TITLE: Clear My Conscience
PAIRING: Matt & Julie
A/N: Just a fluffy one shot, for your enjoyment. :3

OFF MY CHEST

They'd been in the back of Applebees, attempting to speak to one another, for fifteen minutes of Julie's twenty minute break. He'd been around, and she'd been missing him undeniably, which led to their currently very awkward set up.

She looked at her shoes as though they suddenly interested her, and then looked back at him. It was difficult to muster even that, the heartbroken look that sullied his normally nervous gaze too much for her to look at without feeling a little responsible. After all, she was but another drop in the bucket, part of the snowball of stress that he was currently trying to shoulder, absolutely alone. It could have been that stress, the look in his eyes, or the fact that she as well as everyone else knew that everything piling down on him was far from his fault. It'd been her own stupidity, the fact that maybe she truly was too young to know what to do with everything she was feeling, and just the pressure of it all. It hadn't been the right decision, she knew this practically the moment she'd made it, but what was done was done, and there was no going back.

"Are you sure you're okay? You seem stressed…" she guessed as if she didn't know, rubbing the back of her neck nervously. It wasn't as though she didn't know what the answer to that would be, or how far it would be from the truth. As if weighing the decision to answer at all, he gave a small shrug, shifting his weight from one foot to the other with a sigh.

"Been holding up, you know. M'just trying to get things straightened out for my grandma right now, but it's really not going that bad. It's been okay," he lied, practically through his teeth. It was going worse than bad, in many ways. As he'd poignantly put it to the Coach, he was left by his mother, left by his father for something as stupid as a war, left by Julie for someone obviously that much better than him, and left by the coach for a better job. Now, he was attempting to pick up those pieces, and attempting to keep himself and his grandmother afloat while doing so. That was most definitely a job easier dreamed and theorized about than done, for damned sure.

"I hope you know I'm sorry about –" she began timidly, only to be cut off by the clearing of Matt's throat.

"No. I mean, it's fine. Don't… Yeah, don't apologize," he reassured her, though it wasn't easy to do. She didn't have anything left to apologize for in all fairness, having had the decency and grace to break things off with him before diving headfirst into whatever rejection the Swed put her through that sent her back with a sack full of apologies for him. She didn't love him the way he had loved her, the way he continued to love her, despite her having moved on.

But in her defense, she was sorry about 'that'. She was more than just sorry about the entire ordeal, she was positively ill over the choice she'd made. It came at a bad time for Matt, she knew, and it had been a stupid decision on her part. She'd fallen hard for him, but he was so… He was Matt. He was safe and secure, the typical nice guy who she'd always taken the phrase 'nice guys finish last' to apply to. The other boy had been slightly dangerous, somewhat exotic and refreshing. It had been an immature decision to trade in Matt for something she never really had a grip on, in the first place. She wasn't sure whether she simply felt that way because she'd been rejected, or because she'd inwardly always felt that way, but it didn't matter. She felt that way now, and that was all she really knew.

"No, I do. I mean it, Matt," she continued despite his interruption. There were more than a few things she had been keeping on reserve for a while, things that needed to be said between she and Matt, even if he rejected them completely. "I… I made the wrong choice. I didn't mean to hurt you, at all. I just…" She couldn't even finish.

She didn't need to; Matt took the liberty of wrapping up that thought for her. "You found somebody better, I get it. It's done and over with, Julie. You don't need to worry about it anymore, okay?"

"No, it's not okay," she spat back a little frustrated by the indifference she found in his voice, and the fact that he was spewing that ignorant babble. The Swed hadn't been better, even if Julie had thought so, at the time. "He… It wasn't that there was somebody better. It wasn't like that, at all."

Only it sort of was, and Matt wasn't an idiot, which was likely why he was currently rolling his eyes and leaning back, arms crossed, in the darkened back portion of the Applebee's alley. "Then tell me what it was like?" he asked, an edge of aggravation to his voice and he tilted his head to look at her, sideways.

"I don't know, but it wasn't that," she answered pathetically, knowing that at least half of it was a lie; she hadn't been correct in assuming he was better than Matt, but she'd thought it in the moment. She was young, impressionable, and all the other words that adults tacked on to teenagers to relieve them from being responsible for themselves. Truthfully, Julie had just been swept off her feet, and that was the only explanation she could offer anyone, including herself. "He wasn't better than you. He wasn't even as good as you," she reluctantly admitted.

"Because he dumped you, right?" Matt guessed, a little bitterly. The idea of anyone hurting Julie made him a bit angry, though on the other hand, being hurt by Julie hadn't been much more pleasant.

"Are you going to accept my apology or not? I really am sorry, Matt."

The beginning of the statement had been a little fiery, typically Julie Taylor attitude, though it had ended with a whisper and her reaching for his hand. She didn't know what had driven her to do that, to take his hand or even make the jump to try and reconnect with him, and she surely had no clue whether or not it was going to pay off. He didn't pull away, so that was something, she supposed.

"I guess so. Yeah, I do," Matt mumbled his voice still sad. He looked down at their hands, his hanging limply in hers before he decided to take advantage of the situation and squeeze back. After all, regardless of what he tried to project, everyone knew the truth, and that was the fact that Matt Saracen was still hopeless over Julie Taylor, no matter what she did to him. He couldn't pretend that the little sign of hope was anything more than a friendly gesture, nothing pointing to anything more miraculous than that. He didn't have time to hope for much more before the vibe shifted into a slightly awkward zone of some sort.

"I kinda need to get back to work," she told him ruefully, the corners of her lips dragging down in a frown. She was five minutes late already, and though she was tired and much more willing to stay and talk things out with Matt than work, even if it was still a frightening possibility. She gave his hand a light squeeze before releasing it from her own, not something she truly wanted to do at that point. "We'll talk later?"

"Yeah. Sure, we'll do that," he answered, finding himself pathetically longing to hold onto her hand a little longer, even if the conversation was a little rocky. He didn't have any choice in the matter though, as usual, and soon enough, she ducked into the establishment, leaving him there to ponder everything that had just happened.

As well as the fact that he was still in love with Julie Taylor.