Chapter Text
A week ago, Jay was workshopping ways to tell Matt that he couldn’t handle him anymore. Not that he’d exactly been handling him up until then either, but it was maybe something like he couldn’t handle not handling him anymore, the cumulative effect of years of overstimulating his already frayed brain chemistry with excessive off-label amphetamine use by way of living with an insane person finally catching up to him. It’s not like it wasn’t fun, because it was. It’s not like he really had a problem with anything Matt did, either.
He used to really think he did sometimes, those times when they’d fight in tones so serious the words sounded like they were coming from somewhere else, some other people, a TV set left turned on in another room with an old cable network soap opera rerun playing. This created a dissociative, sort of out-of-body effect in Jay that would let his anger take the wheel entirely, and neither of them fettered by any sense of morality or obligation to the institution of ‘civility’ (Matt never was), they would escalate every conflict to its natural conclusion.
Having knocked the breath out of each other or drawn blood or elicited a sound from the other so uncool and embarrassing that they finally felt bad enough or scared enough to sit huffing on the ground, prodding at tender spots where bruises would eventually form, they would start smiling, and Jay swore he could feel the same fucked up aura of adrenaline and dopamine fizzling between them, like they’d taken the same drug and were aware without needing words that it was hitting them at the same time. Then they’d return to calm and normalcy until the pot boiled over again.
No, lately he hadn’t felt that pot even start to simmer – he’d started to suspect the flame underneath it wasn’t even lit anymore. The problem wasn’t that he was mad at Matt or had any problem at all, it was that newfound zen-like acceptance and weird love of his fucked-up situation. That was the problem. He was afraid the flame under the pot was off but the gas was still leaking out and making him slowly go loopy until he’d eventually die in fits of giggles held down under Matt’s arms (what the fuck?).
He missed the twisted comfort he used to feel when he was driven into rages by Matt, getting annoyed by him when he did annoying things and scared when he acted crazy, because he was crazy, and he knew that as long as he hated Matt for being crazy that Jay, at least, was normal, and reasonable. He had an out, and if things got too much, he was sure he’d react strongly enough in either anger or fear to pull out. He could constantly hang out with his crazy roommate, but he was still normal and better than him and he had the high ground, really he was just appeasing Matt by being good enough to stay, anyone else would’ve left really.
The problem was that at some point he stopped paying attention and lost that high ground. Nothing that Matt did that used to make him think to himself 'God, I’m really hanging out with this guy all day?' even struck him as anything at all anymore, it was just routine. He was ashamed to admit it, but sometimes the worst of it, the stuff that really made him think Matt was a freak, was kind of his favourite stuff about him now.
Matt never wanted him to go anywhere on his own and got weird about it if he did, going either mopey or snippy or just plain mean (stopping Jay in the hall after he went out to say “your pores look kind of fucked today man, do you even try to splash your face with some water before bed or do you just straight up not think about your skin, I bet you don't, that’s so funny, you're a disgusting guy, you know that?"). 6 months ago this made Jay feel like a songbird trapped in a cage with clipped wings, being fed little nuts all day as his reward for not being able to fly away and destroy the local ecosystem with some lady bird from the pet shop. Matt would probably buy the expensive pine nuts he liked, the kind his mum used to make pesto with that Jay would eat by the fistful until she found out and shouted at him.
Lately, he didn’t really try to go anywhere without Matt anyway. He’d put on his jacket and shoes to go out and see Matt coming to do the same and instead of feeling weirded out that he hadn’t even asked if he could come with him, he’d just be glad he didn’t have to expend his energy by calling Matt from across the apartment.
Matt would talk, a lot, to the point where sometimes Jay felt an odd sense of familiarity when he’d see a meth head on the street ranting to himself and half attempting to engage passersby in conversation. He was normally happy to sit and listen to Matt, he’d even had passing images of them as two bums together, Matt chatting away as he lit the giant oil drum they were using as a bonfire while Jay silently chewed on a pizza crust and played beats with spoons. One time he told Matt about that thought and he'd gone on an excited tangent about how they should become like the two-man version of Stomp, abandoning the idea abruptly when he realised you couldn’t have a piano in Stomp and that Jay would probably die of exposure if he was homeless (Jay resented that comment but didn’t bother arguing).
When they watched Clerks together, Matt had compared them to Jay and Silent Bob (and also Dante and Randall, and also Dante and his girlfriend when she brought him the lasagna to work, but those comparisons didn’t stick), saying Matt was Jay, which was funny to them, and Jay was Silent Bob. He hadn’t minded that, Silent Bob was the cooler one after all, and he had that hard hitting line of wisdom at the end, so Jay was fine with being the stoic and wise one while Matt was the chatty idiot.
Sometimes, though, Matt’s talkativeness really made Jay want to stop being his friend. There were weeks when he felt he couldn’t get a single fully formed thought out without being interrupted, and times when he thought Matt felt put out by the mere idea of him saying anything at all, of Jay deigning to interrupt his divinely bestowed stream of consciousness. It had occurred to him that maybe Matt didn’t really give a shit about what Jay thought and just wanted a captive audience. Jay didn’t want to give him his captivity. Sometimes it just took him some time to form his thoughts, figure out what he wanted to say and get it out properly, and Matt fed on these moments of deliberation or hesitation like they were his fuel, as if the only thing he needed to have a truly great thought or idea was for Jay to start trying to say something and take a momentary pause for breath.
They fought about that once too, and it wasn’t a good fight, Matt kept saying “it’s so not true Bird, it’s really not fucking true” over Jay’s shouts while he tried to ignore tears burning into the corners of his eyes because if he thought about it he would’ve probably killed himself, and then went to storm out of the apartment before Matt wrestled him to the ground at the top of the stairwell right at the edge of the first step, and they nearly tumbled down and both died but Jay had caught his arm on the second step in time and was (very literally) single-handedly holding the weight of both their bodies while his heart beat so hard he swore he could feel his ribcage struggling not to shatter against the force of it.
He'd finally shouted at Matt to get off him when the pain in his arm began to eat away at him, and they lay side by side looking at the ceiling, basking in the adrenaline, and Jay felt that good good feeling again, like Jay was Matt’s teenage heroin girlfriend, they’d both just shot up together, and were lying somewhere like vagrants on the come up. He’d wanted to stay close to him then, keep their limbs touching, so he knew they were experiencing it together, and they lay there for a while until their panting turned into riffing when Matt had said “I got the DVD for the live action Jack Frost when I was walking by a yard sale like, a year ago, dude we have got to watch that, have you seen that shit? It’s insane” And Jay deadpanned “it’s July” and they burst out laughing because they absolutely fucking knew they were about to watch Jack Frost in July.
They never apologised to each other but Jay also kind of didn’t care anymore. As fixated as he once was on Matt’s occasional displays of blatant disrespect for Jay and his tendency to hog the airwaves of the apartment, he had also started letting himself notice moments when Matt was completely keyed in on what he was saying, listening sometimes weirdly intently, and responding so kindly and sincerely to stuff that Jay knew was absolutely some of the dumbest shit he’d ever said that he half wondered if Matt thought he was just a retard who he should cut some slack, but it did feel good when Matt looked at him with genuine admiration and said “great idea Bird” like he was astounded by Jay’s genius in response to some half-baked comment that even Jay thought was probably stupid.
Jay also noticed that Matt did things just because Jay mentioned them off handedly (“I haven’t had purple soda in years, like the kind that makes your tongue purple? What even was that? It was good with pizza” and Matt came home 3 days later with miraculously the right brand of soda and a large cheese pizza and they’d pretended it was a school pizza party and purposefully cut the slices really thin and laughed their asses off about it – “we- we need to make sure there’s enough for everyone in the class Bird”)
Honestly, Matt was probably kind of obsessed with Jay, and he thought he’d probably be justified in being scared of him. He kind of used to be. When Matt had pretended to hang himself in their living room, as funny as that was, it felt weirdly honest too, like confirmation of something Jay had already suspected, that Matt would kill himself or something if Jay left him. He half worried there’d be some insane murder-suicide situation at some point, like Matt would go full “if I can’t have you no one can” after catching him with his pants down in a hotel room, and Matt is his mob wife, and he shoots Jay with his own revolver, and then his mistress, and himself. Jay wondered if he got iced by the don, would mob wife Matt jump into his grave in hysterics at the funeral and demand they bury him in there with the casket? Maybe. Probably.
It was honestly fucked up how Jay was encouraging this situation, but it didn’t occur to him all the time that he was egging on someone who was probably committed to him to an unhealthy degree. They never negotiated their situation, their future, their level of commitment to one another, and he had probably let Matt believe whatever he wanted to, but most of the time he just felt like he was having fun hanging out with his friend so he rarely felt a need to stop it.
But recently, the thought had been scaring him. It wasn’t necessarily Matt that scared him, but himself, his own complacency. Their whole time living together he felt safe in the knowledge that he was reasonable, he was self-aware and cognizant of the state of his living situation and relationship with Matt, if it got too fucked up, he would be aware of it and bothered enough to leave immediately, so he could do whatever he wanted for now because he'd trusted himself to make the right choices when it came down to it. He wasn’t sure of that anymore.
He still felt annoyed sometimes, or mad, or even kind of scared, like he was actively living with a real crazy bitch who could snap at him one day, or otherwise would just gradually drain his life force away like a vampire until he was a greyed husk, but he somehow didn’t care about that at all anymore. He imagined husk Jay and truly felt nothing. He was fine with Husk Jay! His built-in fail-safe had failed and if he didn’t intervene now he would never transcend beyond his current standard of existence; it might even get worse.
A week and a half ago, Jay stumbled on an opportunity to write a spec score for the new Madagascar movie. A week and a half ago, he locked in on the knowledge he could actually, really, just be Jay, and not Matt & Jay. So a week ago, Jay was trying to figure out a way to let Matt down easy, un-embed him from his flesh a bit, loosen the grip of Matt’s teeth on his calf enough that they could just be normal friends, who hang out, and aren’t embroiled in a bizarre psychodrama with each other, so Matt doesn’t think they’re more than they are, that Jay feels the same intense way he does, that they’re going to get buried together and have one headstone: Here Lies Jay McCarrol (1983-2065) and His Best Friend Forever, Matt Johnson (1985-2065) They Will Be Roommates In Heaven :D
If Jay executed this plan successfully, he had thought, then he could get out before it’s too late, and meet some nice mentally stable people somewhere who drank red wine. That’d be good. That felt smart. He’d still be Matt’s friend, have a great time hanging out, see each other a lot, but Matt’s shit could just be Matt’s shit and his toxins wouldn’t be pumping into Jay’s blood stream like they were conjoined.
He remembered when Matt showed him Dead Ringers by Dave Croner or something like that (“dude this guy’s stuff is like, the wildest shit to come out of Toronto, how do you not know about this”) and at the end the hot twins attempted a procedure to “separate Siamese twins” using some freaky metal tools. That’s what Jay was doing. Those twins in the movie died, but like, Jay wasn’t those guys in the movie, they were on drugs. His mind flashed to an image of him and Matt fighting on the ground, Matt wailing at him, and Jay smiling, smiling, unable to hold it back, his chest surging with warmth, and then punching Matt awkwardly but hard in the nose, knocking him off, and closing his eyes to bask in the feeling of his shoulder hurting where he landed on it when he fell to the ground, feeling like he’d just popped five Lotsa Fizz candies into his mouth at once. He swore Matt was smiling too, he brushed his hand against his arm, he hoped it didn’t seem intentional. He hated him. He had to get out of here.
Then Matt pretended to go to Cuba and Jay watched Star-Trek and Buena Vista Social Club when he was meant to be writing his spec score, which was meant to be his first step towards escaping the codependent existence Matt was building around him.
He honestly hated working, every moment he was trying (or pretending to himself to be trying) to do the spec score felt like he was Bart Simpson being forced to copy the same sentence over and over again in detention. It was torture and made him feel useless and pathetic and probably a bunch of other negative adjectives too. When Matt was giving him stuff to watch and doing his weird bit on Jay it was like he was being given life saving intervention, like the dopamine receptors in his brain all suddenly woke up at the same time. Bart no more, everything was coming up Milhouse!
Jay hadn’t gotten very far in his preparation to tell Matt whatever he was going to tell him, probably just a reiteration of every fight they’ve ever had that he'd deluded himself into thinking would go differently. Jay hadn’t gotten very far in his spec score either. He hadn’t gotten very far at all. Probably the same as he had gotten in his speech to Matt, which was nothing. That was fine. Husk Jay was nothing to him. One must imagine Husk Jay happy.
Matt came home, and they sat on the couch and watched The Wire and ate weird snacks he must’ve gotten from one of the Cuban stores he went to somewhere in Toronto to try and fool Jay. He couldn’t really focus on the show, he wasn’t sure if he even really liked it, and his brain was kind of fried from juggling the guilt of not writing his spec score and watching a bunch of other stuff and having his weird fake Cuba phone calls with Matt, so he just sort of lay there and let thoughts drift out in and out of his mind slowly like leaves floating down a lazy river, which seemed fine with Matt, who looked tired too (weird, but maybe he was still acting like he just got back from Cuba).
They were both kind of just sat there in a vegetative state – Jay pictured them with their mouths hung open and little streams of drool coming out like cartoon characters – and in that moment he felt completely and utterly blissed out. Maybe Matt was keeping him on a secret morphine drip. Maybe the five minutes of suffering trying to write songs for Madacascar 2 had shown him how good he normally had it, like a soldier returned from 'Nam with a new perspective on his banal life.
He imagined if Matt had actually gone to Cuba, and if he had stayed there, left Jay on Queen Street and called him on the phone from Havanese clubs semi-regularly to talk about movies or video games, and Jay would put on those movies or video games to feel close to Matt, to feel like he was spending time with him, and he wanted nothing more than to never have to do that, as fun as it was to pretend for a day. He was actually so fucking happy, every day really.
Maybe, he thought, that’s what this complacency was. Maybe he wasn’t becoming a victim of Stockholm Syndrome, blinded by Matt’s charms into not caring about all his flaws, and the latent dangers of Matt Johnson, maybe he was just happy. Did Stockholm Syndrome feel like happiness? Could it really be that bad of a thing if it did? He guessed that heroin also was meant to feel like pure happiness, and that was definitely bad, he’d seen Requiem for a Dream. His mind melted into a memory of Matt yelling at him at the top of his lungs in the kitchen for refusing to go to his great-grandmas funeral with him (because really, why was she even still alive to begin with, and he hated funerals and didn’t want to see Matt’s family), and Matt just yelled and yelled until Jay got more and more scared and sad and upset and then the warm feeling in his chest started to swell and he had to fight back a smile again even though he wasn’t happy, he wasn’t, he felt like shit, and he felt the fizzing between them again, and realised that maybe Matt was playing a character now too, keeping it going so that the chemical energy would keep flowing, and flowing, and he couldn’t tell what was real anymore, if the fight was still a fight, or if Matt had gotten his anger out and this had transitioned into something else. He kept fighting back too, and then he apologised, and he ended up going to the funeral. It was exactly what you’d expect a hundred-year-old lady’s funeral to be like, and Matt brought a DS they played in a stairwell for an hour. He remembered that he was happy then, too.
The Wire kept playing somewhere, maybe in the same room but maybe far away, and Matt was breathing ever so softly, like a much smaller creature than a man, as Jay drifted to sleep. He dreamt he was at the piano, playing a strange aimless song that sounded like a corny but beautiful backing track for running through a breezy spring meadow with a lover, and then it shifted into something angry and intense and hard and fast and strong and then back to beautiful and soft and then back to intense and hot and red and –
Jay woke up to darkness and the TV bluescreen. The first thing he realised was that he had a boner. Matt was asleep on the other couch, Jay guessed he’d probably moved over there at some point, and was extremely grateful for it. It wasn’t the first time Jay had gotten a boner from a music dream, he figured all creative people maybe got turned on by abstract thoughts and ideas like that sometimes. He’d be lying if he said he hadn’t sometimes kind of absentmindedly played his dick half hard while thinking about some tune he was working on, but it wasn’t serious and he wouldn’t count it as masturbation, sometimes music was just kind of sexual, and working on music could cause a sort of bodily flow of energy to circulate through him that stimulated, well, everything, but that’s just natural chemical reactions and electricity, probably, the thought kind of hurt his head.
This dream didn’t feel innocuous like that though, it felt dark and wrong, but in a different way from when he woke up from a nightmare because he hadn't felt terrible while dreaming, nor immediately upon waking up. He began to feel terrible the moment he realised he was hard. He felt like he was in a nightmare now, more awake than he'd ever been in his life, because he absolutely knew what he was dreaming about, he knew through the music, through the feeling of it, he knew he was dreaming about Matt.