I don't quite know what this is, but the folkies on tumblr seemed to like it, so I figured you lot might.

He recognises the face in the mirror in the way that someone recognises a photo of themselves taken in years long since passed. The face was… similar. The structure of it was absolutely identical, but at the same time, it was horribly different. While Matthew was naturally pale (he knew because he'd stuck a photo of his face up beside the mirror, just so that he knew he wasn't going crazy) his reflection was the kind of pale that came from several millennia spent adapting to live in caves.

The eyes were sunken; lonely and seeking and so much brighter and more vivid than Matthew's own. Deep, dark hollows, gouged out by the small hours, surrounded them. They watched as Matthew felt his face, trying to judge where the differences between them were, watching his strange reflection as it copied his movements. Not accurately, mind. Copied like a dyslexic three rows back trying to cheat off you in French. The movements were sluggish and half-hearted – a skype video call with a bad connection.

But when the reflection was moving on its own – and it did – then the movements were languid, but precise. The hair –too red. The smile (in the brief moments it appeared) – too feral. The posture – too careless. So similar and yet so far apart. Sometimes Matthew would reach out and touch the glass in front of him, to see if he could feel the warmth of this stranger's reflected fingers. But his reflection's hands remained on the countertop in front of him.

There were other differences, the befuddled Canadian noted, once he was able to tear his eyes away from the other Matthew. There was a robe behind the door that wasn't his, and the bottle of cologne that Alfred had given him last Christmas didn't seem to reflect, no matter where he put it. Also, the other Matthew's razor looked like it might bite (judging by the occasional band aid, that assumption was correct).

"Who are you?" he asked, mesmerised in front of the bathroom mirror, one cheek smooshed against the fist that was holding up his head. Days had turned into weeks, weeks to months, and still, the man in his mirror was quite decidedly not him.

The sharp, wicked smile he had only seen a few times before drew back over ruddy gums and teeth that were just a fraction too pointed for comfort. Leaning forward against his side of the counter, he blew against it, heavy panting breaths. Once the other Matthew was obscured, a finger set against the glass, squeaking like nails on a chalkboard as it wrote.

WEHTTAM

And underneath that,

.UOY MA I

"Me?" he asked incredulously, "So I suppose your name is Matthew, too?"

The words on the mirror were fading, but the hand that swiped across the mirror, removing the WEH left no ambiguities as to its intention.

"Matt," Matthew breathed; eyes wide and awed. Leaning forward, he took his turn blowing on the mirror, his fingers retracing Matt's letters, and adding his own.

.EITTAM

~====o)0(o====~

"Must you dress like a lumberjack, p'tit?" Francis sighed, and Matthew looked down at his shirt. Classic red plaid. It wasn't a bad shirt, as shirts went. It was worn soft and comfortable in all the right places. This was somebodies favourite shirt, and it smelt like them in a way that didn't smell like Mattie. It was also a size or two too big.

"It's Pringle," Matthew said reproachfully, only half objecting and mostly just wishing to be left alone to his introspection.

"Even Chanel can create dishrags," the Frenchman shrugged, pursing his lips and wandering off to criticise someone else's fashion sense. Only to be replaced by Miguel and the solid wall of tobacco-smell he always wore.

"Mattie!" he said happily, slapping the Canadian on the back and making him cough with the combination of brute force and the aroma of cigars, "I haven't seen you in ages! You should come over this weekend; hang out a little."

"Sorry, Miguel; I've got a metric tonne of paperwork to do, maybe next time?" Quiet indigo eyes pleaded with the Cuban to just smile and keep on walking. He just wanted to think. He just wanted to go home and stare at himself in the mirror and try and figure out the little things that added up to two different people. He wanted to see how Matt would react to his counterpart wearing his shirt.

"Ok, that's okay. Next time, sure," Miguel just laughed it off, shrugging easily, "Hey, is that a new shirt? It looks good on you."

"Hmmm? This? No, this is an old favourite."

~====o)0(o====~

Matt was already there when Mattie walked in, and he was without his shirt. He was just tucking the end of a bandage into the swathe that wrapped around his chest and up over his shoulder. Piled on the counter was a discarded pile of gauze; stained with crusts of sickness brown and honeyed yellow, spotted with fading red.

Mattie's palms pressed flat to the glass, feeling impotent and helpless; trapped in his own world. Matt rolled his eyes and huffed a sigh; he imitated his double, palms to glass.

There was warmth there, a hand resting against his. Eyes wide, the original Canuck (or that's what he told himself he was) stared. He was no dear in the headlights; no predator versus prey. But rather he saw the prey in the predator, and reflected in those too-vivid eyes, he saw the predator in himself.

"Don't you look at me with those eyes, chickadee," Matt murmured, and Mattie could feel hot breath against his face, see the twisted tenderness behind cruelty.

"What eyes, then?" one Canadian said to the other.

"Closed ones," If it wasn't for the glass between them, they would have been touching – though Mattie wasn't so sure if there was a mirror between them at all. His eyes slipped shut, heart thudding in his chest.

Between their lips, the cold tang of glass seemed to melt.