In general, Matt liked to think of himself as a relatively straightforward sort of guy. He was smart, yeah, a genius when you got right down to it, but he didn't really consider himself to be particularly complicated. He was smart, he was a good hacker, he liked video games and cigarettes and driving too fast at three o'clock in the morning and (maybe just a little too much) he liked Mello.
Mello. Mello was anything but straightforward. Mello was bold and violent and passionate and a million crazy thoughts in leather and Eurotrash boots, sweeping through the world with no sense of subtlety, taking up as much space as possible, and all of it calculated to scream NOTICE ME.
And that was one of the complicated parts. For all his nerve, Mello needed to be noticed. There was something in him that was still that skinny kid back at the House, second to Near and desperate to be the best. Mello didn't know how to be calm and laid back, didn't know how to be patient or quiet or relaxed. He was quick-thinking and fast-talking (and, Matt thought sometimes, absolutely crazy as fuck) and everything with him was immediate and important and the biggest rush of Matt's life every single time. Even the shitty plans, and there were more than a few of those because sometimes Mello liked to act first and consider all the possible consequences second, were worth it just for that feeling.
It wasn't like Matt was suicidal or something, it was just that every time Mello got that look (the one that always meant death or glory or, if they really fucked up, prison) Matt forgot self-preservation and let himself get pulled along for the ride.
Was it really his fault that look made him go a little weak in the knees like some kind of goddamned schoolgirl? Not to mention that dangerous smile Mello got, when he looked like sex incarnate. The smile skipped his knees entirely and went straight for his cock.
And it was reckless and a little suicidal, yeah, but that was all right because Matt knew that Mello needed him. He needed him because Matt was the only person who could hit the brakes every once in a while so they wouldn't crash too soon. The crash was inevitable, they both knew it even if they never said a word, but Matt sure as fuck wasn't going down without a fight. Or at least a little resistance when he could get Mello to sit down and just breathe for half a fucking second.
Sometimes he wondered what it really meant, that he was so willing to follow Mello into certain death.
But then Mello went and blew up a building while still inside it (and what the fuck kind of psychotic idiot does something like that, anyway?) and Matt was awake for the third night in a row and he'd forgotten how to think about anything beyond getting through to the next moment because that was all that really mattered.
He was sitting next to the bed at two AM, half playing his DS and half watching Mello sleep (and it would have been stupid sappy shit had he not been so afraid Mello was going to die on him), when Mello stirred and opened his eyes and blinked sort of blearily in the blueish almost-light.
"What th' fuck're you doing?" he mumbled. "We've shit t'do tomorrow an' I need you. Go t'sleep."
And then he was out again and Matt was grinning like an idiot because in Mello-speak that was as good as an I love you.
"Whatever you say, Mel."
It probably meant that he was the crazy one.
