oh my god, they were neighbors

late night

It was about three in the morning when Ezra woke up on Mateo's couch. Little moonlight creeped into the room from the window on the wall, but it was not this light that had woken up Ezra. A small sound, barely above a whisper, had stirred him awake. Upon hearing another, Ezra interpreted it as a soft but reedy cry, coming from Mateo's bed in the corner of the studio apartment, and he slowly sat up to investigate. He glanced over at a still-asleep Mateo, who was clutching the blankets of his bed so tightly that Ezra imagined his knuckles would be white.

    "Mateo?" Ezra asked softly and received no reply. He blinked a few times and stood, walking over to the bed. Upon examination, Mateo's head appeared to be coated in a sheen of sweat. "Are you alright?"

    Without any response other than a sudden, seemingly random cry from Mateo, Ezra took it upon himself to lean across the bed and gently shake his neighbor's shoulder. This caused the man to tense awake. He froze at the touch and shifted ever so slightly from it, and as he looked up at Ezra, he breathed a few shaky breaths.

    "Mateo, what's wrong?" Ezra asked. Mateo curled into himself a little.

    "Bad dream," he replied, in a voice so small Ezra wasn't sure he heard him correctly.

    Ezra took a seat at Mateo's feet on the bed, giving the shaken man a little space. "Do you wanna talk about it?"

    Mateo shook his head. "It's not a big deal."

    The corners of Ezra's mouth shot down as he brought himself further onto the bed. "I think it is. You seem upset."

    "Just a little–" Mateo sat up and took another deep breath– "anxiety, that's it. This one was just worse than normal. I'm okay, it was just a nightmare. I'm-."

    "Mateo, you're tearing up."

    Realizing this himself, Mateo reached up and felt his cheek where Ezra had noticed a few tears streaming down.

"Oh." Mateo started to wipe them from his eyes, but something in Ezra—some deep desire to return the kindness that had been extended to him, maybe—sparked within him that caused him to reach forward. Ezra took Mateo's hands, brought them down to his sides, and used the sleeve of his own hoodie to dry Mateo's face instead.

"That's better," Ezra remarked. He budged much closer to Mateo, who tucked himself into his legs and rested his head on his knees. "You know, I may be a total piece of shit disaster, but that doesn't mean you can't talk about yourself, too."

"I know," Mateo replied. "I'm sorry..."

Ezra moved so he was sitting shoulder to shoulder with Mateo and, after noticing the remaining somberness on his friend's face, decided to pull the man into his chest so that he would rest in the nook of his shoulder. Mateo seemed entirely content with this, relaxedly burrowing his head into Ezra's chest and smiling, just barely, as Ezra kissed the top of his head.

There was a frustration in Ezra; an argument between every part of his mind and body. He wanted this, to gently comfort and be gently comforted, to give affection to Mateo, to have the boyfriend experience. But he also didn't, finding himself deeply horrified with the idea of genuine love and trust. It would be an admittance to a relationship that, in all his years, he'd never actually had.

He would deal with it later, he decided. Mateo needed him at this moment.

"I had a dream this wasn't real," Mateo said, voice slightly muffled by the cotton of Ezra's t-shirt. He seemed to notice this, pulling away from Ezra slightly. "None of it was. You didn't exist, but I- I remembered you. And I was alone in this stupid little apartment. I missed you."

Ezra smiled and reached for Mateo's hands. "Unfortunately you're stuck with me."

Mateo returned the expression. "I'm glad. I never really had, um...friends."

"I could tell," Ezra chastised, and Mateo mustered a joking frown. "Hey, I've been the same way for a while now. Pretty much since I moved to California."

Mateo's eyes fell to the wall that divided he and Ezra's apartment and looked as if it wasn't there. "What about...well, Jessie?"

"Mm," Ezra replied. "That's a pretty recent thing, too. I've sort of been on my own since Atchison."

"Until now?"

"Until now, yeah." Ezra glanced at the clock by Mateo's bed. "God, it's early. We should go back to sleep."

"I'm sorry for waking you up," Mateo said. "If you want, I can go to the couch for the rest of the-."

"Or we could both stay here?"

Mateo looked genuinely excited, if a bit surprised. "Or that."

For a moment, they maintained a bit of space as they settled into bed, though the tides quickly shifted. Ezra laid flat for a while and stared at the ceiling, less tired than he wanted to be as he thought about the hectic nature of his life up to this point. And Mateo, who had originally stayed in his own half of the bed, eased slightly towards Ezra, resting his head on his chest as if it were a pillow. Absentmindedly, Ezra coursed his hand through Mateo's hair as he continued to stare, trying to placate his own feelings on everything.

Here was Mateo, lying comfortably on his chest. In the apartment right next door was Jessie, who might have been dreaming about her life's undoing. Perhaps a few blocks away was her boyfriend, Quentin, that Ezra could only picture in his mind, but who he wondered about nonetheless. Somewhere in the city was the man who had robbed 7-Eleven, and maybe he was doing the same again. And then there was Atchison. Miles and miles to the west, back in the hellish, flat landscape he had once called home, were his mother and father. Were they awake? And, if they were, were they thinking about him?

None of it mattered. Absolutely none of it. Not his parents, nor the robber, nor Quentin, nor Jessie. Ezra was here at three in the morning with the only man he'd ever genuinely felt protective of, lying next to him, with him, and feeling a far greater comfort in the moment than anything he'd ever afforded himself before. His past was weighing heavy in his heart, desperate as it was to take hold of him, and an unsteady future always lingered hard in his mind, but it meant nothing. Mateo was, by current virtue, the one thing he believed mattered, because presently, as he thought, Mateo was the only thing he needed.

There was the consideration that this much adoration and reliance could result in codependency, but Ezra silenced this with a fist. He kissed the top of Mateo's head as a final 'fuck you' to his brain. Twice, actually, for good measure.