A/N: Rated T for sexual references, drug use, and explicit language. I do not own any part of Digimon and never will.
The smell of drugs and burnt out cigarettes hung heavy in the air. Matt sat up on the side of the moth-eaten bed and squinted into the darkness.
Where the hell am I?
He glanced around, his eyes adjusting to the light. Clothes were strung every which way over the room and broken bottles lay cracked on the carpet. Someone stirred from behind him.
Quick as a flash he spun around and grabbed the closest weapon he could find-- a half drunken bottle of tequila-- and took a stance in front of the intruders. Two figures, reflecting the soggy yellow neon light of the hotel sign beating down from the open window, snoozed on the bed in a drugged sleep next to him. One was a girl about twenty, smelling almost as drunk as she looked, and the other a male about seventeen. Matt dropped the makeshift weapon and racked his brains. When the hell did he have a threesome?!
Come on Matt, think think think! He screamed at himself, making his way to the hotel's bathroom, dodging broken pieces of glass. He shut the door behind him and flicked on the lights.
Staring back at him through the mirror was a blue-eyed blonde of about twenty-three. He was completely nude, and covering his body were visible cigarette burns. His eyes were dull and scared, the bags under them making him look unhealthily pale.
Matt leaned forward towards the mirror and ran his fingers through his limp blonde locks.
What am I doing?
His lack of an answer frustrated him. He raised a fist to the mirror and struck it once, shattering it easily. The blow led to a surprising amount of blood and pain, but Matt was too preoccupied by his fractured reflection in the mirror to notice these things.
What have I become?
Matt wanted no answer to this question.
He hurriedly rummaged through the room, picking up his articles of clothing and putting them on. Before he made his leave, he glanced back at the two figures intertwined on the bed. He shivered. He'd done it with someone underage. An underaged guy for that matter.
He ran out without turning back.
There was a fine mist coming down on the city streets of Tokyo. Matt made his way over to a park bench spotlighted by an overhanging streetlamp. He hung his head and looked down at his bleeding right hand.
Okay, Matt, just try to remember, try to remember...
But he couldn't remember. All the parties he'd gone to, all the drinking and merrymaking all crammed into one big, loud, obnoxious headache of a party. All the times of waking up in different hotel rooms with different women-- and men, in this case-- all came crashing together, fracturing the delicate balance between reality and fantasy.
It seemed like his whole life was one big, sick party after another, filled with high hopes for tomorrows and semi-good intentions, and then waking up in hotel rooms realizing what a fuck he had made his life out to be. And, when he realized this, he would go on to more parties, fill himself with higher hopes for tomorrows that would never come, and wake up in more hotel rooms.
It was like one big never-ending circle.
Matt leaned back against the park bench and tilted his head up, letting the light mist wash down his face. He remembered the boy in the hotel room and audibly shivered. He felt so... dirty.
When did being in a band mean hard partying and drugs? What happened to being in love with the music, the freedom? What happened to just wanting to make a difference in the world by expressing yourself in the only way you knew how to?
Matt looked up at the night sky and asked himself the same question he had asked the scared little boy in the bathroom mirror:
What have I become?
He needed an escape. He needed someone who would ask no unwanted questions and give no unwanted answers. He needed someone who would pick up his pieces, no matter how broken, and put him back together again, like Humpty Dumpty.
The old nursery rhyme played back in his head, making him feel sick to his stomach.
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the King's horses and all the King's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again.
Someone could put him back together again, right? His hands shook. Someone could save him.
His best friend could save him.
He felt his fingers dialing the familiar number on his cell phone and made no move to stop them. He held the cellphone to his ear and waited while it rang.
"Hullo?" came a groggy voice from the other line.
"Hey, Tai." Matt cleared his throat. "I need you."
There was a pause over the headset.
"I'll be right there."
A/N: Aw, more Tai and Matt friendship. You gotta love good ole reliable Tai-- wait a sec, I think that's Joe. Well, whatever.
This one-shot ended up being a spur-of-the-moment kind of thing, where I was just doing something, minding my own business, and then WHAM! Perfect story idea! Usually when I get a story idea I write the rough draft (which is just the plain basics of the story) then revise and write a second rough draft (which is the one that has the details). Then I revise again and voila! Final copy! (Sometimes I'll add another revision in there if I feel the story is lacking.) But this baby just about wrote itself. One minute I'm sitting in from of the computer, the next, there's a whole story just waitin' to be published.
I'm quite proud of this story, though it upsets me that it's so short. It seemed so much longer on paper, but when I uploaded it here it's only about 750 words, give or take. Oh well. Win some, lose some. ^^