this is just a really short chapter, a little backstory on Mathias I
hope it's written well enough I've been in and out of having the flu so I've been a bit out of it lately haha wow im really sorry

Pumped up Kicks - Foster the people

Mathias wasn't really sure about when it started, when he finally opened his eyes and saw the world as something too big to understand and everything outside of it endlessly fascinating and something he wanted to try to understand. He wanted to understand the unexplainable and the rest he didn't really care for. All he was sure of was when he was 14 and his parents were proclaimed dead did he realise that hitting the bottle a year earlier with a kid from Finland he'd talked to all but once save for the nights they'd break out of their respective homes hadn't been the smartest idea of his life at that point and that he wouldn't be able to steal his father's cigars while he took joy rides in a car he barely knew how to drive. But then again at 14 with his voice still going through the process of cracking and his 'parents' dead did he figure he just didn't give a shit and continued to raid the liquor cabinet and hit it harder the night before he was to be sent off to a boarding school with kids who's parents had half the sum of money left in his account that was instructed in his parents will.

He should have been sad that his parents were gone, and he told himself at the time that the reason he was drinking so much night after night at such a young age until the careless watch of maids was to forget it ever happened when in reality it was to deal with the amount of fake sympathy that came his way from people he'd never met.

Anyway he never really felt as if his parents were really his parents, they disconnected themselves from him once he was diagnosed with words too long for him to care about but understood the gravity of them all too well from nights spent hiding underneath bed sheets with a book and a torch in hand. They thought him crazy, a complete lunatic and utterly damaged by his list of illnesses that they paid less and less attention to him in fear of catching it. So he wasn't sad. He didn't know them that well after all.

And maybe they were right, maybe he was utterly bat shit insane, impulsive, rebellious and repulsive on top of it all.

Mathias had pondered that as he walked away from the grand house with adults flanked on either side of him and all of it's riches with a trained smile on his face and even laughter curling at the back of his throat. His suitcase felt light in his hands and the chuckles even lighter on his tongue compared to the worrisome stares coming from the people escorting him to the car.

He made friends with two of the most poker faced boys at the school, both a year under him and more irritable than he expected. His optimism in their little trio started to seem less and less plastic the more he had to force it onto the silence that hung over them most of the time. He joked about him being the king of Scandinavia and them his subordinates, the prettier of the two from Norway and the other from Sweden, the both of them gave up on telling him to stop being so delusional once they'd caught wind of his profile. By that point a round faced boy with a huge smile and an easy personality had joined their trio. When he was 15 he ran away with Berwald to Christiania. The Swede got caught for not being careful enough and being too awkward when it came to coaxing people into being quiet whereas Mathias had learnt to charm people from the get go with an easy smile and a bat of eyelashes. After he was taken away the Dane ended up staying with a girl with pretty green eyes and long brown hair and a witty sense of humour that rubbed off on him after a while. She taught him how to protect himself, languages and where to find the resources to learnt he ones she didn't know.

Sometimes they'd sit together the way he had with Tino, on the edge of a rooftop with a bottle but rather than talking she'd tell him to let go, to let the overpowering and overwhelming weight of the universe embrace him and they'd scream into the night that he'd come to love so much. Scream up at the stars and let go of any worries, let go of the pressure until they'd break into laughter. When he was older the laughter changed to their lips being pressed together and the mixed taste of saliva and whiskey on both their tongues.

He was grateful for the distractions between whatever work he did to keep a place under her care, she wasn't much older than him but she had the wisdom of somebody who had been around for centuries and he appreciated that just a little less than the literature he managed to pull out from abandoned buildings to pass the time when he was feeling a little shittier than usual. If it weren't that he'd look for the stories of homeless men and sit on the side walks as they told him stories and secrets that would later be his inspiration. Some fed his metal issues others soothed them and some just left him asking himself questions about strange happens for weeks on end.

Just before he turned 16 he decided to go to Amsterdam.

He was caught and dragged back on heel the day after he was found loitering around public places. He didn't voice any complaints after they got their hands around him and had him secured, the men in suits who he didn't recognise were wary of him after the people that had originally surrounded him were left twitching in piles. He smiled to himself let them wrap him up and dump him in a car. They made sure he was cleaned up and decent before they sent him back to the school. He smiled the entire way back.

Tino lost all his baby fat and was looking well enough hanging off Berwald's arm. Lukas ended up being flanked by his half brother, a cute kid who was too quiet and seemed to be pretty deep in the teen angst thing when he did talk. And the four stared down the rebellious Dane who had been off the map for nearly a year and to them he smiled wider and let himself be poked and prodded to where he needed to go as he passed them in the hall.

Nothing happened apart from he was handed a new school uniform and practically a slap on the hand before he was thrown into a room with his favourite Norwegian who he nearly forgot all about. It was silent and awkward as he unpacked his few possessions into his own corner, trying not to break into conversation with the pale haired male who's eyes were burning into the back of his head as he worked. It turned out he didn't need to be the one to start conversation.

"Where have you been?"

"Everywhere."

"Berwald told them you were in Christiania."

"And then I left a little while to another place."

"And they found you there?"

"Nej. They found me in Netherlands." His tone was short and sharp and that made the Norwegian silent for a while, and Mathias appreciated it for while it lasted to curl up in the foetal position on his bed and try not to think about the other sitting behind him. It was probably strange for him to see, he'd grown up with a bubblier Mathias, more out spoken more prone to trying to be optimistic. However the Mathias he had known was so dosed up on bottles of pills that he couldn't help it, the only thing he'd had in the past year and a half were relaxants.

"What the fuck is wrong with you? You left us." Lukas said after a while, shifting a lot closer than he had been originally. Mathias twitched in on himself, anticipating the inevitable fist that would smack down on him. Instead he got a gentle hand on his arm as a warning and the other male murmured for him to move over and when he did Lukas slipped in behind him and wrapped an arm around his waist. "You're an idiot you know that? Stupid, reckless-"

"Wow I can see you really missed me there Lukas. Now I'm trying to sleep."

"Roll over."

"No."

"I said roll over."

Growling under his breath Mathias complied and turned to bored his own stare into the depths of the other's, they were both all awkward angles and gangly limbs. Lukas' fringe covered half his face and he kept trying to adjust it with half assed effort. Silently Mathias dug around in his pockets, a hair clip that had been given to him from the girl with the brown hair and pretty eyes in the shape of a cross and smiling lightly, reassuringly, he clipped back what he could from their angle and let his hands fall back to his sides.

He wasn't expecting tears to spring fourth in the other teenager's eyes or for loosely fisted hands to pathetically punch at his chest. "YOU'RE A FUCKING IDIOT WHY DID YOU LEAVE ME HERE WITH ALL THESE A-"

The Dane slapped a hand over the other's mouth and pulled him in close, the smell of soap and shampoo nearly overriding the Norwegian's natural scent. He pressed kisses to the crown of his head, apologies coming out as a mumble and a slur. For a week it was the same thing every night, the two of them eventually settling to silence and Lukas didn't ask about anything for that stretch of time. Only after he did, did the late night coddling stop.

"What happened to you Mathias, you're different." He said on the final night, the two of them bare and pressed against each other pleasantly. "You don't look happy."

"Do you want me to be honest."

"Please."

He smiled tightly and shrugged. Rolling onto his back and peeling his arms away he looked up to the ceiling trying to find a way to word his answer. "I'm stuck between the fine line of reality and the dreaming word and...oh god it's tastes so fucking sweet." His bark of laughter sounded empty.

"How did you survive as long as you did being that poetic?" Lukas pressed, rolling to sit on his knees. "You haven't said anything."

He shook his head, he wouldn't tell him that as soon as he was fifteen he took it upon himself to go from bed to bed for a place to sleep, how he learnt to fight from the girl once Berwald left, how he went to any means to find something to eat. How he envied and despised his original companion for leaving as easily as he did, Mathias watching from the cracks of the walls as the younger blonde left with his head hung and his expression grim. He remember how Berwald had talked about missing Tino, how he would go back if he was in danger, or brought up or anything really.

He envied that.

When he refused to say anything Lukas scowled and continued on to ears that refused to hear until he grew tired and lashed out, his pent up anger getting the best of him as he screamed at the Dane to say something.

As soon as he got off the bed and stormed out did Mathias grab his pillow and smother it over his head, entertaining the notion of suffocating himself as he screamed into the mattress and was brought back to a dark place he'd been fending off as his throat was scraped raw by his shriek.

xx

A month afterwards Berwald confronted him, a confrontation that ended badly as soon as Mathias threw a hit towards the Swede's nose and had him reeling back as blood seeped between his fingers. His outburst cost him a black eye and a cut lip and the friendship that had already been strained enough as he was restrained and Berwald was dragged away passed out with broken limbs. Mathias, silent and smiling sat in an office at the back of the school while adults in their middle ages and black suits talked amongst themselves.

"We're putting him in."

"He's not old enough."

"And he could be useful. He took down Oxenstierna faster than Braginski."

"Have you seen his file?"

"What's wrong with him?"

"Mild schizophrenia, bipolar disorder..what was the other one?"

"Psychotic depression sir."

"We could use that."

"Perhaps sir."

He looked up at them expectantly, bored and a little restless but growing some interest as they talked about him as if he weren't there. The words they said were the long ones he'd been told when he was younger and didn't understand, now he understood them in their entire and sat up a little straight with a frown. That's how everybody had started to act around him, gossip spreading where he could hear it, criticism well within earshot and rumours whispered in passing. He didn't care as some were true and some were not but he didn't wish to change what people thought, it wasn't his business anyway. They sent him out not much longer after, thanking him for his time.

He'd gotten into his first proper relationship during that time, a model with sharp features and an even sharper tongue than the last girl he'd ever really been close to. She was pencil thin, hair long and pale, gorgeous features and a tad bit possessive but he didn't mind. He went with her everywhere, when she needed to get photos taken, when she went to classes, to lunch, and even to bed she'd begun to request he read to her a little which he found a bit strange but went with it anyway. If she was happy he could pretend to be and that's all he really cared about at that point. She'd also been the one that got him his first job that got him on the cover of every magazine as he grew older. They'd broken up once she went back to her home country and he continued on through school life and the strange training he was receiving with the label 'easy' slapped onto his forehead. True he'd done everything with a large population with the people, but once again it was just a way to not think about everything.

His wealth came from old money and the men in suits who sent him to the army a few months after his fight with Berwald. Well he thought it was, the protocols were strange, the stark black uniforms stranger still as opposed to the usual uniforms he thought the army wore. And the training was intense but it gave him something to focus on from all the politics of school.

When he left for the real world with a job he hadn't expected to be handed, a bank account that had him giddy with glee and a side job that elevated his popularity, did he really start to feel the weight of the world come crawling back onto his shoulders and along with it the pills he'd been swallowing since he'd been young.

Mathias wasn't alone but he still felt lonely.

xxx

He sat perched on the edge of the table, legs folded underneath him with new reading material and sniffling into a tissue, cursing the common cold for all he could between reading line after line, word after word and took inspiration in the linguistics. Mathias looked up from his page briefly as his Dutch counterpart came in, half asleep and eyes heavy as he tried to look at his phone.

"It's five am." Mathias said on cue, lips twitching at the rise of an eyebrow before he went back to the novel. "What are you doing up so early?"

"Dunno." Lars grunted, shuffling over to the fridge. Left over cake and orange marinated chicken from the night before sat at the very back behind boxed of Carlsberg and the Dane barely registered the sound of things behind moved around. "It's not good to read in the dark."

"The sun's coming up. It's not entirely dark." And true as it were, warm light spilled across the hotel room floors and manipulated the forms of shadows against the white walls. Fresh air breezed through the open windows and the curtains barely fluttered along with the disturbance. "You should go back to bed."

"You should actually go to bed."

"Not tired."

"You will be later."

"Nothing coffee can't fix." He smiled and set his book down, given up on trying to process the life of written characters. "Do you feel like we've met before Frankfurt?"

"Why?" The expression that crossed his face confirmed yes.

"Just asking."

He never forgot the boy with bloodshot and glassy eyes that were a mesmerising shade of green with his hair struggling to defy gravity and suspiciously smelt like marijuana that he'd obviously tried to mask with some cheap deodorant but was considerate enough to join the Dane in his lonesome seat at the back of a class room. He bore the same scars as he did when he'd leant across to hand him the note and he felt bad for the boy who's name he didn't find out until the last minute and made him feel less alone.

That was the first time he met Lars.