Matt woke up feeling incredibly refreshed. A quick look at the clock on his bedside table revealed that it was just a little after three in the afternoon. Man, sleeping during the day did so much more for him than at night, he hadn't woken up so well-rested in months!
He put on a shirt and headed to the bathroom for his morning ritual ( that it wasn't actually morning didn't mean he could go out into the world looking anything less than perfect, he had standards!), which he managed to finish in record time.
Acceptably primped up, Matt headed to the kitchen, but paused when he noticed Tom sitting on the sofa in the living room, attention completely absorbed by... some weird hand gestures?
Well whatever, not the weirdest thing he'd seen him do. He decided he might as well off some food if he was already making his own.
"Want something to eat?"
Tom seemed to startle and turn around- thaaaaaat wasn't Tom.
Right. Time travelers living in their spare bedroom. And their sofa. Apparently. Jeez, he'd completely forgotten.
The display on Thomas' visor, previously displaying something like a translucent green computer screen, blacked out at a wave from his hand before showing a somewhat familiar pair of green, electric eyes.
"Ah, that'd be nice, thank you."
Matt barely registered the answer to his misdirected question, growing incredibly curious.
"What were you doing there with your hand?"
Thomas blinked at the question, "Um, just organizing some data." At Matt's confused look he elaborated, tapping the side of his visor, "This thing works as a sort of miniature computer."
"...how do you operate it?"
Thomas pointed forwards with two fingers and swiped them to the left. Immediately, the visor showed its previous display, absolutely filled with what Matt now somewhat recognized as a bunch of teensy, tiny open windows. With another swipe to the right, the eyes came back.
"Augmented reality." Thomas answered after his little demonstration, a bit amused at Matt's astonished blinking.
"Oh, uh, wow. That's kinda cool." he said, for lack of better words, and turned around, "Well, I'll go get started on that food."
Thomas may or may not have muttered something along the lines of "...kinda cool. I show him him cutting edge AR technology and he calls it 'kinda cool'...", but Matt didn't particalarly care. Sue him, he was hungry. Such beauty needed proper nutrition and all that jazz.
Once in the kitchen, he reached into the cupboard where they kept their noodles, deciding to just make enough for everyone. They could warm it up later. He even remembered to make enough for six instead of three! (Which involved having to look for a larger pot in their disorganised battleground of a kitchen. Luckily, he was well practiced in looking for specific things in huge messes).
After getting the noodles into boiling water and leaving the tomato sauce to simmer, he reached into the freezer, pulling out a red, homemade popsicle and popping it into his mouth.
Once he deemed the noodles probably overcooked, he drained the water and prepared two servings, setting them down on the table. He called Thoas into the kitchen and then remembered they had two other guests. Sighing at his prolongued hunger, he finished off his popsicle and looked at the plastic stick for a moment, trying to remember something...
Oh.
Oh, wait.
Right, then. He threw it into the sink and opened the freezer again, reaching for another popsicle. Man, they'd need to double their orders if this was going to become any sort of long lasting arrangement.
Matt headed to the newly occupied room, not bothering to knock and simply letting himself in, as you do.
Matthew barely managed to keep himself from jumping at the sudden intrusion, muscles tense and slow to relax after he'd registered no threat. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, turning his tired, aggravated glare to his overly cheerful past self.
Ugh.
"There's food in the kitchen, if you're hungry. Which, well, you really should be. Also this." Matt held out the red frozen treat, also having barely kept himself from jumping at the sight of Matthew's face. He really didn't like the concept of old, cyborg Matt. It was just wrong.
Matthew stared at it for a moment before giving a tiny, wry smile (an admittedly difficult expression to pull off with a metal jaw, but never let it be said that any Matt wasn't a master of his own face), "It's been a while." he murmured as he reached for it.
Matt tilted his head, "What do you mean?"
Matthew seemed to weigh his options for a moment, looking at the popsicle, then back up at him, smile curling into a small smirk. "My meals tend to be... fresher, in my time."
Matt took a few seconds to realize what he meant and wrinkled his nose in mild disapproval. "I'd rather not."
Matthew simply raised an remarkably unimpressed eyebrow, to which Matt looked away sheepishly.
"These work well enough for me."
Matthew shrugged and stuck the popsicle in his mouth, probably knowing exactly what Matt meant, "Fair enough." he mumbled around the treat.
Matt on the other hand, had entirely moved on from the conversation, instead looking intently at the very still, very unconscious form of Edward. He nudged the man a bit with his foot. No reaction.
"Is he still alive?"
Matthew looked down as well, scanning the prone figure, "Probably."
"Are people supposed to be that still? He looks like he's in a coma." the heavy bags under his eyes and somewhat sunken cheeks really didn't help with that impression.
Matthew shrugged, "He might be? He looked like he hadn't slept for a week."
Matt looked on for a bit longer, then looked back at Matthew, pointedly not taking in the metal bits.
"So, food?"
"I'm not really supposed to leave him alone."
"He's in a coma. Or something."
"...yeah, alright."
Back in the kitchen, they found not only Thomas and Matt's miraculously not cold food, but also Tom and Edd, both still looking quite sleepy. Matt made a point of taking the seat between Thomas and Edd while Tom sat on Edd's other side, Matthew simply leaning on the counter while he ate.
Conversation at the meal was awkward and stilted, and ended up dying out completely after a while. This was all just... so weird.
Done eating, the whole group unanimously relocated to the living room, where Edd simply decided to plop down on the sofa, turn on the TV and completely ignore the pink, winged elephant in the room.
Thomas shrugged and went to sit down as well, only to be intercepted by Tom, who practically pushed by him in his apparent quest to take the seat beside Edd before Thomas could.
With an air of highly offended outrage, Thomas silently went for the armchair off to the side instead.
Matthew watched the whole thing with a puzzled frown while Matt took place beside Tom, neither acknowledging what happened.
Edd, on the other hand, gave Tom a puzzled look. which he very much ignored, staring at the screen instead. Raising an eyebrow, Edd rolled his eyes and let it go.
Matthew hesitated for a moment before taking the last remaining seat, beside Matt.
Once again, the atmosphere in the room was uncomforatbly tense. Thomas ignored them all as he fiddled with something or other on his AR display, while Matthew wondered if he should just go back to watching over a man that was obviously not going to wake up for at least a few more hours. The very recent memory of a practically empty, extremely boring room kept him rooted to his spot on the sofa.
They spent a good three hours like this, the only sound in the room coming from what looked to be a Doctor Why marathon. Matthew wasn't really paying attention, something about a biscuit and a bomb.
With an explosive sigh, Thomas shifted his visor back to normal and stood up, walking in front of the sofa towards the kitchen. As he passed Matthew, Matt's attention focused on him and Tom's hand clenched almost painfully aound this flask as he shifted slightly in his seat.
Thomas of course took notice and stopped in front of Tom, looking down at the two of them with a controlled scowl that belied incredible irritation.
"Is there a problem?"
Tom tensed and Edd looked confused at the sudden question, finally looking away from the show.
"I don't know. Is there?" Matt ended up asking back, expression deceptively curious.
Thomas seemed to study them, looking back at their reactions before the right neurons seemed to rub together. He turned his gaze towards Edd, sitting at the other end of the sofa, between him and the kitchen.
Edd looked right back at him, then at his friends, puzzled frown deepening.
Matt tensed as well, and Tom outright glared at the visored man.
Alright, that was enough.
"Guys, what's going on?" Edd asked.
Before either of the two could answer, Matthew stood up as well, a frown of unpleasant realization further marring his face. "They're mother-henning you."
"What?"
Thomas looked at them coolly, "Your friends think we'll attack you at the first chance, apparently."
"What?"
Tom gritted his teeth, "Yeah, well, you haven't given us any reason to think otherwise."
"Tom, what the-"
"We haven't tried to hurt any of you since we came to the past. What brought this on?"
Tom was sitting up now, not quite standing but entirely ready to spring up at any given moment, "Oh, I don't know. Maybe seeing a creepy guy with my face brutally beating a version of Edd? Come on, you obviously have something against that Edward, and it looks like it goes deep, a grudge that goes for years."
"And you're on different sides, apparently." Matt smiled beatifically, "Face to face with a past version of him."
Edd seemed ready to protest (he didn't need protection!), but their arguments were sounding more and more legitimate the more he thought about them, and he silently paled a bit instead, seeing their two 'guests' in a new light. One time traveler bent of killing him was hard enough to deal with. Two, with seemingly better resources? Well...
The two older men seemed entirely shocked by this train of thought, however.
"What- He doesn't- He has nothing to do with us!" Thomas spluttered out.
"Sorry if I don't believe you, General." Tom spat out the title he'd overheard before like venom, now standing.
That seemed to snap something in Thomas, breaking any possible calm he could've achieved. Offense and rage burned through his veins, visor flashing red for a split second.
"What the fuck is your problem with me?!"
"Oh no." muttered Matthew, backing away slightly.
Tom drew himself up to his full, very unimpressive height, black abyssal pits furiously glaring into his future self.
"You're a fucking asshole, that's why!"
"I'M YOU!"
"YOU ARE NOT ME! YOU'RE A PARASITIC ASSWIPE WHO CANT FUCKING CONTROL HIS RAGE AND I REFUSE TO BECOME ANTHING CLOSE TO YOU!"
"DO YOU THINK YOU CAN ESCAPE ME, YOU STUPID-"
"YOU'RE WRONG! THERE'S SOMETHING SERIOUSLY WRONG WITH YOU! WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT WITH EDD- EDWARD?!"
Edd had immediately removed himself from the couch and backed away wide-eyed. He couldn't remember the last time he saw Tom snap like this, let alone two of them. Hell, they seemed to be building on each other's anger!
He'd noticed Thomas had rubbed Tom entirely the wrong way before they'd gone to sleep, but he hadn't thought his friend was this upset about his apparent future. Maybe he'd riled himself up overthinking instead of sleeping...
The screaming continued, both Matts wisely also removing themselves from the immediate area, as both Toms seemed to edge closer and closer to an extreme bout of violence.
For a moment it seemed they'd toned it down, but, nope, there was the yelling again. Tom didn't yell. He didn't do yelling. He was obviously upset but why-
RIIIING.
The living room went silent all of sudden, the sound of the doorbell reverbarating through the house. For a few moments, no one moved, practically frozen in shock.
The doorbell rang again, longer this time, and Matt found himself moving towards the door without really willing himself to. He made sure to position his body so as to block any outsiders view to the inside of the house before opening the front door just enough not to seem entirely unwelcoming. Image was everything after all.
He frowned a bit (not enough to wrinkle up the skin, of course) when he realized who was at their door. There, with his typical aggravated glare plastered on, stood Eduardo, flanked by Jon and Mark as usual. And also as usual, he'd come to complain.
"You morons are being too loud again. Shut the fuck up."
"You shut the fuck up!" came a distracted bellow from the living room. Edd had probably replied on sheer habit.
"We weren't being that loud, Edwin." Matt replied lightly, wanting to get this over with.
Ah there it was, the red, scrunched up face of absolute fury, "The whole neighbourhood can hear you freaks yelling! And it's Eduar-!"
"Yeah, whatever, I think you should go, Emaldo."
Eduardo's face turned a most certainly unhealthy shade of red. That wasn't even a real fucking name!
Matt, seemingly oblivious to his neighbour's all-consuming rage, closed the door on his face. Or tried to at least, but he didn't manage to close it before a foot lodged itself in the remaining gap. With honestly rather unnecessary force, Eduardo forced the door back open, much wider than it'd been previously. He glared into the living room, ready to deliver a terrible tonguelashing-
And stopped dead at the sight of not only his hated neighbours, but two rather threatening older men (was that a metal eye? What the hell?) all of whom looked exceedingly tense and somewhat spooked.
"What the hell?"
Ah, he'd said that out loud. Welp, time to demand answers.
Tom groaned, all anger seemingly leaving him suddenly as he ran a hand down his face and muttered something along the lines of, "Dammit Matt."
The guy with the 8-bit display visor (what. the fuck.) didn't really react, body coiled tight and radiating aggression. Actually, he kinda looked pretty similar to Tom all over...
'Metal eye (and chin holy fuck)' also matched for the most part to Matt and...
Seriously, what the hell was going on? Were they having their families over all at the same time or something?
Eduardo opened his mouth to say something, but was interrupted by the sound of a can hitting the floor.
Another man had just entered the room, yet again creepily similar to one of the freaks, and was staring at him as if he'd seen a ghost.
"...Eduardo?"
AN:
how the fuck did this happen. this was supposed to be a tense but chill dinner scene. why. tom y you so mad.