Chapter 10: London
The silence from Matthew’s end was a grenade with the pin pulled. Kelly’s calls went to voicemail. Her texts, increasingly frenetic, bloomed on his screen and were ignored.
Sara (8:03 AM): Matty. Kelly says you’re ghosting. My youngest needs braces. My Instagram engagement is tanking. This tour is my parachute. Please. Just say yes.
Marie (10:15 AM): Matthew. I know you have reservations. So do I. The thought of doing the “Upside Down” shuffle at our age is mortifying. But my last single debuted at 97. 97. I’m doing this. We need you.
He read them in the back of the Uber to LAX, his stomach tight. The city blurred past, glossy and heartless. Then, a different notification.
Ryan (11:42 AM): I can feel you pulling away. It’s okay. I meant what I said in bed. Whatever you need. If that means we just be bandmates again, I can do that. For the group. Just let Kelly know.
For the group. The phrase was a bullet. It was the same excuse he’d used twenty years ago. Matthew thumbed a reply, deleted it, thumbed another. He finally settled on: Flight to London. Talk soon. It was a coward’s response, putting an ocean between him and the problem.
London was a grey embrace, a drizzle that clung to his coat and the smell of wet pavement and diesel. It was a good place to get lost. Robert’s flat in Notting Hill was chaos—guitars leaning against exposed brick, takeaway containers littering the kitchen island, a scatter of lyric sheets on the floor. It felt like returning to a different life, one that was satellite to Robert’s brilliant, unstable orbit.
He tried to lose himself in the work. At Metropolis Studios, with Indigo Twilight, he was the maestro—focused, precise, demanding. He lost hours shaping a guitar riff, layering Robert’s raw vocals into something haunting. But his mind kept drifting to a sun-drenched bedroom in LA, to the feel of worn couch fabric under his bare skin, to the specific scent of Ryan’s skin.
“You’re somewhere else, love,” Robert said, pulling off his headphones after a blistering take. He was smiling, but his eyes, the colour of a stormy sea, were sharp. He popped the cap off a beer with his teeth and handed it to Matthew. “Your body’s here, but your ears are listening to another song entirely.”
Matthew accepted the beer, the cold bottle a shock. “Just tired. Jet lag.”
“Bollocks,” Robert said softly, not unkindly. He leaned against the mixing desk, all effortless grace in ripped jeans and a worn Ramones tee. “It’s the reunion thing, isn’t it? The one your shark of an agent is selling.”
The game was up. Matthew took a long swig. “Kelly’s pushing hard. A single. A full tour. The others are… desperate for it.”
“And you?” Robert asked, watching him.
“I don’t know.”
“But you’re considering it.”
“I’d have to be back in LA for months. Rehearsals, promo, the tour itself.” Matthew looked at him, searching for a reaction. “It’s Fusion4. It’s… complicated.”
Robert nodded slowly, his gaze dropping to his own beer bottle. He picked at the label. “Right. With the ex.”
There it was. Laid out between them, casual as the discarded lyric sheets.
“Ryan,” Matthew said, the name feeling dangerous here, in Robert’s space.
“Ryan,” Robert echoed. He took a breath, his supportive rockstar persona clicking visibly into place, but it was a half-beat too slow. “Well, it’s a huge opportunity. Your past. Your legacy. You should do it.”
He said the right words. He even reached out and squeezed Matthew’s shoulder. But the hold was brief, and the smile didn’t fully reach his eyes. Matthew saw the calculation there—the frontman who’d spent a lifetime on buses and in hotel rooms, who knew the intimate, pressurized world of a touring act. He knew what could happen. What often happened.
“You’d be okay with it?” Matthew pressed, needing the truth, even if it hurt.
“Course I am,” Robert said, too quickly. He shrugged, a masterpiece of affected nonchalance. “We’ve done long distance before. It’s just… a longer distance for a bit. You’ll be busy. He’ll be busy.” He paused. “Is he still with that fitness bloke? The one who posts pics of his avocado toast?”
“Jonathan. Yeah.”
“Right. Well, then.” Robert finished his beer. “It’s just work, innit?”
But it wasn’t just work. It was a shared history of stolen kisses in dressing rooms, of lyrics written in code, of a heartbreak that had shaped Matthew for two decades. It was a single, perfect day where they’d pretended time had folded in on itself. Robert, for all his rock-and-roll intuition, couldn’t know the full weight of it. But he sensed the gravity. Matthew saw the slight tension in his jaw, the way he avoided directly asking what Matthew wanted.
The unspoken thing hung between them all through dinner, a third guest at the cramped kitchen table. They ordered Thai, the containers steaming open between discarded guitar picks and a stack of unopened mail. Robert talked about the album, about the band’s impending European festival circuit, his words flowing with practiced, nervous energy.
Matthew watched his mouth move, heard the laughter that didn’t quite land, and felt a corrosive guilt begin to pool in his gut. He was here, but he was split. Part of him was still tracing the faded print on a concert poster on a bedroom wall three thousand miles away. He needed to anchor himself. He needed to feel something real, something that belonged only to this room, to this man.
“Rob,” Matthew interrupted, his voice quieter than he intended. He reached across the cluttered table, his fingers covering Robert’s wrist. He felt the fine bones, the steady pulse. “Come here.”
Robert’s chatter died. He looked at Matthew’s hand, then up at his face, searching. A slow, wary smile touched his lips. “Alright,” he said, his voice dropping. He let himself be pulled up, knocking his chair back with a scrape.
Matthew kissed him by the sink, a desperate, claiming kiss. He pushed his tongue into Robert’s mouth, tasting green curry and lager, trying to drown out the phantom taste of Ryan, of cheap tequila and shared cigarettes from their day. His hands fumbled with the buckle of Robert’s belt, the denim rough under his fingers. “I need you,” Matthew breathed against his neck, and it was both truth and lie.
“I’m here, baby,” Robert murmured, his own hands coming up to cradle Matthew’s face, his thumbs stroking his cheekbones. He seemed to melt, the tension from earlier dissolving into a hungry response. “Fuck, I’ve missed you.”
They stumbled through the flat, a chaotic ballet of shedding clothes. A lamp was nearly knocked over. Matthew pushed Robert back onto the unmade bed, its sheets smelling of Robert’s cologne and sleep. In the half-light from the streetlamp outside, Robert’s body was a familiar landscape of lean muscle and pale skin, tattoos snaking up his ribs.
Matthew worshipped it with his mouth, trying to be present. He sucked a bruise into the hollow of Robert’s throat, licked a trail down his sternum. He took Robert’s cock into his mouth, wanting to lose himself in the physical act, in the heavy, salty weight on his tongue, the choked gasp from above. He worked him with a frantic dedication, his own need a sharp ache between his legs.
But his mind betrayed him. The feel of Robert’s fingers twisting in his hair became, for a paralyzing second, Ryan’s tighter, more possessive grip. The musky scent of Robert’s skin blurred with the memory of sun-warmed cotton and Ryan’s specific, clean sweat. He was performing, a skilled technician going through the motions of passion.
“God, Matt, just like that,” Robert groaned, hips lifting off the bed.
The praise felt like an accusation. Matthew pulled off, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He needed to be fucked. He needed to feel so full of Robert that there was no room for any other thought. “I want you inside me,” he said, his voice raw. “Now. Don’t be gentle.”
Robert’s eyes darkened with lust and something else—concern, maybe, at the edge in Matthew’s tone. But he complied, rolling Matthew onto his stomach with a grunt. He spat into his palm, slicking himself, then pressed the blunt head of his cock against Matthew’s entrance. “You sure? Lube’s in the—”
“Just do it,” Matthew gritted out, pressing his face into a pillow that smelled of Robert’s shampoo.
Robert pushed in, a slow, burning stretch that stole Matthew’s breath. The initial pain was a bright, clean signal, a welcome shock to his system. He pushed back against it, forcing himself to take more, to feel the exquisite, brutal fullness. Robert swore, a reverent “fuck,” as he seated himself fully, his body a heavy, comforting weight on Matthew’s back.
Then he moved. Robert set a punishing, deep rhythm, his hips slamming forward with the desperate energy of their earlier conversation. Each thrust drove a grunt from Matthew’s lungs, each withdrawal a hollow ache. The bed rocked against the wall with a steady, thumping beat.
Matthew clutched at the sheets, his knuckles white. He squeezed his eyes shut, but behind his eyelids, he wasn’t in this messy London bedroom. He was on a worn couch in a sun-drenched LA living room, on his knees on scratchy carpet, his own sweat cooling on his back as a different body moved over him. He saw blonde hair catching the light, not dark. He felt the ghost of a different set of hands gripping his hips, a different voice whispering broken, urgent words in his ear.
He was coming apart. Robert’s pace became erratic, his breath hot and ragged against Matthew’s neck. “I’m close, baby, so close,” Robert panted.
The coil in Matthew’s own gut snapped tight, a wave of pleasure so intense it was agony. As it ripped through him, his body convulsing under Robert’s, the name clawed its way up his throat. Ryan. It was a silent scream behind his teeth, a word shaped by the violent exhale of his orgasm. He bit down on the pillowcase, the cotton stuffing his mouth, stifling the terrible, truthful sound.
Robert cried out, a guttural release, and shuddered through his own climax, collapsing heavily onto Matthew’s back. For a long moment, there was only the sound of their ragged breathing and the distant hum of London traffic.
Robert rolled off, pulling Matthew with him, gathering him against his chest. He kissed Matthew’s damp temple. “Christ. Welcome home,” he sighed, his voice saturated with sleepy satisfaction.
He didn’t notice. He felt the tremors still running through Matthew’s limbs and mistook them for aftershocks of pleasure. Within minutes, Robert’s breathing evened out into the deep, untroubled rhythms of sleep.
Matthew lay trapped in the circle of his arms, staring at the faint crack in the ceiling plaster. The guilt was no longer a pool; it was a concrete slab settling on his chest. The scent of sex and Robert was everywhere, but all he could smell was the ghost of a different day, a different man. He closed his eyes, the word he hadn’t spoken echoing in the silent, guilty chamber of his mind.
He closed his eyes, the word he hadn’t spoken echoing in the silent, guilty chamber of his mind. Sleep was a shallow, fractured thing, a gray haze punctuated by the heat of Robert’s body and the cold, linear logic of dawn seeping around the blinds. When he finally gave up, the room held the stale, intimate smell of their sex and last night’s takeout. Robert was a warm, dead weight beside him, one arm thrown possessively across Matthew’s chest.
In the kitchen, Matthew made coffee, watching the brown liquid stream into a mug that proclaimed ‘INDIGO TWILIGHT: EUPHORIA TOUR’. The silence of the flat was a physical pressure. He could hear Robert stirring, the rustle of sheets, the pad of his bare feet on the floorboards. Robert appeared in the doorway, shirtless, hair a magnificent disaster. He smiled, a lazy, post-coital curl of his lips, and Matthew’s heart cracked a little.
“Morning, you,” Robert mumbled, his voice gravelly with sleep. He came up behind Matthew, wrapped his arms around his waist, and nuzzled his neck. His skin smelled of musk and last night’s sweat. “That was a proper welcome last night. Missed that.”
Matthew leaned back into the solid warmth of him, this man he loved, this beautiful, unreliable fact of his life. He stared at the steam rising from his mug. “When does it end, Rob?”
Robert’s hands stilled on Matthew’s stomach. “When does what end, love?”
“This.” Matthew gestured vaguely, the mug in his hand encompassing the messy flat, the unseen tour bus, the perpetual separation. “The you-being-here, me-being-there. The meetings that run long because someone’s coke dealer showed up. The festival in Belgium that turns into a fortnight. When do we get to just… be?”
Robert sighed, a soft, weary exhalation against Matthew’s skin. He untangled himself and leaned against the counter, reaching for the coffee pot. “You know the drill, Matt. The album cycle’s just starting. The promo, the festivals… the label’s chomping at the bit for a follow-up. It’s the machine, innit? Gotta feed it.”
“We’ve been feeding the machine for five years.” Matthew turned to face him. “I’m not twenty-five. I don’t want to live out of a suitcase waiting for you to have a free weekend. I want a home. With you. Not just the place you crash between tours.”
“We have a home,” Robert said, pouring his coffee too carefully. “This is home.”
“It’s a flat you’re in maybe three months out of the year. My clothes are in a drawer here, Robert. A single drawer.” Matthew’s voice was quiet, drained of the fight he usually mustered for this conversation. That absence of heat seemed to unsettle Robert more than shouting would have.
“It’s the life, baby,” Robert said, meeting his eyes finally. There was a pleading note there, a boyish hope that the old charm would work. “It’s who we are. You produce, I perform. We’re artists. We don’t do… suburbs and garden gnomes.”
“I’m not asking for a gnome,” Matthew said, a hollow laugh escaping him. “I’m asking you to choose a point on the map. Any map. And stay there with me for more than a month at a time.”
Robert ran a hand through his hair, exasperated. “And what, Matthew? I just quit? The band’s hot right now. This is what we’ve worked for. You’re asking me to walk away at the peak.”
There it was. The unshakable truth Matthew had always known but tried to wish away. Robert wasn’t holding onto the lifestyle out of necessity. He was clinging to it with both hands because he loved it—the adrenaline, the applause, the chaos. He wouldn’t let go until the music stopped, until the crowds thinned, until the machine spat him out worn and obsolete. Matthew looked at him—the beautiful, stubborn, scared man—and felt a profound and chilling clarity.
The fight drained out of him completely, leaving behind a cold, clean space. In a different time, he would have pushed. He would have listed the sacrifices he’d made, voiced the lonely nights in silent hotels, etched the outline of his own neglected needs into the air between them. But now, the outline of a different future glowed faintly in his mind: a sunlit bedroom, a worn couch, a man who looked at him like he was the only audience that mattered.
“Right,” Matthew said, his voice utterly calm. He took a sip of his coffee. It was bitter. “The peak. Of course.”
Robert looked wary, confused by his surrender. “Matt…”
“We should get to the studio. That guitar line for the bridge isn’t right.” Matthew set his mug down with a precise click. He walked past Robert, their shoulders almost brushing.
In the Uber headed east towards the studio, the city was a monochrome blur of rain and moving metal. Robert was on his phone, texting the drummer, lost already in the day’s work. Matthew watched the rivulets trace paths down the window. He felt disembodied. The decision crystallized not with a bang, but with the simple, tactile motion of his thumb unlocking his own phone.
The glow of the screen illuminated his face in the dim car. He opened his messages, found the chain with Kelly. Her last text, sent yesterday, read: “Time’s up, Scotty. They need an answer. I need an answer.”
He typed slowly, each letter a deliberate step off a cliff. “Tell them yes. Single and tour. Draw up whatever. I’m in.”
He hit send before he could think, before he could look at Robert’s profile, outlined against the passing streetlights. The message whooshed away, a tiny digital bird carrying his fate. He rolled the dice. He felt them land, a silent impact in his gut.
Almost instantly, three flashing dots appeared. Then Kelly’s reply: “FUCK YES. Call you in an hour. Don’t you dare ghost me this time.”
Matthew slid the phone into his pocket. He looked out at the rain-slicked streets, at the neon signs bleeding colour into the gray, and wondered what the hell he had just done.