Chapter Text
i. Did my heart love till now?
He made films. After years of dreaming and hoping and praying, he could finally say it out loud without the fear of it being ripped away. He made films. He could introduce himself as a filmmaker. He had gotten into one of the most prestigious film courses in Berlin.
David, the filmmaker. David tests the words out gently, rolls them around in his mouth and then breaths them across the pillow.
Matteo blinks his lazy eyes open and smiles, sleepy and soft and him.
“Not yet, dude. You have to actually make a film first,” he sighs, eyes glued shut again. David grins at him. A filmmaker, David.
He knows what’s going to happen with the course, he had read the syllabus every year since he was eleven. In first year, he was to make four films, each inspired by a prompt. They had to showcase the techniques he’d be learning in class as well as his own creativity.
The professor was the same one that had been teaching the course for the last ten years, the same professor David had gone to visit once when he was 14, to beg her to let him sit in on the course. Weirdly, the professor didn’t let a random 14-year-old skip school to sit in on her college film classes. She did tell him she’d check out his application in three to four years though.
And now David had sat in a lecture hall with her and 99 other students every weekday for a month. There had never been a day the same. Most days, David arrived ten minutes early with a coffee and colour coded notes to get a seat in the middle of the front row. Other days he arrived with his hood up, barely enough time to slip into the back
But, every single day, he turns up. And David is so proud of himself for that. He fought for this, for everything he has. He built his life from the ground up. He has to keep fighting if he wants to keep it.
The day they get their first prompt, the entire class was buzzing. Every year the prompts were different, none had ever been used twice from what David could find out.
“Okay guys, this year’s first prompt took me a while to decide on. I can’t wait to see what you’ll do with it.” The entire class is silent as she turns to write the words on the huge blackboard. Once she moves away the words are easy to read.
Did you doubt me?
Immediately the class breaks out into a chatter. Everyone wants to have the best idea, to make the best film. There are hundreds of ideas rushing through David’s head, like an impossibly fast slideshow. He scraps most of the ideas before he even realises he had thought them up. Those four words had so much potential.
He’s at home eating a dinner Matteo made for him before he decides what idea to run with.
“I know what I’m going to do with it,” he says, staring Matteo down.
Matteo looks up from his plate with chipmunk cheeks. “Okay?” He sounds muffled.
“My film project, I’ve decided what I’m doing with the prompt.”
Matteo swallows then grins at David. He has something in his teeth. His eyes have so much love, so much pride, inside them. A year ago it would’ve scared David beyond belief, having another person care that much about him, rely on him, believe in him. He doesn't want to be disappointing.
He wants Matteo to stay proud of him. That's all he wants.
“I’m going to make it about being trans,” David looks up to gauge Matteo’s reaction. He knows he shouldn't, of course he shouldn't, but old habits die hard.
Matteo is still looking at him the same way, proud and loving, nodding excitedly.
“That’s such a good idea!” David could see the cogs turning in his head, the excitement and anticipation building. “Oh man, it’ll be so sick David.”
David finds it easier than he ever would’ve thought to smile back.
Once he starts to develop his idea, it gets easier. He knows a kid from his old LGBT+ group who wants to be an actor. He calls the kid and he jumps at the chance to be in it. The school provides amazing equipment and David knows plenty of places to film.
It's easy. It’s written in days, filmed before the week is done and edited in less than a month.
It's finished four weeks before it's due.
He shows it to Laura before anyone else.
It opens with a frame of feet on pedals, cycling along so fast that the background is a blur of grass and concrete. The only sounds are the white noise the microphones picked up, the kid’s heavy breathing and the pedals squeaking.
From there, the story of the trans boy on-screen unfolds. It shows his parents, never believing he’d be able to become the cyclist he wants to be. The parent’s faces never get shown on screen, just bodies from the necks down, clad in muted colours and clothes that look straight from the fifties.
He ended up adding effects to some of their words in editing. He made some of their comments sound distorted, like the main character was underwater. And he makes sure there were close-ups on the main character’s eyes when the more hateful words were said.
This film isn't about the boy’s parents, or his friends, or his other family. For once the film is about the trans kid. He’s the star.
Laura’s favourite scene is the one of the boy repainting the creme walls of his sitting room to Jackson Pollock style paint splatters, then repainting his bike and cycling away with his suitcases.
The film ends on a wide shot, the kid facing his sister, drenched in sweat with three gold medals around his neck. He kid looks older, not a kid anymore.
“Did you ever doubt me?” he asks.
“Not for a second,” the on-screen sister replies.
Laura cries when it’s done. David tells her he’s sorry, that she had to leave for him. Laura makes him swear to never say that again, it wasn’t his fault. He shouldn't have to paint himself beige to match their parents. He wasn’t like them.
If they’re creme, he’s ultraviolet.
When it’s his turn to premiere his film the entire class goes quiet, enchanted for all 12 minutes. David cements his place as one of the best filmmakers in the class with his first film.
He receives a distinction for it, and a hug from the professor.
She's kind to him. He thinks she understands what it's like, to be young and scared. He doesn't really know, but he thinks that she is kind. To him, that's enough.
He doesn't show it to Matteo until a week after he turned it in. Matteo hugs him all the way through. After that, uploading it to YouTube is easy. David doesn't pay attention to the views, but he has to turn off YouTube notifications because of how many times a day his phone starts buzzing.
Jonas tells him his film had hit 100k views two weeks after he decided to post it. David just hopes that there’s a trans kid out there who saw his friend throwing paint at creme walls, and that they thought ‘someday’.
The professor starts keeping him back after class, only five minutes at any time. She asks him questions. How is he? Does he have a place to stay? Does he need anything to eat? It's never direct though, it’s always veiled in a way that could come off as casual if she hadn’t seen him at age fourteen, with a haircut he gave himself and a bruise across his cheek that he didn’t.
A year ago he would’ve hated her for it. Now he thinks she’s sweet. He tells her not to worry, he’s living with his sister and they have plenty of food.
It’s another month before they get their next prompt.
This time it’s simpler, easier even. David heads to Matteo’s the first chance he gets to tell him.
“We got the next prompt,” he pants. He ran up the stairs.
Matteo is just as excited as last time. He had spent hours listening to David brainstorm what it could be.
“It’s ghosts .” The smile slips off Matteo’s face. He blinks slowly.
“Oh.” David is lost. He can see Matteo shutting down right in front of him. He steps closer to him and takes both of his hands into his own.
“Hey,” he whispers, all of his excitement vanished into thin air. Matteo doesn’t meet his eyes. “ Hey.”
Matteo looks up at him, blue eyes glassy.
“I don’t like ghosts.”
He spends the next few hours in bed. It makes David’s heart hurt. He doesn't understand what happened, but he stays next to him through it all. He makes Matteo tea, then toast. When both go untouched he brings them back to the kitchen, refusing all of Matteo’s whispered apologies
He tries to figure out the trigger but he just can't manage. They must have spoken less than five sentences between them before Matteo spiralled.
He has his arms wrapped around Matteo’s waist and his eyes closed when Matteo’s phone starts ringing. Matteo doesn’t make any move to pick it up. Before it rings out, David sees Jonas’s contact. He untangles himself from Matteo and heads to the bathroom to call him back.
“Hey dude, something happened with Matteo. I think he’s going into a spiral or something.” David starts. He can hear Jonas getting worried on the other end of the line, the rustling of him sitting up.
“What? What happened? What triggered it?” David hears the questions, but he doesn't answer any of them. He doesn’t have any answers.
“I don’t know, he’s not talking. Can you come over? It’s just us here.” David hopes he’s doing the right thing.
Within twenty minutes Jonas is walking into Matteo’s bedroom, where Matteo is curled up on his bed and David is crouched next to him, whispering.
David hears Jonas walk in and gets up to walk over to him. The only thing Matteo does to acknowledge him is look over.
David starts to explain everything that happened, but he doesn't get very far. When he mentions ghosts Jonas stops him.
“Oh shit,” he mutters. “Before Matteo was on his meds ghosts were like, a thing. ” Jonas explains to him, how Matteo used to sometimes just shut down at the mention of certain things. It wasn’t every time, but it happened. Ghosts were one of the things. Matteo’s mother used to see ghosts, all through his childhood. It was one of the reasons his father left, the ghosts.
Matteo was terrified that one day he might see ghosts too.
Matteo is off his meds. David creeps over and crouches down beside Matteo’s face again.
“Matteo, Matteo are you taking them? The meds, are you taking them?” David whispers. His voice is shaking. Matteo still doesn't meet his eyes, but he shakes his head slightly.
David is scared. He thought Matteo was doing well, better than ever. He was doing well. There was no reason for him to spiral like this. The mediation was working.
“Why?” his voice cracks.
“I thought I was fixed,” Matteo smiles, bittersweet.
Matteo is back at his biology course a week later.
Matteo is back to Matteo a week and a half later.
Not a lot of good came out of the episode, but there were silver linings. One of them was inspiration for David's next short film.
He makes sure to run the initial idea by Matteo first and, once he has permission, he starts developing his idea.
He finishes the film’s final draft at three in the morning on a Saturday. He’s at Matteo’s before 3:20.
This film is less hopeful than his first one. It’s darker, more subdued. He applied everything he learned since his first film, symbolism, lighting, colour palettes and all. He used the sets they had in school, bringing his own props and bedsheets and wallpaper. Mia even agreed to play the main character for him.
It was about a woman who saw ghosts, how she stayed in bed all day and prayed they wouldn’t find her, how no one believed she was telling the truth. He used handheld shots and soft music through the whole 8 minutes. He got one of the kids majoring in theatre to do makeup for him, dark bags under Mia’s skin, rotting flesh on her face in the mirror.
Mia absolutely knocked it out of the park. She somehow managed to look just how he wanted. She looked hopeless.
He tried to end it nicely, with the woman taking her pills and the ghosts fading away, but it came off sad. Matteo smiles sadly at him when it’s done.
“I didn’t mean to make it so sad,” David mutters. He was so caught up in the joy of finishing it he hadn’t fully considered what it could mean for Matteo.
“No, I liked it. It was honest.”
David’s class thinks the same. They all think he's really great at what he's doing.
All his life he's told himself ‘Just make it to university, people will be different there’ but he'd never dared to expect it could be as good as it is.
People come up to talk to him before and after classes. They ask him questions, they want to know what had inspired his films, why he had chosen those colours, where he got his actors. He had only made two films but the questions just kept coming.
Everyone wanted to sit next to him, talk to him, hang out after class, get coffee. He was the It Boy of his film class. Everything that had made him different, a target, when he was in secondary school was making him unique here.
David can't get used to it. The year he had spent at his last school had been hell. It had ruined his confidence. It's hard to believe so many people want to get to know him.
He’s building it back though, brick by brick. He’s looking around at where he had buried himself, then clawing his way up and out of the earth. It only gets easier the closer he gets to the surface, because now there were people who were willing to pull him free.
He keeps uploading his films to his YouTube channel. He's starting to build a following. Abdi says that people on YouTube love short films, all of David’s do really well. People like his films.
Time moves along. David meets up with his godmother again and shows her both films. She loves them.
David feels himself getting closer to the surface, the air getting cleaner, the dirt leaving his lungs.
Matteo stays on his meds and goes to his classes. Amira said he was smart, like really smart. If he had gone to a psychiatrist sooner his life could've been so much easier.
And Matteo, god Matteo, he was just like normal. He was funny and charming and stupid and young. He got his head caught in the train doors, he bit David’s tongue by accident, he fell while they were just standing in a lift, just standing.
David was starting to look at houses, out in Hamburg, with huge gardens and four floors. He imagined how his life could go. His films could become huge and he would buy one of the houses. Laura could move in on one floor, the girls on another, the boys on another, and then on the very top floor Matteo and him could set up a life together.
He doesn't have much time to dwell on the future though. School is hard. People are starting to drop out of the course. What had been 100 has dwindled down to 75.
There are only two prompts left and the second last one was almost made for him.
Supernatural.
It’s an easy one for him, thank god. David finishes it in a month. He makes a killer film about a lonely gay vampire living in an estate, just what he had always dreamed of. Tumblr goes crazy for it.
His followers are starting to become more loyal, wondering when his next films would be coming out. His YouTube channel is pushing 500k subscribers.
Matteo’s meds are still an issue. He takes them for a month then feels better, normal. But then he starts to think he doesn't need them. David sticks by him through it all.
He opens the curtains when Matteo can't. He puts on soft pop music and dances badly around the bedroom, cleaning things off the floor.
Some days, Matteo heaves his heavy bones off the bed to lean against David so they can sway together.
“What we got to lose, what we gotta move, I move mountains,” Matteo hums along to the track against David's shoulder.
“I’d do anything for you, anything to move, move mountains,” David belts back. He spins Matteo. They are enough.
Then, when no one expects it, it happens. The contact pops up mid-way through a film class and he has to take it. He stumbles out into the hall, stuttering apologies to the professor.
“Hello, is this a Mr Schreibner speaking?” a woman’s voice comes through the phone, friendly.
“Yeah,” David breathes out. He’s leaning against the wall for support.
“We’re calling to confirm a top surgery date?” David had told himself he wouldn’t cry, but the second after he hung up the phone, he was in the boy’s bathroom, calling Matteo frantically and breathing heavily into the phone.
Matteo is there in ten minutes, knocking on the bathroom door.
“David?” He's soft, he's gentle. He's everything David could ever want then some and David has no idea how he got this lucky.
“I have a top surgery date,” David whispers out into the world.
Matteo is just as happy as David is. Life goes on. The days to the surgery are counter down on David’s phone, the ok.cool group chat, a calendar in Matteo’s kitchen and a notebook under David's pillow.
The day they’re meant to get their last prompt, the professor doesn't show up. Instead, a TA comes in five minutes after the class is due to start. Class is cancelled.
On his way to a nearby coffee shop with some of the other students, they all get a Google Classroom notification.
‘Prompt is: Something you love’
David barely even has to think about it before he knows what to do.
“Matteo, I want to make a film about you.” David tries to explain what he’s thinking. They had gotten the prompt a week ago and David still isn’t sure if his idea is going to work.
“Cool.” Matteo is still focused on the game of Zelda in front of him. His legs are intertwined with David’s
“No, it'll be weird.” David doesn't know how to make him understand. It would have to be real.
“No, it sounds cool.” Matteo pauses his game.
“Matteo, it would be weird for you. I’d have to be totally honest, lay your heart out bare for all my film class to see.” Matteo looks down, contemplating. His toes nudge against David’s thigh.
“That's okay. I'm trying to get better at showing people my heart.”
And David wishes to be the same. He wants to be like Matteo, learning to peel the skin from his chest and bend back his ribcage to showcase his heart bare. When someone would grab for it and tear it out, pumping and obscene, Matteo would plant flowers in its place, where they’d grow to a bigger and brighter heart, tangling and spilling out between his ribs and skin.
David can't do that. He’d had his chest pulled open and he has the scars to show it. He wants to be like Matteo, flowering and bright and sunny. Instead, he was sat, stitching himself back together, over and over again. He was wrapping his heart up with metal, only leaving space for three people: Laura, his godmother and Matteo. Everything else gets a place in his hand, or his mind, but only three people are allowed in his heart.
He had never meant it to be three. He thought it would stay at two for his entire life, but Matteo planted himself in the metal and grew inward until his roots were entwined with David’s arteries.
It takes two months to gather enough footage for a twenty-minute short film. It was raw and honest and terrifying. It was them, hearts bared and beating on film for the world to see. The day David has to show it to the class he nearly deletes the whole thing.
But, he makes it to the class. He wobbles to the front of the room. He plugs in his laptop with shaking fingers. He sets it all up. The lights get turned off. People sit forward in their chairs to see what David has come up with this time.
It starts.
Matteo’s face is on the screen, a super close up. It had been filmed on David’s phone.
“Do you think we’re like Romeo and Juliet?” David’s voice sounds airy behind the camera. Matteo’s eyes look away from the camera, up at the ceiling, contemplating.
“Not really. I mean, look where they ended up, right? We’re different. We’re Matteo and David.”
A voiceover, David’s voice, kicks in. This is Matteo. The screen shows Matteo laughing, nose scrunched up. Then it jump cuts to a concentrated Matteo painting David's nails black, then it cuts to Matteo nodding his head to the music coming out of David’s phone. The clips keep changing with no sound. Matteo dancing, Matteo laughing, Matteo with his fists raised challenging David to a fight.
The camera shakes as David sets it up on his tripod to film their wrestling match. They go five rounds and every time David obliterates Matteo.
One ends with him straddling Matteo’s waist, pinning his wrists above his head. Matteo doesn't look like he's too sad about his loss.
One ends with David on Matteo's back, holding both his hand behind his back, another with him squirming while David holds down his legs.
Matteo is turning 19 in October. He says he doesn’t like October, he’s not big on Halloween. The video switches to Matteo in bed, wrapped in the blanket, the curtains are drawn. He’s scared that the ghosts will stay into November.
The sound of the video comes in and the voiceover cuts out.
“Matteo, babe, are you sure you want me to record this?” David’s voice comes from behind the camera again. Matteo in the bed nods a tiny nod and makes a humming noise in the back of his throat. The camera starts shaking then stabilises a few meters away, on the tripod again. David places it so that both he and Matteo are in frame, then walks back over to him.
“You want to talk?” he whispers into the silence. Matteo’s head moves left and right slowly. David places himself down next to Matteo and starts drawing.
The video turns into a time-lapse with a digital clock. It goes from 1 pm to 9 pm in seconds, with nearly no movement, then it slows.
“I’m hungry,” whispers on-screen Matteo. David grins.
“Good.”
Matteo has depression. His mother has schizophrenia. The video shows Matteo kissing each of David’s knuckles one by one. It changes to Matteo playing table tennis with the boys, he loses. It changes to Matteo doing an awful attempt at the orange justice dance around David's kitchen. It changes to Matteo after Matteo after Matteo, ten seconds at a time.
Matteo has a lot of love in him. He doesn’t like being alone. The video shows Matteo playing go fish with Hans, Linn and Mia. He tilts his head back to look at the camera and grins.
The video shows Matteo in the river, all his friends in there too, in the background. David is filming from the bank. Matteo surfaces, hair sticking to his forehead in a way that makes David hopeful for the day he’ll be able to swim in the water with him. Matteo sticks out his tongue and goes back under. He has no idea what it does to David.
Matteo’s father left him and his mother when Matteo was 15 to move to Italy. He expected Matteo to look after his mother. Matteo moved out when he was 16.
The video cuts to Matteo making pasta in his pyjamas.
“Speak some Italian for the video, babe.” Matteo turns around to look at the camera
“David é un fottuto stronzo che mi fa cucinare per lui. Ma, é davvero sexy quindi o consento,” Matteo grins. Subtitles appear at the bottom of the screen.
‘David is a fucking asshole who makes me cook for him. But, he’s really sexy so I allow it.’
“Oh, babe!” David swoons from behind the camera. “What does that mean?”
“I said you’re really good at art and sports, and that you make amazing films.” The pasta boils over and Matteo runs over to fix it while David laughs.
Matteo is really smart but he nearly failed his abi last year. He couldn’t study. He hadn’t been diagnosed yet so all he did was smoke weed and hope it would turn out okay.
The video shows Matteo hiking up a hill behind David. He’s obviously not enjoying it. All of it is muted for David’s voiceover. Only one of Matteo’s sentences gets heard.
“Why would you do this for fun David, you weirdo.”
The next clip is Matteo, deliriously happy at the top of the hill. It’s too windy for any words. Matteo spreads his arms like a mermaid on a ship’s hull and lets his body tip forward, one centimetre at a time.
Matteo doesn’t like himself very much, but I think he’s really cool.
The video shows Matteo sliding downs a wall, then trying to taste strawberry lip balm straight from the packet, then trying to sing along to a fast rap song in English.
The video slows down. Matteo is in bed again.
Sometimes, especially if he doesn’t take his meds, Matteo has bad days.
“I’m so sorry,” Matteo whispers. David runs his thumb along his face but Matteo pulls away.
“Matteo, why? Don’t be.” Matteo sits up. It looks like it takes all his effort. David sits up beside him. Matteo looks down at his hands.
“You’re shouldn't have to deal with this for the rest of your life, so I think you should leave,” Matteo looks over at David. The words sound rehearsed. Before David can object he’s ploughing on.
“I’m sick, there's something wrong inside me. I’ll have to take drugs for the rest of my life, and go to appointments, and I’ll always have days like this. You deserve better. You deserve a whole person, not me. I’m just a shell of something that never was.” David pulls Matteo’s hand into his. Matteo looks like he wants to pull it away.
“That’s bullshit.” David is serious when he says it but Matteo still laughs. “Are you saying you want to leave me because I’m trans?” Matteo’s eyebrows shoot up.
“What? No! Of course not, how could you think that?”
“Well if you think people could never want you because they’re something wrong that you can’t change, and you need to take medication and go to appointments, then you’d have to think the same for me. Because I do all those things, Matteo.” Matteo looks outraged.
“No, that’s different. That’s totally different. That’s not fair to you at all.” Matteo looks angry on his boyfriend’s behalf.
“How is it any different? Your depression isn’t your fault Matteo.” Matteo doesn’t reply, but it looks like he’s thinking hard. He doesn't say anything, just kisses David sadly and the clip changes.
It’s them brushing their teeth together.
There’s a clip of them together on a rooftop full of fairy lights, there’s one of them exploring an abandoned building, there's one of them in a fancy restaurant using the chopsticks as moustaches, there’s one of Matteo trying to do a handstand.
When Matteo was eight he broke his arm. No one noticed for a week. The woman who noticed was his best friend Jonas’s mam.
Jonas’s face appears on-screen along with the other boys. They all wave at the camera. Matteo comes up behind them with a bucket of ice water.
Matteo can’t watch the Wizard of Oz without having a panic attack.
The video shows Matteo’s hands squeezing David’s.
Matteo is allergic to cardamom but he developed immunity to it after eating it for ten years, no matter what reaction he had. I asked him why he ate it if he was allergic.
“I didn’t want anyone to get angry,” says on-screen Matteo as if it’s the simplest thing in the world. The video cuts to a sleepy Matteo just waking up.
“I love you,” whispers David.
“Gay,” whispers a groggy Matteo, grinning. The screen goes back.
I love him. The screen goes black. He’s something I love.