Save You

It's hot out. It's a constant heat, almost stifling. The kind of heat that fills a person's lungs from the humidity and makes everything seem twenty times harder. Matt Flyzik is one of the office assistants that actually works, and therefore is sent to help the student council set up their booth for the school carnival later. It's some stupid themed booth with glitter covered flowers and some other random glittered shit. And if there is one thing to say about glitter, it's like fucking herpes, it never goes away.

He's rubbing his hands together and trying to get the extra glitter off his hands when he sees him. Alex Grieco. He's perfect. Hair always just the right amount of floof with a quirked upper lip that suggests he knows more than he should and he is amused by the entire situation What really gets Matt's heart racing is the way his collar bones peak out through his V neck. Matt loves collar bones, and no matter how hard he tries, he can't seem to make his stand out.

As Alex walks by he gives a little nod and a wink, like he thinks that Matt is even worthy of being in the same vicinity of the air that he breathes; and if Matt heart skips a beat or two, well no one has to know right? "Hey, will you watch what you're doing?" A girl beside him asks snottily, and he looks down at his hands to see that they are now covered in glue and clumps of orange glitter. Perfect. Fucking glitter.

----

"So you're saying he gave you the nod?" Jack Barakat, his best friend, and slightly childish partner in crime asks, mouth full of mustard and French fries. It's a nasty sight that makes his mostly empty stomach churn. "He does give nod, was it a good one?"

"You are such a fucking perv asshole. I hate you." Matt pushes his almost empty water bottle away and picks at the supposed chicken sandwich that the school was serving.

"No you love me, you love me like you love air. You need me in your life and you know it." Jack laughs, and kisses his cheek wetly with a loud smack, and leaves a piece of half chewed fry behind.

"Why do I put up with your scrawny ass again?" Matt asks wiping his cheek with a barely withheld grimace. Can calories be absorbed through skin? Matt wonders, then decides yes, they totally can, and a French fry must be at least forty calories and that means he has to skip dinner tonight.

Alex Grieco passes the table, nods at Matt again, and maybe that could be the faintest of blushes. Jack laughs loudly, a deep belly laugh, that has him wiping his eyes when Matt mentions the blush, "You are so delusional kid." Then he promptly shoves the entire piece of what is supposed to be cake, but really looks like cardboard into his mouth. He chews obnoxiously with his mouth open and a few pieces fall out of his mouth in the process. Jack just picks the chunks up and shoves them into his mouth again.

Matt wishes he could eat like Jack, all those fatty foods he loves to eat non-stop and not gain one ounce. Matt wishes so badly he could, but no, if he even thinks about eating Doritos or drinking a soda he gains five pounds. He hates his body with the rolls of fat that roll over the waistline of his cargo shorts, the way his collar bones are never defined enough, and really is it too much to ask for the second chin he has going on to get the fuck out?

----

Matt's walk home is just a testament to how much he wants, no needs, to lose weight. In the humid heat it's excruciating to walk the six miles home, the walk that is up and down several hills and at one point through a tunnel. He's barely made it three blocks and there is sweat dripping down his face. It's good though, that means he's losing water weight. That's good he reckons.

A beat up black Toyota Camry pulls up beside him, the window rolls down slowly, and Alex Grieco's head pops into view. "Need a ride?" He asks nonchalantly, stopping the car and opening the door. It's a moment's deliberation, but Matt gets in, sliding his bag between his knees. The upholstery on the seat is worn smooth and soft and the air is at least thirty degrees cooler in the car (at least it feels that way.) "I've noticed you around, are you new this year?" That stings.

"We were in kindergarten together, we had the same first, third, and fourth grade teachers, and I've sat behind you in history for the three years." Matt drones in monotone. His hair was perfectly floofy in kindergarten too. Alex's Adams Apple bobs as he swallows and he bites his lip with his perfectly white teeth.

"Oh." Is all Alex says, tightening his grip on the steering wheel. Then he snorts. "I'm such a dick."

"No not really, I mean you may have the same name as Gaskarth but you aren't actually him, so I think you're good on that front." Matt snorts, and watches as Alex throws his head back and laughs heartily. Alex Gaskarth is this transfer kid from some private Catholic school who thinks he's tough shit because he is the lead singer of a band, and because he has a tattoo. He's really just a scrawny asshole who likes to get drunk at parties and acts like he's better than everyone else.

"He's an ass, but he's a nice guy once you get to know him." Alex doesn't sound mad about the way Matt just put down one of his friends, so he takes it as a good sign. The car stops in front of his house, and he scurries out with a mumbled thank you. Halfway to his room he realizes that he never told Alex where he lives.

Matt's mom makes stuffed peppers for dinner, with a side of roasted vegetables, and a thick lemon pudding with whipped cream for dessert. Matt declares he's meeting friends for dinner and that he really needs to go. He really ends up parked at the end of the street, the radio on low, and his Chemistry book balanced on the steering wheel as he reads ahead in the next chapter. He even does the practice problems at the end of the chapter that he knows are going to be assigned tomorrow anyway. Sometimes he regrets taking all AP classes.

----

"Wait, are you saying he drove you home?" Jack asks, from where he's laying on the bleachers, then he sits up ramrod straight, "And he knew where you lived without directions?" Matt nods, pausing his cutting-up-a-magazine project, and looking at his best friend.

"It was so weird. I live in the middle of fucking nowhere. I live in a maze of banks and other corporations." Jack snorts and tosses a balled up piece of paper at him. Matt's assuming it's Jack's homework that he was supposed to be working on. They both watch as it falls under the bleachers and Jack whispers a sharp "Fuck! to himself.

Matt Goes back to his cutting as Jack slinks down to the ground and searches for his paper. He's halfway through destroying a Seventeen when the row he's sitting on shakes slightly. "You know, I don't actually think that the magazine ever did anything to you." A smooth voice comments from his right, a voice that doesn't belong to Jack. Matt jerks in surprise and dozens of magazine clippings fly out of his lap.

"The fuck, I could have stabbed myself and died." He yells, "I could have stabbed my aorta and bled out all over you. Then you would have felt bad about killing me in an abstract way and jumped off a mountain and died and it would have been all your fault for killing me."

"You talk a lot." Alex smirks, "It's kinda hot in an annoying way."

"You're kinda an ass in an ass way."

"Yeah, okay, I'll give you that one." Alex bites his lip, "You wanna go to a party with me?"

"Um, what?" Matt asks before he can stop himself, because seriously, yesterday Alex hadn't even know he'd existed, but now he wants to take him to a party? No, not even cool. Alex continues the assault on his lip.

"I just thought it would be fun, you know, we could get to know each other." He's looking down at his Nike covered feet, lip still caught between his teeth.

"Matt you fucker, I can't believe you couldn't get off your ass and help me look for my homework." Jack whines punching Matt lightly on the arm, it hurts more than it should for the lack of force behind it.

"It's not my fault you threw it at me douche."

"You know what? Forget about it, I'm sure I can find someone better to spend my time with anyways." Alex huffs standing up and strutting down the bleachers.

"What a dick." Jack snips, smoothing the crumpled paper out, "What did he want in the first place?" Matt just shrugs and pulls out another magazine, this time instead of cutting figures out, he's decided to shred the pages into confetti.

-----

He's walking home again, only it's raining this time. He can feel the large splashes of water hitting his skin and the pitpatpitpat noise that the rain makes as it hits the ground is relaxing. A beat up Toyota Camry pulls up beside him, the window is already rolled down.

"Get in." It's a command, not a suggestion, and Alex throws the door open.

"How do you know where I live?" Matt asks, gripping the fabric of his shorts. His knuckles are turning white.

"It's a small town." Grieco shrugs, like it's not a big deal.

"No, bum fuck nowhere West Virginia is a small town, this is the 'burbs of Baltimore. Try again." The fingers on his right hand are going numb from clenching his fist.

"I don't know, I've noticed you around, so I asked around?" It sounds like a question, and there is no denying that it probably is a question.

"Look, it's great that you are like my own creepy little stalker, but I don't think you're telling me the truth." Matt almost wonders if it would be to cliché to add ‘I'm a big boy I can take it,’ at the end.

"I remember you looked better last year." A hollow thud echo's in Matt's head, and a sick pain drives in deep. "You used to look alive. Now, you just look fucking dead." The car halts to a stop, and it takes Matt a minute to realize he's home.

With a snarl of, "You don't know anything, " he yanks the door open and slams it closed, and stalks into the house. When he slams the door shut the widows rattle and almost sound as if they’re going to crack.

His mom doesn't even put up a front of making him come down for dinner, and he doesn't pretend he's going out with friends.

------

Friday morning dawns with thunder, lightning, and rain pelting the windows. Matt's mom makes him drive his barely used car. Jack attacks him as soon as he's in the building, jumping on his back and ruffling his hair. He's not in the mood.

"Fuck off Jack." Jack jumps off and crosses his arms.

"What bit you in the ass?" He asks, kinda tapping his foot a little. Matt just shrugs. "You know Matt, there’s something going on with you, I know you think I don't notice, but I do. What's up?"

"Nothing, there’s nothing wrong with me, just leave me the fuck alone okay? Can you do that or is it just a little too hard for you?"

"You know what Matt, go fuck yourself." Jack walks off with a head shake and a scoff. Matt feels like an ass, but he can't really find it in himself to actually care. His first class is a block of AP Chemistry, the teacher is a Mountain Dew addict who walks around yelling terms and definitions,waving his hands a little crazily. It's two hours of molecular structure and atomic structure; everything just fades away.

Jack makes it a point to ignore Matt in the office during their hour in there, he just sits in his chair, music pounding through his ear buds, lazily flicking through a AP magazine. Matt gets to file the entire stack of papers piled in the 'to be filed' rack.

Matt spends lunch in the library, working on homework that was assigned earlier, and checking over the homework due later. He ignores the gnawing hunger pains, he's entirely too good at that these days. He snarls a quiet 'fuck off.' to whoever sits across from him in the middle of a more intense muscle spasm.

"You know, I don't really get the little obsession my buddy seems to have with you." Rian Dawson, a generally well like guy who seems just a little too cocky for Matt's taste, states from across from him. "I mean, he's been obsessed with you for years, from afar at least. It's only now that he feels the need to get to know you. Personally I think he's wasting his time." He pauses, really lets his words sink in, lets them saturate Matt.

Matt just flips him off, he really doesn't care right now. "This year," Rian continues, ignoring the gesture, "He wants to save you, he's like Harry Potter, he's got a saving people thing. I don't think he can save you though, you don't seem like you want to be saved. Maybe you should let him down gently." The chair Rian's sitting in scrapes across the wood, and it spurs Matt into action.

"You're right, I don't want to be saved, there's nothing that I need saving from." His eyes feel a little heavy, and his body feels a little too light when he says it, and the words hang like a blanket in the air.

With sad eyes and a shake of his head Rian sighs, "If only you could see the way you look to the outside world; if only more people cared enough to make you see." In that same cocky tone he always uses, but it's a little more sad than normal.

Matt's last class of the day is choir, a class he had signed up for when he actually cared about singing, he shares the period with Gaskarth, and they spend most of the class sharing heated glares. Matt isn't even sure what they're fighting about at this point, he's just so used to doing it that he doesn't even pay an ounce of attention. When the final bell rings and all the sheet music is collected, the class leaves, and Gaskarth corners Matt in hall.

"Stop fucking with him," is all that he snarls, before he's gone. Matt's not even sure what he's done.

----

Matt's mom is gone for the weekend, she leaves a fifty on the counter so he can order pizza or something. He tucks it into his wallet and spends the weekend in bed curled in on himself. He ignores the pile of homework in his bag for the first time all year. Rain patters the window all weekend, but Monday morning dawns bright, sunny, and humid as hell. He forces himself to drive when he realizes that his muscles are barely able to support him walking down the stairs.

Jack is still ignoring him, but Matt can still see the concerned looks that he throws at him every ten seconds. He supposes that they're warranted, he didn't shower all weekend and he's still wearing the same thing he did on Friday. He's cold despite the heat, and the new fine hairs all over his body do nothing to help.

The dizziness hits when he bends over to put Patriski, Morgan's doctor’s note in her file, he doesn't have time to react when his feet 'slip' from beneath him and everything turns dark.

----

His eyes feel like lead weights, and it's all he can do to force himself to make them open. Bright white is all he can focus on when his eyes open, that and the smell of heavy disinfectant, it's sharp and nauseating. When he can stop focusing on the light, the sharp pounding in his head hits and it's all he can do to bite his tongue and not scream out.

A door opens, and sharp echoing footsteps get closer and closer, they pause, then the ruffle of something being moved reaches his ears, Matt could look over and see who it is, but he doesn't.

"Oh, good, you're awake you stupid fucker." It's Jack, it's always Jack. There when his own mostly absent mother isn't. "You wanna talk about how you're fucking idiot first, or what the fuck you were thinking? Please, keep in mind, you have .5 seconds to decide before I decide for you." He pauses for a second and takes a deep breath, Matt doesn't say anything, instead he's looking at the stark white ceiling.

"Fine, you don't wanna start, how about I start. So here I was sitting in the office watching my buddy Matt file like normal, sure we weren't talking, but you know he can't get his head out of his ass, and all the sudden I watch him collapse. I thought oh my god he's fucking dying, and if he wasn't all ready dead, the blood pouring out of the gash on his head was for sure going to kill him, so I'm freaking out trying to wake you up and put pressure on the wound all at the same time, and Mrs. Carrowh's is calling an ambulance."

Jack pauses and Matt can hear the pain in the deep shuddering breath he takes in, "You were so dehydrated and your blood sugar was so low that they had to run a saline drip and feeding tube before they could attend to your head wound." Jack snorts, "You're bleeding large amounts of blood from a three inch gash on your head, and they have to attend to your dehydration and low blood sugar first because you were on the verge of dying."

All Matt can think about is the feeding tube, and how it must still be attached and how every second it's attached to him it's making him take in unneeded calories and how he has to get it out, and when he tries to move his arms they won't budge. Jack seeing his struggling puts a warm hand on Matt's, "They figured that once you heard about the feeding tube you would try to take it out, they decided that it would be in your best interest to restrain you. That way you couldn't hurt yourself."

The ‘anymore than you already have’ is left unsaid.

----

In his extended stay in the hospital Matt gains seven pounds, Alex Grieco and Alex Gaskarth visit twice, Jack only leaves his side when the nurses and his mother drag him out of the room, and his mother couldn't manage to get out of her business trip to come see him. It doesn't hurt as much as he thinks it's supposed to.

Jack brings his homework on his last day in the hospital, it's not much, a few worksheets and a paper, and his stay ends on a three day weekend. He's finished before visiting hours are over, and Jack just stares at him slack jawed.

"One day," he starts, "you will have to teach me how to do that." Matt grins, and shakes his head.

Jack will never master the technique of focusing on what is in front of him and nothing else.

When Matt gets home mid-morning Saturday, there is a note on the counter from his mom and a fifty for take-out. It's not like he hadn't expected it. It still stings all the same. He takes the bill and stashes it with all the money she leaves that he never uses.

Matt's in the middle of his mom’s Flat Abs Pilates video, trying to lose the extra weight he had picked up in the hospital when the doorbell chimes. He answers the door with sweat pouring down his face and his shirt partially over his head. Matt can hear a gasp and something fall to the ground.

"You know in the hospital, they had you in that gown and it didn't look this bad," Alex's voice cracks, "How could no one have seen this? How could no one have stopped this?"

"Nobody noticed because there nothing wrong, what the hell are you doing here anyway?" Matt crosses his arms and worries his lip.

"I wanted to see if you wanted to get out and do something fun."Alex grins lightly.

"I don't...I don't...I don't think I'm ready." He pulls out slowly, the words stretched and pulled like taffy.

"Nobody's ever ready, you just have to jump and hope you fall on your feet." Matt suddenly realizes that they aren't talking about a night on the town anymore.

-----

Matt's picking at his extra cheese, extra sauce, double pepperoni, sausage, and bacon pizza with barely held contempt. Alex is on his opposite, starting on his third slice, grease dripping down his fingers and a small line of sauce on his chin. Matt pulls a piece of pepperoni off and sticks it on his tongue, it tastes too salty and the grease is a little too much. He chews it and swallows anyway. Alex beams from across him.

"So why do you do it?" Matt had been waiting for that question since he woke up in the hospital. It didn't make it any easier to answer.

"I can still remember the way my mom looked when my dad walked out, her hair was just a little frizzy and she deflated just a little. There was no crying, no screaming, just acceptance that it was over. It felt like my entire life was spinning out of control. I couldn't, can't stand it. So, at first it wasn't because I thought I was fat, or that other people thought I was fat, it was a way to control everything that I couldn't control. It got worse when my mom changed jobs and started to travel more. Now I just can't stop."

Alex grips his hand, and in the most tone deaf way sings. "Even the brave may depend on someone, the moon only shines with the help of the sun." And yeah, Matt can understand the sentiment.

"Are you saying you want to be my rock in the hard time in my life?" That's what his therapist had called it, a 'hard time in his life.' Matt isn't so sure that he's going to look back at this and think about how shitty it was of him to think that he'd never get over it.

"That's exactly what I'm saying," Alex whispers softly. He seals the deal with a kiss.