Salvation in the Secular Age {MH/GD}

{She Got Jumper Cable Lips}

Please play 40 Day Dream by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes! This is just a short little one-shot, the next part might be up tonight as well. Enjoy this gif of Matty. Like, that hair, though. LOOK AT HIS MOUTH... Anyways, have fun.

{Haper}

"What do you want, Red?" Matty asked me, seated next to me at the bar of the bar.

He was wearing a Dad hat, a blue hoody and jeans, and I was in an olive green tee, skinny jeans, and white Converse. This bar, this dark little hidden gem, was officially our spot now. No one recognized him in here, especially not in his incognito gear. The patrons were mostly older men, and the food was greasy and delicious.

"What I always get," I mumbled to him.

Matty narrowed his pretty, dark eyes at me. "I'm not ordering that, that's embarrassing."

"You're calling me embarrassing?" I scoffed. "You had a twenty-minute fit at the hair salon because they used the wrong shampoo on your hair."

Matty packed his cigarettes against his palm in frustration. "Harper, you have no idea how much damage that did. It took weeks to get the balance in my hair back."

At this point, I just shook my head and blinked at him, completely unable to respond to his level of diva. I lit my clove cigarette and tossed my pack against the beat-up bar counter. It was old and scratched and stained, and I loved it. I wondered how many drunken, life-changing conversations with good company took place here.

Matty put two fingers up in a peace sign, making eye contact with the bartender, who was a short, stubby man with a sweaty bald head. His name was Dale, and he was always unnecessarily rude to Matty. I liked him.

Dale approached Matty, staring at him blankly, with one bushy eyebrow raised. "What do you want?"

"Good evening," Matty said, waving to the bartender. "I'll have a double Patron, and a double Jack Daniels with grenadine and four maraschino cherries, please."

Dale blinked.

"The Jack Daniels is for the lady," Matty defended himself. "Do you want food, too?" he asked me.

"Mmm-hmm," I answered him, blowing smoke in a thin line. "I want a burger. Everything. Extra everything."

"You?" Dale asked Matty.

Matty shook his head, tucking a stray curl back into his cap. "I'm fine, thanks."

Dale moved his bald, sweaty head up and down and walked off from us to make our orders.

It was seven in the evening, on a Saturday, and the bar was filled with familiar smells: smoke, booze, that musk of men who worked with their hands. It was noisy, but all the sounds came together in a harmonious hum.

Matty seemed a little depressed, and like he hadn't slept well. Underneath his chocolate brown eyes were puffy little bags, tinged with a bruise-like shade. Something was up.

"Why aren't you eating?" I asked him, tapping the ash of my cigarette against the ashtray.

"Because I'm not hungry," he answered me plainly.

Dale returned with our drinks, only he gave Matty mine and me Matty's. We each reached over each other's arms and took our drinks, respectively.

"You need to eat," I barked at him. "You're skin and bones."

Matty had a bad habit of forgetting to do normal things: like eat, brush his fucking teeth, change his clothes, when he was in his bouts of depression. Not eating was stage one. This was definitely not the worst I'd seen him, there was still some color to his face and his ribs weren't sticking out dangerously. But I didn't like seeing him this way; it always made me incredibly nervous. Matty tended to do dangerous things to himself when he was depressed, i.e., overdosing on multiple drugs over a girl.