Fell In Love In Stages // a matty healy fanfic

Mr. Serotonin Man -Matty's POV-

>>PRESENT DAY<<
*t/w: drugs*

In every life, there is a turning point—a moment so sharp and searing it cleaves through everything you thought you knew about yourself.

For me, that moment came tonight. When the ghost of the woman I'd been chasing all my adult life had materialised in front of me, and vanished just as quick.

Nothing could have braced me for the look on her face—the disappointment, the disgust.

It was like acid, eating through the carefully constructed façade I'd spent years building.

I didn't care what society thought of me—a worthless seducer, a degenerate rake—but to hear her say the same thing? It gutted me. And the worst part was, she wasn't wrong.
I had no one to blame but myself.

When she left, she took pieces of me with her. The fragment that harbors empathy, the fragment that can reason, and the fragment that cradles my conscience.

In her absence, I felt incomplete, searching for ways to fill the void she left behind. Frequently, I filled that hole with sex, drugs and alcohol.
And a lot of it, at that.

Oh I hid it well. It wouldn't do to be visibly out of sorts. Then some annoyingly perceptive soul might actually take notice, and—God forbid— inquire as to my welfare.

And so I laughed, and continued to seduce women, trying not to notice that I tended to be drawn to the ones with pin-straight black hair down to their waist and that I closed my eyes when I had them in bed.

At first, it felt like a necessity to survive.
But over time, it became something darker—an addiction.
I wasn't filling the void anymore. I was widening it, deepening it, until it swallowed me whole.

Funny how I'd never seen my behavior for what it was until tonight.

When she caught me—when she saw me—I didn't feel like the charming rogue everyone else saw. I felt dirty. For the first time, I understood what I'd done. Each one of those nights, each meaningless encounter, was a betrayal—not just to her, but to myself.

She said she came back for me. She still cared. And that made it so much worse.

If I'd known—if I'd known—that her absence wasn't indifference but something closer to my own agony, I would've lived differently. I would've waited. I would've stayed true.

But I didn't.

I let my anger dictate my choices. I let the bitterness fester, turning sadness into rage, rage into recklessness. And now, looking at myself from this fresh perspective, I can barely stand what I see.

I thought I was surviving. I wasn't.

And now it's too late.
She came back, and I'm not the man she deserves.
I'm a fuck-up. A failure. Nothing more.

If I cared for her at all, I'd give her up entirely. Let her find happiness with someone who isn't rotting from the inside out.

I sat there on the rooftop long after she left, staring at the city lights below. They blurred together, smudged by tears I refused to let fall.

What the hell was I supposed to do now?

The answer came to me in the form of a habit I'd picked up somewhere along the way. A crutch I leaned on when the weight of my own existence became unbearable.

My hand slipped into my pocket, fishing out my phone. It felt heavier than it should, trembling slightly in my grip. The screen lit up, illuminating the cracks in my reflection.

I scrolled through my contacts, my thumb hovering over her name. Little Bird.

For a moment, I thought about calling her. Telling her everything. Apologizing. Begging.

But what good would it do?

I closed my eyes and swiped further down, past names I barely recognized. Past old friends I hadn't spoken to in years. And then I found it—the name that had become a beacon in my darkest moments.

My dealer.

My thumb hesitated for only a second before pressing the call button.

The phone rang, each buzz feeling like a countdown to oblivion. My pulse quickened, matching the frantic rhythm in my chest.

Finally, a voice on the other end answered, cool and detached.
"Yeah?"
"Fifteen minutes," I rasped. "The usual spot."

He hung up without another word.

I sat there for a moment, phone clutched tightly in my hand. The silence was deafening.

If I couldn't fix myself, at least I could quiet the noise for a while. I could forget.

And maybe, if I was lucky, I'd fade away entirely.