From The Start (George Daniel/Matty Healy)

2: Allen Is The Star Of This Fic

At first, George wasn't entirely sure as to quite what he was supposed to do, because Ross had assured him that this all would be fine, and really this had all been executed by him, as he did all he could to ensure that there were no more awkward outings with only the three of them. Because that was what Adam and Ross wanted - the four of them back together as best friends, because that's how it had been for years, and George found himself astounded as to just how he'd managed to fuck that all up so easily.

There'd been quite the point made of assuring him that it wasn't even slightly his fault, and that Matty wasn't good at dealing with his problems, and that wasn't on him, but it was, because there had to be a problem there in the first place for Matty to ruin himself over, and of course, George was the one who'd let that problem fall into place.

It had been an odd four months on George's end too. He wondered what Matty knew of that, what Matty knew of him, what Matty knew of how it had ended - whether Ross and Adam told him, whether he even listened, whether he let them tell him? There were so many questions racing around his mind, but there was only silence: drawn out and prolonged as the second hand on the clock upon their wall ticked away in half time. No, not their wall - Matty's, because this wasn't really George's place anymore; he felt like a guest, he felt awkward and out of place, and not just in Matty's place, but Matty's life, and he hated that.

No. George told himself: changing his mind. Not Matty's wall, theirs, because despite what Matty thought of it, despite what anyone thought of it, he lived here again too; he had a key, he had a bedroom - this was his house too.

And it was just the fact that he had to question that which really solidified the mess in George's mind, because it had been... it had been four months. The kind of four months that had his throat going dry, and his heart slowing in his chest, because he didn't want to think, but suddenly obsessive thinking was what he was made for, as his mind fixated in upon January, and the mess, and one hell of starting a new year, and February, and how he'd spent it in denial, and March, and how he'd gotten lonely and a little fucked up, and April, and how he finally accepted that he missed and needed his best friend.

But Matty was more than that. In an odd way, more than that, always more than that, but not best best friend, because that was the kind of childish, and maybe they had been acting childish, and maybe George was no older than sixteen inside of his mind, but they were well into their twenties, and if George hadn't fucked everything up quite so spectacularly then he might have asked Matty to come up with a word for it - a word for them. He would have. He really would have. And they would have smiled and laughed.

But Matty wasn't smiling or laughing. He was crying, and George was stood there silently like an asshole, and he imagined that it was already what Matty thought of him, and he imagined that in some respects he deserved it, because George had never known what December was, but he'd always known that it sure as hell wasn't nothing.

And the early hours of New Year's Day hadn't been cheating, but it hadn't been nothing, and they lived it that greyed out awkward sense of something: an unplaceable something, and maybe it would have been okay if Matty had known how to use his words. And that was such an odd thought, because he wrote for a living; he had such a gift with it all - words came naturally, but George knew that words came to Matty when he least needed them: in Sainsbury's when they were deciding whether to get two packets of cereal or just one, at five in the morning when he hadn't slept - so many words that he kept himself up for nearly thirty hours, but not, not when he needed to put everything out how it was.

Because it was neither of their faults, for December had been a month of gestures and kind smiles, and how two people slowly just sat closer together without really realising it, and how sleeping on the sofa so they wouldn't have to go to seperate beds was never mentioned, but they were both so mutually aware of it.