matty healy imagines

honeycomb // matty ((part three))

- via xothemonsteryoumade on a03!!

//

Around a week or so later, Matty purposefully stayed up late. He found that for some reason, it was harder to stay awake when he actually tried to; his eyes fluttering, struggling to keep open, and his brain seeming to flicker on and off, consciousness and comprehension coming in scraps and pieces. He waited for George to come back, and he didn't quite know why he was doing this, maybe it's because whatever it was seemed interesting and new, and made Matty feel as if his life isn't just an ended TV series playing reruns of the same used story lines over and over again.

As the sky outside his window turned from a faded denim blue to a gaping and infinite black, he became more increasingly anxious. The ticking clock didn't help, the noise getting louder and louder with each passing moment.

Finally, just when Matty was about to let sleep take over, and give up on this utterly stupid idea, he saw a faint shadow crawling out from under his small twin bed.

George's voice was soft, but the sound nonetheless crashed like ferocious waves against the shore in Matty's muddled and exhausted mind:

"Dude... why are you up this late?"

Matty had a pad of neon yellow sticky notes and a green crayola marker. He prepared himself for this moment, where he could communicate with George and prod him with questions of all kinds. He at one point had the questions he wanted to ask memorized, but as George sat next to him, and the cap was popped off the marker, all of Matty's careful preparation came undone. He sighed, and decided to wing it. He didn't drink those three cans of Mountain Dew for nothing, after all.

I wanted to talk to you, that's all. Can you even see my handwriting?

He wrote, and showed the paper to George. It took George a moment, his eyes squinting at the paper in concentration. He grinned,

"Yeah, I can. What do you want to talk to me about?"

You.

"Me? Like my life??? Or death??? All of that complicated shit in between and after??? Well okay... But only if I get to ask you stuff too. We can like, take turns asking questions or something like that."

If Matty could, he would've sighed heavily just then. What kind of shit would George want to know? What does he not know already honestly? If he really had been staying and guarding this room over the last few years, he probably knew Matty better than Adam, or hell, even Matty's family. He would've seen Matty cry over his many insecurities, and seen Matty put his ear up against his bedroom door, desperately trying to hear his mom's screamed words, and he even would've fucking seen the time Matty opened his window, and dropped an old ratty baseball his dad gave him when he was younger.

George probably had no idea of the intention behind that drop, which was to see how far the fall was from Matty's window, to see if it might just kill him.

Matty decided that if the incident was ever brought up, he'd lie about why he did it, or he'd claim he didn't remember that ever happening.

Alright. George, if that actually was your name, who were you? What do you remember about your life, if anything at all?

"I remember nothing worthwhile. I remember little insignificant fragments, like the flavor of my last girlfriend's lip gloss, or the rush of being in a pit at a punk gig, or the comforting stench of black coffee in the morning. I remember pathetically trying to paint my nails and having them get chipped off almost immediately. I remember opening the window over there and gawking at a meteor shower, stoned out of my fucking mind. I thought it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, and I was way too close to making a stupid decision to climb on the roof to get a better view. I remember watching TV the day Kurt Cobain died, and crying later that night because I looked up to that fucker so much. He didn't even know I existed, yet I still sobbed about it. How pathetic is that shit? The most pathetic part of this is that I don't remember any of my family at all, none of the people that should matter. I don't remember my last name, and I don't remember my birthday. I don't remember how exactly I acted, but judging from those few memories I do still have, I must of been pretty fucking stupid. So who was I, really? I was no one important. I was just a typical fucking edgelord from the nineties who thought they were cool because they did hard drugs and wore ripped jeans and flannel."

George glanced over at Matty, and frowned in disappointment.

Matty was fast asleep and snuggled into his blanket, his expression peaceful and seemingly serene. George couldn't help but wonder if Matty had heard anything he just said at all.

He wouldn't have been mad if Matty didn't, because Matty did seem pretty tired. But what Matty didn't know is that George lost more and more memories of who he used to be with each passing day.

The day that George forgot everything about his old life was a day that George dreaded with every fiber of his being. It was terrifying to think about, having no identity, no origin, no memory of what it was like before he burned out like a sparkler and became this beast.

He would bare no resemblance to the person who once inhabited his shell. He would just be empty and cleaned out, like this apartment before it was bought, all the individuality gone with the last owners leaving.

His hand raked through his hair, and he stared out the window.

With that, he realized that he would've given anything to go back to that meteor shower, back to a time where things seemed so fucking complicated, but were really stupidly simple. Back to a time where everything was so sharp and real, and the pictures were never blurry, and back to a time where George felt painfully alive instead of numbly dead.