Disclaimer: Stevie Bear isn't mine no matter how badly I wish he was. In fact, all of these characters and the Dripping Mascara world sadly only belong to the evil, yet brilliant hands of Gen, who (heavily) edited this fanfic for me, something I am grateful for.

Also major SPOILER alerts for anyone who hasn't caught up to Chapter 121 of Dripping Mascara. Read at your own risk!

"Everybody Hurts"by Avril Lavigne - because I, like Gen, love song recommendations.

.oOo.

It was a sharp knock on his apartment door that caused Matthew to cock his head sideways, a perplexed frown crossing his face as he noted his friend's early arrival. He had just been in front of the living room mirror, refolding the stiff lapel of his oversized blazer as he was musing that he only recently purchased this cheap thing for how Shelley would have loved its pine green color. It made this blazer an apt choice to wear on this day no matter how shoddy and ill-fitting it was.

The day had already dragged on long enough. Tortuously slow and without relent considering how he ached all day for an influence to finally dull conscious thought—and by extension, hurt.

It was this urge that catapulted him into getting ready for a lazy evening that would be spent atop hills overlooking the city, sure to be full of remembrance and healing that could only come from talking about fresh wounds with someone who bore twin scars. With the pace at which he had finished grooming and with how early he set out to get ready, he figured that he was unnecessarily ahead of time—and yet the second knock on his door reminded him that there was another man who stood in the hallway, waiting for this evening to unfold probably just as eagerly as him. "Mark Standard Time must be running a few minutes early today…" Matthew thought wryly as he folded his sleeves, making his way to the door in long, graceful strides.

He swung the door open before even planting his feet. "Holmes, I wasn't expecting you to be so — " his dryly spoken remark was cut halfway once he saw who exactly stood opposite him.

"Hey," the young boy weakly lifted his hand in greeting before letting it fall to his side, where it clenched and alternately fumbled with the hem of his crimson T-shirt. His eyes were downcast and the air around him was imposingly gloomy. He noted that the seventeen-year-old's face appeared rather more swollen than usual. Granted, it had been a month or two since Matthew had last seen him, so he might have just put on some weight.

"Champ." Matthew cleared his throat to mask the emotion that suddenly made his voice hoarse.

The teenager looked up briefly, his eyes rimmed with a thin line of red and the fake stretch of his lips meant to convey a smile that betrayed anything but.

"H-How are you…?" Matthew trailed off, forcing his tone to stay even.

The lanky boy made a show of shrugging dramatically, his gaze stubbornly affixed to the floor and his chin wobbling, as though he didn't trust his voice enough to use it.

Matthew waved him inside then, holding back a sigh as he distantly wished that he had already started on the case of beer he was saving for tonight.

Stephen shuffled inside quickly as Matthew closed the door behind him, and before Matthew could even turn around, he heard a dull plop on the sofa. Stephen sat with defeat in his posture, leaning forward on the sofa and rubbing his face before burying his nose between steepled fingers, his face rapidly turning red.

"Hey… it's okay — " Matthew was beside him in no time, surprising himself with how naturally he comforted Stephen by gliding his right hand along his back. But he should not have been surprised. After all, Matthew had been the closest thing to a big brother to Stephen, and Matthew saw him that way in turn, even with the recent emotional distance that naturally made itself between him and the Manzos since Shelley's passing.

As Stephen further concealed his face in his hands, Matthew swooped down beside him, wordlessly draping his arm around the teen. While studying him concernedly, a lump caught in his throat as he just then appreciated how very young the boy looked right now.

He wondered despairingly where she was, why it wasn't her who was comforting her baby brother rather than him, why said brother was here crying over her memory when he should be ribbing her about the unkempt, lived-in state of the apartment. Our apartment, Matthew thought fleetingly as he felt a pang to his stomach, his throat tightening like a leash had coiled around it. Stephen should be here visiting you and me… US, not just me alone in a damn apartment that we were meant to share —

Matthew forced his crippling train of thoughts to come to a halt right there. There was only one end to such a line of thinking and he wasn't prepared to meet it. He gulped to diffuse the tension choking him and blinked away the sudden wetness in his eyes as he slowly drew his focus back to the young man he still held in a sidelong embrace.

Shelley's little Stevie Bear was here before him, distraught and helpless, his bustling emotions obviously stunted as he found himself stuck on grief that he couldn't move past despite the growth of his body. Unbidden, a memory came forth of the young boy—when he was truly a young boy—following him around at the age of five, imitating him comically as he rounded up chairs under his mother's orders. "Champ" and he had a long history together. He remembered distantly and with no little fondness how he considered him his only little brother, a relationship reciprocated by the young boy who once endlessly chirped about "Natteww" like he was a hero.

Some hero he was.

I couldn't save her.

And with that gnawing thought, his previous soft smile faltered then, leaving only raw pain in its wake.

Silence prevailed for several minutes as Matthew held the young man in a soothing embrace, deriving as much comfort from Shelley's younger brother as he was from him.

Currently, Matthew was absorbed in noticing for the first time how Stephen's fingernails remarkably resembled what he remembered Shelley's nails to look like, with an elegant slope to their broad-base and a length that made her fingers look longer. They weren't particularly pretty, and yet, like with everything he recalled about Shelley, her hands had a certain charm to them because they were uniquely hers.

For better or for worse, he found little unique pieces of her everywhere he looked. Miriam's big green eyes. Bella's hooked nose. Stephen's slightly darker red hair, magically designed to look like hers in order to dispel intrigue and suspicion as to her heritage as Genevieve. Even the way his mother smirked. That seemed to be something he saw reflected in Shelley, no doubt, because she saw a mother in his mom.

Finally, Stephen broke the silence, startling Matthew out of his absent reverie.

"I wanted to see how you… handle this," Stephen murmured feebly as he leaned back slightly, tossing his hands up as if to gesture about everything.

Separating himself from Stephen, Matthew pursed his lips, unable to find a reply to that confession.

Stephen inhaled deeply before continuing softly. "Dad just sort of reads a book—today it was the Bible—but you can tell he isn't reading because the pages never turn. He just stares ahead of him at the pages, and you can see he wipes his eyes from time to time when he thinks no one is looking."

Matthew felt his sinuses sting as he pictured his mother doing something quite similar.

"Bella," Stephen shrugged his shoulders in dismissiveness, "she just locks herself up in her room and cries all day, whereas Jolie just pretends it's like every other day. She completely ignores that it's her birthday."

Matthew noted the way Stephen's voice bristled as he contemptuously described Jolie's avoidance.

"That pisses me off," he concluded, before matching Matthew's guarded gaze with a determined glance. "I dunno. I thought maybe you would show me how this works."

"How what works?" asked Matthew carefully, his expression blank.

"This… this moving on thing!" exclaimed Stephen, almost whining. But then defeat crept into his tone as he murmured pathetically. "I need to know how to be okay again on days like this… when all I want to do is sleep and never… wake up again…" his words were barely discernible towards the end.

Even behind his stiff mask, Matthew felt the coat of moisture gloss his eyes as he clenched his jaw. How ironic was it that Stephen would ask him—he who legitimately poisoned his brain with enough alcohol to put two people into a week-long stupor had it not been for protective potions—Stephen would ask him for advice.

On how to move on.

"Don't." Something like alarm flashed in Stephen's cerulean orbs, and Matthew himself was taken aback by the bite in his harsh reply.

Matthew rose in one swift movement then, looking down his nose at Stephen.

"You might move on, find a life of your own… a girl… kids, even." Even though his tone was far from accusatory, he paused then, taking a moment to leash his mourning as his voice came on the verge of cracking. "I… I don't plan on that."

Stephen appeared slightly chagrined then, but recovered quickly. "So what do you do... on days like this?"

Matthew tossed his head back and distracted himself by running a hand agitatedly through his long bangs, eventually clenching his hand around a fistful of it. It was an evening to mark the anniversary of a birthday she never celebrated. It would have been her twenty-third birthday, but she died just a month shy of her twenty-first and so he paid homage to that—because with her absence, he felt like he his life had come to a standstill as hers came to an end, immortalized only in memories and picture frames.

And knitted scarves and sweaters, in untouched jars of Nutella, in spoken word, and — by God, he loved her with everything in his heart, which beat for her and her alone —

"Matthew…" Stephen was looking at him with concern written in his gaze as Matthew snapped out of his thoughts. He shook his head briefly as he collected himself again, looking off to the side as he resurrected anniversaries of this day in his fuzzy memories.

"I spend it with Mark," he began tentatively, vaguely uncertain of anything except that he always felt better after this evening. "And we talk. And drink. And…" he found himself shaking his head, beside himself as he wondered just how dismal things had become.

This was what he looked forward to, what gave him sustenance through hard times—besides a recently rediscovered companion called faith, of course. Faith had helped him see that his real purpose was to serve humanity, to be a servant to God, like everyone else planted on this earth who had faith in Him. And with His provisions and His guidance, there should be no doubt and no helplessness. But as grounding as this realization was, even faith couldn't support him through some questions that gave him grief on some days like this. And for this he knew he was a weak man.

How different would his life be if she was still here, he wondered not for the first time.

"Sometimes," Matthew started, turning around as he heaved a deep breath. "Sometimes, I cope by praying, by writing poems, and playing music… maybe I'll work out extra hard at the gym…" He knew what he said was as much to console himself as it was to reassure Stephen.

"But mostly…" Matthew gave up, slouching as he shrugged in defeat. "I just drink it all away and talk about it until I'm sick of it. Mark makes it bearable."

Matthew steeled himself against judgment as Stephen scrunched his nose in disgust. But evidently, he misinterpreted the source of Stephen's displeasure.

"Him?!" questioned Stephen irritably. "He's the reason she's even gone!"

"And the reason she probably killed our soul bond," Matthew murmured quietly. He barked back a sarcastic scoff before sobering himself, leaning back on the sofa as he crossed his arms before his chest.

"But yea… him."

He continued thoughtfully. "I hit him first. I was so mad, and I had enough to drink that I wasn't thinking straight. But he's hurting, too. More than me, sometimes." Matthew glanced at Stephen, his gaze serious. "It works because he understands, I think."

Stephen blinked twice and twisted his face uncertainly, apparently deciding that he didn't want to understand what it felt like to mourn his sister after loving her that way.

"Is that what you're going to do today?" asked Stephen simply.

Matthew nodded, briefly checking to see the time.

"Can I come along?"

Matthew froze, staring with a mixture of confusion and alarm at Stephen, whose ears were turning progressively pinker by the second.

"Your dad is going to kill me because the both of us are probably going to be in a right sorry state and thus horrible influences," stated Matthew cautiously, but pausing then as the thought of promised death suddenly seemed quite appealing. "On second thought, that sounds like a great idea," Matthew finished brightly, smirking at Stephen's confusion. "And before you even ask, no — I'm not going to get caught enabling underage drinking. Not in public, at least."

Stephen rolled his eyes, looking surly. "I'm not asking to." He paused then, his expression a mixture of suffering and weariness. "Shelley… wouldn't want that."

"Shelley wouldn't want a lot of things," added Matthew fluidly, and there was no bitterness in his voice, only an all-consuming sadness as he thought of the things that would have bothered Shelley. The cool, breezy nights spent alone after being awoken from dreams in which her presence taunted him, when he would have to bite his fist to stem the despairing sobs that wracked his body. The way Miriam stopped wanting to celebrate her birthday because it felt "wrong" to her. The way his mother never once hounded him to find a girl to love, never once expressing concern that her son was condemning himself to a life of celibacy.

And what was even the point? She chose him… Holmes, by sacrificing herself for him.

It was the only thing that brought him more grief than her absence itself, the one thing that mangled his stomach like a knife twisting inside it. It was also the one wound that no amount of faith would heal. The knowledge that he was trapped in a cycle of eternity without his one soulmate because she had chosen another was a horrible, despairing burden. The inadequacy and betrayal of that fact, when he allowed himself to feel it, had the power to crush everything within him.

And yet, he couldn't blame her. He couldn't blame anyone, really.

Not even Holmes.

If anything, all he had to blame was himself. His stupid mistakes, his letting himself become a slave to the schemes that drove her into Holmes' arms in the first place. Those were the reasons why he lost her for good—for lifetimes and eternity.

Would he be reborn? If he could choose now… the answer would be a resounding no.

But in this life, he was trapped. Because even if she had made the ultimate choice against him, he couldn't bring himself to move past her. Not with all of the hopes he'd built around her, all of the promises he'd made, and the eternity he'd taken for granted.

He loved her more than anything in the world, and once that happens with one Matthew Ruscuiti, it's a difficult spell to break.

That's why I was so careful to not love in the first place, he thought numbly. If only… somehow, I could find out that she didn't mean it… that, even though she gave her life for Mark's, she still loves me and hasn't broken our spell—by God, I'll live a happy life considering the promise of an eternity to come.

But what of Mark then?

As though in answer to his thoughts, there came forth a succession of knocks from the door, spurring Matthew into motion as he sinuously maneuvered around Stephen to get to the door.

"Holmes." Matthew nodded his head as the blond man before him stood casually in a black polo shirt, sunglasses, and khakis, carrying a case of beer and shuffling keys in his hands. Matthew stepped back as a way of making a path for Mark, but Mark only frowned.

"Are we having a pre-party or something at your place?" asked Mark as he raised his sunglasses and rested them above his head. "I just want to get to the hills."

He strolled in nonetheless, easygoing as he always was. Matthew squawked and stiffened as Mark pulled him into a sort of brotherly embrace, heavily patting his back as though to affirm that they weren't suffering alone on this day. Matthew only awkwardly pat his shoulder in return, not quite used to hugs—unless they came from his mother, sister, or Shelley, and maybe her Uncle if at all—but grateful nonetheless for the support.

Mark grimly nodded as he drew apart, and Matthew noticed then with his proximity to Mark the dark circles under his eyes and the prominent arch of his cheekbones tickled by wisps of long flaxen hair. A long, silent look passed between the two men, telling of nights haunted by her ghost and days lost to routines. Just one more day and the next will be better. There was nothing that needed to be said to express understanding.

However, suddenly remembering their visitor, Matthew turned his head to look at Stephen, who had been frozenly watching them with shameless curiosity. Mark followed Matthew's line of vision, stumbling backwards slightly as he choked on seeing Stephen, who was now sitting wide-eyed on the edge of the sofa.

"He wants to come along," Matthew waved in the general direction of where the boy was sitting, his other hand in his pocket.

Mark only gulped, suddenly shrinking into himself as he curled his arms in front of him. He hadn't seen the boy since her funeral and was in no keen mood to either. He prominently remembered the teenager's many tearful glares shot at him, full of blame and condemnation.

Stephen stood up then, erecting a mask on his face as he moodily matched Mark's wary gaze.

"S-Sure," Mark managed weakly at Stephen, who didn't respond, before turning suddenly to Matthew. "But isn't he underage?"

Matthew shrugged dismissively. "He can have some lemonade or something." Matthew waved out the door. "Shall we go then?"

.oOo.

The next chapter will be up later this month. Until then, pleeeeeease Follow/Fav on the top right, and please leave a (kind!) review with your thoughts! Consider dropping a favorite and follow my profile as well.

So… a little background as to why I wrote this fanfic the way I did. I wrote this after watching Chapter 121 on YouTube and feeling so bad for Matthew with what he surely must have beat himself for during that ending. I know some people hated Shelley for what she did to Matthew in that branch… like how could she do what she did knowing how he'd be left off, after everything they'd promised and talked about and lived for? Well, #SHARK shippers could care less, I guess, which is why it was written that way. But here, I ask what if what Shelley did was for Mark AND Matthew. Hope you enjoyed it. Thanks everyone (: