A/N: Hi All, I really appreciate all your follows and reviews on my stories! This story is America and Canada based, so a little different than my usual. I read this fabulous story by Chirigirl13, and wanted to write a sequel. I recommend before reading my story to go and read her story so it makes more sense. Her story is USUK. And you can read it here at , or here at s/9181691/1/Forsaken. She was super nice and let me write a sequel to her story. So if you like Us/Uk and not Ame/can, check her stuff out!
As you know, Canada is shy. Most people think it is cute and sweet, and it is in a way. But, as a person who has suffered through shyness, it is hard to be shy. Life can be terrifying. I want anyone who reads this who has anxiety or extreme shyness to know that there are people out there who understand how it can be so difficult. Hang in there! Loneliness too can be unbearable. So please, if you are very lonely, and life seems horrible, there are people who do care.
Hero
Chapter 1: In Which Matthew buys a House
The house was perfect. Or that was Matthew Williams' first impression. It was charming and small, with such a good price too. Slow down, eh, he thought to himself, as he walked alongside the real estate agent up the concrete path to the door, you've only seen the outside. Matthew knew that outside appearances could be very deceiving.
"Well, here we are!" The cheerful real estate agent crowed, her long, dark black hair swinging about as she opened the screen door, and put in the combination to free the key from the lock hooked on the door. Her salmon colored pumps clicked in time to her excitement. "Now, this is a very quaint little place…" She continued on as Matthew entered the entryway.
It was perfect. He admired the cheerful, well-lit kitchen. To the right the living room had built-in bookcases. "It's equipped with all the newest appliances. Certainly the previous owner was in love with technology. He also was a bit of a crafter, so we have built-in work tables and the garages."
"Sey," Matthew just said quietly, so quietly that his agent just continued on about the positives of the place. She finally quieted after seeing Matthew staring at her. She flushed. "Who lived here before?"
She became agitated. "Well, I suppose I have to be honest. He was a bit of a loner, really. People called him a mad scientist." The unheard and I can't seem to sell this place because of it was hidden under the words.
The negative repercussion she was expecting from Matthew was non-existent as Matthew just looked pensive and nodded.
They continued up the stairs, and Matthew was already decorating in his mind. His large screen television with his comfy leather chairs. His ottoman in the shape of a white bear that he had affectionately called Kuma.
She went through all the rooms, and there was a lingering sense of a man the same height as Matthew. Everything had been hung and set to his height. Sey, almost half his size, had to reach to open cupboards and pull the light switch strings. The room to the left of the main bedroom, it would be a guest room, Matthew decided, was more classic and restrained. Its elegance almost wanted him to use it for a study. Going down the hallway, Sey enumerated the difference wonders of the place, and started getting visibly nervous by the end of the hall.
A door sat there, most likely to another bedroom, and Sey said nervously, but in her best sales pitch, "Well, besides the previous owner, the second little glitch to this place is this room. I have the key, but it doesn't unlock." She then promptly tried to turn the key in the lock, her salmon pump braced against the door as she fought to open it.
Panting in the end, and looking at Matthew with a fake smile and a look in her eyes that said, "I just lost this sale again, didn't I?" Sey shrugged and handed over the key as Matthew said, "Let me try."
Matthew was different. He knew it, and he knew the repercussions of that fact. As the key touched his hand, he felt it grow warm and then cold, and innately he knew that it would work again. He handed it back, and Sey blanched as the door swung open. Two years of dust being disturbed rushed at them. Inside was a fully furnished room, the bed lumpy with blankets, and the drapes closed shut.
Sey was almost trembling with fear. "Here," she squeaked, "Um, this must be another bedroom. I'm so sorry about the dust, we can also get this furniture out."
Matthew just stared at the room. There was a presence of something in here. He could tell. What it was, he didn't know. "No. I like how it looks. It's ok, Sey."
She opened her mouth and then closed it. Bravado showing, she continued on to the attic, which still had a few boxes in it. She showed the garage, filled with tables and wonderfully set up hooks and shelves for organizing. It was also heated. Matthew was sold. If he had been sold at the first glance, he was now prepared to do battle to purchase this house.
"I love it. I'll take it."
Sey just stared at him. "Really?" She said weakly. "Um, nothing bothers you about it?"
"I can't believe it's such a low price, for all these cool things it has." Matthew felt his face turning red from being so shy, and it being his reaction to pressure, attention, or confrontation. School in paticular had been nightmarish for this reason.
"Really!" Hope had crept into her voice, and her final, "Really!" was now confident and happy.
Matthew just looked away. Sey was his real estate agent because she never pushed his introverted ways, and let her own type-A do all the talking.
Her eyes glowed with joy, "We'll have this closed and bought from the bank in no time."
As Matthew moved in he took time to explore the house. The end room, still covered in dust was his first priority. A bit of a clean freak as his mother had said nicely, Matthew was prepared to clean the whole house top to bottom before even emptying his boxes into it.
He entered the room, and he could sense the sadness that lingered. Perhaps it was from a ghost, he wondered, as he peered into the murky dust-laden mirror on the dresser. It didn't seem logical as the sensation was very much alive. He started to clean, and finally got to the bed. He was going to throw out the dusty, hole-ridden blankets, but when he picked them up to do so, he found what was hidden beneath them.
It was a human sized figure made of wood and straw. It was the object giving off the sadness and despair. "Hello." He spoke to the doll.
Its hap hazarded and discarded being reminded him of the porcelain doll he would sneak from his mother's room to play with as a child. His father had finally found out and had forced his mother to buy a display case to lock it in, because no son of his was going to play with dolls. He remembered staring at the doll, head pressed against the glass to look at her, her pretty brown eyes staring sadly back at him, lonely as he felt.
Not much had changed. Matthew was lonely. He had been for so long he didn't remember a different way of being. He empathized with the poor thing laying on the bed. "Hello. I'm Matthew." He touched the wooden arm. To anyone else, he would have looked crazy talking to this strange creature on the bed. To him, it was solace; dolls were meant to be loved, and talked to, and they kept all your secrets.
He continued on cleaning the room, now sanitary enough to not require a mask, and he told the doll about his life, and how he hated being so shy, and how he was going to fix up the house, and he did so until nightfall. Then, before leaving the room, he tucked it back into bed with a fresh blanket.
There was a reason Matthew tried never to judge people. When you have faced the depths of loneliness for as long as he had, see what you consider normal. And Matthew was not 'normal.' He felt half not of this world. His mother had slipped once after she had downed too many margaritas at a girls' night out bash and confessed that his dad wasn't really his dad, and that Matthew was pretty as the fairy people she had met up with the night she conceived him. She later told him that she had been very drunk, and that he must not mention to anyone what she had told him.
Unfortunately, it made sense. Matthew realized people were drawn to him, as if he glowed or glimmered with something that attracted them. Then they would realize how awkward and shy he was, and promptly forget him. He could sense things that were otherworldly. He could make food that people would cry over, it was so heavenly. He was talented at things he had never even practiced at. He, himself, was a freak.
A doll couldn't judge, nor be falsely attracted, or scorn Matthew's slight stuttering when he got worked up, or talk over him. Matthew smiled as he brought in the boxes from the moving van.
"Ah, hello." The blue-eyed man had been watching him for a while. Matthew had ignored it in the produce section, and now that he was in the dry food, specifically the pasta aisle, the man had found a chance to speak to him.
Matthew turned red, and tried to close himself off by turning a cold shoulder towards the man, "Hi," he said curtly and went back to picking between penne or large penne noodles.
"You look so French. Do you mind if I ask, are you French?" The man seemed excited, and Matthew could pick up the faint traces of an accent in the man's speech.
"No. I speak a little though." Matthew still addressed the boxes in front of him, because then he wouldn't have to make eye contact with the well-dressed man. That much, he could tell, from the Italian shoes that peeped out from well turned up designer wool slacks.
"Ah, I'm Francis." A hand reached out in his peripheral vision, and Matthew flushed harder but turned around.
"Matthew," he said. Francis leaned closer, his blue eyes the color of delphiniums, his silky hair wavy about his shoulder like a shampoo model, smiling, and Matthew realized he hadn't heard him. He cringed internally, and tried to speak louder, something his father had always yelled at him to do, "Matthew Williams."
"Ah, Matthieu!" Francis shook his hand, and covered his hand with his other one. "You must be new about here. Small village and all, we always notice everything." Matthew wondered if this man knew that Matthew was a master at noticing things. He stared at the other hand covering his own as if it was poisonous snake. Francis, as charming as he was, was taken already.
"Yes." He disentangled his hand, and it joined his other hand holding his basket.
Francis continued to follow him, "You know if you ever would like to meet some people around here, I could host a wonderful welcoming party."
Matthew's stomach lurched at the thought. "Thanks," he said softly.
Thoughtfully, Francis just said, "Or maybe a small gathering, just myself and my partner?"
Clutching the shopping basket, the forming sweat making it harder to grasp, Matthew said something, anything, to get away from the confrontation.
Later as he walked home, he realized that he had given away his phone number and had planned on meeting two other people.
Once he had put away his groceries and watered his houseplants, he walked up to the room and spoke to the doll.
"I'm so sorry," he said to the poor thing, the inevitable sadness seeping in the wood. He softly patted the straw on the head. "I am. I don't know what to do. I have to go meet people, and I don't want to." He sat there a bit longer staring at himself in the mirror. His blue eyes, in the dim light turning purple, stared back. To himself, he seemed normal. There were just the few freckles on his nose from summer, his unchanging pale skin looking ghostlike, his strawberry blond hair, waving every which way, and that errant curl poking out the side. How he enchanted people he didn't know.
What he did know, is that he wanted nothing to do with Francis Bonnefoy.