When I had initially woken up that morning, with Matty sleeping beside me, I had an idea of who he was.
I knew that he was being spoken about in most corners of the internet, many words being uttered in relation to him: raw meat, drunk, dickhead, drugs, genius, meta. Although that last one was more him than anyone else.
I was familiar with the persona he had created on stage, but it wasn't until I had ended up in bed with him that I truly got to know who Matty Healy was.
He was most certainly a genius, that I couldn't argue with. But he was also kind, and thoughtful. He was loving, and so effortlessly beautiful, in every sense of the word.
It had taken me a while to learn that he didn't like to sleep alone, and that he liked to play with the hem of my t-shirt when we laid in bed together.
Like, right now, his fingers were fumbling with the material of my shirt as he watched me, his eyes softening.
"I wish you'd smile more." I sighed, rubbing my thumb over his bottom lip.
"I do smile, though."
"No, but like, really smile. You know, like this." I tried to offer him my best toothy smile, a terrible attempt at mimicking him, which made him laugh.
"Well I think what you did then tells you why I don't smile like that." He chuckled.
"You know what I mean, though."
"I think I know what you mean."
"You know," I started to say, a breath of air leaving my lips. "You're so beautiful when you smile."
He was beautiful. Everything about him. So much so that it almost made me sad.
A painful silence pressed over us then, and I could feel something shift between us, like I'd said something wrong.
And it seemed that maybe I had, because he pulled his hand away from the bottom of my shirt, sitting up in the bed.
"Uhm─I'm just going to go to the bathroom," he said, standing up and walking across the room. "I'll be back in a minute."
He wasn't back in a minute. I spent the next twenty minutes waiting for him to come back. And when he finally did come back, he didn't say a word to me. He just climbed into bed next to me and turned over, leaving me to wonder what exactly I did wrong this time.