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Every pounding footfall down the stairs is paired with the same syllable: “Jayjayjayjayjay!” Matt appears in the living room, where his roommate is hunched over the “help wanted” section of the Toronto Star. His train of thought is halted by the sight.
“Oh wh– whatcha doin’? Is that for a plan?” Matt asks through a big smile. He thought they’d been in a bit of a rough patch, but he should’ve known not to worry, because look, Bird’s actually taking some initiative! Whatever he comes up with is bound to be brill–
“Looking for a job.” Jay mutters it like he’s talking about the lackluster TV listings. Matt sees red.
“What d’you need a job for?”
“Thinking of moving out.” Like it’s not a nuclear fucking bomb.
Matt musters up enough discipline to silence the scream that wants to rip itself from his chest. Now is not the time for hysterics. Jay doesn’t really mean it. Band morale is at an all-time low, and as the frontman, that’s all Matt’s fault, of course. Obviously. He can fix it; Jay just needs some convincing. He needs to be put back on track, just like that wonky drawer in their kitchen cabinet, the one that they have to keep popping back in at an angle. Matt inhales deeply. Reset. Reset. Find your center. Whoo-sah. Bad Boys II.
“I get it, man. Things have been really frustrating. But this is gonna change everything, see.” He leaps up onto the other couch cushion, though Jay still won’t dignify him with eye contact.
"Okay, so, I was rewatching Mr. Deeds, as I often do, and the whole staged mugging thing gave me an idea. We’ll call it the Hometown Hero Plan.” There’s the pop of the marker uncapping. Matt scrawls the title on the whiteboard and tries hard to keep his voice from shaking. He even tips his head back so none of the embryos of hot tears triggered by Jay’s last comment can ever grow or spill.
“You.” He points at Jay. “In a ski mask. Go to the Rivoli.” He turns back to the board, writes Jay’s name, writes and circles “RIVOLI” four times without lifting the marker from the surface. “Hold the hostess chick at knifepoint.”
Jay slowly shuts his eyes and purses his lips. When he opens them, he finally turns toward Matt.
“I.” Matt points the marker at himself then writes his own name on the board. “In-ter-vene.” He says each syllable slowly and emphatically as he writes it. “Save the day, right, you run off, I explain how I was only passing through to inquire about having my band play a show, total happenstance, lucky lucky, obviously they give it to me! And this, this is all before the news crews even show up, right, that’s, like, extra promo. The cherry on top of the booked-a-show sundae.”
Jay blinks. He looks more exhausted than usual. Maybe he’s not getting it yet?
“And you can play the gig no problem, because no one will have seen your face!”
As he stares at Jay, Matt’s tongue pokes out between his flattening lips and there’s white on every side of his iris. Eagerly awaiting. Begging to be thrown a bone, an iota of acknowledgement. But there’s nothing – just Jay’s empty half-lidded stare. He’s not even doing that crinkly-eye tiny-mouth pensive look he does, when the hamster on his brain-wheel tries to sniff at one of Matt’s plans and run with it. Still, Matt presses forward.
“Of course, we’ll have to walk by in a different disguise a couple times to scope out the crowd first. We’ll need to strike when there are no formidable opponents, you know, no buff guys dining, but still a decent amount of witnesses.”
“So your plan is a crime. Again.” He speaks!
“No no, it’s not really a crime if it’s for the show! It’s pretend!”
“The plan hinges on no one knowing it’s pretend.”
“Well yeah, but I mean, later.” Matt fidgets with the marker in both hands, engine losing steam. “Look, man, you worry too much.”
Jay turns back to study the page spread on the coffee table. Attention lost. Matt’s panic bubbles up anew.
“Think fast!” He flings the marker at Jay’s head and hits his target. Jay doesn’t react. Doesn’t even flinch. Matt’s last-ditch round of ammo just falls to the carpet, pathetic and silent. That expression is back on Matt’s face: tight lips sandwiching the pink bud of his tongue, eyes wide and crazed, nostrils flaring.
“OKAY I see you need a demo to get amped up, that is SO reasonable, Bird. Yeah. Yeah. I got you.” Matt’s saying this over his shoulder as he sprints to the kitchen and rummages around in a drawer. Jay’s ears twitch even though he doesn’t turn his head. There’s a roiling wave of nausea in his core. He must be having some kind of trauma response, a reflex he didn’t even know he’d developed from Matt swinging various blades at him for laughs. It has definitely happened on a more-than-biannual basis, despite Matt’s claims. Jay’s bitten fingernails curl against his navy-grey dark wash jeans before he smoothes his palms up and down them.
“Ah! Here we go.” Matt finds what he’s looking for in the drawer. It’s a kitchen utility knife with a five-inch blade. Smooth, not serrated. Multipurpose. He shuffles over in his socks like a child trying to show you a crayon drawing – except a child probably wouldn’t be pulling your hair and yanking your head back and bringing a blade up to your throat. (Turned to the wide flat side, not the sharp edge, because of course Matt is all about safety during today’s rehearsal.)
“See, you just go like this–”
Jay’s forearm flies up and slams against Matt’s waist at full force, sending him crashing backward into the short bookcase where their boombox rests. He’s instantly on his feet, crushing Matt’s wrist in his hand and walking him backward through the small kitchen. They slam against the wall, situated between the front door and the trash can.
“Yeah-ha! There he is, gettin’ in character.” It’s a sincere laugh that envelops Matt’s words, not a nervous one. As soon as Jay laid hands on him, there was the sweet swell of relief. Like popping a volcanic inflamed zit or pulling a stubborn splinter from the webbing of your fingers. He allows the knife to be taken out of his hand, but Jay doesn’t simply slide it across the floor as far away as possible and chastise him like he expects. Instead he pins Matt’s chest with his left arm and holds the blade up to his throat, sharp side really truly digging against his flesh. Matt can feel the edge kissing the bump of his throat, the one that bobs when he swallows. The cold expanse of the flat part presses up against the underside of his chin.
“Like this? LIKE THIS!?” Jay yells in his face. Matt’s cheeks flush pink and his palms spread against the wall behind him. His eyes narrow and he bites back a smile. He becomes the spitting image of SpongeBob realizing Squidward likes Krabby Patties.
“You want me to do this to some random girl, you sick fuck?” Jay snarls. Matt wants to sputter out another laugh but there’s a pleasant and familiar haze settling over him, one that quiets maybe half the voices left in his head. The scrawny arm pressing into his chest feels grounding, feels better than any grandparent’s hug or sibling’s high-five. He tries to look down despite the blade getting in the way. Jay’s wearing a short-sleeved polo – the one with the cream, brown, blue, and white stripes – so Matt can appreciate every arm freckle up close. Jay uses the knife’s point to tip Matt’s head back up and his voice booms again, lisping spittle attempting to undermine whatever authority he has: “You think this should happen to an innocent person!?”
Matt’s happier to play the damsel than he’ll admit. He’s putting on his best performance now, looking like the pinnacle of pitiful, his barely-there brows slanting and struggling to unite at one peak. Should he beg for his life already? Should he throw in a “please, sir” to test out how Jay responds to honorifics? He has been considering some…
“Oh you wanna be the random girl? That’s it? Biiig fucking surprise there. You’re not gonna step in, you’re gonna watch and jerk off in the bushes imagining it’s you I’m threatening.” Jay’s voice is climbing to a higher pitch. Mentally, Matt is pulled in three directions at once: letting his brain turn off and drift away like an untethered balloon, playing the part of the trembling victim in this roleplay, and keeping all his satisfied braying laughter bottled up tight.
“I’d like to see you try going one day without embarrassing yourself, Matt. How’s that for some fucking homework?” Matt’s dick twitches at that, as if he wasn’t already half hard the moment his back hit the wall. He whines and rolls his hips out against Jay’s leg, which is so close yet so far away.
“Yeah? You gonna be here to grade my homework, Mr. Bird?” Matt makes his voice breathy and thick and here comes all that delicious disdain spreading across Jay’s face. Matt’s made him feel something! Jay roughly lifts up Matt’s shirt with the heel of his left palm, then uses the knife to split through every button in one harsh uncoordinated motion. He tugs it off of his shoulders without a second thought, leaving him topless. The weapon returns to Matt’s throat, lower down this time, where a single sweat droplet rests in the cradle of his jugular notch. Matt’s breath is hot and heavy, eyes already going a bit unfocused. He would impale himself right here and now if it meant he could catch just one French kiss out of Jay. He tries to rock forward, moaning softly.
“Or you wanna leave? You think you’re gonna leave, huh? Okay. So gimme a memento then Jay, leave a– leave a scar, why doncha. A visible one, I mean. Physical.”
The truth is Matt’s not taunting. He means it. He might want it more than he’s ever wanted anything. Any time in their friendship where he’s pushed Jay too far (or, in his opinion, nowhere near far enough) and been left with a bruise or marking of some sort, he has cherished it. All the rugburned knees, the smudgy rings of merlot-purple around his wrist or throat, tiny circles from Jay’s fingertips digging in to the soft flesh of his upper arms to shake him during a fight (or a “scene,” if that was the better word for whatever the fuck they’d been doing these last few months.) He wishes the bright red handprints on his slapped cheeks would last more than half an hour, but they never do. He appreciates them in the mirror for as long as he can.
Matt never tries to give Jay any of these gifts. It would be a sin, an affront, to modify the appearance of something already so perfect. What he does give is his fealty, his labor, the clean dishes. Vacuuming all the crumbs (of the food that he paid for) off the carpet. Their carpet. Theirs.
Still, he loves to watch each little red-purple-brown-green watercolor bloom as it changes his pasty skin into a canvas for temporal art. He photographs the journey of each bruise, holed up in his room with his PowerShot, day by day as it fades away. They look best in natural light, by the window. The fleeting nature of each mark is a pertinent part of its beauty, of course, but Matt knows his worth. He knows he deserves more. A brand. A commitment of sorts, one made to his flesh, if his mind and heart can never hope for one of their own. And he’s going to get it.
Matt jerks forward and Jay doesn’t have time to react or withdraw even if he wanted to, which he doesn’t. The tip of the blade nicks Matt’s collarbone and drags out a thin line. Immediately, the beads well up like little red flowers blossoming along the vine of the cut.
Matt’s speechless mouth hangs open as he presses his chin down and back into his neck, straining to see the damage. Jay’s free hand slides through the front of Matt’s hair, slamming his skull back against the wall where it belongs.
“Look what you made me do.”
Jay is fucking tired. Weary, even. The novelty of bossing Matt around like a well-trained dog wore off surprisingly quickly, especially with the added awkwardness of one party popping an unrequited boner about it. (And trying to ignore said boner was even sillier than addressing it, he quickly gleaned.)
But what was the point of this living arrangement if they couldn’t just be normal best friends? It was like Jay discovered (or maybe finally admitted?) that Matt had only two settings, labeled “Annoying” and “Aroused” – and yes, the lever often got stuck at the midpoint – and both modes required monumental mental effort for Jay to exist around.
See, there’s only so long you can poke fun at a guy for getting off on this shit before you have to admit the part you’re playing in it all. The sting of shame that Matt never felt – but that Jay thought he should – had begun to cling to Jay’s clothes like secondhand smoke. The weird sadist supervillain act was fun for a season, maybe, but not for the rest of his life. He was looking for an out. (And if he really was good at this sort of stuff, really truly built for it, well then surely he could find a nice girl to do it to, lickety-split. A girl who would wash his dishes and dry-clean his blazers and pay his rent and suck him off, the one line he hadn’t let Matt cross even though his eyes begged for it daily.)
Matt saw it coming. He’s a smart guy, after all. In fact, every morning of his life, Matt wakes up with the putrid taste of that specific fear of abandonment making itself at home on his tongue, down his throat, filling up his lungs, tendrils of rot eventually licking at every organ until it’s all that he is. Puppeted by it through every choice he makes. Like this one:
He grabs Jay’s arm with both hands and pulls the knife closer.
“Do it. Fucking do it. Coward. Fucking carve me up, come on then.”
Tell me to stop it. Tell me how to beg. Tell me to shut up. Tell me to slit my own throat because it isn’t worth your effort. Or would you prefer hara-kiri?
He’s locked in now, running his mouth, and somehow that’s way worse than all the fucking moaning from earlier. Jay twists his right arm free and holds the knife down low at his side. His other hand is still pressing Matt’s shoulder to the wall, trying to keep some distance between them.
“I knew it. I knew you were all fucking talk, I knew you couldn’t even go through with the plan I had, I should’ve swapped the roles. Should’ve known you’re too much of a fucking wuss. Chicken. Buh-KAW.”
Jay won’t look in his eyes any more and Matt doesn’t know why. His desperation grows.
“PUSSY.” Matt punctuates the insult by spitting in Jay’s face.
That does it.
The blade goes in.
Matt inhales sharply but he doesn’t scream. The universe freezes as the cold steel invades the space just under his ribs, flirting with his fist-sized spleen but not making contact with it.
He sees white and every inch of his skin feels kissed by the hottest sun. His next exhale comes out shuddered, like carriage wheels crossing cobblestones. When Jay looks up from the embedded blade to meet Matt’s smiling eyes, there’s zero concern. All the rage is still right there; none of it has been skimmed off the surface by this development. They both grit their teeth. Matt starts curving his spine up off the wall, rocking forward to sink the blade in deeper. Jay notices and yanks it out before the demented little fuck can skewer himself. The knife clatters onto the linoleum floor but Jay’s left hand stays around Matt’s throat, pinning him in place.
“Good job! See, I knew you had it in you.” Matt’s genuine glee is potent enough to cloak every ounce of pain in his voice. He cranes his neck to look down again and is transfixed by the tiny yawning mouth of red. His new mermaid gill. His features wobble into a thin smile like a drunken cartoon.
“Freak.”
Matt hums, damn near purrs, in response. That’s me!
“I could kill you.” Aw shucks, do ya mean it? Matt’s hard cock pulses again at the delightfully promising future tense, at how it’s not “I could’ve killed you.”
Jay’s right hand is on Matt’s hip, just under the cut. Turns out he can’t stop staring at his handiwork either. His thumb runs over the warm smooth skin above Matt’s belt loops, then his palm slides up a few inches until his fingertips tease the wound’s clean edge. His index finger is the boldest of the bunch, pressing pressing pressing until it actually makes its way inside Matt.
“Ohf–ohfuck.” There’s a sharp surge of pain and a gurgling sound he didn’t mean to make, but Matt has different priorities. His hand dives down his pants, snakes under his waistband, and starts working himself shamelessly. He can’t remember the last time he jerked off to anything other than the thought of being penetrated by Jay, and now it’s happening. For real for real. Wet and red and painful, just like all those stories he’d heard about how a girl’s first time would be.
He doesn’t let himself think too hard about what might be living on those fingers – the smudges of newsprint or the potato chip crumbs – and instead bites into his lower lip. It’s a poor attempt at muffling his most lascivious moan yet.
Meanwhile Jay’s lip twitches up in yet another miniature display of disgust but of course he doesn’t tell Matt to stop. He keeps staring down at the hole. It’s a stupid thing to be so fascinated by, but he is. He worms his finger in more. This encourages the first real gush of blood to come forth, lapping at his cuticle.
Matt’s next moan sounds so much like a porno chick, Jay’s not sure if he’s faking it as a joke. Either way, he’s morbidly mesmerized.
“Oh fuck, Jay. Yeah. Please.” Matt’s free hand is pawing and clawing at Jay’s shoulder. Jay’s not even past the first knuckle yet but he decides to poke a second finger in alongside the first. Lightning crashes somewhere in the chasms of his dark eyes. The wound splits a little bit wider and Matt starts to feel woozy, color gone from his face.
If this is it, then lord please let him at least be worthy of destruction, his body not a temple but a nondescript grey building to be demolished with a wrecking ball in one grand finale. Anything, so long as he’s not left to crumble in disrepair, neglected, abandoned.
The two fingers curl slightly down and Matt thinks he hears a squelch.
He wants Jay to excavate all the offal, all the good-for-nothing trash inside him. Maybe he’ll find something he likes, one little tumor-pebble that catches his eye like beach glass, some piece of Matt that’s actually worth keeping in his pocket.
Matt wishes he could flex and clench the lips of the incision tighter around Jay’s fingers, like he’s also heard girls can do, but it just doesn’t work that way.
The fingertips make a scissoring motion inside of him and he winces, hissing, eyes finally screwing shut. He fights through the pain and sees a pleasure most powerful on the horizon. Their hips press closer, legs slotting between legs.
“I can feel your fuckin’ hard-on, Bird. Use it. Jerk off in– into me, right there, so I’ll ha– have a part of you inside me.”
Usually Matt’s tongue wouldn’t be so bold, but Jay’s not keeping up with the pace, not putting him in place, not really. Jay’s not playing along this time. This anger isn’t mixed with all the stern, clear commands that have accompanied it for the last few months, and they both know it. They both feel the shift.
Of course, Jay has no reply. Matt keeps leaning forward like he’s trying to fuck himself onto the pair of fingers, his fist pumping away best as it can inside the confines of his ratty jeans, whispering “yeahyeahyeahyeah” until he can’t any more and his jaw’s left hanging open, spit glistening on the inside of his lower lip. His eyes are looking everywhere and nowhere and suddenly, forcefully, his whole frame shudders. Matt’s clammy-sweat forehead presses hard to the collar of Jay’s polo as he moans long and loud and stutter-stammered, spilling into his concealed hand. The euphoria is electric in his veins and he prays it travels down and out to Jay’s fingers, sharing a little piece of the rapture through his ruptured skin.
Jay’s going pale himself now, breathing heavy through his mouth, staring dead-eyed at the blank wall in front of him, looking a bit like he wants to vomit. They have no idea why this is still going on but his fingers press deeper as if on autopilot. Second knuckle’s getting wet now. He twists his hand – flips his palm up to face the ceiling, corkscrews in deeper – all a little too fast.
Matt’s head jolts up and he yelps high and loud over Jay’s shoulder, a fresh sound utterly unheard of in the whole of their shared decade, and although it’s brief, its uniquely horrifying tone cuts straight through Jay’s trance like an air horn’s blast. Finally. The fingers slide out. Some of the tension leaves Matt’s body and his knees buckle. He grabs at Jay’s arms to steady himself, but Jay wrenches away from him and stumbles a couple steps back.
Matt misses the feeling immediately. Feels like he’s plummeting, falling without hitting any ground. It was the closest they’ve ever been. There’s dread like a coiled viper in the pit of his stomach, telling him it’s the closest they’ll ever be. He’s already planning out how he’ll pick at the slit’s scab prematurely and reopen himself repeatedly. Like leaving a light on for Jay.
A beat.
“Jesus Christ.” Jay’s holding his shaking red hand in front of his face with a look of such twisted panic, he might as well be playing Lady Macbeth. “I…” There are simply no words for what’s come over him, no way to insta-quell his horrifically guilty conscience, not even if he tells himself:
- Matt was asking for it, begging for it.
- This is the natural conclusion of Matt’s little games.
- This is good actually, because this is just another list item to add to the canary yellow lined notepad in his room, the one that says “reasons to leave” at the top.
“S’okay. It’s okay, Bird. I’m good. Hey, it’s okay.”
Behind him, Matt drags himself along the kitchen floor, already leaving a snail trail of red. His reassurance isn’t working. Goddammit. Jay is going to get too in his own head about this and spiral.
Matt says it because he knows Jay never will:
“I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”
Jay’s silence is deafening and it is summoning up all the screams Matt wanted to unleash thirty minutes ago, back when Jay was looking at the newspaper. The quiet stretches on and on and on and Matt’s voice can’t jump in to fill it, because he knows he won’t be able conceal the sound of how close he is to breaking.
If this is how it’s gonna be, Matt wishes Jay had reached his whole fucking hand in and snatched his heart while he was at it.