𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐈𝐬 𝐀 𝐋𝐨𝐰. ⁽⁽⁽ᵐᵃᵗᵗʸ ʰᵉᵃˡʸ⁾⁾⁾

Don't You Know That Only Fools Are Satisfied?

Track List:

Seventh Heaven, Beck

Disappearing, The War on Drugs

Something, The Beatles

Room for You, JOSEPH

Just Like Honey, The Jesus and Mary Chain

George would never say it aloud, not even to Matty, who is currently in the lift up towards Ray's flat, but the space inside the disused Battersea Power Station has a clinical air that makes him feel like he's one bad joke away from being sectioned. It's not just Ray's flat, with the white walls and pristine furniture. It's the whole place. When he arrived here, he had to come through a visitors lobby and explain who he was here to see - uh, Ray Farrell, Regan Farrell, F-A-double R-E-double L, yeah - before he was allowed into the lift and sent up to meet her and Lydia. He's grateful when there's a knock at the door, all but sprinting down the hall to get to it before the girls. He leaves Ray and Lydia to mix Tom Collinses in the heavy glasses that Ray had brought in from the kitchen.

Matty stands in the doorway with one hip cocked out to the side, and George meets his surprised gaze with amusement. There's a pause, a silent exchange communicated only through quirked eyebrows and curling lips, before they embrace. George can practically see the excitement and nervousness baked into Matty's brow, and knows that Matty can read the same expression on his face. Ray's invitation had been issued to George via Matty, and was thus communicated in a flurry of texts that focused on tonight definitely not being a double date but just the four of them because Ray had some kind of event related to her business. George is fuzzy on the details even now, trying to hide his ignorance behind deliberately broad and vague questions.

Lydia graces them both with a wide, shining smile. To any outsider, they might assume that Lydia is the founder and CEO, not Ray- her hair is pinned in a chic chignon, her makeup perfect, her silk dress clearly expensive.

"Last one in has to do a shot, I think," George motions towards Ray, who is clutching a magnum of vodka. The proportions are faintly ridiculous, and he hears Matty spluttering behind him.

"Aw, what! That's not fair, I got here dead on 6:15. Did you get here early just to make me look like a dickhead? I bet you did," Matty pulls a face, lips turning down briefly.

"Be a good sport, Matty, show them how it's done," Ray approaches with a shot glass in hand, holding it out to him. George pretends not to watch how Matty's gaze flicks over her before he takes the shot in hand and throws it back.

When he was getting ready, Matty had allowed himself the dubious indulgence of imagining how Ray would dress for something like this. He'd envisioned her in something pale blue, at first, a long column of silk that bares her shoulders and skims over her boyish figure. But that seemed too saccharine for the professional tone, and the vision resurfaced with Ray standing on the stage alone, pale as marble and swathed in violent, bloody crimson. The final image had done away with both the event and the clothes entirely, and Matty had forcibly pushed those thoughts away like he'd been burnt. Any amount of imagining seemed irrelevant now, as Ray greets him with an arm around his waist and a kiss hovered by his cheek, her fingers reaching out to take the shot glass back.

"Nice suit," she says in his ear, over the sound of Beck playing from her speaker.

"I know you said black tie, but I've never been keen on dress codes," Matty hears himself say, relying heavily on autopilot whilst he finds a way to synthesise this vision of Ray (real) with the ones he pictured earlier. Because of course she looks even better than him in immaculate black tailoring. His eyes linger on the red ribbon at her neck, but she seems oblivious, clutching the shot glass like a life-raft in a storm.