Okay, so this was sort of inspired by the song "Never Gonna Leave Me" By Sia.
Disclaimer: I don't own Death Note. Spoiler Warning for Mello and Matt, though that should be all since they're basically the only ones in this.
"I assure you I never wanted to kill you."
The explosion.
Pain. God, it's like fire coursing over me.
Why was I doing this?
What is that noise?
"Mello!" A voice… "Mello, wake up! Stay conscious!" What was that? "Damn it Mello! You aren't leaving me!"
Matt
"You're leaving Whammy's?" The read head looked up from his game, an expression of shock plastered across his face, the device in his hand made an extravagant fanfare of death noises as his character died, but Matt didn't look down.
"Yeah, I'm almost fifteen now, it's time to get out of this hole." Mello said, reaching into his pocket for a bar of chocolate.
"I'm coming with you!" His roommate said loudly getting up off his bed, Mello reached out, grabbed the front of Matt's orange-tinted goggles and pulled them out, letting them snap back sharply against the gamer's face, causing him to jerk backwards and sit down again.
"No you aren't." With that the blonde turned and walked out of the room, slinging his bag over his shoulder and leaving the gamer's life.
"Don't worry Mello; you're going to be okay… Shit…"
The voice again, hazily through the fiery pain…
"It's going to be okay Mello, just hold on. We're almost there."
Where…?
"What the fuck are you doing here?" Mello stared in shock at the red-head on his doorstep, carrying a bag and a cigarette.
"I'm selling life insurance." Matt deadpanned,
"Ha, ha very funny." Mello reached out and yanked the boy inside the flat, slamming the door forcefully and doing up the many locks decorating the inside.
"Seriously Mello, did you think I wasn't going to try and find you? Speaking of which, do you know how many blonde chocoholics with bad tempers there are out there? A lot."
"What do you mean bad temper!"
"Is that a trick question?" Matt smiled hesitantly, Mello rolled his eyes and unearthed a chocolate bar from somewhere on his leather clad person.
Snap
"Mello… can you hear me?"
Dark… Cold…
"They said you'd wake up soon. It's only been a few hours."
Warmth spreading slowly, from my fingers… Up to my face… the flames are back, but small now.
"Don't worry, it's going to be okay, I'm not leaving you."
Leaving? I was the one who did that…
"Matt, why did you come to find me, seriously now?" Mello said, snapping a fragment of chocolate off his bar.
"How could I not? If this is about it taking so long, that's Roger's fault. Decrepit moron got really uptight after you left, it took ages for me to sneak out." Matt smiled a little hesitantly at his friend, Mello couldn't help but smile back.
"Old fuck." Suddenly a phone rang, Mello reached into his pocket and pulled out a sleek black mobile and flicked it open, "What? You do? I'll be right there. Gotta go Matt." Mello stood up and walked towards the door, stopping when he felt a hand on his arm.
"I'm coming too." The gamer said quietly, Mello pulled his hand off gently and pushed him back to his couch.
"No you aren't. Don't worry Matty; I'm not leaving forever this time, I'll be back real soon." The blonde almost smiled and left the room and started doing up locks on he outside, "Don't want little Matt gettin' hurt!"
Hurt
The fire is growing… I'm still in the dark…
Matt?
"Mello…"
"Mello." The quiet voice rang out in the silence of the late night, a rustle as the blonde sat up in bed.
"What, Matt?" He said, reaching for some chocolate to get him going a little, from across the other side of the room Mello could hear his friend shift uncomfortably.
"Mello, what do you do? You won't tell me anything and you always leave straight away when someone calls and you have a gun." He said in a rush, Mello snapped off a bigger piece of chocolate, he had been expecting this for a while.
"I was almost beginning to think that you'd gotten stupid since I left. It's not all that complicated, I just found a new group of morons to order around. Only these ones have guns and bigger egos."
"Mello you wouldn't by any chance be a Mafia boss would you?"
"Sure, not like it's hard or anything, you take down one guy and they're falling at your feet."
"I remember when I first met you at Whammy's… You were furious when Roger made me your roommate. Before the end of the first day you punched me in the face."
The fire… I can't hear Matt… No, listen!
"…that other time when Near first came? Man, you were so ready to beat his head in…"
Fire
"…just didn't want to see you in trouble. That was the first time you made anything close to an apology, or said thank you."
Thank you
"Mello, you can't!" Matt stood in front of the white figure on the floor, tinkering with plastic toy robots.
"He has it coming to him! Stupid sheep!" The blonde said furiously, trying to reach Near over his friend's shoulder.
"Your emotions are clouding your judgment, to be a successor of L you cannot allow clouded judgement." The boy on the floor said quietly without looking up. Mello redoubled his efforts to get to him.
"I'm gonna shove those toys so far up your ass-!" Mello screamed jumping towards Near; Matt shoved his friend backwards, accidentally sending them both sprawling down the flight of stairs they were standing in front of. They came to a halt at the bottom and lay there panting.
"I'm sorry Mello!" Matt said, sitting up and scrambling to his friend to see if he was alright.
"It's okay Matt…" Mello said, then in the quietest voice Matt had ever heard, "I'm sorry, and thanks."
"…that was the first time I thought I got you hurt…"
"Mello!" Matt yelled as the blonde stumbled inside the apartment, blood soaking out from under the hand pressed to him arm.
"How many times do I have to tell them, they come here, they get shot!" Mello exclaimed, Matt paled, he could only be referring to his Mafia underlings. For some reason Matt was a source of curiosity to them and no matter how many times Mello doled out this particular threat a few of the more persistent ones found out where he was and turned up every now and then.
"Mello, you didn't… Shit I'm sorry." Matt said, running to get the first Aid kit from the kitchen,
"I've told you before and I'll tell you again, if they try to mess with you, they get shot." Mello said dumping antiseptic on his arm and slapping a non-stick bandage over it. "There, good to go."
Silence. I'm alone with the fire… Matt? I'm drifting off into darkness.
"I've told them a thousand times!" Mello burst out voice tinged with anger, once again one of his subordinates had decided to be a moron and come to his and Matt's apartment.
"Mello, can't you just leave him?" Matt said gripping the blonde's arm as he headed for the door.
"Fuck no I can't Matt! Morons don't understand mercy." Mello replied, and Matt knew exactly what happened to those who weren't shown mercy, mostly a bullet to the head.
"Isn't he useful or something, can you really just kill him?" Matt asked, for once Mello paused.
"Well actually he's just a vaguely decent hacker but… Get off!" He shook the red head off of him and walked out of the apartment, a minute or so later Matt heard the expected gunshot and a muffled yell. Mello waltzed back inside, kicking the door shut and snapping chocolate off a bar.
"Mello what did you-?"
"He's not dead Matty; he just won't be coming back ever. But that means I need a new hacker." He said looking pointedly at Matt,
"Are you sure?"
"At the very least this way I'll be able to keep an eye on you." Mello said, snapping off some more chocolate and he throwing himself down on the couch and slinging his arm over the gamer, who picked up a console. "Then my only problem'll be keeping my boys from jumping you, but if this little episode is any indication I'll have no trouble."
Suddenly, Mello was aware. He could feel sheets underneath his hands and hair tickling his ear, slowly he cracked open his eyes. He opened them fully to a darkened room that he eventually recognised as his and Matt's apartment.
He lay motionless for a moment until his attention was drawn to the reason his hair was still tickling his ear; lying next to him, curled into the extra space on the bed was Matt. Mello levered himself up into a sitting position and hovered over the red-head; he was sleeping soundly now, but the purple bruise-like smudges under his eyes suggested that it wasn't something he'd been doing a lot of lately.
"Matt." Mello breathed the boy stirred and his eyelids fluttered, when they opened fully and had brought the world into focus Matt sat bolt upright.
"Mello!" he exclaimed, "You're awake! How do you feel?"
"Sore, what the hell happened Matt? How did I end up here?"
"Well, I heard the explosion and came to find you. I took you a friend of mine who know a bit of medicine and then I brought you back here, that was a week ago tomorrow, you've been in and out of consciousness since then."
"That long?" Mello started attempting to get up, but stopped as he realized some thing was off, he raised a hand to his face and felt the soft bandages covering one side of it. "What the fuck Matt?"
"Well Mello, you did blow up a building while inside it, you got hurt…"
"How bad?" A short silence followed his question,
"Bad." Matt said at last, "It was a big explos-Mello don't!" Mello had hauled himself out of bed and stumbled a little unsteadily across the room. Matt grabbed his arm but at a look from the blonde let go, Mello stumbled into the bathroom and Matt followed him, standing just outside of the door as Mello removed the bandages.
At first Mello just stared at the red angry scar stretched across practically the entire left side of his face, and then suddenly he retched and leant forward across the sink, emptying what little was inside his stomach. Matt darted forward and reached forward to hold Mello's hair out of the sick, but in doing so accidentally brushed against the red skin. Mello snapped, spinning around and shoving Matt away.
"Fuck!" He screamed, throwing a hairbrush at the wall, as well as a few more things, and sweeping everything else off the counter onto the floor. Mello then sank down onto the tiles put his head in his hands and screamed a bit more. Matt sidled back into the room and sank down next to Mello,
"Mello," he said quietly,
"Fuck off Matt!"
"No."
"Just fuck off and leave me alone!"
"Mihael Keehl shut up! You're being an idiot!" Matt's raised voice made Mello look up, Matt leant forward until he was right in front of the blonde's eyes,
"This," he said, "changes nothing. You are still the most fucking beautiful person I have ever seen. I am never going to leave you, and I'm never going to let you forget it." Matt pressed up close against his lover and pressed his mouth to the blonde's, then moving it to the side of the scar, gently tracing it all the way over his face. A few hot tears dropped onto Matt's skin and he pulled the blonde into his arms and sat there on the floor with him until he cried himself to sleep.
"Come on Matt, let's go." Mello's voice said through the small microphone in Matt's ear, the red head tightened his grip on the steering wheel of his car and took a deep breath.
"See ya later Mello." He muttered, pressing his foot to the throttle and skidding out of his side street just around the corner from where Takada was just getting out of her car.
"You won't shoot-" his words were cut off sharply as bullets, twenty four to be exact, slammed into his body. Matt slumped, slamming into his car and onto the ground, cigarette falling from his lips as his vision clouded and closed. Sorry Mello, he thought, I know I said I'd never leave you...
Matt, I'm sorry, I never meant for you to be killed. But I'll be joining you soon, if all goes well. Just wait a little longer, I know you will.