George didn't expect much of his life. He come to be rather complacent with the ways things had turned out to be. He wasn't unhappy, per se, just very uninspired by the world around him. He found himself with little more than vague enthusiasm towards a select few things in his life. Perhaps he'd thought he was okay with that, and that he'd live his life amounting to very little at all. Perhaps he really had thought that, but that was before he'd met Matty. Matty didn't expect much of himself. He'd fall out of trust with the world, and came to bury the person he'd once been deep inside himself, under a mess of arrogance and over spoken ideas about the way things should be. Everything was bullshit - love, family, being a 'functioning member of society', and perhaps it didn't look like he was ever going to get far with his life. Perhaps he'd thought he was okay with that: with locking up who he really was inside everything he'd wanted to be. Perhaps he really had believed that, but that was before he'd met George. Neither of them had much cared for change, but the thing was that change never did stop to ask for your opinion before it happened.

George knows his relationship is falling apart-he really does, but he's not quite sure what to do about that fact. He's tried fixing it, but nothing works, and George is reaching the point where he isn't even sure if he wants to repair the damage if he's the only one putting in any effort. But he's not a cheater, and although he finds himself fascinated with a certain stripper at a club he frequents more than he probably should, it's just a passing crush-nothing more. And it doesn't matter if he spends most of his time with Matty instead of his boyfriend, because they're just friends. He's only doing so because Kyle is out practically every night with fuck knows who, so George is entitled to share his evenings with someone else, it's strictly platonic after all...mostly. ~~~ Stripper AU Wattpad exclusive Completed

"Is that a picture of me? In your locker?" "No" "No? Pretty sure that's me" "It might be you, who knows, not me" ©All rights reserved to kickthetrash

Matty doesn't know what's going on with gender, and George doesn't know anything except for how to smoke weed.

see: symbiosis symbiosis: a relationship between two people in which each person is dependent upon and receives reinforcement, whether beneficial or detrimental, from the other.

Matty's not co-dependent, exactly, just very attached, and he's coping, and it's not like anything's happened, except so much happened all at once, because George is allowed to have girlfriends, because Matty and George were never exclusive, they were never anything really, it's just that Matty would like to think that there was something, and that that something was more than wishful thinking, but he reckons it's too late for that now. And it was bad enough seeing George kiss her. Maybe it would have been fine if he'd just reacted like a normal person about it, but no, Matty didn't speak to anyone for days, and George moved out to live with her, like Matty can blame him, and Matty's had what is easily the most depressing four months of his life, because it's come to the point where he's pretty sure he hates George, except, he doesn't, not really, because it's Matty's fault, if anyone's, even though he's yet to get his head around it. But then before Matty really knows what's happening George has broken up with his girlfriend, and needs somewhere to stay for a while before he can sort things out, and Ross is just kind enough to volunteer Matty's house - he has a spare room, after all. It used to be George's room, after all.

Their relationship had been filled with its share of flippant and careless touches from the beginning, but Matty's hand on his back in the middle of the night meant something to him. It was intentional. It always had been. A reassurance in the dark that wordlessly communicated 'I am beside you'. //// A history of George and Matty told in brief vignettes, from alternating perspectives, over the course of 10 years. 13 parts.

"It's complicated." Gemma sighs. "It's really not, love." In which Matty is in love with George and George watches too much Nigella.