“Chill the fuck out, Miles, and cut him some slack. We know how he feels about Matt and he’s obviously hurting. The last thing he needs is you going into bossy daddy mode on him. He has the cape; you’re the disciplinarian. Fucking hell, why do I hang out with you two? Plus, there’s more important shit to discuss. I really want to know what it was like to fuck Matt. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I always wondered what it would be like to have some of that ass.” Oliver’s eyes went wide and Chance continued, “Not that I would have. Friend code and that shit but he’s gorgeous. Probably was a lousy fuck. Most of the extremely pretty boys don’t work real hard because they don’t feel like they have to.”
There was a pause, the room quiet except for the ticking of the clock on Chance’s wall before all three men let out loud laughter simultaneously. Oliver’s gut cramped, he laughed so hard; tears leaked from his eyes as he replayed Chance’s speech in his head. God, he loved these men. As much as he’d been hurting, this helped.
When he had finally settled down enough to speak, he said, “I needed that,” which he knew had been the reason Chance had said it. That was what they did for each other, all of them, and they always had. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind that they always would, either. They were so fucking lucky, all of them. But that didn’t mean he didn’t still feel the loneliness creeping through him. As much as he loved them, something was missing. It always was.
The emptiness was back, that vast barren space inside him that had always belonged to Matt.
Oliver sighed. “For a while there, I really fucking thought things could be different with us. That we could work.” What he didn’t say because he knew they wouldn’t believe him, was that he knew, somehow he fucking knew Matt loved him too. He saw it in the way Matt looked at him, felt it in the way Matt held him. The way he opened up to Oliver in ways he didn’t with anyone else. But Matt had been telling the truth when he said he was too afraid to let himself admit he loved Oliver. It didn’t matter what Oliver believed he knew, though. Even if Matt loved him, that just wasn’t enough.
Miles came over first and sat on his right, then Chance on his left. Oliver put his hand on Chance’s knee and his head on Miles’s shoulder and when he did, it made him even more sad, but not for himself, for Matt. Did he have this with anyone? This friendship that Oliver had with Chance and Miles. Yes, he’d had it with Oliver, but did he have it anywhere else? Did he have it in New York with Parker or any of his other friends? Because as much as they’d all hung out, the bond Matt had with Chance and Miles hadn’t been as strong as the bond Oliver had with them. He couldn’t imagine going through life without them by his side. Without always having people there he could lean on. His heart broke for people who weren’t this lucky…or who didn’t let themselves be.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Miles asked him.
“No,” he answered honestly. Talking about it was the last thing he wanted to do. “I don’t much see the point. We fought. He left.” The end. It wasn’t the ending Oliver would have chosen, but it was the one he received.
“And he should have left, Ollie. He should have,” Miles answered making Oliver tense up. “No, hear me out,” Miles continued. “I’m not trying to be a dickhead here but…I think it’s time to be honest with yourself. You know Matt better than any of us. Maybe you have more answers than we do, but even I know that there’s something going on with him. That there’s always been something going on with him on the inside.” Miles touched his chest. “Where no one can fix it but Matt himself. Not you, me, Chance, his family. No one but Matt. Until he does fix it, there was never a chance between the two of you because you would enable him, baby. You know you would. You’re a fixer and a caregiver, and you would have given him every fucking drop of who you are, and it wouldn’t have been enough because Matt has to heal Matt. Eventually, it would have eaten away at you, at who you are, and that’s always been my main problem. You would have ended up resenting him and hated yourself for it.”
Miles took a deep breath and then continued, “Matt needs to fix Matt, and you need to realize that you can’t be his or anyone else’s savior. The shit between the two of you—it’s not all on him, Ollie. You have to learn to put yourself first. You have to learn that while it’s okay to support people, you aren’t responsible for their happiness.”