Title: Look

Author: Miru

Rating: T for some language

Warning: Spoilers only if you don't know who Matt is

Notes: Drabble written late at night, imagining the thoughts going on between Matt and Mello

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Matt never looked at people so much as he glanced at them. Yes, glance. That was the right word. A quick flicker of the eye for a second or two, maybe three if the subject was particularly interesting, but never more, before his attention was directed at the game in his hands once more. It was something of a defense mechanism, one that he'd developed unconsciously, but one that worked better than anything. After all, if he didn't have any interest in people, they rarely had interest back in him, and that meant he could go on twiddling with his game in peace. Perfect.

Then there was Mello. He didn't glance at people, or look at them, no, he glared at them. He had that fierce light to his eyes (pitch black, a beautiful pitch black that looked endless) that was almost enough to make people flinch just when he looked at them, his glowering, flickering stare boring into you like a drill, like sunlight into an ice cube. Scorching. Or something poetic like that.

And that was how Matt had his defenses smashed in one blow; the wall he'd carefully built around himself went crumbling down way too quickly for his comfort. Who was he to come smashing into his apartment suddenly, after vanishing for four years? What the hell gave him the right to come barging in like a storm (a quiet one, though, silent but deadly, almost)? Well, he was Mello, and that was probably enough. Mello didn't need reasons or excuses.

The blonde had come knocking at the door some random night (it was probably a Thursday), and Matt had opened the door, half expecting some drunk hobo who'd lost his way, and instead found himself with an armful of feverish, unconscious Mello, covered in burns and cuts and god knew what other damage. Typical Mello. He crashed, he burned, then he left the cleaning up for his dog to do. Matt sighed only twice while he bandaged up the burns and bought more painkillers and drugs than he'd ever bought before (he was generally healthy, almost weirdly so) to tend to his patient. Mello the Spiteful, Mello the Fierce, Mello the Glarer, wasn't down for long, and now there he was now, less than a week after that feverish collapse, up and around, bandages wrapped around his face, but unable to hide those furious eyes.

"Look at me."

"Hnn." Even as he gave an absent sort of half-hum in response, Matt could almost feel the heated-metal gaze digging holes into his body as he kept his head bowed, eyes trained on the screen of his game, blinking ever so often behind the golden lenses of his goggles. (They were the +2 supplement to his defense. After all, people had even less interest in him when they couldn't see his eyes, but this apparently didn't apply to Mello.)

"I said look at me."

The lean shadow fell over him, and he realized too late that the blond behemoth was standing over him, the black eyes (god, they fairly glittered) glaring down at him. Pausing the game (even though he knew he probably wouldn't be playing it for a while, not when Mello was looking at him like that), he gave the blonde his customary glance, leaning back so he wouldn't have to crane his neck too far back. "What?"

A dangerous sort of half-smile was playing on Mello's lips, and the words slipped out, slimy and sticky, or at least that's probably what they would have felt like, had they had texture. "You want to help me catch Kira?"

He couldn't help it, really, when a sort of snigger (muffled from his attempts to keep it in) slipped out, and he resumed his game, trying not to pretend those seven words had affected him at all, no, of course they hadn't not in the least…

But who was he kidding, really? Four years, four fucking years, one thousand four hundred and sixty days he'd been waiting for this scarred, insane blonde to come pick him back up and give him a job, and, well, if it called for chasing after a nutjob with a deadly notebook? "Mello, you're fucking insane."

He could almost hear the wide smile he got in response. (Oh, it hadn't changed at all over those past four years, just as wild, just as glaring.) "Awesome. We're going to LA."