#galatea's guitar

[beatsforbrothels]

Gabor Szabo - Galatea's guitar

[lottiecrabie]

galatea, take one – matty healy

matty produces your sophomore album. it's summer. you fall in love like you were always gonna do.

(based on the lorde and jack antonoff melodrama love affair)

warnings: 18+, unprotected sex, cheating, author doesn't know anything about music or writing music

17833 words

June 16

There’s a banging in the back of your head, cool and consistent. You’re monstrously hungover, vestiges of a blurry night in West End, but something in you knows this isn’t a vodka-lime headache. Perhaps fear, or nerves, or prophetic destiny banging at your temple, begging you to turn away. 

You pass a hand through your hair, trying to make yourself look presentable. Sweat sticks to your nape. It’s an uncharacteristically hot day of June and you feel aflamed even in your sheer tank top and cutoffs. That, too, will later feel like some higher sign you brushed away. 

Raking your throat, shaking your head, you finally ring the doorbell. 

Matty Healy opens the front door wide. His hair sprouts from his head like his ideas— without order, overeager and overflowing. His face practically breaks with a grin. You think, pretty. That is the third sign you ignore. 

“Hi,” Matty says, stepping away to free the door. “Come in.” 

Three warning bells, knocking at the back of your head. You raise your sunglasses to the top of your hair, narrowing your eyes at the sudden overwhelming sun, smiling back at him. You step through. 

That is how it all starts. 

June 18

Matty scratches the acoustic guitar mindlessly, head thrown back on the couch pillows. He frowns at the ceiling, humming along as though that would be enough to make a melody bloom out of scattered nothings. 

You play with the strands of the carpet, sitting on the ground, watching him. Something in you almost believes that it could happen— that he’d snap back to you with a grin and those wide, puppy eyes and declare the newest summer hit. You’re afraid of looking away, of missing that fatal microsecond. You want to see when the world breaks apart for Matty Healy. 

A discarded cherry coke rests beside you. It’s lukewarm now, innocent collateral damage to the hot summer air. Matty doesn’t have AC in his apartment. The air sticks to you, weighting against your skin. You leave his house and feel like he’s still lingering on you. 

“How about this?” Matty says, plucking a few chords. You hum non-committedly. “You don’t like?” 

“I don’t know,” you admit plainly. There’s already some unsaid understanding between you; truthful and tackless. You like that you don’t have to filter your thoughts. “I don’t know if it sings to me,” you finish. 

Matty smiles rakishly, digging his cheek. “If it sings to me,” he repeats. “I like that.” You smile, proud. 

June 21

Making an album is like breaking your ribcage open and bleeding on the pages. You’ve always been guarded with your lyrics, afraid of showing scattered words before they’re fully assembled. You have this beaten up sketchbook you use as a notebook, scribbling down all your incoherent wordvomit then slamming the pages close before you try taking them back. Matty finds it funny. That you write where you should draw. He calls it a meta blurring of art. You call him pretentious. 

You hold the sketchbook close to your chest, peering down at it just to recite some verses out loud. Matty nods, repeating them over with delicate care. He changes words, tweaks turns of phrases. He smiles, declares his understanding of them. He’s so precise, so careful and pointed with his words. He uncovers you under the theatrics of rhymes. 

You bleed and bleed. Shit. 

June 22

“What d’you reckon the album is about?” Matty asks, nursing a beer between his hands. It’s late in the evening, later than you should stay. You’re both on the balcony, sitting on white plastic chairs. Your red-toed feet rest on the railing, long naked legs licking up to your trusty jean shorts. 

You exhale your cigarette smoke. You cock your head, pondering over his question, still staring persistently at the sky; not quite asleep, but some darkened blanket thrown over the city. “Heartbreak,” you decide. 

Matty does a little huffing sound, mulling over that sure answer. “Anyone in particular?” He asks, throwing you a side glance, taking a sip of his beer. 

You tap the ashes over the balcony, stretching in your chair. “My ex-boyfriend,” you answer simply. 

“How long has it been?” 

You breathe in. It’s a little uncomfortable to delve into still, some unhealed bruise you feel on your ribs. It might be why the album is coming out clunky and untethered right now: something in you refuses to dive into the emotions again, afraid that maybe you’d stick in the syrup. Choke on it. 

“Five months.” 

“Shit.” Matty shakes his head. “Sorry.” 

“Nah, it was for the better.” You take a drag of your cigarette, shaking your head. “Fucking dickhead.” 

It had been five years of your life, which is the most inconceivable part of this whole affair. The thing that you can’t fully wrap your head around, can’t accept. Five years. It feels bigger than life, grander than the twenty-three years you’ve accumulated. Maybe that’s why you clung on longer than you should, claws digging in his stomach, feet dragging on the carpet: if you left now, what would those five years have been for? 

“Yeah?” Matty asks, reaching his hand out. You give the cig over to him, trying not to shiver as your fingers graze his. He sticks it in his mouth without hesitation. It feels strangely intimate, seeing his lips where yours have been. You have to look away. “What was he like?” 

Gray smoke pours out of his lips. He hands it back to you. “Just,” you gesture vaguely, groaning in distaste. “An artist.”

Matty snorts. “And we’re not?” 

“An insufferable one,” you precise, throwing him a pointed look. 

He smiles boyishly at that. “And we’re not?” 

You roll your eyes. “A different kind of insufferable. A worse one.” You tsk, “He was good, but he just— he didn’t think anyone understood him, you know? And, really, he didn’t want us to. He was smarter, and more brilliant, with grander ideas. We just couldn’t get him at all.” You laugh bitterly, shaking your head. “Now I wonder if he even had anything to say.” 

How it used to infuriate you, the way he would dangle his supposedly genius thoughts just out of reach. You’re too small, love. Too young. Too dumb. You just wouldn’t get it. He’d speak of them in hushed tones— because he just couldn’t stop referencing them, self-obsessed— but never unmasked what those phantoms haunting him, taking hold of the brush were. 

There’s no words for it, he would say. And as someone who made a career out of language, you call bullshit. 

“A lot of his paintings are of me,” you continue, because now that the faucet has been opened you can’t seem to stop thinking about it. “He wouldn’t call me pretty, he would call me raw. I thought he meant it as real, as tangible. I liked that, liked having an artsy boyfriend, kept saying that he found me more than beautiful. How naive I was, boasting to everyone that my boyfriend didn’t think I was hot.”

Your tongue feels ashy in your mouth, and it’s not because of the cigarette. There’s smoke in the air. There’s been smoke for five years. You’ve never been good at pinpointing warning signs until it slaps you in the face, until the fire has already climbed up your legs. Matty stares at your side profile, quiet. 

“I think he meant it as unfinished, actually,” you continue, eyes facing the sky pointedly, searching for hidden stars. You’re afraid your lips will tremble if you look at Matty, afraid your eyes will water. You couldn’t take the embarrassment. “When he painted me, he thought he was completing me.” You snort, sour and mean. You’ve bittered over the months, lost some sugary quality. You linger unpleasantly on tongues now, wrinkling noses. “Fuck being a muse.” 

You take a drag, shoving the cigarette between your lips and hoping it chokes the words threatening to spill out. Fuck being a muse. Fuck five years of your life wasted sitting perfectly still, flashing a smile just to have the teeth rearranged on the canvas. Fuck the man who only knew how to paint you blue. You exhale the smoke, breathing out the building frustration. Fuck watercolors. You want to be made of blood. 

You can feel Matty watch your side profile. It unnerves you. How deeply he looks, how much he seems to see. Even when you don’t let him. Even when you don’t want him to. (Is that how he walks through galleries? Lingering around paintings, analyzing lines and colors and shadows, staring them down until they reveal their secrets.) Your leg shakes. You avoid his eyes purposefully. They dig in your cheek, leaving you bloody and open, leaving you to scab.  

“I think you’re pretty,” Matty says simply with an air of finality. You can’t help but blush, even if you know he doesn’t mean it as a line. He views beauty as this neutral, overflowing thing. Everywhere around, bigger than humans, bigger than sex and romance. 

A fellow artist that appreciates but doesn’t touch. You promised yourself to steer clear from those. Your cheek burns.

“Thanks,” you nod, putting out the cig on the railing. You drop it in your empty beer bottle at the legs of the chair. You can’t lock eyes with him still. 

Matty doesn’t say you’re welcome. It’s not a compliment, it’s a statement. 

“Let’s write about it, yeah?” He says, standing up, opening the glass door. 

You should really get home. It’s late, and you’re a little tipsy, and you’ve made promises. Still, you follow him through, and you don’t know if it’s guilt or excitement pumping in your veins. 

June 24

“Mint and chocolate does not taste like toothpaste!” Matty’s eyebrows furrow in offense, lips gaped wide. 

You giggle at his theatrics, trying to handle the strawberry cone melting on your fingers. You bend down, licking at the pink drops, the stickiness still gluing to your hand. Matty was smarter, taking his green monstrosity in a bowl. “It’s like I’m brushing my teeth.” 

You’re walking down a touristy street of London, wearing cliche sunglasses to shield your eyes. Every step, your shoulders knock together. It leaves your skin burning— you feel a sunburn coming on. 

“You have the taste of a six year old,” Matty declares with a huff. He dips his spoon in his ice cream, scooping it in his mouth, visibly twirling his tongue around it. It’s because of the sun too that your cheeks redden. 

You’re glad for the specs. He doesn’t see the way your eyes follow his lips, enchanted. 

You shake your head. Your shoulders brush together. “You have no taste at all,” you tease, eyes dancing. Matty chuckles. 

June 27

You flip through Matty’s extensive collection of vinyls stored in wooden boxes. It’s almost preposterously him. Kneeling on the scratchy carpet, you awkwardly drape your skirt to not reveal a flash of your underwear. A glass of red rests on his coffee table without a coaster.

It smells smokey in the apartment; Matty is making pork chop, but you’re not entirely sure he’s doing it right. The kitchen and the living room are one open space, stretching the dwindling sunlight from the windows. His back faces you, some washed-out shirt draping nicely over him. 

You hum, running your fingers over the titles. Your hand freezes on the next album. You gasp, grinning from ear to ear. “What?” Matty calls from the kitchen.

“You’ve got The Runaways,” you declare, raising it up like some second coming of Christ. “In mint condition, too. Man, I played that album to the ground.” 

“Why am I not surprised?” 

You stand up excitedly, running to the turntable. You lay the vinyl on the platter, side B up. The needle scratches, Lovers blooming out of the connected speakers. A gleeful sound leaves your lips. 

You nod your head to the rhythm, moving your hips, twirling to your discarded glass of wine. 

I want something bad and nice - hot love

The red sloshes dangerously. You jump, hair flying around, shimmying your shoulders. Matty turns from his skillet to watch you, amused. You dance to him, rounding the island with a laugh. 

“I want a kiss wet and real - strong love,” you sing in his face. Matty shakes his head, chuckling, but it quickly becomes this sort of headbanging dance move. His feet tap to the beat. 

You take his hand, twisting him to face you, pushing and pulling him away like a ragdoll. His body follows gleefully, discombobulated. He’s boneless, running through the short space between the counter and the island, the strip of land you’ve made yours. The pork sizzles in the pan. 

“Make me scream hey what’s your name,” he sings back to you— yells, more. You throw your head back, shoulders shaking with a laugh. 

We lovers never say goodbye

We lovers never die

We stop and go quietly

Cold lovers fade away

June 28

Delilah comes back from her modeling shoot June 28. 

You come in with two iced coffees filling your hands and you’re faced first with a gorgeous, tall, leggy blonde flipping a magazine on the couch. You stop in your tracks, heart falling to your feet. Right, you think, lips thinning. You take a deep breath, soldier readying for war. 

“Hi,” you say, overly cheery. “It’s nice to finally meet you. Delilah, right?” 

The girl looks up at you, grinning wide like an old friend finding a familiar face through a crowd. Your heart rips, guilt spreading through the muscle. It’s worse that she’s nice. “Oh, hello!” Delilah says, standing up to greet you. She has a posh accent. 

“Sorry, I should have knocked. I must have given you a fright.” 

She laughs, waving your worries away easily. It’s a crystalline sound. Musical. You wonder if that’s just how Matty is like— so in love with melody he dates the closest thing to it. “Not at all. It’s nice to finally meet you. Matty talks about this album all the time.” 

Your face crisps. “Yes. Well, yes— it’s a mess.” 

Delilah’s eyebrows rise to her forehead. “That’s not what he says.” Now you wanna know what he does say when you’re not there to catch the words. What your ears have lost to Delilah Prescott. 

But you’re afraid of what your face would reveal if you do ask and she does say. You’re frenzied and electrified just at the mere possibilities. You imagine it in his accent, It’s good. No, no. He would say something more like, It’s fucking good. Mental. It’s a postmodern juxtaposition of art and heartbreak— whatever that means. It’s gonna be the fucking album of the year. It’s gonna be great.

The thoughts finally catch up to your overeager brain. You flush in embarrassment. You’re really crafting compliments from his mouth like song lyrics; tweaking words and chords until it sounds right to your ear. As though you have any rights to puppeteer his own locution and feelings. As though his girlfriend isn’t right there, in front of you, pretty and sweet and smiling so fucking wide. Your eyes pull down, avoidant. 

Your heart jumps, staring at the two coffees in your hands. “Oh, gosh, I didn’t think to buy you one.” You look around as though you would find a third iced coffee hidden under your clothes. Coming back empty, you hand one towards her. “Here, take mine. There’s milk and vanilla syrup in it.” Too sweet, Matty always says, wrinkling his nose when you order. 

Delilah takes it, smiling at you. There’s a chic gap between her front teeth. “Thanks. That’s very sweet.” Too sweet rings in your head again. “Matty will be here any second. He’s finishing up in the shower.” She falls back down on the couch, stretching her infinite legs on the coffee table. “Don’t worry,” she winks at you, smirking like you’re friends, like you’re conspirators. “I’ll make myself scarce when you’re writing. It’s not my first rodeo.” 

You nod at her, wordless. What a cruel faith for a writer. 

Something rattles in your brain at the thought, hand tingling to pull out your sketchbook and write it down. You don’t want to do it in front of Delilah. You don’t know why.

She sits on her boyfriend’s couch, in her boyfriend’s shirt, at her boyfriend’s apartment, but she’s drinking your coffee. Your lips curl. There’s an injustice there, and you can’t pinpoint where.

June 30

“Come do shots,” Bree screams at you, tugging on your glittery black dress. Her lipstick stains her teeth and there’s something awfully poetic about it: too gone to care about the mess; artfully unmade; tactfully improper. You scratch the thought on your brain, hope you remember the dents enough to note them down tomorrow. 

You laugh, brushing her hands away. “I have to make a phone call.” 

“It’s my birthday,” she pouts again, this time holding onto your ring finger. “You can’t say no on my birthday.” 

“It’s 1:24AM, bitch. It’s not your birthday anymore.” 

She gasps, letting go of you in faux-offense. “I was born at ten. My twenty-four hours aren't even up yet.” 

You roll your eyes. “I’ll do a shot after,” you promise to placate her. She smiles, leaning into you to smack your cheek. “Yeah, yeah. I’m the best.” 

“You’re okay.” You snort a laugh, shaking your head. Bree smiles, pleased. “God, it’s nice to fucking see you. You’re holed up in fucking London. I almost forgot your face.” 

“It’s only been two weeks,” you say, oddly defensive all of a sudden. The past two weeks have been spent in an idealistic dreamscape, strumming guitars and sketching ideas down and drinking sparkling wine on the balcony. A carved moment out of reality. You’re allowed, you think, to want to protect it. 

“What? And you can't Facetime?” You roll your eyes. She pouts. “I just miss you,” Bree says, poking your stomach. “Don’t forget me for Matty Healy.” 

“I’m not—” You blush. “It’s not like that.” 

“Not like what?” 

You swallow thickly, cornered. Thankfully, someone puts on a Britney Spears song. Bree, scattered and easily distracted,  screams a squeal and twirls away in her boa and slinky dress. You breathe a sigh of relief, entering the bathroom and slamming it shut behind you. 

Locking the door, you reach for your phone. His contact is the first on your most recent list. You cringe a little at that, dialing it. The ring amplifies against your ear. You sit down on the toilet seat cover. 

“Hey. Everything okay?” Matty whispers, voice low and rough, scratching against his throat, clearly pulled from the depths of sleep. 

You scrunch your face. “Shit. Time difference.” 

He laughs. The sound pianoes down your spine. “Yeah, it's 6AM here. You’re enjoying New York, I gather?” 

“Yes. It’s lovely,” you answer in habit, although you haven’t so much seen New York as Bree’s flat since you arrived. You twist your fingers around the hem of your dress, biting your lip. “I’m sorry for waking you.” 

“It’s okay. I wasn’t sleeping.”

“You’re lying.” 

“Shamelessly, too.” You snort, shaking your head. “I don’t mind. Delilah tried to bite my head off, but I think that’s more to do with my ringtone of choice than you.” 

You bite your lip. You shouldn’t. He’s just— He’s just mentionned his fucking girlfriend, for Christ’s sake. “What’s your ringtone?”

You can practically hear the shit-eating smirk. “Lovers.”

Your heart slams in your chest. At the wrinkled hem of your dress, your fingers freeze. There’s moments in life where you can tell the world spins semi-seconds slower. In the depth of your chest, you can feel time resonate off-beat. 

“Not a big The Runaways fan?” You manage out, strangled. 

“Not at 3AM, apparently.” Springs resound on his side of the line. You imagine him falling on his couch, making himself comfortable to talk to you. You’re flushed— it has to be the alcohol. “So, what’s up?” 

You rake your throat, manually blinking. “Right, yeah. I— I had this idea.” You shake your head, trying to gather your dispersed thoughts to some form of coherence. “About this song. A Galatea concept— y’know, from the myth of Pygmalion? The sculptor who fell in love with his statue and asked Aphrodite to bring it to life?”

“I know.” Your chest flutters. “Go on.” 

July 2

Matty smokes a cigarette on the balcony, glass sliding door open wide. He turns to the side to blow out the smoke, but it still smells inside. You sit on the piano bench, hitting at the keys, frowning at your sketchbook laying precariously open on your lap. 

“I think,” you say, changing notes with a huff. “I want the first verse to be messier. Like you’re not quite sure if you’re listening to the point of view of Pygmalion or Galatea as they talk about some grand masterpiece and some grander love. I want to blur them.”

Your fingers hit the same five keys, the beginning of a melody that has been haunting your mind. You can’t quite pin it down like a butterfly yet; its wings flutter away from you, cruelly evasive. 

“And when you finally get that it’s Galatea talking, you understand that by making her, Pygmalion is creating her love for him.” You twist to Matty, arching an eyebrow. “Does that make sense?” 

“He kisses it and thinks his kisses are returned,” Matty recites, making the words sound divine. He has a knack for it, for breathing musicality into common life. “How can she truthfully want him if she wasn’t made to desire anything else?” 

“Forever object,” you nod. “Metamorphosis, Ovid. You’ve done your research.” He cracks a crooked smile, throws his cigarette beyond the balcony. 

He steps through the apartment, sliding the door close behind him. “When a girl calls at 3AM to talk about Galatea, you look into it. Don’t wanna embarrass yourself.”

You like, secretly, that he says Galatea and not Pygmalion. It’s her tale for a sinful, myth-bending moment in time. More than statue, bigger than marble, she gets a story between these four walls.

“D’you have lyrics?” Matty asks, sitting on the piano bench beside you. 

His shoulder brushes yours, heat spreading down your arms. You keep it tense, frozen in place, afraid that a micromove would make him scoop away. You don’t want space to breathe. You don’t want him to leave you alone. 

“Vaguely,” you say, peering down at your sketchbook. Matty plays your melody, repeating the rhythmic beginning of a song you’ve been toying with. 

His hand reaches across the keys with ease. Long fingered, spindly and agile. You blush, looking away. 

You rake your throat. “Marble skin with paper thoughts.” Matty nods encouragingly. Your heart drips on your ribs. 

July 3

Matty lays in the golden sun, eyes blissfully closed, a hand tucked behind the wild flowers of his hair. It’s terribly hot outside, especially in the unshadowed part of the park. His shirt is off, green grass surely tickling his skin. 

You devour the sight of him greedily. The slender frame; the planes of his stomach breathing slowly; the tattoos inking his skin; the strong shoulders. You lick your lips, biting the end of your pencil. You’re burning under your flesh, fingers tingling to reach out and sink your claws into him. To bruise him up, just to make sure he’s real. 

Matty asked you to draw him in that sketchbook of yours — make a real use of it, love — but you’ve barely done anything other than self-indulgently stare. You wonder if he knows even with his eyes closed. If he feels the languid gaze on his chest. If he likes it. 

You shake your head, peering back down to your sketchbook, drawing out some more messy lines to form the mess of his mane. Biting your lip, you quickly scribble around him spinning ideas like constellations of words to his center of gravity. He lets me through like soft butter. Leaves me sticky with syrup. He bleeds on my palms. I think I’m stained with him. They overlap with his arm. You sigh, shading his chest again. 

July 6

“Carve me down to bones. I don’t need muscles to love. What is a heart if it belongs to you?” You repeat again, singing softly, frowning at the pages. “What is my heart if it belongs to you.” You mule on the change of word, but something still rings off. “Make me a heart to belong to you.”

“I like that,” Matty declares, tuning his guitar. Plucking the strings, he sings back as though to try the taste of the words on his tongue, “Make me a heart to belong to you.”

He sits on the floor while you splay lazily on his couch. Your eyes flutter, sleep calling to you. It’s technically morning now, the late hours of the night stretching dementally far. The sky lays dark above the house. Inside, the only source of light is a red lamp drenching the apartment in mood lightning. It does nothing for the exhaustion digging its claws into your already fuzzy brain. 

“It doesn’t sound right,” you shake your head. “Something’s off.” 

“It doesn’t sing to you,” Matty completes, nodding wisely. 

Your eyes flip to him, heart soaring up your throat. It’s nothing— really, there’s no need to blush, some unkillable glee spreading through your veins. You bite your smile down. So what he remembers some small phrase you’ve told him before. It’s Matty. Pretty words hook to his brain and refuse to be shaken off. It’s probably beyond him. 

You yawn, sitting up. “I should really go. Think I’ll drop on the way home if I don’t leave.” 

“You can stay here if you want,” Matty says, staring down at his strumming fingers, throwing away the sentence carelessly like it doesn’t ivy up your spine. 

“What?” 

Matty looks up to you. “We’ve got the guest bedroom all installed. Why don’t you just crash here?” He grins casually. It all comes so easy to him. “It’ll avoid being found passed out in the street.” 

You chew on your lip, hesitating. You want to. But that’s the problem, isn’t it? You want it too much. It should be easier to say yes. Less like being tempted to some dangerous sin, less like guilt spreading through your belly, less like saying yes to more. 

But you’re selfish. “Yeah, sure. Thanks.” A grin cracks your face. You can’t stop the guilt as the damning words graze your teeth. “That’s really nice.” 

A smile blooms on his mouth. It does nothing to squash down the growing feeling of doing something wrong. “It’s nothing.” He discards his guitar, standing up. “D’you want a shirt to sleep in, too?” 

Your heart drums on your ribs. You sit up, swallowing thickly, mustering a mirroring smile. “That’d be neat.” 

“Of course.” Matty leads you to the bedroom. In another world, you would allow yourself to dream. 

July 8

70s rock music booms from the speakers. Pretty, drunk people twirl in the living room, screaming out the lyrics off-key. In the kitchen, you feel a sort of daze; otherworldly and calm, tucked away from reality with Matty. 

He makes you an espresso martini, your favorite drink, after boasting about his masterful ability to. You stick to his side as he describes each of his steps, as though he’s not just assembling a bunch of liquid in a shaker. You giggle at his antics still, the sound burying in his shoulder. There’s the vague thrum of a dance resonating in his bones. 

For a lack of martini glasses, Matty pours his concoction in the plastic cups the host gave you with a sharpie to annotate. It makes you feel like a teenager again, makes you imagine a life in which you meet Matty several years younger, when you’re still blossoming out of your chunky glasses and braces, getting plastered on straight peach schnapps. 

(What if it was him you had met at a café in downtown New York, fresh off a summer tan and your eighteenth birthday. What if he had chatted you up about his favorite songs and you had listened, mesmerized by the depth of his thought, yearning for a similar complexity in yourself. Would the five years have ended up the same?)

“Here,” Matty says with a slack, drunk smile as he offers you up his own blue, plastic cup. MATTY is written on it in scratchy handwriting, the T and Y with an odd space between it. 

You take the cup and tip it between your cherry glossed lips, tacking the rim of the glass as you taste the rich, boozy espresso. It’s a mature café day in New York, but it’s coffee all the same. 

“How is it?” Matty asks and it seems his grin keeps stretching on excitedly. You fear his face might never snap back in its original form, that he’ll be stuck with a vodka grin forever, eyes shining bright just from looking at you. 

You blink at him shyly. You realize, now, how close he is. You hum at him. “Good.” 

“Just good?” 

You roll your eyes. “It’s great. You narcissist.” 

The playful dig doesn’t seem to register to Matty. He smirks, shrugging. “Told you.” 

You lean against the counter, but Matty doesn’t move up. He breathes in your space. Your skin feels alight, warm and tingling. What would it be if he touched it? Would it groove grossly from the fire? 

Without a word, you raise the glass to his lips, tipping it into his mouth. He swallows the espresso martini dutifully. His eyes meet yours over the rim, dark and intense, rich coffee irises digging into yours.

You release. He licks his mouth and you follow the movement, shameless. “It’s fucking tremendous,” Matty declares. You laugh, throwing your head back. 

Matty seems to get closer to you, or perhaps the room spins around you, deluding your sense of space and time. He’s there, with red, plump lips that will taste of coffee and smoke, and he’s close enough to kiss. You stand straighter. Your eyes flick to his mouth as though it was calling your name. 

When you look back, his own gaze is deeply plunged on your smeared lips. You wonder if he imagines the taste of them himself. If he licks his own like he could get the lingering aftertaste. Your heart races. You could do it. You could— He’s practically inviting you to. 

The plastic glass hangs between the two of you. You don’t kiss. 

July 9

One blue and one red Gatorade stand on the coffee table, intermittently sipped between the pained moans and groans. Matty and you lay on the couch, the world rocking nauseatingly under its feet. The hot hair sticks to your sweaty skin, but you’re too lazy to do anything about it. 

“Rough night?” Delilah asks, coming into the flat with perched sunglasses, a knowing smile and three coffees. She looks like sunshine itself, radiant and happy and definitely not morbidly hungover. 

Matty groans vaguely at her as an answer. She laughs, walking up to him, kissing his forehead as she makes a coffee appear magically in front of his eyes. A grin shines on his face as he spots it, gripping it between greedy hands and dipping his head back to thank her. 

You should have never drank as much as you did last night. Delilah brandishes your coffee next, smiling at you. You think you might throw up. 

July 11

Matty tunes his guitar, relying on your monotone piano notes. You stare at your sketchbook, frowning a little, pressing a key at his demand. You’ve put Galatea on the back burner, incapable of getting past the first few verses without cringing. Something about the song is inherently wrong, and you don’t know how to fix it without unrooting it. 

Instead, you throw yourself into new music, fresher and more palatable, easier to chew and digest. A perfectly catchy breakup song lays nearly finished in a file on Matty’s computer. Some angry lyrics you feel from faraway; you remember writing the words carpet-burnt feet from letting you drag me, but you don’t much remember the sentiment behind. 

Again, you’ve cowarded in front of Galatea, a celestial beast you don’t dare to take on after your last failings. You flip through the pages of your book instead, trying to find a lyric that sparks, something to cling onto and knit and knit from. You chew on your lip. 

“Hey,” Matty speaks, and you jump, suddenly remembering his presence. You twist around to look at him. “Are you ever gonna let me take a look at that sketchbook?”

He’s asking if you’re willing to rip your ribs open and show them off to him. If you’d accept to string your guts out like a comically long clown scarf. If you’d consider cracking your skull and letting him take a peak of your naked brain. 

You hum. “I don’t know. Maybe one day.” 

Matty grins. “I’d like to see.” There’s no rush to it. No demand. Just a fact, a wish. A thought he’s telling you. 

You blush, but you can’t tell why anymore. 

July 12

You tiptoe out of the room, navigating the cracking floorboards expertly. Your feet avoid the planks like sidewalk cracks; a childhood terror of killing your family transformed into waking up the slumbering couple. 

You dip into the kitchen. Light blooms out of the open fridge, Matty’s frame bent into the door. He looks up when he hears you, smiling. “Midnight snack?” 

He’s shirtless, fridge light illuminating him like some divine Apollo. Shadows contour his muscles, draping over his chest tattoos. Your mouth feels dry. You nod, a bit too slow. 

“Think we only have Delilah’s fancy cheese,” he sighs, digging into his fridge to find some hastily wrapped brie. 

“That’s fine.” 

Instinctively, you tiptoe to him, shoulders brushing his as he lays the cheese on the marble counter. Matty opens it up carefully, rummaging in a drawer for a knife. 

Standing side by side in a quiet kitchen, you alternately cut yourselves pieces of cheese, biting into them until there’s nothing left but crumbs, comfortably silent. 

July 15

You wipe the sweat off your forehead, opening your fridge to find some leftover beer at the back of it. It’s some pretentious microbrewed thing your friend Julian left behind when he came to visit. You’re sure Matty will like it. 

“Sorry,” you tell him as you join him on the electric blue 70s couch— you don’t even want to think of the life it’s seen. “Slim pickings. I’m not here much.” 

Matty takes the beer graciously, smiling at you. He tucks it in his mouth, opening it with his teeth, spitting the bottle cap out. Your head grows fuzzy. He reaches for your beer too, repeating the same practiced ritual. You can’t stop following his lips, red, pulled from the bottle, condensation sticking to them. You swallow, throat dry— God, you need that fucking beer. 

Matty hands it back to you with a proud grin. You nod at him, too off-quilter to manage words. “We really are always at the flat.” 

“Well, this AirBnB isn’t nearly as chic.” 

He snorts. “Oh, it’s for the decorations, is it? Not the fact that I have at least a damn guitar?” 

You shrug teasingly, settling further into the cushions of the couch. “Eh.” Your skin sticks to the velvet. It seems you can’t stop gluing to things, leaving parts of yourself everywhere you go. “It’s really the minimalist hipster shit that does it for me.” 

“I’m glad.” Matty scratches at the beer label. “You know, if you wanted, you could stay over. You already use the guest bedroom every other day. There’s no need to waste your money on all this.” All this, he says, like it’s some chateau and not a profoundly tacky, barely functional flat.

Your heart beats in your chest. It’s too good— too unreal. Living there, in his books and his vinyls and his band tees. Walking the floorboards, draping the covers, perusing the fridge. Brushing your teeth beside him, using his soap—smelling like him. Crawling in his bed, tucking yourself into his side, sneaking a hand under—

You stop your spinning mind. 

“What about Delilah?” 

Matty shrugs. “She wouldn’t mind. She’s barely home anyway.” He smiles playfully, “‘Think she’d like some female company.” 

No. That’s the correct answer. The smart one. No. No, we can’t. No, it’ll end badly. No, don’t do this to me. You know I want to. You know I want—  

“Sure.” You wash down the nausea with a mouthful of beer, some vertiginous shock from your own answer. Shit shit shit shit shit. 

His eyebrows rise, face lighting up. “Yeah?” 

You laugh, though it’s entirely constructed. You wonder if he can tell. He always seems to see everything about you.

But he looks up at you so hopefully, so giddily, so genuinely. You’re weak to your core. 

“Yes,” you smile. “Let’s do it.” 

July 16

Your whole life in three very large suitcases, and now it’s being moved to Matty Healy’s residence. You packed more hastily than when you left from New York, throwing clothes in without bothering to fold them; you’ll be unpacking in less than twenty minutes anyway, the wardrobe of the guest bedroom entirely emptied just for you. 

Matty picks you up. He stares at you struggling to direct three suitcases to his waiting car, staying perfectly seated with an amused smirk. 

You huff, hair falling in your face. “A little help?” You ask pointedly. 

Matty snorts, opening his car door. “Thought you were all about that feminism,” he says, grabbing two of your suitcases and throwing them with ease in the backseat. Your eyes follow his arms as he does so, genuinely impressed by their feat. 

You blink away before he sees, burned. 

When Matty turns back to you, his eyes have grown dark. You swallow, suddenly feeling caught, glued to the spiderweb. He walks towards you and thrill pumps in your veins with each nearing step. Your heart beats loudly in your chest. You fear he might hear it— especially if he keeps slithering closer.

He has to stop. When will he stop? 

Matty towers over you, barely inches away. Your breath hitches, entirely caught in your throat. Fuck breathing. Fuck everything but him, but the heat radiating off him. You don’t need the sun when he’s standing this close. 

Matty’s hand grazes yours. It swallows the handle of your suitcase, tugging it out of your fingers and throwing it in the backseat. Your eyes widen, cheeks heating at being so stupid. What did you think was gonna happen? 

Matty grins at you, ruffling your hair. “I’m glad you’re coming,” he says. 

You nod, swallowing hard. “Yeah. Yeah, me too. Thanks again.” 

He waves you away, opening your door. “‘S no problem. It helps me if anything.”

You sit down. His car smells like weed and a cheap car scent dangling from the rearview mirror, and him, faintly. You hate that you recognize the smell. 

Matty enters the opposite side, flicking the pine car scent, then turning the keys. He drives down the road maniacally fast. You’re not even five minutes in and already you’re thinking God, this is an awful idea. 

Wind brushes your hair. The car smells like him. He’s singing beside you, twisting the speaker higher. It’s an awful idea, and yet you’re still buzzing, hiding a gleeful smile behind the palm of your hand. 

July 17

“What are you doing?” Matty asks, leaning above your shoulder to watch your hands. 

“I’m stress-baking.” 

He laughs, sidling to rest his hip on the counter, staring at your hands as you whip your batter with perhaps too much anger. “What are you stressed about?” 

You huff, doubling in harshness of whip. “This stupid song that I can’t fucking get right that is now haunting my dreams. You know, I had a nightmare last night that I was performing it for the Grammys. There was every single one of my heroes in the room — and my childhood bullies, for some reason — and I had this whole choreography and I took the mic and I opened my mouth and— nothing. Not a single lyric out of my mouth. That’s right. I am waking up in cold sweat terrified of this fucking awful, stupid fucking song.”

“Woah,” Matty says, resting a hand on your arm. You finally stop, throwing the whip in with a sigh. He forces you to look at him, smiling reassuringly. “Hey. It’s okay. You know it can take months to finish a song. Years, even. You have your whole fucking life to write about muses.” 

Your heart skips a beat. It’s the first time either of you really acknowledges the main theme of the song. You’re almost relieved that he’s ripped the illusions, taken off your careful mask. Made it explicitly clear he saw you. 

“Maybe you‘re just not wise enough to say what you want to say yet. Maybe you need more experiences— more time to reflect. It’s been six months, darling. Give yourself time to process that shit.” 

You take a deep breath, staring at your runny batter pitifully. “You’re right.” 

Matty grins. “‘Course I am.” He dips his finger in the batter, licking it clean. 

You gasp, slapping his shoulder as he laughs mischievously; a boy licking the cream off his lips. You try not to focus too hard on the shape of them around a finger, sucking, when you mutter, “Pig. Leave my batter alone. It’ll already be a pisspoor cake.” 

“I’m sure it’ll be great.” 

This time, when he dips his finger, he flicks the batter on your nose. You wrinkle, shaking your face away as he chuckles happily. “Gross,” you lament, wiping your nose clean, but joy blooms under your chest anyway. 

You wish you could bottle his laugh up, make the sweetest song out of it. 

July 19

“Don’t buy that off-brand shit,” Matty says, taking the juice out of your hand and back on the shelf. He walks a few steps away, reaching up for the brand name and putting it in your already full cart. 

Your mouth hangs playfully open at this interaction, thoroughly amused. “You’re a snob,” you say, more like a happy realization than an accusation. 

Matty scoffs. “Nah. It’s just better.” 

“It tastes the same.” He shakes his head again, walking off a new alley as you quicken your walk to catch up with him. “You really are a rich kid.” Matty throws you an unimpressed look. “Really,” you insist again. “When I was young, we were lucky if we even had juice in the house.” 

Matty takes a box of spaghetti, which you swap behind him for penne. “Uh-huh. And you had to walk two miles to school every day.” 

“Back and forth! Without shoes!”

“I bet.” You see that he tries to bite back a smile, a failed affair when he hears your giddy giggle. His chin jerks in a faraway direction. “Go get the mint chocolate chip ice cream.”

You stare at him. “Now, you know I won’t do that.” 

He sighs. “Get an ice cream.” 

Grinning happily, you twist on your heels and head off to the frozen section. You grab a tub of neapolitan ice cream, but then your eyes linger on green horror. Sighing, you take a pint of it too. 

July 20

You stare at Matty expectantly. The guitar still rings in the room from your last note. Space holds its breath, waiting beside you. “What do you think?” 

Matty has a slight dent between his eyebrows. He takes more time to reflect, more time than he’s ever taken. Worry digs in your guts. He hates it. He hates it. Fuck, what is he gonna say to Delilah? “It’s good. It’s just—” Matty cocks his head, frowning further. “It’s a love song.” 

Your cheeks heat at his comment. You look down in your sketchbook, reading over your lyrics. “I mean— I don’t know, I guess.” 

Matty grows even more confused. “But that’s not what you wanted to say. It’s like— There’s not even a criticism of anything anymore. Galatea and Pygmalion just love each other.” 

Your heart pinches in your heart. You feel yourself grow defensive. “Is that so wrong? The myth is originally a love story. Maybe that’s all there is to say.” 

“That's not all there is to say. You’ve given me more in versions you’ve thrown away without a second glance than this. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s brilliant lyricism, but it’s empty.” The words lash at your cheeks. You feel them redden. 

Truthful and tactless, that’s what you had decided. Maybe you’d like a bit of velvet after all.  

“It’s an almost completed song, though. More than I’ve managed to say when I complicate it with all that muses shit.” 

Matty stares at you. “You struggle because you care. Because you’re mindful of your words. Because it’s raw, and it reminds you of you. ‘My man of flesh, my heart of stone.’ That doesn’t fucking say shit to you.”

You turn your face away, digging your glare into his empty wall. You don’t want to look at him. You don’t want to think of him. Your heart runs up your throat, ready to throw it up on the strings of your guitar. Your lips tremble.

Matty sighs. “I’m sorry.” 

“You don’t know what things say and don’t say to me.” 

“I know.” He walks to your corner of the couch, vaguely hitting your shoe. “Hey, I’m sorry.” 

Weakly, you meet eyes with him. He smiles down at you, sure and reassuring. You melt on your bones. “It’s fine.” You’re a weak little girl; you’ve always been. 

“But I think this song could be more. The way you talked about it— it means something to you. Don’t take the easy way out. You can write dozen fucking songs about love. Only one about Galatea.” Here he goes again, calling it Galatea, centering her. It leaves you raw this time. 

“You’re right,” you whisper. You sigh, shaking your head, righting yourself. “Yes, of course you’re right. It’s— It was silly.” 

Matty grins, satisfied. He falls on the couch beside you, stealing your guitar. “Well, let’s write a proper love song in its place, then.” 

July 21 

The café is atrociously hipster and pretentious. You’d have gouged your eyes out at the price of a single latte if Matty didn’t insist on paying for it. You pretended to struggle, rummaging your bag for your wallet, but you let the battle last long enough for him to swipe his card. 

Taking your mismatched mug, you make your way to the sugar packets, grabbing three of them. When you sit down at the table, Matty stares at you, typical playful disgust on his face. 

You grin at him mischievously, shaking then pouring the three of them in your coffee. Matty shakes his head, tsking, “Too sweet.”

July 23

Bree wipes the lipstick off her teeth, looking in the mirror. She turns her head right, left, scrutinizing her makeup. Her hair flies wildly around her shoulders. She’s got a Moscow mule sitting on the counter. 

The door knocks loudly. “Hurry up! People need to go to the bathroom!”

“Two seconds,” Bree screams back. She meets your stare in the mirror and rolls her eyes. A small smile teases your lips. 

You nurse your espresso martini quietly. You don’t linger on the taste of coffee. 

“How’s the album going?” Bree asks, scrunching her hands through her curls to achieve her perfect, flawlessly messy hair. 

“Good, good,” you nod. She seems to wait for more, but you don’t offer it. It’s halfway written, still awfully raw. Recorded, then scratched, then regurgitated. It feels like an open wound to you. 

There’s as much love songs as breakup songs, now. You don’t dwell on that fact. I wanna watch how the world breaks open for you, starts one of them. Brown eyes follow me, sings another. If my ribs rip, will you like what you see, hauntingly repeats a third one. You hope Matty dwells on them even less than you do.

“Matty’s cool?”

“Yes.”

“I should meet him sometime.” You hum non-committedly. “What is he like?” 

“I don’t know,” you laugh lightly, looking at her confused. She’s never asked for descriptions of your friends. “He’s— He’s very passionate. And open. He listens a lot, which is surprising because of how much he talks, too. But, still, he listens, and he looks at you, and he makes you feel like you’re the first person who’s ever uttered words.”

Bree stays quiet. You think, Listen to me helplessly chatter, make me the first speaker to ever speak. Another lyric you scratch into your brain and hope it sticks until you have it written down, yet pray it leaves it right after, too. 

“Cool.”

You swallow thickly. Your cheeks heat. “Yeah.”

Bree grabs her drink, reaching out aimlessly towards your hand. “Let’s go dance!”

July 25

Jazz music plays in the house. The lights are pulled low. There’s a delicious smell coming from the kitchen. Your stomach drops to your feet; you kick it when you walk further in, leaving your suitcase by the door. 

Matty cooks. Sizzling sounds ring under the moody music. Delilah drips on his side, her chin resting on his shoulder. They laugh, whisper secrets you can’t make out. 

She has smudged red lipstick. She smiles. 

“Hey,” you say. “Smells good in here.”

“Oh,” Delilah calls happily when she spots you, tearing away from Matty. “We’re making dinner. Join us!”

“Oh, I couldn’t,” you laugh, but it’s strained out of your throat. Your cheeks are sore from smiling this much. 

“Please,” Delilah insists. She walks towards you and grabs you by the hand, tugging you to the working counter. Trapping you. Your cheeks stab at you now. 

Matty nods as a greeting. You nod back. 

“Matty, tell her we’ve got enough food for three.”

He smiles at you conspiratorially, as though you were grand accomplices, making a silent joke about Delilah. “We’ve got enough food for three.”

“The rumors are true,” you try to jest, but it sounds off. 

“Come on,” Matty pokes at your side with his finger. “Eat with us. Tell us about your trip. We’ve missed you.” 

He says we, but you morph the letters around until it sounds like I to your ears. 

“Okay,” you say finally. “Because it smells so good.” 

Delilah claps near you, but it’s a faraway sound when Matty looks at you like that, digging into your soul and coming out satisfied. 

July 26

You sit on his balcony, smoking. The sun is silky, sweet and smooth as it wakes up. The birds sing, the cars drive by, the people talk; you think of recording it, hiding it in a song called Morning. 

“‘Morning,” Matty says, yawning. You snort to yourself. 

“Hello,” you say. 

When you turn to look at you, you fall on Matty’s shirtless frame, gray sweatpants hung low on his hips. You swallow, putting the cig to your lips to stop yourself from parting them pathetically. It doesn’t stop you from gawking, unfortunately. 

Matty spots it and smirks. He digs into the fridge, finds his precious brand name juice and drinks it from the carton. 

“Delilah left this morning?” 

“If you can call it that,” Matty groans. “Fucking three AM.” 

“No tearful goodbyes that early, I imagine.” 

Matty laughs. “It’s hard to cry when you’re half asleep.” 

You finish your cigarette, squashing it on the floor of the balcony. Ashes linger beside your thigh. “I hope she has a good shoot. She told me the concept; it seems pretty cool.”

“It does,” Matty nods, though he doesn’t seem that interested. He gets out his bread, rummaging in the cupboards for his jam. 

“Do you ever think—” You bite your tongue. 

Matty halts his movements, sticking out of the cupboard door to look at you. He smirks, mischievous. “What?”

“Just—” You shake your head, laughing, preparing the groundwork for how silly it will be. Matty walks closer to you, fatally curious. “I wonder how Delilah feels about being a muse. Because that’s what models are, right? A canvas. Something to add onto.” You cock your head. “D’you think she’ll like Galatea?” 

Matty shrugs. “I don’t think she’s thought much about it.”

“Maybe not all muses suffer. It’s a compliment, right? For some people?”

“I think so,” Matty nods. “But it’s different for you, isn’t it? Her photograph isn’t in love with her. He’s not her lover— he hasn’t promised to accept her as she comes. It’s fine if he wants to finetune her. If he wants to make her up. They don’t owe each other anything.”

You mull over that answer. “So it’s love, you think, that rots musedom?” 

Matty rustles a hand through his hair. It makes his arm flexed, his bicep tattoo flashing at you. “I don’t know. I think it’s complex. I think it’s why you’re writing about it.” 

You hum in vague agreement. Matty turns back to his bread and jam, but stops, staring at you. “She’ll love Galatea. Everyone will. You’re gonna write the fucking song of the year.” 

You grin. Something familiar rings in your ear. “Make me a toast, too?”

“Sure.”

July 28

You sit on the couch beside Matty. He’s making you watch some convoluted New Wave movie. You frown at the TV, not understanding the French they fall into randomly, not understanding the plot at all. 

Matty is enthralled beside you. You watch him instead. He’s better art; more entertaining, more profound, more beautiful. You smile when he does. You smile because he does. 

He flicks his eyes towards you. You look back at the TV, straightening your shoulders, wrinkling your eyes to look deeply concentrated. Matty chuckles beside you. It hides in your hair, tickling up your neck to bury in your ear. Your grin widens. 

You lean into him, joking, “This is my favorite part.” You gesture vaguely at the screen. 

Suddenly distracted by the movement near him, Matty grabs your hand from thin air. You still. 

He climbs up to your knuckles. Presses against the bones. Plays with your rings. Twists them on your fingers. Your breathing is caught in your chest. You don’t dare move. Your skin is electrified. 

He rests your hand on his thigh. His thumb rubs at your palm. His finger circles the metal, bumping on the stones. You repeat the sentences over and over, trying to wrap your mind around it. He rests your hand on his thigh. His thumb rubs at your palm. His finger circles the metal.

Tentatively, you let your head drop on his shoulder. He doesn’t move. Doesn’t even tense. You smile, settling into his body, leaving your hand slack for him to play with it. 

July 29

The toothpaste is Matty’s. There’s a part of you that is aware, somehow, that when you’re fresh off a teeth brushing, you taste like him.

You lean your hip against the bathroom sink. Matty stares into the mirror, setting a needlessly furious tempo, wrecking his gum. You laugh as white foam drips from the corner of his mouth. He makes a little embarrassed chuckle, catching it with a finger and rinsing it off. 

You bend over the sink and spit out the toothpaste. When you straighten up, Matty spits right after you. You wash it down the faucet. 

“We should bring in violins for the Circe Circus bridge,” Matty says as you sip on water, swooshing it around and spitting again. “Make more of an impact.”

“Wouldn’t it be a little convoluted? We already have a lot of noise.”

Matty shakes his head. “No, no. It’s supposed to be unnecessarily grand, isn’t it? It’s a bit of a ridiculous caricature of love.” It’s how he interprets it, at least. You’re not quite sure what you were trying to say, just knew the words sounded right and pretty on the page. “We can try it out tomorrow.”

“Sure,” you shrug. You arch an eyebrow. “After the Basquiat exhibit at the Barbican?” 

“It’s a plan,” Matty promises. You ignore the fact that he says plan and not another four lettered word that slithers around your brain. His eyes meet yours. He smiles. “Okay,” he finally breathes. “Sleep well.”

You lick your teeth. “See you tomorrow.”

July 30

Drunk off red wine and Matty’s laugh, you stumble through the hallway. His hand warms yours. You’re a collection of calluses rubbing on skin; it should hurt, but it’s silky sweet. 

Your steps are loose. You trail your free fingers on the wall, guiding you, grounding you. You stop in front of the doors.

The way forks into the master and guest bedrooms. You twist to face Matty, so does he. You grin. Your hand warms, lit up from the mere presence of his between your greedy fingers. They feel alive at your wrist. Aware of him. You wait.

“Goodnight,” he finally breathes. His eyes stare into yours.

“Yeah, goodnight.” 

He doesn’t move, neither do you. Your heart speeds terribly fast. Your lips stretch up. 

Matty looks down at them. Openly. Shamelessly. He doesn’t flicker an evermoving glance, he lingers. You feel your body light up, feel warmth descend to the tip of your toes. A surge of nerves and thrill shoots down your spine, finding home in your knitted guts.

Time hangs in the air. You hitch your breath. His hand burns in yours. 

He tugs you closer to him. A small, ghost move, and you gasp. You feel him breathe against your skin; he’s real. Matty’s eyes fly to yours. They lock meaningfully as his head cocks in defiance. It’s a challenge. It’s an invitation. 

You’re a paper girl. You fold. 

You rise onto your tiptoes, cup his cheek, and kiss him. A soft, delicate thing. A press of lips. A cursive love. Thrill loosens your head from your neck, unscrewing it. He tastes like cigarettes and red wine, and there’s no trace of bitter coffee. You’re glad. 

You pull away almost immediately. Your heart races, trying to catch up with this new world you bathe in. You breathe in his mouth, eyes closed, mind spinning deliriously. You kissed Matty Healy. You kissed Matty Healy. 

Matty makes a low sound from the back of his throat, then hooks his arm around your waist and draws you in, catching your lips with a new feverish kiss. 

He’s not soft or sweet, instead lets himself be puppeteered by the passion, by the raw fucking need. There’s a thing between you pulsing alive for weeks, and you feel it burst at the seams, imploding through your flimsy flesh. It’s fucking inevitable— It’s prophetic. 

His tongue swipes at your lips, coaxing inside your mouth. You moan, gripping his cheek until you could shatter it. Constellations of stars dance behind your eyelids; he’s the center of all of them, a flash of teeth and brown eyes as the shining sun. 

You drip in his arms, and he catches you. Takes all the wax and kisses it harder, tilting his head to better meet you. It’s a head twisting tempo. He’s everywhere around you, under you, seeping in. He exists too vividly. You feel faint at the thought, at the rush of feelings. 

His own hand digs in the curve of your back. He’s tangible, he’s alive and breathing, he’s against you. He’s real. He’s sinfully fucking real. (You wonder, secretly, if he’s finally made real because you kiss him.)

Matty is the one to break away this time. His forehead falls on yours. He pants harshly, eyes closed, as though he needs a silent moment of contemplation. He looks religious for a split moment— bartering with God. 

You don’t take the solemn pause. Don’t want to listen to any chastising, guilting above. You watch him, biting your lip at his flushed skin, at his swollen lips, at his spider lashes on his cheekbones. You kissed him. You can’t believe it. 

His eyes open all at once. You look into them and try to find the leftover scar of some permanent change. “Goodnight,” Matty repeats, this time choked. You laugh. Smacks a kiss on his lips just because you can. 

Matty parts from you difficultly. He straightens, rakes his throat. He lets you out of the trap of his arms with much inner debating, waiting until he’s feet away before dropping your hand. You clench it to feel the phantom shape of his.

“Dream of me,” you say boldly.

“It’s all I do,” Matty whispers back, and then he’s into his room. 

You let your own bedroom door close behind you. You make a stupid, pathetic little happy dance, falling on your bed afterwards. A content sigh slips past your lips.

Rolling to take your sketchbook from your bedside table, you click a pen open. You hit your lips — still burning with the feel of his, with the heat of his tongue — in concentration. 

You try to think of pretty, poetic words, but all you come up with is he loves me, he loves me, he loves me.

July 31

You walk out of your room weightlessly. Everything seems sweeter; the sun doesn’t burn, the birds don’t scream, the flowers don’t wilter. The world exists in technicolors. Shades of black and white become deep maroon, pretty pink. You step from the hallway into the kitchen with light feet, humming to yourself. 

Matty sits at the counter bar with a bowl of cereal and the papers. His eyes flick to yours as he hears you. He smiles. “There’s coffee in the pot.”

“You’re the best,” you declare, practically running to the pot and serving yourself a steaming cup of coffee. You search his cupboard for the sugar, pouring yourself a healthy dose. Finally, you take a sip and make a happy, satisfied moan. 

You approach Matty. You peer over his shoulder to read the latest music article. Your side leans into him; he doesn’t move. It’s all so natural, so domestic. Your heart sings. 

Taking a new sip from your mug, you then lean your head on Matty’s shoulder. His own rests against yours. Your lips hang from your cheek like a clothesline, your teeth scattered white shirts pinned in place. You want to kiss him again, want him to wipe it off of you with his tongue.

“I wanna write a happy song today,” you declare. 

Matty grins against your scalp. He whispers, because it’s as loud as he needs to be for you to hear, “Okay.”

August 1

Matty rolls the blunt, licking the waxy paper and wrapping it shut. You follow his tongue as it sticks out, practically blushing. He takes a blue lighter to flame the tip of it. It burns red. He inhales one hit, then blows it. Smiling at you, he hands the blunt like a precious gift. You graze his fingers purposefully when you grab it. 

It’s stronger than you usually smoke back in New York, but you’ve gotten used to the grassy taste. You don’t cough anymore, don’t even feel it scratch down your throat. The smoke pours out of your lips.

It takes one more hit for your fingers to start tingling. Your body relaxes; your mind enters some sort of daze. You sigh contently, giggling just from the inherent joy swirling in your head. Matty laughs at you, poking your cheek. “You’re already flying, lightweight.” 

“I don’t know why you expect differently.” 

Matty hums. “One day I’ll get you to three.” Your heart rushes. It spreads through your body, like the muscle was suddenly finely tuned with every limb, singing a call-and-response song.

You lay on your back, draping yourself lazily on the scratchy carpet. Your head rests on Matty’s thigh. You look up at him, trying to make sense of him from his dark, sprouting halo, falling downwards as he watches you. You grin, loose and languid, dripping down your cheeks. “Promise?” You say, teasing. 

Your head rolls on his thigh. Matty takes another hit, shaking a laugh off his teeth. “I promise, love.” You don’t even have to morph the letters of that.

August 2

You walk through the up-and-coming art exhibit Matty dragged you to. Your feet linger on small, dreamlike images dotting the white walls. They nag at you with their innate sense of time. A flash of life, captured on a canvas, made permanent against their will. 

What do they mean? It’s always the burning question now. What are you saying? Please, what are you saying? You wonder when you’ll stop feeling like a little girl. When you’ll stop staring at paintings and wish you understood them better, clearer. When you’ll get art intrinsically, when you’ll be deeper than the blank, smooth surface of watercolor papers. 

You lost Matty in the white rooms, breathing through the space at a different pace. He analyzes paintings meticulously. His feet stop with purpose, taking roots in the wooden planks, deliberately stilling. He stares at them and you wish you could know what he’s thinking about for such long moments. Wish you could know how they move him, how they strum his heartstrings. Maybe you could learn the chords on the guitar. 

You stop in front of a papier-mache sculpture. It’s bent in different shapes, an awkward and senseless movement, painted over in white. You can tell the texture through the coat, can see its unruly, unsmoothened topography. Your head cocks.  

It’s not really anything. Or, at least, if it is, you will never figure out what the artist meant it to be. But to you, it’s got a body through its shape. A leg that extends, one that curves in itself. A stomach emptied. An arm that rolls around, protective. One that sticks out. A neck, dainty and vulnerable, bared freely. Headless.

You wonder if anyone posed for this. You wonder how they felt, sucking in their stomach, pinpricks of pain stabbing at their limbs. If they tried on odd positions. If they were naked. If they kissed the artist afterwards; if they thought, it’s enough. If they saw the wet paper build up on the grotesque armature and made themselves repeat, I am made of bones. I am made of bones. 

Your lips tremble. You clench your fists. Your nails dig into your palms, crescent moons of promises. You’d tear through the skin if it meant leaving bloody, leaving human. 

That is where Matty finds you, still staring at the sculpture, robbed of words. He lingers beside you, impossibly close. It’s all he does these days, air with plausible deniability. Real and unreal, present and far, far away. He knocks his shoulder against yours. 

You don’t look at him. “What do you see?” You breathe. 

Matty takes a moment of silence. He thinks, surely. Analyzes lines, composition, materials. Takes it apart in his head to find the solution. You want to see the process, want to catch the bricks he rips as he throws them over his shoulder. 

Matty hums. “It kinda looks—” His head cocks, as though to make sure. “Human.” 

Your heart drops to your stomach. You swallow thickly. “Yeah. Yeah, I think so, too.” And you wonder how long he’d stare at it if you didn’t hook your arm around his, tugging him away. If he’d look at it enough to scream, where are my bones, where are my bones.

August 3

You tiptoe to his door. It’s always firmly closed when Delilah is over, but slightly ajar when you’re two in the flat. It’s felt like a nagging invitation for weeks. You knock on it, a soft, nonexistent noise, like leaving yourself the chance to backtrack. To not mean it. 

“Yes?” Matty calls from inside, squished and drowsy. 

You peek your head through the door. His room has gotten messier over the Delilah-less days. Clothes hang on the ground, half-finished mugs make castles on his desk, CDs tower precariously. He lays in his bed, on the right side, his face crushed in his pillow. A cover drapes over him, but naked shoulders peek through. The light is too low to make sense of them, but you can faintly tell there’s familiar inked lines drawn onto the skin. 

“Sorry,” you whisper. “I didn’t mean to wake you.” 

“I wasn’t sleeping.” He mutters. Relief spreads through you. You don’t know if he’s lying or not, but both possibilities please you. You didn’t actually wake him; he cares enough to tell you otherwise. 

“Okay, good.” You bite your lip. “I— Do you mind if I stay here tonight? I can’t get any sleep in my room.” Your heart drums on your ribs. It’s all so fucking existent, suddenly. Meaningful. 

Matty peeks one eye open. He gives you a glance, then raises his arm, opening the covers for you. You don’t even hesitate, running to the entryway like a promised oasis. You slip inside— like a fantasy, like a dream— and settle into the cocoon. It’s warm, and the sheets smell of him. You roll, getting closer. 

You don’t dare touch him, but you get as near as you can. It’s useless anyway; Matty throws an arm over you and tugs you into his side. You might choke from the heat, and the weight, and the vertiginous knowledge that Matty is ivying around you, but you finally sleep nonetheless.

August 4

You hang up on Bree after drawn out goodbyes. She’s tried to get you to play her some of the album, but you remain purposefully elusive. You wiggle out of her grasp, promising to send her some demos soon. Her pursed lips were dissatisfied, but you can trust your distracted friend to forget it before the night nears its head. 

You walk to the living room. Matty’s shirt falls on your shoulder, something you already plan to shove in your suitcase when it is time to part ways. The thought leaves you frayed, uncomfortable, and you don’t like to think about it more than this. 

Matty is scratching his guitar on the couch when you come in. He sings low, mournful words you can’t make out. You drop beside him, bouncing on the pillows. He smiles at you, stops playing. 

“How was Bree?” 

“Still alive.” 

“Good for her.” 

Your chin jerks to his fingers. “What were you playing?” 

Matty hums noncommittally. “Just this song I’m writing.” 

You sit primly on the couch. You nod at him. “Let’s hear it.” Again, he hesitates. Your mouth hangs open. “Come on! I’ve had to lay my soul bare for you plenty of times this summer. Your turn.” 

Matty sighs, readying his fingers for a chord. “It’s unfinished,” he warns. You roll your eyes at his delays, gesturing for him to go on.

He strums once, twice. It’s truly unfinished— he mutters randomly strung syllables instead of saying lyrics for half of it, just the idea of what the shape of those words could be. But there are words. Yearnful, confused, loving. He uses that dry, direct sense of style, that gloveless prose. Still, you’re once again left wondering what he’s trying to say. What thoughts haunt his mind. 

How you want to know him, brick by brick. 

“It’s beautiful,” you whisper once he rings his last note. He grins to himself, satisfied. “Sing it to me sometime when it’s done.” 

Matty flashes his teeth to you. “It’s a date.”

August 5

You flip through your sketchbook absentmindedly. It feels like you’ve already seen everything, like every word has already been used and discarded. How many times do you repeat yourself, going on and on about the mouths of lovers. You make a small noise of frustration. 

Matty eyes your book. You can tell he’s curious, can see him peer over your shoulder and scan the messy words and messier drawings before you slam it close. You look at him, at his silent plea. You sigh. 

You hand the book out to him. “There,” you say. “I can’t keep reading it. I know it too well.” 

Matty’s eyes widen. “Really?” 

“Find me some pretty words.” 

He grabs it from you without another hesitation. His eyes are hungry, skimming through the pages, flipping the spirals. You watch him as he uncovers you, one paper thin layer at a time. Your heart splashes against your ribs. Blood drips on the bones. You feel awfully like a heart attack. 

“There,” Matty says. He hands you back the book, grinning conspiratorially. “This sings to me.” But you can’t shake off the idea that it’s you that sings to him.

August 6

“Yes, Spain was lovely,” Delilah says, sipping on some Spanish white wine. She’s tanned and freckled, sunshine itself peering through the dark of the evening. She changed the room when she left, and she changes it back now, bursting through the flat again. Beside her, an arm thrown over the back of her chair, Matty drinks his usual glass of malbec. “Barcelona most of all. God, I just love the culture there. It’s so vibrant.” 

A lazy, callused finger twirls in Delilah’s hair. She leans into it subconsciously. Your teeth grind on each other. You clench your fist around your fork, biting on the chicken. “Did the shoot go well?” You manage out, but it’s bitten and bitter. 

Delilah laughs, that bright, musical sound that rings offkey to your ears. She takes a bite of her salad and her lipstick doesn’t smudge. “Fantastic. It was such an amazing concept!” She goes on some more about the visionary genius of the photograph, but it is null to you. 

Your eyes zero in on that fatal arm around Delilah, sure and protective, ownership. Your brain beats in your skull, the tune of a song humming along your cranium. You glance at Matty next. He doesn’t look back. 

You grip the white wine and take a long, heavy mouthful. It’s fruity and light. For the first time in your life, you think, too sweet. 

August 8

The house is quiet. No music hummed from the speakers. No guitars strummed. No dishes washed. No steps walked. No cigarettes smoked. The world is drenched in silence. 

It’s an uncanny feeling, sitting in Matty’s flat alone. As if it’s not supposed to exist without him. As if it should blink out of existence, evaporate out of thin air. As if you should sit in a blank room, staring at white walls, realizing you had made it all up in your head. 

Matty and Delilah are off visiting his parents up North. You play with your fingers, the silence resonating in your chest. It feels suffocating to be alone. 

You grab your phone, typing, how’s manchester? He doesn’t answer it until the next day. 

August 11

Matty’s eyes are bright red. You laugh at them, holding his cheeks between your soiled hands. You know the shape of his jaw, know where it digs and cuts into your palms, and there’s cheesy sonnets running in your mind about it. 

“I’m hungry,” you tell him, leaning into him like it’s a secret, a confession. “Make me that chocolate mugcake again?” Your flutter your eyelashes at him, attempting some innocent, pleading pout. 

Matty hums. He takes your hand by the wrist, puppeteering it to his lips. He kisses the tips of your fingers, then your palm. “What do I get?” He asks, finally looking at you. You feel dizzy. 

Your lips open, but you can’t think of a single word anymore. It doesn’t feel as cruel; it’s merciful, blissful. To finally not think like your life is being threatened, like you have five seconds to come up with a saving solution. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.  

Matty arches an eyebrow at you. He crowds your face, less than inches away, so close you feel like you breathe with him. “Nothing?”

“Mmmh,” you whisper back. Your eyes descend to his lips. “What do you want?” 

With a smirk, Matty catches your lips. He swipes his tongue in, licking into your mouth. You moan against him. Your hand moves to his hair and you grip it, holding him there, kissing him harder, faster, deeper. 

Buzzing spreads through you. You’re not hungry anymore. 

August 12

The raucous sound of low, heavy laughs resonates through the open floor. It shakes up the foundations of the flat from their grandeur, their depth. You take a glance at the three overexcited men, drinking beers and taking the piss out of each other, and they feel like boys for a split second in time. You wonder, privately, how you would have fit into their puzzle if you had met them earlier. 

Matty washes the dishes in the kitchen sink. You dry the plates, throwing secretive glances to the rest of the boys. You don’t know how it would have been years ago, but it’s near perfection now. You stare at the scene outside of your body and you can’t see the seams, can’t find where the stitches of you would be. How you want to stick around, become permanent. 

“They loved you,” Matty says conspiratorially, leaning into you. He hands you a wet plate, a bit of soap still lathered on it. 

You smile at him, gleeful and unashamed of it. Your chest brightens, shining through the skin. “I love them,” you answer.

Ross comes in with the leftover glasses, dropping them in the soapy sink. He ruffles Matty’s hair, gives you a grin. “We need to do this again soon. I haven’t seen you in forever, mate.” He moves to the fridge. 

“Bit busy,” Matty says, bashful. 

He sticks out of the fridge, two beer bottles in hand. “Making the album of the year and all, I heard,” Ross says. Again, he gives you a smile, like you’re old friends, like you’re conspirators. Your lips stretch up. “Still, don’t hide away together. I missed you.”

“‘Course. We’re almost there, anyway.” Your grin freezes on your cheeks. You hate the idea of the after, of the end. You put away the plates in the cabinet.

August 14

The wind blows your hair back. You lean your elbow onto the open window, resting your head as you watch the road blur past you. Matty drives with sunglasses on, and it makes you want to stare at his side profile and etch it into your brain. 

You’ve bickered over the radio station, eventually settling over some blues, bobbing your head quietly to the blasted music. It’s the middle of the day, and yet it seems like the hours announce themselves to stretch on forever. You can taste eternity on your tongue. 

You’re driving to the festival you’re performing at and there should be a typical wreck of nerves in your stomach, tying and knotting and squeezing, squeezing, squeezing until you want to cough your guts out. It’s usually what the idea of public singing does to you, sending you into a mess of anxiety until you’re on that stage, watching your people, and finally feeling right. 

Yet, in this car with Matty, serenaded by vaguely familiar tunes, you find yourself at peace. 

August 15

Matty engulfs you in a hug. He squeezes, as if trying to make sure you feel every particle of him, make sure you know he’s solid. The mic sits between your bodies, awkward and painful amidst the embrace. “Knock them dead,” Matty whispers in your neck. 

You laugh, brushing off your nerves. “Thanks,” you say. “I’ll try.”

“You will.” He releases you. Stares into one eye, then the other. Tucks a strand of hair behind your ear. “I’ll watch as long as I can before I have to get ready for my set.”

“Thanks.” You smile, looking down to hide your blush. “Good luck to you, too. Or break a leg. I don’t know what you believe.” 

“Eh, I don’t need either.” He grins, so fucking smug and cheeky, and you roll your eyes at him. A chuckle slips out of his lips. He mediates, “Thank you. I’ll cash in on that good luck when I need it.” He hugs you one last time, kisses your cheek, and then sends you off on stage. 

You’re off kilter when you approach the crowd, but the sight of it, of them, sunburnt and screaming and loving, makes all your worries melt away like butter. You grin, screaming into the mic, “Hello, everyone!”

August 16 

The world is distorted; colors brighter, sounds clearer, time slower. You lay on the grass and feel each strand tickling at your skin. You giggle, turning to stare at Matty. Your hands hang between the two of you, met in the middle. 

The shrooms glued a slack, happy smile on his face. He looks around the festival tent, the shadows of a tree outside drawing inky chimeras over the plastic tarp. You wonder what he sees. You wonder if it’s prettier than your own vision, the way you bend and rearrange lines until the traces of a human shape drapes over you. 

His head falls to the side, watching you in return. You squeeze his hand; he squeezes back. “I’m happy,” you tell him. “I’m really, really happy.”

“Me, too.” 

A strand of hair falls on his forehead like a lightning bolt. You tighten your grip again. “I want to kiss you,” you whisper. 

Matty inhales slowly. His eyes dig into yours, though he doesn’t move, stilled in time like a statue. You take a mental photograph. Click, you think, and now he’s forever. 

“Then do it,” he answers back, just as secretive, practically tempting you. 

You roll to your side, scooping yourself up until your face nears his. You brush your lips against him, just a graze, and still bliss coils around your brittle bones. It’s not really a kiss, but it’s enough nonetheless. 

But Matty kisses you, crashing his lips against yours and snapping this moment into the hot, burning tangible. His hand blisters your cheek as he takes it, angling you, meeting you better. Euphoria drums in your heart. Boom. Boom. Boom. 

You grip his free hand, placing it over your beating muscle, making him feel the racing tempo he brings out of you. This is you, you want to tell him. This is all for you.

Matty misunderstands your message, instead grazing his hand down your chest, gripping your breast. You moan into his open mouth, shocked by the sudden pleasure. His thumb rubs your nipple expertly. He smirks against you. 

“Matty,” you say, and it’s a plea and a warning. He pushes you to your back. “Fuck,” and it is just a wordless beg.

His hands are everywhere, greedy and eager to discover. He brushes every inch of your skin, climbing under your shirt, raising it over your head. His mouth finds your neck and leaves wet kisses in the crook of it, mapping his way down. You whine in his hair. Your breathing speeds up, quicker and quicker as he palms your tits, as he grabs your waist, as he teases the waistline of your shorts. 

You mutter his name into the air. Everything blurs around you, a happy daze existing only in this tent, only between his arms. You bury your hands in his curls. “Please, Matty,” you whisper. 

“What do you want?” He asks against your collarbone, pressing his lips on it after. You feel him hard between your thighs. The knowledge makes your mind droopy. 

You giggle like it was all silly, all unbelievable. It’s never about what you want; too much, too soon, too real. “What about you?”

Matty hums. He pushes your bra cups, revealing your breast. He parts away from you to take a good look at them. You flush, feeling shy suddenly. 

Matty kneels up. He pants, staring at the mess of you, half-naked and flustered and hot, practically vibrating out of your skin under him. He thumbs your nipple, smirking. “I want this.” 

“Yeah?” You arch an eyebrow. Matty nods, eager. You trail your fingers down his mane to the neckline of his shirt, greedily tugging on it. He obliges and lets it fall off his shoulders. 

Your stare laps at his naked chest with none of the usual shame. Take in every muscle, every tattoo, until Matty Healy himself is blushing under your carnivorous stare. You reach out to touch the ink at his hip, grabbing it between guitar-callused fingers, making sure you’re not imagining the whole thing. 

It has to be the trip. You have to be hallucinating, making sweet visions out of the grass and white. 

“Can you fuck me?” You say, bold and uncaring. If it’s a dream, you can be whoever you want. Can say whatever fancies your mind; even the scary, even the galactic. (Though you don’t, because admitting it just to yourself is already too momentous.)

Matty swallows. “Yeah. Yeah, I can definitely do that.” You laugh, at him or at you or at the sheer fucking joy. It’s contagious; soon he’s giggling too, bending back down into you to suck at your breasts, working on your jeans. The laugh reverberates on your skin. You moan, melted wax in the grass. 

He takes the shorts down your legs, then your underwear. His hungry gaze devours you, taking in every inch of you like he’s realizing you’re real. “Better than I imagined.” You like the sound of that; it hums in your heart. 

“You, next,” you say, pleading. Matty undoes his belt dutifully. It takes some time; his fingers are trembling. 

But then he’s naked in front of you. A wiry frame, inked and scarred, with a hard, leaking cock. He’s better than a Greek god. 

Your hand reaches out for his. He takes it, crosses your fingers together, rests it beside your head as he drapes over you. Dark, coffee eyes meet yours and you get the strange sensation of having your soul bared for him, too. His lips graze yours but he doesn’t kiss you, as though he wants to hear you when he finally pushes in.

You roll your eyes into your skull. Your hand tightens in his, moaning his name. There’s a fucked-out groan coming from him, too. He lays into your neck as he thrusts in and out, slowly, like he was still adjusting to the idea of it. 

“You’re perfect,” Matty whispers. Every particle of you sings his name. You clench around him. “Shit, love, do that again.”

A proud grin breaks on your face. You throb around him. He’s buried so deep you feel him in every nerve ending, yet you still need him. Your free hand digs into his back. You want him under your skin. 

“Faster,” you say. Matty nods in agreement. He bucks his hips into yours. You strangle his hand with a deadly grip, holding back screams of his name. You moan it instead, in the crook of his neck, sticking your tongue out to lick them off after.

It’s better than it’s ever been with anyone. Your body buzzes, ecstasy swooping in your belly. You’re not sure if it’s the drugs or him, and neither answer seems satisfying. 

You can’t tell where you start and he begins, but it’s not a new feeling. He can be rooms apart and you still sense the edges of him, subconsciously, deludingly. He’s there, now, fucking inside of you, bringing you to insanity. 

“Oh, God,” you say. “Fuck.” You don’t think you’ll last long if he keeps going. Matty seems to realize, feeling the way you flutter around his cock, begging and pleading for a release. 

Matty shakes your hand off, using his now free one to rub dizzyingly fast at your clit. Your face scrunches, you moan his name, your hand flexes with the phantom shape of his hand. You snap your eyes open, meeting his, when you break and fall apart. 

It’s been a long time coming, building and building since that fateful day of June 16, but it still takes you by surprise. Your mind wipes clean, relief overtaking every attuned nerve, and all you can think is finally.

Matty follows behind you soon after, shutting his face as his lips part in abandon. A grunt slips past him, his eyebrows wrinkle, his shoulders tremble under your hand, and suddenly he’s spilling into you. 

He falls on you, sighing contently. A vague hand passes through your hair soothingly. You stare at the ceiling in shock. He came inside of you.

It’s fine, you tell yourself. I’m on the pill, you reassure yourself. And he’s clean. Just me— Just me and Delilah. 

“Oh, shit, sorry,” Matty laughs, realizing. He slides out of you, his cum leaking out. Though he does sound apologetic, he still stares at it in mesmerism. Ownership.

“‘S fine,” you mumble lazily. 

Matty grabs his discarded shirt, wiping your inner thighs, cleaning you up. It’s strangely domestic, in some way. You close your eyes and imagine a world where he does this often, humming. 

Matty falls back beside you, tugging your head into his shoulder, holding you close. You grin satisfiedly, loose and relaxed, a syrup girl dripping on him, sticking to him. 

Finally, you sing. Everything feels absolute. 

Your eyes flutter shut, exhaustion seeping through your body. Your face nestles into him deeper. Squished against his shoulder, you ask him, “Do you like me?”

He laughs as if it was silly to ask. “Of course I like you.” 

And do you love me, you want to ask, but you bite your tongue and swallow it down. For now it’s enough. 

August 17

Delilah runs into Matty’s arms. He catches her slackly, a loose arm around her waist as she peppers kisses over his face. Her smile shines bright. The world spins nauseatingly around you. 

Your heart fends in the middle. You stare at the two of them like a car crash, sick to your stomach yet unable to look away. You still remember the feel of his arm around you, the way he held like he was afraid you might blow away with the wind, melt into the grass. The way he gripped.

Matty meets your eyes above Delilah’s shoulder. He seems overrun, robbed of words. You have a few you believe he should be saying, should be thinking, but he doesn’t. There’s an apology in his gentle look. You want to throw up on their shoes. 

You’re a paper girl — fragile, volatile, unsettled, dancing with the wind of feelings — and he’s a rock — sure, confident, stubborn, and staying with his fucking girlfriend. 

August 19

You sit side by side with Matty on the piano bench. You peer in your sketchbook, angled away to hide from him. In his phone’s notes app, he writes the most recent verse’s ever moving state. “D’you have anything else?” He asks, as you’ve discarded the past few editions. 

You hum, skimming through the pages. Your eyes settle on a drawing of constellations, a ghost of a boy smiling in the grass. Your heart punches. You look over the words. “How about—” You shake your head, trying to discard the doom feeling in your chest. “How about she bleeds on my palms, I think I’m stained with her?” 

“Oh, I like that,” Matty nods, quickly scribbling it on his phone. “After all the marble talk, it shows we really are talking about a real person, and that they are left bloody and scarred from being carved away to fit his fantasies.”

You swallow thickly. Your heart speeds. “Yeah— Yes. Sure.”

August 20

Matty blows out his cigarette. He looks almost theatrical in the night; standing on his balcony, leaning on the fence, pouring smoke from his lips, drenching himself in telltale gray. You sit on a plastic chair and get the nagging feeling that you should be having some sort of realization, a lesson of some kind. 

Your hand reaches out for him. Instinctively, he gives you the cigarette. The paper burns in your hand. It’s not what you wanted. 

You place it between your lips. It feels so fucking obvious when smoke lingers around you.

August 23

You pass Matty’s room on mousy feet, making your best efforts not to wake anyone up. The master bedroom door is firmly shut. A couple snores a few feet away, surely entangled in each other’s limbs, a position as known as breathing. The hallway falls into you, knocking against your frail body. You’re squeezed until your chest might burst. 

There’s a yearning in your bones you can’t unroot. It makes you wonder where the flowers of love come from; if the blooming is just weeds. 

August 24

You lay on your stomach, kicking your legs in the air. A raw feeling lingers on your skin, like it was skimmed off on cement, burning and reddening. You hold your breath. 

“I like it,” Bree exclaims, slow and lagging from Facetime. She’s a blurry image, earphones in, seemingly at some trendy New York café you would hate. “I love the chorus. It’s so— so raw, and painful, and real. It’s like— It’s like I’m sixteen again, being manic pixie dream girled by indie, older boys.” 

You smile at that, happy that it reverberates, that it hits home. “Any criticism? We’re still fine tuning it.”

Bree hums. “Maybe make the speaker clearer? It’s a bit convoluted if it’s Pygmalion or Galatea’s point of view.” 

You’re raw. An open wound, poked and prodded and salted, and you can’t seem to finally scab. You grin slackly at Bree. “I see what you mean. Thanks.”

“It’s really a great song, though. That’s just nitpicking.” 

You nod, but it’s faint and unconvinced. You’re not sure being a good song justifies all of it. Breathtaking oil paints never seemed to make you any less blistered. 

August 26

Matty’s hair flops over his forehead. His lips are red and plump, stained from the wine. He’s grinning loosely, a bit tipsy on espresso martinis and merlot. He looks like a poem. 

Your heart softens and melts like toffee, sticking to the bones as it dribbles down your ribs. It calls for him, sings, even. 

Try as you might, you can’t stop wanting him. It breathes with you. 

August 28

“I think we’ve finished,” you declare. You stare at the lyrics of Galatea, messily put down over brand new paper with a fountain pen. You go over each word in disbelief. “I think— Fuck, this is actually it.”

“Yeah?” Matty calls, looking at you all giddy, biting his lip. 

Your smile breaks your face. An addictive rush of glee spins your mind. You can’t contain the joy. “Yes.”

“Yeah?” He repeats, hyping you up. You stand from the bench. His arms open in instinct; you run into them, colliding against his bones. You’re surprised you don’t find the rubble at your feet. 

“Fucking yes,” you whisper in his neck, and you might cry from the bone-deep relief. From finishing a song that has been haunting you with a vengeance. From being in his arms. From smelling his detergent.

“You did it,” he says back, low and emotional. You squeeze him harder. 

“We did it.” Matty tries to humble-wave your words away, but you pull back enough to stare at him. “I’m serious. I couldn’t have done it without you.” And it’s true; too true. This song would have never been what it is now, never had its shape, if you had never met Matty Healy. 

He smiles at you, touched. “The song of the fucking year.” You laugh, throwing your head back. You think of kissing him and you hope he thinks of it too, though he doesn’t do it. 

August 30

You step through the glass doors. Sunglasses rest on the top of your hair. You’re sunburnt on the tip of your nose, a touch of deep color. At least the inside is cool. Faraway, the laughs of Matty’s friends track you. 

You find the fridge, sticking your head inside and sighing in relief. You grab a beer on the way. You rest it on your nose. The condensation drips on your skin, tickling; you scrunch it. 

Matty’s nursing a soft drink as he stands in front of the fan, eyes closed, shirt unbuttoned. You smile at the vision of him, sticky and sweaty, sinfully familiar. 

“Scoot over,” you demand, nudging him. Matty obliges, scooping himself to offer you half of the fan. You moan as the air hits you. Truly content, you open your bottle of beer.

“I like the sound of that,” Matty says. You arch an eyebrow, offering it to him. He snorts. “No, no. Not in that sense. Designated driver, remember?”

“Oh, right.”

“Of course, I wouldn’t have to be if you weren’t such a passenger princess.” 

“Hey,” you frown, faux-offended. “I just haven’t gotten my driver’s license yet.”

“And how old are you?”

“Very, very young still.” You up your nose. 

Matty makes a grimace. “Don’t say that.” The image of that day in the grass, moaning in his mouth, filled up so perfectly, flashes in his eyes. You smirk, sipping on your beer. 

“What did you mean, then?” You ask. You jerk your chin in the direction of the can when he cocks his head in question. 

Matty shrugs. “Just that it sounds satisfying. There’s something almost— I don’t know, rhythmic, about opening a can of beer. Tssh.” You snort at his impression. 

“We could put it in a song maybe,” you offer. “To start it. Maybe Sunburnt? It’s kinda summer-y.”

“I like that.” Matty sighs, “Though I don’t like that we’re talking work on our day off.”

“It’s never really work, isn’t it?” You scrunch your nose. “Not when it’s us, our insides.” 

“Careful,” Matty drawls, teasing. “You’re sounding like an insufferable artist.”

He leans into you. His eyes are light, dancing, and you want to catch the breathtaking sunrise. Want to catch it on camera, show it off to whoever. He’s too pretty. 

You lean into him. Your gaze zeroes in on his lips. The can of beer rests by your side, tucked away. Your breath catches in your throat. You’ve missed him. Missed his mouth.

Matty stares at your lips, offered and tempting, then pulls away. He makes an awkward laugh, shaking his drink. “Need a refill.” He’s off in a second. 

You stand in front of the fan, air blowing and blowing and blowing, and you can feel the traces of him artificially leaving with the wind. 

August 31

August 31, you drop a nuclear bomb. “When are you gonna break up with her?” 

You don’t know what takes over you. He’s vaguely organizing his bookshelf, picking up books and getting lost in the pages and putting them back just a little bit more to the right, and you’re sitting on your piano bench, haphazardly hitting the keys, when it bubbles out of you. The need to know, the need to be safe. 

Time decelerates to a near stop. Silence hangs in the room, heavy, filling up every crevice. The floorboards droop with its weight. Your heart races. 

Yesterday plays in your mind religiously. The near kiss, dodged and avoided, laughed off. How it left you raw, bleeding, how you spun and spun in that overthinking head of yours until you thought your skull might break from the pressure. 

You stare at Matty’s back, glaring into the muscles, tearing through the shirt. You wish him to turn around. You will him to smile. Fear grips your guts. Please. You beg him to answer right. 

Matty sighs. Twists to you slowly, carefully. Your breath hitches, readying. “I don’t know.” 

Shrapnel bursts into your skin. A bomb that reverberates, that obliterates. Your fingers shake; you clench them, willing yourself to be strong, to camouflage the bleeding out. 

Your lips tremble but you straighten them. “You don’t know when or—” Your blood beats in your skull. You keep giving him bullets and finding yourself surprised when it ricochets into you. You swallow thickly. “You don’t know if you will.” 

Matty sighs. There’s an apologetic look in his face and it makes you want to vomit. If only he had the mercy to be cruel, to rip your spine and throw it away. Give you a reason to hate him. “I can’t give you an answer. I just—” He makes a little frustrated noise, annoyed with himself for not having the words. “I need time to think.” 

You give him an incredulous look. “Time to think?” Anger digs into you, and it feels better. Something to latch onto, something buoyant over the currents of pain you’re battling against. Something to clench that jaw, narrow those eyes. “So you haven’t yet? At all?”

Matty makes a noise to speak, to sweeten, sounding like the saccharine letters of your name, but you cut him off. “No,” you say, and it is dry and sure, lashing. “No, I’ve been waiting for you all summer. We’ve—” You let out a laugh of disbelief, crazed and pathetic. “We’ve kissed, we’ve had sex, we’ve been on basically fucking dates, and you haven’t thought about if you wanna be with me?” You hate how your voice sounds wet when you push out, “I’ve thought about you every fucking day this summer.” 

Matty makes an offended face, crying, “Of course I’ve thought about if I wanna be with you.”

You don’t give him time to take it back, twist its meaning, already pleading, “Then what’s the issue?” 

“Because I don’t know!” Again with those three little words, never the right ones, never the ones you breathe from his mouth. He softens, and suddenly the sugary gaze looks like pity to you. “I like you. I really like you, and I care for you, and I don’t want to hurt you.” 

The words ring in the room. Though you want to bury them in your chest, let them bloom and grow until they’ve taken on a whole new face, you don’t. 

You hear the fatal word coming after, see it in his overwhelmed look. “But I care for her too.” You take it like a bullet. “We’ve been together for three years. And I’ve only known you for what? Two months? What if it shits between us? What if it’s not as great as we made it out to be?” 

He makes the worries solid, gives them a physical form, and you want to beg him to let the marble go, knock the paints from his hands. Don’t make it real. Don’t make it possible. 

Dejected, lips trembling, he begs, “Can’t I be a little confused?” 

You breathe out. “Of course you can be confused.” You frown, desperate when you add, “But you cheated on her. Physically, emotionally.” You let the words hit home. A guilty look draws on his face and it’s worse, somehow. “And you’re just gonna go back to her?”  

He sighs, rubbing his forehead. “I know I haven’t gone about this the right way.” 

You blink at him. “Are you fucking kidding me?” 

Gone about this the right way, like he didn’t take hearts and forget them on his piano keys, rotting on the ivory.

“Look, it was fucked. I didn’t think—“ Matty shakes his head. For a poet, he always has the wrong words. “I just wanted you, and I did it, and I know I shouldn’t have—” 

“You’re fucking selfish.” 

He’s selfish, you think, and you scroll back through your memories trying to find the telltale moments you missed, you ignored. If the signs waved over your head and you squinted away, slack, happy smile rising over your cheeks. 

He winces. “I’m sorry.” 

“You’re sorry?” You arch an eyebrow. “You’re apologizing now?” 

Matty huffs. “What do you want from me?” 

You make a disbelieved laugh. How does he not get it? How does he not see? You want to shake his shoulders, but you’re afraid of the marble dust that would linger on your hands. 

“I just want you to choose me,” you cry, like it was so fucking evident. You want him. You want him to want you. 

Matty opens his mouth, then closes it. He’s overrun. 

All those tiny moments; those throwaway smiles, those purposeful glances, those lingering touches, those words, understanding and uncovering and loving— how much of them are real? The curse of being a creator: you make stories in your head. 

He wants to say I don’t know. That’s all he has in his head. 

You nod faintly. Breathe in. Let go. The moment hangs in the air. “You’re not going to, are you?” 

Matty shrugs. That hopeful, sick muscle in your heart beats seconds slower; off-key with the world, with reality. “I don’t know.” 

Your eyes close. Everything snaps back all at once; gravity is heavy, oxygen is ashy, colors are dull. You purse your lips. Try not to cry. 

“God,” you laugh, “what the fuck have I done?” 

The curse of a creator: creating. 

He’s crumbled at your feet. He’s made of blood, and flesh, and he’s bruised and blue. You wonder how much of it is from chisel-martelling him. 

Watercolors, marble, words; it’s all the same. 

Matty frowns. He’s gentle, soothing. “Don’t say that.” 

You throw a hand up. “I’m gonna sleep at a hotel tonight.” Your stare is ice, leaving not a possibility to argue. “Stay with your girlfriend if you want.” 

Matty makes a frustrated sound. “I’m not saying I don’t want you. I’m saying I don’t know yet. I— I just need to figure it out.” 

“It’s not enough.” His face winces: bullets. Something in you is a little gleeful, hopes the metal bites into his skin. Maybe if he bleeds you, mourns you, it’ll all be a little easier to digest.

“Have a goodnight, Matty.” There's a world in which you say those words and then breathe out a soft I love you. He says it back, worshiping and happy. His arms are heavy around your waist. You roll over in bed and go to sweet sleep, satisfied. It’s not this one. You can’t keep trying to make it be.

When you leave his flat, all you can think is, God, I really should have seen this coming. 

September 1 

You adjust the earphones on your head, getting used to the soothing quiet. The microphone lingers near your mouth, inviting you. 

“Ready?” Matty asks from the booth. 

Your eyes snap to his. He’s tired, clearly. Dark circles digging under his eyes, lips bitten raw, stubble unshaved. There’s an air of unmadeness about him, and a yet-to-die need to write about it. Words start coagulating in your mind already, but you don’t let it stick. It’s just an instinct; it’ll be gone soon. 

You give a thumbs up. In the microphone, you whisper, refusing to break eye contact. “Galatea, take one.”

[whateverdontatme]

Quill.

[lamellas]

5 and 23 for the music ask game?

5: A song that needs to be played LOUD

I actually hate playing my music loud so i am going to qualify this as relatively loud and also distinguishing this from songs where i want everyone to shut up so i can listen to it.

Going to choose 2: BFG Division (Mick Gordon) and 21st Century Schizoid Man (King Crimson)

23: A song you think everybody should listen to

Galatea's Guitar by Gabor Szabo!! Its just such a lovely song... the whole album is so soothing and near and dear to my heart. Also gorgeous cover

[untilthenextencore]

Cosmic~... Ch. 5~...

Galatea didn't know how she did it. She got Alicia to promise to bring her backpack from home the next morning. And to bring an extra patch and safety pin for her to use as a makeshift uniform fix the next morning when they meet.

That left her free.

Or so she thought.

For in the next moment, the minute she smiled shyly upon hanging up the phone & told him she was. "All set." She found herself once again wrapped up in his embrace.

His lips reattached to her neck, deepening the mark. Solidifying the memory. Tracing it into her flesh. She arched into him with a gasp & a groan. It was then that she felt his smile grow, lips curving against her neck. A chuckle reverberated through her flesh as she felt the gentle grazing of his teeth. A moment later she felt his hips press forward & grind softly yet insistently into her. He was sizeable. More than sizeable. Hard. Hot. And throbbing.

She gasped again, casting a blushing wide-eyed gaze over to Jimmy. "The way you affect me, luv..." His grin grew to a Cheshire cat state as he leaned in. "You enchant me."

And even as he wrapped her in yet another all-consuming kiss & embrace, he had yet another thing to say. A sort of name for her related to the effect she had on him. "Bewitching, vexing creature."

As they neared his hotel, his driver called out. "We've arrived, Mr. Page."

Jimmy growled once more. Both in aggravation at being so delayed. Foiled by his driver's timing yet again. And somewhat in anticipation of them being so close to being in his suite. Where he knew they'd no longer be interrupted for the night. The thought made him throb once more against her as he panted. "I can't wait to unwrap you. You're my present."

Galatea remained stunned. The sight of which made Jimmy's toothy Cheshire cat grin grow all the more. In an instant the door to the car was opened, her hand was in his, Jimmy gallantly helping her out & they were on their way.

Like the Rainbow & like how she found him when she first returned the scarf, there were a few fans that asked for his autograph, asked for a handshake, or just called out his name. Jimmy once again wrapped her in his coat, shielding her from any prying eyes as they - along with his handlers - hustled to the elevator. Consequently, the lobby & the ride up to his suite was a blur. A blur of bright lights, camera flashes, screaming humanity & sudden silence once in the elevator's cab. The silence was as sudden as the furor. But it was more than welcoming.

Galatea responded by exhaling the breath she didn't know she was holding. Her shoulders relaxing where before they had been tight & huddled into his coat. As she released her breath she tilted her head to the side, resting it on his shoulder.

"Awww..." He cooed, cupping her head softly & pressing a kiss to her temple. "My poor darling..." Galatea smiled & nestled closer. "Tired? Overwhelmed? Are you okay, my girl?"

"Mmmm, a little..." She admitted in a soft shy voice. "But I'm okay. I'm safe. I know I'm safe. Thanks to you..." When Galatea next lifted her gaze, it was to Jimmy gazing intently at her. His fringe semi-obscured his eyes but the flames smouldering deep within were clear to see. Dragon's fire. Mage's fire.

In a whirl it seemed, the elevator doors opened & he guided her down the hallway to his suite. The door was just as soon unlocked as it was locked. Before she knew it they were inside. A fresh champagne bottle in an ice bucket with two flutes. A well-stocked mini bar. Guitars & scarves and suits abound. Lit pillar candles greeting them upon arrival.

Jimmy wasted no time in popping and pouring into the two flutes from the freshly ice-cold bottle. Galatea was then guided to perch on the edge of his large bed, fizzing flute in hand, as she marveled at it all. And he marveled at her in kind.

He pulled up a seat nearby her & gazed at her in the candlelight flickering around them. Jade green eyes piercing her amidst the dancing fire. His silence embraced her as his gaze enveloped her. From tip to toe. And all points therein.

He broke said silence slowly as Galatea sipped her champagne somewhat shyly.

"You..."

Her eyes lifted & flashed over to him as her flute lowered.

"You..."

"Me?..." She queried.

"You... You... You... You... You are the most ravishing, stunning maddening creature I have ever seen in my life..." He hushed with bated breath, before then following up with. "How are you even real? Corporeal? Earthbound no less! You're an angel!"

Galatea blushed & smiled shyly. "I should say the same about you. You're quite handsome yourself. Dashing even. I've always thought so."

Jimmy chuckled, ruffling his hair shyly. "Aww, thank you luv. You don't really mean that do you?"

"Oh I do! I so do!" She took his hand in hers again. "You're one of the most fascinating people I've ever met. I'm so glad you've let me spend so much time with you. I'm honored really."

He gave her hand a gentle squeeze as his heart swelled. "The honor is mine I assure you."

She smiled as his hand reached up to cup her cheek, guiding her into another kiss. The effervescence of the champagne exploding on their lips as they met. His tongue mingled with hers tasting of sweet, tart bubbly grape.

Even as she returned each one of his kisses wholeheartedly, mewling in response to his growls, she never would have imagined his next move. Slowly & carefully, amidst his continued massages of her hand, he guided it between his legs & had her cup him, feeling the large, hard throbbing length that lay hidden behind his silk trousers. She gasped against his lips, breaking the kiss momentarily, looking up to him for guidance.

There she saw Jimmy's face break into an easy smile as he greeted her with a peck, and the words. "See how you affect me, my dear? See? That's all you."

Galatea only smiled shyly, blush deepening as she returned to the kiss. The kiss helping her to both express & silence the things she didn't know how to say. Somehow she found her way to helping him - with his guidance still - to unzip & free his length, gasping again as it sprang from his laxened fly.

"All you..." He mumbled into her lips, wrapping her soft hand around his length. When another gasp followed he swore & added. "Mmmm... No one else... No one else... No one else affects me the way you do..."

Even as everything about her screamed it. Even as her shyness sang it to high heavens. Even as her blush intensified as he guided her hand to move up & down his length slowly; intensifying again at the groan it elicited, she felt she had to tell him. Galatea mumbling into lips which as ever were insistently devouring hers. "Mmmm, Jimmy... Jimmy... Jimmy, wait... Jimmy, I've never... Ever..."

Again Jimmy was all easy grins & more soft kisses. "It's alright, luv. You don't have to worry. I promise I won't do anything you're not ready for. I won't make you do anything you're not comfortable with. Okay?" As proof, he took the free left hand she had laced in his hair & brought it forward, kissing the palm, holding it gently yet tight.

That made her feel a hothouse's worth of flowers bloom in her chest. She felt that kiss in her heart. Her center. Her very core. It was like it drove through her veins. He was in her blood.

Galatea smiled her same bashful smile, coupled with a shy little giggle & nodded, hushing. "Okay. I trust you, Jimmy. I just thought you should know."

Jimmy's heart swelled at those words. "Awww..." He cupped her cheek, kissing her forehead before kissing her again. "It's okay, my girl. Really. Don't worry." Jimmy met her hesitant gaze with a radiant smile. "Don't worry. You're safe with me. I'll take care of you, dearest. Promise. Okay?"

After a moment's consideration, her right hand pulsing on his erection making him fight back a groan with all he had in him, she nodded. "Okay... Thank you, Jimmy." Her fingertips ghosted against his cheek even as her left hand remained in his grasp, as the softest, tenderest kiss was pressed to either side of his mouth & then his lips.

It shattered him.

And spurred him on anew.

His right hand which was still placed over hers, then began milking his erection anew as he throbbed anew for her. Drops of precum dotting & fountaining from his tip over their hands.

Jimmy then returned the favor. Searing more kisses onto her plush lips which left her as ever, stumbling in her attempts to match his ardor.

When he, at last, allowed a groan to pass his lips, he broke from her momentarily, rasping. "'Ere, let's have a butchers at you, luv." Jimmy then having his free hand now slowly slipping her buttons loose & revealing more of her to his eyes. When at last his eyes beheld her, plush, high, round breasts framed in a white bra that appeared to have a self-done embroidered trim with her initials near the straps, he rasped yet again.

"Bloody hell... Galatea... Darling... Darling girl... You're magnificent!..."

Galatea blushed. When Jimmy reached for the center clasp of her bra, unlatching it she shifted. Left hand falling to block him, shyly attempting to cover herself.

"No..." She gazed up at him, meeting his hazed gaze nervously. "Let me see you, luv... All of you... Please, Galatea..."

With a silent nod her left hand fell, and her bra was allowed to be fully unlatched & peeled away & open.

"Jesus..." He rasped again. "Galatea... Darling, you're beautiful! Absolutely bleeding perfect! Enchanting creature..."

Jimmy didn't know what stirred him more, the sight of her so freshly bare, or the sight of her toying with her plaid skirt shyly with her left hand as she continued to do her best to follow his guidance in stroking him with her right. Or was it the sight of her constantly looking to him for guidance throughout?

Either way, Jimmy was affected deeply.

His hand trembled as he reached up to make contact, fingertips gently caressing the swell of her breast, just under her locket. Ghosting against her flesh before he cupped her breast in hand.

Galatea stirred, arching her back & hissing a sudden gasp, gripping her skirt & getting a firmer grasp on his erection. Her knees clicked together, toes curling in her shoes. She let out with a soft, "Ah..." as she felt his thumb circle her nipple with a feather-light touch, making it tighten. Her thighs trembled. If they pressed any closer they'd create a diamond in between them.

Jimmy sighed at the sound. His erection pulsed, dripping more over their clasped hands. Both the sight of her so stirred & arched, the sound of her gasp & the feeling it incited in him all lead him to purr a breathless. "Ohhh... Precious girl... The most beautiful angel of a girl..." He returned his lips to her, claiming her in a passionate kiss as he continued the circling of his thumb, making her wriggle, mewl & rub her thighs together in an attempt to quell the fire he was stoking within.

Jimmy lifted his right hand off hers, placing it gently, comfortingly on her knee. The rubbing stopped suddenly. Thighs still trembling. Galatea's lips suddenly parting from Jimmy's in a sharp gasp. She again looked up to him nervously, seeking direction once more.

Jimmy's voice came once again in a rasp. "Please, Galatea... Let me..." At the same time, his hand slowly traveled up, ghosting her tender flesh with his fingertips as he drew designs - sigils - into her trembling thigh. He pressed heatedly soft kisses into her lips as his fingers traced their intangible shapes. In between the kisses Galatea heard him whispering intangible words, but couldn't quite hear them clearly.

"Jim-my...?" She mewled, his name coming out in fractures. Doe eyes fixed on him yet again.

At the same time, with her seemingly unaware, Galatea's thumb swept over Jimmy's leaking tip.

Jimmy responded with a deep groan, a throb & yet another trickle of precum. "Unhhhhh, yes..."

Galatea gasped as all those things were coupled with Jimmy's right hand steadily tracing its designs further upwards & under her skirt. Jimmy broke his incantations momentarily to whisper. "Galatea... Galatea, please... Please... Please... Let me..." As his fingers finally made contact with her core. Cotton covered. Heated. Wet.

The feel of all of this made both of them gasp. Galatea had no earthly idea how to answer or in which form to respond. Everything was too surreal. And at the same time all too real.

Jimmy was left to respond in a deep-seated growl, pressing his fingers ever so slightly more firmly against her damp core, no longer ghosting. His hips jerked into her hand at the contact, making her hand brace the base as it gave an almighty throb. "Please..."

Galatea's legs laxened. They trembled still but parted just a bit wider. Both of them a chorus of pants in the key of bated breath. Until Galatea broke the silence with a softly hushed. "Yes."

"Yes?" Jimmy whispered as his lips ghosted against hers as his fingers pressed & began to rub at her dampness in earnest now.

"Mmmm, yes..." Galatea nodded, parting her legs more for him.

"Yes." He repeated with finality before his lips took hers in another fiercely passionate kiss. Heated. Hungry. Wanting. His fingers continued their ministrations, now switching between rubbing & tracing soft sigils into the petals of her flesh behind the thin sheath that separated them.

For now.

"Darling... Darling, may I?" Jimmy mumbled against her lips, as his fingertips glided along the leg opening, gently tugging it as a hint to what he was asking.

"Mmmm, yes..." Galatea hushed, tilting her hips up towards his touch. A sign. She was finally giving herself up to him just that bit more. Jimmy let the breath he didn't know he was holding out in a heated sigh as his hand shifted up & then slid down, delving into the waistband & below.

When the feeling of damp curls & slick petals of flesh met his fingertips he felt his erection grow larger still as it surged in her hand. He felt a soft scratch to the back of his hand that he instantly knew the source of. More embroidery. Likely done by hand.

His hand slid back out slowly. Jimmy parted reluctantly from her momentarily, but he had a mission. A curiosity. He had to see what the artwork beheld.

And lo and behold...

As he reached down & slowly flipped her skirt up he was glad to be seated lest his knees give way. For there before him, embroidered on the lace-edged cotton - now well-sodden thanks to him - was a delicately embroidered strawberry. Done in green, red & pale ivory for the seeds. Clearly hand done as opposed to factory pressed. And yet again, the inspiration was clear.

The Strawberry Thief.

William Morris.

There before him lay a remarkably familiar sight across his years; a young girl in a state of undress. But the fact that it was her. Her. Her in all her sweetness, shyness & pureness. Accessorized with her William Morris locket & now... Now... Now there was this. This. This clearly well-done albeit amateur embroidery.

Paying truth to his initial assumptions, a shy if now half-nude Galatea spoke softly, assuring. "I did it myself. It's based off of the Strawberry Thief."

"William Morris." He nodded, trying to focus on his breathing.

"Yeah... Another fave..." She was left panting similarly.

"May I...?" He motioned slightly to them, fingers half curled in anticipation.

"Please..." She hushed with a nod, parting her legs again, incidentally flashing him her drenched core yet again. A hint of dark curls was visible through the damp fabric. Another arrow to Jimmy's heart. Though the effects radiated lower. Much lower.

As his fingers tucked into the waistband, Galatea tilted her hips up yet again, allowing him to peel her sodden panties off slowly. And then there she was. Miles of legs & endless curves. Full round breasts with tight peaked nipples framing her William Morris locket above a red plaid skirt. Dewy damp curls and slick rouged lips below. Dark doe eyes and a pink petulant pout. A young brunette beauty in full flower. Caught in his silken web. Displayed in his candlelit room. Petals yet untouched.

Jimmy nearly swooned with delight.

He gripped her panties & felt her excitement drip into his hands.

Meanwhile, she seemed puzzled at his sudden stillness & inaction. "Jimmy?..."

In an instant, the panties were on the ground. She was in his arms & his lips were on hers yet again. His hands wandered, skimming her silken curves before retaking their earlier position; left hand cupping her breast & thumbing her nipple, right hand delving between her legs & playing amongst the petals & dew.

Jimmy was ecstatic. He felt delirious with delight. Was this all real? Was it just a dream. He didn't know. All he knew is he never wanted to wake up. Ever.

Galatea for her part was similarly dizzy with happiness. Awash in bliss. Her breath came hot & in pants amidst their continued hungry kisses. Without even knowing it, or even realizing it her hips began to rock against his fingers as they caressed her.

"Galatea... Darling... You're a natural..." He chuckled, massaging her petals with his fingers, attempting to part them gently.

When he then attempted to slide the tip of his middle finger inside, he was met with slight resistance. Galatea's body resisting despite herself. Tightness. A squeeze against his tip. And a mewl as she leaned into his touch, lifting her hips & arching her back.

"Shh... Shh... Shh..." He soothed, as his finger pressed further until it was slowly accepted up to the first knuckle with a soft grunt. Despite his soothing, she mewled again & clenched on his insistently exploring digit.

"Jesus Christ..." Jimmy whispered. She was so new. So pure. So un-fucking-touched. It was unreal.

"Precious babygirl..." He sighed, prompting her to open her wincing eyes & gaze at him curiously. "Hold on to me, Galatea... Hold on to me..." Instantly, she shifted her arms closer around him, left hand laced in his curls, right hand leaving his erection & gripping his shirt. "Good girl." Another warm kiss to break up the monotony of his reverent hushing & hazy-eyed gaze was her reward.

He pressed his finger deeper at the same time his tongue lapped at & lifted her tightened nipple into his mouth with a soft suck. Instantly her fingers tightened around his silken shirt & his soft locks as they ensnared her fingers. He gave another deep suck & massaging of his tongue against her rosebud nipple as his finger pierced deeper. Again she arched against him, arcing her body closer to him as she nearly vibrated with pleasure edged with a tinge of pain.

"Beautiful girl..." He hushed reverently, pressing a kiss to her tightened nipple before turning to pay the same attention to her other breast. And as she let out with a soft cry of "Ah!" As his finger was taken to the hilt inside her with a soft thrust, he purred. "You're mine now..."

He then began a series of slow deep thrusts inside her, moving his left hand off her breast & wrapping that arm around her waist. Her hips continued to rock as he thrusted, moving into the thrusts amidst a chorus of her mewls & sighs. She rocked her hips slightly faster, hiccupping a cry as he pressed his ring finger in to join with his middle finger.

"Such a natural, darling... How beautiful you look..." Jimmy grinned. "You're so wet... So hot... So tight... I can barely squeeze in here..."

"Jimmy..." Galatea wriggled & writhed in his arms. "Jimmy please... Don't say that..."

"Aww... Don't be embarrassed, darling. Don't be." He murmured between kisses to her breasts & along the expanse of her body as it undulated under his touch. "You're so beautiful... So beautiful this way... So pure... So raw & unfiltered... So real & yet unreal... So pure... So beautiful..."

He leaned her back down on the bed gently, hovering over her on his knees. His left hand then joined his lips in wandering her body. This new position allowed Galatea to let her legs embrace him as she rocked into each thrust he pressed into her.

His callused fingers sought & found each one of her spots. Spots she never knew she had. When they sought & found her g-spot, rubbing it softly she jolted. A gasp flew from her lips & her hand lifted from his shirt to grasp her skirt, wringing it once again.

"Jimmy..." She mewled, his name falling from her lips in a sigh as she undulated & gripped her skirt. "Jimmy... Jimmy, I feel pressure..."

"Pressure, darling? Really? Are you okay?" Jimmy asked, showering her profile in kisses. "You're not in pain are you? I'm sorry. I don't mean to hurt you, my girl..."

Galatea shook her head, toying with the elder guitarist's curls. "No. No, I'm not in pain. Just pressure. Low in my stomach... I... I feel like... It... It feels like something's coming..."

Jimmy felt a jolt himself, gasping & searing a kiss onto his newfound beloved, making her hum against his lips in surprise.

"Mmmm!..."

Jimmy then broke his sudden & insistent kiss with the sotto-voce order. "Let it come..." This he paired with more of his thrusts & massaging of her spots, making her toes curl.

"Mmmm... What?" She queried, in a delirious hush. "Really? But... But I..."

But Jimmy was insistent. "Let it come..." He mumbled amidst more kisses falling from her lips, down her neck & body. "Let it come, my darling... Let it come... Trust me..."

As ever, the ministrations of his skilled fingers, lips & tongue made it so she hardly had any choice. Her hips continued to rock, walls clenching on his fingers as they thrust & curled, finding & zeroing in on every last of her inner weaknesses. His tongue traced its sigils. On her neck. The swells of her breasts. The peaks of her nipples between every suck. Between her breasts just below her still-opened Blackthorn adorned Locket. Down her soft belly. Along the waistline of her skirt. The warm silk of her ever embracing thighs. The downy, dewy, softly haired mound between her legs.

By the time his lips found & zeroed in on the little rosebud of her clit nestled amongst the dew, she jolted once, gasped sharply & arched to meet him as a single word was pulled from her lips & lungs in a cry that was both whisper soft & deafeningly loud. And with one last curve & massage of her spot as the elder guitarist kissed the little bud tenderly, she shattered in his hands. Melting in his arms. Galatea came hard for the first time with a cry. That single word. The only word her head, heart, body, soul & spirit knew to call & the only person she knew beyond God to call to. "Jimmy!"

Her release sprayed down his hand & arm, dripping down his lips, jawline & neck. Her legs tightened & then relaxed, falling open for him once at rest. Little jolts stirred her body. Little aftershocks of the almighty uproar he had her in. Tiny flinches. Bucks of the hips. Mini undulations. Until finally... She lay in repose. Clearly spent after all he had done to her. Starry eyed. Hazy gazed. In a dream. In the midst of which she didn't even realize she was stroking her locket with fingers still dotted with bits of Jimmy's precum.

It was a sight.

A sight that spurred him on to action once again. He snatched the hand caressing the locket, pressing a kiss to the palm before circling it once again around his erection. Now reddened at the tip. Throbbing near painfully for her. It felt larger, harder than it had in a while. Harder than he'd ever felt for anyone perhaps. And it dripped, for her attention.

She stirred somewhat, not minding the smear of her own release his hand left on her, still softly murmuring his name. "Mmmm, Jimmy..." She giggled dreamily at a private joke as she continued the strokes under his tutelage. "You're so good to me. So kind & gentle. You deserve so much. You're wonderful. So wonderful. I adore you."

Those words sent a jolt up Jimmy's length & up his body. They gave him shivers. Chills. He ached for her. She was so sweet. So sweet. So sweet & open. It intoxicated him. She intoxicated him. Beyond any drink or drug imaginable. How she affected him. It was unreal. All too unreal. She was unreal.

This led him to firm his & thusly her grasp around his pulsing length, both of them milking him smoothly. Her thumb swept over the tip as it wept, nearly weakening his knees as he knelt before & over her. "Nngh..." He was panting. Pupils blown. His eyes fixed on her. On the prize before him. His prize. His treasure. His treasured girl. His most precious. His most precious, precious girl.

He was a sight in a different way. That he knew for sure. He must look a sight. The wild man of Surrey. The wild man of Tower. The wild man of Boleskine. But she showed no fear. Only dreamlike smiles & innocence. Soft giggles at his grunts & curses even amidst her demure blushes at his words of want.

Knowing now he enjoyed the contact, she continued her ministrations. She began experimenting; rubbing, flicking & swirling her thumb over the weeping tip as she stroked.

He was close now for sure. He knew it. Jimmy's left hand returning to cupping her breasts & thumbing her nipples amidst more mewls, moans & giggles only added to that. As did her idle swaying of one bent knee as she lay, hiding & revealing her sodden core to him over & over again.

This reminded him of his fingers wrapped around hers, and how a few were still wet with her release. He couldn't help it. He snapped. Letting his hand leave hers to continue its strokes, Jimmy took his fingers to his lips, licking & sucking the taste of her off of them, hungrily. Like a man possessed.

She tasted sweet. Fresh. Like nectar of the gods. Was this what angels tasted like? It must be. Her scent alone was heady. But the taste. Oh God, the taste.

Galatea just giggled as ever at the sight. Her blush deepened as he knew it would. "Jimmy, that's naughty." She smiled despite her admonishment & the milking of her hand.

"Sorry, luv. Can't help it. I... I need it..." He rasped, meaning it more than he ever knew he could before.

"Awww..." She cooed, reaching up to ruffle his hair with her left hand. "It's okay, Jimmy." Ever tender amidst his being a man clearly possessed & feeling like an animal in raging heat.

He pressed a kiss to her palm as it neared, procuring another. "Awww..." And then the coaxing of his gaze with a soft. "Jimmy..." His eyes locked on her, seeing his sleepy-eyed maiden coo. "I adore you." Before then blowing him a kiss.

It shattered him.

And it was this. The feel of her. Her softness filling his hands. Her silken hand wrapped around his length & dutifully following his lead in bringing him to his peak. The unholy sweetness of her. The taste of her. The scent of her nectar filling his nostrils. All of this along with the whispered & cooed words of adoration. The tenderness. The kiss.

All of this conspired... Nay, combined... All of this combined to bring him not only to his knees, not only to the edge, but over it in one headlong rush. As he groaned out. "Ohhhh, Galatea..."

Hips jerking against her hand as he erupted & grunted, the orgasm taking him suddenly & all at once.

He came hard.

Hard.

Harder than a man nearing forty had any right to. His release fired over her fingers, onto her thighs, her stomach & breasts. He felt some drip onto the sheets between his knees. But the sight that drew more slashes of release from him, and that he knew would empty loads from him in future, was the sight of streaks of his release that had meteored over her mound & the dewy curls that lay between her thighs as she lay in dreamy-eyed shock & wonderment at the event that had just occurred.

Panting & spent, the guitarist leaned over & pressed his lips to hers yet again in a soft kiss. "Thank you, princess. That was wonderful." He then shakily left the bed, heading into the washroom.

This led Galatea to pout a bit until she with a flush caught sight of him returning, now fully nude, with a warm, damp washcloth. She sort of expected him to towel off himself but instead was surprised when instead, the first place the washcloth softly scrubbed clean was her dewy mound. She gasped, blushing deeper again & mewling. "Jimmy... I... I... I'm still tender there."

He just grinned even as he felt his cock give one last throb for the night at her words. Oh, how she affected him so. "I know. Don't worry. Just trying to help freshen us up a bit before bed. 'Ere... Let me do this..." The towel then met her thighs. Her stomach. Her breasts. And then finally his own length, now spent.

Jimmy only then remembered the streaks along her fingers. When he went to reach for her hand with a sheepish. "Ah! Sorry, darlin'. Here, let me..." He was stopped short. Stunned into abrupt silence. For there he saw Galatea attempting a few licks of one of the streaks on her fingers.

Noticing his silence & looking up to note his gaze fixed on her, she gasped. "Ah! Sorry... I just... Was curious I guess... I mean... I sort of... I... I tasted myself on your lips & I... Um... Sorry... Sorry... Sorry, Jimmy..." Now her face was fully flushed as she reached her hand out to allow him to wipe her clean there too.

Instead, Jimmy took her hand with the washcloth & rejoined her on the bed. He wrapped her in his arms. Tight. Tight. Deliriously tight. And he seared a deliriously heated kiss onto her lips. She mewled against his lips in surprise to which he moved only to wrap her hand in the washcloth, tenderly wiping it clean. The kiss lasted as he reached down to finally undo her skirt.

This prompted her to break it with a soft gasp. "Jimmy!"

"Shhh..." He soothed, petting her hair as he draped the skirt over the headboard. He then pulled the covers over them both, tucking her into his embrace, clearly intending to keep her there for the night. "I know. I know. I know you're tired, darling girl. Me too. How can one not be after a night like ours?" Jimmy added with a grin.

She giggled & snuggled up to him, returning each kiss he bestowed upon her with full affection.

"Let's get some sleep, my dear. Shall we? After all. We have a big day tomorrow too. I have my business to attend to. And we must see you off to school as well."

"Jimmy..." She mewled, wanting to say something even if she wasn't quite sure exactly what to say in the moment.

"No buts, my dear. We must see you to school. I'll have you dropped off & picked up on time tomorrow I promise..." Of this he was resolute. Even when her kisses & her embrace & her sweetness weakened so much of his resolve typically. He felt it his duty to look after her in this way as well.

"Okay... I understand..." Galatea reluctantly agreed. She disliked the hours spent away from him. But hopefully the old adage of "absence making the heart grow fonder" stayed true. Though she didn't know how much fonder one's heart could grow. Certainly no more fonder than hers! Though she was willing to try & find out! She was willing to try & do just about anything as long as it was with him. Always willing with him. For him. Because of him.

With that settled, Galatea told him what time to set the alarm as she nestled herself in his embrace amidst the pillows & blankets. The candlelight now snuffed was replaced by soft moonlight.

She snuggled up to him amidst more lazy, sleepy kisses as he wrapped his arms closer around her, cocooning her safely & snugly for the night. This brought another dreamy-eyed smile & sleepy giggle from her. Her smile & giggle then drew a hazy-eyed smile & chuckle from him amidst even more kisses.

And as she fell asleep in his arms, Galatea pressed one last kiss to the elder guitarist's lips. "Goodnight, Jimmy... Sweet dreams..." Before, pledging once more. "I adore you..."

Those three words clutched at his very soul. They clenched at his heart, sending it surging into his throat, where it remained as he hushed back to the now happily sleeping schoolgirl beside him. "Goodnight, dearest Galatea... Pleasant dreams to you as well..." Jimmy then pledging with a feather-soft kiss of his own. "I adore you as well... Goodnight..."

He then bestowed upon her a new sobriquet. One he did not give lightly. As anyone who truly knew him knew that he did not take lightly as well.

"My angel..."

~

As ever this is forever under construction~...

Hope you enjoy~!...

[trevlad-sounds]

"Subway Cosmonaut".

2023-05-26

Downtempo Sunrise Lounge Wednesdays, Fridays & Sundays.

Mocky-Amaimono (Sweet Things)(feat. Nia Andrews and Joey Dosik)-00:00

Falk & Klou-Kosmonaut-03:15

Quiet Dawn-Subway-10:07

Secret Circuit-Thawing Stage-11:20

Michal Turtle-Ball Of Fire-14:33

Hydra Transmitter-Moodrup-21:38

Vieux Farka Touré & Khruangbin-Ali Hala Abada-27:05

Yoker Moon-Submit It to the Mountain-31:57

Bobby Oroza-The Otherside-35:06

Ivor Cutler-The Bridge-38:48

Sven Wunder-Harmonica And….-39:35

Gábor Szabó-Galatea's Guitar-43:13

Aythar-Alien Worlds Part 2-48:41

Surprise Chef-Conversation Piece-59:24

Uh Huh-Babylon-1:04:01

Georgia Anne Muldrow-Brokenfolks-1:08:27

The Pattern Forms-Incense-1:12:46

Đ.K.-The Three Realms-1:15:40

Kutiman, Dekel-Need To Forget-1:21:30

Breakbot-Another Dawn (feat. Irfane)-1:24:43

[orphanedsource]

I also have been trying to promote this album I know it's from 1968 but I think it's one of the most beautiful instrumental records of all time? Personally

[daveslutstaine]

6, 15, and 31

6: Cheese or pepperoni? Pepperoni!

15: What was the last thing you drew? It's not done yet, but this is what I have of it so far

I was listening to a video of an orthodox monk that popped up on my recommended feed on YouTube. In the video, he was giving advice to a person who wrote to him on having anxiety and really low self-esteem. I remember in one point of the video he said something along the lines of "tearing open your rib cage and letting the Holy Spirit in". I don't remember his exact wording, but it was enough to stick with me and cause me to want to draw something similar. I watched a bit more of his videos and he has a really, how do I say this, vivid way of speaking. I love how he puts visuals in my head basically!

31: A song that sticks in your head? Lately I've been getting Galatea's Guitar by Gabor Szabor stuck in my nogging. I played it recently while studying and it's really nice to listen to while reading heavy medical textbooks! His music rides that fine line of just being interesting enough that it keeps my brain entertained but it's also just soft and tame enough that it doesn't distract me from what I need to do. It's a nice song though! Perfect for when I want something calm but not boring!

[maximuswolf]

Gábor Szabó - Galatea's Guitar [Jazz]

Gábor Szabó - Galatea's Guitar [Jazz] https://youtu.be/LrH8-PHjyGE?si=mtKKaKF7MsuY6lqb Submitted October 04, 2024 at 11:46PM by HilariousButTrue https://ift.tt/V71AUp0 via /r/Music

[hartshorn-and-isinglass]

Whew.

First concert today was the Beatles Baroque, which you may remember I briefly considered not going to but I am ultimately glad I did.

Looking at the promo material for this concert I was under the impression that they were gonna go like, full Baroque up in this shizz so I was a *little* disappointed to see that they had the lutenist on a modern guitar, an electric bass in the mix, and mics for the singers. I feel like once you pull back to kinda-Baroque, you're not really that far off from the Beatles as the Beatles themselves recorded these pieces. Which is, in itself, pretty rare to actually hear in concert, it's just that I guess I was hoping that I'd get to see them take it even farther. Still, as the most quality Beatles cover jam session I'll probably ever hear live, this was great.

And yeah, okay, I'm sorry I rolled my eyes when I first saw this on the program. The Beatles are not my usual jam and I was for a long time pretty burnt out on all the various ways people were doing Beatles stuff so I haven't listened to them in a loooong time. But yeah, a lot of these songs slap. They're classic for a reason. I was not expecting to fucking cry hearing "Dear Prudence" either, so I am really eating crow on my pretensions to being a jaded music nerd, LOL.

I've been sitting far enough back that I don't get a good look at a lot of the musicians in the pit and there are a bunch of them that I don't know from elsewhere. Today I realized I may have sat near the harpist in the audience last night since he wasn't doing Acis and Galatea. We had only the briefest exchange about how terribly uncomfortable the seats were. Dang it! I wish I'd realized!

[xpoken]

Le jour de son anniversaire, Anna et sa sœur se sont retrouvées au Manhattan Club, où les Kings of Rhythm jouaient souvent du rock

Le leader du groupe est monté sur scène, a pris la guitare et a chanté, c'était Ike Turner - le premier musicien sérieux et une vraie chance dans la carrière musicale de la future star.

 La performance des musiciens a impressionné la chanteuse en herbe par sa nouveauté et son expression, Hayek était alors déjà une star et elle ne rêvait que de la scène.  Hayk était sceptique quant à l'offre d'Anna de chanter ensemble, mais a promis qu'elle aurait bientôt une telle chance.  On ne sait pas combien de temps la promesse devrait attendre, mais le désir d'Anna de chanter était si fort qu'elle a profité de la première occasion favorable.  Le moment est venu - lors d'une soirée, en réponse à une offre ludique d'un membre du groupe de jouer quelque chose pour sa sœur, elle a simplement pris le micro et a chanté les tubes de Beebi King avec autant de passion que possible.

 Turner n'a pas pu s'empêcher d'apprécier le talent - Anna est devenue la chanteuse du groupe "Kings of Rhythm".  Hayk prévoyait le succès et créa de manière désintéressée sa Galatea - il acheta des robes et des bijoux brillants, des fourrures et des chaussures de concert à talons aiguilles, choisit des coiffures et l'envoya chez le dentiste - c'est ainsi que sont apparus des éléments de style emblématiques: un sourire blanc comme neige, les plus belles jambes féminines sur scène, des tenues moulantes, une tignasse chic aux cheveux négligents.

 Le style de scène spécial et la manière de jouer ont été perçus avec fracas par le public, "baby Ann" est rapidement devenue l'âme de l'équipe, la soliste principale et la préférée du public.

[lottiecrabie]

you know how lorde brought jack out at one of her shows and he played the guitar while she sang and they were very touchy feely and just gazing at each other the entire time? imagine a blurb like that on gto readers tour when her and matty are just friends now but there is still definitely underlying tension the entire time

i Know where this blurb idea came from I see you🫵

the screams rain over you, a torrential wave of love that you can’t help grinning at. you sit there, legs hanging off the stage, gripping your mic in silent awe. the world ripples in front of you, bodies of people — real, tangible, knowledgeable of your lyrics better than you sometimes — face you. the room seems larger, like entire cities could fit between these walls, like everyone you’ve ever known could be smiling back at you.

you use the energy like fuel. pretend your heart isn’t racing up your throat as you tilt up the mic. ‘i have a surprise for you guys,’ you say, teasing, confessional. another wave of screams, delighted in just being special. you laugh. ‘there’s a really special person here tonight. the producer of this album, my dear friend—‘ you barely need to let the name out, high-pitched cries already drowning it out, but still; ‘matty healy!’

he comes from backstage and he cracks the world open. stagelight transforms in soft sun rays, shining over your head until sweat pearls your forehead. strawberry ice cream lingers on your tongue. the faint smell of cigarette comes through, burning in the heat. he’s summer, even in the thick of this december month. you have to blink away, blind.

there’s a part of you way that will always be in august, and it throbs when he’s around you.

matty sits down beside you, offered a guitar by some worker. he waves to the crowd, working his charm easily. you have no sun to blame this flush on. you hope the stage makeup hides it, stop yourself from pressing the cold microphone to your cheeks and draw attention to it.

‘hello,’ you say. ‘not too tired?’

‘never,’ he answers, though it’s lost to the ears of the crowd, micless that he is.

‘i warmed the crowd up for you.’

‘you’re—‘ you aim the mic his way, graciously allowing the public into this moment, ‘—too sweet.’ you want to laugh. your chest tightens, in the habitual ways it still hasn’t learned not to.

something in you is angry that he’d dare say it here, in front of anyone, in front of everyone. not because he’s sharing anything personal, anything momental; because he’s not. to him, too sweet is any other phrase, and you’re left reeling from the slap he doesn’t know he gave.

‘we made pygmalion two summers ago, in this very city,’ you say conversationally, addressing the crowd. ‘i lived here for four months and so, forever, london will be the intrinsic pygmalion city. i don’t think i can walk any street without being washed with it.’

‘i live here and there’s still places i can’t visit without being reminded of pygmalion,’ matty says in the cadence of a joke. you chuckle for him, ever gracious.

‘there’s still wines i can’t drink,’ you attempt to volley back, but it starts feeling a little too raw, a little too real. you get the uncomfortable impression of being under a microscope, and you clutch the microphone with the need to swallow it all back.

matty steals the mic from your hands, eyes wrinkling with mirth. ‘this one used to say she didn’t like red wine.’

you roll your eyes, taking it back. ‘yes, well, i just—‘

again, matty’s fingers brush yours, angling the mic back to him. ‘—never drank the correct sort, yes, i told you so.’

‘stop taking my mic!’ you laugh, giving a look to the public as you gesture to him. ‘it’s a wonder we finished any song with all of this.’ you sit up straighter, attempting to put the show back on track. ‘and yet we did. you might know this one, it’s called galatea.’

again, a new wave of excited screams wash you. galatea is always a highlight of the night. the broken lyrics that come back to you, sung and cried, tears filling the eyes of the first row until you have to look away. this time, you don’t even attempt to watch them, instead turning to face matty, crossed-legged.

his fingers strum the chords familiarly; you croon the first words. you get projected on a sofa, red lights drenching the two of you, the stars shining just for you. he’s so known you might choke up. you have moved on, you promise yourself you have, but what can you do with all the knowledge you gain of someone? where do the memories go when you’ve stopped needing to play them back every night just to fall asleep. they can’t cease to exist, yet they can’t fit in the palms of your hands either.

his eyebrows tilt as he concentrates, bobbing his head. a curl strikes his forehead and you stop yourself from reaching up and brushing it away. parts of you wake up, called to attention. the need to wish and hope and yearn; to exist in the possible, nearly-not but just enough that it’s exquisitely painful. you think of new lyrics, you hate yourself for it.

the chorus cries out of you. you scoot closer, sing it to him. you’re back in a booth, angry eyes pinning him down vengefully. matty glances up and there must be something in you that has quietened, that has folded over and surrendered. he doesn’t look away from your stare. he doesn’t get overwhelmed with the weight of it.

your hand flies to his knee, as if to make sure he’s real. he is; flesh and muscle and that stubborn heart of his, beating somewhere far away from you.

for all the sun he represents, he doesn’t burn anymore. it’s a soft sting, like another memory buzzing in you. your fingers retreat. mournfully, you sing the next lyric.

you whisper the last words out, smiling faintly. his fingers halt. he stops suddenly; he’s there and then he’s not, per usual. the cries roar back to you. for all the worlds that exist in this very room, they always seem to cease when he’s beside you. a summery cocoon you craft out of nothings, one that’s off somewhere in a london apartment.

you turn back to the crowd, remind yourself of everything that is real too. ‘thank you,’ you whisper to them, a hand to your chest, vaguely bowing. thank you for being there when the ground doesn’t seem to hold you up anymore. you look at him. and then, a grin, waving an arm to him. ‘matty healy, everyone!’

[whateverdontatme]

The Ethereal Western impact

[lamellas]

Get to Know Me Tag Game

Tagged by @the-starry-seas! thank you!

Rules: answer + tag 9 people you want to get to know better and/or catch up with.

favourite colour: greens! esp soothing sort of muted ones from olive to lichen-y greens

Last song: Galatea's Guitar by Gabor Szabo

Currently Reading: I'm waiting for the library to give me a hold on True Colors from the repcomm series

Currently Watching: Delicious in Dungeon !

Currently Craving: Chicken tenders n fries which im going to get in like half an hour as a treat >:)

Coffee or tea: i like both a lot but i have a tea collection! lots of true teas but also a good amount of herbal ones. i like to give ppl new ones to try bc my go-tos are uncommon in cafes and stuff like Russian Caravan and pu-erh and genmaicha

A hobby you would like to try: wld love to get into a martial art or rock climbing again. Also, felting!

A discipline you'll follow during the Olympics: I dont follow the olympics at all lol

An AU/Alternate Universe you've been plotting for: for Definitely AU, mostly a little corries fixit to try and give them some nice things

I'm not sure who would be okay with me tagging them, so instead I will just leave an open invitation for whoever wants to pick this up :)

[lazarro]

Vision by John Austen (1919)