The following week flew by with all the stunning oh-holy-shit-where-did-my-vacation-go that befitted elementary school summer break and little else; a day before it was fit to end Alfred threw a bitchfit about the amount of time Matthew was spending with Gilbert—which was, admittedly, a lot.
"Matt."
Matthew glanced up at his brother only for a moment before returning his gaze to his cell phone. Uninterested, he sighed. "No, Alfred, I did not hide the maple syrup, I euthanized it due to its utter lack of quality. Now go away."
"I-"
"Begone."
"This is more important than the goddamn maple syrup!"
Matthew actually looked at him. Briefly. "Nothing is more important than maple syrup, Alfred, we have been over this before."
Alfred stuck his tongue out at his twin before continuing. "Matt, it is becoming increasingly obvious to me that-"
"Do you even understand the syllables that are coming from your mouth?"
"Does it matter whether I know them or not?"
"Kinda."
"Bleah. Anyway, it's so obvious it hurts, Matt, and it is ruining you."
Violet eyes locked on blue ones. The tension in the air could be cut with a knife. Matthew slowly shifted to a sitting position from where he had been lying on the couch, never once breaking eye contact.
"...What?"
Alfred smacked his forehead. "You, Mattie, are totally head-over-heels, which is a really weird phrase because our heads are kinda always above our heels, but I digress, for a weird albino German assfuck who used to be in a band with Francis.
"Look at your life, look at your choices.
"What are you doing, Matthew, what are you attempting to achieve?" Alfred stopped, staring at his brother.
"...He's not German, he's Prussian, and he's very touchy about it."
"And that is what you get from that whole fucking speech. Matt, I thought you were the smart twin."
"I am. You are simply too much of an incompetent failure to understand when someone is avoiding participating in a discussion with you which, frankly, is completely inconsequential to either of our lives at this moment."
"...I can use big words too, you know." At this Matthew sighed, typed something quickly to whoever he was texting (gee, what a mystery, Alfred thought,) and switched his phone off, standing up and grabbing his brother's shoulders.
"Al, I am going to go out now, and you are not going to follow me like you did yesterday, and you are going to call your insane British boyfriend and have him make shitty scones for you and you are going to chill. Got it?" He stared at his brother as he said this, making him as uncomfortable as possible. Alfred scowled.
"Yes, Mom, I won't stalk you and your insane German boyfriend."
"Prussian. And he is not my boyfriend."
"Oh, I'm sorry, here I thought Prussia was dissolved near a century ago.
"Also you two are totally going out, there is no other word for what you are doing."
"I know it was dissolved, and it's still a sore subject for him, and yes there is it is called hanging out with a friend, get it through your skull, turn around, and call Arthur or else I'm calling him for you."
"Have a good time on your date, brother dearest!" Alfred said as he pushed his brother to the door.
"Fuck you, Alfred!"
"Eew, no! Go away!"
And so he did.
"Gilbert, I fucking despise my brother." This was said through a slurpee, thus sounding more like "Glrrr, I fmmr depps m brtl."
"...What?"
Matt swallowed. "I hate my brother."
"Which one?"
"The one that doesn't work at Victoria's Secret."
"Why do you hate Alfred, Matt? Do tell." Matthew snorted.
"Well, he's really obsessed with my love life. Why is my younger twin brother who lives a thousand miles away from me obsessed with my love life, Gil? Why is this a thing?"
Gilbert laughed. "When in L.A., do as the bitches do. Which is to say obsess over love lives of people who would really like to have their privacy, thank you very much, but don't because paparazzi."
"Welp."
"Yes. It is highly disheartening, but we plow through it because being a superstar is awesome to the highest degree."
"I...see. Awesome. Right."
"Damn straight." Gilbert smiled at him. It was a cocky grin, but it had less of the usual assholiness and more friendly affection then when they had met. "Honestly, if I were you I'd be glad that the news passed over me after every game—fans are bitches. Has anyone ever run up to you or someone you were talking with and just started screaming? There are two types of screaming. One is the fan-of-the-you type, where they just shriek about how you are totes their fave and how you should marry them and have a million little superstar babies and have sex with them and sign their vaginas — or dicks, come to think of it, had that happen once too — and shit. Those fans are weird but tolerable to a degree."
Matthew, about halfway through this spiel, lost track of the words and just watched him talk—the way his tongue, stained blue from his drink, moved, the gestures he made as he described things, the various states of revulsion his face took on as he spoke.
"Then there are the haters. The ones that just scream and scream and say how you're a horrible human being and deserve to get devoured by a rabid chinchilla just because you didn't get together with a girl who all the tabloids expected you to, or because you ruined music, or because you are a faggot who is going to burn in hell, or whatever, and they grab at you and try to kill you and stab you with pencils until you leave or get security involved." He shuddered, then grinned at the Canadian with one of his blinding, real, grins. "Creepy-ass motherfuckers, the ones that grab you."
Matthew rolled his eyes. "I'm sure. Out of curiosity, how come I haven't seen a media flood about how you're now the forbidden lover of my brother or something similar? Because we have been spending enough time together to alert the presses to my existence."
Gilbert blinked at him. "I don't know, actually. Usually the paparazzi would be smothering us by now about my gayitude, which has been obvious since the first time I went on stage in sparkly eyeliner and skinny jeans," Matthew laughs, "But for some reason it's not happening. Maybe God decided he'd be nice to me and send me a camera-repelling angel to chat with. I dunno."
"Please. I'm hardly an angel. If anything, Satan has sent me here to purchase your soul with a few measly pancakes, which was wonderfully easy."
"What, Matt, do you only like me for my soul? I'm hurt!"
"Yes, I have been using you this whole time. I am leaving now I have what I came for, and I'm taking your eternal soul with me!" Matthew cackled. Other patrons of the 7-11 front patio glanced over at him.
"What? No, Birdie, you can't do this to me!"
"Watch me!"
"But Matthew, what about the baby?"
"...I'll take its eternal soul too, how about it."
"You horrible human being!" at this they both burst into laughter that was totally unbecoming of two grown men, which was sort of reminiscent of prepubescent girls giggling about makeup, but they were manly so it wasn't.
As they sobered up, Matthew sighed.
"What is it, Matt?"
"I'm leaving tomorrow, Gil, what am I going to do without your corrupting influence on my otherwise spotlessly innocent existence?" he had worded it as a joke, but it came out more honest than he had hoped it would.
"Fuck that, we are going shopping because you need better shoes and you are going to not think about it. Kommen." Gilbert stood and grabbed his wrist, pulling him out of his chair.
"Hey, I like my shoes!"
"Nope, we are getting you better ones whether you like it or not, because if your clothes are going to hope to compare to how pretty you are there should not be frays in the crappy red canvas."
"Well, I guess if you-wait, pretty?"
This was not going to go over well because Gilbert saying that he was pretty had way more of an effect than it should have and oh shit, Alfred was right, but he couldn't say that, wouldn't, because that would be telling and Matthew is not just going to confess his undying love for someone he only met a week ago, damn it, even if he is nice and understanding and doesn't forget about Matthew and likes to talk to him and gives him the time of day and is so unbearably gorgeous with his snow white hair and stunningly red eyes and that smile that could light up the entirety of Pluto whilst sitting on Mercury and make the sun look dim, because there is just no way that Matthew Williams fell for his adoptive brother's best friend who had dated a psychopath and oh fuck it who was he kidding he was totally in love with the guy.
"Um...Well, yeah, I mean, you're awesome and you have naturally purple eyes and really nice hair and stuff, so I think 'pretty' is kind of accurate, uh..." it took Matthew a moment to register that the other had responded in the first place, and then to absorb what he said.
Gilbert legitimately thought he was pretty. Damn it, he felt like a sixth-grader. A sixth-grade girl. A sixth-grade girl with a crush.
Shit.
He had to hide this.
"Fuck you, I'm manly. Look at this manly hair. See how glorious it is?" He flipped it for good measure and shoved his maybe-kind-of-crush-boyfriend-thing with his shoulder.
"Glorious, yeah, if you're on the front cover of Seventeen."
"I have the same hairstyle as Thor!"
"The Norse god?"
"No, the Marvel character. Good guess though."
"...Oh. Still belongs on Seventeen."
They had a wonderful time attempting to find shoes that pleased both of them—price didn't matter as Matthew was still rolling in cash from the latest international game's payoff—and they wound up purchasing no less than three T-shirts, six hats, two jackets, seven necklaces, countless pairs of underwear in various garish technicolor shades of every color on any spectrum ever, eighteen pairs of pants, one miniskirt, two slightly-less-mini-skirts, one dress, twenty-three bobbles, nineteen doodads, and forty-five different types of candy.
Oh, and two pairs of sinfully comfortable shoes, one red and black and the other white and black, both with horribly hipster-esque checkerboard patterns, but those didn't matter at all.
They did see Francis at the shopping mall, but he didn't see them as he was at the time tearfully reconciling with the family of a once-beloved tarsier from the past, but that is a story for another time, children, and Mommy and I will tell you when you're older. Matthew turned slowly on his heel and walked in the other direction, and Gilbert followed suit.
"Matt?"
"Yeah?" It was now nearing ten PM, and all of the stores they had been looting had closed, but they were still wandering the streets talking.
"I'm really glad you came to LA this week. It's been great being an annoying douchebag to someone for a whole week without repercussions. I mean, really."
"You're not a douchebag."
"Suuuure."
"Okay, maybe just a little bit of a douchebag. We should probably eat something."
"Probably."
They were silent for awhile.
"Oh, fuck it, let's go to your place and I'll make pancakes."
"Yes."
AN: Welp. I've had this done for a while, but I kept putting off posting it for reasons unknown.
...Can you guys tell I've been reading Homestuck from the way I'm rambling throughout this chapter? Yes? Okay.
Anyway, I'd really love feedback—please do review, and don't hesitate to say what's wrong with my writing! It's helpful, and although I don't always do as people ask, I like to have the feedback to consider.
Seriously, honest reviews help. Sorry for this AN running on so long, and have a nice day, everyone. I'll update soon.