The title for this chapter is a line—and the title, obvi—from the song Tell Me I'm A Wreck by Every Avenue.
Scientific Soul Mates
Chapter 3:
Tell me I'm a wreck
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The rest of the week was full of Morgana and her looks of disbelief, her blithe, judgmental head-shakes, text messages and phone calls meant to try to talk him into backing out of such an endeavor—because, in her words, "You cannot marry someone you've never met, Arthur! What if things don't work out? What if you wind up getting a divorce? If you've never met them before you can't very well ask them to sign a prenup and if you wind up losing half of everything to some gold-digger, Uther will disinherit you for the sheer stupidity you've displayed!"—but Arthur was already set in seeing this through. Because what did he have to lose? If he got married and it didn't work, he certainly wasn't against having to compensate them for their time, as dirty as that made him feel when he thought about it quite like that.
He didn't have much time to think about it, anyway, between work and Morgana and the follow-up phone calls with Dr. Leslie and the massive questionnaire he was sent that Tuesday to fill out—with so many in-depth questions he wondered if he was actually being interviewed by the government because they suspected him to be a threat to national security or something—he didn't seem to have much time to worry about it or even consider for another moment backing out, not once his mind was made up on the subject.
He supposed there was a little part of him that didn't even think he was going to be matched up—he suspected, in that small, cynical part of him, that not even such experts would be able to find a match for him—which made it all the more easy to go through the motions of answering question after question and enduring Morgana's looks and calls and made it easy to push everything to the back of his mind, even as he got lost in work and phone calls.
And then Dr. Leslie called him at work that Friday and asked to set up a house visit.
"The way you keep your house, the things you have displayed, how neat or disorganized you are—all of these things come into play when trying to find your perfect match. Is seven tomorrow evening all right for you?"
"Yeah, yeah," Arthur nodded to himself, knowing she couldn't see it, swallowing down the sudden stale taste in his mouth. "It's fine," he added, hanging up the phone a moment later after they ran through a few more details, picking up the pen on his desk and clicking it a few times, thoughtfully running over the current state of his house.
All things considered, it was pretty neat and orderly. Sometimes he let his dishes pile up for a day or so, sometimes he left his clothes strewn about, sometimes he took off his ties and left them in the strangest of places without even realizing it—once, when going to get some ice cream, he found his lucky tie in the back of his freezer—sometimes he left lights on, sometimes he left paperwork all over the dining room table, and half-finished cups of tea here and there.
There were few pictures, but the ones that he did have on display meant quite a bit to him—his mother, for example, who passed away when he was only a baby, was tucked just on the edge of his desk next to the computer in his home office. There were also pictures of his sister and father and friends and important events in his life, and, actually, maybe he had more pictures than he thought he did…
Should he straighten up, however, was his current concern. Should he dust, pick up his clothes, find all his misplaced ties, empty his half-full tea cups, be sure all his dishes were clean and put away, and other things of the such? Or would that mess with… the process? Or something of the such?
When he finally went home later that evening, telling his friends he couldn't grab a drink that night, when they asked him, saying he had far too much work to get done to make it that night—actually, he hadn't had a proper case to work on in something like a month or so, but none of them, other than Morgana, knew that, and she was more likely to tell everyone he planned on marrying a complete stranger than she was likely to tell them he was lying to them about the amount of work he had to do—he dropped his briefcase off on his couch on his way through and walked through his house, just to get a real feel of it. He'd lived there for years now, he knew he probably should have had a feel for it already, but…
Running his hand along the smooth walls, taking in this picture there, that table there, he found there were things he'd never even noticed about his house before. For example, the carpeting in his office was bright red. He'd spent hours upon hours in that office, and not once had he ever noticed the color of the carpeting. His room had hardwood floor, the bed was never made, the bookshelf he kept in it was all but bare, a few books on it, the rest scattered about the room and rest of the house; the bathroom had several empty shampoo bottles lying about, for some reason he had condoms and lube in the drawer in his kitchen right next to his silverware—those he would move, for sure, before Dr. Leslie arrived the next evening.
For the most part, his house was immaculate, it was just a bit of a mess.
He decided he would leave it relatively as it was, with the exception of his bathroom and the kitchen; he was going to do his dishes that night anyway, so it technically wasn't cheating; and no way was he leaving his condoms in the kitchen drawer—he didn't need her to think he was some sort of sexual deviant and match him up with someone else who kept their condoms in their kitchen drawer for some reason other than laziness—he was willing to accept that was an odd sort of thought, but, in his own defense, it had been a long, strange week…
And when Dr. Leslie arrived the following evening, and he took her on a walk-through of the house, answering question after question after question until she finally left an hour and a half later…
He collapsed on his couch, too tired even to get something to eat for another hour or so at least. If this happened, he found himself thinking, if they actually found a match for him, in just a couple weeks' time, he was going to be sharing this house with someone, he was going to be welcoming someone into this chaotic little world of his, this world of half-finished cups of tea and ties left everywhere and condoms in the kitchen drawer and a bookshelf with very little books and his insane work hours and his insane family and friends and—
Suddenly, the prospect of marrying someone he didn't know was rather terrifying and exciting all at once, and he was actually looking forward to being matched up—was hoping he would be matched up now—more than he originally thought he was going to be.
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