I promise you all I have no idea what I am doing, really.
Disclaimer: I….I….shut up.
"LEVEL UP!" I winced as the words emanated from the TV, the sound hurting my ears.
"Turn it off." I threw my chocolate bar at the back of my roommate's head, but he didn't flinch. None to my surprise did I find the chocolate bar smacking me back in the face as he tossed it back at me over his shoulder, one hand still on the controller.
"Got to hell Mello." is all the answer I got as he continued playing, eyes never leaving the screen. His silly suede vest lined with fur was draped over the couch behind me and he sat on the floor, hunched over, wearing that skin tight striped shirt made out of thin fabric he favored so well. I raised a blond eyebrow and ran a hand through my yellow head of chin-length hair. He did not just say that.
Without another thought to the matter I pounced at him, landing on top in a way that was painful only to him, and I swiped the gray plastic controller from his hands so it flew away and bumped into the bottom of the TV. I felt a gloved hand cover my face as he pushed me away, adjusting his goggles over his eyes.
We've only been rooming for a few months, me and him, but to my sole distress he can just as easily read my actions as he can the ridiculously small print on the boxes of his games. I frowned, he had paused the game, hit the button just before I landed, already knowing I was coming at him.
That was one of the things that most confused me about Matt. If he knew I was coming he could have easily moved out of the way to avoid the pain of me tackling him, but he simply just paused his game and calmly waited for impact. God I hated that bastard.
"I'm gonna break that fucking game." Matt shrugged and laid down on the plush carpet, knees in the air.
"I already beat it. Twice." With that he got up and went to the dresser, pulling out one of the drawers in search of his addiction. I glared as he came to sit back down on the carpet, a stone-carved ashtray containing a half-finished pack of Marlboro cigarettes and a new, blue plastic lighter in his hand.
When Roger first showed me into our room I was a bit surprised to find out he smoked. He hadn't even said hi to me as I unpacked my things, he just kept playing the game he was unimaginably engrossed in. Until I turned TV off, that is, and demanded why he was ignoring me.
"It's not like you said anything to me." was his blunt answer as he pulled up his goggles and rubbed his eyes. I suddenly realized this as the truth, a bit sheepishly I might add, but I refused to lose my center.
"Isn't it common bloody courtesy to introduce yourself to the new person you're going to live with?"
"Yeah," he nodded, "it is. So why didn't you do it?" I blinked once, angry that he was whipping up comebacks so quickly. "Allow me to humor you. I'm Matt, your new roommate. 'Bed time' is a foreign word to me, and sometimes so is 'sleep'. Also, if you have a problem with lung cancer you can ask for another room." I gave him a surprised look.
"You have lung cancer?" He shook his head, messy red hair shivering as he did.
"Neither of us do." I could've sworn I saw his eyes flash behind the vermillion lenses of his goggles. "Not yet, that is."
To tell the truth, even after those five or six months of living with him, I still hadn't seen his eyes, which brought me to wonder sometimes if he were blind or some such deficiency. I took a hard fall back to reality as a puff of smoke hit me in the face, forcing me to stifle a disgusted cough.
"Sorry, the wind's blowing weird tonight." Matt knew how much I didn't like the fumes, so he leaned out the window and poisoned his lungs, keeping the smoke as far away from me as possible. For this, I was grateful.
I guess Matt and I were what you would call friends. Actually, we had done all out bonding in the infirmary, me from falling out of tree and splintering my collarbone, Matt from falling and cracking his skull open on the concrete. Don't get me wrong, the Wammy house infirmary is not just a regular infirmary, it's more like a bite-sized ER station.
I was surprised to find I was actually worried about him, mostly because the doctors said his survival might be kind of iffy. Screw worried, I was scared. Matt was truly the only person I had really talked to at Wammy's beside that Near bitch, and to him all I did was crap talk. But with me and Matt, we actually conversed, even if it was mainly me snapping nasty things at him and him responding blankly as he continued to play god knows what on the TV.
I watched him, leaning against the sill with the old style door pane opened wide, letting in the late autumn air. I walked over to him and noticed for the first time the word 'Jeevas' tattooed in old English lettering along the shell of his ear.
"The hell is this?" I said, running my finger over the word. I felt overcome with smug satisfaction as I felt him shiver at my ghosting touch.
"My last name." I felt my eyes widen, to tell the truth I had really never found out Matt's name. He knew mine, of course, because I'm the chatterbox of the century, but I had never really taken the time to find out his.
"When did you get it inked?" Matt shrugged, squishing the cigarette between his fingers and flicking it out into the night.
"The infirmary got it checked out, they took samples and stuff that would tell them how old it was." He turned to me, leaning his back lazily against the sill. "They said I must've gotten it done pretty young, and that it was home made. They said the ink was expensive too." I looked down at the fingers he had squished the cigarette with, which were now twitching restlessly.
"Did you just burn yourself?" Matt nodded.
"Yep, do it sometimes. But that's nothing, see?" he raised his sleeve to show me at least seven different circle-shaped scars that were obviously old cigarette burns, dotting the skin all the way to his elbow.
"You're an idiot, you really need to quit."
"Because you think I did this to myself? My old roommate did this to me when he found out I pitch for the other team. Do you think I'm that stupid?" I looked at him for a minute.
"You're…gay?" He smirked and nodded, turning his head to look back out into the night, perhaps hiding embarrassment that he wasn't letting show. I nodded as well, leaning my weight against the wall next to the window.
"Yeah, me too." Matt looked back at me, his smirk growing wider.
"Understatement of the century." He teased. Pushing off the sill he walked back to sit on the couch, almost like an invitation to join him. I closed the window, hating the cold weather, and padded over to sit next to him on the couch. Glaring at him I sat as far away from him as I could, keeping away from him like the plague.
"Still, you should quit. I really don't care if you get lung cancer and die or not, the fumes are just bugging the shit outta me." Matt let out a chuckle.
"You're such a pansy Mel. But let's say I was going to quit, cold turkey style, how do suppose I'm gonna do that?" I felt myself shrug, frustrated by his laid-back tone.
"Keep your mouth busy; chew gum or something." Matt shook his head disapprovingly.
"I hate gum, makes me gag." I don't know how long we sat in silence after that, having nothing to say after our brief conversation. Hesitantly I broke the silence.
"Do you know I've never seen your eyes?"
"Yeah, and I intend to keep it that way." I was silent for a moment before reaching over and attempting to pull them down.
"No!" he snatched at the goggles, somehow keeping them at bay over his eyes. His actions were to no prevail, though, for I gave a firm yank, and off they came. Before I could catch a glimpse Matt squeezed his eyes shut, the skin around them pinching into wrinkles. I tackled him for the second time that evening, forcing him to lay down while I straddled him with my knees, forcibly trying to pry his eyes open.
Finally, after much argument passing between me and him, his eye muscles grew tired and surrendered to me, opening to reveal his oculars. I stared.
Something was…weird about those eyes. They were kind of glassy. Spaced out. They twitched as they stared into mine, involuntarily, and the red that marbled the whites of his eyes from lack of sleep did their appearance none better.
"Happy now?" he muttered, his strange eyes glaring back into my icy blue ones. I nodded before replying.
"They're…not that bad. Not bad enough to wear goggles over them twenty-four seven." With a shaking hand the redhead reached for his goggles, which I let him take from my slack grip. He fixed them on.
"Everyone needs some kind of shield. For you, it's your feminism and bitchiness. That's why I deal with you. It's your turn to do the same for me."
"Can't you just keep them off for me?" I whined, subconsciously realizing one of my hands was pinning his wrist. Matt sighed, his breath smelled faintly of cigarettes, but mostly of those stupid ice-breaker mints he was so hopelessly addicted to.
"Can't you just stop being a bitch for me?" He asked, mimicking my tone of voice. Before I knew what I was doing I had already breathed out the answer to his question, my eyes wide with realization.
"Yes."
And suddenly I realized why I let him do all the things I hated. He looked so amazing when he smoked, so cool when he leaned out the window casually, smoke blowing from his lips, curling in artistic, twisting patterns from the end of his cigarette. He looked so happy when he played those games, so caught up it was cute. I liked it best when he slept though, the way he curled up much like a cat, snoring softly after a long night of video game playing. I always felt like a stalker when I watched him, infatuated, as he did all his everyday actions.
He was unimaginably excepting as well. When I first started wearing my tight leather clothing and I told him to keep his mouth shut because I didn't give a fuck what he thought, he only shrugged and gave me a lazy grin.
"It looks good on you." was all he said before turning back to his game, gloved fingers flying at an admirably quick pace over the little colored buttons. Well, at least, I was pretty sure they used to be colored before all his gaming wore the coloring away, rubbing it from existence. And what about just now, when he simply shrugged when I admitted to being gay, and turned away as if it were as normal and simple as saying hello.
So right then, how could I help myself but thoughtlessly press my lips to his, dreading the second after when he would pull away and tell me to get the fuck off him so he could ask Roger for a new room. But he didn't. In fact, it was me who pulled away, so surprised and excited that he hadn't that I couldn't focus on the moment well enough.
When I pulled back I was silent, studying his face for any signs of anything. His eyes were stern, but it was only a second later I found he was grinning.
"Jesus you're such a girl." And I did feel too much like a girl for comfort when Matt sat up, me on his lap (which I might've thought awkward if I wasn't having an emotional spasm at the moment), and delivered an identical kiss to the one I had given him just a few moments ago. He slid his goggles off before his lips met mine again.
Matt managed to lay off the smoking for two months, mostly because I made him do it by acting like a distressed girlfriend every time he went into a coughing fit. I think it was when I started to fake being nearly in tears when he laughed hysterically (which resulted in yet another coughing fit) and promised that if I convinced him in the next few hours then he'd lay off the cigs a bit. A few minutes later I told him I loved him and he passed out from shock. That was all the convincing he needed.
And yesterday, when I was battling him in a brutal game of Mario cart, he told me he loved me too right before he crossed the finish line, whupping my sorry ass for the fifth time that night. But I never did see him cross it, I was already passed out on the carpet. And not out of shock, oh no, but because he was going to make me quit chocolate because he'd won the game fair and square. Love hurts. Real bad.
Fluffy shonen-ai is what I live for, so take that Ben! Flame me if you must, this was an evil concoction that deserves that hatred of MattXMello yaoi lovers everywhere. Of course, nice, flattering comments don't hurt either.