Chapter Text
By the time Chris left Dr. Fournier’s office, the last dregs of the storm had fled to sea, leaving behind a perfect fall afternoon that flooded all the rooms and passageways of Mass General with lambent golden light. Chris smiled as he made his way back to the neurology wing, back to his amnesiac brother. Smiled as if his therapist hadn’t just shaken the foundations of everything he thought he knew about his and Matt’s relationship.
As luck would have it, his vacant smile ended up coming in clutch, because Jimmy and Nick were approaching up the other end of the corridor almost as soon as Chris stepped out of the elevator.
“You look chipper,” Nick commented.
“How’d it go with the head doctor?” Jimmy said, parking Nick a few feet from the door of Matt’s examining room.
Chris waved at Matt through the window; Matt perked up from where he was sitting at the edge of the bed, beaming as he waved back. He was writing something on a clipboard and, in a chair across from him, so was Rachel. The doctors and Marylou stood watching along the side wall.
“Chris?” Nick said.
“Huh? Oh.” Chris turned back to them; now that he’d seen Matt again, his wide grin was effortlessly genuine. “Yeah, it went fine. We mostly talked about me and Matt. A lot of it was about stuff that happened when we were kids.”
“That’s their whole thing, isn’t it, psychiatrists?” Jimmy remarked. “Saying everything in your life goes back to something in your childhood.”
“She’s a psychologist, though.”
“Oh, well. Them too.” Jimmy reached for the door handle. “You two coming in?”
Nick glanced up, but Chris spoke first.
“In a minute,” he said. “I wanted to ask Nick something.”
Jimmy slipped into the examining room, and the door clicked shut behind him. Nick peered up at Chris.
“What is it?” he said. “Did something happen with Matt?”
“No. Well, sort of, but, uh…how’s your leg?”
Nick tilted his head in suspicion. “It’s fine. They gave me a whole at-home physical therapy routine to do. And before you ask, I can handle it all myself. I don’t need you checking up on me about it.”
“Uh, okay. That’s a little hostile.”
“No, I don’t mean—I’m just saying, with Mom and Dad leaving us on our own, I don’t want you to feel responsible for me or anything. I’m fine. Just…focus on Matt.”
“Alright. I just figured I’d ask. Because—”
“Because I chewed you out about not asking, yeah.”
“No,” Chris said. “Because you’re my brother, and I actually give a sh*t about you.”
“That too.” Nick winked. “Your turn. I want to know what happened when we were kids that you had to talk to your therapist about.”
Chris turned to the examining room window again. Now Matt was on his feet, pacing as he contemplated whatever was on the clipboard. Trying to remember something, or maybe just debating an answer to an open-ended question.
“Uh, so…what happened was, Matt remembered something new for the first time. A little while ago, during his first appointment.” Chris wet his lips. “It was us giving each other valentines in third grade.”
“Of course.”
“What do you mean, ‘of course?’”
“Was that the year you stole one of Mom’s roses from the vase in the kitchen and made me film you giving it to him on bended knee?”
“No, that was fifth grade. And I didn’t steal sh*t, bro, Mom said I could take one to give to Matt.”
“My mistake,” Nick said blandly.
“Anyway, Melissa has some, like, insane idea that Matt was in love with me back then. And our entire lives, basically. All because of that one memory. That’s why his brain wants to think we’re boyfriends now.”
Nick blinked up at him, unfazed.
“I mean….” Chris fidgeted his arms at his sides, scuffed his boots against the waiting area carpet. “That’s crazy, right?”
“I doubt she’s saying that based on one memory.” Nick glanced at the examining room, where a gradual outbreak of voices seemed to presage Matt’s appointment coming to an end. “And it’s not that crazy.”
“‘Not that crazy?’” Chris hissed. “Our brother secretly wanting me ever since we were kids is ‘not that crazy?’”
“It would explain some things. A lot, actually. Like, have you ever noticed how he looks at you?”
Chris glowered down at Nick wordlessly. This was all so stupid that he resented feeling any obligation to engage with it.
“Yeah, okay. Here’s a hint, Chris: it’s not like that.”
“God, you’re sus.” Chris collapsed into one of the chairs and shoved his hands through his hair. “You’re just saying all this sh*t because you love watching me squirm.”
“No, dumbass. Matt’s health and happiness are slightly more important to me than playing a joke on you, so calm your overinflated ego down a few notches.”
“You still like it, though,” Chris mumbled in self-pity. “I can tell. You love how awkward this is for me. Playing gay and in love with my own brother. You could be helping cool things off but instead you constantly goad Matt on. Like taking all those weird as f*ck pictures of us at the pond yesterday.”
Nick smirked. “I wanted to stump people at siblings or dating.”
“And then helping him make that bracelet for me when we got back?”
“I’m just being an encouraging friend to him,” Nick said innocently. “We talk about you a lot when we hang out, you know.”
“Yeah, I’m sure you do,” Chris snapped, but before he could draw Nick into a full-blown argument, the examining room door swung open and the medical team strode out, followed by their parents and Matt. The doctors departed with only brief recognitions of Chris and Nick’s presence, then Rachel with a more genial farewell a minute later. Matt ambled over to Chris’s chair and massaged his nape, squeezed his shoulder.
“Everything okay?” he said. “You look a little stressed.”
“Everything’s fine, babe,” Chris said, and it wasn’t even a lie. Like a switch being flipped, Matt’s touch instantly had him feeling less anxious about the uncomfortable possibilities that his session with Dr. Fournier had excavated.
“Yeah, me and Chris were just teasing each other,” Nick said. “How was the appointment?”
“I liked it more than the first one, the one with just the two doctors.” Matt shrugged. “Rachel’s really nice. We made a list of things I want to do, things I need help doing still, activities, um…places I like?” He scratched his temple. “It was a lot of stuff. I can try to remember it all if you like.”
“That’s alright, honey,” Marylou said, indicating a folder under her arm. “We’ve got everything you worked on right here.”
“Oh, good,” Matt said with relief. “I—I can remember. I’m just kind of tired.”
“Yeah, of course, Matt,” Chris reassured him. He squeezed Matt’s hand. “I’m tired too. No one likes waking up at the crack of dawn to spend all day in the hospital.”
Marylou laughed. “Is 9:15 the crack of dawn now?”
“It’s closer to dawn than when we normally wake up,” Chris said.
“He’s got you there, Mom,” Nick said.
“Alright, I think everyone’s ready to get out of here,” Jimmy said, taking hold of Nick’s wheelchair. “It might even be early enough for us to beat some of the traffic.”
Jimmy’s optimism proved out, and they made it home in less than half an hour, door to door. By then it was nearly four and they’d have to leave around 5:30 to meet Justin at Norma’s Trattoria for the family dinner celebrating Matt and Nick’s first week home. In Chris’s opinion, an hour and change was the ideal amount of time to relax and recuperate in bed after an early morning, and that was what he and Matt did as soon as they got back to their room.
“You going to take a nap?” Chris murmured. He and Matt lay side by side, both on their fronts with their hands bordering their pillows, Matt’s left resting gently on his right.
“I might try.” Matt stroked the grooves between Chris’s fingers. “If I can get my mind to shut off.”
Chris chuckled. “Knowing you, not too likely.”
Matt smiled back at him in the warmth of early evening. Tiny particles of their shared dust swirled lazily in the honey-colored light between them.
“How about you?” he said. “You look sleepy.”
“Nah, I’ll stay up with you,” Chris said. “You can tell me what’s keeping your mind from turning off. It might help.”
“Just all the stuff the doctors said. About how I’d probably start remembering things from childhood before anything later. And maybe not much from the past few years at all. I tried telling them that I remember all sorts of stuff about us, you know, from when we were little all the way to high school. They just nodded and said you’re the exception.”
“Ooh, I like that.” Chris squinted and pursed his lips while rubbing his chin. “I’m the exception.”
“You are,” Matt said earnestly. “I remember all sorts of stupid sh*t: how to play Fortnite better than you and Nick, the books we read in sophom*ore English, the words to every song on my Spotify playlists. But people, it’s a total blank. They’re faces and names and nothing else. Everyone except you, Chris.” He lifted his hand to touch Chris’s hair. “That just shows how much you mean to me.”
Chris snorted. “Wait, I’m still stuck on you claiming you’re better than me at Fortnite. Nick, obviously—he’s got more skins than wins. But me? I don’t think so.”
“I’ll put you on my back a few more times when we get home from dinner if you need proof.”
“Uh, sure, okay. Keep talking nonsense, kid.” Chris nipped Matt’s wrist, and Matt giggled away. “You know, speaking of childhood memories, I told my psychologist about the valentines thing.”
“What’d she say?”
“A bunch of stuff.” Chris shut his eyes and nuzzled his pillow, pretending to be drowsier than he felt, formulating the words to follow with precise care. “I guess she thinks you liked me for a long time before we actually did anything about it. Like…most of our lives.”
The room was quiet, and Chris wondered with mounting dread if he’d humiliated Matt somehow, if he shouldn’t have revealed to him his conversation with Dr. Fournier, if he shouldn’t have confided in her about their third grade Valentine’s Day in the first place. But when he peeked one eye open to gauge Matt’s reaction, his brother was grinning at the sliver of white between them on the bed, his cheeks and ears flushing a bashful pink.
“Chris, I’m pretty sure I had a crush on you since before I even knew what that word meant.” Matt flipped onto his back, clasped his hands behind his head, sighed at the ceiling, and his blue eyes blazed ardently in the first orange glimmer of sunset. “I remember following you around—” he paused, frowned. “Yeah, it was here, but for some reason I remember it looking different. But I’d follow you around, we’d get freeze pops in the kitchen, we’d walk out to the porch and suck on them and balance on the railing and waste the entire afternoon. When you talked, everything you said made me laugh; when I talked, it was like you knew everything inside my head without me having to explain. And I’d think, wow, I hope the rest of my life is just like this. Just like today.”
“Wow.” Chris cleared his throat. “And you didn’t, uh, you didn’t think that was maybe just you wanting us to be best friends? Or, like, I don’t know…brothers?”
“Sure I did. It’s what I thought for my entire life, until…um, I can’t remember when, you know, because of the accident, but I eventually figured out I like guys. And I guess that’s when I figured out I like you, too. Because all those feelings finally made sense.”
“Wow,” Chris said again. “I, uh, had no idea you felt this way for so long.”
“That’s okay.” Matt winked at him. “Neither did I. Until recently.”
They did end up napping in the end, though only for a little while before Marylou came in to shake their shoulders and tell them it was time to leave for Norma’s. Matt went for the bathroom first and while Chris was waiting his turn he donned his hoodie and jeans and ran his fingers through his hair. Then he looked at the bracelet on the nightstand, the one Matt had made him yesterday.
He hadn’t worn it this morning to the hospital. In the rush to get everyone showered and fed and out the door, it was easy for him to pretend he’d simply forgotten to put it on. Not that Matt had asked, but Chris had been sure to make the excuse anyway as they piled into the car.
It wasn’t that Chris didn’t like the look of the bracelet. Neither Matt’s good taste in jewelry nor his understanding of Chris’s style had been lost to the crash. Truth be told, the bracelet was exactly the sort of thing Chris would wear, and the fact that Matt had crafted it with his own hands—with Nick’s help, to boot—only made it that much more suited to him, that much more special.
Then again, it was this very meaning Chris balked at. One more thing to blur the lines between the make-believe relationship that was mostly confined to his bedroom and the stark reality of the outside world. A thing adorning his own body. A thing that would travel with him in public. A thing that further called into question whether he himself was being pulled into the elaborate fantasy that Matt’s brain wanted them to live in. The fact that other people wouldn’t grasp the significance almost didn’t matter, because Chris would.
And yet, in spite of all that, Chris was wearing the bracelet when he met the rest of the family outside Nick’s room. He pulled up the sleeve of his hoodie when no one else but Matt was looking and grinned.
“I remembered this time,” he whispered.
“It looks good on you,” Matt replied. Then he slid his hand into Chris’s and they held each other, with only a brief interruption to get buckled into the van, until the strip mall parking lot outside Norma’s.
Justin was already there when they arrived, holding their customary corner booth by one of the front windows. Nick took one end of the seat, propping his crutches under the framed antique map of Calabria, and their parents scooted towards the inside, leaving the other end to Chris and Matt. Chris watched as Matt’s gaze surveyed the wall of wine bottles, the jars of infused oil and spicy peppers and olives black as pitch, the dim light fixtures high on the walls and the tea candles strewn across their table.
“Remember this place at all, Matt?” Chris said.
“No,” he said in disappointment. “It’s cozy, though.”
“This is one of the major places we do family dinner,” Justin said, sipping his glass of red wine. “Right, Mom?”
Marylou cast him a meaningful glance, an even more meaningful tilt of her head. Justin scratched his cheek.
“Which…Matt’s always been here for, because he’s pretty much a part of the family,” he added.
Chris caught Nick’s eyeline across the booth. The latter subtly rolled his eyes.
“Yeah, uh, ever since I can remember, it’s always been you two.” Justin pointed both index fingers at his two youngest brothers before drawing them flush together. “Matt and Chris. The inseparable pair. Always up to something. Not surprising you ended up together. Not surprising in the least.”
Nick groaned softly into his hand and stared down at his napkin. Jimmy looked from Justin to the glass of wine, then back again.
“Here,” Marylou said, pushing the basket of bread and dipping oil towards Justin. “Fill your mouth up with that.”
“No, I—” Matt sat forward in the booth. “I kind of want to hear about it.”
“He just means we were close growing up, babe,” Chris said.
“But you said you weren’t surprised about us?” Matt persisted, leaning even further into the table. “I mean, even I was surprised. Chris, too.”
“I’d say Chris was way more surprised,” Nick said helpfully.
“Thanks, Nick,” Chris said, marking down a mental note to get back at him in the near future.
“Yeah, I mean…it just makes sense, doesn’t it?” Justin tore off a hunk of bread and chased it with more wine. “You’ve always had that special bond your whole lives. Closer than friends, closer than brothers. Maybe it just took you twenty-one years to realize what it really was.”
“That’s what I think,” Matt said. “A lot of it was just me figuring out who I am. And Chris….”
“Is still working on that,” Chris finished. “He’s a work in progress.”
“Aren’t we all?” Justin said. By now he’d given up on the bread and turned to his half-full wine glass, which he raised in Chris and Matt’s direction. “Seriously, though, whatever you guys are, wherever this whole relationship thing takes you…I’ll always love you two like no one else. Uh, I mean, alongside Nick.”
“It’s okay,” Nick said. “They can have their moment. Actually, that was really touching.”
“I just didn’t want you to feel excluded.” Justin passed him the bread. “Here, I know how much you love giving yourself garlic breath.”
The server finally arrived then—for a Monday night, Norma’s was surprisingly packed—and after they ordered, the conversation naturally turned from Matt and Chris’s relationship to Nick’s physical therapy. Chris did his best to pay attention to it, but no matter how hard he tried his brain wouldn’t stop looping Justin’s words, and Matt’s from earlier that evening, and Nick’s from that afternoon. It was a lot harder to dismiss his psychologist’s theory as crazy when all three of his brothers had more or less confirmed it. A lot harder to ignore his own confusing feelings for Matt when Justin, the one person who’d never missed at telling the three of them apart, the one person who could plausibly lay claim to knowing them better than their own parents, was saying that he and Matt just made sense together. It didn’t really matter how much of it he’d made up on the spot, just like it didn’t really matter that the relationship itself had begun as a figment of Matt’s shattered mind. What mattered was that it all felt real, and realer by the day.
