#mattie:threads

[stormymists]

who: lily porter ( @scienceknewmynightmares ) where: campus

Matías liked Lily's smile. He liked a lot of things about Lily, actually, which is why he always felt a pang of guilt whenever he saw her. He was genuinely trying to change. He didn't want to be . . . that. Not if it led to what happened when he was eighteen.

"Hey!" he jogged up to Lily with a small smile, a tiny bouquet of scraggly flowers in his hand. "Sorry I'm late." He held the flowers out to her. "Stopped to pick these for you."

[stormymists]

"That shark was terrifying! I had nightmares for ages," Matías said with a laugh, rubbing his arm where Ehren shoved him, fighting a blush as best he could at the contact. He really needed to stop doing that. Ehren was his best friend, and he didn't want anything to happen to ruin that.

He snorted softly at Ehren's assertion that he was always right, shaking his head with a fond smile as he follow his friend deeper into the theater. "You wanna grab something to eat after this?" he asked after a moment.

"Ugh.... that makes me feel ancient," Ehren groaned, reaching out to playfully shove Mattie's arm. "Yes! How could I forget? I kept telling you, sharks don't live in fresh water, but you doubted me, which I'm sure you've learned over the years to never do, because I'm always right."

[stormymists]

Matías nodded, allowing Ehren to lead the way since he knew the theater better than he did. "Man, fifteen years . . . we were just babies back then." Six years old. They'd just started kindergarten. Matías remembered forgoing making any new friends in order to sit by Ehren. He didn't regret it. "Remember when we accidentally saw Jaws on TV? I was so scared of water I didn't even want to take a bath." He laughed.

"Technology hasn't come that far yet," Ehren grinned, but shrugged. "Like, stuff from the last 15 years old. They were used as decorations for a while, but I guess now they need to rotate them or something. Some of them just had like, a ten year reshowing or whatever, so now they wanna toss 'em all."

[stormymists]

"Sounds like you need to grow more arms," Matías said with a small grin, approaching the door anyway. "How old are these posters? We talking Hitchcock and Bergman? Or like Spielberg and Scorsese?" he asked curiously, slipping into the theater beside Ehren, holding his breath briefly as he passed him.

closed starter for @stormymists (mattie) location: outside seaside cinema

"Mattie!" Ehren opened the side door to the theater, waving at his best friend. "C'mon! I need your help. There's a bunch of old movie posters that the theater is just going to throw away, and I only have two arms, but I want to bring as many of them home as I can. You can have some for your room too if you want."

[stormymists]

Matías took the bracelet with the familiar heaviness of guilt settling in his chest. He gave her a small smile, leaning over to kiss her cheek. It was probably suspicious that he wasn't very affectionate with his own girlfriend, but he wasn't very affectionate with anyone. Aside from Ehren. He chalked that up to familiarity and hoped nobody really noticed.

To Lily, he just told her he wanted to take it slow as it was his first relationship, and she knew about the beatdown even if she didn't know why it happened. Sometimes the PTSD worked in his favor. "Thanks, Lil. I love it," he said, putting it on immediately.

lily wasn't worried that matías was late, she knew things happened and people could get side tracked like she did herself sometimes so when she finally saw him she smiled. "hi! that's okay!" she said before her eyes lit up at seeing the bunch of flowers being handed to her. "oh my god these are so cute, i actually got you something too!" she took a bracelet out of her pocket and held it out to him after she took the flowers. "i saw the pattern online and it just felt like your style so i wanted to make it for you, it's got your initial and favorite color and everything."