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Prescription Caramel

Summary:

For every heartbreak I prescribe caramel. I know it hurts now: one day it won’t.

*

Matt and Max in Australia.

Notes:

Set in the Après universe because I couldn’t let go of Francine’s line, “For every heartbreak I prescribe caramel” and because, well, I’m a lech. And let’s all just accept that I’m taking over the M&M tag like a slime-mold.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Chapter 1: Matthias

Chapter Text

For every heartbreak I prescribe caramel. I know it hurts now: one day it won’t.

 

 

A long time ago, Matt told Max, if I move to the beach, I’ll grow out my hair, I’ll learn to surf. In 2020, he gets in a handful of lessons before lockdown. He finds an instructor through a woman he meets at Max’s bar: she knows someone who knows someone else who knows Jason, who’s from California.

Couldn’t you have stayed in California, to surf?

Naw, Jason says. Wife’s from Melbourne, from Dandenong, actually, but no one in America knows where that is. Jason shrugs: a man giving way before an onslaught of inevitability. What brings you here, buddy, besides chasing the waves?

 

 

The day after Max flew away from Montreal, temperatures dropped and ice spread over the world like impenetrable armor. Matt moved through autumn like a man on a frozen pond, afraid of his footsteps, afraid of falling and the cold, afraid to see what remained after the thaw. He saw splinter lines spreading, saw his life with Sarah reflected as if in a broken mirror, saw Mr. Courtemanche’s kindly face fracturing into the face of a funhouse clown. What am I doing, he asked himself, staying here, eating ground glass like snow?

In Melbourne there was no thaw, no gentle spring, only scorching heat; and smoke: the country was on fire, wildlife dying. On Max’s doorstep on Eirene Street after twenty-four hours of travel and four hours of uneasy sleep, he gripped Max and felt the heat gripping him in turn. The smoke made him cough. They tumbled inside, but inside there was no relief: in Melbourne there was drought and every day his skin was hot and lonely. On the flight over, his seatmate had fallen asleep and slumped against him, cheek to shoulder, and he had let her, just to feel it, the warmth and pressure of human touch. Max used to touch him in Montreal, knead him, quick and easy, but Max had stopped after the third time they had kissed, holding his hands up like a man under arrest, and in September before they said goodbye Max had only brushed him, tentative, knuckles rasping over his jacket before he pulled away; Max’s fingers were curled inward, pointing at himself, his palms.

Max was always touching his friends in Montreal, wrestling them, and Matt had interpreted the end of touch as the end of friendship but not the end of everything, if only he could find the courage to make the leap. Inside the shared house on Eirene, they were learning how to touch each other again. In daylight, Max kept his hands to himself; at night, he moved deliberately, raising Matt’s temperature until he thought he would burst or be boiled alive. And Matt, for his part, tried not to hold on too tightly, tried not to gouge.

 

 

The morning after Max took him to Port Melbourne Beach, he had opened his eyes to find Max watching him.

They were lying side by side, face to face. In Max’s room the blinds were broken and the sunlight was coming between the slats in burning slices. Max ran his finger along the edge of light, again and again, and picked up a thread of conversation as if they’d only just set it down. If you could read my mind, Max said, you wouldn’t like what you saw.

What would I see?

I don’t think grammatically, for one, Max said, grinning, no logic, you’d hate it. Then, getting up, changing the subject: Are you hungry? Do you want breakfast?

No, wait, he’d said. Come back. Tell me.

A breath. Max sagged back into the mattress; stared at him, blinking. Well, forget grammar, Max said eventually. I don’t even think in sentences. I don’t think. But I hear things. I hear my mother talking shit.

You hear all the horrible things people have said to you, he’d thought, panicked, you hear them echoing out of some dark cloud, some miasma, my voice is there too, and he’d put his hand on Max’s red cheek and said, forgive me.

Max had looked gut-punched. Of course I forgive you, he’d said.

It wasn’t enough. He said, I wish I’d never…I wish…

Reading minds and turning back time, Max had said, smiling in a way that leaked pain. What’s your third wish for the genie? Max could read his mind, was reading it; Max stopped smiling and touched him, slowly, methodically, dipping a fingertip into Matt’s bellybutton before reaching down.    

 

 

The night after Port Melbourne Beach, he moved into Max’s bedroom, where the air smelled like cigarettes and the sheets still smelled like sugar. A pair of discarded false eyelashes jutted from the carpet like the wings of a dead butterfly. Max went to work and Matt went to the corner store to change a wad of Australian bills into one- and two-dollar coins and spent the evening feeding Max’s bedsheets into the washing machine, over and over, waiting in the doorway with folded arms for each cycle to end. The washer became unbalanced and started to rattle; later, the dryer door jammed and he beat it with a fist until it shut. A tiny green lizard, a gecko, ran halfway up the wall and froze there, posing, and he took a picture and sent it to Max.

Are you doing the laundry? Max asked.

Just the sheets.

He had plucked the eyelashes from the carpet with his fingernails and held them to the light. Strips of glue extended from the lash-beds into thin air, ghostly. Stuck to each black fan were pieces of pink glitter and one or two real eyelashes, so blonde as to be translucent. Suddenly, it wasn’t enough to throw them into the garbage. He took them to the kitchen and washed them down the drain.

Ooh, Max’s housemate Ellie said, when she came home and found Matt vacuuming. We could get used to this.

 

 

In Montreal, he put away his suits and ties, sold the Jeep, stopped work; now, in Melbourne, he lives the way Max lives, which reminds him a lot of the way he lived in university, walking everywhere, taking buses and trams, ducking into doorways to hide from the weather, except here what he’s hiding from is sun and not snow; and, in the evenings, drifting in a haze of alcohol and pot. It’s starting to wear on Max, the drinking, the smoking, and the sunlight; when Max smiles at him his face erupts with tiny lines.

So, how’s it going, Rivette asks him, with lively interest. In December, in the old year, he and Rivette had made a deal: get your mother to check on my mother, my poor lonely mother, it’ll be good for them both. How was the arrangement treating Francine and Martine, he had called to ask, and Rivette had batted his question away like a cat annoyed by his audacity. Never mind Francine and Martine, how are you, Matthias? How is it, your riches to rags story? Your giving it all up for love story?

Hey, he says, be gentle. I’m fragile. Remember? Remember yourself that day: Griffintown, that supper, that crème caramel. You were on the verge of holding my hand.

Rivette sniffs: you sound much better now.

Really though, Rivette says. What’s it like?

He doesn’t mean, what’s it like to be in love. Not that Matt will tell him. (The answer to that question is, it’s unbelievable. The agony of it, the rush. My skin is pinched, my heart is pinched, and needles are run through them. I tingle, I gasp, I lie awake at night.) Rivette means, what’s it like to start over? To go from knowing everything, the order of your life, from waking to sleeping, from breakfast coffee to evening espresso, from annual review to promotion, birth to retirement, to knowing nothing? To find that your rising trajectory ends in a cliff and to throw yourself off that cliff? It’s like floating, he tells Rivette. I’m floating. I’m going to learn how to surf.

Surf? Rivette repeats it incredulously. Floating, I hope you float! You’re going to need flotation devices, think of that stunt you pulled at the cottage, don’t drown yourself before your happy ending comes. Little yellow floaties. Little yellow wings…

Are you done?

No, Rivette says. Get a speedo too, a yellow one, a real banana hammock.

I’m hanging up.

Wait! Tell Max we said hello.

We?

Myself and Liane, Rivette says, I’m at Frank’s, Frank’s at work. (Shitting Christ, Matt says, don’t talk about my dick around Frank’s mother, am I on speaker? Rivette, am I on fucking speaker?) Hi, Matthias! Liane says. Her voice hasn’t changed: kindly, wistful. He speaks to her for another minute, cringing, then says goodbye.

 

 

His surfing instructor, Jason, is blond, damp, and eager. Handsy and hands-on. He reminds Matt of someone, though Matt can’t think who. Let me help ya with that, Jason says, when Matt struggles with the back zip of his rental wetsuit; I got you, man, Jason says, and slits Matt open to the tailbone, opening him to the salt and sky like an insect in a chrysalis. Naked from the waist up, Matt strolls over the sand toward the surf hut, neoprene sleeves flapping.

See you Tuesday, Jason yells. His next client has arrived, a white-haired woman. Pink board, pink suit. Jason waves and shouts over her head. Keep practicing and don’t forget what I told you about not popping up on your knees.

When he gets back to the house on Eirene Street, Ellie is sitting on the futon eating instant noodles and watching a rom-com. He sits with her and thinks about what he used to do in the evenings, ruining his eyesight with redlines. The night was black by the time he remembered to look outside, the lights in the downtown office windows forming their own constellations. It isn’t nighttime yet in Melbourne; the sky is a deep velvety blue. Jude Law kisses Cameron Diaz. Ellie cups her own cheeks and sighs. Oh, God, they don’t make them like they used to, she says.

The sky turns purple. Ellie brushes her teeth. Black: Ellie goes to bed.

Blacker still: Max comes home: slow, swaying. Goes straight to the fridge.

“You smell like the ocean,” Max says, in passing.

“You smell like beer.”

“Had a spill.” Max gestures. Want one? He shakes his head. Max cracks one open anyway and joins him on the futon. “So,” Max says, “do you like it?”

“Like what? Be specific.”

“Asshole,” Max says mildly. “Surfing.”

“It isn’t surfing yet,” he says. “I can’t stay on my feet. I paddle. Like a dog.”

“You’ll get there.”

Max is tired, dreamy, distant. His eyes are unfocused and his mind is somewhere else. He drinks and he jiggles his leg. Their knees are touching, hairs scraping. Matt thinks about his wetsuit, his cold wet knee, his kneecap studded with grains of sand.

“My instructor says…” he begins. My instructor, Jason…no, forget it, good night.

“Oh,” Max says, startled. “Good night.”

 

 

Ellie comes to the beach with her friends. They cheer him on. They call his name: Matthias, Matthias!

Girlfriend? Jason asks, bright-eyed.

No, he says. He doesn’t elaborate. I do group and partner packages, Jason says. Thanks, he says, I’ll let her know.

He wipes out again and again. Over and over. Cowabunga, baby, Jason yells, in complete sincerity. On the sand, he puts his hand on Matt’s hip. Bend like this, he says. No, deeper. Deeper, deeper—good.

 

 

Saturday, January 25: his birthday. Max bakes Matt a cake, takes him to the botanical gardens, and brings him home to jerk him off tenderly, kissing him the entire time. He returns the favor and falls asleep. When he wakes up Max is gone, tending bar: Saturdays are lucrative; the manager likes Max, gives him all the best shifts. His phone buzzes, and he looks at it, heart jumping: it’s Sarah saying happy birthday. I love how much you respect me, Sarah had said once. I love that you never pressure me. But Matt, you’re allowed to ask.

How are you, my darling, my one love, Francine had asked that morning. I sent you a little something, has it arrived?

Not yet.

I don’t think much of this Outback postal service, Francine had said. (He had said, exasperated, it’ll get here, this isn’t Crocodile Dundee, Christ.) There was something for Max too, another little something, she had refused to say what.

Where Sarah was concerned, Francine had always been ready to scold him. Aren’t you working too much? Aren’t you neglecting her? Matthias, that’s no way to treat a woman who loves you. But she asks after Max the way she used to ask when they were children, oozing maternal concern. She wants to know how he eats, how he sleeps. Do you understand, Maman? Matt wonders. What I’m doing and why I’m here? This stay of mine, it’s not an extended sleepover. We’re doing more than building pillow forts. Not much more, but more.

He can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times Max has fucked him. Maybe it’s indifference; maybe it’s just being thirty. Max turned thirty in October; Matt had wished him a happy belated birthday by text and received no reply.

 

 

Saturday, February 2. Matt stands up on the board once, hoots like a Tusken Raider in triumph, and promptly falls off, smashing into the water. He and Jason paddle to shore together. Back on the sand, Jason whacks him hard between the shoulder blades, a meaty wet slap, then grabs him and ruffles his hair.

“Fuck yeah, dude,” Jason says. “That’s what I’m talking about.”

Today, Jason strips to the waist with him and follows him to the hut. Meeting the wife for dinner, Jason explains. Early Valentine’s Day date. It’s ten years tomorrow, can’t believe it. Hey, teach me some French, quick. Gotta keep the romance alive.

He imparts a few phrases and makes Jason repeat after him. I love you, you’re my world, my everything, I’ll follow you to the ends of the earth.

“Gonna trust you didn’t just teach me how to say I want to fuck livestock.”

“No guarantees.”

Jason guffaws and hooks him around the neck. “You know what we call this in English, we call this a knuckle sandwich. Au bout de la terre?” He says it like this: oh boot day la tear.

Jusqu’au bout de la terre.”

“Jesus,” Jason says. “I’ll stick to je t’aime.”

He releases Matt and heads to the showers. Matt heaves his board out of the sand. The summer light is blinding, eternal; he feels suspended in crystal. He turns and almost knocks Max over.

Coliss,” he says. His heart pounds. “What are you doing here?”

“Ellie said I should come check you out,” Max says. There’s something dazed about his expression, something bewildered. Even in the shade of the hut, his face looks hot and painful and sunburned. “She said you were getting good.”

“That’s nice of her,” he says. “Did you see me fall on my ass fifty times?”

“No.”

“Do you want to see it?” He has fifteen minutes left on his rental. Enough for a final wipe-out. “Get your phone ready, I’m sure the gang will appreciate the footage.”

Silence. He gives Max a look; Max looks back, blank.

“Okay, esti,” he mutters. “I’ll rinse off.”

 

 

He passes Jason on the way in. Jason’s already dressed, wet hair slicked back. She’ll divorce me if I’m late again, Jason says. Good luck, he says.

He finds a spot on the bench between a pile of discarded towels and a beach bag, squeezes his phone out of its waterproof bag, and drops it. When he straightens up, Max is in front of him, closing the door.

“That’s supposed to stay open,” he says.

Max stares at him and turns the deadbolt.

The noise goes through him like electricity. His heart stops and starts again. Max, he says. Max, they have a key. But he’s already lifting his head, his mouth. Max stands between his legs and holds his skull like he wants to crush it, digging his fingers into Matt’s scalp. Before he kisses Matt, he bites him hard.

 

 

Ten minutes later, Katie from the surf hut unlocks the door. A man hovers impatiently behind her. She looks perplexed. She scans the room. Max is washing his hands. Matt is folded over his knees, his wetsuit around his ankles. Droplets slide down his naked back: sweat or water. He bunches a towel over his lap before he greets her.

Everything okay, she says. Paul says he heard shouting.

Yeah, Matt says.

Jason head out already?

Yeah. He watches Max dry his hands and walk into the white-hot sunlight.

 

  

The glare fades. The sun sets. Max doesn’t go to work. He follows Matt into his bedroom and locks the door again. I thought you came here to be with me, Max says.

I did, he says.

Then beg me, Max says. Beg me to fuck you.

Ellie, he says. She’s home: singing in the living room and painting her toenails.

Fuck, Max says, red-eyed, I don’t care, I don’t give a shit. I want her to hear you. I want the whole street to hear you. On the beach, on the bench by the showers, he had groaned when Max bit him and cursed when Max yanked his wetsuit down and wormed a spit-slick finger behind his balls, and Max had said, go ahead, yell, I want that fucking surf instructor to hear you, I want him to break down the door and come in and see you cumming on my fingers. What, he’d said, too surprised to say anything else, and Max had shouted, you heard me. When I took you to the beach you begged me, Max says; Port Melbourne, you begged me, why haven’t you said anything since, beg me to fuck you, do it. Do it, please.

He lies down and begs and Max fucks him, pinning Matt the way he might pin a wriggling eel. There’s nothing deliberate about Max’s touch now. His grip is desperate, sometimes clumsy. His cock is too dry and hurts, but Matt clings to him anyway, moaning; Matt holds Max as tight as he can and scrapes him with his fingernails.

 

 

The smell of burning wakes him. He jogs into the kitchen to find Max sucking on two fingers and swearing at a pot. There’s a bag of sugar on the counter, a carton of cream, a book with a broken spine lying flattened under measuring cups. The air is acrid: sweet ash. He opens a window. What are you doing, Christ, he says.

Oh, I, Max says. I, this book, this cookbook. Your mom sent it.

He glances at the book. The old yellowing pages. It’s his mother’s dessert bible, the one she swears by, the one thing, she says, she made sure to take from the old house the night she left Ronaldo. There’s another package on the counter by the sugar, wrapped in blue paper and tied with brown string: his birthday present.

Are you, Max says, hesitant, are you okay, last night, did I hurt you, did I…

I’m a little sore, he admits.

I’m sorry, Max says. He looks like he’s going to cry. He swallows and starts to stutter. She wrote me a note, Francine. A note, a letter. Prescription caramel. I don’t know what it means.

He says, whatever it means, I don’t think she meant, burn down the house.

Matt, Max says, wavering.

He takes Max’s hand and slides Max’s fingers into his mouth.

 

 

March.

Gésu, his mother says, you look like a strip of leather.

You sound disgustingly happy, Rivette says. Ugh, stop. No, I don’t want to talk about Frank. I don’t care what my mother told your mother.

Ellie says, do you think you could keep it down? Do you think you could try, for God’s sake?

Jason’s wife Miranda says, it’s so nice to finally meet you! Jason talks about you all the time. I think you might be his favorite client.

Max says, do you think they’re going to lock us down?

Matt says, does it matter?

 

Chapter 2: Maxime

Notes:

🙃

Chapter Text

You deserve everything, Rivette had told Max once. It had happened at the cottage, the summer before the summer he kissed Matt, the summer before the summer he left for Australia, in a rare moment where he and Rivette had found themselves standing apart from the group, sunning themselves on shore in the last rays of the afternoon while Frank and Shariff and Matt balanced on the dock like goalies and repeatedly dunked Brass into the water, grabbed him and threw him back in every time he tried to climb out, shouting, laughing, screaming—Maxime, you deserve everything.

What? he’d said, distracted; Matt was shouting at him.

Everything, Rivette had said, wine-drunk. Everyone deserves everything, but you most of all.

Max, get over here, Matt had shouted: Max, he’s escaping, don’t let him escape. He’s dragging me in, oh coliss! There was a tremendous splash as Brass hooked his hand around Matt’s ankle and tugged him in.

Max had finished Rivette’s wine for him, grinning, chugging. I deserve this, he had said, waving away Rivette’s protests, parrying Rivette’s arm, isn’t that what you just said? But in his heart of hearts Max knew he deserved nothing. Not this day, not this sunset, not Matt’s arm around his neck, later, as they staggered back to the house.

I don’t deserve this, he had thought, when he’d opened his door in Melbourne to find Matt waiting outside. Then he’d thought Matt should get something for coming all this way, and he had let hope and momentum carry them: into his house and into his bedroom, where they had kissed and fondled each other until Matt had fallen asleep. In the morning, hope and fear were the same emotion, soaring wax wings melting under the sun, an awful lurch. Matt had rambled about sexuality—his own, Max’s, Frank’s, for fuck’s sake—and visas and lawyers and Karine Mercier. Matt had said, you know I love you, and Max had told himself that Matt was there so it must be true.

 

 

Max knows what girls like and he knows what he likes and somewhere in the middle, he figures, he'll find what Matt likes. The night he takes Matt to Port Melbourne Beach, the night he fucks Matt for the first time, he feels Matt opening up for him and holds his breath, as anxious as he's ever been about performing well. Matt’s fingertips skate up and down his back, light as air. How was it, Max wants to ask, but they both fall asleep. In the morning, he wants to touch Matt’s cheek but strokes the pillowcase instead.

After Matt moves into his bedroom, they sleep together the way they always have, touching only accidentally, waking up in a warm sweaty pile, except now in the mornings Matt rolls toward him and thrusts blindly into his hand.

While Max is learning how to touch Matt again he's forgetting how to touch everything else. At work he drops glasses, spills ice; on the street he loses his bus pass in a gutter. Barflies buy him drinks, brush his knuckles; he comes home with the world fuzzy around its edges and stands gazing at Matt as he sleeps. He wishes that Matt had never come and that Matt had come sooner.

Max? Matt says, still half-asleep.

Shh, Max says.

 

 

Time passes. Matt’s hair gets shaggy and his beard, untrimmed, starts looking wild. In another life, Max would have teased him about it, would have elbowed him and said, you’d better do something about that, you coureur de bois, you Sasquatch, what’s Sarah have to say about this fur you’re growing on your face? I’m just looking out for your love life, dude. In this life, this Melbourne afterlife, Max thinks about the rasp of Matt's face against his face and flushes and says nothing.

Matt, keeping his promise to go outside every once in a while, signs up for surfing lessons. Now he wanders around the house with sand baked into his calves, smelling like the sea. His skin darkens, but the sun bleaches the hairs on his arms until they shine like gold. Max thinks about tickling them and doesn’t. He thinks about licking Matt’s forearms, one night after Ellie has gone to bed, and doesn’t.

Do you like it? he asks instead.

Be more specific, Matt tells him, I don’t know what ‘it’ is.

Asshole, Max says. I mean surfing. He touches their knees together, feels the acceleration of his heart. Matt’s leg is hot, firm and still against the nervous jigging of Max’s thigh. He gulps his beer and waits.

I’m going to bed, Matt says abruptly. It isn’t an invitation. He disappears into the bathroom. Max leans back on the couch; sighs; palms himself through his shorts.

 

 

He hadn’t told Ellie much about himself when he messaged her about her spare room, just that he was Canadian, that he was a bartender and fairly tidy and that he smoked but would be happy to keep it in the yard. Ellie had been friendly but formal and he had thought he wouldn’t see much of her, but the night after he’d moved in, he had come home from work to find her crying in the kitchen over a balled-up pair of socks. Her boyfriend had left her last week, she had explained, in such a hurry he’d taken just a suitcase. He wants me to box everything up to send to him, she had said, and I can’t, these socks, these stupid fucking socks, I can’t.

Max, tipsy, had said, fuck him. If he wants his things he can come get them himself. He can come on his hands and knees. Impulsively he had plucked the socks from Ellie’s hand and stuffed them into the garbage, and said, okay, what else, let’s gather it up, let’s burn it in the yard, and Ellie had laughed; the next morning, Max was hungover and Ellie was his friend.

He hadn’t told Ellie about Matt, either, about the mess he’d left behind in Montreal; not even about his mother. He had hinted, had said, if you knew what I did…

Did you kill someone? Ellie had said. No? Then no worries.

So Ellie had supported each and every of his short-lived flings, and when Matt appeared she had supported that too, with winks and nudges and insinuating comments. And date-night suggestions. When he’d said, Ellie, what about you, who are you swiping right on today, she’d said, oh, I’m taking a break, I’ve had enough of men. But what are you doing tonight, eh, you and Matthias?

A week into the dry spell, Ellie says, “Took my girlies to the beach yesterday. We saw Matt surfing.”

“Cool,” he says.

“I think you should check him out,” she says. “He’s getting good.”

“Oh yeah?”

She angles a look at him, a decidedly un-Ellie look, surprisingly stern. “Don’t just take my word for it,” she says. And she says, “I really think you should see for yourself.”

 

 

It’s important to be interested in your partner’s interests, Ellie says. So he goes. The sun is shining, the ocean glitters; he arrives squinting, trying to keep his eyes open against the glare, ready to admire Matt in his new element. But whatever he’d expected to see, to feel, it wasn’t this: Matt's instructor hugging him, whooping; this jealousy so thick and heavy that it slams into him like a black tide. It’s just like with Frank, he tells himself as he chokes. It’s just like with Frank, with Shariff, with Brass, that easy arm around Matt’s shoulder, that big toothy grin. When Brass yanked Matt into the water at the Rivette house you didn’t want to cut off his head, you just laughed. Laugh now: it’s funny. But he sees the way Matt leans into the hand that is placed on him. How Matt obeys its push and pull.

He touches the surf hut behind him, leans against it, scrubs his fingers against its splintering wood wall. He thinks of the way Matt shied from him a week before. He thinks, how dare you. He thinks, my heart’s going to burst.

Matt lopes toward him. Doesn’t see him: all of Matt’s attention is fixed on his instructor, on this blond amiable giant, Jared or Jason, Max forgets. Matt is grinning, chatting. Chatting in French, Max realizes, as his ears begin to ring.

Don’t be a fucking idiot, he tells himself. Millions of people speak French, speak joual, you’re not special. Millions of people have boyfriends. Millions of people fall in love with the boy next door. None of this is sacred. It’s statistics.

He watches Jared or Jason sliding his fingers into Matt’s hair. Shitting Christ, he thinks, and he thinks, vomit, do it, you have to puke or you’re going to explode, and he thinks, this is too much, too terrible; leave it, drop it, run away.

Then he thinks: where would I go? For fuck’s sake, I’m already at the end of the world.

Coliss,” Matt says, “what are you doing here?”

 

 

In the locker room behind the surf hut, he bites Matt’s lip until Matt gasps. He thinks, if I can’t have you, I’d rather die. I want, I want, I want. I’ll eat you up raw. I’ll swallow you whole. I’ll drag you into myself, into this void that is both heart and stomach, and then and only then will this wailing hunger stop.

What stops it is the noise of a key in the lock. Max springs back and looks at his hands like they’re covered in blood.

He can feel Matt staring at him. The swollen silence.

I’m sorry, he says. Fuck, Christ, sorry. So sorry. Sorry—

The door opens. He turns to the sink. The water erupts into the basin like a geyser, stinking, icy, and chills him to the bone.

 

 

On the tram back to Eirene Street, he has to sit, sick and shaky. Matt stands in front of him, quiet, holding a strap, blocking his sight.

Max…, Matt says.

He doesn’t answer. He looks at the hair on Matt’s toes, the sand. A few weeks ago, he’d told Matt, if you could read my mind, you wouldn’t like it; you wouldn’t like what you saw. Because in my mind is a monster. It deserves nothing and it wants everything. And its teeth are sharp.

Ellie greets them as they shuffle inside. He says something he won't remember later, takes Matt into his room, and locks the door. At the surf hut he had demanded, are you fucking him? Are you? Answer me, are you? Now he says, “I thought you came here to be with me.”

“I did,” Matt says, bewildered. And: “Ellie’s home.”

“I don’t care about Ellie,” Max says. “I don’t give a flying fuck. If you came here to give yourself to me, then do it. Then beg me.”

You’re going to leave me, he thinks. Now that you know. Now that you see. I’m all twisted up inside, I’m so fucked up. You’re going to leave me and then I’m going to die.

He looks at Matt with his vision blurring, and through the blur he sees that Matt is taking off his clothes and lying down, not just obediently but eagerly.

"Please," he says.

“Please,” Matt echoes.

 

 

He wakes at dawn to red shame and ten missed texts: his manager, Helen, asking him where the hell he is. Concerned at first, then angry, then concerned again. Matt is asleep beside him, sprawled on his stomach, his cock pinned to the mattress and his bare ass bluish in the light streaming in from the street. Spreading Matt while he fucked him, he had spat at his own cock and watched himself pounding the thick foamy trickle deep into Matt’s body, and Matt had reached back and clawed at him, at his thighs, crying out so faintly and rhythmically it was like he was hiccupping. He had known he was hurting Matt and hadn’t stopped, hadn’t slowed down.

Matt hadn’t asked him to. Matt had drifted somewhere beyond words; it was only at the end, when Max pulled out of him with a gush, that Matt had groaned, oh fuuuuck.

I’m sorry, he tells Helen. I’m okay. I’ll explain.

The eighth, ninth, and tenth texts are from Ellie. First an emoji blowing a kiss. Then a shocked face. Then, twenty minutes later: Jesus CHRIST Max. I’m opening tomorrow, can you give it a rest?

Matt sighs in his sleep: whuff. His forehead wrinkles, then smooths out. The light is on his cheek, in his parted mouth.

“I love you,” Max says. “I love you.” His voice cascades: falling gravel. I love you. I love you. Love you. Fuck. Love you. He wipes his face and climbs out of bed.

 

 

There are packages on the kitchen counter. He sees the Rosemont zip code. Recognizes Francine’s handwriting: Matt’s handwriting but smaller, neater. Chèr Maxime… He bends over her gifts, forehead to the paper, and breathes.

 

 

This dessert book, Francine explains in her note, has all of Matt’s childhood favorites. It is a joint Lamy-Ruiz treasure, stolen from the house of that heartless ogre, Ronaldo Ruiz. Just call me Indiana Lamy, she says. She hopes the book will arrive in time for Matt’s birthday, and that Maxime will take his courage in hand and attempt a recipe. You have the skill, she says. Remember how you and Matt made all those mud pies!

Her postscript is brief and mystifying: Prescription caramel.

There’s only one caramel recipe in the whole fraying binder, a sauce the book claims will go well with the devil’s chocolate cake on page 79. He goes to the 24-hour corner store with red eyes and buys the missing ingredient, heavy cream.

It’s six o'clock and balmy. Returning home, he crashes into Ellie on the doorstep. Sorry, he begins, but she sprints off, too harried to glare at him or give him a second glance. His manager is still asleep, and he wonders what he’ll tell her tonight. There’s nothing he can say except that he’s lost his mind. Back in the kitchen he discovers that mice have gnawed into Ellie’s bag of white sugar.

 

 

Matt rises with the sun. And he’s cheerful. He smiles at Max and stoops to lick burned caramel off Max’s fingers. Then he makes himself coffee and opens his present.

Francine’s birthday gift to Matt is a silk bathrobe, gunmetal blue. Matt drops it in a puddle on the counter, scalded, swearing.

“At least it isn’t lingerie,” Max says. His voice comes out raw, like he’s getting over a cold. Or, he supposes, like he’s been awake for an hour and a half, cleaning and cooking and crying into an inedible caramel sauce like the world’s most pathetic Cinderella.

Matt looks at him sharply.

He covers his eyes. This is your fault, he says. I don’t know how to live without you. I was learning how and then you showed up and ruined it and now look at me. Now look. If I miss work again I’m going to get fired. Christ and fuck.

Matt says, slow, soft, “Do you want me to go?”

He shudders.

“I just submitted my visa extension request,” Matt says, “but I can withdraw it.”

“Don’t threaten me.”

“I’m not threatening, I’m just asking.” Matt sounds raw too and he looks up; Matt is staring at him with his lower lip trembling. “I thought—last night—”

I hurt you, he says.

“I liked it.”

Fuck, he says, an explosion.

Matt says, I don’t know how to live without you either. So don’t ask me to.

 

 

He apologizes to his manager. He apologizes to his coworkers. He apologizes to Ellie, who shows him the Bose noise-cancelling headphones Matt gave her and says cheerfully, you could murder someone in your room tonight and I wouldn’t know.

Fuckin’ Moneybags, Brass used to call Matt behind his back. To Matt’s face, Max says, “You didn’t have to do that.”

“What’s the alternative?” Matt says. “Keeping it down?”

“Well, yeah.”

Matt shrugs at him. “You know that’s impossible.”

“Slut,” he says jokingly. “Oh,” he says, as Matt looks at him, gulping, wide-eyed, “see? You can be quiet.”

 

 

March.

Opeulaille,” Francine exclaims. “That hair!” Max looks at Matt, who looks back, rolling his eyes. “Don’t they have barbers in Oceania?”

“Mom,” Matt says, “it’s lockdown.”

“And? So? Don’t you have scissors?”

“I’m on leave,” Matt says, petulant.

“Oh, and you can’t cut your hair on leave? It’s against the rules?”

“Rules, what rules, come on…” Matt glances at him: sudden, shifty. “Anyway, Max likes it.”

Francine changes her tune immediately. “Oh, well, in that case…”

Matt nudges him. “You do, don’t you? Max?”

He does like it. He likes pulling it. Dragging Matt’s mouth to the root of his cock and holding him there until he gags. He did it last night and smeared Matt’s saliva all over his face. Rubbed Matt with the ball of his foot until Matt jerked and came on his sock.

The sock had gone into Matt's mouth, afterward, to muffle him. It hadn't worked, and neither had the Bose headphones, judging from the way Ellie had kicked the wall. That morning Matt had disappeared for an hour; reappearing with an apology millefeuille from some fancy patisserie in the CBD, far beyond their permitted 5-km radius, he had held a finger to his lips and slipped it inside her door.

He turns red; mutters, “I’m sorry.”

“Now, Max, why on earth are you apologizing? It’s a matter of preference, of course. I just think…”

Matt’s grinning at him.

“By the way,” Francine says, one of her dizzying topic switches, “did you ever make anything from that book of mine? The Lamy Bible? Now’s the time, isn’t it? I hear everyone’s doing sourdough. There’s no sourdough in the Bible, I mean the dessert bible, in the real Bible, probably, but I think—”

Maman,” Matt interrupts. “Prescription caramel, what does it mean?”

“Oh!” Francine flutters to a halt. “Oh, that. I was just…it was just…oh, well, look at you,” she says. “You don’t need prescription anything. You’re happy, I can tell.”

And you should be, she says. Don’t look away, Maxime. You should be. You deserve it.

 

Notes:

Thank you for reading! If you liked it, please reblog!

  • small playlist
  • (but I mostly listened to Lately on repeat)
  • See you Tuesday, Jason yells. His next client has arrived, a white-haired woman. This is absolutely alt-universe Priscilla.
  • Maxime, Maxime, get thee to a therapist, Maxime!

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