#who is matty healy?

[tayfabe75]

"What do I mean when I say I don't care?" he asked. "What is that apathy I speak of? It's an exhaustion, maybe. The truth is, when I go home, this is not the shit I'm dealing with. I'm not dealing with the crisis of masculinity. I'm dealing with how my mum's feeling, what Ross is going through. I'm trying to be in service to people." He was no longer invested in the project of being publicly correct. "I've done my decade of trying to be that," he said. "I'm more interested in actually being wrong, and people seeing that, and knowing what's right because of it."

May 29, 2023: Matty describes his disinterest in being publicly correct. (source 1, 2)

#year: 2023 #may 2023 #quote: matty healy #matty's character #matty's values #topic: politics #topic: controversy #get to know them #jia tolentino #source: the new yorker #source: jordan hughes #who is matty healy?

[lottiecrabie]

galatea, take one – matty healy

matty produces your sophomore album. it's summer. you fall in love like you were always gonna do.

(based on the lorde and jack antonoff melodrama love affair)

warnings: 18+, unprotected sex, cheating, author doesn't know anything about music or writing music

17833 words

June 16

There’s a banging in the back of your head, cool and consistent. You’re monstrously hungover, vestiges of a blurry night in West End, but something in you knows this isn’t a vodka-lime headache. Perhaps fear, or nerves, or prophetic destiny banging at your temple, begging you to turn away. 

You pass a hand through your hair, trying to make yourself look presentable. Sweat sticks to your nape. It’s an uncharacteristically hot day of June and you feel aflamed even in your sheer tank top and cutoffs. That, too, will later feel like some higher sign you brushed away. 

Raking your throat, shaking your head, you finally ring the doorbell. 

Matty Healy opens the front door wide. His hair sprouts from his head like his ideas— without order, overeager and overflowing. His face practically breaks with a grin. You think, pretty. That is the third sign you ignore. 

“Hi,” Matty says, stepping away to free the door. “Come in.” 

Three warning bells, knocking at the back of your head. You raise your sunglasses to the top of your hair, narrowing your eyes at the sudden overwhelming sun, smiling back at him. You step through. 

That is how it all starts. 

June 18

Matty scratches the acoustic guitar mindlessly, head thrown back on the couch pillows. He frowns at the ceiling, humming along as though that would be enough to make a melody bloom out of scattered nothings. 

You play with the strands of the carpet, sitting on the ground, watching him. Something in you almost believes that it could happen— that he’d snap back to you with a grin and those wide, puppy eyes and declare the newest summer hit. You’re afraid of looking away, of missing that fatal microsecond. You want to see when the world breaks apart for Matty Healy. 

A discarded cherry coke rests beside you. It’s lukewarm now, innocent collateral damage to the hot summer air. Matty doesn’t have AC in his apartment. The air sticks to you, weighting against your skin. You leave his house and feel like he’s still lingering on you. 

“How about this?” Matty says, plucking a few chords. You hum non-committedly. “You don’t like?” 

“I don’t know,” you admit plainly. There’s already some unsaid understanding between you; truthful and tackless. You like that you don’t have to filter your thoughts. “I don’t know if it sings to me,” you finish. 

Matty smiles rakishly, digging his cheek. “If it sings to me,” he repeats. “I like that.” You smile, proud. 

June 21

Making an album is like breaking your ribcage open and bleeding on the pages. You’ve always been guarded with your lyrics, afraid of showing scattered words before they’re fully assembled. You have this beaten up sketchbook you use as a notebook, scribbling down all your incoherent wordvomit then slamming the pages close before you try taking them back. Matty finds it funny. That you write where you should draw. He calls it a meta blurring of art. You call him pretentious. 

You hold the sketchbook close to your chest, peering down at it just to recite some verses out loud. Matty nods, repeating them over with delicate care. He changes words, tweaks turns of phrases. He smiles, declares his understanding of them. He’s so precise, so careful and pointed with his words. He uncovers you under the theatrics of rhymes. 

You bleed and bleed. Shit. 

June 22

“What d’you reckon the album is about?” Matty asks, nursing a beer between his hands. It’s late in the evening, later than you should stay. You’re both on the balcony, sitting on white plastic chairs. Your red-toed feet rest on the railing, long naked legs licking up to your trusty jean shorts. 

You exhale your cigarette smoke. You cock your head, pondering over his question, still staring persistently at the sky; not quite asleep, but some darkened blanket thrown over the city. “Heartbreak,” you decide. 

Matty does a little huffing sound, mulling over that sure answer. “Anyone in particular?” He asks, throwing you a side glance, taking a sip of his beer. 

You tap the ashes over the balcony, stretching in your chair. “My ex-boyfriend,” you answer simply. 

“How long has it been?” 

You breathe in. It’s a little uncomfortable to delve into still, some unhealed bruise you feel on your ribs. It might be why the album is coming out clunky and untethered right now: something in you refuses to dive into the emotions again, afraid that maybe you’d stick in the syrup. Choke on it. 

“Five months.” 

“Shit.” Matty shakes his head. “Sorry.” 

“Nah, it was for the better.” You take a drag of your cigarette, shaking your head. “Fucking dickhead.” 

It had been five years of your life, which is the most inconceivable part of this whole affair. The thing that you can’t fully wrap your head around, can’t accept. Five years. It feels bigger than life, grander than the twenty-three years you’ve accumulated. Maybe that’s why you clung on longer than you should, claws digging in his stomach, feet dragging on the carpet: if you left now, what would those five years have been for? 

“Yeah?” Matty asks, reaching his hand out. You give the cig over to him, trying not to shiver as your fingers graze his. He sticks it in his mouth without hesitation. It feels strangely intimate, seeing his lips where yours have been. You have to look away. “What was he like?” 

Gray smoke pours out of his lips. He hands it back to you. “Just,” you gesture vaguely, groaning in distaste. “An artist.”

Matty snorts. “And we’re not?” 

“An insufferable one,” you precise, throwing him a pointed look. 

He smiles boyishly at that. “And we’re not?” 

You roll your eyes. “A different kind of insufferable. A worse one.” You tsk, “He was good, but he just— he didn’t think anyone understood him, you know? And, really, he didn’t want us to. He was smarter, and more brilliant, with grander ideas. We just couldn’t get him at all.” You laugh bitterly, shaking your head. “Now I wonder if he even had anything to say.” 

How it used to infuriate you, the way he would dangle his supposedly genius thoughts just out of reach. You’re too small, love. Too young. Too dumb. You just wouldn’t get it. He’d speak of them in hushed tones— because he just couldn’t stop referencing them, self-obsessed— but never unmasked what those phantoms haunting him, taking hold of the brush were. 

There’s no words for it, he would say. And as someone who made a career out of language, you call bullshit. 

“A lot of his paintings are of me,” you continue, because now that the faucet has been opened you can’t seem to stop thinking about it. “He wouldn’t call me pretty, he would call me raw. I thought he meant it as real, as tangible. I liked that, liked having an artsy boyfriend, kept saying that he found me more than beautiful. How naive I was, boasting to everyone that my boyfriend didn’t think I was hot.”

Your tongue feels ashy in your mouth, and it’s not because of the cigarette. There’s smoke in the air. There’s been smoke for five years. You’ve never been good at pinpointing warning signs until it slaps you in the face, until the fire has already climbed up your legs. Matty stares at your side profile, quiet. 

“I think he meant it as unfinished, actually,” you continue, eyes facing the sky pointedly, searching for hidden stars. You’re afraid your lips will tremble if you look at Matty, afraid your eyes will water. You couldn’t take the embarrassment. “When he painted me, he thought he was completing me.” You snort, sour and mean. You’ve bittered over the months, lost some sugary quality. You linger unpleasantly on tongues now, wrinkling noses. “Fuck being a muse.” 

You take a drag, shoving the cigarette between your lips and hoping it chokes the words threatening to spill out. Fuck being a muse. Fuck five years of your life wasted sitting perfectly still, flashing a smile just to have the teeth rearranged on the canvas. Fuck the man who only knew how to paint you blue. You exhale the smoke, breathing out the building frustration. Fuck watercolors. You want to be made of blood. 

You can feel Matty watch your side profile. It unnerves you. How deeply he looks, how much he seems to see. Even when you don’t let him. Even when you don’t want him to. (Is that how he walks through galleries? Lingering around paintings, analyzing lines and colors and shadows, staring them down until they reveal their secrets.) Your leg shakes. You avoid his eyes purposefully. They dig in your cheek, leaving you bloody and open, leaving you to scab.  

“I think you’re pretty,” Matty says simply with an air of finality. You can’t help but blush, even if you know he doesn’t mean it as a line. He views beauty as this neutral, overflowing thing. Everywhere around, bigger than humans, bigger than sex and romance. 

A fellow artist that appreciates but doesn’t touch. You promised yourself to steer clear from those. Your cheek burns.

“Thanks,” you nod, putting out the cig on the railing. You drop it in your empty beer bottle at the legs of the chair. You can’t lock eyes with him still. 

Matty doesn’t say you’re welcome. It’s not a compliment, it’s a statement. 

“Let’s write about it, yeah?” He says, standing up, opening the glass door. 

You should really get home. It’s late, and you’re a little tipsy, and you’ve made promises. Still, you follow him through, and you don’t know if it’s guilt or excitement pumping in your veins. 

June 24

“Mint and chocolate does not taste like toothpaste!” Matty’s eyebrows furrow in offense, lips gaped wide. 

You giggle at his theatrics, trying to handle the strawberry cone melting on your fingers. You bend down, licking at the pink drops, the stickiness still gluing to your hand. Matty was smarter, taking his green monstrosity in a bowl. “It’s like I’m brushing my teeth.” 

You’re walking down a touristy street of London, wearing cliche sunglasses to shield your eyes. Every step, your shoulders knock together. It leaves your skin burning— you feel a sunburn coming on. 

“You have the taste of a six year old,” Matty declares with a huff. He dips his spoon in his ice cream, scooping it in his mouth, visibly twirling his tongue around it. It’s because of the sun too that your cheeks redden. 

You’re glad for the specs. He doesn’t see the way your eyes follow his lips, enchanted. 

You shake your head. Your shoulders brush together. “You have no taste at all,” you tease, eyes dancing. Matty chuckles. 

June 27

You flip through Matty’s extensive collection of vinyls stored in wooden boxes. It’s almost preposterously him. Kneeling on the scratchy carpet, you awkwardly drape your skirt to not reveal a flash of your underwear. A glass of red rests on his coffee table without a coaster.

It smells smokey in the apartment; Matty is making pork chop, but you’re not entirely sure he’s doing it right. The kitchen and the living room are one open space, stretching the dwindling sunlight from the windows. His back faces you, some washed-out shirt draping nicely over him. 

You hum, running your fingers over the titles. Your hand freezes on the next album. You gasp, grinning from ear to ear. “What?” Matty calls from the kitchen.

“You’ve got The Runaways,” you declare, raising it up like some second coming of Christ. “In mint condition, too. Man, I played that album to the ground.” 

“Why am I not surprised?” 

You stand up excitedly, running to the turntable. You lay the vinyl on the platter, side B up. The needle scratches, Lovers blooming out of the connected speakers. A gleeful sound leaves your lips. 

You nod your head to the rhythm, moving your hips, twirling to your discarded glass of wine. 

I want something bad and nice - hot love

The red sloshes dangerously. You jump, hair flying around, shimmying your shoulders. Matty turns from his skillet to watch you, amused. You dance to him, rounding the island with a laugh. 

“I want a kiss wet and real - strong love,” you sing in his face. Matty shakes his head, chuckling, but it quickly becomes this sort of headbanging dance move. His feet tap to the beat. 

You take his hand, twisting him to face you, pushing and pulling him away like a ragdoll. His body follows gleefully, discombobulated. He’s boneless, running through the short space between the counter and the island, the strip of land you’ve made yours. The pork sizzles in the pan. 

“Make me scream hey what’s your name,” he sings back to you— yells, more. You throw your head back, shoulders shaking with a laugh. 

We lovers never say goodbye

We lovers never die

We stop and go quietly

Cold lovers fade away

June 28

Delilah comes back from her modeling shoot June 28. 

You come in with two iced coffees filling your hands and you’re faced first with a gorgeous, tall, leggy blonde flipping a magazine on the couch. You stop in your tracks, heart falling to your feet. Right, you think, lips thinning. You take a deep breath, soldier readying for war. 

“Hi,” you say, overly cheery. “It’s nice to finally meet you. Delilah, right?” 

The girl looks up at you, grinning wide like an old friend finding a familiar face through a crowd. Your heart rips, guilt spreading through the muscle. It’s worse that she’s nice. “Oh, hello!” Delilah says, standing up to greet you. She has a posh accent. 

“Sorry, I should have knocked. I must have given you a fright.” 

She laughs, waving your worries away easily. It’s a crystalline sound. Musical. You wonder if that’s just how Matty is like— so in love with melody he dates the closest thing to it. “Not at all. It’s nice to finally meet you. Matty talks about this album all the time.” 

Your face crisps. “Yes. Well, yes— it’s a mess.” 

Delilah’s eyebrows rise to her forehead. “That’s not what he says.” Now you wanna know what he does say when you’re not there to catch the words. What your ears have lost to Delilah Prescott. 

But you’re afraid of what your face would reveal if you do ask and she does say. You’re frenzied and electrified just at the mere possibilities. You imagine it in his accent, It’s good. No, no. He would say something more like, It’s fucking good. Mental. It’s a postmodern juxtaposition of art and heartbreak— whatever that means. It’s gonna be the fucking album of the year. It’s gonna be great.

The thoughts finally catch up to your overeager brain. You flush in embarrassment. You’re really crafting compliments from his mouth like song lyrics; tweaking words and chords until it sounds right to your ear. As though you have any rights to puppeteer his own locution and feelings. As though his girlfriend isn’t right there, in front of you, pretty and sweet and smiling so fucking wide. Your eyes pull down, avoidant. 

Your heart jumps, staring at the two coffees in your hands. “Oh, gosh, I didn’t think to buy you one.” You look around as though you would find a third iced coffee hidden under your clothes. Coming back empty, you hand one towards her. “Here, take mine. There’s milk and vanilla syrup in it.” Too sweet, Matty always says, wrinkling his nose when you order. 

Delilah takes it, smiling at you. There’s a chic gap between her front teeth. “Thanks. That’s very sweet.” Too sweet rings in your head again. “Matty will be here any second. He’s finishing up in the shower.” She falls back down on the couch, stretching her infinite legs on the coffee table. “Don’t worry,” she winks at you, smirking like you’re friends, like you’re conspirators. “I’ll make myself scarce when you’re writing. It’s not my first rodeo.” 

You nod at her, wordless. What a cruel faith for a writer. 

Something rattles in your brain at the thought, hand tingling to pull out your sketchbook and write it down. You don’t want to do it in front of Delilah. You don’t know why.

She sits on her boyfriend’s couch, in her boyfriend’s shirt, at her boyfriend’s apartment, but she’s drinking your coffee. Your lips curl. There’s an injustice there, and you can’t pinpoint where.

June 30

“Come do shots,” Bree screams at you, tugging on your glittery black dress. Her lipstick stains her teeth and there’s something awfully poetic about it: too gone to care about the mess; artfully unmade; tactfully improper. You scratch the thought on your brain, hope you remember the dents enough to note them down tomorrow. 

You laugh, brushing her hands away. “I have to make a phone call.” 

“It’s my birthday,” she pouts again, this time holding onto your ring finger. “You can’t say no on my birthday.” 

“It’s 1:24AM, bitch. It’s not your birthday anymore.” 

She gasps, letting go of you in faux-offense. “I was born at ten. My twenty-four hours aren't even up yet.” 

You roll your eyes. “I’ll do a shot after,” you promise to placate her. She smiles, leaning into you to smack your cheek. “Yeah, yeah. I’m the best.” 

“You’re okay.” You snort a laugh, shaking your head. Bree smiles, pleased. “God, it’s nice to fucking see you. You’re holed up in fucking London. I almost forgot your face.” 

“It’s only been two weeks,” you say, oddly defensive all of a sudden. The past two weeks have been spent in an idealistic dreamscape, strumming guitars and sketching ideas down and drinking sparkling wine on the balcony. A carved moment out of reality. You’re allowed, you think, to want to protect it. 

“What? And you can't Facetime?” You roll your eyes. She pouts. “I just miss you,” Bree says, poking your stomach. “Don’t forget me for Matty Healy.” 

“I’m not—” You blush. “It’s not like that.” 

“Not like what?” 

You swallow thickly, cornered. Thankfully, someone puts on a Britney Spears song. Bree, scattered and easily distracted,  screams a squeal and twirls away in her boa and slinky dress. You breathe a sigh of relief, entering the bathroom and slamming it shut behind you. 

Locking the door, you reach for your phone. His contact is the first on your most recent list. You cringe a little at that, dialing it. The ring amplifies against your ear. You sit down on the toilet seat cover. 

“Hey. Everything okay?” Matty whispers, voice low and rough, scratching against his throat, clearly pulled from the depths of sleep. 

You scrunch your face. “Shit. Time difference.” 

He laughs. The sound pianoes down your spine. “Yeah, it's 6AM here. You’re enjoying New York, I gather?” 

“Yes. It’s lovely,” you answer in habit, although you haven’t so much seen New York as Bree’s flat since you arrived. You twist your fingers around the hem of your dress, biting your lip. “I’m sorry for waking you.” 

“It’s okay. I wasn’t sleeping.”

“You’re lying.” 

“Shamelessly, too.” You snort, shaking your head. “I don’t mind. Delilah tried to bite my head off, but I think that’s more to do with my ringtone of choice than you.” 

You bite your lip. You shouldn’t. He’s just— He’s just mentionned his fucking girlfriend, for Christ’s sake. “What’s your ringtone?”

You can practically hear the shit-eating smirk. “Lovers.”

Your heart slams in your chest. At the wrinkled hem of your dress, your fingers freeze. There’s moments in life where you can tell the world spins semi-seconds slower. In the depth of your chest, you can feel time resonate off-beat. 

“Not a big The Runaways fan?” You manage out, strangled. 

“Not at 3AM, apparently.” Springs resound on his side of the line. You imagine him falling on his couch, making himself comfortable to talk to you. You’re flushed— it has to be the alcohol. “So, what’s up?” 

You rake your throat, manually blinking. “Right, yeah. I— I had this idea.” You shake your head, trying to gather your dispersed thoughts to some form of coherence. “About this song. A Galatea concept— y’know, from the myth of Pygmalion? The sculptor who fell in love with his statue and asked Aphrodite to bring it to life?”

“I know.” Your chest flutters. “Go on.” 

July 2

Matty smokes a cigarette on the balcony, glass sliding door open wide. He turns to the side to blow out the smoke, but it still smells inside. You sit on the piano bench, hitting at the keys, frowning at your sketchbook laying precariously open on your lap. 

“I think,” you say, changing notes with a huff. “I want the first verse to be messier. Like you’re not quite sure if you’re listening to the point of view of Pygmalion or Galatea as they talk about some grand masterpiece and some grander love. I want to blur them.”

Your fingers hit the same five keys, the beginning of a melody that has been haunting your mind. You can’t quite pin it down like a butterfly yet; its wings flutter away from you, cruelly evasive. 

“And when you finally get that it’s Galatea talking, you understand that by making her, Pygmalion is creating her love for him.” You twist to Matty, arching an eyebrow. “Does that make sense?” 

“He kisses it and thinks his kisses are returned,” Matty recites, making the words sound divine. He has a knack for it, for breathing musicality into common life. “How can she truthfully want him if she wasn’t made to desire anything else?” 

“Forever object,” you nod. “Metamorphosis, Ovid. You’ve done your research.” He cracks a crooked smile, throws his cigarette beyond the balcony. 

He steps through the apartment, sliding the door close behind him. “When a girl calls at 3AM to talk about Galatea, you look into it. Don’t wanna embarrass yourself.”

You like, secretly, that he says Galatea and not Pygmalion. It’s her tale for a sinful, myth-bending moment in time. More than statue, bigger than marble, she gets a story between these four walls.

“D’you have lyrics?” Matty asks, sitting on the piano bench beside you. 

His shoulder brushes yours, heat spreading down your arms. You keep it tense, frozen in place, afraid that a micromove would make him scoop away. You don’t want space to breathe. You don’t want him to leave you alone. 

“Vaguely,” you say, peering down at your sketchbook. Matty plays your melody, repeating the rhythmic beginning of a song you’ve been toying with. 

His hand reaches across the keys with ease. Long fingered, spindly and agile. You blush, looking away. 

You rake your throat. “Marble skin with paper thoughts.” Matty nods encouragingly. Your heart drips on your ribs. 

July 3

Matty lays in the golden sun, eyes blissfully closed, a hand tucked behind the wild flowers of his hair. It’s terribly hot outside, especially in the unshadowed part of the park. His shirt is off, green grass surely tickling his skin. 

You devour the sight of him greedily. The slender frame; the planes of his stomach breathing slowly; the tattoos inking his skin; the strong shoulders. You lick your lips, biting the end of your pencil. You’re burning under your flesh, fingers tingling to reach out and sink your claws into him. To bruise him up, just to make sure he’s real. 

Matty asked you to draw him in that sketchbook of yours — make a real use of it, love — but you’ve barely done anything other than self-indulgently stare. You wonder if he knows even with his eyes closed. If he feels the languid gaze on his chest. If he likes it. 

You shake your head, peering back down to your sketchbook, drawing out some more messy lines to form the mess of his mane. Biting your lip, you quickly scribble around him spinning ideas like constellations of words to his center of gravity. He lets me through like soft butter. Leaves me sticky with syrup. He bleeds on my palms. I think I’m stained with him. They overlap with his arm. You sigh, shading his chest again. 

July 6

“Carve me down to bones. I don’t need muscles to love. What is a heart if it belongs to you?” You repeat again, singing softly, frowning at the pages. “What is my heart if it belongs to you.” You mule on the change of word, but something still rings off. “Make me a heart to belong to you.”

“I like that,” Matty declares, tuning his guitar. Plucking the strings, he sings back as though to try the taste of the words on his tongue, “Make me a heart to belong to you.”

He sits on the floor while you splay lazily on his couch. Your eyes flutter, sleep calling to you. It’s technically morning now, the late hours of the night stretching dementally far. The sky lays dark above the house. Inside, the only source of light is a red lamp drenching the apartment in mood lightning. It does nothing for the exhaustion digging its claws into your already fuzzy brain. 

“It doesn’t sound right,” you shake your head. “Something’s off.” 

“It doesn’t sing to you,” Matty completes, nodding wisely. 

Your eyes flip to him, heart soaring up your throat. It’s nothing— really, there’s no need to blush, some unkillable glee spreading through your veins. You bite your smile down. So what he remembers some small phrase you’ve told him before. It’s Matty. Pretty words hook to his brain and refuse to be shaken off. It’s probably beyond him. 

You yawn, sitting up. “I should really go. Think I’ll drop on the way home if I don’t leave.” 

“You can stay here if you want,” Matty says, staring down at his strumming fingers, throwing away the sentence carelessly like it doesn’t ivy up your spine. 

“What?” 

Matty looks up to you. “We’ve got the guest bedroom all installed. Why don’t you just crash here?” He grins casually. It all comes so easy to him. “It’ll avoid being found passed out in the street.” 

You chew on your lip, hesitating. You want to. But that’s the problem, isn’t it? You want it too much. It should be easier to say yes. Less like being tempted to some dangerous sin, less like guilt spreading through your belly, less like saying yes to more. 

But you’re selfish. “Yeah, sure. Thanks.” A grin cracks your face. You can’t stop the guilt as the damning words graze your teeth. “That’s really nice.” 

A smile blooms on his mouth. It does nothing to squash down the growing feeling of doing something wrong. “It’s nothing.” He discards his guitar, standing up. “D’you want a shirt to sleep in, too?” 

Your heart drums on your ribs. You sit up, swallowing thickly, mustering a mirroring smile. “That’d be neat.” 

“Of course.” Matty leads you to the bedroom. In another world, you would allow yourself to dream. 

July 8

70s rock music booms from the speakers. Pretty, drunk people twirl in the living room, screaming out the lyrics off-key. In the kitchen, you feel a sort of daze; otherworldly and calm, tucked away from reality with Matty. 

He makes you an espresso martini, your favorite drink, after boasting about his masterful ability to. You stick to his side as he describes each of his steps, as though he’s not just assembling a bunch of liquid in a shaker. You giggle at his antics still, the sound burying in his shoulder. There’s the vague thrum of a dance resonating in his bones. 

For a lack of martini glasses, Matty pours his concoction in the plastic cups the host gave you with a sharpie to annotate. It makes you feel like a teenager again, makes you imagine a life in which you meet Matty several years younger, when you’re still blossoming out of your chunky glasses and braces, getting plastered on straight peach schnapps. 

(What if it was him you had met at a café in downtown New York, fresh off a summer tan and your eighteenth birthday. What if he had chatted you up about his favorite songs and you had listened, mesmerized by the depth of his thought, yearning for a similar complexity in yourself. Would the five years have ended up the same?)

“Here,” Matty says with a slack, drunk smile as he offers you up his own blue, plastic cup. MATTY is written on it in scratchy handwriting, the T and Y with an odd space between it. 

You take the cup and tip it between your cherry glossed lips, tacking the rim of the glass as you taste the rich, boozy espresso. It’s a mature café day in New York, but it’s coffee all the same. 

“How is it?” Matty asks and it seems his grin keeps stretching on excitedly. You fear his face might never snap back in its original form, that he’ll be stuck with a vodka grin forever, eyes shining bright just from looking at you. 

You blink at him shyly. You realize, now, how close he is. You hum at him. “Good.” 

“Just good?” 

You roll your eyes. “It’s great. You narcissist.” 

The playful dig doesn’t seem to register to Matty. He smirks, shrugging. “Told you.” 

You lean against the counter, but Matty doesn’t move up. He breathes in your space. Your skin feels alight, warm and tingling. What would it be if he touched it? Would it groove grossly from the fire? 

Without a word, you raise the glass to his lips, tipping it into his mouth. He swallows the espresso martini dutifully. His eyes meet yours over the rim, dark and intense, rich coffee irises digging into yours.

You release. He licks his mouth and you follow the movement, shameless. “It’s fucking tremendous,” Matty declares. You laugh, throwing your head back. 

Matty seems to get closer to you, or perhaps the room spins around you, deluding your sense of space and time. He’s there, with red, plump lips that will taste of coffee and smoke, and he’s close enough to kiss. You stand straighter. Your eyes flick to his mouth as though it was calling your name. 

When you look back, his own gaze is deeply plunged on your smeared lips. You wonder if he imagines the taste of them himself. If he licks his own like he could get the lingering aftertaste. Your heart races. You could do it. You could— He’s practically inviting you to. 

The plastic glass hangs between the two of you. You don’t kiss. 

July 9

One blue and one red Gatorade stand on the coffee table, intermittently sipped between the pained moans and groans. Matty and you lay on the couch, the world rocking nauseatingly under its feet. The hot hair sticks to your sweaty skin, but you’re too lazy to do anything about it. 

“Rough night?” Delilah asks, coming into the flat with perched sunglasses, a knowing smile and three coffees. She looks like sunshine itself, radiant and happy and definitely not morbidly hungover. 

Matty groans vaguely at her as an answer. She laughs, walking up to him, kissing his forehead as she makes a coffee appear magically in front of his eyes. A grin shines on his face as he spots it, gripping it between greedy hands and dipping his head back to thank her. 

You should have never drank as much as you did last night. Delilah brandishes your coffee next, smiling at you. You think you might throw up. 

July 11

Matty tunes his guitar, relying on your monotone piano notes. You stare at your sketchbook, frowning a little, pressing a key at his demand. You’ve put Galatea on the back burner, incapable of getting past the first few verses without cringing. Something about the song is inherently wrong, and you don’t know how to fix it without unrooting it. 

Instead, you throw yourself into new music, fresher and more palatable, easier to chew and digest. A perfectly catchy breakup song lays nearly finished in a file on Matty’s computer. Some angry lyrics you feel from faraway; you remember writing the words carpet-burnt feet from letting you drag me, but you don’t much remember the sentiment behind. 

Again, you’ve cowarded in front of Galatea, a celestial beast you don’t dare to take on after your last failings. You flip through the pages of your book instead, trying to find a lyric that sparks, something to cling onto and knit and knit from. You chew on your lip. 

“Hey,” Matty speaks, and you jump, suddenly remembering his presence. You twist around to look at him. “Are you ever gonna let me take a look at that sketchbook?”

He’s asking if you’re willing to rip your ribs open and show them off to him. If you’d accept to string your guts out like a comically long clown scarf. If you’d consider cracking your skull and letting him take a peak of your naked brain. 

You hum. “I don’t know. Maybe one day.” 

Matty grins. “I’d like to see.” There’s no rush to it. No demand. Just a fact, a wish. A thought he’s telling you. 

You blush, but you can’t tell why anymore. 

July 12

You tiptoe out of the room, navigating the cracking floorboards expertly. Your feet avoid the planks like sidewalk cracks; a childhood terror of killing your family transformed into waking up the slumbering couple. 

You dip into the kitchen. Light blooms out of the open fridge, Matty’s frame bent into the door. He looks up when he hears you, smiling. “Midnight snack?” 

He’s shirtless, fridge light illuminating him like some divine Apollo. Shadows contour his muscles, draping over his chest tattoos. Your mouth feels dry. You nod, a bit too slow. 

“Think we only have Delilah’s fancy cheese,” he sighs, digging into his fridge to find some hastily wrapped brie. 

“That’s fine.” 

Instinctively, you tiptoe to him, shoulders brushing his as he lays the cheese on the marble counter. Matty opens it up carefully, rummaging in a drawer for a knife. 

Standing side by side in a quiet kitchen, you alternately cut yourselves pieces of cheese, biting into them until there’s nothing left but crumbs, comfortably silent. 

July 15

You wipe the sweat off your forehead, opening your fridge to find some leftover beer at the back of it. It’s some pretentious microbrewed thing your friend Julian left behind when he came to visit. You’re sure Matty will like it. 

“Sorry,” you tell him as you join him on the electric blue 70s couch— you don’t even want to think of the life it’s seen. “Slim pickings. I’m not here much.” 

Matty takes the beer graciously, smiling at you. He tucks it in his mouth, opening it with his teeth, spitting the bottle cap out. Your head grows fuzzy. He reaches for your beer too, repeating the same practiced ritual. You can’t stop following his lips, red, pulled from the bottle, condensation sticking to them. You swallow, throat dry— God, you need that fucking beer. 

Matty hands it back to you with a proud grin. You nod at him, too off-quilter to manage words. “We really are always at the flat.” 

“Well, this AirBnB isn’t nearly as chic.” 

He snorts. “Oh, it’s for the decorations, is it? Not the fact that I have at least a damn guitar?” 

You shrug teasingly, settling further into the cushions of the couch. “Eh.” Your skin sticks to the velvet. It seems you can’t stop gluing to things, leaving parts of yourself everywhere you go. “It’s really the minimalist hipster shit that does it for me.” 

“I’m glad.” Matty scratches at the beer label. “You know, if you wanted, you could stay over. You already use the guest bedroom every other day. There’s no need to waste your money on all this.” All this, he says, like it’s some chateau and not a profoundly tacky, barely functional flat.

Your heart beats in your chest. It’s too good— too unreal. Living there, in his books and his vinyls and his band tees. Walking the floorboards, draping the covers, perusing the fridge. Brushing your teeth beside him, using his soap—smelling like him. Crawling in his bed, tucking yourself into his side, sneaking a hand under—

You stop your spinning mind. 

“What about Delilah?” 

Matty shrugs. “She wouldn’t mind. She’s barely home anyway.” He smiles playfully, “‘Think she’d like some female company.” 

No. That’s the correct answer. The smart one. No. No, we can’t. No, it’ll end badly. No, don’t do this to me. You know I want to. You know I want—  

“Sure.” You wash down the nausea with a mouthful of beer, some vertiginous shock from your own answer. Shit shit shit shit shit. 

His eyebrows rise, face lighting up. “Yeah?” 

You laugh, though it’s entirely constructed. You wonder if he can tell. He always seems to see everything about you.

But he looks up at you so hopefully, so giddily, so genuinely. You’re weak to your core. 

“Yes,” you smile. “Let’s do it.” 

July 16

Your whole life in three very large suitcases, and now it’s being moved to Matty Healy’s residence. You packed more hastily than when you left from New York, throwing clothes in without bothering to fold them; you’ll be unpacking in less than twenty minutes anyway, the wardrobe of the guest bedroom entirely emptied just for you. 

Matty picks you up. He stares at you struggling to direct three suitcases to his waiting car, staying perfectly seated with an amused smirk. 

You huff, hair falling in your face. “A little help?” You ask pointedly. 

Matty snorts, opening his car door. “Thought you were all about that feminism,” he says, grabbing two of your suitcases and throwing them with ease in the backseat. Your eyes follow his arms as he does so, genuinely impressed by their feat. 

You blink away before he sees, burned. 

When Matty turns back to you, his eyes have grown dark. You swallow, suddenly feeling caught, glued to the spiderweb. He walks towards you and thrill pumps in your veins with each nearing step. Your heart beats loudly in your chest. You fear he might hear it— especially if he keeps slithering closer.

He has to stop. When will he stop? 

Matty towers over you, barely inches away. Your breath hitches, entirely caught in your throat. Fuck breathing. Fuck everything but him, but the heat radiating off him. You don’t need the sun when he’s standing this close. 

Matty’s hand grazes yours. It swallows the handle of your suitcase, tugging it out of your fingers and throwing it in the backseat. Your eyes widen, cheeks heating at being so stupid. What did you think was gonna happen? 

Matty grins at you, ruffling your hair. “I’m glad you’re coming,” he says. 

You nod, swallowing hard. “Yeah. Yeah, me too. Thanks again.” 

He waves you away, opening your door. “‘S no problem. It helps me if anything.”

You sit down. His car smells like weed and a cheap car scent dangling from the rearview mirror, and him, faintly. You hate that you recognize the smell. 

Matty enters the opposite side, flicking the pine car scent, then turning the keys. He drives down the road maniacally fast. You’re not even five minutes in and already you’re thinking God, this is an awful idea. 

Wind brushes your hair. The car smells like him. He’s singing beside you, twisting the speaker higher. It’s an awful idea, and yet you’re still buzzing, hiding a gleeful smile behind the palm of your hand. 

July 17

“What are you doing?” Matty asks, leaning above your shoulder to watch your hands. 

“I’m stress-baking.” 

He laughs, sidling to rest his hip on the counter, staring at your hands as you whip your batter with perhaps too much anger. “What are you stressed about?” 

You huff, doubling in harshness of whip. “This stupid song that I can’t fucking get right that is now haunting my dreams. You know, I had a nightmare last night that I was performing it for the Grammys. There was every single one of my heroes in the room — and my childhood bullies, for some reason — and I had this whole choreography and I took the mic and I opened my mouth and— nothing. Not a single lyric out of my mouth. That’s right. I am waking up in cold sweat terrified of this fucking awful, stupid fucking song.”

“Woah,” Matty says, resting a hand on your arm. You finally stop, throwing the whip in with a sigh. He forces you to look at him, smiling reassuringly. “Hey. It’s okay. You know it can take months to finish a song. Years, even. You have your whole fucking life to write about muses.” 

Your heart skips a beat. It’s the first time either of you really acknowledges the main theme of the song. You’re almost relieved that he’s ripped the illusions, taken off your careful mask. Made it explicitly clear he saw you. 

“Maybe you‘re just not wise enough to say what you want to say yet. Maybe you need more experiences— more time to reflect. It’s been six months, darling. Give yourself time to process that shit.” 

You take a deep breath, staring at your runny batter pitifully. “You’re right.” 

Matty grins. “‘Course I am.” He dips his finger in the batter, licking it clean. 

You gasp, slapping his shoulder as he laughs mischievously; a boy licking the cream off his lips. You try not to focus too hard on the shape of them around a finger, sucking, when you mutter, “Pig. Leave my batter alone. It’ll already be a pisspoor cake.” 

“I’m sure it’ll be great.” 

This time, when he dips his finger, he flicks the batter on your nose. You wrinkle, shaking your face away as he chuckles happily. “Gross,” you lament, wiping your nose clean, but joy blooms under your chest anyway. 

You wish you could bottle his laugh up, make the sweetest song out of it. 

July 19

“Don’t buy that off-brand shit,” Matty says, taking the juice out of your hand and back on the shelf. He walks a few steps away, reaching up for the brand name and putting it in your already full cart. 

Your mouth hangs playfully open at this interaction, thoroughly amused. “You’re a snob,” you say, more like a happy realization than an accusation. 

Matty scoffs. “Nah. It’s just better.” 

“It tastes the same.” He shakes his head again, walking off a new alley as you quicken your walk to catch up with him. “You really are a rich kid.” Matty throws you an unimpressed look. “Really,” you insist again. “When I was young, we were lucky if we even had juice in the house.” 

Matty takes a box of spaghetti, which you swap behind him for penne. “Uh-huh. And you had to walk two miles to school every day.” 

“Back and forth! Without shoes!”

“I bet.” You see that he tries to bite back a smile, a failed affair when he hears your giddy giggle. His chin jerks in a faraway direction. “Go get the mint chocolate chip ice cream.”

You stare at him. “Now, you know I won’t do that.” 

He sighs. “Get an ice cream.” 

Grinning happily, you twist on your heels and head off to the frozen section. You grab a tub of neapolitan ice cream, but then your eyes linger on green horror. Sighing, you take a pint of it too. 

July 20

You stare at Matty expectantly. The guitar still rings in the room from your last note. Space holds its breath, waiting beside you. “What do you think?” 

Matty has a slight dent between his eyebrows. He takes more time to reflect, more time than he’s ever taken. Worry digs in your guts. He hates it. He hates it. Fuck, what is he gonna say to Delilah? “It’s good. It’s just—” Matty cocks his head, frowning further. “It’s a love song.” 

Your cheeks heat at his comment. You look down in your sketchbook, reading over your lyrics. “I mean— I don’t know, I guess.” 

Matty grows even more confused. “But that’s not what you wanted to say. It’s like— There’s not even a criticism of anything anymore. Galatea and Pygmalion just love each other.” 

Your heart pinches in your heart. You feel yourself grow defensive. “Is that so wrong? The myth is originally a love story. Maybe that’s all there is to say.” 

“That's not all there is to say. You’ve given me more in versions you’ve thrown away without a second glance than this. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s brilliant lyricism, but it’s empty.” The words lash at your cheeks. You feel them redden. 

Truthful and tactless, that’s what you had decided. Maybe you’d like a bit of velvet after all.  

“It’s an almost completed song, though. More than I’ve managed to say when I complicate it with all that muses shit.” 

Matty stares at you. “You struggle because you care. Because you’re mindful of your words. Because it’s raw, and it reminds you of you. ‘My man of flesh, my heart of stone.’ That doesn’t fucking say shit to you.”

You turn your face away, digging your glare into his empty wall. You don’t want to look at him. You don’t want to think of him. Your heart runs up your throat, ready to throw it up on the strings of your guitar. Your lips tremble.

Matty sighs. “I’m sorry.” 

“You don’t know what things say and don’t say to me.” 

“I know.” He walks to your corner of the couch, vaguely hitting your shoe. “Hey, I’m sorry.” 

Weakly, you meet eyes with him. He smiles down at you, sure and reassuring. You melt on your bones. “It’s fine.” You’re a weak little girl; you’ve always been. 

“But I think this song could be more. The way you talked about it— it means something to you. Don’t take the easy way out. You can write dozen fucking songs about love. Only one about Galatea.” Here he goes again, calling it Galatea, centering her. It leaves you raw this time. 

“You’re right,” you whisper. You sigh, shaking your head, righting yourself. “Yes, of course you’re right. It’s— It was silly.” 

Matty grins, satisfied. He falls on the couch beside you, stealing your guitar. “Well, let’s write a proper love song in its place, then.” 

July 21 

The café is atrociously hipster and pretentious. You’d have gouged your eyes out at the price of a single latte if Matty didn’t insist on paying for it. You pretended to struggle, rummaging your bag for your wallet, but you let the battle last long enough for him to swipe his card. 

Taking your mismatched mug, you make your way to the sugar packets, grabbing three of them. When you sit down at the table, Matty stares at you, typical playful disgust on his face. 

You grin at him mischievously, shaking then pouring the three of them in your coffee. Matty shakes his head, tsking, “Too sweet.”

July 23

Bree wipes the lipstick off her teeth, looking in the mirror. She turns her head right, left, scrutinizing her makeup. Her hair flies wildly around her shoulders. She’s got a Moscow mule sitting on the counter. 

The door knocks loudly. “Hurry up! People need to go to the bathroom!”

“Two seconds,” Bree screams back. She meets your stare in the mirror and rolls her eyes. A small smile teases your lips. 

You nurse your espresso martini quietly. You don’t linger on the taste of coffee. 

“How’s the album going?” Bree asks, scrunching her hands through her curls to achieve her perfect, flawlessly messy hair. 

“Good, good,” you nod. She seems to wait for more, but you don’t offer it. It’s halfway written, still awfully raw. Recorded, then scratched, then regurgitated. It feels like an open wound to you. 

There’s as much love songs as breakup songs, now. You don’t dwell on that fact. I wanna watch how the world breaks open for you, starts one of them. Brown eyes follow me, sings another. If my ribs rip, will you like what you see, hauntingly repeats a third one. You hope Matty dwells on them even less than you do.

“Matty’s cool?”

“Yes.”

“I should meet him sometime.” You hum non-committedly. “What is he like?” 

“I don’t know,” you laugh lightly, looking at her confused. She’s never asked for descriptions of your friends. “He’s— He’s very passionate. And open. He listens a lot, which is surprising because of how much he talks, too. But, still, he listens, and he looks at you, and he makes you feel like you’re the first person who’s ever uttered words.”

Bree stays quiet. You think, Listen to me helplessly chatter, make me the first speaker to ever speak. Another lyric you scratch into your brain and hope it sticks until you have it written down, yet pray it leaves it right after, too. 

“Cool.”

You swallow thickly. Your cheeks heat. “Yeah.”

Bree grabs her drink, reaching out aimlessly towards your hand. “Let’s go dance!”

July 25

Jazz music plays in the house. The lights are pulled low. There’s a delicious smell coming from the kitchen. Your stomach drops to your feet; you kick it when you walk further in, leaving your suitcase by the door. 

Matty cooks. Sizzling sounds ring under the moody music. Delilah drips on his side, her chin resting on his shoulder. They laugh, whisper secrets you can’t make out. 

She has smudged red lipstick. She smiles. 

“Hey,” you say. “Smells good in here.”

“Oh,” Delilah calls happily when she spots you, tearing away from Matty. “We’re making dinner. Join us!”

“Oh, I couldn’t,” you laugh, but it’s strained out of your throat. Your cheeks are sore from smiling this much. 

“Please,” Delilah insists. She walks towards you and grabs you by the hand, tugging you to the working counter. Trapping you. Your cheeks stab at you now. 

Matty nods as a greeting. You nod back. 

“Matty, tell her we’ve got enough food for three.”

He smiles at you conspiratorially, as though you were grand accomplices, making a silent joke about Delilah. “We’ve got enough food for three.”

“The rumors are true,” you try to jest, but it sounds off. 

“Come on,” Matty pokes at your side with his finger. “Eat with us. Tell us about your trip. We’ve missed you.” 

He says we, but you morph the letters around until it sounds like I to your ears. 

“Okay,” you say finally. “Because it smells so good.” 

Delilah claps near you, but it’s a faraway sound when Matty looks at you like that, digging into your soul and coming out satisfied. 

July 26

You sit on his balcony, smoking. The sun is silky, sweet and smooth as it wakes up. The birds sing, the cars drive by, the people talk; you think of recording it, hiding it in a song called Morning. 

“‘Morning,” Matty says, yawning. You snort to yourself. 

“Hello,” you say. 

When you turn to look at you, you fall on Matty’s shirtless frame, gray sweatpants hung low on his hips. You swallow, putting the cig to your lips to stop yourself from parting them pathetically. It doesn’t stop you from gawking, unfortunately. 

Matty spots it and smirks. He digs into the fridge, finds his precious brand name juice and drinks it from the carton. 

“Delilah left this morning?” 

“If you can call it that,” Matty groans. “Fucking three AM.” 

“No tearful goodbyes that early, I imagine.” 

Matty laughs. “It’s hard to cry when you’re half asleep.” 

You finish your cigarette, squashing it on the floor of the balcony. Ashes linger beside your thigh. “I hope she has a good shoot. She told me the concept; it seems pretty cool.”

“It does,” Matty nods, though he doesn’t seem that interested. He gets out his bread, rummaging in the cupboards for his jam. 

“Do you ever think—” You bite your tongue. 

Matty halts his movements, sticking out of the cupboard door to look at you. He smirks, mischievous. “What?”

“Just—” You shake your head, laughing, preparing the groundwork for how silly it will be. Matty walks closer to you, fatally curious. “I wonder how Delilah feels about being a muse. Because that’s what models are, right? A canvas. Something to add onto.” You cock your head. “D’you think she’ll like Galatea?” 

Matty shrugs. “I don’t think she’s thought much about it.”

“Maybe not all muses suffer. It’s a compliment, right? For some people?”

“I think so,” Matty nods. “But it’s different for you, isn’t it? Her photograph isn’t in love with her. He’s not her lover— he hasn’t promised to accept her as she comes. It’s fine if he wants to finetune her. If he wants to make her up. They don’t owe each other anything.”

You mull over that answer. “So it’s love, you think, that rots musedom?” 

Matty rustles a hand through his hair. It makes his arm flexed, his bicep tattoo flashing at you. “I don’t know. I think it’s complex. I think it’s why you’re writing about it.” 

You hum in vague agreement. Matty turns back to his bread and jam, but stops, staring at you. “She’ll love Galatea. Everyone will. You’re gonna write the fucking song of the year.” 

You grin. Something familiar rings in your ear. “Make me a toast, too?”

“Sure.”

July 28

You sit on the couch beside Matty. He’s making you watch some convoluted New Wave movie. You frown at the TV, not understanding the French they fall into randomly, not understanding the plot at all. 

Matty is enthralled beside you. You watch him instead. He’s better art; more entertaining, more profound, more beautiful. You smile when he does. You smile because he does. 

He flicks his eyes towards you. You look back at the TV, straightening your shoulders, wrinkling your eyes to look deeply concentrated. Matty chuckles beside you. It hides in your hair, tickling up your neck to bury in your ear. Your grin widens. 

You lean into him, joking, “This is my favorite part.” You gesture vaguely at the screen. 

Suddenly distracted by the movement near him, Matty grabs your hand from thin air. You still. 

He climbs up to your knuckles. Presses against the bones. Plays with your rings. Twists them on your fingers. Your breathing is caught in your chest. You don’t dare move. Your skin is electrified. 

He rests your hand on his thigh. His thumb rubs at your palm. His finger circles the metal, bumping on the stones. You repeat the sentences over and over, trying to wrap your mind around it. He rests your hand on his thigh. His thumb rubs at your palm. His finger circles the metal.

Tentatively, you let your head drop on his shoulder. He doesn’t move. Doesn’t even tense. You smile, settling into his body, leaving your hand slack for him to play with it. 

July 29

The toothpaste is Matty’s. There’s a part of you that is aware, somehow, that when you’re fresh off a teeth brushing, you taste like him.

You lean your hip against the bathroom sink. Matty stares into the mirror, setting a needlessly furious tempo, wrecking his gum. You laugh as white foam drips from the corner of his mouth. He makes a little embarrassed chuckle, catching it with a finger and rinsing it off. 

You bend over the sink and spit out the toothpaste. When you straighten up, Matty spits right after you. You wash it down the faucet. 

“We should bring in violins for the Circe Circus bridge,” Matty says as you sip on water, swooshing it around and spitting again. “Make more of an impact.”

“Wouldn’t it be a little convoluted? We already have a lot of noise.”

Matty shakes his head. “No, no. It’s supposed to be unnecessarily grand, isn’t it? It’s a bit of a ridiculous caricature of love.” It’s how he interprets it, at least. You’re not quite sure what you were trying to say, just knew the words sounded right and pretty on the page. “We can try it out tomorrow.”

“Sure,” you shrug. You arch an eyebrow. “After the Basquiat exhibit at the Barbican?” 

“It’s a plan,” Matty promises. You ignore the fact that he says plan and not another four lettered word that slithers around your brain. His eyes meet yours. He smiles. “Okay,” he finally breathes. “Sleep well.”

You lick your teeth. “See you tomorrow.”

July 30

Drunk off red wine and Matty’s laugh, you stumble through the hallway. His hand warms yours. You’re a collection of calluses rubbing on skin; it should hurt, but it’s silky sweet. 

Your steps are loose. You trail your free fingers on the wall, guiding you, grounding you. You stop in front of the doors.

The way forks into the master and guest bedrooms. You twist to face Matty, so does he. You grin. Your hand warms, lit up from the mere presence of his between your greedy fingers. They feel alive at your wrist. Aware of him. You wait.

“Goodnight,” he finally breathes. His eyes stare into yours.

“Yeah, goodnight.” 

He doesn’t move, neither do you. Your heart speeds terribly fast. Your lips stretch up. 

Matty looks down at them. Openly. Shamelessly. He doesn’t flicker an evermoving glance, he lingers. You feel your body light up, feel warmth descend to the tip of your toes. A surge of nerves and thrill shoots down your spine, finding home in your knitted guts.

Time hangs in the air. You hitch your breath. His hand burns in yours. 

He tugs you closer to him. A small, ghost move, and you gasp. You feel him breathe against your skin; he’s real. Matty’s eyes fly to yours. They lock meaningfully as his head cocks in defiance. It’s a challenge. It’s an invitation. 

You’re a paper girl. You fold. 

You rise onto your tiptoes, cup his cheek, and kiss him. A soft, delicate thing. A press of lips. A cursive love. Thrill loosens your head from your neck, unscrewing it. He tastes like cigarettes and red wine, and there’s no trace of bitter coffee. You’re glad. 

You pull away almost immediately. Your heart races, trying to catch up with this new world you bathe in. You breathe in his mouth, eyes closed, mind spinning deliriously. You kissed Matty Healy. You kissed Matty Healy. 

Matty makes a low sound from the back of his throat, then hooks his arm around your waist and draws you in, catching your lips with a new feverish kiss. 

He’s not soft or sweet, instead lets himself be puppeteered by the passion, by the raw fucking need. There’s a thing between you pulsing alive for weeks, and you feel it burst at the seams, imploding through your flimsy flesh. It’s fucking inevitable— It’s prophetic. 

His tongue swipes at your lips, coaxing inside your mouth. You moan, gripping his cheek until you could shatter it. Constellations of stars dance behind your eyelids; he’s the center of all of them, a flash of teeth and brown eyes as the shining sun. 

You drip in his arms, and he catches you. Takes all the wax and kisses it harder, tilting his head to better meet you. It’s a head twisting tempo. He’s everywhere around you, under you, seeping in. He exists too vividly. You feel faint at the thought, at the rush of feelings. 

His own hand digs in the curve of your back. He’s tangible, he’s alive and breathing, he’s against you. He’s real. He’s sinfully fucking real. (You wonder, secretly, if he’s finally made real because you kiss him.)

Matty is the one to break away this time. His forehead falls on yours. He pants harshly, eyes closed, as though he needs a silent moment of contemplation. He looks religious for a split moment— bartering with God. 

You don’t take the solemn pause. Don’t want to listen to any chastising, guilting above. You watch him, biting your lip at his flushed skin, at his swollen lips, at his spider lashes on his cheekbones. You kissed him. You can’t believe it. 

His eyes open all at once. You look into them and try to find the leftover scar of some permanent change. “Goodnight,” Matty repeats, this time choked. You laugh. Smacks a kiss on his lips just because you can. 

Matty parts from you difficultly. He straightens, rakes his throat. He lets you out of the trap of his arms with much inner debating, waiting until he’s feet away before dropping your hand. You clench it to feel the phantom shape of his.

“Dream of me,” you say boldly.

“It’s all I do,” Matty whispers back, and then he’s into his room. 

You let your own bedroom door close behind you. You make a stupid, pathetic little happy dance, falling on your bed afterwards. A content sigh slips past your lips.

Rolling to take your sketchbook from your bedside table, you click a pen open. You hit your lips — still burning with the feel of his, with the heat of his tongue — in concentration. 

You try to think of pretty, poetic words, but all you come up with is he loves me, he loves me, he loves me.

July 31

You walk out of your room weightlessly. Everything seems sweeter; the sun doesn’t burn, the birds don’t scream, the flowers don’t wilter. The world exists in technicolors. Shades of black and white become deep maroon, pretty pink. You step from the hallway into the kitchen with light feet, humming to yourself. 

Matty sits at the counter bar with a bowl of cereal and the papers. His eyes flick to yours as he hears you. He smiles. “There’s coffee in the pot.”

“You’re the best,” you declare, practically running to the pot and serving yourself a steaming cup of coffee. You search his cupboard for the sugar, pouring yourself a healthy dose. Finally, you take a sip and make a happy, satisfied moan. 

You approach Matty. You peer over his shoulder to read the latest music article. Your side leans into him; he doesn’t move. It’s all so natural, so domestic. Your heart sings. 

Taking a new sip from your mug, you then lean your head on Matty’s shoulder. His own rests against yours. Your lips hang from your cheek like a clothesline, your teeth scattered white shirts pinned in place. You want to kiss him again, want him to wipe it off of you with his tongue.

“I wanna write a happy song today,” you declare. 

Matty grins against your scalp. He whispers, because it’s as loud as he needs to be for you to hear, “Okay.”

August 1

Matty rolls the blunt, licking the waxy paper and wrapping it shut. You follow his tongue as it sticks out, practically blushing. He takes a blue lighter to flame the tip of it. It burns red. He inhales one hit, then blows it. Smiling at you, he hands the blunt like a precious gift. You graze his fingers purposefully when you grab it. 

It’s stronger than you usually smoke back in New York, but you’ve gotten used to the grassy taste. You don’t cough anymore, don’t even feel it scratch down your throat. The smoke pours out of your lips.

It takes one more hit for your fingers to start tingling. Your body relaxes; your mind enters some sort of daze. You sigh contently, giggling just from the inherent joy swirling in your head. Matty laughs at you, poking your cheek. “You’re already flying, lightweight.” 

“I don’t know why you expect differently.” 

Matty hums. “One day I’ll get you to three.” Your heart rushes. It spreads through your body, like the muscle was suddenly finely tuned with every limb, singing a call-and-response song.

You lay on your back, draping yourself lazily on the scratchy carpet. Your head rests on Matty’s thigh. You look up at him, trying to make sense of him from his dark, sprouting halo, falling downwards as he watches you. You grin, loose and languid, dripping down your cheeks. “Promise?” You say, teasing. 

Your head rolls on his thigh. Matty takes another hit, shaking a laugh off his teeth. “I promise, love.” You don’t even have to morph the letters of that.

August 2

You walk through the up-and-coming art exhibit Matty dragged you to. Your feet linger on small, dreamlike images dotting the white walls. They nag at you with their innate sense of time. A flash of life, captured on a canvas, made permanent against their will. 

What do they mean? It’s always the burning question now. What are you saying? Please, what are you saying? You wonder when you’ll stop feeling like a little girl. When you’ll stop staring at paintings and wish you understood them better, clearer. When you’ll get art intrinsically, when you’ll be deeper than the blank, smooth surface of watercolor papers. 

You lost Matty in the white rooms, breathing through the space at a different pace. He analyzes paintings meticulously. His feet stop with purpose, taking roots in the wooden planks, deliberately stilling. He stares at them and you wish you could know what he’s thinking about for such long moments. Wish you could know how they move him, how they strum his heartstrings. Maybe you could learn the chords on the guitar. 

You stop in front of a papier-mache sculpture. It’s bent in different shapes, an awkward and senseless movement, painted over in white. You can tell the texture through the coat, can see its unruly, unsmoothened topography. Your head cocks.  

It’s not really anything. Or, at least, if it is, you will never figure out what the artist meant it to be. But to you, it’s got a body through its shape. A leg that extends, one that curves in itself. A stomach emptied. An arm that rolls around, protective. One that sticks out. A neck, dainty and vulnerable, bared freely. Headless.

You wonder if anyone posed for this. You wonder how they felt, sucking in their stomach, pinpricks of pain stabbing at their limbs. If they tried on odd positions. If they were naked. If they kissed the artist afterwards; if they thought, it’s enough. If they saw the wet paper build up on the grotesque armature and made themselves repeat, I am made of bones. I am made of bones. 

Your lips tremble. You clench your fists. Your nails dig into your palms, crescent moons of promises. You’d tear through the skin if it meant leaving bloody, leaving human. 

That is where Matty finds you, still staring at the sculpture, robbed of words. He lingers beside you, impossibly close. It’s all he does these days, air with plausible deniability. Real and unreal, present and far, far away. He knocks his shoulder against yours. 

You don’t look at him. “What do you see?” You breathe. 

Matty takes a moment of silence. He thinks, surely. Analyzes lines, composition, materials. Takes it apart in his head to find the solution. You want to see the process, want to catch the bricks he rips as he throws them over his shoulder. 

Matty hums. “It kinda looks—” His head cocks, as though to make sure. “Human.” 

Your heart drops to your stomach. You swallow thickly. “Yeah. Yeah, I think so, too.” And you wonder how long he’d stare at it if you didn’t hook your arm around his, tugging him away. If he’d look at it enough to scream, where are my bones, where are my bones.

August 3

You tiptoe to his door. It’s always firmly closed when Delilah is over, but slightly ajar when you’re two in the flat. It’s felt like a nagging invitation for weeks. You knock on it, a soft, nonexistent noise, like leaving yourself the chance to backtrack. To not mean it. 

“Yes?” Matty calls from inside, squished and drowsy. 

You peek your head through the door. His room has gotten messier over the Delilah-less days. Clothes hang on the ground, half-finished mugs make castles on his desk, CDs tower precariously. He lays in his bed, on the right side, his face crushed in his pillow. A cover drapes over him, but naked shoulders peek through. The light is too low to make sense of them, but you can faintly tell there’s familiar inked lines drawn onto the skin. 

“Sorry,” you whisper. “I didn’t mean to wake you.” 

“I wasn’t sleeping.” He mutters. Relief spreads through you. You don’t know if he’s lying or not, but both possibilities please you. You didn’t actually wake him; he cares enough to tell you otherwise. 

“Okay, good.” You bite your lip. “I— Do you mind if I stay here tonight? I can’t get any sleep in my room.” Your heart drums on your ribs. It’s all so fucking existent, suddenly. Meaningful. 

Matty peeks one eye open. He gives you a glance, then raises his arm, opening the covers for you. You don’t even hesitate, running to the entryway like a promised oasis. You slip inside— like a fantasy, like a dream— and settle into the cocoon. It’s warm, and the sheets smell of him. You roll, getting closer. 

You don’t dare touch him, but you get as near as you can. It’s useless anyway; Matty throws an arm over you and tugs you into his side. You might choke from the heat, and the weight, and the vertiginous knowledge that Matty is ivying around you, but you finally sleep nonetheless.

August 4

You hang up on Bree after drawn out goodbyes. She’s tried to get you to play her some of the album, but you remain purposefully elusive. You wiggle out of her grasp, promising to send her some demos soon. Her pursed lips were dissatisfied, but you can trust your distracted friend to forget it before the night nears its head. 

You walk to the living room. Matty’s shirt falls on your shoulder, something you already plan to shove in your suitcase when it is time to part ways. The thought leaves you frayed, uncomfortable, and you don’t like to think about it more than this. 

Matty is scratching his guitar on the couch when you come in. He sings low, mournful words you can’t make out. You drop beside him, bouncing on the pillows. He smiles at you, stops playing. 

“How was Bree?” 

“Still alive.” 

“Good for her.” 

Your chin jerks to his fingers. “What were you playing?” 

Matty hums noncommittally. “Just this song I’m writing.” 

You sit primly on the couch. You nod at him. “Let’s hear it.” Again, he hesitates. Your mouth hangs open. “Come on! I’ve had to lay my soul bare for you plenty of times this summer. Your turn.” 

Matty sighs, readying his fingers for a chord. “It’s unfinished,” he warns. You roll your eyes at his delays, gesturing for him to go on.

He strums once, twice. It’s truly unfinished— he mutters randomly strung syllables instead of saying lyrics for half of it, just the idea of what the shape of those words could be. But there are words. Yearnful, confused, loving. He uses that dry, direct sense of style, that gloveless prose. Still, you’re once again left wondering what he’s trying to say. What thoughts haunt his mind. 

How you want to know him, brick by brick. 

“It’s beautiful,” you whisper once he rings his last note. He grins to himself, satisfied. “Sing it to me sometime when it’s done.” 

Matty flashes his teeth to you. “It’s a date.”

August 5

You flip through your sketchbook absentmindedly. It feels like you’ve already seen everything, like every word has already been used and discarded. How many times do you repeat yourself, going on and on about the mouths of lovers. You make a small noise of frustration. 

Matty eyes your book. You can tell he’s curious, can see him peer over your shoulder and scan the messy words and messier drawings before you slam it close. You look at him, at his silent plea. You sigh. 

You hand the book out to him. “There,” you say. “I can’t keep reading it. I know it too well.” 

Matty’s eyes widen. “Really?” 

“Find me some pretty words.” 

He grabs it from you without another hesitation. His eyes are hungry, skimming through the pages, flipping the spirals. You watch him as he uncovers you, one paper thin layer at a time. Your heart splashes against your ribs. Blood drips on the bones. You feel awfully like a heart attack. 

“There,” Matty says. He hands you back the book, grinning conspiratorially. “This sings to me.” But you can’t shake off the idea that it’s you that sings to him.

August 6

“Yes, Spain was lovely,” Delilah says, sipping on some Spanish white wine. She’s tanned and freckled, sunshine itself peering through the dark of the evening. She changed the room when she left, and she changes it back now, bursting through the flat again. Beside her, an arm thrown over the back of her chair, Matty drinks his usual glass of malbec. “Barcelona most of all. God, I just love the culture there. It’s so vibrant.” 

A lazy, callused finger twirls in Delilah’s hair. She leans into it subconsciously. Your teeth grind on each other. You clench your fist around your fork, biting on the chicken. “Did the shoot go well?” You manage out, but it’s bitten and bitter. 

Delilah laughs, that bright, musical sound that rings offkey to your ears. She takes a bite of her salad and her lipstick doesn’t smudge. “Fantastic. It was such an amazing concept!” She goes on some more about the visionary genius of the photograph, but it is null to you. 

Your eyes zero in on that fatal arm around Delilah, sure and protective, ownership. Your brain beats in your skull, the tune of a song humming along your cranium. You glance at Matty next. He doesn’t look back. 

You grip the white wine and take a long, heavy mouthful. It’s fruity and light. For the first time in your life, you think, too sweet. 

August 8

The house is quiet. No music hummed from the speakers. No guitars strummed. No dishes washed. No steps walked. No cigarettes smoked. The world is drenched in silence. 

It’s an uncanny feeling, sitting in Matty’s flat alone. As if it’s not supposed to exist without him. As if it should blink out of existence, evaporate out of thin air. As if you should sit in a blank room, staring at white walls, realizing you had made it all up in your head. 

Matty and Delilah are off visiting his parents up North. You play with your fingers, the silence resonating in your chest. It feels suffocating to be alone. 

You grab your phone, typing, how’s manchester? He doesn’t answer it until the next day. 

August 11

Matty’s eyes are bright red. You laugh at them, holding his cheeks between your soiled hands. You know the shape of his jaw, know where it digs and cuts into your palms, and there’s cheesy sonnets running in your mind about it. 

“I’m hungry,” you tell him, leaning into him like it’s a secret, a confession. “Make me that chocolate mugcake again?” Your flutter your eyelashes at him, attempting some innocent, pleading pout. 

Matty hums. He takes your hand by the wrist, puppeteering it to his lips. He kisses the tips of your fingers, then your palm. “What do I get?” He asks, finally looking at you. You feel dizzy. 

Your lips open, but you can’t think of a single word anymore. It doesn’t feel as cruel; it’s merciful, blissful. To finally not think like your life is being threatened, like you have five seconds to come up with a saving solution. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.  

Matty arches an eyebrow at you. He crowds your face, less than inches away, so close you feel like you breathe with him. “Nothing?”

“Mmmh,” you whisper back. Your eyes descend to his lips. “What do you want?” 

With a smirk, Matty catches your lips. He swipes his tongue in, licking into your mouth. You moan against him. Your hand moves to his hair and you grip it, holding him there, kissing him harder, faster, deeper. 

Buzzing spreads through you. You’re not hungry anymore. 

August 12

The raucous sound of low, heavy laughs resonates through the open floor. It shakes up the foundations of the flat from their grandeur, their depth. You take a glance at the three overexcited men, drinking beers and taking the piss out of each other, and they feel like boys for a split second in time. You wonder, privately, how you would have fit into their puzzle if you had met them earlier. 

Matty washes the dishes in the kitchen sink. You dry the plates, throwing secretive glances to the rest of the boys. You don’t know how it would have been years ago, but it’s near perfection now. You stare at the scene outside of your body and you can’t see the seams, can’t find where the stitches of you would be. How you want to stick around, become permanent. 

“They loved you,” Matty says conspiratorially, leaning into you. He hands you a wet plate, a bit of soap still lathered on it. 

You smile at him, gleeful and unashamed of it. Your chest brightens, shining through the skin. “I love them,” you answer.

Ross comes in with the leftover glasses, dropping them in the soapy sink. He ruffles Matty’s hair, gives you a grin. “We need to do this again soon. I haven’t seen you in forever, mate.” He moves to the fridge. 

“Bit busy,” Matty says, bashful. 

He sticks out of the fridge, two beer bottles in hand. “Making the album of the year and all, I heard,” Ross says. Again, he gives you a smile, like you’re old friends, like you’re conspirators. Your lips stretch up. “Still, don’t hide away together. I missed you.”

“‘Course. We’re almost there, anyway.” Your grin freezes on your cheeks. You hate the idea of the after, of the end. You put away the plates in the cabinet.

August 14

The wind blows your hair back. You lean your elbow onto the open window, resting your head as you watch the road blur past you. Matty drives with sunglasses on, and it makes you want to stare at his side profile and etch it into your brain. 

You’ve bickered over the radio station, eventually settling over some blues, bobbing your head quietly to the blasted music. It’s the middle of the day, and yet it seems like the hours announce themselves to stretch on forever. You can taste eternity on your tongue. 

You’re driving to the festival you’re performing at and there should be a typical wreck of nerves in your stomach, tying and knotting and squeezing, squeezing, squeezing until you want to cough your guts out. It’s usually what the idea of public singing does to you, sending you into a mess of anxiety until you’re on that stage, watching your people, and finally feeling right. 

Yet, in this car with Matty, serenaded by vaguely familiar tunes, you find yourself at peace. 

August 15

Matty engulfs you in a hug. He squeezes, as if trying to make sure you feel every particle of him, make sure you know he’s solid. The mic sits between your bodies, awkward and painful amidst the embrace. “Knock them dead,” Matty whispers in your neck. 

You laugh, brushing off your nerves. “Thanks,” you say. “I’ll try.”

“You will.” He releases you. Stares into one eye, then the other. Tucks a strand of hair behind your ear. “I’ll watch as long as I can before I have to get ready for my set.”

“Thanks.” You smile, looking down to hide your blush. “Good luck to you, too. Or break a leg. I don’t know what you believe.” 

“Eh, I don’t need either.” He grins, so fucking smug and cheeky, and you roll your eyes at him. A chuckle slips out of his lips. He mediates, “Thank you. I’ll cash in on that good luck when I need it.” He hugs you one last time, kisses your cheek, and then sends you off on stage. 

You’re off kilter when you approach the crowd, but the sight of it, of them, sunburnt and screaming and loving, makes all your worries melt away like butter. You grin, screaming into the mic, “Hello, everyone!”

August 16 

The world is distorted; colors brighter, sounds clearer, time slower. You lay on the grass and feel each strand tickling at your skin. You giggle, turning to stare at Matty. Your hands hang between the two of you, met in the middle. 

The shrooms glued a slack, happy smile on his face. He looks around the festival tent, the shadows of a tree outside drawing inky chimeras over the plastic tarp. You wonder what he sees. You wonder if it’s prettier than your own vision, the way you bend and rearrange lines until the traces of a human shape drapes over you. 

His head falls to the side, watching you in return. You squeeze his hand; he squeezes back. “I’m happy,” you tell him. “I’m really, really happy.”

“Me, too.” 

A strand of hair falls on his forehead like a lightning bolt. You tighten your grip again. “I want to kiss you,” you whisper. 

Matty inhales slowly. His eyes dig into yours, though he doesn’t move, stilled in time like a statue. You take a mental photograph. Click, you think, and now he’s forever. 

“Then do it,” he answers back, just as secretive, practically tempting you. 

You roll to your side, scooping yourself up until your face nears his. You brush your lips against him, just a graze, and still bliss coils around your brittle bones. It’s not really a kiss, but it’s enough nonetheless. 

But Matty kisses you, crashing his lips against yours and snapping this moment into the hot, burning tangible. His hand blisters your cheek as he takes it, angling you, meeting you better. Euphoria drums in your heart. Boom. Boom. Boom. 

You grip his free hand, placing it over your beating muscle, making him feel the racing tempo he brings out of you. This is you, you want to tell him. This is all for you.

Matty misunderstands your message, instead grazing his hand down your chest, gripping your breast. You moan into his open mouth, shocked by the sudden pleasure. His thumb rubs your nipple expertly. He smirks against you. 

“Matty,” you say, and it’s a plea and a warning. He pushes you to your back. “Fuck,” and it is just a wordless beg.

His hands are everywhere, greedy and eager to discover. He brushes every inch of your skin, climbing under your shirt, raising it over your head. His mouth finds your neck and leaves wet kisses in the crook of it, mapping his way down. You whine in his hair. Your breathing speeds up, quicker and quicker as he palms your tits, as he grabs your waist, as he teases the waistline of your shorts. 

You mutter his name into the air. Everything blurs around you, a happy daze existing only in this tent, only between his arms. You bury your hands in his curls. “Please, Matty,” you whisper. 

“What do you want?” He asks against your collarbone, pressing his lips on it after. You feel him hard between your thighs. The knowledge makes your mind droopy. 

You giggle like it was all silly, all unbelievable. It’s never about what you want; too much, too soon, too real. “What about you?”

Matty hums. He pushes your bra cups, revealing your breast. He parts away from you to take a good look at them. You flush, feeling shy suddenly. 

Matty kneels up. He pants, staring at the mess of you, half-naked and flustered and hot, practically vibrating out of your skin under him. He thumbs your nipple, smirking. “I want this.” 

“Yeah?” You arch an eyebrow. Matty nods, eager. You trail your fingers down his mane to the neckline of his shirt, greedily tugging on it. He obliges and lets it fall off his shoulders. 

Your stare laps at his naked chest with none of the usual shame. Take in every muscle, every tattoo, until Matty Healy himself is blushing under your carnivorous stare. You reach out to touch the ink at his hip, grabbing it between guitar-callused fingers, making sure you’re not imagining the whole thing. 

It has to be the trip. You have to be hallucinating, making sweet visions out of the grass and white. 

“Can you fuck me?” You say, bold and uncaring. If it’s a dream, you can be whoever you want. Can say whatever fancies your mind; even the scary, even the galactic. (Though you don’t, because admitting it just to yourself is already too momentous.)

Matty swallows. “Yeah. Yeah, I can definitely do that.” You laugh, at him or at you or at the sheer fucking joy. It’s contagious; soon he’s giggling too, bending back down into you to suck at your breasts, working on your jeans. The laugh reverberates on your skin. You moan, melted wax in the grass. 

He takes the shorts down your legs, then your underwear. His hungry gaze devours you, taking in every inch of you like he’s realizing you’re real. “Better than I imagined.” You like the sound of that; it hums in your heart. 

“You, next,” you say, pleading. Matty undoes his belt dutifully. It takes some time; his fingers are trembling. 

But then he’s naked in front of you. A wiry frame, inked and scarred, with a hard, leaking cock. He’s better than a Greek god. 

Your hand reaches out for his. He takes it, crosses your fingers together, rests it beside your head as he drapes over you. Dark, coffee eyes meet yours and you get the strange sensation of having your soul bared for him, too. His lips graze yours but he doesn’t kiss you, as though he wants to hear you when he finally pushes in.

You roll your eyes into your skull. Your hand tightens in his, moaning his name. There’s a fucked-out groan coming from him, too. He lays into your neck as he thrusts in and out, slowly, like he was still adjusting to the idea of it. 

“You’re perfect,” Matty whispers. Every particle of you sings his name. You clench around him. “Shit, love, do that again.”

A proud grin breaks on your face. You throb around him. He’s buried so deep you feel him in every nerve ending, yet you still need him. Your free hand digs into his back. You want him under your skin. 

“Faster,” you say. Matty nods in agreement. He bucks his hips into yours. You strangle his hand with a deadly grip, holding back screams of his name. You moan it instead, in the crook of his neck, sticking your tongue out to lick them off after.

It’s better than it’s ever been with anyone. Your body buzzes, ecstasy swooping in your belly. You’re not sure if it’s the drugs or him, and neither answer seems satisfying. 

You can’t tell where you start and he begins, but it’s not a new feeling. He can be rooms apart and you still sense the edges of him, subconsciously, deludingly. He’s there, now, fucking inside of you, bringing you to insanity. 

“Oh, God,” you say. “Fuck.” You don’t think you’ll last long if he keeps going. Matty seems to realize, feeling the way you flutter around his cock, begging and pleading for a release. 

Matty shakes your hand off, using his now free one to rub dizzyingly fast at your clit. Your face scrunches, you moan his name, your hand flexes with the phantom shape of his hand. You snap your eyes open, meeting his, when you break and fall apart. 

It’s been a long time coming, building and building since that fateful day of June 16, but it still takes you by surprise. Your mind wipes clean, relief overtaking every attuned nerve, and all you can think is finally.

Matty follows behind you soon after, shutting his face as his lips part in abandon. A grunt slips past him, his eyebrows wrinkle, his shoulders tremble under your hand, and suddenly he’s spilling into you. 

He falls on you, sighing contently. A vague hand passes through your hair soothingly. You stare at the ceiling in shock. He came inside of you.

It’s fine, you tell yourself. I’m on the pill, you reassure yourself. And he’s clean. Just me— Just me and Delilah. 

“Oh, shit, sorry,” Matty laughs, realizing. He slides out of you, his cum leaking out. Though he does sound apologetic, he still stares at it in mesmerism. Ownership.

“‘S fine,” you mumble lazily. 

Matty grabs his discarded shirt, wiping your inner thighs, cleaning you up. It’s strangely domestic, in some way. You close your eyes and imagine a world where he does this often, humming. 

Matty falls back beside you, tugging your head into his shoulder, holding you close. You grin satisfiedly, loose and relaxed, a syrup girl dripping on him, sticking to him. 

Finally, you sing. Everything feels absolute. 

Your eyes flutter shut, exhaustion seeping through your body. Your face nestles into him deeper. Squished against his shoulder, you ask him, “Do you like me?”

He laughs as if it was silly to ask. “Of course I like you.” 

And do you love me, you want to ask, but you bite your tongue and swallow it down. For now it’s enough. 

August 17

Delilah runs into Matty’s arms. He catches her slackly, a loose arm around her waist as she peppers kisses over his face. Her smile shines bright. The world spins nauseatingly around you. 

Your heart fends in the middle. You stare at the two of them like a car crash, sick to your stomach yet unable to look away. You still remember the feel of his arm around you, the way he held like he was afraid you might blow away with the wind, melt into the grass. The way he gripped.

Matty meets your eyes above Delilah’s shoulder. He seems overrun, robbed of words. You have a few you believe he should be saying, should be thinking, but he doesn’t. There’s an apology in his gentle look. You want to throw up on their shoes. 

You’re a paper girl — fragile, volatile, unsettled, dancing with the wind of feelings — and he’s a rock — sure, confident, stubborn, and staying with his fucking girlfriend. 

August 19

You sit side by side with Matty on the piano bench. You peer in your sketchbook, angled away to hide from him. In his phone’s notes app, he writes the most recent verse’s ever moving state. “D’you have anything else?” He asks, as you’ve discarded the past few editions. 

You hum, skimming through the pages. Your eyes settle on a drawing of constellations, a ghost of a boy smiling in the grass. Your heart punches. You look over the words. “How about—” You shake your head, trying to discard the doom feeling in your chest. “How about she bleeds on my palms, I think I’m stained with her?” 

“Oh, I like that,” Matty nods, quickly scribbling it on his phone. “After all the marble talk, it shows we really are talking about a real person, and that they are left bloody and scarred from being carved away to fit his fantasies.”

You swallow thickly. Your heart speeds. “Yeah— Yes. Sure.”

August 20

Matty blows out his cigarette. He looks almost theatrical in the night; standing on his balcony, leaning on the fence, pouring smoke from his lips, drenching himself in telltale gray. You sit on a plastic chair and get the nagging feeling that you should be having some sort of realization, a lesson of some kind. 

Your hand reaches out for him. Instinctively, he gives you the cigarette. The paper burns in your hand. It’s not what you wanted. 

You place it between your lips. It feels so fucking obvious when smoke lingers around you.

August 23

You pass Matty’s room on mousy feet, making your best efforts not to wake anyone up. The master bedroom door is firmly shut. A couple snores a few feet away, surely entangled in each other’s limbs, a position as known as breathing. The hallway falls into you, knocking against your frail body. You’re squeezed until your chest might burst. 

There’s a yearning in your bones you can’t unroot. It makes you wonder where the flowers of love come from; if the blooming is just weeds. 

August 24

You lay on your stomach, kicking your legs in the air. A raw feeling lingers on your skin, like it was skimmed off on cement, burning and reddening. You hold your breath. 

“I like it,” Bree exclaims, slow and lagging from Facetime. She’s a blurry image, earphones in, seemingly at some trendy New York café you would hate. “I love the chorus. It’s so— so raw, and painful, and real. It’s like— It’s like I’m sixteen again, being manic pixie dream girled by indie, older boys.” 

You smile at that, happy that it reverberates, that it hits home. “Any criticism? We’re still fine tuning it.”

Bree hums. “Maybe make the speaker clearer? It’s a bit convoluted if it’s Pygmalion or Galatea’s point of view.” 

You’re raw. An open wound, poked and prodded and salted, and you can’t seem to finally scab. You grin slackly at Bree. “I see what you mean. Thanks.”

“It’s really a great song, though. That’s just nitpicking.” 

You nod, but it’s faint and unconvinced. You’re not sure being a good song justifies all of it. Breathtaking oil paints never seemed to make you any less blistered. 

August 26

Matty’s hair flops over his forehead. His lips are red and plump, stained from the wine. He’s grinning loosely, a bit tipsy on espresso martinis and merlot. He looks like a poem. 

Your heart softens and melts like toffee, sticking to the bones as it dribbles down your ribs. It calls for him, sings, even. 

Try as you might, you can’t stop wanting him. It breathes with you. 

August 28

“I think we’ve finished,” you declare. You stare at the lyrics of Galatea, messily put down over brand new paper with a fountain pen. You go over each word in disbelief. “I think— Fuck, this is actually it.”

“Yeah?” Matty calls, looking at you all giddy, biting his lip. 

Your smile breaks your face. An addictive rush of glee spins your mind. You can’t contain the joy. “Yes.”

“Yeah?” He repeats, hyping you up. You stand from the bench. His arms open in instinct; you run into them, colliding against his bones. You’re surprised you don’t find the rubble at your feet. 

“Fucking yes,” you whisper in his neck, and you might cry from the bone-deep relief. From finishing a song that has been haunting you with a vengeance. From being in his arms. From smelling his detergent.

“You did it,” he says back, low and emotional. You squeeze him harder. 

“We did it.” Matty tries to humble-wave your words away, but you pull back enough to stare at him. “I’m serious. I couldn’t have done it without you.” And it’s true; too true. This song would have never been what it is now, never had its shape, if you had never met Matty Healy. 

He smiles at you, touched. “The song of the fucking year.” You laugh, throwing your head back. You think of kissing him and you hope he thinks of it too, though he doesn’t do it. 

August 30

You step through the glass doors. Sunglasses rest on the top of your hair. You’re sunburnt on the tip of your nose, a touch of deep color. At least the inside is cool. Faraway, the laughs of Matty’s friends track you. 

You find the fridge, sticking your head inside and sighing in relief. You grab a beer on the way. You rest it on your nose. The condensation drips on your skin, tickling; you scrunch it. 

Matty’s nursing a soft drink as he stands in front of the fan, eyes closed, shirt unbuttoned. You smile at the vision of him, sticky and sweaty, sinfully familiar. 

“Scoot over,” you demand, nudging him. Matty obliges, scooping himself to offer you half of the fan. You moan as the air hits you. Truly content, you open your bottle of beer.

“I like the sound of that,” Matty says. You arch an eyebrow, offering it to him. He snorts. “No, no. Not in that sense. Designated driver, remember?”

“Oh, right.”

“Of course, I wouldn’t have to be if you weren’t such a passenger princess.” 

“Hey,” you frown, faux-offended. “I just haven’t gotten my driver’s license yet.”

“And how old are you?”

“Very, very young still.” You up your nose. 

Matty makes a grimace. “Don’t say that.” The image of that day in the grass, moaning in his mouth, filled up so perfectly, flashes in his eyes. You smirk, sipping on your beer. 

“What did you mean, then?” You ask. You jerk your chin in the direction of the can when he cocks his head in question. 

Matty shrugs. “Just that it sounds satisfying. There’s something almost— I don’t know, rhythmic, about opening a can of beer. Tssh.” You snort at his impression. 

“We could put it in a song maybe,” you offer. “To start it. Maybe Sunburnt? It’s kinda summer-y.”

“I like that.” Matty sighs, “Though I don’t like that we’re talking work on our day off.”

“It’s never really work, isn’t it?” You scrunch your nose. “Not when it’s us, our insides.” 

“Careful,” Matty drawls, teasing. “You’re sounding like an insufferable artist.”

He leans into you. His eyes are light, dancing, and you want to catch the breathtaking sunrise. Want to catch it on camera, show it off to whoever. He’s too pretty. 

You lean into him. Your gaze zeroes in on his lips. The can of beer rests by your side, tucked away. Your breath catches in your throat. You’ve missed him. Missed his mouth.

Matty stares at your lips, offered and tempting, then pulls away. He makes an awkward laugh, shaking his drink. “Need a refill.” He’s off in a second. 

You stand in front of the fan, air blowing and blowing and blowing, and you can feel the traces of him artificially leaving with the wind. 

August 31

August 31, you drop a nuclear bomb. “When are you gonna break up with her?” 

You don’t know what takes over you. He’s vaguely organizing his bookshelf, picking up books and getting lost in the pages and putting them back just a little bit more to the right, and you’re sitting on your piano bench, haphazardly hitting the keys, when it bubbles out of you. The need to know, the need to be safe. 

Time decelerates to a near stop. Silence hangs in the room, heavy, filling up every crevice. The floorboards droop with its weight. Your heart races. 

Yesterday plays in your mind religiously. The near kiss, dodged and avoided, laughed off. How it left you raw, bleeding, how you spun and spun in that overthinking head of yours until you thought your skull might break from the pressure. 

You stare at Matty’s back, glaring into the muscles, tearing through the shirt. You wish him to turn around. You will him to smile. Fear grips your guts. Please. You beg him to answer right. 

Matty sighs. Twists to you slowly, carefully. Your breath hitches, readying. “I don’t know.” 

Shrapnel bursts into your skin. A bomb that reverberates, that obliterates. Your fingers shake; you clench them, willing yourself to be strong, to camouflage the bleeding out. 

Your lips tremble but you straighten them. “You don’t know when or—” Your blood beats in your skull. You keep giving him bullets and finding yourself surprised when it ricochets into you. You swallow thickly. “You don’t know if you will.” 

Matty sighs. There’s an apologetic look in his face and it makes you want to vomit. If only he had the mercy to be cruel, to rip your spine and throw it away. Give you a reason to hate him. “I can’t give you an answer. I just—” He makes a little frustrated noise, annoyed with himself for not having the words. “I need time to think.” 

You give him an incredulous look. “Time to think?” Anger digs into you, and it feels better. Something to latch onto, something buoyant over the currents of pain you’re battling against. Something to clench that jaw, narrow those eyes. “So you haven’t yet? At all?”

Matty makes a noise to speak, to sweeten, sounding like the saccharine letters of your name, but you cut him off. “No,” you say, and it is dry and sure, lashing. “No, I’ve been waiting for you all summer. We’ve—” You let out a laugh of disbelief, crazed and pathetic. “We’ve kissed, we’ve had sex, we’ve been on basically fucking dates, and you haven’t thought about if you wanna be with me?” You hate how your voice sounds wet when you push out, “I’ve thought about you every fucking day this summer.” 

Matty makes an offended face, crying, “Of course I’ve thought about if I wanna be with you.”

You don’t give him time to take it back, twist its meaning, already pleading, “Then what’s the issue?” 

“Because I don’t know!” Again with those three little words, never the right ones, never the ones you breathe from his mouth. He softens, and suddenly the sugary gaze looks like pity to you. “I like you. I really like you, and I care for you, and I don’t want to hurt you.” 

The words ring in the room. Though you want to bury them in your chest, let them bloom and grow until they’ve taken on a whole new face, you don’t. 

You hear the fatal word coming after, see it in his overwhelmed look. “But I care for her too.” You take it like a bullet. “We’ve been together for three years. And I’ve only known you for what? Two months? What if it shits between us? What if it’s not as great as we made it out to be?” 

He makes the worries solid, gives them a physical form, and you want to beg him to let the marble go, knock the paints from his hands. Don’t make it real. Don’t make it possible. 

Dejected, lips trembling, he begs, “Can’t I be a little confused?” 

You breathe out. “Of course you can be confused.” You frown, desperate when you add, “But you cheated on her. Physically, emotionally.” You let the words hit home. A guilty look draws on his face and it’s worse, somehow. “And you’re just gonna go back to her?”  

He sighs, rubbing his forehead. “I know I haven’t gone about this the right way.” 

You blink at him. “Are you fucking kidding me?” 

Gone about this the right way, like he didn’t take hearts and forget them on his piano keys, rotting on the ivory.

“Look, it was fucked. I didn’t think—“ Matty shakes his head. For a poet, he always has the wrong words. “I just wanted you, and I did it, and I know I shouldn’t have—” 

“You’re fucking selfish.” 

He’s selfish, you think, and you scroll back through your memories trying to find the telltale moments you missed, you ignored. If the signs waved over your head and you squinted away, slack, happy smile rising over your cheeks. 

He winces. “I’m sorry.” 

“You’re sorry?” You arch an eyebrow. “You’re apologizing now?” 

Matty huffs. “What do you want from me?” 

You make a disbelieved laugh. How does he not get it? How does he not see? You want to shake his shoulders, but you’re afraid of the marble dust that would linger on your hands. 

“I just want you to choose me,” you cry, like it was so fucking evident. You want him. You want him to want you. 

Matty opens his mouth, then closes it. He’s overrun. 

All those tiny moments; those throwaway smiles, those purposeful glances, those lingering touches, those words, understanding and uncovering and loving— how much of them are real? The curse of being a creator: you make stories in your head. 

He wants to say I don’t know. That’s all he has in his head. 

You nod faintly. Breathe in. Let go. The moment hangs in the air. “You’re not going to, are you?” 

Matty shrugs. That hopeful, sick muscle in your heart beats seconds slower; off-key with the world, with reality. “I don’t know.” 

Your eyes close. Everything snaps back all at once; gravity is heavy, oxygen is ashy, colors are dull. You purse your lips. Try not to cry. 

“God,” you laugh, “what the fuck have I done?” 

The curse of a creator: creating. 

He’s crumbled at your feet. He’s made of blood, and flesh, and he’s bruised and blue. You wonder how much of it is from chisel-martelling him. 

Watercolors, marble, words; it’s all the same. 

Matty frowns. He’s gentle, soothing. “Don’t say that.” 

You throw a hand up. “I’m gonna sleep at a hotel tonight.” Your stare is ice, leaving not a possibility to argue. “Stay with your girlfriend if you want.” 

Matty makes a frustrated sound. “I’m not saying I don’t want you. I’m saying I don’t know yet. I— I just need to figure it out.” 

“It’s not enough.” His face winces: bullets. Something in you is a little gleeful, hopes the metal bites into his skin. Maybe if he bleeds you, mourns you, it’ll all be a little easier to digest.

“Have a goodnight, Matty.” There's a world in which you say those words and then breathe out a soft I love you. He says it back, worshiping and happy. His arms are heavy around your waist. You roll over in bed and go to sweet sleep, satisfied. It’s not this one. You can’t keep trying to make it be.

When you leave his flat, all you can think is, God, I really should have seen this coming. 

September 1 

You adjust the earphones on your head, getting used to the soothing quiet. The microphone lingers near your mouth, inviting you. 

“Ready?” Matty asks from the booth. 

Your eyes snap to his. He’s tired, clearly. Dark circles digging under his eyes, lips bitten raw, stubble unshaved. There’s an air of unmadeness about him, and a yet-to-die need to write about it. Words start coagulating in your mind already, but you don’t let it stick. It’s just an instinct; it’ll be gone soon. 

You give a thumbs up. In the microphone, you whisper, refusing to break eye contact. “Galatea, take one.”

#who had third random thing on their lottiecrabie bingo card #i refuse to set this in matty's cement shrine Btw so imagine any other place please #to my rileybear<3 #galatea take one #matty healy imagine #matty healy x reader #matty healy smut #matty healy #matty healy fic #matty healy fanfic #the 1975 fic #the 1975 smut #smut #writing #imagine #fanfiction

[wreckedandpolemic]

she's got a boyfriend anyway - matty healy

part iv - got him on the phone

(mdni) the obligatory call me when you're bored fic, alternatively titled does he take care of you?

Michael is grunting on top of you, sweaty and panting. Your eyes are screwed tightly shut as you moan fakely, dead still except for the mattress bouncing in time with his weak thrusts. You slide a hand between your legs and circle your clit, gasping when you finally get a burst of pleasure. Then, Michael pulls your hand away.

“You’re gonna come on my cock, baby,” he insists, and you swallow a disappointed groan. He has this complex about making you come all by himself, as if he’s less of a man if you play with your clit a little. Just a few more days, you tell yourself. Then he’ll go home and you can break up from a safe distance.

Your fabricated moans come out robotically, your hips rocking in an attempt to feel any real pleasure. Matty would never fuck you like this; Matty knows how to make you come, and, crucially, he likes it. You imagine him on top of you instead, fucking you into the mattress; his hips meeting yours in that sweetly desperate way; his calloused fingers playing with your clit, making you squirm with pleasure. His name springs to your lips, and you bite down hard to keep it from escaping.

“Are you close, baby?” Michael moans in your ear, snapping you back to the present moment.

“Yeah,” you reply, voice thick and breathy and utterly fake. He brings a hand down to your cunt and you wonder if this will be the time he finally gets it right, the barest brush over your clit hitching your breath. Then he drags it further down, rubbing futilely at your folds, and you resign yourself back to your artificial whining.

Minutes later, your performed orgasm already faded to the back of your mind, Michael rolls off you and throws away the condom. A shudder runs through you as you remember letting Matty fuck you raw, how all-consuming your need for him was that night, that you’ve longed for him every time Michael has put his hands on you in the days since. You burrow back into your sheets, squeezing your eyes shut against the stab of guilt as Michael speaks. 

“Gonna run to Tesco and grab some bits. You need anything?” he asks, smiling that sweet, gentle smile that makes you remember why you fell for him in the first place. God, you’re going to Hell.

You shake your head, blinking sleepily up at him. “No, thanks. You know where you’re going?” you ask, praying he won’t ask you to come with him. He hasn’t noticed, yet, that you’ve been avoiding him as much as physically possible in your two-bedroom house, always engrossed in your phone, or with your nose in a book, or dragging him to meet your friends. If you’re forced to sit with the weight of your sins for too long, you know your house of cards is going to come tumbling down.

He nods, pressing a soft kiss to your temple that aches in your chest. You don’t deserve him, his kindness, his care; your heart is callous, traitorous. Worst of all, even now, it yearns for Matty. The door clicks shut as you grapple with your scruples, your moral compass spinning out of control. It’s almost like your guilt is tethered to him, fading to a faint hum and then falling completely silent when your front door swings closed.

There’s a buzzing under your skin, your body pleading pathetically for the pleasure it was denied, your organs a knotted mess of desire and shame. You can’t keep up the pretence of righteousness for long, can't lie to yourself the way you lie to Michael. Your hands are sure and steady as you dial Matty’s number.

“Hello?” He sounds bleary, sleep-addled. It’s 12pm; practically sunup for him. Closing your eyes, you can almost cast yourself curled up in bed with him, his body warm against yours, his lips soft at your neck.

“Hi,” you begin, biting your lip. “I was just thinking about you…” You trail off, waiting for Matty to pick up his cue. This time, you aren’t going to let him force you into the role of the temptress — you called, the sin is already committed. You just have to let him run with it.

Something rustles on the other end of the line, probably him shuffling around in bed. “Is that so?” he says, and you can practically hear his teasing grin.

“Hard not to, when it’s the only way I can get wet for him.” 

“Did you come?” he asks, and you snort. As fucking if. The reminder that Michael has never once made you come, never once asked how to make you feel good, assuages some of your guilt.

“Got bored about halfway through, started thrashing and wailing like a crazy person so he’d get it over with.” You roll your eyes and Matty cackles.

“You want me to come over? Get you there properly?” he asks, and it’s oh-so-tempting, but ultimately not worth the risk. Michael isn’t going to be gone that long, and getting caught would be… less than ideal.

You sigh, rolling onto your back. “Nah. Not a good idea, probably.”

He snorts. “Never stopped us before,” he says, his smirk practically audible.

“Do you wanna help me get off or not?” you snap, but there’s no heat in your words. A deep sigh slips from your lips and you brush your fingers down your body, resting your hand against your lower belly, desperately close to where you need it.

You hear a zipper slide down and stifle a laugh; you can picture him flawlessly, passed out in last night’s clothes, face pressed against the pillow, digging sleep-marks into his face. “Whatever you want, princess,” he murmurs. “How do you feel?”

“Needy,” you whine, pouting at your phone. “Wanna touch,” you add, desire pulsing thickly under your skin.

Matty’s answering chuckle is soft, indulgent. “Go on, angel. Do it just like you showed me.” You obey, heat flooding your body as images of that night swim in your vision, Matty’s gaze heavy on you as his cock disappears into his fist, his tongue skilled and sure between your thighs.

A whine slips from your lips as you rub slow circles into your clit, your phone thudding on your pillow as you pinch your nipple with your other hand. Matty groans, the slick sound of his hand working over his cock tinny over the speaker. “Fuck, want you so bad,” you breathe, heat smouldering between your legs. “Need you,” you choke out, hips grinding down against your hand.

“I’m there,” he answers. “I’m right there with you, princess. Tell me what you need.” His voice is low, weaved through with desire, his words punctuated with his familiar, soft moans.

You dip a finger inside yourself, the faint stretch heavenly between your thighs. “Need you to fuck me,” you gasp, eyes rolling back in your head as you imagine it; your fingers become his, rough and calloused and fucking into you exactly how you want. “Want your cock, Matty, wan’ it s’bad, please.” Your words come out slurred through the haze of pleasure enveloping you, Matty’s rhythmic groans dragging you higher.

“Begging so pretty for me,” he coos. “Miss that pretty cunt so bad, darling. Wanna get my mouth on you again, feel you cumming around my tongue. Miss your taste, princess.”

Thighs clenching, you whimper, the phantasm of his tongue delving between your thighs and lapping at you skilfully as you writhe under the tide of heat that rolls over you. “Want you to fuck me stupid,” you breathe. “Wanna forget everything except you,” you gasp, the admission falling unbidden from your lips, the truth in your words frantic and inescapable.

Matty chokes on a breath, groaning on the exhale. “Fuck, darling, you’re making it so hard not to come over there and fuck your lights out. Need to feel you coming on my cock so fucking bad.”

Reckless desire swirls through you, the protestations of your rational brain muted and fading against the flames licking their way up your body. You’re lost in it, the devil himself kissing at your thighs as you sin and sin and sin. “So come.”

His breathing hitches. “Are you being serious?” he asks, and you hear his hand still as he turns your words over in his mind.

“Yeah. Fuck it. Fuck all of them.” The words come easily, not weighted by some arbitrarily ascribed idea of morality; the truth you can’t delude yourself over any longer.

“God, angel,” he murmurs, voice trembling, thick with an emotion you couldn’t have named before today — one you have to bite back so it doesn’t spill from your lips at this inopportune moment. “So fucking perfect. You feeling good?”

“So good, Matty, fuck,” you say, fucking yourself on your fingers in a sweet, glorious rhythm. “Wish you were touching me,” you whine, hips rolling against your hand as Matty resumes his own motions. “Wanna suck your dick. Want you to make me choke on it.”

His answering moan is obscene, half your name and half a garbled noise of pure desire. “Such a good little slut for me. Want me to fuck your mouth, yeah?” You whine desperately. “God, you’d look so gorgeous like that, all pretty on your knees and drooling for me. Thought about that for so fucking long, princess.”

Your cunt clenches around your fingers, your head so hazy with bliss that you can barely force out the words, “Want you.”

Matty laughs fondly. “Then cum for me, darling. Cum for me and I’ll come over there and give you what you need, I promise,” he swears, voice gravelly through his moans.

“‘M close, ‘m so close, wanna cum for you, Matty, please, fuck,” you babble, incoherent and dazed as ecstasy pools in your belly, buzzing gorgeously through your limbs. The flimsy thread tying you to your sanity suddenly snaps, your stomach lurching as you’re plunged into bone-deep pleasure. A string of obscenities falls from your lips, twined around sticky moans and near-pained whines, your flesh melting off your bones, glueing you in place as euphoria rolls achingly over you.

Matty groans your name as he cums, the picture of him spilling into his fist vivid and rapturous behind your eyelids. You lay in silence for a few moments, letting the aftershocks subsite. “I meant it,” Matty says, cutting through the quiet with uncharacteristic seriousness.

“Me too,” you say instantly. There isn’t even the barest shadow of doubt in your mind. You hardly remember that Michael exists, let alone why you should care. “I want you, Matty. For real. I think…” you bite back the confession, too raw to give through your sketchy connection. “I think you should come over here and let me have you,” you breathe, low and teasing.

The grin in his voice is audible. “Don’t move, princess,” he orders. “Don’t even get dressed. I want you to keep playing with yourself, okay, darling? Keep yourself all pretty and wet for me, yeah?”

Your thighs clench, fire licking at you, stoked by his words. You’re ruined, have been since you set foot back in this town. Matty is the snake, his mouth the poisoned fruit, the temptation luring you into damnation. But as the flames kiss at your skin, you wonder if getting there might just be worth the price. “Yeah, okay,” you murmur, sucking in a sharp breath as your finger brushes over your sensitive clit, your hand coming up soaked with desire. “Hurry.”

“Darling, the devil himself couldn’t keep me away.”

You wonder if it’s a sign that the devil is wandering the plains of his thoughts too. But you’ve never been one for omens, so you let the quiet creep of bliss take over, the buzzing in your brain drowning out the beep of the dial tone. Anticipation creeps up your spine, slow and teasing.

Then, there’s a knock at your front door.

Shit.

#idk why im so heavy on the religious imagery here #i swear im not actually lottiecrabie #maybe reader is a lapsed catholic or something Who knows not i #matty healy x reader #matty healy #matty healy smut #matty healy imagine #the 1975 #the 1975 fanfic #the 1975 smut #writing #smut #she's got a boyfriend anyway

[aidenelsa]

and i won't confess that i waited but i let the lamp burn as the men masqueraded i hoped you'd return with your feet on the ground tell me all that you'd learned cause love's never lost when perspective is earned and you said you'd come and get me but you were 25 and the shelf life of those fantasies has expired lost to the lost boys chapter of your life forgive me peter, please know that i tried to hold onto the days when you were mine but the woman who sits by the window has turned out the light

#BEST SONG ON THE ALBUM I SAID WHAT I SAID #peter >>>>>>>> #taylor swift #ttpd #the tortured poets department #the tortured poets department the anthology #the smallest man who ever lived #fortnight ft post malone #who’s afraid of little old me #so long london #guilty as sin? #peter #joe alwyn #matty healy #my boy only breaks his favourite toys #thank you aimee #the black dog

[boookends]

i can’t fucking believe he would say this

#mine #every time i see a vid of him talking this is what im imagining in my head #today i offer you a meme #tomorrow who knows #matty healy #the 1975 #meme #animal crossing #girlblogger #girlblogging #slay

[beliefandsayingsomething]

he needs me he needs me he needs me

#who gave him the right #feeling like a woman diagnosed with hysteria in the 1800s #nobody should look that good smoking #matty healy #the 1975

[theworthwhilefight]

this account is very much NOT a safe space for matty healy. and it’s very much not a safe space for people who want to “support” taylor swift for dating him. you don’t get to receive love and support when you actively choose to date a man who is outwardly and continuously egregiously LOUD about his racism. you don’t get to call yourself bullshit like “miss americana” and come out with an entire film! an entire film!! about how you want to be more woke and stand up for rights. and then turn around and do this. i’ve spent so many years being a taylor swift fan and half those years begging her to speak up about important human rights. whenever she finally does, she does the bare minimum and calls herself miss americana and reflects on her long and winding journey to being more of an activist. but that shit means literally nothing to me so long as she continues to date this disgusting, sorry excuse of a man and refuse to acknowledge the active harm he continues to perpetrate against marginalized communities.

#taylor swift #matty healy #and this is a woman who has actively expressed her fear of losing her love #nothing has ever made me lose my love for her #but she’s making it fucking hard to not want to distance myself from her as she chooses to date this piece of shit #if you don’t want us to lose love for you then don’t fucking date an asshole because that makes u an asshole by association too!

[3terna15unshin3]

#stole first pic from twitter sorry don’t remember who it’s from #matty healy #the 1975

[lyrical-swift]

Taylor Swift - The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived

#taylor swift #the tortured poets department #the smallest man who ever lived #ts ttpd #the 1975 #matty healy #taylor stans #taylor swift eras #taylor swift lyrics #lyrics #typewriter #typography #the tortured poets society #poetry #words #spilled words #taylor swift ttpd #lyric edit #ask me anything

[tayfabe75]

"Being Funny in a Foreign Language" ended up an album in pursuit of love, rendered plainly. "Before, I always debased myself when I became sincere," Healy told me. "I'd be sincere, and then I'd say, 'Oh, I'm only joking,' or 'Oh, I pissed myself,' or something else unglamorous to negate how much I just let you in." At one point, in the studio, he was recording vocals for a track that became "I'm in Love with You," and he kept trying to sneak a "not" into the chorus. Hann stopped him, and said, "Dude, five albums in, everyone knows you're funny. So if you want to say 'I'm in love with you' then just do it. Say it. That's where you're at." Healy told me, "All of the things that used to define my work, or the nihilistic part of one's twenties—postmodernism, addiction, individualism—they're all cool and sexy and appropriate at the time, but, for me now, are those the things I yearn for?" In his personal life, he had found himself wishing for consistency and reliability, "the things we get from a partner that we don't get from the rest of the world." "I think Matty is a deeply sincere person, who can, at different points, be misunderstood because of how much he enjoys a bit," Antonoff said. "If you don't know him, if you don't get him, because you're not really tuned in to the work, you might assume a cynicism that is literally not there." He mentioned the song "Part of the Band." The lyrics are inflected with Healy's persona games, his compulsion to comment on the politics of pop culture, and at least three references to ejaculation. Healy sings, "Am I ironically woke? The butt of my joke? / Or am I just some post-coke, average, skinny bloke / Calling his ego imagination?" And yet it's a beautiful—and, somehow, even understated—song, set to a "Street Hassle"-style backdrop of lilting, bittersweet strings. "That to me is the most exciting part of him and his work," Antonoff said. "That the façade of it can beg so many questions, but that the heart is still so obvious—that it's this deep sincerity, and a longing for love, to love, to be loved."

May 29, 2023: Matty describes the motivation behind the tone shift for The 1975's latest album, 'Being Funny in a Foreign Language'. (source 1, 2)

#year: 2023 #may 2023 #quote: matty healy #quote: jack antonoff #matty's character #jack antonoff #mutual friends #overlap: friends #overlap: collaborators #topic: love #topic: sincerity #get to know them #jia tolentino #source: the new yorker #source: jordan hughes #who is matty healy?

[rosetta-stoned-bitch]

So twsift namedrop Kim K's daughter and mentions Kim's death. Because of the beef that she primarily had with Kanye....

But she shouldn't be held responsible for the bad that men in her life ever do, like Matty Healy being a bigot or that godawful director she worked with or Kelce being a xenophobe and misogynist. She disgusts me.

#anti taylor swift #Saw some shit in an Instagram comments section about how she got her vindication only 3 years ago #(all I hear is that she got vindication and she's kicking a fallen horse) #And how Kanye namedropped her a few years ago (why is Kim paying for her Ex husbands stupidity) #And don't get me wrong. I don't even like Kim K. But to stoop to such a low level is fckn disgusting and idc who says what #Your dearest taytay is not a girl's girl #Not to mention that she namedropped a literal child into a hateful song #Godfuckingawful #anti travis kelce #anti matty healy #arushi rambles

[notyouraryang0dd3ss]

#per that anon sending me tiktok links thank you! im gonna post the rest #anti taylor swift #tiktok #the tortured poets department #matty healy #anti matty healy #WHO IS THE RAPIST IF YOU KNOW CAN YOU GUYS PLEASE REPLY????

[prettyboysdontlookatexplosions]

literally me on this night in april 2024 listening to taylor swift’s album about the extremely public nervous breakdown i’ve been watching her have since the joever news broke

#remember when she was like #I JUST WANT YOU ALL TO KNOW EVERYTHING IN MY LIFE IS BETTER THAN IT EVER HAS BEEN LITERALLY EVER #and those of us who get it were like…. oh she’s UNWELL unwell #the content of this album is: Yes. Yes I Am. #well. that and ‘i wanted to fuck matty healy so bad it ruined my life possibly forever’ #with just a soupçon of ‘i fucking hate my loser fans’ fusixhiexbuedhhe #ttpd spoilers

[hrryshoney]

#matty healy #the rings and eye makeup i just moaned #where’s anon who talked abt guyliner this is 4 u

[nowshesdoingitallthetime]

oh you’re fucking joking. oh my god.

📸: (I think this is who took them)

#like oh you’re joking right #like there’s actually no way #like come on #who allowed this #why is this allowed #he’s not allowed to do that #matty healy #the 1975 #still… at their very best

[abiiors]

midnight, car lights 🌃 // george daniel x reader

a/n: a second fic for the george bbf!au that's been plaguing me lately!! (a third one is coming soon). also happy 10 years of self titled <33 i'm scheduling this to come out at midnight uk time tihi

cw: none really, just fluff and flirting. maybe a very tiny age gap?? like 2 ish years

wc: 3.3k

“let’s go on a joyride.”

those words bounce around in your head like the dvd logo, said to you at 11:50 in the night—whisper-shouted would be more accurate. from under your balcony no less, like some fucked up iteration of romeo and juliet. 

so far you have failed to come up with a coherent answer for george who stares up at you expenctantly.

you lean over the railing, your curiosity piqued. "a joyride…” his words repeated back to him in a disbelieving deadpan voice. 

he nods eagerly. in his hands is a tiny heap of small stones—the source of the clinks on your bedroom window that had scared you half to death. when george follows your gaze, he drops the rocks hurriedly, dusting off his hands. 

“it’s a thursday night…” you point out. 

he clicks his tongue. “and you’re clearly not doing anything.”

your eyes narrow at his little jab. sure he’s right but come on now, he didn’t need to point it out like that.

“my brother—”

“is out on his ‘date’.” he makes a little face at that and you stifle the urge to laugh at how icked out he looks. clearly, some more questions that you need to pester matty with. but that’s for tomorrow. right now you raise an eyebrow at the way he cuts you off and finishes your sentences.

“my parents—”

“are asleep!!” his voice acquires a borderline whiny quality. “i checked!” he confirms proudly and before you have the chance to present him with further counterarguments, he throws his hands up in the air. 

“come on, little healy,” george’s grins a feral little grin, “scared you’ll get caught?”

you bite your lip, determined not to let him see your smile. it’s midnight, you’re in your pjs—an old ramones t-shirt and tiny shorts that barely come up to the top of your thighs—your hair is half out of your ponytail. in short, you’re the ugliest you’ve ever looked in front of george. 

meanwhile he looks like he’s just stepped out of an indie rock magazine—black skinny jeans, a black t-shirt that hangs loosely on him and yet somehow fits perfectly and his beloved vans. at this point, you’re sure george could wear just about anything and still look drop-dead gorgeous. 

“only a little drive? i promise i’ll get you back home in one piece.”

truth be told, you had made up your mind the first time he asked. a slow tingle of thrill slithers down your spine. the goody two shoes who’s never even smoked a cigarette before he came into the picture. about to sneak out the window at 11:56 pm. 

“okay,” you mumble to yourself. the small smile you’d tried to stifle escapes anyway. “okay, fine.”

george grins and whoops silently, fists the air in triumph. it does something funny to your stomach–his excitement. 

“hold on a minute,” you tell him before making a mad dash to your wardrobe for an acceptable pair of jeans and a t-shirt. 

the subtle nude lip gloss is inviting but you know it’s too much. he’s probably just bored on a thursday night and has nothing else to do. so begrudgingly you settle on a lip balm and brushing out your hair. 

it’s fine. it’s normal. and anyway, he’s not going to see you as anything more than matty’s little sister, so what’s the point?

another little rock clinks on your window followed by a soft whisper-shout. 

“hurry up!” the clear impatience in his voice makes you giggle but you look at the mirror a final time, smoothing out your unruly hair. this is as best as it gets. 

after all, this is not a date.

“can’t exactly fly out the window, george,” you respond drily as soon as he comes back into view. 

he looks around curiously, toeing the grass and pulling it loose with his shoes. you can practically see the wheels in his head turning, generating ideas that you don’t entirely trust… matty’s friends aren’t the sharpest tools in the shed—not according to you anyway—but once george gets an idea, it is downright impossible to deter him. 

“that looks good enough,” he mumbles but you catch it anyway, catch the spot his eyes are trained on and your stomach plummets about half a foot. 

“have you—have you lost your mind?!” you stifle your screech halfway through, looking at the boy in front of you like he’s grown two heads. 

george shrugs, looking the least bit bothered and points to the pipe next to your window. 

“it’s sturdy, look,” he gives it two firm raps with his knuckles. “and there’s the brick for you to grab onto. and i’ll catch you.”

the last part has your ears perking up. you look at him with a raised eyebrow. it’s only a floor. the ground below you is soft grass that’s regularly mowed and looked after. if you fall, the most that will happen is a bruised ass (and a bruised ego). besides, the alternative is to go your through the front door and risk waking up the whole house. 

“trust me!” he bounces on the balls of his feet, eager and impatient. 

george stuffs his hands in his pockets, veins on his forearms taut with tension. his colourful tattoos are a stark contrast to his all-black outfit. should you trust him? 

“if i fall—”

“you won’t!” he answers confidently. “i’m not going to let you get hurt.”

your heart skips a beat at how soft he sounds, mumbling the sentence more to himself than to you. a shadow of tenderness crosses his features, or maybe you’re just projecting. just a silly little girl with a crush on her brother’s best friend. a cliché. 

“can’t let my best mate’s little sister get hurt,” he clears his throat. and your heart drops in your chest. of course not. to him you are nothing but matty’s sister. ‘little healy’. 

“’course not,” you mutter begrudgingly and grab onto the pipe.

george stands below you, hands raised, neck craning to guide your steps down the exposed brick wall. there’s taking risks and then there’s whatever the fuck this is. regardless, you have put a disturbing amout of faith is george and now there’s nowhere to go but down. literally. 

the last few feet loom between you and the ground. your sweaty palms almost slip and involuntarily a whimper escapes you. 

“almost there, sweetheart,” george murmurs. that word snags in your brain. all thoughts fly away, and before you know it, you’re missing a step, foot slipping on the rough wall. there’s a split second of panic, the beginning of a scream that dies in your throat as soon as you feel a pair of hands around your waist. 

warm, rough hands on soft skin. 

george, holding you up. 

you’re practically pulled flush against his chest, wide-eyed and flushed from the almost fall. funnily enough, the vertigo intensifies the moment you look up into his eyes. they’re just as wide as yours, mouth parted as if he was about to say something. 

for a fleeting instant, time seems to stand still. the world around you fades into a distant blur as you and george remain locked in this suspended moment, bodies pressed close together, his towering over yours. his warm breath tickles your skin, and you can feel the rapid thud of his heart against your chest.

"are you okay?" george's voice is a hushed murmur, his grip on you firm yet gentle.

you manage a shaky nod, finding your voice after a few seconds. "yeah, i... i think so."

george's grip on you doesn't waver as he slowly guides you back onto the solid ground, his hands lingering on your waist for an extra beat before finally releasing you. you take a step back, both to regain your composure and to put some distance between the two of you. 

"thanks," you mumble, your cheeks burning with embarrassment. "i don't know what happened there." you giggle nervously, unable to stare directly into his eyes. 

"no need to thank me,” he smiles, “just glad i was here."

the two of you stand there for a second, the weight of the almost moment hanging in the air. then, as if on cue, george's playful grin returns, diffusing the tension like a ray of sunshine breaking through the clouds.

"good to know i can make your heart race like that, little healy," he begins with a teasing glint in his eyes.

despite the heat creeping up your neck, a small laugh escapes your lips, the tension finally breaking as you roll your eyes at his cheeky comment. "you're unbelievable, george."

“right then,” he toes a small pebble, stuffing his hands in his pocket. “shall we?”

his car is cleaner than you expected. 

sure there are some receipts and empty plastic bottles on the floor, even a jacket in the back seat for some inexplicable reasons but it’s nowhere near the pigsty that is your brother’s car. 

“in you go,” he motions, casually holding the door for you. internally you’re grateful that he can’t see your flustered expression. 

it’s a tiny gesture, barely even a gesture really—just a boy opening a car door for you. but he’s not just a boy. he’s george—the boy who makes you mad beyond belief and annoys you with the smallest of efforts. the boy who makes you stumble over your words. the boy who is your brother’s best friend. 

“my my, george,” you tease to cover up your flustered silence, “manners. when did that happen?”

george rolls his eyes as he closes the car door behind you, and you settle into the passenger seat. you notice the faint scent of air freshener, attempting to mask any lingering odors from the cigarettes he no doubt must have smoked earlier. you glance sideways at him when he gets settled in the driver’s seat, unable to hide the hint of a smile playing at the corner of your lips.

"believe it or not," george retorts, putting the car in reverse, "i do have manners sometimes. just don't expect it all the time."

another playful taunt crawls up your throat, about to make it’s way out of your mouth when george casually just does the hottest thing you’ve ever possibly seen. your heart is in your mouth as you try not to stare at his arm behind your headrest. george, oblivious to your freak out, focuses solely on reversing the car from its little hiding spot. his cologne—something warm and smoky—fills the tiny car. a space that is so overwhelmingly him that you have to swallow roughly every couple minutes lest you do something incredibly stupid. 

like grabbing his face and kissing him senseless. 

especially with how inviting his light stubble looks. 

instead, you pointedly stare out the window at the dull grey road beneath you. 

“scared?” he teases, misinterpreting your darting eyes. 

all you can do is shake your head. there’s no way you trust your ability to speak right now, especially as half of your brain is focused on not ogling his arms and hands. 

this was a mistake. this was a stupid, idiotic, avoidable mistake. 

“come on! aren’t you excited to do something reckless for once?”

you are, you really really are. there’s no denying it as the car finally maneuvers out of the parking spot and away from your house. 

you let out a silent sigh of relief. the tension in the air begins to dissipate, and you take the opportunity to relax your grip on the seat. you sneak another glance at george, this time allowing yourself to truly take in his features.

his bleached hair is tousled—just the right amout of effortlessly messy, and his full pink lips only intensify the butterflies in your stomach. george is beautiful—from the way his hands grip the steering wheel with confidence to his jaw that tenses as he focuses on the road. all of it makes your heart race again. you can't deny your silly little crush, can’t deny all the times you have wished george was anyone but matty’s best friend. that you actually had the courage to kiss him. more than that you can’t deny all the times you’ve wished he would kiss you first. 

“where are we going?” you clear your throat, distinctly aware of how breathy you sound. 

george shrugs. “maccies, i think. been really craving some milkshake.”

and then he has the audacity to snicker at your gaping face. “a milkshake…” you trail off, wondering if hitting him on the head would be taking it too far. “sure, good to know i risked my life for your milkshake cravings!”

“pfft,” he blows air, taking his eyes off the road and training them on to you. “admit it, sweetheart, you were ready to, oh what was it? ‘risk your life’ for the thrill of it. don’t lie to me now, i saw it in your eyes.”

there it is again, the little flutter in your ribcage at the s-word. george seems so casual about it too, throwing it around like it doesn’t bother him whatsoever. and maybe it doesn’t, maybe he uses that on every single girl he talks to. the thought curdles in your stomach. 

“fine then,” you huff, turning back to the window.

the mcdonald’s is a flurry of people—drunk and high students looking to satisfy their munchies, homeless people looking for a cheap meal and shelter. exhausted employees handing out orders with a dead expression on their face. you almost feel sad, making them prepare two milkshakes at this ungodly hour. 

you turn to george who is busy studying the menu with the utmost curiosity. 

“strawberry,” he mumbles to himself then turns to you. “or no, wait. banana?”

you quirk an eyebrow. “strawberry is superior.”

“which means that’s what you’re getting,” he replies and goes back to perusing.

“if you think, for even a second, that i would let you steal—”

“so territorial, sweetheart,” he teases, eyes still on the artificially lit board. “fine. two strawberries then.”

george places the orders, giving the cashier his winning smile and handing over some cash. she perks up slightly, eyeing him through her lashes while george leans against the counter. a sudden heat burns through you, wild and unpleasant. 

heartburn, you tell yourself. the milkshake will fix it. 

or maybe not looking at george being flirty would fix it but oh well…

so you turn around, finding yourself an empty seat and leave him to bring over the drinks. 

minutes later, you almost jump out of your skin when george places the cool take-out container against the nape of your neck without warning. 

“real mature, george!” the shriek causes a few people to throw distasteful looks your way but he looks absolutely unbothered and oblivious.

“such a grump,” he snickers and motions for you to follow him. 

armed with your milkshake, you settle in the car once again. the car park is almost dead at this hour of the night and you wait for him to start the car back up, for him to tell you what the next steps are but george only taps tirelessly on the steering wheel. a complete 180 from five minutes ago.

tap. pause. tap tap tap. pause. tap. pause. it’s restless and rhytmless; not like his usual tapping where he’s lost in own tune. his milkshake sits untouched, condensation dripping onto the dashboard. 

you wrap your lips around the straw, sucking on it noisely, sipping on the sweet, cool liquid while you observe him closely. “something’s on your mind.” 

your statement makes him blink. so you’re right then, something is on his mind. he’s more fidgety than usual. in the stillness of the night, his thick swallows and knee jerks are painfully obvious. 

“what’s up…” you trail off, unsure if pushing him would be the right move. 

“there’s this–well. i want to–”

“this is new.” the amount of glee in your voice should be disturbing to you but you can’t contain it. because it is new. 

you’ve seen george be arrogant and annoying, laddish and even on occasion, sweet. but you’ve never seen him be shy before. 

“shut up,” he mutters to himself, then sighs loudly. “okay fine, it’s better if i just show you.”

you follow his movements inquisitively, his imperceptibly shaky hands as he takes out his phone and opens up a non-descript recording titled track 11

his phone screen illuminates his face in the dimly lit car as he hovers over the audio file. the soft glow casts a warm, intimate ambiance, making you acutely aware of how close you are to him in the confined space. your curiosity and anticipation mount as you wonder what he's about to reveal.

"i've been thinking about this for a while now," he clears his throat, finger lowering to finally click on the file. "and i want to share something with you."

at first, nothing happens. all that comes out of the speakers is static and then some more static. but just as you're about to speak, the car is filled with the opening notes of a song—one that instantly tugs at your memory. It's a tune that you have heard before, at different points in time. it's the song that matty’s hummed to you on days you were ill in bed, a song you heard them play at band practice. it’s a song that george and matty laboured over for days. the one that brought you all closer together.

and now it sounds all put together. the final piece of the puzzle locked in.

matty’s voice is stronger than you’ve ever heard, adam’s guitar and ross’ bass sprinkling magic onto it. and then there are the drums—precise and clear and passionate. just like how george drums his fingers on his lap now, matching the beat of the song.   

when the song ends, there's a brief silence in the car. the weight of the notes and the sincerity in his eyes hang in the air, leaving you breathless.

"george," you finally whisper, "that was..."

“we finished it,” he smiles, looking down at his lap. “so we recorded it…”

“it’s…”

there you are once again, at a loss for words. almost certain that there might be actual tears in your eyes. 

“that was…”

“shit? derivative? lousy?” he tries to laugh it off, covering up a vulnerable moment with his jokes but you’d be damned if you let that happen. 

“perfect.” 

the words echoes around the car resoundingly. there’s no challenging your opinion. the song is perfect.

“and you listen to me once and for all george daniel, if you call that song names in front of me one more time, if i hear you call it shit and derivitive and lousy again—”

before you can finish your sentence, george leans forward, crashing his lips onto yours. there’s a crackle of electricity in the air around you, the slowing down of time as if you’re having an out-of-body experience. as if you are a fly on the wall watching two people giving into the magnetic pull between them. but george cups your cheek with his hand and you jolt back into your body. 

his lips are cool from the milkshake but the kiss is searing hot, teeth clashing against teeth. your bodies trying to get as close to each other as possible despite the gearstick between your seats. george tugs on your bottom lip, smiling wide as if he can’t help it—grinning ear to ear.

by the time you pull away, you’re both breathing heavily—practically panting. he doesn’t pull back entirely, instead he keeps his eyes closed and his forehead rested against yours. the grin stays on his face. wide and gorgeous and making him look so boyish. 

“um,” you start and break off into a quick laugh. 

"i've wanted to do that for quite some time now," he admits, his voice barely above a whisper.

“yeah?” 

“yeah.”

with some hesitation, george lets go of your face, opening his eyes to look at you a second later. 

“damn, sweetheart,” he sighs again, chuckling a little. “this is turning out to be a great joyride, huh…”

lemme know what you think <33

taglist: @scooby-doodoo, @partoftheairforce, @beachesgetpeaches, @justgoatsbreakinghearts0855 @beachesgetpeaches, @you-muppet, @mcabister, @alexmarie29, @at-her-very-foreign, @hfkait, @squishysoupy

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#disclaimer: i don't own the gifs in the banner. i got them from pinterest so idk who the creators are sadly #they kissed. everyone cheered. #banner by cafekitsune <33 #george daniel #george daniel x reader #george daniel fic #ross macdonald #matty healy #adam hann #the 1975 #george daniel imagine #george daniel the 1975 #george daniel x you #george x reader #george x you #brother's best friend #george daniel fluff #the 1975 fluff #the 1975 rpf #rpf #fluff #fluff writing