*For the fantabulous and lovely icanreadyourmind, because we all know that MattXMello is practically canon. I hope I can live up to your expectations with this piece, because I know that I loved writing it. Inspired by "Demolition Lovers", but not a songfic.

**I don't own it, dolls. It ain't mine. Check it. ;)


It didn't make any sense… At all… It didn't make sense at all.

From the time he'd been small, Mello had always been abusive of Matt. It wasn't anything that he did on purpose, usually. It was just a reflex. And in a way, it was the ultimate proclamation of love that Mello could give. Mello was damaged in that way, and that part of him, the part that was supposed to feel, was broken. Given his past, it wasn't hard to see why…

After all, if you walked in on your mother splayed out on the bedroom floor, dismembered, and with her heart sitting in your father's hands, how would you cope with it? Mello had been developing perfectly normally, exceptionally even, before that.

He'd been seven.

Mello had had to live with his father for three more years after that, and he had to live with the fact that his mother's corpse was rotting in the floorboards beneath his room.

And due to his exceptional intelligence, it didn't surprise him when rat poison found its way into his father's coffee one morning. In Mello's opinion, the rats had more right to live in their house than his father did anyway.

And then somehow, Mello found his way to Wammy's.

And when Mello found Wammy's, Mello found his way to Matt.

Whereas nothing made sense to Mello, Matt could see everything clearly and for what it was.

Despite being really quite smart, Matt had never found anything that he was ahead of the crowd in. Sure, he was a kid genius, but other than that what did he have going for him? Nothing. Not one thing. So he figured that the least he could do was put what little he did have going for him to use. And when he discovered that his talents lied in surveillance and electronics, Mello was all Matt could think of.

Because he'd always been that way. Matt gave. It was his defining characteristic. He acted like he didn't care, but in reality he'd given every bit of his soul away. And just like with Mello, it was his past that defined him.

Matt had grown up in poverty, and every little thing he had had gone to his parents, to them making a better life for the three of them. Except for the one time, he'd woken up in the morning, and his parents had been gone. They'd left. And Matt knew instinctively that they weren't coming back.

It was okay though. At least that way they could be happy, Matt thought.

Matt ended up at Wammy's.

Soon after, Mello found him there, and their dysfunctional relationship of give-and-take began.

Through the years at Wammy's, each benefited from the other's presence, even though to outsiders who didn't understand their relationship it just looked like Matt was Mello's bitch and that Mello was an overconfident, hotheaded jerk. They fed off of each other in a way that people couldn't understand, in a way that made them isolate themselves. Their self-isolation though, it pulled them closer.

And then Mello left Matt, for reasons that, at the time, Matt didn't understand. It was the first of many things Mello did that would throw Matt's life into total disarray.

Near left too, and all of a sudden, Matt was number one. It was a new feeling, one that didn't make any sense to him. The status, it launched his reputation skyward, and in the world of Wammy's he became legendary.

Matt wasn't meant to be legendary. He knew that much. To be a legend… That was Mello's goal. Not his.

But the gamer figured that all Mello was doing was making himself happy… So he put up with it. He stuck around at Wammy's, and he dealt with the attention, and he was lost.

But if Mello was happy, then Matt was happy.

Leaving Matt for his stint with the Mafia proved much harder than Mello had anticipated. Mello had become more attached to the redhead than he planned on, and every time he heard so much as a beep that resembled something off a video game, he found his head whipping around to search for the familiar goggles.

They were never there, of course. And Mello's bad mood would deepen, and he'd spiral further into his own rage.

It was part of his anger at leaving Matt that pushed him to the top of the ranks of the Mafia. His fury at having to leave Matt behind to deal with Near fueled his fire, giving him reason to try all the harder to get his business taken care of, because as much as he didn't want to admit it…

Mello owed Matt a massive apology.

And then, that day when Soichirou Yagami approached him in full riot gear, equipped with a Death Note, Mello was scared absolutely shitless.

He'd never admit it. He'd never talk about it, to anyone. After the Mafia, Mello had learned to not show emotion, it just wasn't done.

Except… Except maybe to Matt.

He might, he thought, if he made it out of this alive, be able to talk about it to Matt.

And then he blew the place up.

Matt hadn't really been doing much the day that it happened. He'd just been lying on the bed that he'd outgrown a long time ago, the one he kept out of nostalgia, playing some game or other. It didn't matter which one, that was irrelevant. All he knew was that, for the first time in his life, the game he was playing was less important than what was going on in the world around him.

Because it was Mello. And all Mello could do was utter one word.

Matt's name escaped Mello's lips, gently, painfully. He looked like he was going to collapse any minute, and Matt was frozen in his tortured gaze.

And Matt saw his face, bleeding profusely down into his mouth, down his neck, and dropped the Game Boy. Matt suggested going to see Roger, but Mello refused, telling Matt to get things to bandage him there, in that room, or that he would leave and get someone else's help.

Matt quickly gathered gauze, bandages, antiseptic, and tape before taking care of the only thing that mattered to him. From the urgency with which Mello was ordering him around, and the way that he didn't want to see Roger, Matt knew that Mello didn't want people to know he was there. So he kept silent, and let Mello stay there for the night.

When Matt woke up, Mello was gone.

The only thing he'd left behind was an address with a scribbled note beneath it.

Don't come unless you're willing to leave everything else behind.

And Matt most definitely was. After all, he wasn't programmed to be number one.

He was more of a hero's sidekick type of character.

And before either of them could really stop it, or think about it, or recognize the repercussions of all their actions, they were partners in crime, in it to win it, to beat Near, to defeat Kira.

They weren't stupid. Far from it actually. Both of them knew that they were going to die, the way that destiny had decided for them. They'd already made the decision though, and neither of them was going to back out, neither was going to leave the other.

Mello had already left Matt once, and he didn't think he could do it again. In fact, if everything had gone as Mello had planned, Matt would have made it out of the entire affair alive.

Matt, on the other hand, wouldn't have dreamt of leaving Mello for the world. He knew he was giving his life for the man, but it didn't matter. Matt was born to give.

Both recognized the other's shortcomings, and more than made up for them, bringing progress to the small flame of a relationship between them. Matt knew that Mello cared, despite the fact that it was impossible for him to show it, and Mello knew that Matt would go to the ends of the earth for him. Neither was going to ask the other to come out openly about their problems, so it was just an unspoken rule – when one was suffering, the other silently took care of the problem. While both did this, however, neither realized that what was burning between them wasn't friendship.

A friend didn't come back to whisk a friend away into the heart of danger, the way Mello did with Matt. If Matt had only been a friend to Mello, Mello would have been able to go at it without him.

But if Mello hadn't had Matt, he wouldn't have been able to make it as far as he did.

A friend tries to talk a friend out of doing things like Mello did. If Matt was a friend, he would have tried to suggest a more rational course of action many a time.

But Matt was more than that. Matt wasn't just a friend. Matt was a lover. And lovers support each other unconditionally.

And while that flame never had the chance to escalate to a physical sense, deep down, both of them finally realized it in the end.

Just barely, before it was too late.

That night that the final act in their tragic love story came about, they tried to act like it was no different from any other night. Mello tried to act like he didn't care about the fact that he was sending their lives into certain turmoil, and that if even the slightest thing went wrong, Matt would die with him. Matt had on that familiar face of apathy, not showing that inside it was tearing him apart knowing he would never see Mello again, even if he managed to live through it all.

Mad. Stupid. Crazy. Insane. Manic. Adjectives flipped through Matt's head as he tried to find the perfect word to describe what they were doing, until he finally settled on frenzied.

It was perfect to describe what they were doing. Nothing was slow for them. Everything was heat of the moment, do or die, us or them. If they didn't react quickly enough, they were going to die. Even this time, though there was a plan, if one thing went wrong, they were both dead.

And Mello already thought for certain that he was going to die. He was only praying that Matt made it out alive.

Matt let out a final lazy chuckle, masking the bile he was feeling in his mouth over their situation, and turned away until he heard Mello say his name. When he found himself facing the blonde again, the moment they locked eyes a kiss came upon them.

And again, that word frenzied came to mind, as the kiss was desperate, trying to fit a lifetime of what they had finally pieced together as love into one mind-shattering, life-altering kiss. As they stared at each other, the deed done, neither of them said a word. Matt just placed a hand on Mello's face and whispered his name sadly, and Mello broke eye contact. Matt turned away at a slower, more somber pace than before, but Mello grabbed his wrist with one hand, pulling the rosary over his head with the other hand.

And as Mello placed his rosary over Matt's head and murmured a prayer of protection, a single tear slid down Matt's face. Mello knew that if he looked at Matt for a moment longer he'd lose all conviction, and so he turned away, and left his beloved behind.

Matt didn't really care about the fact that the Japanese police were chasing him. He was more concerned with the fact that he might not be buying Mello enough time to get away with Takada. Matt still clung to the slight hope that both he and Mello would live, though the chances of that, in L-speak, were probably at 0.000001%. Matt gripped the steering wheel tightly, sliding through a dangerous turn in a stolen car. He almost wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it all.

And then he was surrounded.

They called for him to get out of the car, so he did. Weaponless, defenseless. The only protection he had was that of the rosary and whatever Mello had said to him. Witty banter sprung from his lips, a self-defense mechanism he'd gained long ago.

And then he was shot. Shot, a brutal and inhumane number of times, for the well-being of a mass murderer.

With Mail Jeevas died a bit of Mihael Keehl, although Mihael Keehl carried a bit of Mail Jeevas as well.

Mello's heart died that moment that he saw Matt's car on the television screen of the truck.

In fact, he didn't even care as he was burning alive. He'd forgotten about Near, about Kira, about Takada. Matt, Matt, Matt…

Mello was practically dead before the flames began engulfing his body. His soul and heart had been ripped to shreds, all he had having been stolen from him before he'd ever really even had it.

The pain surrounding his body took his mind off of the heartache that was eating away at his insides. And no one was there to hear, but he mumbled only one final word as the last of his life energy found its way out of his body, wriggling out of his corpse.

"…Matt."

No one wants the last emotion they feel to be remorse about how much they should have done when they had the chance.

"I'm trying, to let you know just how much you mean to me…" – "Demolition Lovers", My Chemical Romance