Pairing(s): MattxMello
Author's Note: Out of all the hundreds of crack/drabble ideas that I came up with for the MxM pairing this summer, I felt that I should write something serious, if for any other reason, to prove to myself that I could actually write a serious (serious-esque) MxM fiction. Hence this idea to write a chronology with metaphorical tones about violent children's games, innocence, and of course, guns. Just Mello's relationship with the gun in general, everything short of him running towards it in slow motion through a field of flowers...I did say this was supposed to be serious, didn't I?
I really enjoyed two things about writing this story: it was a chance to review gun jargon, which I haven't had an excuse to do since my Trigun fiction way in the day. Now I have even more useless knowledge crammed in my skull and it feels good. XD The second thing was the unexpected abundance of dramatic irony, which just sprouted like dandelions during typing. Dramatic irony being something that the audience knows that Matt and Mello haven't wrapped their silly little heads around yet.
Disclaimer: I don't own Death Note.
Innocence is more fleeting than passing car lights on the highway, especially when children are in so much of a hurry to grow up. They receive a taste of life and become insatiable, they expand inside and become too much for their small bodies to contain, until they scratch at their skin, urging their bones to grow faster, so they could become eligible for bigger and greater things. Growing up becomes another game, a mad dash to the finish line to see who inherits the burdens of adulthood first, and then wear it for all to see like a war badge.
In the meantime children practice adulthood on the playground: households are made underneath the jungle gym, and wars are declared on the soccer field. There is no reason, no cause for mock combat but it feels so right. Waging themselves against each other in every game where sides are chosen, alliances made with pinky swears and last for about as long as recess. Or maybe the tiny soldiers scatter in a playful free-for-all, their small hands take the shape of guns, or they pick up sticks and improvise the sounds of stabbing shots as they shoot their playmates down.
Bang, bang, you're dead: the last one alive and standing wins, and winning is all that matters.
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Mello leaned his back against the tree, the rough corrugated bark scratching his skin through the thin material of his shirt the more he pressed into it. His heart was pounding hard enough to burst out of his ribcage in a flurry of blood and bone fragments. The sound was going to give his position away, even when he clutched his chest and took deep breaths it still wouldn't calm down, so he prepared to move.
He began to tilt towards the right; his body still glued to the security of the tree; that was when he heard a branch snap, and it jumpstarted his adrenaline all over again. It would've been safer if he reached around the tree slowly, but he was never one to play it safe--safe was boring. He leaped out of his hiding spot, lacing his two hands together with his thumbs and pointer fingers stretched out into the shape of a gun and shouted, "Bang, bang!"
Then he waited for Matt to fall down like he was supposed to. But when it never happened, when Matt remained frozen on his feet, Mello became agitated and jabbed an accusing finger at him.
"You're dead, Matt."
"No I'm not."
"Yes you are! I shot you in the chest twice! You're dead!"
"Nu-uh, I'm wearing special armor," Matt explained and folded his arms against his self-proclaimed immortal chest while Mello stamped his foot.
"That's totally stupid!"
"You're just mad because you can't win."
"I'm mad because you're an idiot," Mello countered heatedly, while Matt shrugged his shoulders.
"Whatever. This game is stupid anyway, why do you like it so much?"
"It's my favorite game. What's your excuse?"
"What?"
"Why do you play with me if you think it's so stupid?"
Their conversation was interrupted by the distant sound of an adult voice calling them back to the confines of indoors. Their other housemates joined together into one big wave of stampeding feet and glowing faces, frostbitten and weary from rigorous play. Matt grinned at him once last time, pivoting around on his heel and jogged back to the orphanage with Mello in tow; his question left dangling and unanswered in the late afternoon air.
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He made sure to put a great amount of distance between himself and Near when they were called into Roger's office, sliding through the entrance to the mahogany crypt that smelled like books and aged cognac. Out the window against the coconut white sky a leaf was swiped off its branch by the breeze and plunged to its death on the hardened earth. That was when Roger told them that L was dead, and not to worry about a funeral because he had already been buried: a nameless body dropped in some cheap hole in the ground.
It felt like the whole world was splintering down into some unfair spiral, while Near continued putting his puzzle together as if Roger had only announced the weather to them. L was dead, the least he could do was pretend to care, the impassive little brat. Like hell he was going to work with him, and Roger must've been on glue to even suggest it, and not the cheap stuff that kindergarteners used, but the airplane model glue that caused reality to melt into a blissful puddle beneath your feet. There was never going to come a time when he was going to get together with Near and play nice: he'd rather shove a hot curling iron up his ass and roll around in broken glass than work with him. Either he would be the one to succeed L alone, or…
Mello stormed out of the office and into his bedroom, throwing his possessions and a few chocolate bars into a bag and hoisted it over his shoulder, resisting the urge to flip the orphanage off as he walked away from it forever. Children threatened to run away from home all the time, to join the circus, go to the moon, whatever. But Mello wasn't just leaving his home, he was tossing all rights to childhood behind at the steel gates, outside the Wammy's House he could no longer call himself a child, even a teenager. He was now entering the adult world with Near's words repeating inside his head like an annoying song:
If you cannot win the game, if you cannot solve the puzzle, you are just a loser. Mello was not a loser. He was going to be the one to win this competition, because unlike Near, there was no such thing as going too far to get what he wanted. Kira made it personal when he took down the one person that he respected. Now he was going to finish it and finish it his own way.
He was going to trade in his pretend gun for a true firearm, and play the game for real.
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They glinted like venomous snake scales, like the hide of a scorpion glistening in the sun: greasy and dangerous in the poor lighting. All shapes, all sizes for all occasions, it was a truffle assortment of artillery. Mello bit into his chocolate bar, his wide eyes taking them all in before selecting the biggest weapon on the table: a rifle too heavy to be picked up with a single tedious hand and forced him to balance his chocolate between his teeth; then put it down completely.
"That type of gun only works if you want to rob a bank or shoot down the President," one of the mobsters whom Mello didn't know the name of told him. "Would you like something a little more compact?"
"I want whatever works," Mello answered cryptically, perching the rifle on top of his shoulder and stared down the barrel of the gun. It wasn't the smoothest answer he could give, but he didn't feel like investing too much attention into stupid questions. He looked over the rifle one last time with disdain and then traded it for a semiautomatic pistol.
It fit inside his hand snugly, his fingers molding into the right nooks and curves by instinct. It was hibernating now, laying dormant in his grip without posing a threat to anyone, but that could be so easily changed. His gloved finger rubbed against the trigger, almost pressing down on it…
"It's not loaded," the same guy told him, interrupting his daydream to hand Mello what looked like a black Pez dispenser without the goofy cartoon character head. The missing puzzle piece that completed the entire picture: he searched the gun for the release button until he finally ejected the empty magazine and jammed the full one in its place inside the handgrip.
Mello then stretched his arm out in front of him and aimed the pistol at the wall, which for the moment assumed the role of Kira inside his head as he slid back into his fantasy world. "Bang, bang," he whispered under his breath so nobody else could reach their ears out and hear him; then smirked. It was perfect.
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The first time Mello shot a person was completely justified. Although some could argue that he was quick to jump the trigger and needed therapy with an intense medication agenda, but who the hell were they to judge him? What made these people so special? They didn't even know what happened.
The mobsters didn't respect him. They didn't respect him for the longest time and it was abusing Mello's patience. Every instance was a new blow to his tolerance, threatening to smash it to pieces, beyond repair. He had already gotten sick of this treatment at the orphanage, having to claw his way to the top of the pile and scream to be noticed, and then still be pushed to the side.
To the mobsters he was just a bratty little runaway, a blue-eyed underfed-looking orphan with a big mouth. He had to improvise to make status among them.
But this wasn't like the Wammy's House, his worth wasn't determined by his brains; they could shit if he could do college level math equations in his sleep. Mello realized that the mobsters were like animals: gruff and untrusting, skulking around in the shadows regarding him with their predatory eyes. Not only could they smell fear, they could use it as rope to hang him: good thing that he wasn't afraid of them. Their way of life had been melted down around the reptilian pieces of their brain, the egocentric needs of comfort and self-preservation. Although the mafia was a little more evolved than the average criminal, they were like pack animals, hyenas to be precise, picking meat off the corpse that is human degradation.
Mello didn't respect them, but he had to pretend that he did, prove his loyalty again and again without taking shit from any of them. Pretty soon they ran out of things to say and quietly accepted him as one of their own.
All except for one jackass, who found Mello endlessly entertaining. He patronized him, patted his head as if he were a dog, and one time when Mello walked into a room it fell silent, that man and a couple of his greasy friends were wearing secret grins they were unable to hide. Mello wasn't positive, but he swore he heard the word, "Goldilocks" uttered amongst them.
The final straw was when he touched his last chocolate bar. No, he didn't just touch it, he ate it, and Mello knew he ate it, because of the smug look smeared across his obnoxious face. And then when he confessed to the crime, and rumpled his hair, Mello had had it. The gun was not even an arm's reach away, snugly kept in the front of his pants. Why not use it?
He shot him in both kneecaps. Bang, bang, the empty shells clattered to the ground, muffled by the sound of the man's inhuman howl as he crumpled to the hard floor in front of Mello like a marionette snipped from its strings, rendered completely useless. Blood was flowing from his pant leg, seeping through his fingers as he clutched onto it for dear life, his unshaven face contorted into a gargoyle mask of pain.
Meanwhile Mello was still shaking from the recoil, the power that blasted up his arm and proceeded to speedily infect every blood cell, every fragment of his body. He had never experienced such a gravitational high in his entire life, only the first time that his tongue tasted chocolate came close to this. He licked his lips, a ticklish bubble of laughter swelling up in his throat threatening to pop as his mind curled around a new epiphany.
The gun was everything. It wasn't just a weapon, it was his right to authority, it represented the strength that he needed to win the game, and more importantly leave Near in the dirt. He didn't keep a gun in the front of his pants for fun or to make his crotch look bigger. It was his control, he needed it where he could reach it and as long as he had it, he finally had a chance to seize the upper hand. You don't win battles through passive plotting; you win them by forcing your enemies' backs to hit corners.
Mello grabbed him by the collar and dragged him upwards so he could snarl in his face. "Don't touch my chocolate again. Ever."
The man merely whimpered in response as he was shoved back to the ground in a broken little heap, with Mello stalking away. His hands were still trembling while he stripped the wrapper off of another chocolate bar and bit into it, savoring the candy as if he had never really tasted it before.
The first time that Mello shot somebody was the moment the other mafia members realized not to fuck with him.
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Fire sucked.
But the end results of fire were a bitch and a curse. He barely escaped the explosion that he caused, he was lucky that he only got away with the scars that he had, the thick pink ridges of tissue caked over the left side of his face tapering down his neck and shoulder blade. Unattractive, but not nearly as ugly as the face of death. His own mortality danced naked in front of him that night, along with a very bitter insight.
He fucked up: that fact followed him home and preyed on his dreams, carrying pictures to his mind of burning buildings. Everything was swallowed by it, rushing like a greedy wave on Hell's shore, hot breaths consuming him and everything that he had worked for. Then he woke up, not to the dark caverns of the underworld with devils to keep him company, but tangled up in the cotton sheets of Matt's bed. The comforting tranquility of a whitewashed studio flat, clutter in every corner: clothes and trash scattered on the floor, Gundam collectables posed on the nightstand. Sometimes Matt himself would be there when he woke up, fast asleep in a bedside chair with his gaming device slack and neglected in his lap. Then Mello would poke him awake and demand painkillers.
Fire sucked and the burns left behind from the flames were unreal, as if the fire was still alive and burning on his skin. It made every aspect of living painful: speaking, eating; sleeping. He couldn't lie on his back without arching his spine upwards in agony, and turning on his stomach was no peaceful alternative either, not without the horse pills that Matt gave him with water.
They were huge and near impossible to choke down; then the effects made his brain break down into chattering particles, bouncing around in his skull like Mexican jumping beans on crack while his body dragged sluggishly from room to room. When he was high he couldn't be rational let alone in control of himself or his surroundings, he was completely dependent on Matt, even when he started to get better, and was bothered by every second of it.
His focus snapped off his thoughts as the door opened; reflexively he reached into the covers and snatched his gun, pointing it at the stranger who came in. Matt hesitated a couple seconds as he sized up the firearm aimed at his throat, then continued to walk towards him.
"You bring that thing into bed with you? What if you shoot yourself?"
"Matt, I'd like you to meet Mr. Safety," Mello responded thickly, his voice relaxing while his body remained stiff, watching Matt as he knocked and rearranged some things to put the glass of water and medication down, only temporarily while he scooted his chair closer to the bedside, then picked them up again. He twisted the childproof white top off the bottle of pills and bounced two into his waiting gloved palm, then leaned his knees into the edge of the bed as his other hand cradled the back of Mello's head.
"Open wide..."
"I can take it myself, you asshole," Mello growled and tried to shrink away from his advances, but Matt took a handful of his hair and held him in place.
"Like hell you can," Matt said and pinched the first pill between his thumb and pointer finger, holding it parallel to his nose. "I can't make a choo-choo train out of this, but we can pretend it's a UFO, buzz, buzz, clear for landing in Mello's mouth-"
The right side of Mello's face tinged pink, first he just couldn't believe what Matt was actually saying; then the burst of outrage stung him like a live wire pressed to his wet organs, he practically lashed out at Matt, "Shut up! I'm not a little ki-"
His sentence was rudely cut off by the painkiller as it was tossed into his wide open mouth. Mello gagged, perhaps a little too dramatically, reaching for his neck but then forgot it as his hands grasped for the cup of water to tug it to his lips and pull the cold water into his mouth and ease the drug's journey down his throat. Once he was done and had caught his breath, he shot Matt a withering glare.
"You fucking waste."
"This would go by a lot smoother if you'd just take them like a man," Matt deadpanned and for the quickest second Mello wanted to tell him just how wrong that comment came out, but simply complied grudgingly with a firm scowl that Matt ignored.
"Why do you bring it into bed with you?" He asked again, dropping the second pill on Mello's tongue for him to swallow. "It's a little too metallic for a security blanket, don't you think?"
Mello's throat muscles tightened as he forced the second painkiller down, taking more gulps of water. He couldn't make Matt understand, the cop with the Mario Brothers moustache knew his name; he almost wrote it down in the notebook. But he didn't know the rules of the game and hesitated. If he hadn't…
He brought a hand up to push the cup away from him, almost sloshing water down his front, "If we're found, we're vulnerable. I keep it to shoot down anybody who tries to stop us."
"Nobody's going to find us."
"They could."
"True. But they'd have to get past me first," Matt answered and Mello snorted.
"And what are you going to do? Use that stupid armor of yours? Is it even still good?"
Matt blinked two times in sequence, as if he couldn't believe what he was hearing. "Of course it's still good."
That's when Mello became very aware of the hand that was still holding his head, even when the ritual of pill taking had been over for a while. His eyes slid along the expanse of Matt's arm, starting to count the black and white stripes of his shirt but got bored and gave up halfway. He felt his body sinking into the mattress, the subtle hand of gravity suddenly noticeable, maybe the drugs were kicking in faster than normal, maybe it wasn't even the same drugs, maybe Matt slipped him a rufie, or something as simple as Matt's confidence relaxed his muscles. There was no sensible comfort in his sloppy logic and loyal self-confidence, but if Matt bothered to say it, instead of resorting to his trademark silence, then it could damn well be true.
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Matt wasn't the type to worry: whatever happened, happened. If the world were destined to come to an end in a final blaze of glory, then he'd light his cigarette on the apocalypse and wait the whole thing out. As for his opinions on the Kira case, if he even bothered to make any, he probably thought the whole thing was stupid too just like all of Mello's other games, but he agreed to play with him anyway. Matt didn't care, but Mello did, so he shrugged his shoulders and followed his lead without question: that was how their relationship worked.
But he kept giving Mello this look behind the amber tint of his goggles, one that Mello couldn't define, and it kept crawling up underneath his skin, laying eggs of irritation in his bloodstream until he couldn't think of anything else every time that their eyes met. It was as if Matt wanted to say something, but never did; he always broke their gaze to look at something else: his DS, the pizza stain on the couch cushion; they stared at each other's boots like the answers were stitched somewhere in the leather. Did Matt doubt him?
Mello wanted to say something to him: if he told him that it was going to be all right, Matt would make fun of him and call him gay. He wanted to make some snappy response, but every time he thought of one, it died stillborn on his lips and they remained inside their bubble of awkward silence, only broken up by the sound of Matt puffing away on his cigarette and Mello loading his gun. The determined snap of the magazine cleared his head, and he finally thought of what needed to be said:
"Hey Matt."
"What?"
"Remember that bulletproof armor of yours?"
Matt didn't say anything and for a split second Mello felt foolish. If Matt didn't remember or know what he was talking about then he just looked like an idiot for making such a comment.
"What about it?" Matt finally responded taking a long drag on his nicotine pacifier and Mello looked him straight in the eye.
"Remember to put it on tonight."
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The news report was still playing inside of his head like a moving tattoo imprinted on his eyelids. Anonymous idiot gunned down today for being a part of kidnapping Kira's precious messenger. Nobody knew who he really was, where he came from, what he liked to eat or if somebody loved him, and they didn't care either. He was just a body, somebody who stood for a cause that only Mello knew. Bang, bang. Matt was actually dead this time.
It wasn't pretend; it wasn't the distant horror of newspaper ink, not to be sympathized with because such a human tragedy seemed so distant from reality. Mello's only solace was in diluting himself to believe that one merciful bullet might've struck Matt somewhere vital and spared him the entire lead hailstorm; then maybe Matt didn't have to suffer too much when he was shot down in the street.
Matt was dead and there was no compensation for the murder until Kira was defeated and their mission was proved worthwhile. But Mello was seriously considering kicking Takada once or twice for the trouble of her suit-wearing army. He sat in the front seat of the van, staring into space without seeing anything. His gun was sitting patiently in his lap; he trailed a finger along the barrel and almost winced at the glinting chrome: he couldn't even touch it without thinking about what happened, even though his weapon wasn't the culprit; it was only responsible for his heavy thoughts.
There was truly a steep price to pay to be the last one standing. It was better to play with no allies at all, or just with people not worth caring about. Then he didn't have to feel guilty for making decisions that get them killed, knocked down like toy soldiers on a clothesline, and then having to move past their bodies without stopping to mourn them. He was still alive, he had sunken his teeth into his survival and refused to let go. That was his top priority. He still had a game to win, and now he had to live to the very end to bury Matt.
Mello picked up his gun, about to stick it back in its usual place, then stretched his hand away from his body completely and dropped it in the passenger's seat.
It was a far reach if he needed it, something he wouldn't normally allow himself to risk, but tonight it was all right.
The guns of adults were proven to be too cruel. He put it down temporarily in exchange for the pretend weapon he let go of years ago, the comfort of childhood when Matt could still get up and proclaim immortality with his stupid grin, and the bad guys like Kira always lost no matter how many lives they claimed, because darkness never lasted long in the realm of child's play. He could attempt to recapture that innocence in a moment's rest, and hold onto it tight until he vanished.
End.