Work Text:
Jay McCarrol is in Matt’s bed.
He’s asleep, which means that Matt is allowed to stare at him for as long as he wants, as long as he keeps his eyes from pressing too hard. If he looks too hard, if he really digs into the whole of him, to the un-Botoxed lines around his face and the way his lips are sort of chapped, like he doesn’t drink enough water, then he might wake him up. He’s stirred a few times, nothing-phrases coming from his throat before settling down again. Matt feels the most intellectually stimulated he’s ever felt in his life. It’s like he’s doing a study, like he should come away from this session with a 500-page thesis on how Jay McCarrol sleeps and dreams; his unconscious existence. He wonders if previous bed partners have remarked on the noises he makes, or the way he moves, and then he wonders if Jay has had previous bed partners, the type that can watch you sleep like Matt’s doing, who could potentially take pictures and sell them to tabloids. He wonders if he just kicks people out after he’s done fucking them. Matt feels like, if he looked any harder, he’d be boring holes into the side of Jay’s face, and that is his cue to back off a little.
Jay looks sad, in sleep. Honestly, he’s looked sad the whole time he’s been around him, save for when he’s looking at Matt. It gives Matt an insane ego rush to think that Jay is such a miserable little sad sack that it’s visible to everyone around him, but when he looks at Matt, of all people, he brightens up a little. His sallow complexion clearing when Matt speaks. It’s probably-definitely really bad for Matt that this is the case, that there’s physical evidence of Matt crashing into Jay, and that it’s a positive impact, like someone carving something beautiful out of stone. Jesus, fuck. Matt feels himself start to get hard again, though he really shouldn’t be able to, given that they went at it for a few hours not that long ago.
The sun is starting to come up, glimmering through Matt’s curtains. The light dapples Jay’s face, giving Matt some key spots to zero in on. One hits the tail end of his eyebrow, sparse and dark. Another on the bridge of his nose, his pores tight. Matt feels like he’s being offered a 20-course meal. He feasts on the entirety of it. Jay shifts and the covers on Matt’s bed move low enough that he’s offered a taste of chest hair, black and white. Matt grinds his teeth. There’s a red mark on Jay’s shoulder from where Matt got a little too friendly and had to be pulled off by the nape like a kitten and reminded that Jay is a public figure who can’t go around covered in hickies like a teenager. (A black eye is fine, of course.)
Matt debates the ethics of jerking off next to your sleeping once-best-friend turned rock-star-idol, for long enough that Jay starts waking up. His face screws up, all his wrinkles standing out. Matt is utterly charmed by him, by his age, how he's worn in. It feels like he’s been carbonated, all of the blood in his body fizzing as he watches something that he hasn’t seen since he was a kid, the two of them huddled in one bed because Jay had a nightmare, or because he was so angry at his parents for not being as laissez-faire as Matt’s.
Jay groans a little. Matt is slapped in the face with it, reminded of the little noises that he made while they fucked last night, or, worse, when Matt was hurting him. He cracks an eye open. Matt tries really hard not to stare at him as it happens.
“Hey,” Jay says, sounding a little apprehensive in a way that rustles Matt’s feathers.
“Hi,” Matt responds, fangirly and inappropriate. “Uh,” he clears his throat. “Hey, yeah. Good morning.”
“What time is it?”
“I don’t know,” Matt says.
“How long have you been awake?”
The truth is that Matt has been awake all night. He shrugs. “An hour?”
Jay frowns. “Were you watching me sleep?”
You don’t know the half of it, buddy. “No, I was on my phone.”
“Doing what?”
“Jesus, what’s with the 20-questions? I was doing normal phone stuff. Doom-scrolling. You know.”
Jay’s face clears up a little, the clouds parting enough that Matt stops feeling nauseous. “Okay. Uh. I have to piss, is there a bathroom that I can—”
“Yeah, totally. I mean.” Matt thinks that there is a minor possibility that his bandmates might attack and de-limb Jay if they see him. “Let me show you.”
Jay’s brow furrows. “I think I can find it myself if you give me directions.”
“Yeah, yeah. Just. It’s kind of dangerous out there, you know? And maybe I should just walk you there just in case.”
Jay sighs. He sits up. Matt is treated to the sight of his bare back. He watches him run a hand over his face. “Shit.”
Matt waits for more information. He doesn’t get any. “...What?”
“I just. I fucking forgot, like, what world we were living in, you know? I forgot that it wasn’t just—”
You and me. Matt agrees, he had forgotten too. He had forgotten about the Jay McCarrol Google Alert on his phone, and his subscriptions to the Jay McCarrol Update accounts, and the way, ultimately, he’s just a fan who got really lucky. His gut swims. He doesn’t say anything because he’s not sure that there’s anything he could say that would make it better. They both wanted to go back, but Matt was right when he said it yesterday: there’s no way back. There’s no magic out. There’s no time machine.
“I’m sure I have a bottle you could piss in, if you wanted,” Matt half-jokes.
Jay doesn’t turn to him, but Matt watches a shiver run along his back that could swing positive or negative.
“I think we should go to my place,” Jay says to the room, still not turning to Matt.
Matt blinks. “We should?”
Jay pulls his knees up to his front, another loud echo of childhood. “It would be really easy for me to give up on this, Matt.” He sounds really adult when he says it, in stark contrast to his posture and the sentiment behind it. I don’t want to give you up, I don’t want to pop this bubble. “So, I think we should go to mine. And we can figure it out from there.”
Matt doesn’t ask what there is to figure out. It’s un-figure-out-able. They’re fucked in a major way.
Matt wants to know what Jay’s thinking. He thinks that it might be like asking him to chop his head off if he were to ask. He chews his lower lip. The sun is still coming up, but it doesn’t really hit him until Jay turns to him, sheds light on him, bright and painful.
Matt says it, says “What are you thinking?” because he’s not 23 anymore, and he’s braver than he’s ever been.
“What are you doing with your life right now?” Jay asks, instead of answering. Or maybe that is him answering. Maybe the big thing on his mind is what a loser Matt is.
Matt shrugs. “I don’t think it’s as easy as like what am I doing or not doing, you know? I’m a person. I’m a real person.”
Jay sniffs. Matt hit the nail on the head. Jay wants to take Matt to his house and never let him leave. Matt wants to be electively kidnapped. He also wants to be able to walk down the street and get boba without being tailed by a bodyguard.
“I know you’re a real person,” Jay says, quiet.
“Do you? I don’t know that you’re a real person.”
“I’m not,” Jay says.
“Jay,” Matt says, laughing uncomfortably.
Jay shrugs. “I don’t think… not for a while. I don’t… I mean, it wasn’t when I left. I kept being… I mean, I think I was real for a while after that. When I was writing the first album, and living in that shitty little apartment. But not for a long time.”
To the public, fame dehumanizes you. People stop seeing celebrities as human beings for a lot of reasons. They’ll stop looking like human beings, or they’ll stop acting like human beings, or they only exist to be seen, or when they’re not seen, it’s so that people can speculate about what they’re doing, which is kind of just another way of being seen, isn’t it? Celebrities like to talk about how they’re just like US, and a lot of them believe that’s true. Probably the majority of celebrities think that they’re just like US.
Matt isn’t sure what to say.
Jay puts his face against his knees. “That’s why. I mean, that’s why I was talking about it — going back, asking you if you would go back and redo it, because that’s what I want, I don’t want to do this anymore, Matt.”
Matt, when they met for dinner yesterday, when they went back to Matt’s after, thought that this would be a one-and-done. It would be an NDA to sign, and maybe, in some impossible future, they’d be able to see each other semi-regularly to grab coffee, or Matt could come over to Jay’s place and watch a movie in his in-home theater.
And now, this. Now he’s sitting in bed with Jay McCarrol and listening to him talk about how much he hates his perfect life. They sit in silence for a few minutes.
“I really have to piss, Matt, so if you’re gonna come with me, you have to get dressed, and then we’ll go.”
“To my bathroom?” Matt says weakly.
“No,” Jay says, turning to him. “I’m gonna call my driver, and we’ll go to mine.” He gets up. Matt looks at his ass. There are deep, dark claw marks on it. Matt hadn’t realized he was being so rough with him once they got in bed. He thought there was a clear delineation between that and the floor.
“I don’t know,” Matt warbles.
Jay glances at him and then picks up his phone. “I’m not going to wait around and fucking piss myself because you can’t make a decision,” he says. His tone is so different from how it was just seconds ago. He’s getting frustrated with Matt. Matt watches him get dressed. When he’s done, he turns to Matt, arms crossed over his chest. He’s got dried blood under his nose and on his chin and cheeks. “Get up.”
“Jay, come on,” Matt says, laughing. “Bird. It’s not this serious.”
Jay swallows. “I’m not gonna see you again if you don’t come with me.”
Matt’s eyebrows fly up. “What the fuck are you talking about? So, now it’s an ultimatum? You’re fucking — dangling your friendship over my head and telling me I can’t have it unless I give up my autonomy?”
“Jesus, Matt,” Jay says. “I didn’t say anything about you giving up your — I just want you to come to mine. And we’ll talk. And we’ll figure something out.”
“No! Because that’s not what you’re asking. It wouldn’t be so fucking life-or-death if that’s what you wanted! You’d go take a piss in my fucking toilet if it wasn’t!”
Jay rolls his eyes. This is the first taste Matt is getting of Famous Jay in the last 24 hours. “Matt, you are the one who’s making this something bigger than it is. I just want to go home, and I want you to come with me. And then we’ll talk.”
“And you’ll get me to sign some big packet signing away my life. You know, for such a little bottom bitch you’re really obsessed with owning me.”
Jay shakes his head. “I don’t want to own you.”
“Okay, then let’s not go to yours. Let’s go get some breakfast, and we’ll take a walk through High Park, and we’ll go see a fucking movie. We’ll do that, instead.”
Jay’s jaw sets. “I can’t do those things, Matt.”
“Yeeeeah,” Matt drawls. “Because you’re so fucking famous and high and mighty, and you can’t spend a couple hours with your old friend Matt, because you’re gonna get shot and killed outside the Revue, or some shit.”
“Yes,” Jay says, plainly. “Yes, Matt. Yeah, that’s why I can’t do that.”
“Hey, Bird, newsflash. You aren’t the most famous person in the whole fucking world. You can go for a fucking walk. Celebrities go for walks.” Matt, unbeknownst to himself, has started getting out of bed. He swings a leg over his mattress and stands up. “Is it me? You’re just so fucking terrified that someone’s gonna see you with me that you won’t do it?”
“Matt, I’m just trying to have a conversation with you.”
Matt shoves him. He wonders if this was what Jay had been after all along. Jay stumbles back, and then pushes forward, shoves Matt back.
“I already called my driver,” Jay says calmly. “So you can come with me, or —”
Matt slams his body into Jay’s, forces him onto the ground. He follows him down, gets a hand around Jay’s wrists and stares at him, at his wide, unfocused eyes and open mouth.
“What do you want me to say?” Matt asks. He takes Jay’s jaw into his other hand. “Why are you playing games with me, Birdie?”
“I’m not,” Jay says.
“I think you are. I think you were goading me into this. And you’re not even good at it, Jaybird. You’re really bad at getting me to do what you want.”
“You’re doing what I want right now,” Jay says, breathy.
Matt laughs, stunned. “Yeah. I mean, yeah, I guess you’re right. How early on did you decide you wanted this to happen?”
Jay blinks. He breathes hard. He’s trying to decide whether or not to tell the truth. “Basically from when I woke up.”
“I watched you sleep all night,” Matt says.
“I know,” Jay replies.
“You snore,” Matt says.
“I have a CPAP at my house,” Jay answers.
Matt crawls forward and plants his knee directly into Jay’s bladder.
“Jesus — fuck!” Jay curses, and then he’s pissing his fancy jeans. He tries not to. Matt watches him try not to, but once he starts, it’s impossible to stop, and Matt watches his face screw up with wide eyes, listens to him whimper and whine and cry like it’s the best song he’s ever heard, like it’s the best one Jay has ever written, Grammy-worthy. (It would be Jay’s sixth.)
“Is that what you wanted?” Matt coos, bringing his leg back alongside Jay’s body. His bare knee splashes in the puddle Jay left under them.
“N-no,” Jay weeps.
“You kept talking about how you had to piss,” Matt says. “Like I wasn’t going to do something about that. Obviously, you wanted it; obviously, you were telling me that that was what you wanted.”
“I didn’t — I don’t know, I didn’t think that you were gonna —”
“You baited me into making you piss your pants, Bird. You thought I wasn’t gonna do it?” He reaches down and presses against Jay’s bladder again. Jay squirms under his touch. “Jay, baby, I want you to know that I’d do anything for you.”
“You won’t come to my house.”
“Within reason,” Matt rolls his eyes. “How are you gonna get home now? I guess I could let you borrow some pants. Would you like that? I could give you a dirty pair so you could huff the crotch whenever you wanted.”
“Jesus christ, Matt,” Jay pants.
“Did you really text your driver? Is he really on the way?”
“No,” Jay admits.
Matt sits back, lets go of Jay’s wrists and straddles him, the ass of his briefs instantly saturated. Jay's hard. Matt can feel him trying to press up into him. “You’re a filthy liar.”
“Sorry,” Jay says.
“Yeah, you’re not sorry. I bet you’d like to be, though, huh?” He grabs Jay’s face. “You want me to make you sorry?”
Jay nods in Matt’s hold. Matt looks at his face, really looks at him, at the flush at the tops of his cheeks, his mouth in a pout. His stomach hurts. It occurs to him that this is all that he’s good for, in Jay’s eyes. If he were to go along with Jay, go back to his mansion, and let him talk him into being his live-in fuck buddy, that would be the only thing he’d ever be for the rest of his life. And that’s… Matt considers his current occupation, which is unemployed loser, and thinks that maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.
It physically pains him to do so, but he gets up instead of fucking him on the floor. He’s going to need a shower, his legs all covered in Jay’s piss, body mottled with blood from where Jay was bleeding on him last night. He’s a one-man Jay McCarrol DNA-collection device. They could clone him, just from what Matt’s got all over him.
Jay stays on the ground, looking up at him with hooded eyes. Matt nudges him with a toe. “Get up, we’re gonna go get clean.”
“What about your roommates? What about—” His hard-on, straining his wet jeans.
Matt shrugs a shoulder, feeling kind of strange and cold. “They’re not even that bad. I just wanted you to stay in bed with me.” He doesn't answer the other question.
Jay stands up. He’s weirdly springy. He flutters at Matt’s shoulder, eerily similar to how he was when they were younger, filled with a renewed energy at having just been wrung out on Matt’s bedroom floor. Matt wonders if he could get Jay to clean it up before they leave. What method would be most humiliating and therefore most rewarding for Jay.
They get in the shower together. Matt feels self-conscious, standing up naked next to him, the force of gravity weighing all of his body mass down. Jay doesn’t notice. He hums as he washes his hair with Matt’s 3-in-1.
“Bird,” Matt says.
“Hm?” Jay asks, opening his eyes even with soap dripping down his face. His left eye twitches closed as the suds slip in.
“I don’t know if it’s a good idea for me to go with you.”
Jay shuts his other eye. “I don’t know what you think I’m gonna do with you, Matt, but I’m not gonna, fucking, chain you up or lock you in a cage.”
“But you will. Metaphorically.”
Jay runs his hands over his face. The blood washes away. “Haven’t I already?”
Matt looks down at his feet. He’s right. Matt isn’t a real person. He’s Jay McCarrol’s #1 Fan. “Can you get out of the way so I can wash my hair?”
“Can I wash it for you?” Jay asks.
Matt lets him. He stands under the spray and lets Jay soap up his hair, lets him wash him clean, his lanky body pressed up behind him, shivering. He feels Jay’s breath puff against his shoulder when he leans down to press his mouth to it, in some perverse imitation of a kiss.
Matt feels torn between turning around and kneeing Jay in the gut and turning around to kiss him. He’ll walk that tightrope for the rest of his life, he thinks. Matt’s wanted him forever, and now he gets to have him, but this Jay, this Jay who has been puppeted all over the world, sucking up drugs and sex and getting dumber and dumber; Matt never thought he’d have this Jay. It seemed too wish-fulfillment-y. It made more sense, almost, that he’d get sent back in time and get the Jay of yesteryear than this one.
Once Matt is clean, they get out and wrap up in towels.
“You need better linens,” Jay comments.
Matt shrugs a shoulder. He won’t need anything where he’s going.