Welcome to part two of O Brother. I hope you enjoy your stay.
The class noticed different things about the boy who stood in front of them, some noticed that he was taller than most boys – six foot if he was an inch- some noticed that his hair was long and unkempt. Other's still noticed that he didn't seem to care for being up there at the front of the class beside the teacher. Other's noticed the unusual colour of his sunken eyes and the darkness that surrounded them, made all the more evident by their brightness.
But to a man, the entirety of the class noticed that he was trouble. Trouble with a capital Mess With Me And Die T. From his slouch to the scornful set of his lips, he was Trouble. And joy of joys, he was now theirs.
"This, class," the teacher said, as though she had some rare and exotic treat for them, "Is Matthieu Bonnefois," she paused to write his name on the board, the shriek and scrape of chalk murmuring with the constant rustle and shuffle of thirty odd teenagers, "And he will be with us for the next two years, so let's give him a warm welcome. Now, Matthieu, why don't you introduce yourself?"
Matthieu cast a baleful eye around the assembled students, and sighed, straightening a little.
"My name is Matt. You don't call me anything else. Don't even call me that if you can help it. My name is your new four letter word."
The teacher blinked, "Now, Matthieu-"
"Not even my mother gets to call me that," his expression didn't change as it swept from the class to the teacher and back again, "I'll be eighteen in a few weeks. I got held back a year because I was in juvenile detention for aggravated assault, so I have no problem with teaching you not to piss me off. Stay out of my way and I won't have to hurt you."
Not even crickets could be heard as the class exchanged wide-eyed, fearful glances. With something that might have been a smile, if one were considering the anatomy of a shark rather than a human, Matt made his way to a seat at the back of the class and sat down.
And that was how Matthieu Bonnefois started his time at Hetalia High.
To be fair, Matt had reason enough to act like Krampus. It's all very well to say, 'he came from a broken home,' which he did, but what must be emphasized was that home tried to break him first.
François Bonnefois was a hard man, indifferent to his life and his family.
Until he wasn't.
Matt's expression didn't change; his face stoic and furrowed, even as fiery red bloomed in his cheek. He kept the stinging skin to his father, eyes trained on the carpet. That was rule three of the Bonnefois household. You don't make eye contact with Père.
"What do you think you're looking at, boy?" François demanded, "Tell me!"
"Nothing," Matt's tone was antagonistic at best, outright hostile at worst. And of course, the Frenchman took it in the worst possible way.
One tanned fist pulled at the material of the boy's tee shirt, yanking him forward, up onto the tips of his toes, scuffed sneakers working to stay on the floor.
"I don't like your tone," his father said quietly.
"I'm not looking at anything, sir," Matt said again, trying his best to sound like he meant it, which he really didn't. But at the same time, he knew for a fact that saying, 'I was looking at your ugly mug, you waste of space,' would earn him a trip to the hospital because he'd fallen down the stairs again. And Maman would sit next to his bed and fuss with her skirts, and giggle nervously as she told the doctors how clumsy he was. All the while her sad eyes would apologise, and she would buy him liquorice on the way home. But not even the chewy shoelace strings would make the anger go away.
Matt was angry, angrier than any eight year old had any right to be. Angrier than any child should ever be. He was angry at his father for even existing. He was angry at his mother for doing nothing in his defence. He was angry at himself for not being stronger. He was angry that he wasn't allowed more than one facial expression. Rule number five: Don't look happy, don't look sad.
Emotion is weakness.
"That's what I thought you said," François intoned, shoving the boy away from him as though he were nothing more than an empty soda can. Matt landed on the kitchen floor with a slap, his elbows numb from the impact, bits of him hurting that he knew shouldn't be. He stayed on the floor, eyes downcast until his father deigned to leave the room.
Wincing, Matt picked himself up off the floor, dusted off his jeans and limped back to his room.
"I think it was nice of the nurse to sign your cast," Marianne smiled tremulously, her fingers clenched white around the steering wheel of the car. Matt glanced down at the blue marker that adorned the white plaster that encased his arm from thumb to bicep. The cast was huge, wrapping all the way around his arm, all heavy and white, and held up with a sling.
"Spose," he sighed, his gaze returning to the cityscape passing by.
"She's always been so kind to us," the Frenchwoman said, breathing deeply as she recalled the pained smiles the nurse had given them as Matthieu came in with bruise after cut after broken bone. Last time it had been his other wrist, the time before his collar bone, the time before that three ribs and a black eye.
"Maman," the child's eyes were still as hooded and uncaring as his father's, "This isn't the way home from the hospital."
"Oh?" Marianne's laugh was shaky, and her grip on the wheel tightened until it seemed as though her knuckles would burst through her skin.
"He'll come looking for us," Matt sighed. He was ten, not stupid.
"He won't find us," she answered, drawing herself up proudly, taking steadying breath after steadying breath as she pulled herself together, and the boy wondered if this was how his mother always was under her shy laughter and downcast eyes.
"Good," was the only word out of his lips for the rest of the car trip.
They pulled up at the airport amid the constant clamour that seemed to surround such places. Screeching speakers announced their gibberish across the warehouse-sized rooms. People ebbed and flowed around them, transient and not really there at all. Matt decided that he liked airports. He liked non-permanent things. Things that would change were nice. He disliked the concept of steadfast and unchanging. His father was unchanging.
"Now, my darling," Marianne had stopped in front of the departures gate, "Here is your passport and your ticket. And you keep this with you," she pressed the documents into his plastered hand and looped a lanyard around his neck. Looking down, Matt saw the words UNACCOMPANIED MINOR on the yellow card that dangled against his stomach.
"Why aren't you coming with me?" he asked quietly, not crying, because he knew better than to do so.
"I can't, Matthieu, I want to. I do, my precious child," her hands stroked over his hair and his cheeks, as though she was trying to take his face with her, "But you'll be safe. He won't hurt you anymore. You'll stay with your Aunt Madeline."
"Will he hurt you?"
"No," Marianne smiled, tears in her eyes. She shook her head, "No, he won't hurt me."
"You're lying."
"You go to your Aunt Madeline. She'll take care of you. You have a little cousin. His name is Matthew, too. Shows how long it's been since your father spoke to her," The sound that came from the Frenchwoman's throat was more sob then it was laugh.
"Since he spoke to her?" Matt's too-bright eyes were distrustful, "Maman, you don't have a sister, do you?" Dread lapped first at his toes as waves might do at the sand, but it rose quickly, sucking his stomach down into it. It rushed in to fill his chest and choke the air from his lungs, closing off his throat, "I don't want to go with her."
"Please, my son. Please. Do this for your Maman. Be safe," tears sat openly on her cheeks now, which was strange. For all that she was cowed by his father; Marianne was a remarkably composed woman.
"I don't want to live with the girl version of him," Matt's eyes, his mother noted, biting back a shiver, were exactlylike his father's.
"She is not like him, Matthieu. She knows what he is like, she will protect you. Now go. Your plane is boarding," Her hands gripped his shoulders too tightly, her knuckles white and her bones threatening to break through the paper-thin barrier of her skin once more.
She thrust a carry-on bag into his hands and pushed him lightly through the gates towards a man with a metal detector.
"Au revoir, Matthieu," she tried, doing her best to smile and thinking, perhaps, that she hadn't gotten him out soon enough, as his voice carried to her above the hubbub of the departing aircraft,
"Goodbye, Maman."
"Little Peter Rabbit had a fly upon his nose, Little Peter Rabbit had a fly upon his nose," the boy sang, making first bunny ears, then wings with his hands before pointing to his nose, which had chocolate on it, "Little Peter Rabbit had a fly upon his nose and he flicked it and he swished it and the fly flew away!"
He had been singing that song for about an hour and a half as he and his mother waited for the plane to land. It had been delayed in a stop-over in New York.
"Maman," the boy tugged at her sleeve, his eyes owlishly wide, blond curls tipping back as he craned to see her face, "Maman, what's he like?"
"Who?" Madeline asked, jerked from her Peter Rabbit-induced coma, "Oh, yes, Matthieu. I don't know, sweetie. His mommy says he's very quiet."
"How old is he?" Matthew had been asking these same questions over and over since he had found out that his cousin was coming to stay with them.
"Ten years old. That's five years older than you," his mother repeated patiently.
"That's old!" Matthew said with a sage's assurance, "Is he going to be my new big brother?"
"That's for him to decide, Matthew," Madeline said, smiling kindly and patting her son's soft, blond mop.
A crackling loud speaker announced the arrival of the 704 from Paris to Vancouver via New York, and she bundled her son into her arms and went to meet her new charge.
Matt was standing beside a charmingly child-friendly air-hostess with a dour expression on his face and a tatty black backpack in his hands. Madeline waved, and Matthew hid behind her legs, clinging to her knee as they approached this new and frightening boy.
The flight attendant crouched down, a smile as red as the candy shell of a smartie on her lips, "That looks like your Auntie and your little cousin, doesn't it, Matt?" she cooed, "Why don't you go say hello?"
There is a special way children have about them that can be quite unsettling to adults. Children have either no knowledge of or no regard for social conventions. Children automatically shy away from people who they think are bad news, and a lot of the time they're right. As virtuously innocent as they are made out to be, they are also shrewd. Matt gave the hostess a glance out of the corner of his eye, one far too adult for one his age, and it said exactly what he thought of her. Nothing.
"Are you Madeline Williams?" he asked in careful English, his accent flawlessly anything but French.
"Yes, I am," her eyes creased at the corners, "Are you Matth-"
"Matt," he interrupted, "Just Matt."
"Alright, Just Matt, this is Just Matthew. Shall we go home?" Wide, indigo eyes peaked around Madeline's thigh, clinging to her skirt. Before she could usher them back towards her car, Matthew detached himself and trotted right up to Matt, looking up into the other boys eyes without the fear he had displayed only moments before.
"What happened to your arm?" he asked, pointing at the plaster cast.
"My father broke it in three places," Matt answered, his expression stuck in neutral, and Madeline felt her stomach turn.
"Does it hurt?"
"It aches," the child gave a half shrug, the corner of his mouth twitching carelessly.
Without saying another word, Matthew tugged at the ratty black backpack, pulling it from the older boy's unresisting grasp and setting it evenly on his own shoulders.
Matt looked down at the other boy; slight and fair, with eyes that wouldn't look out of place on a lost dog. He had never held much stock in religion; it wasn't how he had been raised. His mother had played around with the concept of faith, but had understandably canned the idea. Looking at his little cousin with his wide Bonnefois eyes and his halo of curls, he could almost understand the concept of cherubim.
When they had first met, Matt's impression of Matthew had been that he was a shy child who hid quite literally behind his mother's skirts.
As it turns out, this impression was quite false. Yes, Matthew was quiet, but it wasn't for bashfulness' sake that he had hidden behind his mother. He simply followed her around like a duckling.
And now he had imprinted himself onto Matt.
It was a little disconcerting, the older boy found, to be followed around by a mop of blond hair and a pair of almost unnaturally large, curious eyes.
Every so often he would ask a question, usually something innocuous like what his favourite colour was (red) or why he was so quiet (dunno). But every so often it was a question that pushed at all the wrong buttons. They soon worked out a method for dealing with that, though, and Matthew went back to his duckling ways.
"Matt, why did you come stay with us?" Matthew had asked, not looking up from his crayon drawing.
"Because he hit me," it had been accepted after the first week or so that the older boy had no qualms about discussing this with his cousin but the second his Aunt asked he clammed up.
"Why did he hit you?" His voice was soft, almost pitying and Matt couldn't stand it.
"I don't want to answer that question."
Matthew let silence fall between them, "You want me to go away for a while?"
"Yeah."
Why did he hit you? The question echoed around his head with every step he took.
He didn't know.
"Look what I can do!" Matt's eyes flicked towards the seven-year-old in front of the couch. Smiling, now that he had an audience, Matthew wiggled his feet apart little by little, getting lower and lower until he was in the splits, his elbows on the carpet.
"Doesn't that hurt?" It wasn't often that Matt deigned to ask a question.
"Nope, I just have to stretch first," a curtain of blond hair slid sidewise, a pleased little smile on plump pink lips.
"That's pretty cool, Mattie," something that might have been a smile ghosted across his face.
Mattie beamed.
"Matt, will you play with me?"
Matt only glared.
"Matt?"
The older boy made a disgruntled noise.
"Matt, please?"
"Go away, Mattie," he sighed, jaw tight, patience wearing thin, not that he really had any to begin with. As he grew older, twelve now, and tall with it, he was finding more and more about himself that reminded him of the man he tried so hard to not be like.
"Couldn't you just-?"
"I said no!" It happened too fast for him to fully understand what had happened until he saw Mattie sprawled on the floor, tears collecting in his eyes.
Matt felt his face go slack. Not stiff, tensed and impassive as it usually was. Mouth agape and eyes – for once – not sleepy with indifference but wide with shock. Shaking his head slowly, as though he was underwater, he began to back away. A few stumbling steps backwards and he was running as he had never run from his father.
Three weeks later, after a stern talking to by his Aunt and after sentencing himself to solitude and silence, he let his guard down just a little. It was a nice day out, if a sky filled with sickly grey clouds is your idea of nice. It just made Matt feel as though perhaps it wasn't such a bad thing to be as sour as he was, so he sat on the back porch and threw breadcrumbs into the fresh snow for the birds.
He didn't even hear the soft footfalls.
"Matt?" Mattie sounded nervous, afraid, and the older boy fought back the lump in his chest.
"Yeah?" he sighed, barely sparing a glance for the child beside him.
"I made this for you," This time he turned around, and promptly wished he hadn't. There was a card in Matthew's hands. Emblazoned across it in large, bubble-letters were the words, 'I'm Sorry'. With numb fingers, he opened the card and stared disbelievingly at the words inside.
Dear Matt,
I'm very sorry for making you angry, I didn't mean to. I hope you don't hate me, because I love you very much.
Mattie
Matt stared at the message, reading it once or twice, but mostly just staring. It was in the child's messy, five-year-old writing, but he seemed to have gotten an adult to write the words for him to copy, because the spelling was correct. There was even a crayon scribble that looked like it might have been the two of them hugging.
"It's not your fault," he said, quickly shoving the words past his lips, "I shouldn't have- It was my fault."
A tentative smile broke out across Mattie's face, "Does that mean you love me, too?"
"No," Matt stared at the yellow-grey clouds.
"Oh," that disappointed tone was gut-wrenching, "Why not?"
"Because I don't think I know how."
They sat a while, watching the birds that came to bob and peck at the soggy crumbs at their feet, keeping extra still as they approached.
"There are a lot of birds here," Mattie breathed as a sparrow hopped right up to his shoe.
"Yeah," the older boy half shrugged, "Look, that's a jay, and a blue tit, and that's a chickadee."
"A chickadee?" the child blinked, leaning forward to look at the black-capped little bird his cousin had pointed out.
"Uh-huh, look," Matt tipped some crumbs into his hand, hunkering down so that the bird could see them. After a moment of head turning and a few hop-skip steps, the little bird was pecking crumbs from his palm, "It'll eat right out of your hand." Matt looked up, something thoughtfully sad in his eyes, "A bit like you."
"I don't get it," Mattie said, watching in wonder as his cousin lifted the bird – now perched on his fingers – up to his face.
"I pushed you and you apologised to me. There's something wrong with that," carefully, he took a soft, pale hand and tipped crumbs into it, passing the bird along to the younger boy, who held it reverentially, "There you go, chickadee."
"I don't think it can understand you," the boy laughed quietly, a grin pushing at the apples of his cheeks, making them plump and round, ripe for eating.
"I wasn't talking to the bird."
Mattie trailed Matt around at school, stars in his eyes as he watched his cousin brush through the crowds that he got caught in. Where Mattie was too shy to put himself out into the world and make friends, Matt actively discouraged the very concept of 'friends'. He was lenient and oddly affectionate to Mattie but anyone else was lucky if they got a civil response.
Usually, the elder boy dissuaded his shadow from tailing him during school hours. It was distracting, and besides, they were in different classes. Mattie should at least have one friend in his own class.
Passing Mattie, surrounded by a group of his peers on the playground, he returned the boy's enthusiastic wave with a twitch of his lips and carried on walking. He didn't see the way his hand drooped or his smile vanished, or even the way his classmate's eyes lit with a dark hunger after he was gone.
"Chickadee, your shirt was in my-" Matt's voice froze in his throat. Mattie was in the middle of changing out of his uniform, thin hands on the button of his plain grey trousers and a latticework of bruises across his chest and arms. They existed in a veritable rainbow of colours, blueberry blue, mauve, pink, lime green, mustard yellow, charcoal grey and royal purple.
"Matt?" the boy's eyes were wide, caught like a deer in the headlights, he scrambled for his words the way he scrambled for a shirt to cover himself, "It- It's not what it looks-"
"Who. When. How long."
"Really, I promise, it's not-" Mattie tried again, a tremulous smile trying to form on his lips.
"Tell me!" Matt's voice cracked through the room like a slap, ringing metallically off the walls.
"I tripped," the younger boy swallowed, tongue flicking out to touch dry lips, the faintest crust of blood around his nose, "Down the stairs at school. It's no big deal."
Red-blond hair, darker and longer than Mattie's whipped back and forth, pulling out of its rubber band to hang loose and thick around Matt's face, "No," he said hoarsely; "No you didn't."
The next morning, Matt strolled into Mattie's homeroom, hands behind his back. He was miles taller than any of the other children which, as he had just toppled into his teens, it wasn't surprising. The class was noisy, chattering and chittering like monkeys in a tree, picking at each other's hair and clothes. All the same, it didn't take more than a moment of the older boy's presence to quieten them.
"You know who I am. You know why I'm here."
And he didn't have to say anything else.
Matthew, however flattered, was less than impressed with his cousin's methods. Despite the apology cards and attention he was now getting, he was far from stupid. He knew that the second Matt left for high school; he was going to get the beat-down of his life.
"You shouldn't have done that," he sighed, sitting forlornly on a swing in the back yard that Matt was now pushing gently back and forth. It hadn't been the elder boy's original intention, but seeing Matthew just sit there; sagging against the ropes like a puppet that'd had its strings cut was depressing.
"If they try anything, you tell me, chickadee," Matt's tone was steely, matching the creak of rope on branch, "Anything at all."
Matthew Williams didn't go into his first day of grade three with much enthusiasm, but that soon settled down when he walked into class and took a corner seat without being so much as glanced at, let alone being pushed or punched.
He thought it a little odd when the teacher didn't call his name, but shrugged it off. But the vague feeling of being ignored built as he was missed when notes were handed out.
"Colin," he asked, tapping one of the boys who avoided hitting him on the shoulder to get his attention, "Colin, can you tell me what's going on?"
Colin didn't even look at him.
Frowning, Matthew went around the class, horror growing in his chest as his classmates refused to even acknowledge his presence. Break time came and went, and still people looked through him as though he was no more than a ghost. The Russian exchange student had even sat on him at lunch time and not noticed at all.
People bumped into him, jostling in the corridors as though he didn't exist, so when he dropped his pencil bag, pens and pencil crayons were kicked across the floor instead of having people walk around them. And just like that, the corridor was empty and it was just Matthew on his knees on the cool, grey linoleum flooring.
Panic welled in his chest, clawing at his mind, his nerves, everything, the very core of who he was – which isn't much when you're nine. Was he invisible? Why couldn't anyone see or hear him. Sure, he was a little on the small side, and yeah, he did dance. Was quiet, didn't say much. He was shy. He didn't know why this was happening though.
When he got home he tailed Matt, subdued. Without saying much more than hello, he pulled out his homework, a few refresher sums. Matt didn't have any homework yet, so he sat and watched his cousin with hooded eyes. Usually they did their homework at the table, but today they sat on the teen's bed, Matthew with his head bend over his book and Matt leaning with a bowed spine against the cool of the wall, just watching.
Matthew started when the pale hand alighted under his chin. The touch wasn't tender or particularly careful, it just was. Clumsy and childish, it tilted his chin up so that Matt's too bright eyes could study his face. Their eyes were different colours, but both were Bonnefois eyes. One set indigo, one set violet.
"What did they do to you, chickadee?" Matt asked quietly, voice jack-knifing on the ee.
"Nothing," Matthew shook his head, utterly bewildered that he was telling the truth, even as he fought back the burn behind his eyes, "They didn't do anything."
Days turned into weeks, and weeks turned into months, and still no one said a word to Matthew at school. It was beginning to drive him a little bit crazy, and it was certainly starting to show.
"Matthew," Mattie sat at one end of the couch, staring at his knees while his mother sat at the other, trying her best to get him to talk, "I'm worried about you. Your marks are dropping; you've barely said a word all week. Please, sweetie, won't you talk to me?"
Her son shrugged, thin shoulders drooping, "'Haven't got anything to say."
"Please," Madeline whispered, begging, "I can't remember the last time you smiled. Please. Even Matt is worried about you." Fourteen and growing fast, Matt was collapsed in an armchair, his limbs limp, as though he was a pot of spaghetti that had been dumped into a chair.
"Nothing's wrong," Matthew insisted, still not looking up for fear of meeting their eyes, "I'm tired, and not hungry. I'm going to sleep."
It was Matthew's turn to clean up the class after school. Straighten the desks, push the chairs in, sweep the floors, and clean the blackboard. He wondered how no one noticed his name on the roster, how his name wasn't on the class list, how no one seemed to even see him. Was he really that unremarkable?
At least Matt still noticed him. Sometimes the older boy would even smile at him, which just made his day. Matt's actual smile was rare as a hen's dentures, so Mattie counted himself as very lucky to have seen it no fewer than five times in the four years that they had been living together. Matt was his best friend.
"Who are you?" Matthew gasped, whirling to face the speaker. There was a girl standing behind a desk, a dark hoodie pulled low over her eyes. His heart raced in his chest. Someone spoketo him! Acknowledged his presence!
"I'm Matthew," he smiled shyly; "I'm cleaning up."
"Who are you?" A boy this time, on the other side of the classroom, with the same dark hood over his face.
"I'm… Matthew…" he said again, confused.
"Who are you?" Another figure sprang up from behind a desk.
"Who are you? "
"Who are you?"
"Who're you?"
"Who are you?"
They were getting closer now, surrounding him as he tried desperately to force his name out of his closing throat.
"Who are you?" the child closest to him asked, pushing him so that he staggered into the line off hooded spectators. They caught him and pushed him back so that he stumbled. And then the game began, pushing him back and forth between them, chanting who are you, who are you over and over until Matthew's vision was a tear-blurred slide-show of black hoods and cruel smiles. Laughter and jeering catcalls of 'Who are you' echoed around his head.
"Stop! Please!" he sobbed, "I'm Matthew! I'm Matthew!"
"My name is Matthieu Bonnefois," the laughter in the room vanished immediately, minnows in the presence of a shark, "And I want to know what the fuck you think you're doing."
"Go away," one bold soul dared to say, standing a little taller and broader than his black-coated brethren.
Matt reached out and pushed the hood off the boy's head. He couldn't name names, but it was one of Mattie's classmates. His stony expression not shifting by an iota, he grabbed the boy's scruffy brown hair and yanked on it, pulling his head back at such an uncomfortable angle that it made the little wretch screech.
"What did you do to him?"
"Nothing! Ow! It was nothing, I swear! It was just a game, let me go!"
On the floor in a crumpled heap, Matthew sniffled harder, and Matt's grip only tightened.
"This is a game to you?" the teen asked coldly.
"Yeah, we were just having some fun, weren't we, Mattie?" Colin's head couldn't turn, but his eyes, which were watering in pain, flicked towards Matthew, who shook his head, face crumpling in on itself tearily. "We were just play-" the boy's words stopped dead as Matt's fist socked into his gut, lifting him clean off the floor for a second. Colin collapsed as Matt let go of him, throwing up a little bit and trying to gasp for air at the same time resulting in a hiccupping, choking noise. Bile and saliva dripped from the boy's lips as he sucked oxygen.
"Oops," Matt said flatly, "You lost."
The moment felt like it should have had something more, some kind of witty riposte or pearl of wisdom to send the child on the straight and narrow, but Matt was fourteen; a child of few words and not one inclined to waste them on lost causes. He just hoped that the boy would become the man he knew he would be. And then he hoped that he ran into a worse man.
Carefully scooping Mattie up and setting him on his feet, Matt picked up his things and guided his snivelling cousin out of the school gates and back home.
That night, Matthew had spent the evening clutching Matt's chest and sobbing himself to sleep on it while the teenager watched him, awkwardly patting his head from time to time to show his sympathy as best he could. But when the lights went out and Mattie was curled up against him, shivering slightly and whimpering in his sleep, Matt pulled the blankets up around them, tucking the younger boy in and giving him a tentative hug, which seemed to calm him.
Mattie really was too cute for his own good.
Matt told Madeline, who went to the teachers, the principal and the parents and after a week, she politely smiled her way into a school transfer and every single child in that class bar Matthew getting a permanent mark on their record and three weeks' suspension (pending expulsion should any further disciplinary action be required). And it was in that polite, sugar sweet smile that Matt could see how she was his father's sister.
It was a good school, and closer to home, so Mattie could walk home without Matt, which the elder of the two regretted a little. It was on those walks home that they had grown close.
"Maman?" Matt asked incredulously, staring at the woman drinking coffee with Aunt Madeline in the middle of the beige settee.
"Yes, Matthieu. I've come to stay with you now. We can be a proper family," Marianne's smile was thin, but there was still spark to it, one that was growing stronger. She looked more happy and relaxed than she had done in any of the memories Matt had of her.
"It's Matt now," he muttered distractedly, "You mean you ditched him?"
"If by that you mean have I left your father, then yes, I have. But what's this about calling yourself Matt? It's so inelegant, dear," she took another sip of tea and Matt slouched sullenly under her gaze, scuffing his foot against the carpet.
"I don't like my name," he muttered, lip curling in disgust.
"Why on earth not? Matthieu is a beautiful name!" Marianne frowned. She didn't really want to fight, she was so tired of fighting, but this was the same child she had dropped off at the airport, surly and freshly fifteen.
"It's the name he gave me," Matt's belligerently hooded gaze slid away from his mother to burn holes in the carpet with his eyes.
It struck both women in that moment how very much he looked like his father, not just in attitude, but in appearance. Same sort of hair, same eyes, same jawline, same shoulders, same slouch, same nose. So much the same.
"Well," the Frenchwoman fussed with her skirts, "You come here, Matt, and you tell your Maman how you've been."
It was a sleepy, sunny afternoon. School was due to start in two weeks, and both Matt and Matthew were hiding out in the coolest room in the house, trying to escape the muggy heat and the white haze that floated like a malignant spirit above the city. Mirages shimmered on the road. It was too hot for anyone to be outside, which meant that the knock at the door was unexpected. Unexpected and unwelcome as the Spanish inquisition.
Grumbling because his mother was sunning herself in the back and his aunt was on an ice run, Matt poked Mattie in the thigh with the end of a chewed ballpoint pen, prompting him to answer the door.
The day was too hot and sultry, tempting with adulterously thick and cloying air. Feeling as though he might as well get a glass of water because it really just was that hot, and while he was at it he might get one for Mattie, too, Matt tumbled forwards onto his feet and padded carelessly across the floor. He wasn't graceful the way Mattie was, Mattie was a dancer, but the older boy moved like a predator, and his cousin thought that was pretty neat.
As he rounded the corner to go through the living room to the kitchen, Matt stopped dead, suddenly feeling ice prickling in his skin.
It was the same face. Five years gone and he hadn't seemed to have aged a day.
François' eyes alighted on his son and the slick, sickening smile he was using to try and weasel his way into the house vanished. Only to reappear, a thousand times pointier and colder. It almost seemed as though it should be steaming in the heat.
"You're not welcome here," Matt said flatly, the hot air swallowing his words, crushing them.
"But if this is where my wife and child are, then I must be welcome," that smile was out of place, sharp and predatory as it was, it didn't match his dead eyes. Mattie looked back and forth, suddenly terrified. He was within arms' length of the man who had beaten his best friend and they had exactly the same eyes. It was like they had been copied out of François' face and pasted into Matt's. He took a step backwards, and then another one.
"Get behind me, chickadee," there was still that horrible emotionlessness to his voice.
"Go on," François cooed, "Get behind him, chickadee. Tell me, chickadee, what's your name? Or are you just the bird pet of my weak, stupid son?"
"His name is Matthew," Matt growled, "He's not my pet and I am not your son."
"Oh? Madeline always was an unoriginal girl," the Frenchman laughed, and it was a hollow sound, "Matthieu and Matthew. How sweet."
François took a step forward, looking about the house with a scornful curl on his lips. Matt stepped forward, too, eyes level and brow raised in defiance. He was almost the same height as his father now, an inch or two shy but promising to get taller, become broader, to be if not a better man then a bigger one.
"Get out of this house," Matt said, thankful that the squeak of puberty remained blessedly absent, and his voice was as deep and as threatening as it could be, hoarse and gravelly.
"I want my wife back," François shrugged, "You may stay with my pathetic sister and her feeble offspring. You should never have been born."
Matt just stared; surprisingly, he didn't care. He'd always cultivated an attitude of I Don't Give A Fuck where his father was concerned, just for appearance's sake. But it honestly surprised him that he couldn't give a good God damn what this man thought of him. He could feel Mattie at his back, and he could feel something spark under his ribcage as he stared at the mad who had made the first decade of his life a living hell. It was joy. Some kind of fierce, angry, avenging delight.
"What are you looking at, boy?" François said coldly, and somewhere in the pit of his stomach, Matt felt the thrill of fear and dread that usually preceded another slap, or some other blow. But he was bigger now. He wasn't a child, and he didn't have to listen to a tyrant.
"I'm looking at you, you worthless bag of shit," he said, no trace of a smile on his lips.
"Matt, chouchou, be a dear and get your Maman a-" whatever Marianne wanted, they would never know, because the second she saw François, she blanched and froze. One trembling hand raised itself to her mouth as she shrunk in on herself in fear.
"Marie," François' face softened, and he stretched out an arm as though he was reaching out to her, "Marie, come home. I miss you. I promise I'll be better. I will, ma chérie, s'il te plait?"
"No," her voice trembled, but still she shook her head, "No. I can't live like that, François. I love you, but I can't do that anymore."
"Marianne," this time his tone was less wheedling than it was cautionary, "Don't do this."
"You heard her," Matt said, taking another step forward and pulling Mattie's hockey stick from the umbrella stand next to the door, "Now leave."
"I'm not leaving without her," François raised a hand to knock his son out of the way, only to be blocked by the hard wood of a field hockey stick colliding with his arm. He hissed in pain, recoiling slightly, "Get out of my way, boy!"
"No," Matt said firmly, choosing to ignore that his voice had chosen that moment to shriek like a badly tuned violin.
"Move. Think of your bird pet," the Frenchman's voice dropped in volume, low and almost reasonable, "We wouldn't want anything to happen to him, would we?"
"Matt?" Mattie asked, taking another several steps backwards until he backed up into the couch.
"Alouette" François didn't so much sing the words as he did intone them as though they were some sort of ritual chant, "Gentille Alouette. Alouette j'emplumerai. J'emplumerai le cou. Il le bec. Il le tété. Alouette."
Matt's deadpan glare plummeted into a scowl. "Out," he gasped, the word barely a breath.
"Pardon? I did not hear you," François sighed emotionlessly.
"GET OUT!" Matt bellowed, shoving the J hook of the hockey stick into the man's solar plexus. Breath wheezed from François' lungs and he doubled over, only to have the stick crack down on his shoulder, numbing it. The teen didn't know what was driving him to do it, but he needed to get his stinking, wretched father out of the house and away from his family. He knew he was young. He knew he didn't have the strength to do it with his bare hands, but that was why he was swinging a piece of weighted wood with joyous abandon. Knees, elbows, bones, joints, soft points, any area that would hurt when struck, Matt powered the stick into. Ignoring the cries for him to stop, he shoved the still breathless François out the door and into the front yard, where he fell onto his back in the heat and didn't get up. The teen shut the door, locking it.
François' breathing was shallow as he stared almost unblinkingly at the white sky. His pupils were pinpoints, every muscle in his body contracted in pain and surprise. Matt's, on the other hand, were wide, obliterating almost all traces of his Bonnefois eyes, a too-bright sliver of violet ringing black pits.
There was a banging behind them, someone pounding on the window no doubt, trying to stop Matt from going crazy. Too late.
"Don't-" the Frenchman's lips sucked and pulled at the air, trying to get some air, "Don't do this."
"Nothing you say will convince me I shouldn't," Matt shrugged, bringing the stick back like a club, "But if you want to grovel, go right ahead."
"You're supposed to be a better man!" the Frenchman spat blood, tongue probing at a loose tooth.
His child laughed. Matt didn't laugh often, he'd never really found cause, but this was actually funny.
"I'm not better than you," he chuckled, "I'm a thousand timesworse." He could hear screaming behind him; hear the hollow pounding on the window.
His swing ground to a halt when the window behind him shattered.
"No! Matt! NO!" Matthew shrieked, leaning out of the broken window, glass glittered in his halo of blond hair and a myriad of cuts streaked red all over his face and arms, "Please don't do this! Please!" The boy's face was drawn and pale, obviously in pain, but still leaning out across the broken glass to make his cousin see reason.
"Say thank you," Matt said, taking a step back, letting his arms hand limp at his sides and feeling the adrenaline leave his body feeling like overcooked pasta, "He's the only reason you're alive."
"Weak-" was the only word that escaped François' lips before his son knocked him out. Two minutes later the police arrived with an ambulance, and they took the two Bonnefois' away. Mattie sagged in the window, his mother's arms around him as Marianne tried to get the distracted boy to hold still so that she could pull the glass from his cuts.
Matt leant against the bars of the holding cell, arms hanging out and temple pressed to the cold metal.
"Why am I in behind bars while he walks free?" he asked, glad that his Canadian citizenship (merci beaucoup, mademoiselle Madeline) kept him from being deported straight back to France and into the clutches of his father, who was looking decidedly worse for wear. His eyes were swollen almost shut, the skin glossy and a lovely mix of red and black. He was missing a tooth and the way he was walking – gingerly as an elephant on eggshells – suggested that something might be fractured or cracked.
"Son, you hold your peace," the policeman ordered sternly, turning back to try and finish taking François' statement.
"I'm not your son," Matt drawled, rolling his eyes, "I'm his."
"Sir, is that true?" the policeman asked, frowning, his eyes narrowed in sudden suspicion as he began to draw the familial similarities between with boy in the cage and the man before him. Even all banged up, there was a remarkable resemblance.
"This child is insane," François said flatly, "I would very much like to go back to my hotel, if we could please hurry."
"Why, daddy," Matt was smirking now, eyes no less bright for their hooded lids, "Are you afraid of me? Why? You spent ten years beating the shit out of me. Isn't it my turn yet?"
"I'm not going to dignify that with a response," the Frenchman said, speaking as precisely as he could with a missing tooth, a swollen tongue and a lip that was going to need stitches.
"Rule two," the teen sighed, closing his eyes, looking much older than he was.
"What?" François hissed, trying not to look angry as he ignored the policeman, turning in his chair, "What did you say?"
"Rule one:" Matt recited dutifully, his wolfish smirk growing, "Know your place. Rule two: Your opinion is worthless, so don't say anything. Rule three: Don't make eye contact. Rule four: No matter how much it hurts, don't cry. Rule five: Emotion is weakness. Rule six: He brought you into the world. He can take you out again. Rule seven: Never fight back. I made that one up. I didn't really want to die."
"Son, what did you say your name was?" the officer asked, seeming genuinely interested for the first time since Matt had been bundled into the cold concrete cell.
"Matthieu – Two tee – André Bonnefois. Fifteen, only child of Marianne and François Bonnefois. Matt when I'm at home."
"Canadian?" the man asked, taking notes, much to François' incandescent rage.
"Naturalised. Parisian born," there was a sneer to Matt's lip as though he didn't care much for the idea of being French.
"And how long have you lived in Vancouver?"
"Five years. Maman sent me to live with family after thishoser," he used the word with particular relish, "Broke my left arm in three places. Wrist, ulna and elbow. It took three months to heal and I still can't straighten it properly. See?" Matt glowered at his father, laying it on thick. If he was going down for hitting his father, then he was going to return the favour in spades. He rolled up his sleeve, showing off the place where the bone in his elbow jutted out unnaturally, straightening it as far as it would go.
"He broke your arm?" The policeman repeated, eyebrows raised.
"I can't believe you're listening to this hooligan! He almost killed me!" François was beside himself, eyes blazing with violet fire as he tried desperately to rein his temper in.
"Sir, let him finish."
"My arm, both my wrists, three ribs, my collar bone and my ankle," Matt was just downright smug now, "And he decided that it might be a good idea to come harass my mother."
"Mr Bonnefois, could you come with me, please?" The policeman said; the vaguest air of disapproval in his tone. And that was when Matt knew he had him.
"I hereby sentence you to two years in a juvenile detention centre. Court adjourned," Matt's shoulder's sagged as the gavel came down and he wasn't released from his handcuffs.
"Matt! Matt!" Matthew fought his way through the flow of people, pressing close to his cousin, "Matt, what's going to happen to you?" he asked, reaching out, but being pushed away gently by a guard.
"I'll go away for a while. I'll be home before you know it," he promised, an attempted smile sort of forming on his lips.
"Pretty thing came to see you off," the older boy licked his lips as he watched the car that had dropped Matt at the gates of the detention centre pull away and trail dust back up the road.
"That's my mother you're talking about," he answered coolly, not particularly fussed. His mother was a beautiful woman, and, he discovered, now that his father had been charged with assault and deported, perfectly capable of taking care of herself.
"Nah, nah," his cell mate drawled, "The little one. Pretty thing. He'd look good fucked. Cum on his face an everything." Matt raised his eyebrows, he hadn't really thought that juvie would be like that, the man across from him couldn't be more than two years older than he was, "So, what're you in for?"
Matt's heavy gaze rested on the other boy, and he seemed to sink under the weight of it, "Beat the living fuck out of the last guy to look at my chickadee."
"Jeez, okay. Pretty thing's yours, lay off," his cell-mate laughed and raised his hands defensively. Matt smiled.
"It's funny how you think I'm joking."
Mattie sighed as he shut the front door, not bothering to announce his arrival. His mother wouldn't be home for another two or three hours, and Aunt Marianne wouldn't be back for another four or five yet. He missed Matt. He missed that he looked out for him. He missed that he was just there. He missed being called chickadee, even. He was almost eleven now. And Matt's absence weighed on him. His father had died in a car crash before he was born, and although it wasn't entirely accurate to say that his cousin had become his father figure, he was still Matthew's strongest male role model and he was sorely missed.
"What, no hello?" Matt asked, holding a shirt against his chest, "God, it's like she doesn't know me at all." Marianne's newest – and rather successful – venture was that of a fashion consultant. She told rich people what to wear and they paid her through the nose for the privilege. As such, she had taken it upon herself to get her son some new clothes now that he was another two inches taller than he had been last time he was home.
"Hi, Matt," Mattie sighed. And stopped. His head turned slowly, a smile spreading across his face like ivy, "Matt! You're home!"
"Sentence halved for good behaviour," a lazy smile pulled at his mouth and Matthew's heart throbbed in his chest.
"You're back," the boy repeated joyously, flinging himself at his cousin, legs wrapping around the older boy's waist, face buried in his shoulder, clinging to him like a koala bear, "I missed you!"
"Me too, chickadee. Me too."
"Wisconsin." Matt said impassively, eyes tracing around their cosy little slice of suburbia.
"My name is John Johnson, I come from Wisconsin," Mattie replied. The house looked even better in person. Cream with dove-grey roof slats, if it wasn't two stories high, it would look like a cottage.
"You boys will love it," Marianne smiled, "There's a good elementary school just around the corner for you, Mattie, and a dance studio so you can keep shaking your tail feathers!" She gave a little shimmy and both boys looked down, whether from respect or horror neither was going to say. "And there's a high school for you, Matt. There's even a boy on this road that goes to the same school as you will, see?" A young man was bouncing a basketball off of the garage door of his home. A touch shorter than Matt, blond hair, glasses.
"I can tell you right now that we're not going to be friends," the teen said, trudging inside, trailing Mattie behind him like a shadow.
Of all the things Matthew liked about the new country with its new state and its new house, it was the fact that it had a proper, grassy back yard that he liked the most.
"Pick me up!" he instructed Matt, who was lazing on the apple-green lawn and silently wishing that the sun would fall from the sky and stop catching in Mattie's hair in the way that it was.
"You're a little big to perch on my shoulder, chickadee," he said, too much summertime having mellowed him a little bit. It was nice to be home with his favourite little bird and just relax. Though Matthew was getting bigger by the hour.
"No, Matt," the words were dragged out playfully, and he tapped the teen's nose, his head resting on Matt's thigh, "Like a ballet lift. All the girls in my class say it's really fun and I want to try. You could lift me. Please?"
"Spose. How would I do that?" Mattie's face lit up at his words, brighter than the summer sun that tangled and shone in his hair. It was less curly than it had been, instead it fell in soft waves to his jaw, a bit shorter than Matt's, but still an imitation. And at that moment, it was spread across Matt's thigh, running in gleaming golden rivulets over his jeans.
"Well, I come towards you, you grab my thighs and pick me up," he shrugged, "Simple."
"I just grab your thighs?" there was nothing about Matt that wasn't sceptical in that moment.
"Yeah, c'mon," Mattie tugged the two of them into a standing position, "See?" He turned his back to Matt, "Put your one hand here," he tapped the inside of his thigh, "And the other one here," his fingers touched the inside on his other thigh, though this time the distance between where he wanted his cousin's hand and his own crotch was a little more kosher.
"Now?" Matt asked, hands hovering, not sure why his stomach felt like it had dropped into his knees.
"Not yet, hang on," With careless ease, Mattie twisted, throwing one leg into the air, parallel to the ground, "Okay, hands at the ready!" It was with an oddly reverential grip that Matt cupped the firm heat of the other's thighs, feeling muscles tense and pull as the younger bent his knee, "On the count of three, I'm going to jump as high as I can, lift me at the same time. And hold me properly; I don't want to be dropped."
Rolling his eyes, Matt gave the soft velour of his cousin's board shorts a squeeze, feeling the material move over softer skin and his heart thump in his chest.
"One, two, three!" And Mattie was in the air; Matt's hands guided him upwards until he was above the teen's head, looking out at the gardens that surrounded them.
"You're flying, chickadee," Matt murmured, voice unusually fond.
"Don't let me fall!" his cousin begged, breath coming in deep lungfuls.
"Never."
Junior year in Hetalia high was peaceable enough, Matt did his best not to start fights, which really was unsurprisingly easy, considering that he'd scared the living shit out of his classmates within three minutes of being introduced to them and no one had wanted to be within a two metre radius of him since.
On a personal level, however, he was having problems. Well,problem: singular.
Matthew Williams was growing up to be an alarmingly attractive boy. Thirteen years old. It was hard to believe that it had been eight years since the child singing Peter Rabbit had held his bag at the airport. In that time Mattie had stopped believing in Santa Claus, the Tooth Mouse and the Easter Bunny. Somewhere along the way, Matt had replaced them all.
Matt himself wasn't sure if it was some kind of childish blind faith or something deeper and darker than innocent hero worship. He wasn't sure which he hoped it was. He had almost regretted when the younger teen became too big to lift, his fingers had lingered longingly on the soft indentation that marked the line of Mattie's thighs curving up into the swell of his buttocks. And just in that simple touch, he was sure that he had been found out. There had been something in Mattie's eyes as he turned to look at Matt, not moving out of the range of his fingers, just watching. What it had been, the elder wasn't sure he ever wanted to know, but that look had unnerved him – no mean feat. It was too adult, and too careless of taboos and social conventions. Too impassive and too like his own eyes. Though Matt did rather want to know what it was he had given away.
As it turned out, little Mattie, darling Mattie, sweet, kind and cherub-faced Mattie was a masterful little minx. With narrowed eyes and the slightest hint of a vulpine smile, he took every opportunity presented him to test his cousin's resolve. From dancing about the house to over sexualised pop music to lounging on the couch, watching Saturday morning cartoons in his boxers, it was driving Matt insane. Every move Matthew made was specifically designed to wear away at his sanity, from the way that the younger boy held his pencil to the way he pushed his hair back from his eyes.
What finally snapped Matt, the thing that finally broke through the wall of 'he's just a child' was completely coincidental. Mattie, not anticipating Matt awake, was simply trying to get a fresh box of Cheerios from the stockpile in the top cupboards beyond his reach. The elder teen could feel blood flooding his cheeks as he stood immobile in the doorway. Mattie was just too cute. He was beyond cute, and Matt had a few choice words for him stored in a scrappy notebook that was hidden unoriginally in his mattress.
Strong, supple legs were stretched taut and Matt wanted to run his hands from narrow ankles to the hollows on the soft insides of his thighs – just visible inside the hems of his boxer shorts. His shirt was much too large – probably something 'borrowed' from his cousin's wardrobe – and creased and crumpled up around him just enough so that the red blond could see a tempting sliver of his lower back.
The terracotta tiles looked cosy but were quite astonishingly cold as Matt padded across them until there was a warm body pressed between him and the counter. He stretched out in a languid movement to flick the cupboard open, fingers playing across the assortment of boxes it housed until he came to the one he wanted.
This was not what Mattie had been expecting. One minute he was trying to get breakfast like a good little hunter-gatherer and the next there was a body that was definitely Matt pressed up against him. He could feel thighs against his, hip-bones against the small of his back, a broad chest against his back and too-hot, tickling breath on his neck. The cardboard rattled as it was set down.
"We should keep these lower down," it was a perfectly innocent sentence, but there was something in Matt's voice that made Matthew's knees tremble. The elder teen's voice had long since stopped jack-knifing, and Mattie's had yet to start. The sand-paper purr raked over his nerves, leaving them open and raw.
"Yeah," his voice was a breathless gasp as he twisted to face his cousin. It was Matt's turn to have his breath hitch when two pale hands pressed insistently against his chest, stroking curiously as they worked their way around his neck, tugging at the rubber band that kept his hair back until it fell loose, brushing his shoulders in coarse red waves, "Matt?"
The elder teen looked down at his quarry, violet eyes as impassive as they ever had been, even when one of Mattie's legs hooked around his hip and the other nudged his thighs apart to rub against the flannel crotch of his pyjama bottoms. "Mattie. What are you doing?"
Mattie looked up from under pale lashes his eyes revealing nothing, "You want me," he said with particular delight, lips reverentially forming those poignant words as though he knew no sweeter flavour on his tongue than they.
"You're just a child, chickadee," Matt countered softly, more for his own benefit than Matthew's.
"Are you calling yourself a paedophile?" Mattie argued, eyes as hooded as his cousin's as he watched Matt's mouth form sounds.
"Maybe. You should let go of me," even as he tried to pull away, the younger teen clung all the tighter, rubbing up against Matt in all the best and worst possible ways.
"But I want you, too," Matthew whispered, soft, damp lips pressing with sweet inexperience to his cousin's neck, fingers tangling in long, reddish hair. Matt let his eyes close, his lips parting to draw a shaky breath. When he opened them again, he was once more resolute. With firm, regretful fingers, he prised Mattie away from him, letting the boy go back to his Cheerios, "I love you."
"That's why you have to let go."
The joy most parents find in finally having a teenager with a driver's license is that after years of careful training and indoctrination, they at last have someone to drive around and do the chores that they themselves do not want to do. Like getting the milk or fetching and carrying a younger sibling.
Or, in Matt's case, Matthew.
Matthew and company, as it turned out. The younger teen's new strategy for seduction was catastrophically less successful than the last one. Largely because he neglected to take into account that Matt didn't really get jealous. He got angry. And if there was one thing that never worked out well for anyone, it was an angry Matt.
The car itself was a piece of shit. Rust stains ate away at the dull red paint, iron oxide heavy. But that was the way he liked it. And of course – as per parental decree – it was a twin-cab, specifically for the purpose of shipping Matthew to and from school, and wherever else it was that his mother had said he could go.
He could take the Cuban, with his meaty hands and his infatuated blush. He could take the Russian with his reservedly playful nature. He could take the Russian'ssisters. Both of them. He could take the loud-mouthed German with the grabby hands. What he could not – would not – take was the girl in his backseat with her big brown eyes and her fingers wound together with Mattie's. They were going on adate. To a movie. And dinner. And if this got any more adorably clichéd, Matt was going to do something he would seriously regret in the near to distant future.
The trip to the cinema was almost intolerable, what with the way they were cuddling and giggling and the way that every now and then, Mattie's eyes would meet Matt's in the rear-view mirror as if to say this could be you. I could be fawning overyou.
Matt almost drove into a traffic light when he saw Mattie kiss her cheek on the way to buy their tickets.
The way back was even worse. She was blushing the whole trip, holding hands as though they'd never stop. Matthew was blushing, too, and he kept glancing up at her from under his lashes, leaning in close and whispering something that would make her giggle more. The urge to kill was on the rise. The car was coming up to a stop street, and the lovebirds in the backseat were leaning in for a kiss.
Gradually, Matt eased onto the accelerator, pressing it down gently until he was almost flooring it but not jostling the couple in the back seat. Three metres from the stop sign, he slammed on the breaks, tipping both Monsieur Williams and Mademoiselle Laroche onto the floor of the car.
"Matt!" Matthew scolded, eyebrows pulled down in a disapproving frown, "Watch where you're driving!"
"Break's must be going," Matt shrugged, giving the pair of them a dark look as they picked themselves up. That was one of the things that the younger boy had realised early on. Matt never apologised. He could easily enough admit that he had been wrong, but he would never apologise. When asked, his defence had been that he had spent the first ten years of his life being sorry and he wasn't going to waste another second apologising for anything.
Disbelief apparent, Matthew quietly apologised to Michelle, comforting her until they dropped her off at home, at which point he nimbly hopped out of the car behind her and after a minute's murmuring and quiet smiling, planted one on her. A proper kiss, full on the lips, there might even have been some tongue in there. Matt didn't look beyond a certain point, choosing instead to slam the heel of his hand into the horn, making it wail and startling Matthew and Michelle apart.
"That was rude," Mattie said primly as he climbed back into the back seat – he'd been banned from the front seat ever since he put his hand on the inside of Matt's thigh in the middle of a four-way interchange.
"And you're cruel," Matt answered, pulling out of the Laroche family driveway with more force than was strictly necessary. The whole frame of the vehicle seemed to shake with pent up rage.
The truck protested as Matt swung it around a sharp corner and down a dirt road to the common-land parking lot.
"Matt?" Matthew was slightly wary now, dragging the word out, "Why are we here?"
"You'll forgive me," it wasn't a question, it was an instruction, the elder boy's sleepy eyes ablaze, "If I don't take kindly to being played with."
"You told me to let go, that's what I'm doing," There was a distinct click-creak-thump as Matt exited the car, and Mattie scrambled for his own door only to find that his cousin had beaten him to it and was now climbing into the back seat with him.
"Bull. Shit." The words were clipped and harsh, and Matt was a very large presence in a very small space. He'd hit the six-foot-oh mark and didn't show too many signs of stopping.
"Matt, what are you doing?"
"Explaining," he answered, pale hands cupping flushed cheeks, "That you cannot," faces but a breath apart, "Mess me around like that. I will not allow it." Matt's lips were rough and chapped, but surprisingly gentle as they pressed to Mattie's, one kiss merging into another into another into another until the young Canadian was flushed and breathless.
"You do want me," Matthew's voice was breathlessly elated, his chest heaving, "I was afraid."
"I do want you. All to myself. But you're so young, chickadee," the next kiss was hungrier than the last, a little more insistent, "Not yet fully grown. Relationships are complicated. You could change your mind."
"I won't-" Matt's lips found his again, coaxing them open, stopping him from talking. It wasn't often that the elder boy monopolised a conversation, so Mattie just let him be, revelling instead in the joy of their joined lips.
"You're, what, thirteen? You define relationships by physical attraction?" Matt moved his kisses along the other's jaw and down his neck, and Mattie gasped, his cousin steadily pushing him back onto the seat so that Matt was leaning over him, hands planted on either side of his head.
"I suppose?" the younger boy was breathing like a racehorse after the Kentucky Derby.
"Lust?" More soft kisses. Matthew Williams was, in that moment, quite positive that he was going to lose his virginity on the backseat of Matt's beat-up old truck and it terrified him a little, especially because the larger boy was becoming more and more aggressive by the second.
"I guess?"
"Sex?" Matt purred, his hand finding itself under Mattie's shirt, raking blunt claws over his stomach, eliciting a moan.
"Maybe?" A button popped, and then another, and before too much longer, Matt's favourite red plaid shirt – the one his mother hated so very much – was hanging open, giving his cousin a view of strong lines of muscle and old scars, livid and pale alike. The elder boy was nestled quite comfortably between Mattie's thighs and slowly he rolled his hips, rutting against the body beneath him.
"Sex makes things complicated. There are all sorts of emotions involved. You're too young to understand it properly. You're not ready for this; it'll screw up your emotional devolvement. And you realise, don't you," he hummed against the soft skin of the pale neck he was just dying to mark, "That what you're asking me to do is called Statutory Rape? Rape, chickadee. Even if you get down on your knees and beg for it. And if your mother finds out. If she presses charges. Which, knowing your mother, is almost a guarantee. Then I am facing jail time. Not juvenile detention, Matthew. Jail."
Matthew's hands were pinned to the seat now, grey upholstery pressing against bare skin, and he was legitimately scared, but he couldn't say anything because Matt's lips were hard and hungry against his, prying them open and invading. He didn't know whether he wanted to buck his hips up into the glorious friction above him or shy away from the hot, hard erection he could feel caged behind the zipper of Matt's jeans.
The kiss broke, leaving Mattie gasping, his lungs aching for air, "Matt, please-"
"Which is exactly why," his cousin growled between hot, open-mouthed kisses, "I refuse to lay a finger on you until you're eighteen years old."
The younger boy practically sobbed in relief as he felt Matt's overwhelmingly hot body vanish, slip from between his legs and back into the driver's seat. Mattie lay panting on the back seat, trying to understand what had just happened.
"But-"
"No ifs, ands, buts or 'What Would Jesus Do's, and that's final," Matt said flatly, sleepy violet eyes still alight with desire.
"You're hard," the young Canadian whispered.
"Not your problem." The answer was so fast in coming that Mattie had barely finished speaking before it arrived.
"I want it to be my problem," Matt sighed, because the kid had learnt that tone of voice from him.
"In five years. Think you can hold out that long?"
"You don't want me to help with that? You wouldn't have to lay a finger on me, I promise," the idea of controlling the situation was at the same time ridiculously more appealing than having Matt pin him to the nearest flat surface and much less satisfying.
"Make it easier on both of us, chickadee," Matt sounded tired and strained, "If I can't touch you, you can't touch me."
Freshman year for Matthew Williams was fun. Nobody pushed him around (possibly because once again Matt had given his famous Touch Him And Die speech) and he got a title part in the school musical. It was a touch difficult. He knew the dance like the back of his hand, but Mistofelees had several lines, most of which the teacher gave to other people because he refused to speak above a whisper. This was largely because his voice was breaking, but like hell he was going to tell that to anyone.
He made friends with one of the seniors, Alfred Jones, the brother of one of his cast-mates. Tommy with his sleepy smirk and lazy eyes was reminiscent of Matt, but in a more jovial, more volatile sort of way. For all his hatred of sameness, the elder Canadian was remarkably unchangeable. Life was good. He even got Matt to be in the play with him. Matt, with his husky, purring voice spoke Mattie's lines.
The No Touching law, sacrosanct as it was, was flouted more than once, never more than a kiss, though. Never more than a kiss as Matt's high school degree came and went. Never more than a kiss as Mattie took his turn to rocket through the centimetres until he hit six foot and stopped, three inches shy of Matt. Still Bambi-eyed and innocent, he kept dancing, kept on whispering thoughtless I Love Yous when no one else could hear. A diploma in mechanical engineering got Matt a job close to home – to save up for a proper degree, he promised his mother – so that he could continue to watch over Mattie.
The hood of the tractor was warm, rust spots glittering with gold and silver in the dappled sunshine of an over-hanging oak tree. It was an ancient thing, kept around just because it looked quaint and rustic. Matthew sat straddling it, lanky muscled limbs hanging loose, his head lolling to the side to avoid the glare of from the shiny metal of the motorbike Matt was working on.
Rough, calloused hands tinkered aimlessly with delicate pieces of metal, fitting them back together so that the machine wouldn't gutter when it roared. Mattie loved to see him like this, shirt off to keep it clean, dark grease smeared from fingertip to elbow. There was a look of boredom so profound in his hooded eyes that it couldn't have been anything but peace.
Every so often, he would glance up at Matthew, and they watched each other watch each other. Yellow gold sunlight and the apple-green glow of fresh spring leaves danced around them, conducted in an eternal waltz by a warm breeze.
"We could get married," Matthew sighed, stretching out across the hood of the tractor, letting his chin rest on woven fingers, "How do you feel about Massachusetts?"
"Indifferent, just don't ask me to spell it," Matt's response was terse, but only because he was poking a fiddly piece of the engine with a screwdriver, "What brought that on?"
"I'll be eighteen soon," as if he would let anyone forget it, "And you know I love you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Getting married seems like the natural solution," he gave a lazy shrug, sunlight gleaming on his spectacles, glowing in his eyes and hair.
"I'm not the alpha and omega, chickadee," two little frown lines pursed between Matt's brows, "It might feel like you'll love me forever, but you're young yet. You'll find someone," the words 'better than me' hung like a silent guillotine.
"I've loved you this long, haven't I?" It was the same line Matthew always used when Matt fell into his unfailingly pessimistic thought habits.
"I'm not sure I love you," it was banter as old as they were, almost. It had wounded Mattie aft first, injured his pride before he realised that it was his cousin's way of expressing his fear than he would be forsaken.
"You do," the young Canadian answered with absolute certainty.
"If you say so, chickadee," a genuine smile pulled at Matt's lips, and Mattie felt his heart thud as though it had missed a step going downstairs rather than a single, measly beat.
"Matt," whispered words, soft lips and wandering hands gave the man the first impression that he might be having another fantasy – this certainly would not be the first time sexual frustration had manifested itself in his subconscious – but the weight above him and the light were too insistent to be dreams. There was Matthew, straddling his waist, hands stroking his bare chest and nuzzling into the crook of his neck to hide warm kisses and sharp nips, "Matt, wake up." Hot breath clouded against his skin and made him shiver.
"Chickadee," One bleary, slitted eye looked at the alarm clock. Glowing green informed him that it was 6:18 AM. Well. Two hours was more than he'd slept the night before, "You had better have a damn good reason for waking me up."
"Guess what day it is," the younger instructed, the tip of his tongue tasting the seam of Matt's chapped lips.
"Don't need to," he rolled them over so that Matthew was cradled by the heat Matt has pressed into the mattress as he slept, "Happy birthday, chickadee."
A happy sigh escaped Mattie's lips and he smiled, "You're going to keep your promise?" he asked, breathlessly joyful.
"Have I broken one yet?"
"No," he started, body tensing as a calloused hand did not pass GO or collect two hundred dollars, heading straight for the gold at the end of the treasure trail. "Matt?"
"You're already hard," the man's face was more impassive than it had ever been, sleepy eyes a-smoulder as his hand wrapped around Matthew's cock.
"And?" he tried to defend himself, failing when rough fingertips brushed over the head of his member and he had to bight his lip to stop himself moaning aloud.
"Did you expect me to take you in this bed?" Matt's tone of voice was positively tickled, "In your mother's house? Oh, chickadee. If I'm going to soil you the way you want me to, I'm not going to do it here."
"Then what are you- Aah!"
"I can touch you now," Matt whispered, "I'm allowed to touch you. And in, I don't know, a week, maybe? In a week, we're going to go camping, just the two of us. Call it a rite of passage. And I'm going to give you everything you ever wanted."
"I only wanted your heart," Mattie managed to gasp between clenched teeth, his nails cutting red lines into the skin on Matt's shoulders as he clung to them, hips bucking into his cousin's hand.
"Then I suppose you can have that, too," his voice was almost perfectly emotionless as he watched the boy who he had grown up with writhe and gasp, occasionally kissing his bitten lips, just because he could. Even simply watching Matthew's eyes, foggy with orgasm as he panted for breath was a moment of sheer bliss.
Mattie's fingers stroked lazily through coarse, red blond hair, his cousin watching him with hooded violet eyes, wrapped inextricably up in each other.
"Tis almost morning, I would have thee gone," For a brief, dazed moment, Mattie thought the older man had hit his head on something before he recognised the lines. Last year's school production had been something a little more classic than Andrew Lloyd Webber, and so the Bard had been called in, "And yet no further than a wanton's bird; Who lets it hop from her hand, Like a poor prisoner in his twisted gyves, and with a silk thread plucks it back again, so loving-jealous of his liberty."
"I would I were thy bird," Matthew murmured, lips pressing again and again to whatever skin he could reach.
"I would you were, too, chickadee," Matt sighed.