I first drafted this on July 1st with the prompts of: Canada, Canada Day, Painting of a Building.
Enjoy!
Matthew cleared his throat and fiddled with the edge of his shirt as he examined himself in the mirror. He had put on a nice, red, plaid shirt and perfectly clean jeans as well as combed out his hair. Hopefully it'd pass whatever test Alfred apparently had for him. Last year he forced Matthew into some kind of suit that matched his. A suit. It was a party at his house, with only friends! Matthew had spent the evening worried he would spill some form of alcohol or the dip over the beautiful, borrowed suit. It was terrible. But this year, the shared party was hosted on his birthday, so he'd get a little more control over what went down.
He remembered to pull down his Canada pin to attach to his shirt pocket. Alfred always preferred celebrating a more explosive 4th of July, but Matthew liked to honor the country that he had spent the majority of his life in and Alfred had spent his childhood summers in.
When their parents had officially divorced at an age of nine, dad taking Alfred and mom taking him, they'd lost contact with a helpful dose of 'support' from their respective guardians in the decision. It'd been vehemently rekindled around the time they began coordinating to go to the same college, and then bribed the school board to allow them to share a room together. Well, Alfred had bribed them. Matthew kind of followed behind him rabbling that it wouldn't work and they'd gone this long being in different buildings, now wouldn't be any different.
They'd actually gotten permission, to Matthew's surprise, and he suddenly spent more than half of his time around the brother he hadn't physically been around for over eight years. It had been an… interesting experience for Matthew, especially after he had romanticized his childhood best friend forever. They'd only exchanged a couple emails over the years before this coordination. Sure, Matthew had browsed through his many social accounts, but the real thing was… more intense.
The ring of the doorbell startled him, and the sharp metal of the pin pricked his finger. He sucked the beading blood away and hustled down the stairs to the door.
"HAPPY BIRTHDAY MATTIE!" The door was burst open before he could reach it. Typical.
"Happy early birthday to you too, Alfred."
Alfred's hand landed on his shoulder like a cement block, after years of experience he was able to hold his body up with the pure power of his will alone. "The shirt looks great on you bro! Glad you left your hoodie in the room. ANYWAY, a hero can't be late so we better get going!" And Alfred was pulling him through the house, grabbing his keys, cell phone, wallet, and then throwing it all at Mattie who deftly caught each item and inserted them into their designated pockets.
He prepared himself to be thrown out the front door and into the car, but then Alfred suddenly stopped in the middle of the front hallway.
"Ok, so uh-" Alfred was avoiding eye contact and rubbing the back of his neck. Matthew's eyes opened wide and brain worked overtime to put the rare event to memory as best he could. "-I know that we've never really agreed about mom, but I know that she was really important in your life and I know the fire took a lot of stuff and memories and shit along with it so I uh wanted to try to to the best I could to uh, ya know, help you remember-"
Matthew sighed and held out his hand. "Just hand me whatever you're hiding behind your back."
Alfred startled, got caught in his gaze like a deer in headlights, and then handed over the parcel.
Matthew tore it open, careful not to destroy the hilarious cartoon drawing Alfred had drawn of the two of them hugging with a Happy Birthday! scrawled in his messy but legible hand-writing beneath. His doodles weren't bad; he'd dreamed of being a comic book artist for a long stretch of his teenage years and had gotten surprisingly good during that time.
When Matthew's eyes finally comprehended what had been hidden within the brown paper, they watered with unbidden tears and he put a hand to his mouth. It was the blueprints of mom's house, his home, with a little watercolored sketch of the initial idea. The blueprint was filled with notes and doodles of Alfred's memories of the flower vase they broke, and the corner that they were always banished too, and the cookie drawer, and that terrifying painting of that clown, and on, and on, and on. He'd even glued a couple worn down photos of the different rooms around the edge. "Oh Alfred, how did you find these?"
Alfred shrugged. "I was just digging around in the files at work, ya know?"
"As an architectural engineer does."
"Exactly. And I found the blueprints for mom's house–it was only built when we were four years old, did ya know? where do ya reckon we stayed before that?–and then I dug around on the internet a little, now that I had the details of the whole deal and everything and I found an initial sketched design for the house and so I tracked down the original, it really wasn't that hard, and–"
Matthew hugged him to shut him up. "Thank you, Alfred." He was surprised really. Alfred avoided talking about mom like it was a nasty bug that was going around the school. She'd found out about his boyfriend before he had even told dad. Her reaction had forever distanced Alfred from her, and pushed Matthew to defiantly start up contact with his brother again. It'd be years before he himself came out of the closet, but by then she'd begun to ease herself into a new way of thinking and anyway, the two of them were close. He'd never held resentment. Alfred had.
The fire had hit Matthew hard, especially seeing as it was right before finals and he had no reasonable way of making it up to Canada without the paycheck that wouldn't arrive until the end of the month. Alfred had held him through his grief.
Matthew hastily wiped away his tears to turn and set the frame down. He couldn't even imagine how much time the smiling doodles and carefully written notes must have taken.
He took a shaking breath, "Come on. We don't want to miss our own birthday party."
Alfred fell into step behind him, demure for a moment.
By the time they had reached the car parked on the street, he was taking the lead again with sweeping hand gestures and telling stories in his boisterous voice.