Hey, y'all. w Third fanfic! Pretty much the same jazz as the last one… beware of fluff, scared!Matt, comforting!Mello, and loving/angry!Mello. Cuz they're on the prowl fo sho! XD Anyhoo, you know the drill, reviews make my heart flutter, flames make me want to stab someone in the face with a spoon. Repeatedly. So, for the sake of the unlucky person who's nearest me the next time I have ahold of a spoon, just don't do it, mkay?
Rated T for: some language, yaoi content (soft BL, nothing to be afraid of, right?), mild violent reference.
Spoilers: Mello's full name, Matt's first name, foreshadowing (i.e., don't read if you haven't read/watched the whole thing). A'ight, I think I covered everything so, enjoy! :D
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"AH!" Matt woke with a sharp yelp, and instantly panicked when he found his limbs bound and immobile. He began to thrash about, muffled yells punctuating his efforts.
Across the hall, Mello was dragged comparably slowly to consciousness. As soon as his razor-sharp brain had worked itself free from the fog of sleep and he was able to process the dark world around him, he sat bolt upright. Adrenaline laced the blood hammering through his veins at double time, hand lancing out with shocking speed to grasp the gun that never left him in a practiced maneuver.
"Matt?" he barked out, leaping agilely to his feet without a sound.
There was no answer, save for the continuing sound of Matt's incoherent grunts and yells, accompanied by an odd, irregular thumping noise.
Sharpened even further by the fading adrenaline rush, Mihael Keehl's brilliant mind deduced the truth in an instant.
"Shit," he ground out, dropping his gun. At least we're not under attack, he thought as he padded hurriedly to Matt's room, leaving the gun abandoned in the hallway. Carefully and quietly he turned the knob, allowing the white door to fall open. As his luminous blue eyes adjusted to the darkness behind Matt's door, he took in the scene before him with a worried sigh.
The redhead was hopelessly tangled in the sheets of his single bed, eyes squeezed shut and tears forcing their way through, leaving beads of moisture in his eyelashes and on his cheeks. His teeth were bared in a helpless, despairing grimace, his arms wrapped tightly around his own shoulders. The occasional whimper snuck out between his clenched jaws as he rocked himself slightly.
"Matt?" The blonde said softly, uncertainly. At once, the redhead's eyes flew open, wide with terror and shining with unshed tears. About a second after meeting the blonde's gaze, he shuddered, folding in on himself as his eyes shut again and his face colored with shame. His breath catching in his throat in a wheezy gasp, he spoke.
"Mel…" he said, a broken sob forcing its way up from his chest choking off further words.
That was all the invitation Mello required. Hell, he probably didn't even need that.
Matt lay quivering as Mello approached, then burst into tears with a soft cry as the blonde's strong, gentle arms wrapped around him. Fingers clenched tightly in Mello's shirt, the redhead buried his face at the junction of neck and shoulder as he cried himself out, struggling to simultaneously inhale as much of his lover's scent as possible—chocolate, shampoo, and something else unidentifiable, something familiar that had, by Matt's recollection, been there since their days at Wammy's, maybe longer.
"Nightmares again?" Mello's voice murmured into Matt's hair, who could only nod.
The blonde tightened his embrace slightly, protectively, then asked, "Do you want to talk about it?"
"N-no," Matt's voice broke. Mentions of the cause of his current state dredged up things in his mind he decidedly didn't want to think about.
To distract himself, Matt forced his world to shrink till it was just him and Mello—the same thing he did with his video games to make himself forget his past, all the shit in the world, everything. Forget it all.
As he did this, Matt found something that even his video games couldn't produce—as his world shrank, Mello seemed to grow, till he was everywhere—pressed warmly against the length of the front of his body, in the arm wrapped securely around his back, in the hand cupped tenderly around the back of his head, in the steady breathing he could both hear and feel, in the strong, even, reassuring heartbeat against his breastbone.
Everything Matt saw, felt, heard, and smelled was 100% Mello, and that calmed him down.
His muscles cramped and exhausted, Matt abruptly went limp in Mello's arms. Their mutual sigh of relief reverberated in the now-quiet room as one of the blonde's arms left Matt to carefully untangle his pale, noodley legs from the twisted sheets.
Rather than let go of the redhead completely, Mello chose the option that benefited them both—he stood, hands moving smoothly and quickly to secure a sure grip on the other. The redhead was quiet, letting Mello do as he pleased, suddenly too tired to care. Soon the blonde had carried him through the hallway (kicking the forgotten gun back into his room as he went). He placed Matt on his bed as though he were made of glass, then wasted no time in sliding in next to him, enfolding him in his embrace once more.
After a moment of silence between the pair, Matt took in a deep, trembling breath that Mello felt raise goose bumps on his chest.
"I… I think I'm read… to talk about it now," the redhead said in a small, uncertain voice. Mello waited patiently, knowing that Matt would continue when he was ready. About thirty seconds of breathing together, he did.
"I… I saw you. Not you, like you are now, but still… you, you know? Your hair was shorter, and messier. You wore your clothes like you do now, I guess, all leather and stuff. But they were kinda torn up, and covered with soot. You were covered in soot, too… and blood."
Matt began to shake, and closed his eyes, concentrating on the warm, real, wonderfully solid arms around him, his breath and heartbeat. As soon as he found that he could continue, he did, swallowing once before speaking.
"You were hurt… you didn't look like you were in your face, you never do… But I could see it 'cause of the way you were standing. Anyway, you were looking at me and saying something, I guess, I could see your mouth moving, only I couldn't hear you, there was this noise, this roaring noise… I dunno if you knew I couldn't hear you or not, 'cause you kept talking, saying whatever it was… getting angry, but scared too, I could tell. You started waving your arms around like you were pushing me away. That's when I kinda started to understand what you were saying. 'Run, Matt, run.'"
"I didn't want to. I was scared, but scared to leave you, too. Anyways, I started running towards you, but you stopped me, kissed me, gave me your rosary and turned me around, made me leave… made me leave you behind."
"Then there was this noise, bigger than that roaring. A hundred… a thousand times louder. And all this light, hot white everywhere… and you were gone! You were gone, Mel!"
Matt was crying again, helpless, as though his heart was breaking.
Mello bit his lip, like he might cry too. But Mello didn't cry. Mihael Keehl never cried. Instead, he placed a finger beneath the sobbing redhead's chin and tugged it up, forcing green eyes to meet blue.
Then lips crashed, and Mello kissed with a fierce desperation, determined to make Matt… Mail, his Mail… his friend, lover, hacker, and partner, his precious gamer… determined to make him forget.
When Matt's lips remained slack and unresponsive, Mello let loose an incensed growl and gripped the redhead's jaw, forcing his mouth open, eliciting a whimper from the teen's mouth into his own. Finally, though, Matt began to kiss back, which made Mello pull back slightly with an elated gasp, then dive straight back into it again. His lips moved without fury now, and he was gentler, pouring potent love from his mouth to Matt's.
Finally the redhead wrenched himself away, breathing loudly, requiring oxygen. In response, the blonde moved his lips to the other's neck, punctuating every passionate utterance he made with a kiss.
"I." Kiss.
"Fucking." Kiss.
"Love." Kiss.
"You." Kiss.
"I will." Kiss.
"Never." Kiss.
"Leave you." Kiss.
"Understand?"
With one final kiss, Mello pulled back to gaze down at his young lover. Matt was staring up at him, his breathing still a bit faster than normal. His eyes shone with love and wonder as he lifted his palm to lay it against Mello's soft, pale cheek.
"Well, do you?" Mello demanded as he lay back down, drawing his redhead to him in a possessive way that Matt had no problem with. "Do I what?" Matt breathed, sliding closer to sleep with each passing second. Mello hissed slightly, briefly tightening his grip on Matt. "Do you… understand?" he repeated, eyes fiery in the darkness. "Mmm… yeah… o'course…" he mumbled.
"Not enough. I want to hear you say it, Matt."
"I understand. You love me. I love you too. You'll never leave me. Do I even need to—"
The end of Matt's sentences was cut off as he was squeezed again. "Yes, you do." The redhead sighed. "Okay, Mells. I promise… I swear I'll never leave you."
The blonde sighed, anger melting to contentment as abruptly as usual. Matt knew it was just a part of Mello, as much as chocolate and the fiery spirit constantly flickering behind those ice-blue eyes. And so Matt not only accepted it, he embraced… loved it. With that final acknowledgement, Matt slipped into a deep, comfortable slumber, safe from the nightmares that only his Mihael could keep at bay.
Mello continued to speak softly to the youth long after his eyes had slid closed and his breathing evened out. In the darkness his thin voice, occasionally roughening with emotion, made promises he wasn't sure if you could keep. But damn straight I'm going to try, was his final thought before he joined his beloved Mail in his dreams.