Chapter Text
Catharsis
Noun:
- The process of releasing, and thereby providing relief from, strong or repressed emotions.
- To purge.
- as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary.
******
Part I
The living room is full of boxes – they span out in front of him like a sea made of cardboard, each a varying shade of brown: Rust, sepia, coffee, umber and (because he’s bored and feeling artistic) burnt sienna. The boxes cover every available surface in the room and Matty sighs quietly through his nose as the full weight of what he’s agreed to lands heavily on his shoulders.
For fuck’s sake.
He hears the front door opening in the hall and automatically moves out of the way as George enters the room carrying – you’ve guessed it – another fucking box . All the boxes in the room have names. Sensible names. Names like ‘bathroom’ and ‘kitchen.’ Very George names because George is, by his nature, a control freak so it makes perfect sense that he has labelled every fucking box ahead of today. Today which is – Matty sighs again, his shoulders slumping with the motion – moving day. Although so far the only things that they’ve moved have been cardboard boxes. Fucking millions of them.
A throbbing sensation is beginning in Matty’s left temple as George places the box he’s carrying (which is helpfully labelled ‘awards and shit’) carefully on top of another box labelled ‘spare bed sheets.’
“Why the fuck do you have so much stuff?”
It comes out harsh and George gives Matty a look that says ‘don’t start’ as he straightens up and stretches out his arms. Matty watches him as he takes his time raising his hands above his head, elongating his freakishly tall spine and pushing his palms upwards like he’s trying to lift the sky.
“I mean it – no one needs this much stuff,” Matty reaches out and goes to poke the thin line of visible stomach that has appeared with George’s movement and George buckles in on himself, smacking his hand away.
“Could you not?” he says, closely followed by, “I have a regular amount of stuff.”
Matty shakes his head and gestures vaguely at the sea of brown cardboard in front of them: “You live alone. This is not a regular amount of stuff. It can’t be.”
“Actually I have less stuff than the average person because I believe in minimalism Matthew,” George’s voice has an edge to it and Matty knows he should leave it, but he can’t.
He snorts loudly:
“There are approximately nine million boxes in this room mate. Nothing about you is minimal.”
“Are you going to help like you promised or are you just going to get in the way?”
Matty can hear the strain in George’s response. George is trying to be patient with him. Trying being the operative word. George has to try a lot. Matty wonders if part of the reason why George took up meditation is because of him and the obvious chaos he brings into George’s otherwise calm and “minimalist” life. He wonders if he should feel bad about that, but then his attention returns to the conversation at hand:
“Both, obviously,” he responds dryly and he knows he’s being unhelpful but he doesn’t care because really, why the fuck does George need so much stuff?!
George mutters something under his breath as he goes back out into the hall and Matty rolls his eyes, immediately throwing them up to the ceiling when they land on the boxes again.
Fucking boxes.
He sighs once more, pushing the air out of his nostrils forcefully. George is his friend. His best mate. But Christ almighty, he should have done what Ross and Hann did when George announced his moving date, which was immediately respond with an excuse. Ross was “away” and Hann pulled the new baby card which, alright, was a fair excuse.
“Wish I had a new baby,” Matty grumbles as he makes his way over to the nearest stack of boxes.
He hears George moving something that sounds heavy in the hall and he yells:
“Where do you want me to start?”
And George, sounding even less patient now shouts back:
“Whatever, just fucking do something!”
Matty picks up the box closest to him and sneers at it when he sees the label: ‘George’s Bedroom.’
“Who the fuck else’s bedroom would it be? Jesus ,” he breathes, but he shoves it under his arm and heads in the direction of the stairs anyway.
George’s new house is, Matty admits to himself as he ascends to the upper floor, pretty nice. It’s in the countryside and overlooks a field. The décor is very George – all muted Earth colours. He pauses on the stairs, looking out the large window and taking in the idyllic view of some sheep in said aforementioned field. He understands why George likes the house so much, although has George really thought about the dynamics of living this far into the countryside? Like, where the fuck is the shop? And what were you supposed to do at three in the morning when you’re five spliffs deep and the lust for McNuggets is strong?
He continues up the stairs, turning into the biggest room he finds, assuming that this is where George is going to sleep. A bed is already set up in the room and, because he has zero boundaries, Matty immediately drops the box he’s toting, kicks off his shoes and takes a running jump at it.
He yelps as he makes contact with the bed, the mattress bouncing beneath him, the headboard banging against the wall.
“Are you kidding me?”
His eyes snap upwards to see George standing in the doorframe glaring at him.
“What do you want me to do here mate? I couldn’t not jump on it,” Matty shrugs, as if it’s a valid excuse.
“Look, if you want to leave I can just do this myself,” George’s jaw is pulsing slightly now and Matty has known him long enough by this stage to know that he’s pissed off. Proper pissed off.
Matty immediately pushes himself up onto his elbows:
“I’m sorry, it’s just so fucking boring. WHY do you have so much stuff?!”
His voice is nasally and annoying and George gives him a frustrated look:
“Mate what will it take to get you to just stop messing and help me ?”
But they both know the answer to that question.
Matty watches as George puts down the random lamp he’s holding. Without saying a word, George disappears and Matty can hear him in another room, unzipping a bag, looking for something.
“We can’t get so fucked up we don’t actually achieve anything today,” George returns, bag of weed in tow.
Matty punches the air in silent victory as George moves around the bedroom, picking up the various tools he needs to roll one of his epic joints - a packet of tobacco, some skins, a hot pink lighter that Matty is eighty percent sure actually belongs to him. He ends by grabbing a large book on Japanese art out of a nearby box to use as a surface and then the bed shifts beneath Matty as George settles down and gets to work.
“You have the attention span of a goldfish, you know that right?” George says and Matty fakes offence as he lies back down on the bed, shifting his hips and making himself comfortable. Above him, a white ceiling stretches on forever like the arctic circle - a blank expanse of empty space.
The longer Matty stares at it, the more the lack of colour messes with his head. He waves his hand at the ceiling:
“What’s with this?”
“I don’t know what you want me to say. It’s a ceiling. It came with the house,” George sounds tired.
“You should hang a mirror up. Might make this room a bit more interesting.”
Somewhere above him George makes a disapproving noise:
“Hard pass.”
Matty laughs and then feels the softness of nostalgia bubbling up inside him. George, his best mate, has gone and bought a house. A proper house. A home . He finds himself getting a tad bit emotional as he voices his thoughts:
“Still can’t believe you’ve gone and bought a grown-up house.”
He knows George is smiling, even though he can’t see him in this position. He can hear it on the edge of his voice as he responds:
“You know I have actually bought a house before.”
“Yeah, but this is different. This isn’t an apartment and you have a garden and a driveway ,” Matty gesticulates for effect, “It’s a proper grown-up house.”
“I wasn’t aware that a driveway was the pinnacle of adulthood,” George says and then adds: “You have a grown-up house too by those lofty standards.”
Matty hears the click of a lighter and an inhale and he raises up and plucks the spliff directly out of George’s mouth, sticking it in his own and taking a long drag as George swats at him.
It’s true that his house does have a garden, but it doesn’t have a driveway.
“Yeah, but it’s not technically a grown-up house,” he exhales smoke, watching as the tendrils reach up towards the boring, white ceiling.
“How so?” George shifts beside him, laying back against the pillows and bringing his feet up onto the bed.
“Well it’s deeply impractical for starters. I’m fucked when I get older – how am I supposed to get up those concrete steps when my hips are in bits?” Matty frowns.
“You could always just pull yourself up via that ridiculous blue curtain,” George reaches out a hand and grabs the spliff back off Matty.
The blue curtain is, of course, referring to the ostentatious portiere that hangs over the top of his stairs. It was ridiculous really and he was forever tripping over it, but it added a certain showmanship to the house that appealed to him.
“You don’t like my blue drapery?” he turns his head, craning his neck upwards so he can give George a disgusted look.
“No one likes it. It looks stupid.”
“That’s cause you don’t know how to use it properly.”
“It’s a curtain Matthew,” George deadpans.
“No, it’s a medium for an entrance. You have to pull it back loudly. It declares your presence. It’s an artistic statement.”
“The only statement it makes is that you’re a twat,” comes George’s reply.
There’s a moment of silence and then the two of them collapse into laughter.
They pass the spliff back and forth and talk shit until inevitably they land on the topic of work. They’re currently back in the studio after some extended time off and there’s so many ideas to explore, so many styles to play with and, in George’s case, so many tiny adjustments to be made before what they’re working on is deemed worthy.
Eventually George finishes the spliff and pokes Matty with his foot:
“Will you shut up now and help me unpack?”
And Matty just scowls as he rolls off the bed and sinks to the floor because unpacking is really fucking boring but he also knows he did promise to help so he’s sort of stuck here until some of the boxes have been emptied at least.
His eyes land on the box he initially carried into the room and, deciding that there’s no time like the present to bore himself to death, he crawls towards it. He’s just about to open it when George appears out of nowhere, a long leg stepping over Matty and scooping up the box before Matty even has a chance to touch it.
Matty looks up at him suspiciously:
“What? Scared I’m going to find your collection of vibrators?”
George cackles:
“Nah mate, just don’t want you sniffing my underwear. Go unpack the office – I’ve put all the boxes in there.”
Matty gets to his feet with a beleaguered sigh:
“Alright, fine.”
George’s office looks like the inside of his head, in that it is a crazy mix of different objects that have no common theme to tie them together but somehow they make sense. So far Matty has found books on meditation, wanky art prints and various trinkets that George had picked up during their travels.
He frowns as he unwraps a large piece of amethyst and places it on the bookshelf in front of him.
A crystal, really?
George was becoming more ‘Age of Aquarius’ with each day that passed. At this rate he’d be brewing fucking herbal tea and cleansing their chakras on the regular. Matty grimaces as he pictures George trying to get them to all chant before heading out on stage or some such bollocks. He wouldn’t put it past him to be honest. He eyes the amethyst and then decides to be annoying. He pokes it with his finger, ensuring that it will sit crookedly on the shelf which he knows will drive George insane when he finally notices the reason why the room’s Feng Shui feels ‘off.’
Satisfied with this tiny act of rebellion, he bends down and pulls another object out of the open box in front of him as he hears George coming down the stairs.
“For FUCK’s sake,” he says, making George stick his head in the door.
“What’s wrong with you now?”
Matty holds up his latest find:
“You have a bong? You have a fucking bong right here and we’ve just smoked spliff with our hands like animals .”
“I hear talking but I don’t hear unpacking,” George says and Matty shoots him a glare but carefully puts down the lime green bong and opens up another box. He frowns when he sees yet another fucking box sitting directly inside it on top of some old throws.
I am stuck in a hell of Matryoshka cardboard boxes.
He picks up the box. It’s relatively small and - he moves his hand up and down, gauging the weight - oddly light. The contents inside shift slightly but don’t give anything away. Intrigued, Matty pokes at it and then realises it’s upside down. He flips it over and he spots George’s handwriting scrawled right along the seam which has been taped shut. The box says: ‘Closet. Do NOT open.’
“What’s this?” Matty asks as he runs a finger over the bolded words.
The words ‘Do NOT open’ have been underlined repeatedly, suggesting that the words are more of a command as opposed to a suggestion. Never one to back down from a challenge, Matty is just about to defy the weird directive and rip open the box when suddenly it’s snatched out of his grip by George who has crossed the room quickly.
“I’ve got this one,” George says.
“What?” Matty blinks at the space in his hands were the box was a second ago, then shakes his head and looks at George:
“But what is it?”
“Nothing. It’s just… shoes. It was supposed to be in the box you brought upstairs but it must have gotten mixed up,” George shrugs. He’s aiming for casual but he doesn’t sound that way. He sounds… awkward. Embarrassed, almost. They both eyeball each other for a few seconds.
“Shoes,” Matty repeats the word and then makes a point of slowly glancing down at George’s size twelve feet. “You wear ridiculously large shoes and you’re telling me that there’s a pair of loafers or some shit in that tiny box?”
He frowns as George completely gives the game away then by scratching behind his left ear - a gesture that he only ever does when he’s lying. Matty’s eyes narrow.
“What’s in the box?” he asks again and again George responds with “shoes” but Matty’s curiosity is officially piqued now.
He and George don’t tell each other lies and they definitely don’t keep secrets from each other - they never have, so whatever is in the box must be a fucking unspeakable horror or incredibly mortifying.
Oh god, what if it’s a severed ear?
Matty shakes the thought from his head:
This is George. He’s too calm to rip someone’s ear off.
Then another thought occurs to him:
Bet it’s a sex toy.
He moves so quickly, George has to act fast.
“What is your problem?!” George snaps as he whips the box over his head and out of Matty’s reach.
“What’s in the box?” Matty presses, jumping up to try and grab it but it’s no use, George has at least a foot on him in terms of height. The box dangles above him, enticingly just beyond his grip.
“Nothing. Shoes. Shoes that I’m now going to put in the closet where they belong,” George takes a few steps backwards and cautiously lowers the box.
“Why are you being so fucking weird about it?”
“I’m not. I’m unpacking my bedroom. This is a box for the bedroom so I’m taking it upstairs to unpack,” George says the words like he’s speaking to a very small, very stupid child.
Matty gives him a withering look as he turns and walks towards the door. Then George makes a suggestion:
“Why don’t you be useful and go unpack the kitchen?”
Matty sulks as George leaves the room. Something about the box is weird, he can feel it in his bones and maybe it’s because he’s bored as shit or maybe it’s because a boundary has never existed in his friendship with George before, but standing there beside George’s crooked amethyst, he makes himself a promise:
I’m going to find out what’s in that box.
******
The box obsesses him for the remainder of the day. He thinks about it constantly. The box is on his mind as he has a smoke in George’s landscaped garden, smiling to himself as a sheep ambles over to the fence to check him out. He sees the box in vivid detail in his skull as he unpacks the kitchen, pausing to pinch his nose, wondering why the fuck anyone would need three fucking garlic presses. He thinks about the box as George cooks them dinner using only one garlic press and thus proving Matty’s initial opinion that owning three fucking garlic presses is just ludicrous. And he is positively fixated on it when they bust out George’s bong and smoke a lot of weed over several games of FIFA.
It was just so strange. Why did George have a box specifically for his closet? And, even more intriguing, why on earth did it say ‘Do NOT open’?
“You sure you don’t mind sleeping on the sofa?” George’s voice shakes him out of his thoughts.
“Sofa?”
George shrugs lazily, clearly stoned off his tits:
“Yeah? I’m assuming you’re staying given that you’re high as shit and it’s late? None of the beds for the guest rooms have arrived yet. They’re due tomorrow.”
Matty just nods, picks up the bong and takes another hit.
It turns out that Matty won’t be sleeping on the sofa because after several more hits of weed, George promptly passes out, star-fishing across it and taking up all the space. Matty knows that attempting to wake him is futile. George sleeps like the dead.
Guess I’ll have to crash in his bed .
Matty’s eyes widen as realisation suddenly hits him:
I’m unsupervised. I can go find the box.
He quickly and quietly exits the living room and before his brain can catch up with his actions, Matty finds himself on his hands and knees in George’s closet, pulling the box out of the back where it has been strategically hidden under a pile of shoes.
I bet it’s sex toys. It HAS to be sex toys.
He pauses, hand poised over the box as he listens to the quiet hush of the house. He frowns.
Did I just hear something?
But as he strains his hearing, the only noise that greets him is silence.
Convincing himself that it was probably just a wayward sheep in the field outside, he shrugs and then carefully opens the box, feeling a little thrill running through him as the words ‘Do NOT open’ yawn wide and the contents are revealed.
“The fuck?” he whispers to himself as he’s greeted by a line of different colours – black, purple, blue, red.
Matty frowns not understanding what he’s seeing. He’s about to tip the contents onto the carpet to explore further when he hears it: The unmistakable noise of size twelve footsteps on the stairs.
FUCK.
Without thinking, he shoves his hand into the box, grabs one of the items and slips it into his back pocket to inspect later and then scrambles to put the box back where he found it.
He’s shoving it back into the depths of George’s closet when a deep voice asks:
“What are you doing?”
Matty freezes and he enjoys a silent panic attack as his mind whirls, frantically searching for the perfect explanation as to why he’s on all fours with his arse sticking out of George’s closet at two in the morning.
“Oh nothing. Just checking out your shoes. I saw these,” – he grabs the first shoe he can find and pokes his head out, waving said shoe in a desperate attempt to distract George – “Louboutins?”
“You have the exact same pair. We wore them to the BRITS. Have you smoked that much weed that you can’t remember 2019?” George sighs, his face clogged with sleep. He looks exhausted.
Matty frowns at the shoe and then George moves towards him. He takes the shoe and says:
“Sorry for passing out. I’ll get you a pillow so you can get some sleep.”
And Matty knows that this is George’s polite way of saying ‘Get the fuck out of my bedroom and go downstairs and please, for once in your life, stop being so fucking weird.’
As Matty gets up and leaves the room, he sees George sticking his head into the closet and not-so-subtly looking around.
Curiouser and curiouser…
******
Matty is watching George intently as he works in the studio, the blue light from the computer giving him an otherworldly vibe. It’s early morning, two days after Matty spent the night in his house and they’re back at work. George looks happy, well rested, like all that country air is agreeing with him. In stark comparison, Matty looks like something that has just been dug up.
He hasn’t slept in two days and he’s been smoking like a chimney. He shifts on the cold, leather sofa that takes up some of the wall near the piano.
“Are you sure you’re alright mate?”
He looks up as Ross approaches him, mug of tea in hand.
Matty blows out a cloud of smoke and deadpans:
“Peachy.”
“What’s with this then?” Ross gestures at his own face and the intended message is clear even though he doesn’t say it aloud: You look like shit mate.
Matty scowls and brings up a hand, rubbing at the stubble on his chin:
“I’m not sleeping.”
“Is it because you’re a twat?” Ross offers, a grin tugging at his mouth.
“No Ross, it’s not because I’m a twat. It’s because I’ve had my mind on other things. Things that don’t actually involve me being a twat,” he retorts and as if on cue, George starts bobbing away in his chair, his ears obscured by large headphones, making Ross and Matty look at him.
“Trouble in paradise?” Ross asks, looking back at Matty and taking a slurp from his mug.
“Fuck off Ross.”
“Is G working you too hard? Making you sing all those difficult songs? Poor little twat face.”
Ross reaches out and ruffles his hair and anger rages in Matty’s chest. He smacks Ross’s hand away, getting cigarette ash everywhere in the process, and loudly tells him to “fuck off” again which, thankfully, Ross does after a few minutes.
Ross leaves with a friendly “Later twat face” and Matty is left staring at the back of George’s head again.
Matty is tired. Matty is so tired standing up feels like something hard to achieve. And the reason why he’s so tired is because of that fucking box from the other day. The box has thrown him and Matty, as everyone who is acquainted with him will attest, is notoriously obsessive. Over the course of the past two days (and with the more he has thought about it) the box has stopped being ‘something George wants to keep private for whatever reason’ and has now turned into ‘George is keeping a secret from me.’ And George and Matty don’t have secrets from each other, so why was George so weird about that fucking box in the first place? Why didn’t George want Matty see what was inside it?
Which was, Matty realised when he inspected the object he had stolen in detail as soon as he left George’s house, a collection of ropes. The small, red bundle Matty had taken and shoved in his back pocket that night was a tightly-bound length of rope. Actual rope.
George Daniel keeps a collection of ropes in his bedroom closet.
In front of him, George pulls his headphones off his ears and swivels round in his chair, pausing mid-motion when he catches Matty staring.
“What?” he asks.
“Nothing,” Matty responds.
But the question continues to drive Matty insane for the rest of the day. He just wants to know why. Why does George not want him to know that he has a collection of ropes in his bedroom? Is it a kinky sex thing? If so, who cares? George and Matty had shared many hotel rooms over the years and Matty had heard him shagging on various occasions. What was a little restraint kink amongst friends? But worryingly, what did it say about their friendship that George felt the need to have a secret he wasn’t willing to share? Given that George knew everything about Matty, it was making him feel off-kilter and weird. It was making him ask himself another worrying question which was this: If George is keeping this a secret from me, what else is he keeping a secret?
“Seriously mate, what is your problem?” George asks him later on when he catches Matty staring at him for the hundredth time.
George is sitting behind the piano trying to recreate a melody that’s been banging around inside his skull since yesterday.
“Nothing,” Matty makes a dismissive gesture with his hand, but George isn’t having it:
“Why are you staring at me?” he asks again and Matty frowns and then figures if he doesn’t ask, he’ll never know. He decides to be tactful:
“If you had a secret you’d tell me, right?” he leans onto the top of the piano and George frowns:
“I don’t know. That depends on the secret.”
Matty sighs, getting impatient:
“That’s not fair, I tell you everything. I’ve never kept a secret from you in my life.”
“There are some things I wish you’d keep a secret from me mate, believe me,” George gives him a look.
“Like what?” Matty counters.
“Like that time you tried to do No Nut November,” George grimaces, like the memory physically pains him.
No Nut November had been a bad vibe, not just for Matty but for everyone around him. Mainly because he was channelling big rage vibes for the entirety of the two weeks he tried to go without a wank.
He shakes his head:
“This isn’t about me.”
“It sort of is – you’re the one standing there accusing me of keeping something from you,” George responds and Matty’s eyes narrow so much they turn into slits. He hates when George tries to reverse-psychology him.
“You are keeping something from me. I know,” Matty says, getting annoyed.
“ What am I keeping from you?” George throws up his hands in exasperation.
“This,” Matty says.
He whips the red rope out of his back pocket and slaps it down onto the piano so it’s almost at eye-level with George.
“Why the fuck do you have an entire box of ropes in your closet and why was the box marked ‘Do NOT open’?” Matty demands. “It was underlined George, underlined .”
The colour drains from George’s face and there’s a moment of tense silence. Then, suddenly, George’s hand shoots out to grab the rope, but Matty is faster. He snatches it and presses it against his chest, taking a step back as George slides off the piano bench and moves towards him.
“Give it to me mate, I’m not messing,” George says and his voice is laced with a warning.
Matty is well aware that he’s hit some kind of nerve and that he probably should stop, lest George take a notion and beat the living shit out of him, but he’s committed to this now and the only thing worse than getting a smack from George is the thought of backing down from an argument he instigated.
“Not until you tell me what it is. Is it a sex thing? It’s a sex thing isn’t it?” Matty says and George’s face is getting redder and redder by the second.
“Give it to me Matthew,” George says, moving closer and closer until he’s towering above Matty.
“I’m serious. What is this?” Matty says and he makes the mistake of looking down at the rope that’s pressed against his chest. That’s when George sees his opportunity. He reaches out and grabs the rope, ripping it out of Matty’s hands and storms across the studio.
Matty watches as George shoves the rope into his pocket and angrily opens the door.
“What’s your problem?” Matty calls after him as he exits the studio.
“Leave me alone Matty,” George’s voice responds.
******
George doesn’t speak to Matty for the rest of the day and Matty sulks the entire time. Later that evening, he finds himself at a loose end in his house. He grabs his laptop and sits down. He pulls up Google and types in a question:
Why is my best friend keeping a secret from me?
The results bring up a variety of reasons but there are two prominent terms that catch his eye, namely: ‘privacy’ and ‘codependency.’ He reads the definition of codependency:
A codependent relationship is a circular relationship in which one person needs the other person who, in turn, needs to be needed. Codependent relationships lack boundaries. They allow repeated invasion of privacy and codependent parties are willing to share everything, even their thoughts – this is a process known as ‘merging.’
He frowns and picks up his phone, quickly sending a message to Hann, the most level-headed person he knows:
Matty: Have George and I ‘merged’?
He chews on the side of his thumbnail as he waits for Hann to respond. A strange sense of anxiety starts to grow inside him and he picks up a spliff and lights it. It takes about ten minutes, but eventually his phone vibrates beside his leg and he picks it up:
Hann: I’m not sure. You might have. You did share a lot of beds when we were getting the band off the ground.
Matty rolls his eyes and types another message:
Matty: I mean: Are George and I codependent?
Hann’s reply comes instantly this time:
Hann: You and George are so codependent I’m pretty sure you’d both die if we ever tried to separate you for an extended period of time.
Matty types another question:
Matty: Do you think George keeps any secrets from me?
Three dots appear on the screen for a long time to show Hann is typing and then two messages appear:
Hann: I think if George is keeping secrets from you then there’s something wrong with your incredibly dysfunctional and unhealthy friendship.
Hann: Isn’t your whole deal based on a worrying lack of boundaries with each other?
Hann has a point.
Matty doesn’t bother to respond and instead he takes a deep pull on his spliff and types another question into Google:
Why would you have ropes in your bedroom?
He knows it’s a stupid question that has a very obvious answer, but he reads through the host of results that Google spits up anyway. Unsurprisingly, each result features the word ‘bondage’ and the crease between Matty’s brows deepens because he knows George and George is a placid, gentle being so is he really into bondage? It doesn’t seem to fit.
You’re being a bit mental here mate. You need to get off the internet. And subsequently book a therapist because you obviously have issues. No one should care about finding something odd in their best mate’s bedroom THIS much. It’s weird. You’re being weird. Creepy vibes.
He’s just about to close his laptop when something on-screen catches his eye. It’s a headline and half of it is cut off:
Erotic Art: The Meditative Practice of…
Matty’s eyes widen as he reads.
Meditative.
Art.
Somewhere in his head, a tiny bell starts ringing. George is meditative. George likes art.
He clicks the link and the full headline comes into view:
Erotic Art: The Meditative Practice of Shibari.
“Shibari,” he says the word aloud and it feels strange in his mouth.
The website is, surprisingly, not a sex website. Instead it’s a sleek online publication, the kind that carries lifestyle features about art and literature and, apparently, Shibari – a type of rope bondage from Japan that’s having ‘a moment’ in popular culture.
Matty scrolls down through the article, his eyes landing on repeating words such as “rope,” “art,” “sensual,” and “surrender.”
He stops scrolling abruptly as a photograph appears in the middle of the feature. It’s striking. On his screen a man is on his knees, his muscular back facing the camera. His arms are behind his back and they are bound tightly together, but the way they’re bound is, well, beautiful. A heavy black rope criss-crosses up his arms, holding him firmly in place but creating nothing short of art in the juxtaposition between the man’s pale skin and the thick black bands of the rope itself.
Matty stares, his mouth open slightly, as his eyes roam over the image, taking in every single detail. And then, he notices, in the corner, hidden in shadow, there is another person standing directly in front of the man carefully watching. You can’t see them really, only the suggestion of their presence. His eyes track downwards and he sees the tip of a man’s shoe and a long length of rope falling over the end. He has studied enough art to know that there’s a direct correlation between the figure in shadow and the ropework which has been meticulously carried out on the main subject.
There’s an elegant balance at play in the photograph and a distinct energy that feels… intriguing.
Two things happen at the same time then: Matty feels a strange uncoiling of heat in his lower stomach and the spliff he’s holding burns down, singeing his fingers and causing him to curse loudly and drop the spliff (and his laptop, almost) onto the floor.
He thinks about what he has seen for the rest of night. Lying in bed, sleepless and feeling oddly restless, he grabs his phone and googles the word again.
Shibari.
This time he opts for an image search and a sea of photos fill the screen of his phone – men and women contorted into positions with weirdly captivating, intricate rope detailing running up their arms and down their legs. Rope snakes around throats, waists and breasts. Limbs are pushed back, held, restricted.
As Matty studies the images, his heart rate starts to pick up. As his eyes roam over wrists and ankles and bodies, he finds himself biting his lower lip.
Matty had dabbled in bondage before. Not the ‘scary’ kind of bondage, but the kind of bondage where your partner of choice jokingly restrains you with a pair of fuzzy handcuffs or a tie just for a laugh, but this? This was something different. This was… artistic?
He chews on the inside of his cheek, unsure if that’s the right word. And his thoughts drift to George again. Is this the secret George has been keeping?
Is George, his George, his best fucking friend secretly tying people up on the weekends? Is George like the figure in the earlier photo, standing there, a presence in the dark while someone is constrained helplessly in front of him? Or is he the one on his knees with his hands bound behind his back?
And as he lies there in the dark, Matty feels his temperature rising and his body responding to the images.
By the time he makes it to the bottom of the results page, his cock is so hard it’s painful.
******