at a college party, kissing down his neck. It is almost normal; it’s what is supposed to be happening to a guy like him, young and kinda cute, and brooding.

That doesn’t help the nausea that comes over him when she starts kissing his neck. It doesn’t help when his flight instinct kicks in, his heart beating way too fast and his stomach in knots. But he’s used to it by now, so he pulls her closer instead of letting go. Pulls her close enough so her chin lands on his shoulder, and they are hugging more than dancing now. And Matteo hates himself for wanting this just the tiniest bit, for melting into the bodily contact ever so slightly. Sara is nice, and she likes him, and she really is one of the few people that actually touch him these days, and whenever she doesn’t try to use her lips for things that aren’t drinking or talking, he thinks he might actually be able to do this. Be with her. Pose for silly Instagram selfies next to her, make fun of the way she pronounces American city names, be good to her, mostly.

But then he can feel her mouth on his skin again, slowly dragging up his jar, and he bolts, almost throwing her off, glad when she only bounces into the dancing bodies around them and sways with them immediately. She looks more confused and hurt than angry. Matteo has seen angry Sara before, and he does not fancy meeting her again.

He leans in again. ‘Gotta piss,’ he lies.

He pushes through the bodies, swaying slightly with them. He actually makes his way to the bathroom, patting his pockets for the joint he’s rolled earlier.

‘I’m glad we’re not some self-absorbed assholes anymore that smoke in strangers’ bathrooms at parties,’ Jonas has said a few weeks back. ‘Still assholes though,’ Matteo answered. ‘Still assholes,’ Jonas repeated, ruffling his hair. Well, fuck him; Matteo can be a self-absorbed asshole just by himself, thank you very much.

He blows smoke at his own mirror image, daring him to blink. He has to close his eyes at the eye contact. Pathetic fuck.

At least the vodka is starting to kick in, and in combination with the weed, it’s kinda working. He can feel it in his head, his thoughts still racing and self-destructive as ever, but softer around the edges, not as cutting. So what if he is a lazy, self-serving asshole. So what if he is lying his way through life, so what if he has abandoned his mother, broke up his best friends’ relationship, failed his Abi, disappointed his girlfriend, caused global warming, hasn’t managed to pack his lunch four out of five days last week and has been forced to survive on dry Knorr Asia noodles. So what.

And fuck, now he is hungry. He wonders if that Marie girl has some food lying around. Or if the fridge has been left unguarded.

He presses the joint into the sink, puts the remnants behind his left ear and pushes past the little queue that has formed behind the door, including an obviously highly inebriated Abdi jumping from one leg to the other.

‘Should have known, you fucking asshole!’ he grins, hand held out for a high five.

Matteo flips him off while walking backwards into the kitchen – or rather, into the person standing in the doorway, as it happens.

‘Fuck, sorry,’ he turns around to the guy who is currently patting his hoodie in a hopeless attempt to save the unsalvageable. It’s quite obviously soaked with whatever drink he was holding before Matteo knocked it over. And he isn’t even looking at Matteo, but his eyes, dark and unwavering, still manage to captivate him, so Matteo stares. And he wonders, briefly, if Sara had this kind of eyes, if he could manage to kiss her like he means it, but then the guy also has hands, and shoulders, and cheekbones, and –

‘Damn, I was going to wear this for my sister’s engagement party tomorrow,’ the guy says, looking up and yep, he definitely has lips, too. His eyes widen a little when he sees Matteo, and it’s probably the fact that Matteo looks a mess even without having a drink up his shirt, his hair a mess and his eyes red from smoking.

‘Fuck, really?’ Matteo tries not to stare at the sarcastic smirk forming around the corner of the guy’s mouth.

‘Yep, I was going to combine it with my tartan kilt and suspenders.’

Matteo huffs. ‘If that’s the case I might have spared you the embarrassment. Suspenders are obviously meant to be worn with leopard print only.’

‘Oh?’ the guy raises an attractive eyebrow (Apparently, Matteo thinks eyebrows can be attractive now) and looks him up and down agonizingly slowly. ‘Tell me more, fashion guru!’

Matteo is sure, if he could feel his face, he would feel a blush forming at his cheeks. And he isn’t exactly sure if he has been flirting, or if he is being flirted with, but he knows that he can’t take the risk to stumble into this conversation with his guards down.

‘I was actually just looking to get some food.’

The guy turns around, ‘I saw some Pizza Hollandaise in the microwave earlier. So unless you’re into that – I think you’re out of luck’

‘No, no, no, that’s just unacceptable. I’ve been trying to convince my boss for ages to take it off our menu,’ Matteo mutters, passing him to open the fridge. An impressive amount of beer bottles and nothing else. He sighs.

‘So you’re a fashion expert and a food connoisseur. Any other talents you want to tell me about?’

‘‘You don’t have to be a food connoisseur to know that Pizza Hollandaise is an abomination.’


He should leave. He should leave before he can fall into the trap of captivating dark eyes and beautiful dark skin because that shit is scary in ways that dancing with Sara isn’t. But then he turns around and holy shit, the guy has eyelashes too, and rosy cheeks and –

‘But I do roll a decent joint, I’ve been told. Fancy a smoke?’ He taps a finger against the joint behind his ear.

The guy tilts his head and seems to think on it for a second, sending Matteo’s pulse racing for no particular reason. ‘Sure. Won’t help you with your cravings though.’

Matteo huffs, nodding to the corridor. ‘I think I’ll survive.’
 

He can’t help but exhale in relief when he pulls the apartment door closed behind him, even feeling the guy’s eyes on him. He feels drained and for some reason, he thinks the boy next to him might just understand that, as he just stands there and waits patiently for Matteo to get a fucking grip. 

‘What’s your name?’ Matteo asks, to shake off whatever has settled between them.

‘David. And you?’

‘Matteo.’

‘Up or down, Matteo?’

Matteo crosses his arms, and wonders if he could be brave this one time. If he can believe in an ‘up’ for once. But as it is, there isn’t much reason to. He’s still him, after all, even if one brave moment in some girl’s kitchen has brought him to this staircase with a beautiful stranger. So he nods downwards and follows David down the stairs.

Matteo takes the lowest step, leaning against the wall with his back, his feet against the railing, mirrored by David one step above. It takes him several tries to light the joint between his own lips and hand it to David. When he looks up, the other one looks amused.

‘You’re so drunk.’

‘You’re so drunk,’ Matteo parrots before thinking, but it makes David’s lips stretch into a smile around the joint in his mouth, and fuck, that’s a sight.

‘You should probably get out of that hoodie,’ he says, deflecting, ‘It’s soaked.’

David looks down with an uncertain frown for a second as if contemplating something, but when he looks up again, a confident smile plays around his lips. ‘It was just a drink.’

Matteo huffs. ‘Okay…’

He finds a coin in his pocket and twirls it between his fingers. This is the best or the worst part of getting high, he can never decide. The not-thinking, the emptiness. He’s almost there.

‘You’re not in political science with Marie, are you?’

‘No.’ Please don’t ask, please don’t ask. He knows what comes next, or he thinks he does. The usual questions, the pitying looks. Rinse, repeat.

‘Thought so,’ David grins instead, ‘You don’t have the vibe.’

‘The pretentious gonna-save-the-world-before-breakfast vibe?’ Matteo, smiling fondly thinking about Jonas. He could never pull it off, but his best friend always does look effortless sporting rolled up jeans and protest signs.

‘That’s the one.’

‘Well, doesn’t fit you either.’

‘Thanks. I decided I could do better by the world by shooting people directly instead of scheming around it,’ David deadpans.

That startles a laugh out of Matteo, although he makes sure to cover it up by coughing. ‘So you’re an assassin?’

‘Something like that.’

‘I take that as a yes.’

David laughs, and it knocks all air out of Matteo’s lungs, he just exhales with an exaggerated whoosh and stares, because boy, that smile –

There is a commotion above them, and seconds later a bunch of drunk students stumbles around the corner, laughing at some drunk joke none of them will remember tomorrow.

They both move to get out of the way, on different sides of the stairwell, and Matteo’s eyes are fixed on the other boy’s lingering smile still, in a horrible, sweet, can’t-look-away-ever kind of way, and – he only recognizes Sara’s blonde shock of hair when it tickles his face and she stumbles into his body, lips on his. He presses into the wall behind him but unfortunately doesn’t disappear into it. 

‘Hey, na? Don’t feel like partying?’ Sara slurs against his mouth, ‘I was looking for you!’

He grabs her hip when she struggles to stay on her legs and she sags down on the stairs.

‘May I?’ she reaches out to take the blunt from David’s fingers who looks put out for a few seconds before schooling his impression into something more friendly, distant. Matteo doesn’t think he’s ever seen anyone so possessive over weed that isn’t him. The smoke from Sara’s mouth fills the space between them, a harsh reminder that Matteo can’t have good things. He only ever gets to look at them through the fog.

He almost scoffs at the obvious symbolism. This is what he gets for getting high while sad.

‘Oh!’ Sara pulls him out of his own head, ‘You’re the guy! The – Leonie guy, yes?’

She pushes against David’s arm softly, as if recognizing an old friend.

‘Er, yes? I –‘

‘Take me home?’ she turns back to Matteo sagging against his legs and he automatically grabs her head to steady her.

‘Uhh. Where’s Leonie?’ he asks.

Sara casts another uncertain look to David, who is looking up at the ceiling, and then back at them. ‘I should get back. Is she gonna be okay?’

Matteo nods, eyes cast down at the girl. An outsider could think that he’s just that concerned, a nice guy who just wants to help, not a pathetic fucker who can’t meet a guy’s eyes that he’s barely known for more than ten minutes. Matteo knows better, but he won’t think about it. ‘Do you have your keys?’

‘Can’t go home, no keys, lost my roommate. Take me to yours!’

‘Can you walk? I don’t want to carry you.’

‘As if I’m that fat!’

‘You sure about that?’

‘Hey!’ she swats his hand away when he tries to get her to stand upright and he snorts, mirthlessly.

‘Come on, let’s get you home.’

Chapter Text

Matteo hates waking up alone, but he is used to it. He hates it more when it is Sara who is lying next to him, face scrunched into his favourite pillow. They have done this too often for him to feel too upset about it, just the usual anxious pit in his stomach. The first time, back when they were still trying to be boyfriend and girlfriend to each other, he woke up and stumbled into the living room and into a full-on panic attack.

Now, it’s more of a fight between rationality (if she wakes up and you’re still here she might want to make out) and laziness. He doesn’t feel too bad hangover-wise, so rationality wins.

The kitchen is blissfully empty, but so is his fridge department. He’s gotten into trouble with Mia and Hans before for borrowing their food, but Linn’s relatively chill about it, so he picks out a tomato and some peppers from her shelve. He used to hate cooking, the activity stained by his father leaving him alone with his bedridden mother again and again until he actually finally fucked off all the way to Italy. As a self-taught cook, his process is chaotic but purposeful, and he has learnt since that music helps with motivation and distraction.

Not that he needs the distraction. His mind hasn’t gone back to the staircase, or dark eyelashes, rosy cheeks, or lips pouting around a poorly rolled joint. It hasn’t. It’s just that he’d rather not take the risk.

He’s just rinsing the pasta when Sara walks in, wearing one of his t-shirts he’s fairly sure she found somewhere on his floor. It’s wrong on so many levels and he would ask her to take it off if he wasn’t sure she’d misunderstand.

‘Morning,’ she mumbles, letting herself fall into one of the kitchen chairs.

‘Morning,’ he answers, pulling the headphones from his head, ‘Pasta?’

She makes an exaggerated choking sound, before letting her head fall onto the table with a thud. ‘Ou,’ she mumbles, ‘please make sure to never let me drink again?’

Matteo wants to tell her that he really isn’t in a position to let her do anything, that they’re not actually anything to each other, not anything he can name at least, but he knows she would leave if he did, and he doesn’t feel like being alone, so he presses his lips together instead, and drops down next to her on a chair, the pot in front of him.

‘If you change your mind,’ he says, placing a fork in front of her.

She doesn’t answer.

*****

Re-doing his last year comes with the perk of not knowing anyone in his year, so people leave him the fuck alone at school. It also has the disadvantage of not knowing anyone in his year, so school usually bores him to death. Also, he somehow managed to lose his scarf and it is too fucking cold to go outside, so he’s fucking itching for a cigarette.

He is on his phone for most of his last lesson, Spanish of all subjects, and he knows he should be listening, but he can’t bring himself to care.

Sara has uploaded a series of party pictures and tagged him in one of them, although he is pretty sure he didn’t pose for any pictures with her on Saturday. The first picture is obviously taken in his kitchen, and it shows the remnants of his Pasta alla Luigi, with the caption ‘Party with the best people <3 including hangover breakfast by the best master chef @matteohno :-*’. It’s whatever, really, but it still makes him anxious, to be part of her life like that. Plus, she didn’t even eat any of his pasta. He slides through the pictures, mostly selfies with people he doesn’t know, except – His thumb hovers for a second before zooming in on the familiar face of one handsome boy. Leonie and Sara beam into the camera next to him, while David’s expression is more of a controlled smirk. Matteo can’t look away. He’s captivating even on a cell phone display and Matteo doesn’t think that’s fair.

A sharp cough snaps him out of it. Mrs Weber is standing above him, hand outstretched. ‘Thank you, Matteo, you can pick up your phone after the lesson.’

‘No Mrs Weber, I’m really sorry!’

‘Lengua?’

‘Uhm. Lo siento?’ he looks up at her with what Jonas calls his puppy dog eyes.

She rolls her eyes and turns around. ‘As I was saying…’ The girl next to him grins at him and he sends a weak smile back. He zones out again.

 *****

Matteo doesn’t like owing things to people. In third grade, when his mother’s state worsened for the first time, he often had to burrow lunch money or pre-made sandwiches from his friend Mads. He didn’t think much of it except that he was hungry and his friend’s mom put mayonnaise on his sandwiches which made them even better than usual sandwiches, until Mads started to bring it up at every possibility, like when he lost a bet or tried to get out of duties in school so Matteo would do them for him.

That’s when he learned that nothing in life was free.

This is why he initially said no when Amira asked him to come and work at the same pizza place she had worked at during high school.

‘Come on, Mia said you’re looking for a job. What’s wrong with this one?’ she rolled her eyes. Great, he was being a nuisance, even when he didn’t take anything from people.

‘That’s super nice and all. But I’ll find something on my own.’ Whenever he got off his ass to actually apply, that was.

‘It’s not a favour, Matteo. If anything, it’s the other way around. I got a job as a research assistant with one of my professors and my boss won’t let me go until I find people who take over my job.’

‘You got a HiWi job in your first semester? Holy shit.’

She looked down at her fingernails. ‘I was super lucky. My prof likes me.’

‘Lucky, huh?’

‘So? The job?’

Matteo said yes and for a second she smiled before schooling her face into something sterner. ‘Make me proud!’

They got him to deliver pizzas on his old bike twice before they replaced him by someone who could cycle for more than five minutes without dying of asphyxia.

Matteo doubts that’s what Amira meant by making her proud, but now he’s working in the kitchen, next to Abdi, and he doesn’t think he’s doing an awful job. Not as awful as Abdi, anyway.

‘What about four-cheese?’

‘I don’t know!’

‘Pepperoni?’

‘How the hell should I know which pizza your fucking turtle likes best?’

‘No, but, if she was human? Like, based on her human personality!’

‘What?’

They both jump when the phone rings.

‘Your turn,’ Matteo grins.

‘Dude, I’m off in like five minutes!’

He forces his concentration back on the task, while Abdi walks off, pouting. People usually don’t order their pizza on the phone anymore, and if they do, they are either super-old, or difficult customers, or both, which is bad enough, but more often, it is people complaining about their orders, and that is worse. And that is why they have a system, as to not get into any fights.

‘Oi Luigi! It’s for you!’

He flips him off.

‘No, for real this time. Someone found your scarf or something.’

Matteo rolls his eyes and shuffles over to the phone, giving Abdi a slap to the back of his head.

‘Hello?’

‘Hi.’ Matteo almost gasps at the voice. He didn’t even know he remembered David’s voice, and he probably didn’t, not consciously anyway. It’s more of a visceral response, really.

‘Hi,’ he parrots weakly.

‘Hey. Uhm,’ David says, ‘This is David. I don’t know if you remember me, but… You forgot your scarf on Saturday.’

‘Yes,’ he says, slightly breathless. ‘I mean, to the remembering part.’ It’s a bit of an understatement, but he does. Remember him, that is. ‘And I’ve been missing my scarf.’

‘Okay, so… We should stage a handover some time.’

‘I don’t know if I’m comfortable with that…’ Matteo feels brave. He doesn’t think it suits him very well, but he does. ‘You being an assassin and all that. Sounds risky to me.’

David laughs and Matteo can almost see it. Almost.

‘That just makes me very good at handovers. You should always trust professionals, Matteo.’

‘I don’t know, you haven’t told me your price yet,’ he grins into the phone like an idiot, then checks to see that Abdi isn’t looking at him.

David stays silent for a few seconds, then: ‘One pizza hollandaise.’

‘No, don’t do this to me!’

‘This is not a negotiation, Matteo.’

‘But–‘

‘You’ve heard me.’

‘That’s not–‘

‘I’ll be there in twenty minutes.’

Chapter Text

Matteo has a lot to thank Jonas for. Like, when they were in fifth grade and he got lost in the new school, Jonas found him before he could be too late for their first English lesson. Or, when they were on a school trip to the sea life centre and Matteo hung back at the shark tank for too long, got lost alone, and almost missed the bus, so Jonas ran through the whole aquarium to find his best friend (To be honest, a lot of instances involve Matteo being lost somewhere and Jonas finding him).

Another thing is, how he always manages to make things fun. He seems to instinctively know when Matteo is dreading something, so he turns things around and makes something good out of them*.

In 6^th grade, Matteo hated PE because frankly, he didn’t have any talent at any sporty activity whatsoever, so Jonas made it his mission to find the one sports Matteo was good at. To this day, ping pong is the one thing Matteo is capable of beating the boys at that doesn’t involve video games or drinking competitions.

Or, a few years back, Jonas found out Matteo was preparing his own meals, so he asked him to cook for him, to prove that he was indeed a capable cook. Matteo stood in his kitchen miserably; After all, he would have done everything his best friend asked of him (and no, he did not fancy thinking about why that was), but he also hated cutting vegetables and peeling potatoes made his fingers cramp up.

‘You’re doing it wrong, Luigi,’ Jonas said, after watching him for a few minutes.

Matteo looked down at his hands, defeated. Because of course he was, he didn’t know what he was doing one bit.

‘You gotta think like an Italian, dude. Enjoy the moment!’

Ten minutes later, Jonas was dancing through the kitchen, throwing pieces of pepper at Matteo’s mouth. They lost track of time and failed to remove the potatoes from the pot in time, but Jonas said he preferred mashed potatoes anyway.

After that, Matteo found that making up his own recipes and experimenting was kind of fun.

Which is not something he should be doing at his job. There are strict regulations that require him to put exactly five pieces of mozzarella on a Pizza Speciale, and that tell him how to chop the tomatoes. It’s easy, and most of the time Matteo doesn’t mind.

But this? Pizza Hollandaise? Of all the things David could have asked of him –

‘What are you mumbling to yourself about?’ Abdi asks while throwing on his jacket.

‘I’m not mumbling. Shut up!’

‘Are you upset about your scarf? Because I can borrow you mine if you need it.’

‘What? No, I’m not upset!’

‘Okay, but I’m heading out now. Don’t sue me if you freeze your ass off when you head back home.’

‘I’ll sue you if you mention my ass one more time.’

‘Why? It’s a good ass! You should be more proud.’

‘Why thank you! Now please leave me and my ass alone?’

Abdi grins, fist bumps him and leaves, and Matteo is left alone in the shop. At this time of the day, there are no new orders coming in, and Leonardo, their shift manager, sits back in his office to finish off the daily business. There are multiple options here, one of which is to do as he is told. Technically, David did put an order in, even if it wasn’t during business hours.

And Matteo is nothing, if not a professional. He snorts. ‘Fuck it.’

*****

When the door opens, Matteo almost expects Abdi to be back, or a late customer to drop in. He’s spent the last twenty-five minutes convincing himself that David isn’t actually going to show, that he was joking when he said he was going to come by. So he doesn’t turn around for a few moments, just breathes, trying to quench the hope inside his rib-cage.

‘Hey,’ That voice again. It really isn’t fair.

‘Hey, na?’ He can’t help a small smile when he turns around to David leaning over the counter. ‘Alles klar?’

‘Ja, klar. Uhm…’ David holds out his red tube scarf and holds it up, but pulls it back when Matteo goes to grab it. ‘I believe you have a payment to make.’

‘Your payment is in the oven. Patience!’

‘Patience yourself then!’

Matteo huffs and turns around to hide his smile. He busies himself by wiping off the counter again. He’s made sure to be finished cleaning up before David arrives (and if he has been a little sloppier than he usually would, nobody has to know), but right now, his hands need something to do to keep them from doing something stupid like reaching out over the counter.

‘So, how did you find me?’ he asks. Smalltalk, he can do. He hopes.

When he looks up, David’s cheeks are a little pink, and it’s about the prettiest thing Matteo has ever seen. Okay, maybe he can’t actually do this.

‘Looked up places that sell Pizza Hollandaise in Berlin.’

‘Shit, that’s a lot of places.’

‘Yep. I actually talked to another Matteo before you. But he was from Sicily and didn’t speak any German.’

‘Guess I’m lucky you didn’t give him my scarf.’

‘Guess you are,’ David smiles.

Matteo thinks he really fucking is. Even when the oven timer beeps and he jumps and David laughs at him.

‘Ecco fatto!’ he places the pizza on the counter with an exaggerated bow and a cheeky grin.

‘That’s not what I ordered,’ David’s grin is way too wide for him to be taken serious in his complaint.

Matteo thinks he has outdone himself with this one, the crust of the mozzarella just right, the ricotta cheese melting into crispy bacon and artfully arranged heaps of spinach, crested with pieces of corn and pepper. And yes, if he could, he would wax poetry about pizza, what about it?

‘Oh, isn’t it?’ Matteo feigns innocence, ‘Bummer.’

‘So what is this?’

‘Just try it!’

‘My profession requires me to be very careful about foreign food.’

‘Well, my profession makes me an expert on pizza toppings. You should always trust professionals, David.’

David casts his eyes down to the pizza, then back at him, scrunching his mouth a little as if to suppress a smile before coming to a decision. ‘Okay, you win.’

Matteo can’t help the grin that spreads all over his face.

‘… This time.’

*****

‘So speaking Italian. Is that a thing?’

‘It is in Italy. Or so they say.’

‘And you?’

‘Yeah, my father’s Italian.’

‘You ever go there?’

‘Not anymore.’

*****

‘What’s your deal with assassins anyway?’

‘What? You don’t think they’re cool?’

‘Maybe. Do you?’

‘I think they’re super interesting. I mean, a lot of assassin movies are just action sequences after action sequences, but there are some good ones that actually deal with cool topics. Like, the psychological implications of killing for money. Or, the ethics of capitalism. And so much more. Do you know Léon: The Professional?’

Matteo shakes his head no.

‘By Luc Besson. You should watch it sometime.’

*****

Matteo has lived with Hans and Linn long enough to not be surprised by the interesting activities they get up to inside their living room anymore. He has literally walked in on them trying out nude painting once, with a petite blonde girl standing butt naked on top of their coffee tables and concentrated looks on their faces. Usually, he shrugs to himself and closes the door to his room behind him, especially on days like this, where he’s gone straight from school to work, stood in the heat of the kitchen for hours and… stayed longer to talk video games and argue about the best children’s movies of the 2000s. The last one was his own fault but it was so, so worth it.

He doesn’t know what compels him to interact now. It’s not like the fishing rod Linn is currently dangling in front of a goldfish glass is any weirder of an occurrence than most other things they have done.

‘What are you doing?’

Hans turns around, eyes wide in excitement. ‘Linn is looking for a new hobby.’

‘What happened to… Uhm… the other one?’

‘Collecting stamps?’

Matteo doesn’t think he knew about that one. He shakes his head.

‘Drying fruit?’ Hans aims his phone camera at him, and Matteo pulls a face.

‘Puppeteering?’ Linn asks distractedly.

‘We prefer real people now,’ Hans adds.

‘Why can’t you just smoke weed and drink alcohol to fill the void like a normal person?’ Matteo drops down on the couch. All energy has left his body.

‘Might try that next,’ Linn mumbles.

‘Yes, thank you for your contribution, caterpillar!’

Matteo rolls his eyes at the nickname. When he moved into the flat, Hans took to calling him butterfly. He doesn’t remember when the degression happened, but now it’s a constant reminder that he has failed to meet expectations.

‘Whose fish is that anyway?’

‘Andy’s! Watching him for the weekend,’ Hans beams.

‘And Andy’s okay with you killing his pet fish?’

‘We’re not killing, we’re practising.’

‘I’m putting him back in if he bites,’ Linn smiles.

‘Uhm. Can’t he, like, die from the hook?’

‘Hans! You said it’s okay!’ Linn whines and throws the rod at him.

Hans ducks, rubs the back of his head and looks into the front camera of his phone. ‘Oops.’

‘It’s okay Linn,’ Matteo grins, slacking down deeper into the cushions of the couch, ‘Fish are food, not friends.’

Hans snorts. ‘Maybe rather not this one.’

Matteo shrugs and pulls out his phone to find a message from Amira on top of his notifications. He’s met her a few times on parties since she handed down her job to him, but they haven’t actually interacted meaningfully ever since the worst study partnership of all times ended. Between fights over religion, homosexuality, and his own weed consume… Let’s just say he is not exactly her favourite human in the world.

Amira             Hanna tells me you could use some help studying?

Matteo            Are you serious?

Amira             You are motivated this time, yes?

Matteo            Yes!

Amira             Then I’m your girl

Matteo            Holy shit thank you

                       Wait what’s in it for you?

Amira             Let’s just say you owe me

He sends back a shook Pikachu meme and receives back a smirking emoji.

‘Na? Is that Sara?’ Hans falls down next to him on the couch, ‘You’re smiling.’

Matteo wonders when he has ever smiled over a message from Sara but presses his lips together before he can say something that he will regret.

‘She was here last Sunday, wasn’t she?’

‘She was too drunk to go home,’ he says. It’s stupid, but however much he wants people to not think that he is not dating Sara, he also doesn’t want people to think that he does. Or maybe, he doesn’t want people to think that he wants them to think that he’s dating her. Whatever the reason, he can’t bring himself to give more than vague answers whenever he is asked about her. Which is just as well, it’s not like he’s usually a very talkative person.

‘She’s a nice girl,’ Hans probes.

‘Sure,’ Matteo gets up from the couch. ‘Hey, maybe a pet would be good for Linn, no?’

‘Like a fish?’ Hans smiles.

‘Yeah. Or something cute.’

Chapter Text

‘I swear it looked like… Like melons!’ Abdi is in the process of yelling when Matteo joins the boys at the ping pong table close to Carlos’ apartment.

They’ve taken to rotating through their neighbourhoods ever since Carlos and Jonas have moved places and they don’t live as close anymore. Today is Carlos’ turn, which means that Matteo had to take one bus and two underground lines to get here, and that’s after a full day of school, and he’s already so done with.

‘Boobs?’ Carlos asks.

‘No man, her ass! Her boobs were more like… cantaloupes.’

‘Damn.’

‘Yeah.’

Matteo moves to greet Jonas, the only one of the boys who is not too engaged in the conversation to see him coming.

‘What’s up?’

‘Not much.  Although Abdi might have a new crush as it seems.’

‘Crush? I don’t know man,’ Abdi frowns. ‘Sam is hard to forget.’

‘At least you’ve got a whole new fruit basket to play around with now,’ Jonas grins.

‘I wish! I’m nowhere close to a playdate.’

Matteo rolls his eyes in exasperation and turns to Jonas, holding up his ping pong racket. ‘Apropos playdate?’

He can barely keep up with the pace the others are setting. Usually, he would be kicking the guys’ asses at ping pong, but lately, he’s been too exhausted to enjoy moving around too much.

So he sits down at a park bench, staring into the trees above him.

It’s a fucking miracle they’re all still here. Not in Berlin specifically, but here, as in together, as a friend group. He should feel luckier about it.

Repeating his Abi shouldn’t drag him down like this, it shouldn’t taint everything he does. He should be able to meet up with the boys and have a fucking good time for god’s sake. Laugh at Carlos’ and Abdi’s antics, chat with Jonas about his new project. This should be the easy part.

He looks down at his phone. He’s watched Léon: The Professional the day after David had recommended it to him, then sent out a stupid text including a stupid gif, because Matteo is nothing if not stupid and now the two blue checkmarks are mocking him constantly.

‘Hey, all good? How’s studying going?’

‘Alright? Amira said she’d help me.’

‘Amira? Seriously?’

He shrugs.

‘Why would she do that?’ Jonas laughs. ‘She kinda hates you.’

‘Unnamed favour?’ he says uncertainly. He has asked himself the same question. But... Gift horse and all that.

‘Oh, dude,’ Carlos chimes in, ‘Trust me, you do not want to owe a favour to Amira.’

Matteo rolls his eyes. ‘Already do. Honestly, how bad can it be?’

‘Dude! I once borrowed a pen from her during Abi and she made me help her design the Abi book pages with her and Kiki.’

‘Aw,’ Jonas reaches out to pat Carlos on the shoulder with his ping pong racket.

‘Dude, that took hours! For one pen!’

‘I’m sure Kiki made it up to you,’ Abdi grins and makes his weird grunty sex noises.

‘That she did, my friend.’ Carlos holds out a hand for a high five.

‘No, but it’s good that she’s helping you. I’m sure you’ll be fine.’ Jonas puts a hand on his shoulder and Matteo resists the urge to swat it away. Not because he still wants it too much, but it’s still his first instinct.

Not that he’s thought about Jonas in that way in a long time. Or anybody. He can’t actually want somebody. He’ll fuck up and do something stupid like last time, or he’ll end up not fucking up and actually getting somewhere with someone and then that person would be stuck with him. And then he’d have to be good all the time, right? He’d have to be good for that person. And he doesn’t know how that works.

He’s not good for Sara, and he hasn’t been good for his friends in a long time. He’s not a good son or flatmate or student either.

‘Earth to Luigi!’ Jonas calls, waving a hand in front of his face. ‘Where did you go?’

‘Uhm, Abi,’ he says. ‘I actually think I should go home to study.’ It’s not a lie – he really should go home and study. It’s not what he intends to do, but nobody has to know that.

*****

What he does do is fuck himself up even more. He tends to do that when he’s in a bad mood. Do something to make it hurt deeper.

He takes the bus to his mom’s place. She’s not there. She’s not there but she is, in a way. Her presence is still there. But she’s in a clinic for a few weeks physically, she told him, in a text that he didn’t answer, so he fishes the spare key from underneath the porcelain owl and lets himself in.

Weirdly enough, his first instinct leads him to the fridge. She’s left a package of cheese and a bunch of cherry tomatoes in the lower drawer and it’s all mouldy now. He wonders which would distress her more – a mouldy fridge on return or an empty fridge if she expected to find old food – and he can’t decide what to do, so he just stands there for a few minutes or more, until the vibration of his phone brings him out of it.

Amira             Tomorrow 3pm at Blattgold?

Matteo            I’ll be there

Amira             Sober?

Matteo            Boring

Amira             Middle finger emoji

Matteo            Of course!

He steps away from the fridge pocketing his phone. There is a picture pinned to the outside of the fridge with an ugly magnet that he must have painted when he was around twelve – old enough to try out the acryl paint his mom had gotten him and young enough to fail tremendously. Untalented enough, too, that’s for sure.

He doesn’t remember having seen it the last time he was here. Granted, it’s been a year, but he’s sure he would remember. She must have hung it up after he left.

He wishes she was here so he could ask her, ‘why this ugly-ass monstrosity?’ and she could answer ‘It’s abstract. It doesn’t show its beauty to just anybody’ and reach out to touch his hair.

He’s also really glad that she’s not here because if she was, she would ask him why – why did he leave, why did he lie, why did he come back – and he only ever knows half the answers.

He left, half because he couldn’t not, and half because of the black hole inside of him that threatened to swallow him whole. He cannot explain where it came from, or what it does, or what it feels like. Even if he knew, where would he take the words from?

The lowest step still creaks and he takes the next step more deliberately, to the left, where the rug dampens the sound. It’s frightening how well he still knows his way around the house. He wonders if it still knows him, too.

He’s not the cheeky boy that used to run up the stairs to avoid detection by the enemy forces (the Catholics and the Italians), but he’s still a boy, still running. Only now it’s getting pathetic, and he’s supposed to figure things out now, to make plans, to feel like he’s living his life instead of being lived, but here he is, sneaking up the same stairs, only now the enemy forces seem to be living inside him, and he can’t hide. The stairs squeak under his feet, giving away his position easily.

He doesn’t know what he’s more afraid of – that his old room is still there, untouched – or that he’s going to find it empty.

In the end, it’s anti-climactic. The door has been left ajar, and there are clotheshorses piled up in the room. She has been using his room, has left parts of herself in it. And… that’s kinda good, he thinks. They are in this room, both of them, still connected, even if he can’t bring himself to hit send on the answers to her texts that he drafts.

Because if he can’t give her the truth, what can he give her, really.

The mattress of his old bed gives away too easily when he sits on the top end, too soft for his now acquired taste. So he did change. Hah.

There’s a yellow thing sticking out from underneath the blanket, and he grabs it, absentmindedly, throws it in the air, catches it. He didn’t think to take his old indiaca with him when he left, but now, he thinks it might just be what he needs. Just because.

He doesn’t want to interrupt the balance, so he digs into his pocket and finds the coin, the one he found in his pocket on Saturday, and leaves it on his old desk, leaves behind another piece of himself.

*****

Matteo isn’t scared of many things. If he would allow himself to be more self-aware, he’d probably think about how you have to care to be scared, and sometimes you have to be scared to care. Like, how he didn’t care enough to be scared to fail his Abi, and then he wasn’t scared enough to take measures so that he wouldn’t.

But Amira? Amira is very scary.

Maybe that’s because Amira doesn’t sugar-coat things. Ever. Maybe it’s just scary to see the truth through someone else’s eyes.

Or maybe – maybe it’s the fact that Matteo does care with her. That he genuinely thinks she’s awesome, yet he fails over and over again to meet her approval.

So he’s early, today. He runs to Blattgold after school and startles the waitress when he tears open the door a little too energetically. He orders two drinks, and because he doesn’t know what Amira likes these days, he orders two different ones, so he can ask her about her preference when she arrives.

He thinks he’s being very smart about this until both drinks cool down because he was so freaking early and he really should have thought about this. He looks down at the drinks miserably, contemplating if he should drink one real quick and pretend this never happened, but then Amira, standing above him with a flushed face and an amused smile, literally snaps him out of it.

‘Is one of these for me?’

‘Ähh,’ Matteo looks down, flushing. ‘Yes. No. Yes. Uhm. They’re both cold now, so I’m just gonna go and get you a new one. Any wishes?’

She chuckles. ‘Club Mate is alright.’

He salutes and walks over to the counter.

When he comes back, Amira has spread out her Bio notes from last year on the table. He recognizes part of the diagrams from this year’s lessons but not all of them.

‘Okay, so how do you want to do this?’

Another scary part about Amira is that she shows her disapproval, but she never tells him what to do, leaving him all the choices.

She offered help, now the ball is clearly in his corner. She won’t mother him out of it.

‘Uhm, I get like… most of the content if I see it, I think. I think it’s mostly organizing? I’m shit at that.’

‘Okay?’ she prompts gently.

‘I just don’t know where to start and then I… don’t.’

‘Well, you’re here, so that’s a good start, yeah?’

He nods, and she smiles. It’s easy, after. Amira is brilliant, and she’s able to coax him enough to get shit done. He thinks, if he’d accepted her help like this last year, he might have passed after all.

‘Why are you helping me?’ he asks after they’ve finished putting his notes in order, supplementing them here and there with hers.

She looks up at the ceiling for a second before answering. ‘Yeah, about that – I – actually not I, my brother, to be exact – could use your help.’

He raises his eyebrows behind one of his mugs.

‘Yeah, so – Omar’s a film student and he’s got this project, and he needs people to help him out on set. He’s asked me, but I don’t want to run around his set having him tell me what to do, so –’ She points vaguely in his direction. ‘Voila!'

‘So I technically owe your brother now? What’s in it for you?’

‘Well, he’s my brother, so by necessity, I love him –’ she grins, ‘– Don’t tell him that. And more importantly – no offence, but I’d rather have him owing me than you. He’s way more useful.’

‘Hey, I can be useful! I have talents…’ he trails off mockingly. ‘I can juggle three balls. I beat almost everyone at Fifa. And I’ll have you know I make the meanest pasta.’

‘The meanest?’ she grins.

‘The meanest. Knows-what-you’re-sensitive-about-and-teases-merciless kind of mean. It once told Abdi – Oh fuck, what time is it?’

‘Summertime.’

‘Haha. Fuck, I need to get to work. Uhm… thanks for all this. And text me about your brother?’ He clumsily collects his notes from the table.

‘Don’t forget it!’

‘I would never.’

When he stumbles out of the café, his eyes immediately get stuck on a couple walking towards him on the pavement. It takes his brain a second to catch on to the fact that it’s David that’s walking towards him, and then it takes another second to dampen the excitement of seeing David with the fact that he’s with a girl, and they’re obviously close, and she ruffles his hair, and he’s laughing as he ducks away, and so is she.

Matteo stops in his tracks and stares like an idiot because he honestly didn’t think he’d see him again. Berlin is humongous and you don’t just happen to stumble across gorgeous boys with questionable pizza taste.

Plus, David deserves to be stared at. Or, he deserves much more, but this is all Matteo is capable of giving.

It’s either the abrupt movement of a head snapping in his direction, or the sensation of being stared at by a creepy half-stranger, but David stops laughing and looks up at him. Fuck.

David gives a small nod with a smile and Matteo looks back down at his phone. He’s already late, yet he can’t bring his legs to actually carry him to where he needs to go.

So he helplessly watches as David and the girl approach.

‘Hey,’ David says with a smile that seems forced. Or maybe that’s just Matteo projecting his own awkwardness on other people again. ‘Just heading out?’

‘Yeah,’ he says weakly, ‘Work.’

‘Hi,’ the girl says, raising her eyebrows at David, obviously waiting to be introduced. She holds out a hand when David doesn’t move. ‘Laura.’

‘Matteo. Uhm, I really have to go.’

He tries not to look back, but when he does, David holds open the door and Laura puts a teasing finger to his cheek that he swats away playfully. It’s so natural, Matteo aches with it.

*****

Matteo is glad for Abdi, most of the time. Their work schedules overlap to a great extent, so they spend a lot of their worktime bickering and joking around, and he would probably have died of boredom already if it wasn’t for him.

But on days like this, he wishes he would shut his mouth from time to time. Abdi seems to have a never-ending collection of girl stories, dumb jokes and semi-philosophical questions that bounce in the space between his ears, and Matteo just needs a break. He’s been around people all day, studied through his break with Amira, and – he really thinks he deserves a bit of peace, today.

‘Can you shut up for a second?’ he snaps before he can stop himself.

Abdi, bless him, looks more confused than mad. ‘Hä? Digga, chill ma.’

‘Fuck, sorry. Headaches.’ It’s not a lie.

‘All good. Need a break? I can cover for you.’

‘Just a smoke,’ Matteo mumbles, making his exit through the back door.

He lets the smoke fill his lungs and his brain, and it doesn’t help at all.

When he comes back in, Abdi is standing next to the order display with a puzzled expression. ‘Do you know someone called Leon?’

Matteo shakes his head no.

‘But there’s a message for you?’

Matteo huffs. ‘Yeah sure.’

‘Seriously! It says, “Better, Luigi?” and a gun emoji.’

Matteo walks over to him, looking over his shoulder. He really doesn’t know any Leons. In fact, the only person with that name he can think of is – ‘Oh.’

‘What? You know him?’

‘It’s a movie. He’s an assassin.’

‘Okay? Are we worried?’ Abdi shoves the display over to him.

Matteo shakes his head, even though he thinks he should be. It’s not okay that a movie reference and a two-word message can send his heart racing. ‘What’s the order? I’ll take it.’

‘Dude, who is it? Is it a girl? Is it Sara?’

‘Just a friend,’ he says, and it’s not exactly a lie. Matteo might have a stupid crush (He’s not stupid, he knows, okay?), but that won’t stop him from befriending a guy that’s smart and funny and who sends him inside jokes by ordering pizza from his workplace. ‘It’s a boy,’ he adds, hoping that Abdi’s heteronormative brain doesn’t make the connection.

He picks up the order and begins preparing, picking out ingredients that fit with the pizza pepperoni David has ordered.

‘Uhm, that doesn’t go there,’ Abdi says, watching him instead of minding his own orders.

‘Does now,’ Matteo grins. He doesn’t know if David planned for him to take charge of his pizza topping intake, but he definitely knows he won’t mind.

‘Dude, you want another complaint on the cursed telephone?’

‘Matteo looks down at the pizza, trying to smother a smile. He doesn’t know how to tell him that he completely wouldn’t mind. If a little extra Parmigiano and olives can get David to get in touch – that’s worth all the complaints.

*****

Matteo’s almost home when his phone vibrates with a message.

David             Grazie, Luigi!

Matteo            Prego

                       :)

‘What are you smiling about?’ Hans asks.

Matteo shrugs and walks backwards to his room.

‘What, I can’t just be happy to see my roommate?’

Hans laughs. ‘I wish, caterpillar. I wish!’

Chapter Text

Matteo runs down the stairs to the underground station Amira has texted him the address of. He’s late, but what else is new.

He spots a group of five students carrying what looks like professional filming equipment down another set of stairs and hurries to catch up with them.

Omar spots him when he approaches and waves him over.

Matteo has only met the guy once at an awful study date at Amira’s place last year, but Omar immediately pulls him into a bear hug that Matteo tries to reciprocate, so he ends up clapping his back awkwardly.

‘It’s insanely nice of you to help! I can really use another hand.’

‘Uhh. Well, you know Amira,’ Matteo shrugs awkwardly, ‘Didn’t have a choice.’

‘Well, I’m really glad to have you. About every film student in the city is doing their final projects right now, so the guys you can see here are the only people who can give me a hand.’

‘It’s cool. Just tell me where you need me.’

Matteo isn’t really keen to be here, but he feels better, now that he knows he’s actually going to be useful. He might be lazy, but contrary to popular belief, physical labour is not his worst fear – being redundant is.

And that’s as much as he is going to think about that. Because thinking about that means facing all the ways in which he is, in fact, completely useless to the people in his life. So he takes the lighting fixture Omar holds out for him, and smiles through brief introductions.

One girl with a bright smile and a pink hijab is especially chatty, and he ends up standing next to her while Omar runs back and forth to bring his small crew and the three actors in position.

‘We’ve been here all day yesterday as well,’ the girl, whose name Matteo has immediately forgotten says, ‘Omar has very specific visions and he will not let anything get in the way of that.’

‘Except for my missing camera man, apparently!’ Omar runs past them with some sort of fancy tripod in his hands. ‘Next train’s coming in seven. If David’s not there yet, I want you to take over for him, Ada!’ The girl next to him, Ada apparently, salutes, and Matteo almost chokes on air. It’s stupid. He’s sure there’s hundreds of Davids living around Berlin. But he can’t help but turn around to watch the staircase every time his eyes catch some sort of movement in his periphery.

‘So Omar’s got his own camera man?’ he asks, hoping he’s not entirely obvious about the nervous excitement he’s trying to contain.

‘Yeah. Well, David’s a first year, but according to Omar, he’s got the eye.’ She makes a dramatic hand movement in front of her face.

‘Okay Ada, I need you! Everyone on position! Matteo can you pick up the reflector? Just stay exactly where you are. Okay, everybody clear? Action!’

The high screech of an approaching train fills the tunnel and there is a slight wind ruffling the actresses’ hair in just the right way. Even Matteo and his unsophisticated eye can see that it’s an aesthetic shot, the way she walks away from her acting partner while the underground swooshes past her. And even the movements of the crew around them have some beauty to them, the way they move in a seemingly effortless choreography. Everybody knows where they need to go, and even when the mic guy runs into a cable and almost stumbles, he manages to do his job as far as Matteo can tell.

‘Very well. Ten minutes guys!’ Omar walks back to talk to his actors.

Ada joins Matteo again, and for once he is grateful for the company of someone more extraverted than him. ‘Do you have enough food for the day? Your whole day is gonna be like this. Shoot, ten minutes break, shoot, break, shoot break. Omar’s relentless.’

He smiles, ‘Not the worst trait for a director, no?’

‘Not at all. Not for a human either,’ she smiles fondly.

‘Where do you know him from?’ he asks.

‘The mosque. We’ve basically known each other our whole lives.’

‘So you’re doing this on a voluntary basis?’

‘Aren’t you?’

‘I was blackmailed. Or,’ he grins, ‘Asked very nicely. By Omar’s sister.’

‘Oh!’ she beams. ‘Amira’s the best!’

Matteo smiles at that. He wouldn’t have agreed a year ago, but now, even his monkey brain can recognize just how much he owes her. It’s not just his job, and the study help – It’s how she’s never entirely given up on him, even when she’s been exposed to his worst traits on a regular basis. Other than her, there’s only a hand full of people who can say the same.

‘Finally!’ Omar yells and Matteo’s head snaps up early enough to see David approaching him. Or rather, approaching Ada, as he realizes belatedly.

‘Hey,’ David says quietly. He’s looking at Ada, only spares a glance to Matteo. ‘Sorry, I’ll take that,’ he gestures to the camera and turns away quickly.

Matteo feels invisible in an entirely new way. He’s used to the feeling in the general sense, often even tries to blend in with his environment when things get too much, but he hasn’t experienced it yet with David, who’s always kind, always attentive and patient.

‘Great, everybody on position! Thirty seconds guys!’ Omar yells, and Matteo tries to focus back on the scene.

They shoot six takes of arriving trains before Omar tells them to take a longer break. Everybody seems relieved, and Matteo thinks it’s no wonder. Even he feels exhausted, and all he did was holding up a non-heavy object for a few minutes a time.

‘Do you want to get lunch with us?’ Ada asks, but Matteo is already looking for David who is staying behind underground with the filming equipment.

David hasn’t looked at him once while filming, and he knows that probably means he shouldn’t approach him, but after the initial sting, Matteo began to notice things, other things about David. For one, the boy wasn’t actually looking at anyone, not just Matteo. He did his job, and he did it well as far as Matteo could tell. But he used his breaks to check back with Omar, and Omar only, and otherwise busied himself with the equipment, shoulders dragged up, face closed. It’s so unlike the boy Matteo has gotten to know so far that he can’t help but feel worried.

‘Uhm, I’ve got to make a phone call,’ he lies.

She shrugs and joins the others, and Matteo fiddles awkwardly with his phone until they’ve filed out, then grabs his backpack and approaches.

David doesn’t look up, so Matteo just stands there for a few moments staring until he realizes he’s going to have to say something at some point.

‘Hey, na?’ He stumbles over the two syllables.

‘Hi,’ David says, looking up, a little breathless. Matteo finally feels seen again, even if David’s gaze is careful and judging, and some of its usual warmth is missing. He looks exhausted.

‘Everything okay?’ he grabs the handle of his backpack tighter.

‘Yeah, sure, just…’ he points towards the equipment.

‘Shooting people?’

David gives a little smile at that.

‘Uhm, are you hungry? Cause I brought some sandwiches. They’re no pizza pepperoni, but…’

For a second it looks like David wants to say no, but then he sighs and gives a curt nod, so they sit down on the platform across from each other, ignoring the weird looks they get from by-passers. It’s one thing to shoot in a public space; it’s another to just sit there surrounded by equipment, eating sandwiches from the rainbow-coloured lunch box Matteo has borrowed from Hans.

They settle into a semi-comfortable silence. Comfortable, because it’s David. Semi, because Matteo still doesn’t know if he’s welcome in his space right now.

Matteo is the kind of person who can be won over with any type of food at any time, but he still doesn’t now the kind of person David is. He just thinks he does, because David is familiar and safe, and it doesn’t feel like they’ve only known each other for a short amount of time.

‘You know I’ve read up on the Léon movie, and apparently, Luc Besson wanted to film a sequel, but couldn’t because of production politics,’ Matteo says, apropos nothing.

David looks surprised for a second, but then the small smile comes back, and Matteo mentally throws his fist into the air. ‘Yeah, I know. Happens more often than you’d think.’

‘Sucks. I liked Mathilde,’ Matteo says, trying not to show how much every single word that comes out of David’s mouth right now means to him. He knows how hard it is, sometimes. He knows how it is to get tangled up inside his own brain and not being able to find a way out.

‘They actually ended up using the script they had for the sequel for another movie. It’s not too bad either,’ David says.

‘Really?’

‘Yeah.’

‘We should watch that one together sometime.’

David looks as stunned by his words as he feels himself. He didn’t plan to ask him to hang out again, god no. It’s just that he desperately wants to, and his mouth is faster than his brain.

‘I’d like that,’ David says quietly.

Matteo has to look away to hide the smile that takes over his face.

*****

Matteo will never tell them this, but he likes living with his roommates. Hans can be a lot at times, and Mia can be demanding at times, and Linn – Well, Matteo can’t really find any flaws in Linn, to be honest – but they are a lot better than any of the people that have made their appearances during his time at the WG.

When Mia left for Madrid, the WG had the questionable honour of hosting Kiki and Carlos for two months and – Matteo loves Carlos like a brother, and Kiki – he can appreciate her for what she does – or is – for Carlos, and he can see the ways in which she has had to develop, and he can admire that. But he still has a classically conditioned cringe-and-hide reaction to the word ‘Schatz’, and is left with more than one trauma of catching them in the act of trying out whatever sex position Carlos had dug up that time. It’s not like he’s never walked in on Hans and one of his conquests, but at least Hans limits his escapades to his own room and the bathroom.

When Linn moved back in with her parents for one and a half months at the end of the year in order to take care of her sick father, not only did it throw Hans into an especially clingy phase combined with the excitement of holiday season, they also found a guy from Kiki’s business class to sub-rent her room. The guy was nice enough, he even did Matteo’s dishes without complaining, but whatever he did, Matteo just couldn’t feel home with him. He didn’t even know what it was, the polo shirts on the clotheshorse, or the sound of his pretentious coffee roaster, or the way he always asked Matteo how his day had gone.

He much prefers Mia’s quick greetings through doors left ajar, Linn’s quiet excitement over the smallest things, and Hans’ over-the-top but genuine affections at unfitting times.

Today… Today he thinks he might like it a little less. Because when he opens the door to the apartment after a long fucking day of school and work, the first thing he hears is laughter, which isn’t too bad. But the second thing is a screech and a hiss, and then something is attacking his leg.

It’s too small to do any real damage but energetic and motivated enough to make him stumble backwards and land on his ass.

‘No, come here kitty kitty!’ Hans coos above him, having appeared miraculously from the kitchen. ‘That’s just good ol’ grumpy Matteo!’

‘Yeah,’ Linn appears next, grabbing the thing that is currently trying to work its way through his jeans and lifting it up, ‘We like Matteo.’

Matteo debates on whether or not to say thank you, then lands on ‘What the fuck?’

‘Linn got a pet!’ Hans says excitedly, and… yeah, Matteo can see that. ‘Something cute. Or…’ Hans looks back at the struggling demon Linn holds as far from herself as she can, ‘So we thought.’

‘But you brought back Satan?’ Matteo asks.

‘We thought about naming her Diva,’ Mia calls from the kitchen. ‘But I’ll put Satan on the list!’

Matteo huffs and shoves past Linn and her… friend. He’s only shortly surprised to see both Amira and Hanna next to his roommate and holds out his fist for Amira while hugging Hanna. Efficiency, and all that.

‘You still live here?’ he grins, slumping down in the chair next to Mia.

‘Yeah but I have to pick Alex up from daycare at half-past four.’

‘Couldn’t Hans babysit him today?’

‘I have a job, butterfly. Thank you very much.’

‘Yes, you’re a responsible adult, yada yada yada,’ Matteo grins.

‘Snap!’ Hans laughs.

Linn stumbles into the kitchen, arms stretched, the kitten in both hands. ‘Box, I need the box!’

They all stare at her for a few seconds, before jumping into action at the same time, running into each other in the process. It’s Amira, in the end, who gets up gracefully and sweeps the cat box from the kitchen counter and holds it open so that Linn can get rid of Satan incarnated.

‘So, back to the name list?’ Hanna asks, detaching herself from Hans.

‘Not to rain on your parade, but aren’t there more urgent matters than names right now?’ Amira raises a judgemental eyebrow at them.

‘Like?’

‘Like… Figuring out how to tame that thing?’

‘Meh,’ Matteo pops a cookie in his mouth.

‘I’m sure she’ll get tired eventually,’ Linn smiles serenely.

‘Psychologically speaking, a name could help her find her own identity and take control of her aggressive urges,’ Mia states.

‘Are you supposed to make that stuff up, as a first-year psychology student?’ Hanna asks.

‘I don’t know, but it’s fun,’ Mia smiles.

‘Alright, what do you have so far?’ Matteo asks. He’s invested now, okay?

‘So far? Noora, Sassy, Diva, Sana, Eva aaand Satan!’

‘But she didn’t react to anything,’ Hanna explains, ‘So any suggestions are welcome.’

‘Carbonara?’ Matteo says.

‘That’s pasta, not a name, butterfly!’

‘It’s the best kind of pasta you heathen. And it’s a good cat name.’

‘Veto!’, Mia calls.

‘Wait, we get vetoes?’

‘We do now!’

‘Muffin?’ Matteo thinks aloud.

‘Veto!’ Mia shouts and the others groan.

‘If you like Veto so much, you should put it on the list,’ Linn suggests.

‘What about Pringles?’ Matteo grins.

‘Oh, that’s cute!’ Linn beams.

‘Veto!’

‘What, why?’

‘I’m putting in a veto for everything food-related,’ Mia says, ‘I’m not going to call that thing Pfannkuchen, or Chicken Nugget, or Schrippe*, or...’

‘Schrippe!’ Hans and Matteo yell at the same time, making Linn jump and Mia facepalm.

‘Seriously?’

Hans jumps up to open the cat box and lets Schrippe jump on his arm. Now that she has calmed down some, she looks kinda cute. She is white with a black spot right on her snout and her huge eyes are a light blue, and she might be pouting right now, which is adorable.

‘Let’s get you to your bed, yes?’ Hans says.

They all filter out of the kitchen and Matteo is kind of glad for it. He’s exhausted, and human contact does not help, as enjoyable as it has been.

He’s about to close his eyes when Amira’s cough makes him jump.

‘Omar said you were a great help,’ Amira says. She seems surprised by the fact and Matteo can’t blame her.

‘It was fun,’ he shrugs, head in his hands.

‘If you ever want to help again…’ she obviously jokes, but Matteo perks up.

‘Yeah, cool. Just let me know when and where.’

‘Okay…’ she says, bemusedly, ‘I’ll tell him.’

Matteo tries to keep up his poker face and fails spectacularly. He’s pretty sure he’s blushing.

*****

Matteo has gone back to Sara’s Instagram account. He knows he shouldn’t – for one, he’s supposed to be studying right now. And secondly… well secondly, it’s fucked up to stalk your ex-girlfriend’s (or whatever’s) account in order to… stalk another guy. He knows, okay?

There are other pictures of David now, and it doesn’t look like they’re random party pics either. They’re in a park, and at campus, and at some coffee house, and Matteo takes five minutes to absorb the fact. Apparently, that’s a thing now, David and Sara. Or rather, David and Leonie, since she’s smiling into the camera next to him on every single picture it seems.

Leonie’s guy, Sara had slurred that first night, and it only occurs to him now what that might entail. Not: Leonie’s friend. Her guy.

He throws his phone onto his mattress before scrambling to get it back and clicking on the profile that is linked on David’s face.

There are no photos on the account, only drawings, and they are good. Not that Matteo knows what’s good in art, but this definitely is. It has meaning, but not the kind that you can easily put together, or ever. It’s the kind of pieces that art history students could have entire discussions about and still not get to the point. It speaks of freedom and loss and broken wings, like the one with the bird glued on top of a black and white photo of a tree, the first post on the account. And it’s stupid, but some of the drawings calm something in Matteo, like the one with multiple photos of different abandoned places layered above each other. And then there are the ones that are so full of emotions Matteo thinks he can taste the pain that has leaked into the paper. David’s fucking talented. Matteo clicks follow, and he probably would have anyway, even if it wasn’t David.

*****

It takes about three days to get a response. When it comes… it’s kind of all worth it. He’s sitting in his Spanish lesson again, and the girl next to him, that has been overly nice to him for a few weeks now, is smiling at him again, so he’s scrolling through his meme library when the Instagram notification pops up. da_vid.gif has sent you a message. Matteo has never tapped a notification more quickly.

David             Stalking much?

Matteo           not my fault you’re famous

David             That’s what my last stalker said

Matteo           what happened to him?

David             you don’t wanna know

Matteo           [gif]

David             Haha

David             So Omar said you’d be willing to help with shooting again. Is that a general offer or limited to the Mahmood family?

Matteo           depends

                      what’s in it for me?

David             my eternal gratitude?

Matteo           meh

David             what did Omar promise you?

Matteo           his first-born sister

David             Lucky

                      How about I never order pizza hollandaise from you ever again if you go location scouting with me?

Matteo           You’ve got yourself a deal!

David             well played! I’ll let you know when and where

Matteo grins too hard, then loses his phone to his exasperated Spanish teacher. Not that he stops smiling afterwards.

Chapter Text

‘Schrippe, no!’ the scream comes from somewhere close to Mia’s and Linn’s rooms, and Matteo almost decides not to follow up, but then again he took the last of Mia’s pasta yesterday and he feels kind of bad.

He regrets the decision immediately when he rounds the corner only for Mia to point an accusing finger at him.

‘This is your fault!’

Matteo looks down at what looks like the content of a laundry basket, specifically, what looks like the freshly washed content of a laundry basket after a particularly vicious attack. There’s an innocent looking kitten sitting next to the massacre, licking her paws.

‘How is this my fault?’

‘You call her by the name of food, she will behave like one!’

‘Like a bread roll?’

‘Exactly like a bread roll!’

‘Should this make sense to me?’

‘I’m meeting Alex’ dad tomorrow and my laundry is wrecked, I don’t have to make sense!’

Somehow, that sentence seems to bring Schrippe back into action, or maybe it’s just a coincidence that she starts rubbing herself to the garment she’s lazing on.

‘Come on!’ Mia throws her hands in the air.

‘Okay, Brötchen. Let’s go!’ He scoops the little thing up and she cuddles into his hoodie sleeve immediately.

‘Thanks,’ Mia mumbles when he walks off. There’s honestly not much else he could do, it’s not like he’s a laundry, or fashion, or anything-else expert.

But he closes his room door behind them and sets Schrippe down to the floor. She tumbles to the left and falls down on the wooden floor, then starts meowing pitifully.

‘I have to study, buddy,’ Matteo says.

Schrippe pouts – yes, pouts –, then stalks over to Matteo’s bed to scratch at the wood.

‘Not the bed, girl. Come on!’ He scoops her up again and carries her to the closet. ‘This is soft, too, yeah?’

She sniffs at the t-shirt she’s landed on for a few seconds, and only starts meowing when Matteo’s walked over to his desk. ‘Shut up!’

She doesn’t.

‘Lalalalala!’ he shoves his hands over his ears while trying to sort out his Spanish notes with his elbows. It’s hard on a normal day, but with a handicap, it’s almost impossible. If he had an Amira for studying Spanish too, his life would be so much easier. Also, if someone  wouldn’t be trying to get his attention from the closet constantly.

It takes ten minutes before he stalks back over to her. ‘What?’

She meows. (Shocker.)

‘You don’t like the closet?’ He scoops her up. ‘Yeah, I don’t like it much either.’

He snorts and looks down at the unimpressed kitten in his hands. ‘Jokes are lost on you. What even are you good for?’

She cuddles into him, until he opens the big pocket of his hoodie for her and she basically scrambles to get inside.

‘Okay, but shh, now. I need to get this done.’ He smiles when he feels her nuzzling into the fabric of his hoodie. ‘Yeah alright. ‘s nice.’

There’s a sharp knock on the door and a second later, Mia’s head appears in the doorway. Apparently, none of his roommates really grasp the concept of knocking in its entirety.

‘Hey, thanks for taking her. I’m a bit stressed.’

‘That’s alright, she’s playing dead right now,’ he gestures towards his hoodie pocket.

Mia huffs out a laugh. ‘I much prefer her that way.’

‘Did you save your clothes?’

‘Some,’ she opens the door entirely, ‘I could honestly wear the best outfit in the world and I’d still be nervous.’

‘You haven’t met him yet?’

‘It just never happened. First I was in Spain, and then Alex went to London, and with the whole long distance relationship thing, we didn’t really manage to do the whole meeting-the-parents thing,’ she bites her lip. ‘And now it’s kinda awkward, no?’

‘Dunno,’ Matte shrugs. ‘But he’d be stupid not to like you.’

Mia smiles and goes quiet for a few seconds. ‘There’s some Kartoffelgratin leftover in the kitchen. If you want.’

‘Kartoffelgratin would be a good dog name,’ Matteo contemplates.

‘Don’t you dare!’ she gives him a stern look that transforms into a smile while she leaves the room.

 *****

The problem with getting attached to his pet (okay, Linn’s pet, technically) is that you can’t really take a kitten anywhere that’s not home, and Matteo misses his demon-cat. So he’s grumpy standing in the kitchen of Pizza Adventures, and Abdi’s being annoying, and his phone has been blowing up with messages from his mom again. She’s home from the clinic and wants to see him. She’s praying for him. She still has his Christmas present. Does he want to come by?

There’s another message he isn’t looking at anymore. ‘Do you have to work?’ ‘Ja :(‘ and then – nothing. So he probably completely blew his chances of helping David filming. Because of this stupid job that he needs but kinda hates. Today, that is.

So he really just wants to go home, and there’s only a few orders left, he is so close – close to going home, falling into bed, cuddling his kitten – when the cursed telephone rings minutes before the order deadline.

‘Your turn!’ Abdi beams.

He’s too tired to say fuck you.

‘Pizza Adventures, you’re talking to Matteo. What can I do for you?’

‘No Pizza Hollondaise, that’s for sure.’

Matteo almost chokes. ‘Not if you still want that help?’

‘What are you doing after your shift?’

‘Uh. Nothing. Yet.’

‘I’ll pick you up.’

‘You have a valid order?’

‘Surprise me!’

Matteo’s supposed to be off before Abdi today and is now confronted with the challenge of getting rid of him. It shouldn’t be an actual challenge, because Abdi’s almost as lazy as he is, but if Abdi is good at one thing, it’s knowing his friends.

‘Wait, you want to stay longer?’

‘Dagmar’s waiting for you, isn’t she?’

‘Well, don’t you have Schippe now, too?’

‘Schrippe. And she’s with Linn today.’

‘Still, why would you do this for me?’

‘Well –‘ There’s this guy, he almost says, I really like him, so I need you to not be here when he comes. What he ends up saying is some bullshit like ‘Ever since I’ve got Schrippe, I really found a deep understanding of what it means to miss your pet. I know you’ve been missing your turtle.’, which leads to Abdi contemplating about the colour of turtle eyes for six and a half minutes.

It’s bullshit, but it works, so shortly after, Matteo is back to cleaning the kitchen in record time while the Pizza Funghi with extra parma ham is in the oven.

*****

Somehow, this time it’s easy to turn around when David comes in. And Matteo can’t help the smile that takes over his face.

‘Hey,’ David says, bouncing on his heels.

‘Hi! Pizza’s almost done.’

David smiles back and sits down at the counter, watching him as Matteo performs the last bit of cleaning, but for some reason, Matteo doesn’t feel observed, he just feels seen. It’s disconcerting how undisconcerting this is.

‘I was –‘ David starts, then stops when Matteo turns around to face him, so they stare at each other for an uncomfortably comfortable time. ‘Sorry. I mean for last time. I was a bit out of it.’

Matteo nods, curtly. The thing is: he is a bit relieved. Relieved that David isn’t that picture-perfect boy he thought he met on the stairs that first day. That if David gets into his own head sometimes, maybe Matteo can do the same and it would be okay.

He doesn’t say any of that though. It’s too big of a maybe.

‘It’s cool,’ he says, and it’s true but terribly inadequate. And then, because he is a coward, and he doesn’t know where this conversation could take him, he says: ‘Eat in or take-away?’

They end up taking the pizza with them to the first location David wants to check out. They mostly cycle next to each other, as far as Matteo’s capable of keeping up with the other boy.

‘So, this is for your first-year project?’

‘Yeah… Although it’s a bit more ambitious than it should be and I’ll probably end up using a lot of the material for a bigger, private project.’

‘What is it about?’

‘On a basic level? Two brothers with a love-hate relationship sabotaging each other’s life. Thematically, it’s about self-hate and guilt, and suffocation in your own life and –‘ he stops himself. ‘Sorry, I guess the basic level is enough.’

Matteo doesn’t know how to answer that, because no, it’s not enough. It’s never enough when David starts talking, and he doesn’t really understand. Matteo has friends he loves, and he likes talking to – almost all of them, but after some time around people, and if they use too many words, he shuts down. It’s just how his brain seems to work. With David, he wants to hear more. He just doesn’t know how to politely say ‘please don’t ever stop talking; your voice is the best thing I’ve ever heard.’

He ends up saying nothing, just kicking the pedals of his bikes a bit more violently.

‘Where are we going?’ he asks.

‘Let yourself be surprised,’ David smiles.

Matteo rolls his eyes. They are in a neighbourhood full of old buildings, all of them with their own charm. It’s no use guessing where they will go. Judging by David’s Instagram account, he is one of those people who take something ordinary and transform it into something special. They might be going to a fucking Späti and sit in front of a shelve with twenty different foreign vodka bottle to figure out their cinematic and aesthetic value for all he knows.

‘There we are!’ Sure enough, they stop in front of an unassuming building made of red brick walls. David pulls out a key for the front door.

‘Is this where you plan to kill me?’ he asks when they walk into the dark staircase.

‘Jury’s still out,’ David says offhandedly.

‘Well, you just let me know,’ Matteo grins, and even though he can only see his back, he knows David’s laughing, too.

They walk up a bunch of stairs that Matteo gives up counting after a while. It’s a standard staircase with a communal cleaning plan; it gets grittier the further up you walk, and since it’s old, and a residential building, he rationally knows it can’t be that high, but he’s just cycled alongside a person much fitter than him, so of course he’s out of breath when they reach a dead-end at the top of the stairs.

‘There we are!’ David grins, and it takes Matteo a while to follow his gaze upwards to a trap door in the ceiling.

‘So you really do plan to kill me,’ he deadpans.

‘No, come on, there’s even a ladder.’ David makes a jump for the handle in the trap door and miraculously doesn’t die by falling down the stairs next to them. Matteo’s sure he would manage if it was him.

But there’s a brittle ladder folding out when the trap door is pulled down, and David’s up there before Matteo can tell him, no, he’s quite sure he’s gonna die of exertion and anxiety if he climbs up any higher, especially since he’s still holding a pizza box in one of his hands. So of course he follows.

David’s standing too close to the edge for Matteo’s liking, with his back to the abyss, waiting for Matteo to emerge. His gaze is attentive, patient, and Matteo has missed him. It’s completely irrational, he hasn’t even known him all that long, but he’s spent whole days thinking about the way David makes him feel, and now that feeling is back with a force, and he’s missed it.

‘Come, take a look!’ David says.

‘Uhm, yeah. I can see… from here,’ Matteo says from where he’s standing safely. Three extra metres between him and the edge.

David tilts his head, eyes full of mischief. ‘Heights?’ he grins.

‘No, thank you,’ Matteo jokes weakly.

‘Come on,’ David says, ‘it gets better when you sit down.’

So Matteo joins him at his spot, with barely a metre to spare between them and certain death. Objectively, dying wouldn’t be great right now. Not when he’s really content with… well not where he is, but with who. Whom? Who? He gets stuck in his head for a second, not realizing that David has asked him something until he meets his questioning grin directed at him.

‘What?’

‘How do you like it? As a filming location?’

‘It’s amazing,’ he says. Because it really is. The sun has long set and Berlin, or what they can see from here, is glowing underneath. It’s not much, maybe some four street corners and a bridge, they’re not high enough to overlook many of the surrounding houses, but the sky is bigger here, closer, and it feels a bit like they’re lost to the world.

‘I got the keys from a friend. I’d told her that I was thinking about using very obvious symbolism and then break it off in more creative ways. Like, using only claustrophobic basement shots, and wide rooftop shots in the first third or so of the movie, and then, I don’t know, slowly break the pattern.’

‘So basements for confinement, and rooftops for freedom?’

‘Yes!’ David beams, ‘Although, that’s the obvious association. And I want to… go a bit further. Show, how there’s constraint in freedom, too. Because the freedom to choose forces just that. A choice. So then, there’s also peace in confinement, right?’

‘Yeah,’ Matteo says, ‘but what if you choose confinement?’

‘As in?’

‘As in, you choose not to choose.’

‘That’s a choice, too.’

‘So then there’s really no difference,’ Matteo says, and it’s so fucking dumb he almost cringes at his own words.

But then there’s a brush of fingertips against his hand and he’s almost sure that it’s too purposeful to be by mistake. But then the fingertips leave again, and that’s purposeful too, he thinks. So he releases his breath again.

‘Yeah,’ David says quietly, ‘No difference at all.’

‘Did you go to film school right after Abi?’ Matteo asks.

‘Yeah… I applied right after, didn’t think I would get in, to be honest.’

‘But you did?’

David hums but doesn’t elaborate.

‘I still don’t really know what I want to do. After,’ Matteo says. ‘I got into a fight with one of my roommates last year, about how she thought I was self-sabotaging myself. How I failed my Abi because I was afraid of what would come afterwards.’

‘You got mad?’

Matteo shrugs. ‘She says I’m not dumb enough to fail under normal circumstances. But I’m not so sure.’

David makes a sound in the back of his throat that he seems to be trying to suppress. His eyes are wide and sad, and Matteo’s afraid he’s going to contradict him and then he’s gonna have to pretend to believe him.

‘I don’t think anyone is sure of that,’ David finally says, because of course he doesn’t go down the predictable path. Matteo presses his fingers into the concrete beneath them to keep from reaching out. Because he really fucking wants to.

‘Says the film making prodigy?’ he smirks, after too much time has passed.

‘You can be dumb in many ways, I guess.’

‘I certainly can, thank you very much,’ Matteo jokes.

David huffs. ‘If you’re fishing for compliments here, I can’t help you. Compliments are only giving out on Sundays, and the third Tuesday of the month I’m afraid. Company policy.’

‘Fuck off. If self-deprecating jokes would be fishing for compliments I’d be disappointed a lot.’

‘I guess that’s what they call coping with a cruel reality?’

‘Hello? I wasn’t fishing for insults either!’

‘Oh? My bad,’ David grins.

‘That’s enough! No pizza for you!’

‘No, I didn’t mean it!’ David makes a jump for the cartoon that’s still resting on top of Matteo’s thigh, but for once, Matteo’s reflexes don’t betray him as he jumps sidewards. There’s a thud when David follows though, and Matteo manages to push the pizza aside before he’s pinned to the roof on his back, his hands dangling over the edge.

‘Holy fuck,’ he says, and then, because David doesn’t say anything, just stares down at him with dark eyes and flushed cheeks, and it’s a bit overwhelming, him, and the night sky above him. ‘So about that killing thing… any chance you would be willing to negotiate?’

David shakes his head no, still so serious. ‘You look good like this.’

Matteo swallows, follows the lines of his cheekbones to his mouth with his eyes, then looks up to see that David’s mirroring the motion. ‘What about company policies?’ Matteo’s grin fades, a little, because – because David’s no laughing matter. He’s not someone Matteo’s just going to be able to forget if this goes inevitably wrong, and Matteo ends up being alone again.

David’s no laughing matter, but he’s also – He’s also not someone Matteo can run from, realistically. He doesn’t want to, either.

So he leans forward, upwards, just a bit, and hears David suck in a breath, and then maybe, because they’re close, so close – he thinks he can feel the rush of an exhale on his lips. And it’s slow and careful, and David’s hands on his wrists soften their grip, just a little bit, and then he can almost, almost feel his upper lip pressing softly against his, before – there’s a loud noise, and then silence.

Matteo takes about five seconds to remember where (and who) he is when David’s already crouching down next to the trap door that has fallen down.

‘Uhm,’ he says, ‘Fuck.’

‘Fuck doesn’t sound awesome,’ Matteo sits up embarrassingly slow, ruffling his own hair.

‘It’s not,’ David says, and again – ‘Fuck.’

Matteo’s still too fucking groggy to process much of the situation, which is probably good, because if he would, he’d be panicking, and he doesn’t think that would be entirely safe on a rooftop in the middle of Berlin.

‘You don’t think jumping would be a solution, do you?’ David jokes weakly. He begins pacing the rooftop, and Matteo follows because he doesn’t know what else to do.

‘There, a fire escape!’ David beams.

‘You’re kidding?’ Matteo looks at the thing in horror. A thin, rusty ladder leading straight down the building wall into his certain death. He’s not being melodramatic here – that thing is a death trap.

‘Might be the only way.’ David bites his bottom lip and Matteo is distracted for a second.

But – ‘No fucking way. I’d rather stay up here forever, eating pigeon meat for all I care. I’m not getting on that thing. Seriously, I –’ he can feel himself getting more riled up with the second, the situation finally seeping in, his pulse quickening, until he can feel a hand against his arm, and somehow it manages to ground him.

‘It’s okay, I’ll call Leonie. She gave me the key. Maybe she has another one, or knows where to get one.’

Matteo groans. Because of course, it’s Leonie. Of course it’s Leonie who’s going to find them up here. Fuck.

David pulls out his phone from his back pocket.

‘Hi Leonie, uhm, dumb story but… we’re on that roof right now and we’re kinda… stuck? The door closed behind us.’

Matteo tries to keep his gaze on the horizon and his lips from tingling, and his head from chanting almost, almost, almost, but then he can feel David’s eyes on him again, so he turns.

‘Uhm, yeah, that’s… Uhm,’ David says, biting his lip. ‘Yeah, that’s… Uhm. Awesome. Thanks.’ He hangs up and stares at Matteo for a few seconds, and Matteo feels bare under his searching gaze.

‘Dumb question, but… Did you know that Sara lives here?’

Matteo’s eyes widen to a comical degree and he thinks David gets it but he also thinks he needs to say something, to tell him, that no, he didn’t let his crush walk onto his ex-girlfriend’s rooftop with him wittingly, so… ‘Sara?!’ he says dumbly.

‘Yeah, Leonie got the roof key from her; she’s the one who…’

Matteo finally finds some words in his brain, so he interrupts. ‘No, I… I knew she moved out of her parent’s place last October, but… I was never… I was never here. I swear.’

‘You never visited her?’ David finally breaks eye contact to look at his fingernails. His voice sounds so fucking small. Matteo wants to fling himself off the rooftop.

‘Not since like, after we broke up,’ he mumbles, ‘but that was last year.’ He really, really doesn’t want to discuss the mess that is his life. And speaking of which, he really, really doesn’t want Sara to come up here and find him with David. He really doesn’t want anyone to find them here. If it was up to him, they would stay up here, in their little bubble above the heads of three and a half million people and no-fucking-one would ever find them. But – he eyes that damned fire escape again. It’s not so bad, honestly. A little rusty, and possibly the way to his death but…

His head whips around when David starts laughing, and Matteo’s brain is confused for a second between being extremely put out by the situation and the joy that comes from seeing that beautiful laugh again, but then laughter bubbles in his throat, too.

‘You’re seriously considering the fire escape!’ David laughs, ‘You said you’d rather feed on pigeons than die on that thing, but you’re considering the fucking fire escape!’ He barely brings out the last few words before he cracks up again.

‘That just shows my priorities right now!’ Matteo calls out exasperatedly. ‘Pigeons, certain death, meeting my ex on a rooftop.’

David smile grows incredibly fond and Matteo doesn’t think he deserves it right now, but it makes his fingertips itch to reach out again.

‘Let’s go,’ David breathes and then he reaches out, grabs him by the hand and drags him to the edge of the roof.

‘You’re serious?’

‘More serious than death,’ David smiles, then waits. It takes Matteo a few seconds to catch up. To recognize that David is giving him the choice, ultimately.

‘Let’s.’

Matteo disentangles their hands and stretches his fingers at the loss. He only takes a second to look down the ladder, but it’s already too much. ‘Fuck!’

‘Don’t look down,’ David murmurs, which is very fucking unhelpful. A hand finds the small of his back, a thumb pressed briefly into his hip. Fuck, he thinks again, but in an entirely new way.

He reaches for the handle and his feet find the first step. It’s easier than he thought and he gets into a rhythm after a few steps, and he doesn’t look down anymore. He does make the mistake of looking up about ten steps above the ground to see David slowly following him down the ladder and there’s legs and… other body parts in quite tight black jeans and, well… that’s distracting in entirely different ways.

He’s pretty sure he’s blushing when he reaches the ground and he hopes David will pin it on the exertion, but then David jumps down the last two steps and stumbles into him, and then he pushes him further into the wall next to them, this time with purpose, and then his lips are on his, and it’s only a peck, but it still leaves Matteo breathless. Or, again, it could be the exertion, but fuck, Matteo knows better. He knows what he’s feeling; he knows what he has been feeling ever since he sat in that rundown staircase with this boy.

So he pushes back, first shoulders, then he finds his hips instead, and then it’s David being pushed against the wall and Matteo forgets all about where his hands are because now there’s lips and they’re both soft and firm against his own, and he can’t really comprehend how that’s possible, and then teeth scraping his bottom lip, and he didn’t know kissing could feel like this. Like dipping your feet into the sea after a long hot summer day, like finding solid ground after climbing down a death trap of a ladder. Like coming home, but a thousand times more exciting.

And the troubling thing is, he doesn’t think he can stop. Like, if there’s no one keeping him from kissing this boy whose pulse flutters underneath his fingertips, he’s just going to keep doing it.

But then he can feel David smiling into the kiss and then he can’t really help but smile, too, because that’s how it seems to work between them. David’s fucking magnetic and Matteo would follow him about everywhere.

They keep breathing together, foreheads touching.

It’s both peaceful and exhilarating, and Matteo slowly comes to realize that he can’t let this moment go. He can’t let it stop, not yet.

‘My place?’ he asks.

David hesitates, so Matteo places another small kiss on his lips. ‘It’s okay, we can just stay here.’ He’s glad that he doesn’t sound as panicked as he feels.

‘No,’ David’s voice is a low murmur against his lips. They’re still so close, and Matteo already regrets having to let him go at some point, ‘Let’s go.’

Chapter Text

The thing is, Matteo remembers being happy. He wasn’t a sad child at all, he was cheeky and witty, and he got into more trouble than all of his friends combined.

And even this last shitty year, there were moments of genuine joy.

But he can’t remember ever feeling this content.

Waking up in David’s arm is something else.

‘Morgen,’ David mumbles into his hair when he stirs, pressing a kiss against his forehead.

‘Mhmhmng,’ Matteo says, nuzzling into his neck.

David laughs, tightening his grip around Matteo’s shoulder. They sleep.

*****

‘Hi,’ Matteo whispers against his lips when consciousness finds them again.

‘Hey,’ David whispers back, playing with the hair that falls into Matteo’s eyes, ‘Sleep well?’

‘Mhm,’ he moves the last centimetres to close the distance between them. He doesn’t think he can ever get enough of this.

‘Breakfast?’ David asks into their kiss, ‘I’m starving.’

Matteo nods, reluctantly rolling over to look for a semi-clean set of sweatpants on his floor.

‘Uhm,’ he says, hand on the handle when David moves to join him. He wasn’t exactly planning to hide David from anyone. If coming out to his roommates by parading the guy he spent the whole night making out with around is the price to pay for being with David, that’s…, so worth it. And it’s not like they’re gonna react in a negative way. He knows that. But he doesn’t want to end up in Hans’ vogueing class next Thursday or discussing blow job techniques over breakfast. And it’s just not how he planned to come out. Not that he has planned it.

It’s not like he planned for David to like him back.

‘Matteo?’ David asks quietly when he doesn’t move.

‘Uhm,’ he says again, because he’s an idiot, and his brain has stopped working. ‘I’m not… you know… out. To my roommates.’

‘Okay,’ David cocks his head, ‘You know that’s okay, right?’

Matteo shrugs.

‘I don’t mind. For all I care, I’m your cousin… Davide of Firenze.’

‘Not my cousin,’ Matteo mumbles, moving to press his lips against David’s briefly, and is pulled back by his hoodie when he turns to leave.

He ends up pinned to the door panting into David’s mouth. Not like he’s complaining.

*****

The kitchen is blissfully empty and Matteo feels stupid for even bringing up the non-issue, but then David leans against the counter with some distance between them, and it makes Matteo feel better.

He also feels really shitty about feeling better about it.

‘Pasta or Sandwiches?’

‘Knowing your talent for pizza toppings, I am very interested in what you can do when you cook pasta,’ David smiles, and he’s fucking genuine, too. It’s like he really expects things from Matteo. It’s a bit troubling when Matteo doesn’t really know if he can deliver, but it makes him want to try.

‘Va bene,’ he grins, ‘Although I’m a bit handicapped seeing that I don’t have shit in terms of ingredients. Also, you’re gonna help.’ He throws him an onion that David catches easily, but eyes like it’s his mortal enemy and meant to be defeated.

‘Can’t I just be responsible for the entertainment? Or like… an ornamental prop?’

‘No, that would be my role!’ They both turn to see Hans standing in the doorway, striking a pose even though there’s a struggling kitten in his hand. ‘I’m Hans. The roommate,’ he moves to shake David’s hand but seems to remember the cat in his hands and moves back.

‘David,’ David smiles, ‘Onion appointee.’

‘Responsible job,’ Hans smiles.

‘Yeah,’ Matteo agrees, ‘Don’t fuck it up!’

‘Harsh tone in the kitchen. I’m off to my bath yoga class. You keep Schrippe from destroying any more of Mia’s property. I don’t want her to leave us.’

‘Mia wouldn’t throw you out,’ Matteo tells Schrippe, holding her up in front of his face.

Hans rolls his eyes. ‘I meant Mia, butterfly. Toodles!’

Matteo picks up a cutting board and a knife, but when he turns to David, the other boy is grinning mischievously, and Matteo realizes something awful just happened.

‘Butterfly?’

‘No, don’t you dare. Only Hans is allowed to give me silly pet names!’

‘What about Luigi?’

‘Luigi is not a silly pet name. How dare you!’

‘I’m just trying to figure out what’s allowed here,’ David grins.

‘You’re allowed to cut that onion. That’s it!’

‘Why thank you!’

‘You’re welcome. Now shut up!’

*****

David ends up going home at some point, and Matteo tries not to be too put out by it. He knows, technically, that he can’t keep the boy in his room for the entirety of forever, but he doesn’t have to like it, okay?

So he ends up lazing on his bed the entire afternoon, and if he’s hugging the pillow David has used the night before no one needs to know.

He startles when there’s a knock and then Mia’s standing in his doorway.

‘That’s not how knocking works,’ Matteo says, ‘You’re supposed to wait.’

‘You’re supposed to clean the kitchen once you’re done cooking,’ Mia smiles, ‘I guess we’re both rule-breakers.’

Matteo huffs.

‘The girls are coming over soon. I wanted to know if you would like to join us?’

‘Join you for your girls’ night?’

‘Well, Sam’s not here, so we’re one down.’

‘Do I have to colour my hair?’

‘No, it’s enough if you just wear something really colourful.’

‘I’ll see,’ he sits up. ‘How was Axel’s father by the way?’

‘Strict. Rich. Fairly nice,’ she says, ‘Could have been worse, I suppose.’

‘High praise!’

His phone vibrates.

David             I have to actually go location scouting this weekend. Are you in?

Matteo           Sure, we have a deal, no?

David             Saturday, 10:00!

‘I found this in the kitchen, by the way,’ Mia says, reminding him that his private smile is actually not so private right now. She holds up some sort of book Matteo doesn’t think he’s seen before. ‘Do you know who it could belong to?’

‘Uhm, no. Maybe a friend’s. I’ll ask him.’

‘Okay, I’ll leave it with you, then,’ She puts it down on the bed next to him, seeming to think it over. ‘There are some drawings in there, so… maybe you’ll recognize them?’

He shrugs. ‘Yeah, I’ll have a look.’ He knows that he won’t though. If he knows anything about David, it’s that he’s a fairly private person. The way he keeps up this mysterious persona, the way he’d rather share deep thoughts about life than any sorts of facts about himself.

Matteo           Did you forget your sketchbook here?

He doesn’t expect David to answer immediately, never mind call.

‘Uhm, I’ve got to take this,’ he says, trying to shield the phone from Mia’s view. She raises an eyebrow but actually closes the door behind herself.

‘Hey,’ he says.

‘Hi.’

Matteo waits, but there’s nothing more, just the silence between them. Something is wrong.

‘You okay?’

David coughs. ‘Yeah. You saw my book?’

‘It’s right here,’ Matteo says, ‘My roommate found it.’

David is silent again.

‘So… You need it? You can pick it up if you want,’ he smiles carefully, even though the other boy can’t see him, ‘Or we can stage another handover.’

‘Did you look inside?’

‘No. Figured it might be private?’

‘It is,’ David sounds relieved.

‘So, handover?’

‘You just want another date,’ David says, back to his teasing self.

‘So you’re saying that was a date?’

‘Well, you did end up getting a goodbye kiss.’

‘Several.’

‘Several,’ David laughs.

It’s a nice sound, and Matteo decides that he wants this. He knew that, of course, but it hasn’t been a decision so far. There’s been this pull that he feels towards David, but this is him, the rational part of him, saying Fuck it, I’m in.

‘I do, though,’ he says, ‘Want a date that is.’

He really hopes David is smiling into the silence. Because he deserves to smile all the time. That’s a fact.

‘Just tell me when and where,’ David says, and Matteo falls over onto his mattress.

‘I will.’

*****

So, Matteo has done something stupid, he realizes. Not only has he asked out the boy he liked on a date (how did that happen, anyway?), but he apparently agreed to plan the whole thing. Matteo’s never planned anything, and he’s never been on a date either, except for one butchered attempt with Sara.

He’s seen movies, but he doesn’t remember anything that would be his or David’s style. He’s tagged along with Jonas and Hanna sometimes but they never did anything apart from going to the movies or getting ice cream. And since Matteo was there, it probably couldn’t even be called a date, technically.

So, to conclude, he’s fucked.

He hasn’t texted David in twenty-four hours and he’s sure there’s a time frame in which you’re supposed to let someone know about the plans you’ve made for them.

‘You look like someone stole your weed,’ Hans says, plopping down on the chair next to Matteo with Schrippe in his hands. The cat seems to have calmed down some since she moved into the flat, but as soon as she recognizes Matteo, she begins to struggle to get into his lap.

Matteo makes a face, then takes Schrippe to cuddle her into the space between his neck and his shoulder. It’s true what they say apparently, pets are a comfort in times of distress. Not that David is a source of distress. He just… deserves a lot. Matteo isn’t sure he can deliver.

‘I’m useless,’ he groans.

‘At vacuuming? Yes. At everything else? Far from, butterfly. What’s wrong?’

Matteo gives him a small smile.

‘Come on. How can I help you?’

Matteo thinks it over. He can’t tell Hans what’s going on, and he doesn’t think anyone can help him anyway. It’s no use.

‘It’s fine,’ he says.

‘Come on, tell meee!’ Hans whines, ‘I’m undoubtedly the best listener in this flat, and I am a very helpful person. I’ve helped Linn find a dozen hobbies, and Mia the woollen socks Schrippe had stolen. I come with references!’

‘Plus, you’re bored?’

‘Plus, I’m bored!’

‘No offence Hans, but I don’t think you of all people can help me with this.’

‘Me of all people? What is that supposed to mean?’ Hans says, faux-outraged.

‘Just that…,’ Matteo shrugs helplessly. ‘I don’t know, just – okay, so I’m planning a date – you can’t tell anyone okay? It’s fresh –,‘ he hurries to add. ‘But, you know, if you’d help me with this, the idea would probably end up being too – gay. You know what I mean?’ He’s pretty sure he’s doing an awful job at explaining, judging by Hans’ shell-shocked face. And it’s not like the gay thing is a problem. David’s a boy, he himself is a boy – he’s aware. It’s just… ‘I mean, like, gay-gay. Dancing to Beyoncé, everything super-dramatic, over the top…’

‘I didn’t know you had a problem with me,’ Hans says, and now Matteo knows he fucked up because Hans looks upset.

‘It’s not a problem at all; it’s just not what I wanna do.’

‘Because it’s too gay-gay,’ Hans deadpans, defiance in his voice.

‘I didn’t mean –‘

‘No, you said what you meant. You were making a judgement based on stereotypes you think I fit,’

‘I’m not even saying it’s a bad thing, listen –‘

‘No, you listen up, caterpillar. What you call over the top, I call being myself. I have had to be braver than you and your little monkey brain can comprehend. I’m not pretending to be something I’m not. If that’s over-dramatic to you, you friggin deal with that or move out.’

‘Hans –‘

‘No, I don’t want to talk about that anymore. I – gotta give Schrippe a bath. If you don’t mind?’ It’s not an actual question, so Matteo hands her over.

He’s an asshole. Fuck, he’s such an asshole. An asshole, who hurts his friends, who can’t figure out how to make the guy he likes happy, who’s gonna blow his second and last chance to get his Abi, an asshole who doesn’t know where he’s going, except he does and it’s nowhere pretty.

This is what he does when he wants something too much. He leaves corpses left and right. He did it to Hanna two years ago when he thought he wanted Jonas too much, all for himself. That was maybe the first instance Matteo showed his true, ugly colours.

The worst is though – the worst is when Matteo wants to be free too much. To make his own decisions, to leave the confinement of the peoples’ arms that love him, or think they do.

Because Matteo becomes desperate with it, desperate to leave a mother who can’t get out of bed and throws plates at him the next day. Desperate to leave a girlfriend who wants too much from him.

People think Matteo’s one deathly sin is sloth, but he knows better. He knows the reason he can’t go to church with his mother again is greed. That, and – that and the other thing.

If Matteo still believed in God, he’d at least have the certainty of knowing where he was heading, after. If Matteo still believed in fate, he’d at least have the excuse of following a path that was laid out for him.

But he doesn’t, so there’s only him, and his bad decisions.

And would you look at that, even his distress is self-centred.

Chapter Text

‘I found this location we can take a look at on Saturday. It’s an abandoned pool at an old military base that looks really cool,’ David says, legs dangling from the wall they’re sitting on.

In the end, Matteo decided that he doesn’t need to plan a fancy date for David just yet. For now, they’re getting to know each other. And what better way to do it than to get ice cream. He now knows his favourite flavour (Chocolate. What a loser.) and the way he eats his cone (Biting. Matteo can’t believe he likes this guy.) and that’s important information to be obtained.

‘Nice,’ he says. He doesn’t think he has said much more than ten words since they’ve met up in front of David’s lecture hall, but if David notices, he doesn’t show it. In fact, he seems to take the initiative more, talking about everything and nothing, telling Matteo about the time he ate 9 coups of ice cream, or the time someone tried to touch his hair because ‘it looked so fluffy’ which brings him to a rant about everyday racism that Matteo follows with his mouth slightly agape, because holy fuck, David really is the whole package, isn’t he? He’s so fucking smart and passionate, and Matteo could never.

‘Yeah, maybe you can walk through the frame for me, just so I can try out some angles, take some pictures and short clips,’

‘Should I dress up?’

‘Yes, please. I’m thinking sexy nurse costume.’

Matteo huffs, ‘In your dreams!’

‘True,’ David ducks his head and smiles, and his pinkie reaches over to touch Matteo’s. Matteo’s not proud at how his breath hitches at the simple contact.

The sun hasn’t been around for too long, and he doesn’t think it will stay – it never does. April at the latest they will be drowned in buckets of rain again. The park is full of people like them who soak up the sun like starving people who don’t know when they’ll eat again. So this is all they’ve been doing. Careful, searching touches, or sometimes not careful at all, like the time Matteo tackled David so close to the waterside they ended up in serious danger of falling in.

Sometimes, he can’t believe how easy it is with David. How he never has to be careful with his words around him, how he can shove and tease and touch, how David can be open and vulnerable with him and Matteo can be open and vulnerable in return.

‘So when’s your first exam?’ David asks.

‘Next week,’ he says, ‘History’

David hums. ‘I hate history.’

‘Really?’ Matteo thinks a movie nerd like David should be inspired by the topic, or maybe that’s just his own narrow mind.

‘Really. I mean, not that I hate history itself? Not all of it at least. Just the way it’s told.’

‘My history teacher says “dunnit” at the end of each sentence,’ Matteo jokes, ‘So I know exactly what you mean.’

‘Haha,’ David says, rolling his eyes at him.

‘No, I understand,’ Matteo says, ‘You mean, how for example 95% of history books are about men, right?’

‘Yeah, that. But also, it’s so rigid. History is treated as this ultimate truth, barely interpretation needed, when reality is barely, if ever that unambiguous.’ David kicks off the wall unexpectedly and Matteo scrambles to follow. ‘I mean, it’s how you say. White cis-hetero men are in power, so they create truth. It’s not because people are repressed that they’re insignificant in the grand scheme of things, our – their voices just aren’t heard. They get a footnote if they’re lucky, and they’re talked about instead of getting to tell their story themselves.’

David is walking quickly now, like the conversation has riled him up. Matteo wants to say something smart, but he stays silent next to him. Jonas made him proofread one of his essays on post-truth and gender theory a while ago, so he probably even could say something that’s not entirely dumb, but he doesn’t risk it. He just pulls his shoulders up a little more.

They walk silently next to each other, and Matteo thinks maybe David is looking for words, like him. They walk aimlessly, slowing down some, and their hands brush from time to time.

‘I’ve got to tell you –‘, David says, but that’s the moment Matteo’s mind goes blank and he drags David to the side into the bushes.

‘What the –’

He presses a hand on David’s mouth and follows the figure that passes them, unassuming, on the path next to them, with his eyes, until she’s vanished behind another set of trees.

David stays still next to him, for an uncomfortably long time.

‘Who was that?’ he asks when Matteo doesn’t move either, eyes cast to the ground.

‘No one,’ Matteo says, but without missing a beat: ‘My mother.’

David nods like that was his first guess, too. ‘She can’t see me?’

Matteo frowns, ‘What? No, she can’t see me. I –’

This is the moment, then. The moment David will realize what a major fuck-up he is. ‘It’s not good between us,’ he says vaguely, ‘I – I left.’

It’s all he wants to say about that, but David looks at him patiently, like he always does when Matteo needs a second to sort out his brain. ‘I left her when she wasn’t doing good. My father left, and… then I did, too.’

David hums, not judging, Matteo thinks, just listening.

‘I’d tell her about you though,’ Matteo says, blushing when David’s gaze turns intense. ‘If I’d still talk to her. I’d tell her I met this guy, who’s a bit mysterious. Who might or might not be an assassin. Who has the worst taste in pizza toppings –’

‘– Hey!’

‘You know it’s true. Do you want to get out of the bushes?’

‘Brilliant idea,’ David says.

They keep walking, the sun slowly setting, the canal to their right. Matteo feels better every second. It’s still tense, but David makes him sit down by the water and listen to his music, and they lay down and watch the sky turn a darker blue.

‘When did you move out?’ David asks.

It’s a simple question, but it still surprises him. He thought they were done with the topic. He is done with the topic. ‘Last year around this time,’ he says, nevertheless.

‘You haven’t seen your mom since?’

‘I just saw her twenty minutes ago,’ he deadpans.

‘I know… But – Christmas? Birthdays?’

‘What?’ he frowns, ‘Are you trying to make me feel bad?’

‘Course not,’ David ducks his head, just as Take me to Church by Hozier comes on in the playlist, and Matteo’s stomach turns. He reaches over to grab for David’s hand, and he lets him, for a few seconds, before getting up abruptly. ‘I should head home. My sister will be waiting with dinner.’

Matteo swallows around the lump in his throat. ‘Okay.’

‘You’re staying?’

He nods.

‘Okay, I’ll see you. I – had fun today,’ David says.

‘Me too.’

‘Good,’ David smiles.

‘Yeah.’ His own smile is weak. He sits by the river until it’s too dark to see his own mirror image in the soft waves, then he walks home, fists clenched into his jacket pockets.

*****

Matteo is fucking tired by the time Saturday comes around. He’s been able to avoid Hans for the last few days, but it’s easier to just not be home at all. So he takes on more shifts at work, even though he has to work with people that aren’t Abdi, and that usually sucks, because most people, Matteo finds, talk either way too much, or not at all, and that’s annoying too.

Whenever he is home, he sleeps. He hasn’t seen Schrippe in days, but then again, he probably doesn’t deserve her, anyway.

He’s announced to the boys that he won’t be joining them until after the first exam is over, so they leave him alone at least. Which is great, because he actually gets shit done for his History and Spanish exams, and bad, because the only time he uses his voice is at work when yelling out orders.

David hasn’t texted once. Not at the text he sent the morning after their date, not at the meme he found yesterday and just had to send him. He arrives at the spot David sent him five minutes early, his pulse higher than it should be after a thirty minutes bike ride. It’s not new, he’s always been nervous around the other boy. It’s a common side effect of falling too fast.

He leans against the big metal gate and waits. There’s a lot of things he has to say today. Sorry, being one of them. Sorry for ruining our first date with my issues. Sorry for not telling you earlier, for hiding who I am. I’m fucked up, and I hope you can still like me. My father left because he couldn’t take us any more, and I hated him for it, but then I did the same.

Maybe not the last one. That’s just another issue Matteo’s not ready to face, and if he can’t handle thinking about it, David shouldn’t have to.

At ten past ten, he turns around, surveying the area. The buildings visible from the street seem abandoned, lost to the world except for some graffiti artists who have left their marks all over.

At quarter past, he checks the location David has sent him again.

At half-past, he sends a text asking where David is and receives an answer almost immediately.

David             Sorry, can’t make it today

It’s such a blow that Matteo doesn’t know what to do for a second. His first instinct is to throw his phone, but he ends up clenching it in his fist instead.

At eleven, he pushes away from the gate and goes home.

*****

Mia                 Hey, is everything okay at home?

Matteo           Yeah, why?

Mia                 I just thought I would check in with you, since we left you alone for the week.

Matteo frowns down at his phone. He didn’t even know he was alone at the apartment. In fact, he has been too busy avoiding everybody to notice. He snorts.

At least now he knows, so he can smoke in the kitchen. In fact, he can smoke wherever he wants. He lies down underneath the kitchen table and tries to find patterns in the texture of the wood.

David hasn’t texted him since Saturday and today is… Wednesday. No, Tuesday. It sure isn’t Monday, that’s when his History exam went down. He checks his phone.

‘Thursday? What happened to Wednesday?’ he mutters.

It’s not like David to just vanish on him. David’s a kind person, but Matteo is not, he knows that. And now David knows, too. So David has every right to leave, it’s just – that doesn’t make Matteo feel any better.

He’d rather be mad than – than this.

He startles when the doorbell goes off but doesn’t move. Whoever’s down there can fucking climb his balcony if they want to. He’s not moving.

It’s not like he can’t. He knows, technically, there are muscles in his body that can be moved by means of motor neuron activity, but his brain does not want that.

The next time the doorbell goes off he startles so hard he hits his head at one of the table’s legs.

‘Ugh fuck,’ he groans and drags himself to the buzzer.

‘What!’

‘Yo, it’s me!’ Jonas says.

Matteo buzzes him up. One, because Jonas is one of the few people Matteo almost never not wants to see, and two, because he knows his best friend and he would most definitely just keep buzzing if he didn’t.

He leaves the door ajar and heads back for the kitchen, shortly considers lying down again. He doesn’t, but it’s a close call.

‘Luigi? Man, Abdi has been blowing up the ok cool chat, you’re supposed to be working right now.’

‘Uhm, I’m sick,’ Matteo says warily. He probably looks it, so it’s an okay lie.

‘Shit,’ Jonas says, typing something into his phone. ‘Okay, but Abdi can’t work alone for the whole night.’

‘He owes me, tell him to man the fuck up.’

‘He says he’s covering for you but you really need to come in now.’

‘Fuck.’

‘Yeah okay, let’s go,’ Jonas looks up at him, finally. ‘Shit, you’re stoned.’

‘Baked,’ Matteo confirms, grinning.

‘Great moment to be proud of yourself, dude! Any idea how to deal with that?’

‘Dunno, but I’m a grat pizza baker when high. Remember last year?’

‘And your eyes?’

‘Them, too.’

‘No dude, we need to do something ‘bout your eyes, they’re completely red!’

‘I’ve got a knife and a lighter somewhere?’

‘Bro!’

‘Finally!’ Abdi throws his hands in the air in a truly Italian manner, ‘Leonardo asked about you twice but I told him you were on the toilet both times.’ He taps his forehead to indicate that he thinks he’s really smart.

‘Thanks, man!’
‘Okay Jungs, Matteo is a bit… Tired today, so we gotta keep him in line. Abdi, you help him do his job. Carlos and I stay here disguised as customers.’

‘To do what?’

‘Observe, keep him in line… Eat pizza…’

‘For free…’ Carlos adds. They high five.

‘We’re such good friends,’ Jonas grins.

It’s not awful, after that. If Matteo had been alone all day, the unwanted thoughts would have been all-consuming. How he fucked up Saturday, how he fucked up in life, how he’s fucked up period.

With the boys around him, they come in waves. One second he’s sprinkling feta cheese over a pizza laughing at Jonas trying to read their next order in a faux-Italian accent, next he’s frowning because David likes feta, and he likes the Italian accent, too, and this can’t be a coincidence, can it?

It’s not like the boys don’t notice either, but they let it go after Matteo mumbles something about stress, Abi, and missing his mom.

Luckily, it’s a slow day pizza-wise, so he sends them home early to prepare the last orders of the day in peace.

Unluckily, when the doorbell chimes a few minutes before last call for orders, Matteo looks up and immediately regrets his whole life.

To be fair, David looks just as miserable.

‘Hey,’ he says, voice hoarse from smoking and laughing.

‘Na,’ David says, ‘I’m just… I need pizza.’

Matteo snorts mirthlessly. ‘Came to the right place, then.’

He gets to work right after. There are two orders before David’s, and even though he’s supposed to prioritize walk-ins, he takes his time with them. He doesn’t know if he does it out of spite, or to keep David in his proximity for a bit longer.

Then he stands in front of David’s pizza and doesn’t know what to do, because so far, he’s always improved his orders in some way, but he doesn’t know if David still wants that.

In the end, he exchanges some spices that David probably wouldn’t recognize either way. He can feel David’s eyes on him from time to time, from all the way over by the window, where he’s slouched across one of the plastic tables, phone in his hands.

He doesn’t quite look like himself. Or rather, he doesn’t look like the David Matteo thinks he knows.

But then he half-smiles when giving over a ten euro bill, and Matteo thinks he can survive on that smile for a day or two. He’s pathetic, and he knows.

‘I actually wanted to–’ David coughs. ‘I think–’ he stops again. ‘I think maybe things have been going a bit too fast.’

‘What?’ Matteo frowns. He doesn’t think he’s been all that forward. He’s been sending a few memes, back when things were still okay, but David had responded to them, laughed even, and sent some back.

‘Matteo, I–’ he breaks off, his expression pained in empathy. In pity, Matteo recognizes. He knows what this is. He’s never experienced it himself, but he’s been witness to enough break-ups to know.

‘I need some time,’ David says, and it’s too much of a cliché, yet he seems to actually mean it.

‘How – how much time?’ Matteo stutters. He tries not to look too heartbroken, to not show how much he hurts but – David seems to know anyway. He looks devastated by the fact. Because that’s the kind of person he is, always kind, always considering, even now.

‘Matteo–’

The door swings open and it takes Matteo a few seconds to grasp that he’s seen the person before. Laura, he thinks.

Something shatters inside him.

‘Hey, what’s taking so –’ she seems to sense something about the atmosphere because she interrupts herself.

‘I’ll be right out,’ David says sharply.

Matteo grabs the counter to steady himself while David is distracted.

The falling door leaves them in uncomfortable silence.

‘I should leave.’

‘No, you didn’t answer. How long is some time?’

‘Matteo–’

Matteo doesn’t want to be complicated, he just wants to know. He just needs to know, is all.

‘I’m not saying give me a time of day, just – are we talking days or weeks?’ Months?

David’s face transforms into something more horrifying than pity. Guilt. And then Matteo actually knows knows what is going on.

‘It’s fine, okay, I’ll wait. I’ll wait,’ he winces at how obvious the panic in his voice is.

David doesn’t say anything, just looks at him like he’s so done with this. So done with him.

‘It’s fine,’ he says again.

‘Matteo, I think I should…’ he turns to leave, actually turns around, so Matteo pushes forward past the counter and grabs his hand.

‘No, you didn’t answer. Please–‘

David basically recoils from him. ‘I don’t like you like that, okay? Sometimes, people leave for a fucking reason and then you have to just bloody let them. That’s how life is. You of all people should know that. I – need to go.’

Matteo stumbles back like the blow he’s just received was a physical one. In a way, he’d prefer that, even.

He’s probably being melodramatic, but he doesn’t fucking care. He just doesn’t. He grabs his keys from the counter and brushes past David out the door. He’s probably going to lose his job over this.

Guess who doesn’t give a fuck.

*****

Matteo’s stupid, so he texts David exactly five hours after he rushes out the door. He’s sitting on the living room floor, cross-legged, and he’s drunk and lonely, and he just wants to be acknowledged by someone, just wants to feel like he exists and matters outside of his own experience, that someone else cares, and rationally, he knows there are people more suitable for that than David, but then they’re not David which means they won’t do.

So yeah. David.

Matteo sends a gif of a giraffe drinking from a waterhole than slowly moving forward, sinking, until the whole animal is swallowed by the water.

He writes: When your crush tells you they don’t like you back.

He types out an apology twice and deletes both.

*****

He sleeps. He’s still half asleep when Hans gets back one or two days later, but he’s still being ignored anyway, so that’s okay. He manages to get out of bed for a revision session for his Spanish exam. He runs into Laura at the bus station (or a girl that looks just really like her) and goes home instead of school. He eats take-out when he doesn’t forget to feel hungry. He sleeps.

Chapter Text

‘Hey,’ Mia says, ‘Alles klar?’ Everything alright?

Matteo shrugs, looking down at the t-shirt he’s been wearing for three days straight. He’s pretty sure she can tell it’s not. He was just about to steal some more of her food, too.

‘Hans talked to me…’

He freezes. If she throws him out now, this is it. He can’t move back home, and he doesn’t think there’s any chance of finding a new room when he needs to study for two exams still… not that he’s studying much as it is. He’s been skimming his notes for few minutes a day.

‘He asked me if you ever said anything homophobic to me. He didn’t say why, but…’ she trails off.

‘What did you tell him?’

He hasn’t spoken in days and his voice sounds it. The smoke filling up his lungs every waking hour probably doesn’t help.

‘I said you’re not a homophobe.’

‘You’re sure about that?’

‘You’re not?’

‘I said something stupid to Hans. I didn’t… I probably didn’t mean it, but… I did say it.’

‘If you didn’t mean it…’ She still tries to defend him and it is hurting his chest. One more person to disappoint.

‘Intention doesn’t really matter though, right? I hurt him. I am what I am.’

‘Okay, and what now?’

‘What?’ he frowns.

‘I mean, you said something shitty. Have you apologized? Are you gonna be branded forever as a shitty person? Is that your excuse to act like an asshole from now on? That’s so lazy!’

‘Well, lazy is my middle name. You should know, you’ve cleaned up my mess more often than I can count.’

‘And because of that, you get to act like an asshole?’

Matteo shrugs. It doesn’t really matter, does it? He fucks up, people forgive him, so he fucks up again. It’s better not to be forgiven. Second and third chances don’t work with him, because there’s something inherently wrong with him.

See, Matteo knows about mental illness. He knows, seeing his mom, that they have more in common than he’d like to admit, and seeing the people around him that actually manage to act like decent, normally functioning people, that his own brain doesn’t work that way. He doesn’t have a name for it, and he doesn’t want one, because a diagnosis would be just another word, and words tend to get stuck in his head, and then he wouldn’t ever be able to get rid of it again.

What he knows is this: every part of his brain is self-centred, the anxious part, the lazy part, the part that has affection for his friends – all of these were built for self-preservation. He’s trying to save himself constantly, even from people who love and care for him, and who deserve better.

He doesn’t think other people work like that.

‘Matteo… You don’t need to talk to me, or Hans, or anybody. But I know how it is when you keep things to yourself. It doesn’t get better.’

‘I don’t have anything to say…’ He looks down at his hands, unable to look at her. It’s not a lie entirely. If words could express what it is he’s experiencing, wouldn’t he have found them by now?

‘You’re gonna tell me you’re not miserable right now?’

He has to keep himself from shrugging again. People tell him it’s frustrating, and he doesn’t want her to get frustrated with him. He’s been alone for three days and – He doesn’t want her to leave. God, he doesn’t.

‘Last year,’ she says slowly, ‘Before you moved in with us, something happened to me. And I kept it to myself because I was scared and ashamed, and I couldn’t find the right words, and – I couldn’t heal. I started to heal once I started talking to people.’

‘Was it your fault? The thing?’

‘No,’ she says with conviction.

‘Then it’s not the same,’ he says, ‘It’s not the same if it’s my own fault.’

Mia sighs, getting up, and Matteo thinks he’s done it. He’s made her leave him, too. ‘Hot chocolate.’

‘What?’ he frowns.

‘I want to tell you something, but we need hot chocolate for that conversation.’

Matteo huffs but gets up to grab a cooking pan.

They work in comfortable silence, and she doesn’t get mad when he screws up and spills some cocoa on her sweater.

His fingers close around the cup for warmth, a small comfort.

Mia closes her eyes before uttering the words, and she takes a sip before talking. ‘Some guy harassed me last year.’

Matteo’s glad he hasn’t taken a sip yet, because he’s sure he would have choked.

‘I’m… I’m so sorry,’ he mutters. Here he is, lading off all his shit with her when she… has had it so much worse. ‘That sucks so bad.’

‘It’s okay. I mean, it’s not, obviously. But I am. I’m okay now.’ She stares into her cup before continuing. ‘They guy was Alex’ sister’s ex and Alex had warned me about him and I still got drunk with him, I trusted that stranger more than my boyfriend… So I told myself that it was my own fault. If I hadn’t…’

‘But it wasn’t,’ Matteo cuts in.

‘No,’ she smiles ruefully, ‘I know that now.’

‘Good.’

Mia stares into the distance for some time, eyes on the tree crowns outside the kitchen window.

‘It’s not the same then,’ he says. You don’t know –’

‘I know about Jonas and Hanna,’ she says and Matteo swears he forgets how to breathe for a second.

‘I know you think you ended them, but – It’s not that simple. If you hadn’t done this or that, this other thing wouldn’t have happened – or happened differently – That doesn’t make it your fault.’

‘I left my mom,’ he says.

‘Okay,’ she says.

‘I hurt Sara.’

‘Sara’s a big girl. So is your mom, by the way. I’m not saying don’t take responsibility, but – none of this seems to be the end of the world?’

‘There’s more –‘

‘Yeah, but you’re a teenage boy, you’re supposed to be stupid.’

Matteo can’t help but look offended for a second, making her laugh.

‘Drink your chocolate,’ she says.

‘So if I’m supposed to be stupid, that’s okay then?’ he says, ‘That’s not what you said earlier.’

‘No, but if you do something stupid, you take responsibility. You take responsibility and then you forgive yourself.’

It sounds too simple, and Matteo knows it’s way harder than she makes it sounds. But with his hands warm and the taste of hot chocolate lingering on his tongue – he almost thinks he can do it.

He buys a bar of organic chocolate and puts it in Mia’s shelf (The next day, Matteo’s shelf in the fridge is filled to the brim with cheese and antipasti). He asks Linn if she would let Schrippe sleep in his bed once a week (She tells him to please just take her away from her for at least two days, please please please, and he does, a genuine smile forming around his lips). He buys ten packs of smarties and fills up Hans’ entire sexy mug collection with them (Hans eyes him suspiciously, looking like he’s trying very hard not to smile). He texts his mom that he misses her (She texts back immediately).

He talks to Hans.

He’s sitting in the kitchen when he finds him, a mug full of smarties and a bowl of coffee in front of him.

‘Can I talk to you?’

‘Say the words and I’m yours.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘That’s – not the words I meant but – I appreciate it.’

‘I didn’t mean what I – I shouldn’t have said that.’

Hans looks down at where he’s currently painting his nails in bright pink. ‘I guess I’m a little gay-gay,’ he chuckles.

‘Yeah, but –‘ Matteo looks at the ceiling and he prays to a God he doesn’t believe in to find the right words, ‘That’s a good thing. You’re yourself and that’s – That’s more than I can say for myself on most days and – that’s really good.’

Hans looks up at him, clearly surprised.

‘I talked to Mia,’ Matteo says, ‘So not all of this comes from my own little monkey brain.’ He pauses to think for a second. ‘If you think that it’s a good thing to say, that is. If it sounds stupid, that’s entirely on me.’

Hans grins. ‘You know what that means, right?’

‘You’re going to paint my nails now?’

‘Good idea, but I was actually going to offer you some smarties. Some twit filled up all my mugs with them. I even had to use a bowl for my morning coffee. I feel so avant-garde!’

‘What an act of terrorism!’ Matteo grins. He isn’t entirely convinced he deserves it, the smarties or Hans’ forgiveness but he’ll take it. He’ll take it, and he’ll try to be worth it.

‘What words did you mean? When you said ‘Say the words and I’m yours’?’ he has to ask.

‘Don’t worry, be yoncé,’ Hans startles a laugh out of Matteo.

They sit in actual silence for a minute, and it’s nice. Watching Hans apply nail polish to his right hand with his left hand is weirdly calming, and Matteo is impressed by the precision.

‘How did your date go by the way?’ Hans asks, ‘I think I deserve all the gory details, don’t I?’

Matteo swallows thickly. In for a smartie, he thinks. ‘I think I blew it,’ he says, ‘I think he – he doesn’t really like me anymore.’

Hans doesn’t react for a second in which they both concentrate on the last bit of nail polish be applied to his right pinkie. He closes the lid of the bottle and turns around, slowly. ‘He’s an idiot, then.’

Matteo shrugs helplessly, unhappily. He doesn’t think so.

‘You know what that means though?’ Hans says, waving around his hands.

‘More smarties?’ Matteo asks, optimistically.

‘It means, we’re having a party on Friday,’ Hans declares, ‘Butterfly, you can’t tell me all members of our flat are part of the LGBT+ community and expect me to not have a party about it! No worries, I’m not going to out you. It's just a party. For us.’ He jumps up, clearly too excited to keep seated. ‘MIA! I need my flags! I need glitter, and I need my flags! And condoms! All sizes!’

Chapter Text

The boys rope him into another party on a Thursday of all days, because University students apparently are all lazy fuckers who don’t have anything to do on Fridays. That’s the dream.

He doesn’t want to go, but they’re smart about it, make him study first (they take turns all day and it’s hilarious because they forget to plan in breaks, so Matteo takes his first break around four when a panicked Jonas storms into the flat screaming ‘Lunch! We forgot lunch!’, but they buy him a kebab afterwards and make him walk around for half an hour because ‘exercise is important for the brain’) and it actually pays off. He still feels insecure about the exams, but at least he’s done something about it now.

But then he doesn’t have an excuse not to join them for an early pre-game in his own living room and take the underground to another house party with them, except for ‘I’m fucking exhausted’ and ‘I really don’t want to’, which they say don’t count.

The flat is packed, and Matteo loses all the other boys almost instantly, when he catches sight of Sara in the hallway and ducks into the next best room which happens to have a foosball table in it, and he plays three matches with an American exchange student who calls him Matt against two girls who keep talking to them even though the music is too loud to properly understand each other. The guy drags them to some other room to do shots and Matteo conveniently loses them in the crowd.

At this point, he doesn’t think the boys would notice if he just left and he’s about to do just that when someone grabs him and of course it’s Sara and of course she’s drunk and of course she tries to kiss him. He dodges her lips so they graze his cheek instead and he starts turning to leave.

The thing is, Matteo has said No to Sara before, once. At that point, they were still in that awful pretend relationship and apart from the times he’d come up with ridiculous excuses not to make out he had pretty much let her dictate every single aspect of their relationship.

One afternoon, Sara decided they needed to go on a proper date. They’d been dating for something over a month but they still hadn’t actually done anything but making out at parties or on their beds or hung out at school.
She thought it was time; Matteo thought it was better than trying to keep her hands off of him while in bed.

They went for dinner and Matteo paid with the money his dad had sent him for rent, feeling stupid. After, they sat on a park bench and Sara started talking about Abi Chaker and how it was cool that so many people from different friend groups joined the prank team. Matteo knew Jonas and Carlos had been part of the penis prank, but otherwise was pretty clueless and couldn’t care less.

‘I used to be into Alex,’ she said, ‘And then some guy from my staple who always took home different girls. I’m so done with that. Boys who don’t treat me right…’
She took his hand and all Matteo could think about was that Sara chose him because she wanted a nice guy for once and instead she had gotten him. He told her that.

‘It’s not an insult, you know,’ she grinned. She was still always smiling, always patient with him. Matteo knew it wasn’t, but he also knew she was wrong. He told her that, too.

‘You are though,’ she said, insecurity seeping into her voice.

‘But I don’t even like you.’

Sara looked like he hit her, or like she wished he had done that instead. Then she got up and left.

She didn’t acknowledge him again at school or at parties until they got drunk at the lake after everyone had been given their Abi certificates apart from Matteo. He got drunkenly sad and sadly drunk and they ended up making out against a tree. There was a bump poking into his hip painfully, yet that wasn’t the most uncomfortable thing at the moment.

So, that’s the most pathetic origin story ever, yet here they are, at the exact same point, eight months later, and Matteo is fucking tired.

‘Come on,’ she grins, trying to drag him back into her.

‘No, wait, I – can I talk to you for a second?’

‘Boring,’ Sara grins, but she nods towards the balcony door and walks ahead.

‘So? Is this a scheme to get me alone?’ she leans against the balcony rail and cocks her head.

‘No, I – I don’t wanna make out with you,’ he stutters out and it’s what he wanted to say but not how he wanted to say it.

‘Okay, then talk!’

‘No, I mean–’ he breaks off, frustrated.

‘Use your words!’

Matteo would if he had any. He inhales deeply. ‘I don’t wanna make out with you anymore. Ever.’

‘Dundundun,’ she says.

‘What?’ he startles into a laugh.

‘Sorry, that was dramatic. And I’m a bit drunk.’

‘Okay…’ He smiles tentatively. It can’t be that easy. ‘So we’re good?’

‘Yes,’ she winces. ‘No. Wait, do you have a girlfriend?’

He shakes his head no.

‘You sure?’

‘I’ll have to ask Jonas, he knows better about that stuff, but yeah I’m pretty sure.’

‘Haha.’

It’s too cold out to be outside in a hoodie, and Sara’s only got a short dress on that can’t help against the drizzle at all. Yet something makes her stay put. Matteo doesn’t know whether to be grateful or annoyed.

‘Do you like someone else?’

He nods, because – because he just can’t lie anymore. He’s so done with it.

She smiles. ‘Me too. But I think she likes David.’

Matteo walks up to the balcony rail next to her and looks down at the street. This is it then, his opening. He thinks, fuck it. ‘I like him, too.’
He doesn’t look at her, but he can feel the moment she understands because he can feel her tense next to him.

‘Wait, what?’

He turns to her. ‘David. He’s the one I like.’

‘You’re bi, too?’

‘No, or,’ he coughs, ‘I don’t think so.’

‘But if you like David…’

Sara’s entire face falls and Matteo fights the urge to throw himself off the balcony. He did this. Fuck.

‘Matteo, we were on and off for a year,’ she says, voice sharp.

‘I know,’ he breathes, unhappily.

‘Fuck,’ she says, ‘God, that explains so much.’ She huffs out a laugh. ‘That explains, like… Everything.’

‘I’d like to think me being a selfish asshole played a role, too.’

‘That, too!’ She hits him softly in the arm. ‘Fuck.’

They stand like that for a while, hair damp from the light rain, and Matteo has just come out to his ex-girlfriend, yet he feels inexplicably calm.

‘What now?’

‘Now you give me your weed. I know you have some on you.’

‘What?’

‘You lied to me for a year. I deserve it.’

He pulls out the blunt he’s rolled before the party. ‘You get a drag and that’s it!’

‘ONE drag? You’re on thin fucking ice, Matteo Florenzi!’

He grins around the joint in his mouth.

‘So, Leonie, huh?’ He hands her the joint.

‘How did you – never mind, it’s super obvious.’

‘Well, not before you said something,’ he grins, ‘I honestly thought you were into me for some reason.’

‘Meh, you’re okay I guess. Good kisser… When you try, that is.’

He plucks the blunt from her mouth. ‘No more weed for you!’

She grins.

‘You can’t tell anyone- about me, I mean,’ he feels the need to say.

‘Matteo, I’m bi. I know about coming out.’

He sighs, ‘Okay, good.’

‘Okay, good,’ she smiles and he can’t help but smile back. ‘Well if Leonie and David get together, at least we can be sad together.’

‘Eat ice cream’

‘Watch bad movies.’

Matteo sighs melodramatically. ‘David likes bad movies.’

‘Leonie hates them. Except for the bee movie for some reason.’

‘The bee movie is not a bad movie. How dare you!’

‘She says the same.’

‘Guess you got a type,’ he grins, ‘Smart people.’

‘What about David?’ she changes the tone, ‘Does he like you?’

‘No,’ his voice sounds rough from the smoke. Or maybe it’s something else. ‘He knows some stuff about me. Some shit I did.’

‘Ohh, blackmail material! Tell me more!’ Sara laughs.

‘Never,’ he drags them to his feet, first himself than her by the hand. The thing is, he wants to keep holding her hand because it’s nice. There are no more expectations left he feels he can’t fulfil. They’re just them now.

‘Let’s go dancing!’

He knows her well enough to know that’s the best way to distract her, and sure enough, she beams when he moves them over to the dance floor.

‘Platonic dance partners!' She whoops and he’s glad that the party noises around them drown out the sound.

They dance for a while, and it’s nice. Matteo didn’t know he could enjoy dancing, but Sara is goofy and funny, and it doesn’t matter that he doesn’t know what he’s doing. After some while, they’re joined by Leonie, and Matteo tries not to be meanly obvious about pushing Sara and her into proximity, who is drunk enough not to mind. He’s having fun, and he doesn’t think he’s had actual fun at a party for a long time.
It’s probably because Sara’s mouth is safely attached to a bottle of vodka instead of his mouth, but there’s also the fact that he told her the truth, and it didn’t go awful. Being honest feels good. Like he finally got something right.

He’s just trying to detach Sara from her bottle when he sees him. And for a second he thinks David sees him, too, but then again he might have imagined the whole thing because when he dares to look again, the other boy is gone.
And rightfully so, Matteo thinks; he has no right sneaking into his proximity when Matteo finally feels okay again.

Sara tackles him from behind. ‘Less moping, more dancing!’
Matteo is okay with that.

*****

He doesn’t want another smoke, but he feels like he needs some air. The mere presence, the energy of so many people around him always drains him.
So he pulls the front door closed and starts down the stairs before thinking better of it and walking up. Maybe there’s roof access, or maybe he’ll just sit by the windowsill in the staircase.

Only that doesn’t happen, because when he turns the corner to the sixth floor the spot near the window is taken, and the first thing Matteo feels is relief, because apparently, he didn’t hallucinate David earlier (and that speaks for his own mental state, thank you very much), but then panic, because this looks really fucking bad, following the guy who clearly communicated his non-interest in you up to a secluded area. So he wants to turn around and leave before David can spot him but apparently another, stronger part of him wants to stand rooted to the spot and stare.

‘Uhm,’ he says, when David turns around and his eyes grow big, ‘I didn’t follow you, just needed some air.’
David doesn’t say anything, so Matteo scrambles for more words. Anything to keep David looking at him. ‘I’ll leave. Sorry.’

‘No, wait!’ Matteo starts to turn, but then David lunges forward and grabs his arm, and Matteo is so surprised by it all that he stumbles a bit and is really fucking glad David is there to steady him. After assaulting him, basically, but what gives.

They end up so close to each other Matteo can feel his breath on his cheek.

So obviously, matteo.exe stops working.

It’s too much, after missing him for too long, and David is looking at him and then – and then he’s kissing him, and that’s too much too, too good.

It’s desperate but soft, so soft. And he doesn’t know if he will ever have this again, so his hands fist into David’s sweater, pulling him back when he begins to draw away, and then they’re just breathing, foreheads pressed together, mouths close but not touching.

When David turns to leave again, Matteo lets him, because he knows what happened last time he tried to hold on to him. He lets him go because even though he thinks maybe David didn’t mean the shit he said last time, he can’t bear hearing it again.

He listens to the retreating footsteps and he counts the stairs to discern whether David goes back to the party. When he hears the front door to the street open and shut, he goes back to the party and tries to find the boys.

He ends up having shots with that one girl from his Spanish class who finds him in the kitchen, and he finally learns her name (Sophie-mit-ie), and then he finds Carlos and Abdi on the dance floor and convinces them to do a drinking competition (that he wins, even though he doesn’t feel like a winner at all, more sad and now nauseous).
He’s thinking about laying down on the living room floor when Leonie finds him again, with Sara leaning onto her, so they’re both a little skewed.

‘Florenzi! You need to take Sara home!’

Abdi whoops, and Leonie looks a little disgusted by it. ‘You player!’

‘Hey, friend!’ Sara disentangles herself from Leonie awkwardly and hugs Matteo enthusiastically. She’s still a very good hugger. They should establish hugs as part of this new friendship thing between them.

‘You should take her,’ he says, addressing Leonie over Sara’s shoulder. ‘Yes, Sara?’

‘Yes, I’m coming with you!’ Sara drawls, ‘Coming with Leolie… Leonie,’ she hiccups.

Leonie looks conflicted. ‘Can’t you take her home? My mom’s not really keen on drunk people.’

Matteo sighs. Does he have to tell Leonie about the end of the arrangement now, too?

‘She’s your girl, Florenzi. Get a grip!’

He decides that no, it’s not his place. ‘Alright then, let’s go. I’ll take you to my place.’

‘Stop hitting on me Florenzi! You know I’m –‘ Her eyes grow big and flitter over to Leonie. She’s so fucking obvious, Matteo wonders how Leonie can miss this.

‘I’m not hitting on you, I swear! Friends can take each other home!’

‘Yes! Platonic sleepover!’ She whoops and pulls off her left shoe while leaning into him.

‘So you’re friends now?’ Leonie asks.

‘Friends who don’t make out,’ Sara says proudly. She turns to Matteo. ‘Can you carry my shoes?’

‘Why?’ he whines, ‘I’m already carrying mine!’

‘On your feet! You carry my shoes or you carry me. Make your choice!’

He sighs, making grabby hands for her stilettos. And yeah, it’s not awful this time, going home with her. Even if he has to carry her shoes.

*****

Matteo tells Mia before the party. It’s logical, because she’s been in his shoes, and she understands, and she’s family.
He tries not to think about the fact that there’s more family that he needs to talk to, his mom specifically.
Mia hugs him. ‘I’m proud of you.’
‘Didn’t really do anything,’ he says, kinda knowing it’s bullshit. The last few days wouldn’t have been as exhausting if he hadn’t. He just needs to hear it.
‘You did,’ she says, simply.

*****

When he tells Linn, she smiles and asks him if he wants Rouladen for dinner.

*****

‘You’ve got glitter in your eyebrows,’ Jonas says instead of a greeting.

Matteo shrugs. Hans has been all over the flat all day with glitter and confetti and lametta. He’s a bit hungover, spent most of his days lying in bed with Sara, barely talking, each in their own world. It all felt so fucking okay, it made Matteo want to cry out of relief. It also made him call Jonas. He’s his best friend and if Matteo stays on the path he’s at he’s not going to do it without him.

They sit down in a park, and Jonas seems to sense that something is wrong because he waits but when Matteo doesn’t talk he goes: ‘I think I’m gonna drop out of Uni for now.’

Matteo chokes on his kebab and ends up with a coughing fit.

‘What? I thought you love political sciences. You’re all over all the… protests and shit.’

‘Protests and shit,’ Jonas smiles, ‘You know that people without an academic degree are allowed there, right?’

‘They are? Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Because your lazy ass would’ve joined?’

‘Might have,’ Matteo grins.

‘Nah, I just think all this purely academic stuff isn’t really my thing. I like a more… Hands-on approach. Maybe social work. But I might try some internships before applying for programs.’

‘I –‘ Matteo says, and stops because he doesn’t know how to start. But then again, it really is that simple, isn’t it?

‘I felt really shitty when all of you went off to University without me. And I know it’s not your fault or anything, but – It was just so annoying that everybody seemed to have everything figured out, only I was stuck – I wouldn’t even have known what to do after Abi if I had passed. I still don’t.’

‘That’s okay, you know? I don’t think half the people who pretend to have it figured out actually know what they’re doing. I certainly don’t.’

‘I met this guy,’ Matteo says, ‘He’s a film major and he’s in first year, and he’s really good. He knows so much, and he’s really smart, but what’s really impressive is that he’s super passionate about it all; he knows what he wants, and he just goes for it.’

‘I’m jealous too, sometimes. Like, you’ve got this awesome flatshare, while I’ve moved around three times this year because I always end up in an apartment full of morons, or bullies, or straight-up assholes.’

‘I wasn’t jealous of him,’ Matteo says, ‘I was jealous of you and of Mia and Kiki, even Carlos –’

‘Ouff!’

‘Yeah,’ Matteo laughs, ‘I wasn’t jealous of him, just – he had something that I didn’t and – it didn’t make me envy him. He just gave me the feeling that I could have something to aspire to, too. Someday.’

‘What’s his name?’ Jonas asks, carefully, like he knows it means something.

‘David.’

Jonas nods.

‘I… We went out a few times.’

Jonas keeps nodding. It’s a bit comical, but Matteo is too tense to appreciate it.

‘How did that go?’

‘Complicated,’ Matteo sighs. Kissing the guy who explicitly told you he didn't like you in a dimly-lit staircase seems to warrant that word.

‘Did you wear your baggy jeans?’

‘What?’ Matteo grins, can’t help it, really.

‘I’m just saying, maybe don’t trust yourself in fashion matters. Just ask for help!’

‘Who? Hans? Abdi?’

‘I was talking about myself!’

‘So I look like a pretentious political science nerd? Pardon, like a pretentious ex-political science nerd?’

‘Ouch!’

‘Too early?’

Jonas lifts his fingers to indicate a tad.

‘So we’re good?’ Matteo has to ask.

Jonas holds out his kebab to toast. ‘Always.’

*****

Matteo      Can you help me with bio again? Getting a bit desperate. Would do anything? Pretty pretty please!

Amira       Vollidiot! Of course I’ll help you. Sunday at yours?

Matteo      You’re the best!

*****
He’s not ashamed that he enjoys Hans’ pride party just the tiniest bit. He’s not happy about all the glitter that he keeps finding everywhere, but he has a good time sitting in the corner with Linn and dancing with Mia – he doesn’t think he’s ready to get onto the dancefloor with Hans yet, so they have their private little sub-party for an hour or so in her room for a while, and she’s drunk, so she keeps hugging him, until Alex shows up, and she hugs him instead.

He takes shots with Hans, and talks to some people he doesn’t know too, people with different types of flags in their faces, and once he’s had a bit of drunken courage and has made sure that really, there are no people he knows at the party other than his flatmates, he lets Hans apply the gay pride flag to his cheek, and then kiss his other cheek with the cherry red lipstick of his. His pulse thrums in his throat, and he thinks he might panic, but then he feels Hans’ reassuring hand on his shoulder and Mia and Alex give him a thumbs up from across the room, so he just breathes and it’s fine. He calls it a day half an hour later.
Being proud is exhausting, he thinks, but maybe he can practice some more.

*****

He spends Saturday hungover and regretting his life, but he manages to finish his notes for Biology and Spanish so that Amira has something to work with when she joins him to study. He texts Sophie-mit-ie to ask her to study with him on Monday. She texts back a puking emoji and ‘I’m so fucking hungover. Help!’, and then: ‘Studying sounds alright. Bring food!’ and an address.

*****
Amira is perfectly on time to the minute, so Matteo buzzes her up and doesn’t wait for her at the door, picking up a Club Mate from the fridge instead.
He turns when he hears shuffling inside the flat. ‘Hey, do you want –‘

Matteo’s not often speechless – okay that’s a fucking lie, but still – he doesn’t think he’s ever been more surprised.

‘Uhm. You’re not Amira.’

‘What gave me away?’ David says, eyes cast down a bit, so he doesn’t look at Matteo, but there’s a small smile playing around his lips.

It’s still enough. His presence is enough to equally calm and excite Matteo. He doesn’t understand. Because David kissed him three days ago and then ran, and he doesn’t know what it all means, but it still feels right, having him here.

‘Amira sent me. I owed her one and – well, here I am.’ David shrugs. ‘I’m not sure I’m gonna be of much help, I didn’t even take bio.’

‘Uhm,’ Matteo licks his lips and tries to keep the swooning to a minimum. He thinks his eyes pretty much say it all though. He can’t help it.

He hasn’t stopped thinking about their kiss. Can’t, really. But – he’ll be David’s friend if he can. He doesn’t have to ruin everything. He can do this.

‘Alright. Do you like Mate by any chance?’

David gives a cute little half-smile. ‘That will do.’

Matteo walks him into the living room and sits down on one side of the couch, David on the other looking around like he’s never seen the place before.

‘What’s this?’ David picks up an array of flags spread out on the coffee table.

‘Oh, just the remnants of the last party,’ Matteo huffs, ‘Apparently, when all members of a flatshare have come out as some part of the LGBT acronym, that warrants a pride party.’

He only realizes what he has just said when he sees David’s teasing grin transform into something softer. It’s stupid, of course, that his pulse speeds up after he says the words. If anyone should have an inkling about his sexuality, it’s David, and – Matteo is okay with that. He trusts him. Still.

‘I’m gay,’ he says, grabbing the gay pride flag from the table and waving it with a silly face before quickly letting it fall back on top of his homework.

‘Figured,’ David says, grinning wider.

Matteo can’t help but grin back.

‘What about this one?’ David holds up the flag with two light blue, two pink, and one white stripe in the centre.

‘Oh, none of us is trans, but some of Hans’ friends are,’ Matteo says.

David looks down at the flag, rolling it slowly in his fingers. Matteo can see the tension in his shoulders and the fight inside his mind. He’s all too familiar.

‘Me too,’ David says quietly, his eyes cast downwards and his shoulders still tense, as if bracing for impact.

And Matteo forgets to breathe for a second because he realizes what this is. This? This is David trusting him right back. It knocks all thought out of his brain, the pressure to respond appropriately, to get this right. Like Jonas did for him, and Hans, and Mia, and Sara. Like he deserves. And the moment David looks up he can see the panic in his eyes because he’s taking way too long to respond and his brain is still screaming at him and –

‘You can keep the flag if you want?’ he blurts.

He wants to kick himself, he really does, but then, after a second of shocked silence, David smiles and – it’s a nice smile, okay? In fact, it might just be Matteo’s favourite thing in the world, so – of course he smiles back, and then David smiles a little wider, and then Matteo does too, until they are full-on beaming at each other, until David looks back down at the flag and says, ‘Why thank you, Mr Florenzi, I think I just might,’ and then they are back to grinning like lunatics.

*****

‘Why do you owe Amira?’ Matteo asks.

‘Uhm, she did me a little favour a while back,’ David says, and Matteo swears his cheeks colour as he does.

‘What kind of favour?’ Matteo smiles, ‘It’s something embarrassing, isn’t it?’

‘No, just – Just gave me a phone number, is all.’

David looks at his fingers.

‘Wow, important phone number if it warrants coming here,’ Matteo grins.

‘Yeah, well, got me a pizza for free,’ David says. He’s still not looking at him, but for now, Matteo doesn’t mind, because he doesn’t think he could hold his gaze anyway, right now.

‘Pizza Adventures?’

‘Yep.’

‘So there was no Sicilian Matteo?’

‘Fiction, I’m afraid.’

‘Cool,’ Matteo says, and he can’t contain his grin as he looks up to find David’s already looking at him, an obvious blush forming on his cheeks.

*****

David does make him study in the end. As it turns out, he doesn’t speak a word of Spanish and his Biology skills are rather limited, but he is quite helpful in asking the right questions, even though he never knows when Matteo makes up the answer on the spot, unless it is way too ridiculous and then he smacks him (like that’s supposed to be a punishment).

Chapter Text

Matteo is woken up by the smell of fresh coffee and laughter outside his room door, which almost gives him a heart attack, because he thinks he missed his alarm and now he’s late for his last exam and he’s going to fail again and – there’s a soft knock on his door and the next moment Amira barges into the room.

‘Wake up, sleeping beauty, it’s exam day!’

‘Didn’t we agree to let him wake up with his alarm?’ Someone, Hanna, Matteo thinks, calls from the living room.

‘Well, where’s the fun in that? Get up, Vollidiot!’

‘Coffee?’ he asks, pathetically.

‘Coming in five minutes!’ Photoshop Markus slides into the room.

‘Who else is here?’ Matteo groans.

‘Uhm, everyone, basically. Except, Sam sends best wishes from Peru,’ Mia says.

‘Thanks!’ Matteo calls from beneath his blanket.

When he comes out of the shower, everybody’s sitting around the living room table. Mia didn’t exaggerate; all their friends are here. Abdi’s sleeping with his head in Carlos’ lap.

‘You want a bread role?’ Linn asks.

‘Jam?’ Mia holds out two glasses from her own personal collection (He's not crying, you are.)

‘Or your bio notes?’ Amira raises an eyebrow at him.

‘I made cookies,’ someone says.

‘Who are you?’

‘We went to school together.’

‘Oh yeah. Didn’t you use to wear turtlenecks all the time?’

‘I’m into suspenders now.’

‘Cool.’

Matteo’s a bit overwhelmed by everything but, all in all, content.

‘Where’s my phone?’ he asks. There’s some shuffling involved until someone finds it underneath a pile of oranges.

David             Good luck for today. Can I pick you up after? x

Matteo           Thanks! Yeah sounds good!

Matteo smiles down at his phone and tries not to concentrate too hard on the ‘x’ behind the message. They’ve been texting back and forth ever since the day David helped him study, and David hasn’t said anything, but Matteo doesn’t think that falls under needing time, or not liking, or not wanting him.

David             Awesome, it’s a date!

‘We’re going to the park later. Play some flunky ball, drink, celebrate your last exam,’ Jonas says, ‘You’re coming.’

‘I’ve got plans,’ he says distractedly.

‘No you don’t,’ Linn says, hands in Schrippe’s fur, ‘I asked you yesterday.’

Matteo           Actually, my friends just told me they’re gonna pick me up

David             Oh

                      Another time then?

Matteo           Or you could come, too?

He looks at the speech bubble that appears and disappears over and over again.

‘Leave him,’ Carlos grins, ‘He’s obviously meeting Sara, after.’

‘No, I’m not,’ he snaps, ‘Can we change subjects? Kinda want to concentrate right now.’

He almost tells them then. I like boys. One boy in particular. But being with David, and telling people in cosy one-on-one conversations is different from announcing his sexuality to a whole group of people, friends or not. Most of them know, anyway. Carlos might possibly be the last one to be out of the loop, to be honest.

Plus, he isn’t lying when he says he needs to concentrate. The thought of leaving the flat in less than twenty minutes and walk into an exam room to write the test that could possibly decide where his future is headed – it’s terrifying.

He thinks he can do it, but – it still scares him. And well– if that doesn’t describe his entire life right now.

*****

There’s a voice message waiting for him when he shoves his bike into the rack twenty minutes before the exam starts.

‘Hey, good luck with bio. I’d love to join you and your friends later – Uhm,’ It’s silent for a second and Matteo almost checks if that’s all before David continues talking. ‘I’d like to – go on a date with you though, sometime. Just the two of us. If you still want to, that is. Maybe we can talk, or something.’

And yeah, Matteo’s still scared, but he doesn’t think the feeling in his stomach is entirely attributable to that.

*****

Matteo hates when people pick him up from school, even if it’s out of convenience. He feels like a little child when Hanna or the other boys surprise him after a long day of boring classes. It reminds him of the rare occasions when his dad would pick him up from school, talking Italian to him in front of his friends and taking him to some amusement park or a special restaurant or wherever, really, it didn’t matter. It made Matteo feel special, but in a way, it also reminded him how insanely insignificant he was on any other day.

Today, it’s not so bad, because basically everybody’s there and they’re cheering when he walks around the corner, and it’s nice. They’ve apparently been using the time he took for his biology exam to get drunk on cheap prosecco, and Matteo’s all for that.

So he laughs through the obvious elementary school jokes, fist bumps Linn and the boys, hugs Hanna, Mia and Kiki, and then turns to find David standing next to Amira. He greets her first, because it’s a bit overwhelming, even as Mia quickly brings the general attention to herself by announcing that Alex is already at the park with a car boot full of beer.

But then Matteo doesn’t give enough of a fuck to not hug David when he hasn’t seen him in ten days. They cling on a little too long, and when he looks back, only Jonas is looking at them with a huge smile on his face. Matteo rolls his eyes at him, but can’t help but smile back.

‘Have you met everyone?’ he asks as they watch Jonas and Amira trying to get everybody to get onto their bikes.

‘There were introduction games before you got here,’ David grins.

‘Kiki?’

‘Yep.’

‘David, I’m – I’m so sorry,’ he sighs dramatically.

‘Don’t be. Thanks for inviting me, it…’ David looks away but then seems to decide otherwise, as he looks at him intently. ‘It means a lot.’

And Matteo knows what this means, or he thinks he does. This, this thing between them, whatever it is exactly, means a lot.

He stays by David’s side for the entire bike ride, up until the end when David decides to get into a bike race with Abdi and Kiki (Not that Abdi’s any competition). Matteo stays at the end of the group with Hans and Linn.

‘So, am I right in the assumption that I get to plan your next date?’ Hans winks.

Matteo grins. ‘Only if I get to pick your next Grindr match?’

‘I thought you’d never ask!’

When they settle down on their picnic blankets in the park, he takes care to settle down next to David, who’s deep into a discussion with Abdi about alien abductions but who smiles up at him against the sun, squinting his eyes. Matteo has never seen anything more beautiful. He hopes no one can see him blush.

It’s a good day. The stress of Abi falls away, and he’s slowly starting to feel like himself again. It’s not just that school’s over, or that David’s here with him. It’s not even the whole coming out thing, although that’s a huge part of it.

It’s how he finally feels he can look forward to things other than his next drag at a joint. How he can look at his friends and think about all the ways they make each other’s lives a little better. Not always good, but bearable.

At some point, Jonas picks up his guitar and starts singing, and one after the other they all join in.

Hanna puts her arm around his shoulder, so he lets himself have this, sings quietly to let his voice blend with the others’, and smiles when David’s pinky brushes his own on the blanket.

He is here, and so are his friends, and even more miraculously, they are all here for him. And it’s not like Matteo understands why they are, or if he even deserves it, but they seem to think he does, and for now, that’s enough.

*****

'Hey sunshine!' Her voice is the same, just a bit contorted by the phone, although he can hear she's trying not to cry. It's been a year, more than.

'Hi mom, I -'

'I've missed you!'

'I've missed you, too.'

'Matteo, love, I'm so -'

It just falls out of his mouth, then. 'I have a boyfriend, mom. He's - he's really good. You - I think you'd like him. If you can give him a chance. He's not fuzzy about pizza, so that's good I think. You're neither. And he likes movies, so do you and -'

'He sounds lovely.'

Matteo exhales for the first time in a year.

*****

‘I liked your friends,’ David says.

They’re looking over to the same tree Matteo has been staring at for what feels like years of his life, but the perspective is different as they are sitting down on his balcony, legs dangling over the edge and hands brushing.

‘They’re pretty great,’ he agrees.

‘You’re pretty great,’ David says. He says it easily. Like it doesn’t send Matteo’s heart racing. Like it doesn’t question everything Matteo has been telling himself for the last year.

‘You’re not so bad yourself,’ he says.

David grins. ‘Not so bad? I’m amazing!’

Matteo chuckles and David’s grin fades. ‘I know I haven’t been – I mean – I was real shitty for a while.’

‘Yeah, me too,’ Matteo says, ‘but – but we fuck up and we try again. That’s life isn’t it?’

David holds his hands up like he wants to surrender. ‘Woah, how did you become so wise?’

‘Got a kitten, ate some smarties!’

They smile at each other, and Matteo’s hands itch to reach out, push back the strand of hair that’s falling into David’s face. But he also knows that he can’t. Not yet. Not when there are a lot of things they need to say and – that’s what failed them last time, isn’t it? It wasn’t them; it was words left unsaid.

David’s smile fades slowly, and Matteo wants to trace it, absorb it with his fingertips. ‘I want to, though,’ David says, and at Matteo’s confused frown: ‘Try again, that is.’

‘Yeah, ‘d be good,’ Matteo says. And then he knows this is it: He has to use his words now. The ones he carries inside, the ones that scare him.

‘When you said what you said about me – about me knowing that people have reasons to leave – that hurt me. And it didn’t just hurt because it was true – but because you wanted it to. And I knew that, I think. I knew that you only said it to hurt me and that – I didn’t know how to cope with that. Because I don’t think you’re the type of person who hurts other people – not on purpose anyway – so it had to be me. I made you do that, and –’

‘– And you know the type of person I am, do you?’ David snaps, and it’s a bit harsh, but Matteo doesn’t flinch.

‘No, but I want to,’ he finds David’s hand and squeezes before continuing. ‘I just – For the longest time, I wanted to apologize? I wasn’t mad at you; I just wanted to say sorry. And I don’t anymore.’

‘Good, you don’t need to,’ David says, softer now, but still on edge.

‘I thought that you didn’t want me because of what I did to my mom,’ Matteo says, ‘Because you realized what kind of a person I am and –’

‘And what kind of a person is that?’ David’s voice has softened completely now, and Matteo thinks: He did that. He leaves traces of himself on the other boy, and it’s not always bad. Matteo can make other people angry and annoyed – he can and does so with ease – but he can make other people laugh, can make voices go soft and quiet, too.

‘I thought – and I still do sometimes – that I am a bad person. Or, maybe not bad. But I’m selfish, yes?’

‘Everybody is. It’s called self-preservation. I know what that’s like.’

‘Is that why you –’

‘Yeah,’ David says, ‘Had some bad experiences during high school, so when I got to Berlin, I didn’t really tell anyone I was trans. I didn’t let anyone in period. You weren’t…’ he sighs. ‘You weren’t planned at all.’

‘That’s what my dad said,’ Matteo jokes, then frowns. ‘Wow, that hit close to home.’

David laughs and hits him in the arm. Yeah, he deserves that.

‘Anyway, I tried telling you in the park. And then your mom happened, and you were so open and vulnerable and – I just realized that I couldn’t do it. That I would just keep being the mysterious assassin with bad taste in pizza and nothing else, and I didn't want that, but I physically couldn’t bring myself to utter the words.’

‘So it wasn’t about me?’ Matteo has to ask. He thinks he knows – has known for a while.

‘No, never. You were – the way you talked to me at Omar’s shoot, or when you held that pizza hostage until I gave you your scarf... I was already half in l–’ He stops himself, eyes wide, and Matteo mirrors the expression, scared half to death, the both of them.

But then, here they are, on his stupid balcony where there’s not much to see except for some trees and a lightly trafficked street in the middle of Berlin. Yet the world is changing around them, constantly, and so are they. Matteo is not the same boy David met in that staircase all these weeks ago, but David isn’t either. He’s not just the boy on the telephone demanding a handover, not just a sad boy sitting on the ground of a train station, not just the confident boy on a rooftop – he’s all of them, and Matteo – Matteo has fallen in love with each and every one of them.

‘Yeah,' he says, 'Me too.’