a/n: yeah, this is really random.
Matt's revelation that he had hallucinated much of the past decade of his life was late in coming. It took a hopelessly young, meagerly talented and completely unknown pop singer giving him eyedrops and more drugs to even think to consider he had ever hallucinated.
To be certain, the realization that this young girl was, in fact, right was more than a little disturbing, causing him to consider what else he had imagined about his life. He already knew that he had written off his most uncomfortable memories as an entirely different personality, in fact, but that wasn't what kept him up at night.
To the contrary, he was tormented by what he had fabricated about Harriet and his relationship with her. There was no doubt in his mind that the fights and unpleasantness were absolutely the truth, however he wondered whether the flirting and the good times were all in his head.
He was probably more crude to the beautiful girl than he thought, which wouldn't really have surprised him much, had he really sat to think about himself, but that was not one of his strong points. Being that Matt was such a horrible person that he couldn't stand to look at himself clearly—his revelation that the disgusting drug addict who got fired was, in fact, himself was only a reminder of that.
When his eyes met hers the following morning, he couldn't hold her gaze. He rubbed the back of his neck anxiously and cleared his throat. She looked at him quizzically from the other side of the glass, not understanding why exactly she made him so nervous, or why he was so enamored by her. He was the only person that she had ever met to not immediately write her off as either having a superiority complex or merely being ignorant. No other man had seen her as being worth the effort. At the same time, Matt was the only man that she had ever been involved with whom she found to be completely despicable.
There was something about Matt's utter lack of morality and concern for others that intrigued Harriet. Perhaps she was finally experiencing the female adolescent desire to have one of the "bad boys", albeit about a decade later than anticipated, but this little Christian girl finally wanted a taste of the wild side.
Matt had wanted to break the good girl. It had always been a fantasy of his. He wanted to be charmingly bad and carry her over the threshold to the dark side. He fancied that perhaps he had, but realized it was more than likely that he had imagined that, as well. He doubted someone as pure and beautiful as she would break her own moral code to sleep with a sleazy, sweaty and by all means disgusting writer boy as himself. He found these clear and painful thoughts to be uncomfortable and more than irritating as he swallowed another handful of pills, downing it with half a bottle of stale, lukewarm beer that had been sitting on his desk for the better part of two days.
Matt tried to write a scene for Harry. All he got was a love letter.
He didn't realize before he handed it to Harry for a critique.