The Cure to Angst
"Mello," Matt says worriedly. The nineteen-year-old hacker watches the monitor from behind his best friend with concern shining through his blue eyes. "Which one is this? Your seventh?"
"Eighth," Mello replies. "Does it matter?" It sounds like a rhetorical question, and Mello did intend it to be rhetorical; he isn't in the mood to put up with Matt's lectures about how this is going to be the death of him.
Matt sighs exasperatedly, putting his arms on the back of the office chair and swinging to around so Mello is facing him. "Mello," he says, emphasizing it clearly, "you. Need. To. Stop. This."
"If you get to kill your brain cells all day by playing those games," Mello glares at him, "then I get to do this."
"Mello!"
"Matt, relax. It's not like I'm doing drugs or anything."
"You might as well be! Jeez, now that I think about it, you're just like Cloud."
Mello blinks, not quite understanding. "I'm like condensed water?" he asks in a puzzled tone.
Matt waves a hand dismissively. "Never mind," he says with another sigh. "But I'm serious."
"So am I," Mello says evenly. "You get to play video games, I get to write these things. Wasn't it you who told me that everyone needs a creative outlet?"
"Yes!" Matt throws his arms into the air dramatically. "I didn't expect you to go off and write-" he splutters for a moment, faltering before finding his voice again and finishing, "-write this!"
Mello rolls his eyes. "It's only a story," he says bluntly.
"A story about you and I dying," Matt reminds him. "What is it this time? Right, I die of a drug overdose. Mels, when I said that you should find a creative outlet, I really was hoping for you to start writing," he says honestly. "I looked forward to reading what you'd come up with. But now you're writing about the various ways we can die; that's not exactly one of the things I'd been expecting!"
Mello glances at his laptop for a second before averting his gaze back to Matt. "It's not that bad," he mumbles softly.
"Not bad?" Matt echoes. "In one of them, I get shot down and you die of a heart attack. Angst and tragedy is nice to read once in a while, but..." He firmly grips Mello's shoulder, looks him in the eyes pleadingly. "Mello. This is really scaring me. You are really scaring me."
Unable to keep eye contact, Mello's eyes wander down to his hands lying limply on his lap. "Well, what else can you suggest?" he says.
Matt releases his shoulders. "I don't know." He shrugs. "Write about the day you met me. Or our first Christmas at Wammy's. Or that chocolate syrup incident. Anything - you know, you could write an mpreg if you want to, and I wouldn't care. As long as it's optimistic."
Mello cocks his head curiously. "Mpreg?" he asks.
"Men getting pregnant," Matt elaborates.
Biting back a smile and evidently failing horribly, Mello says, "I see." His eyes glitter with mischief.
Matt blinks, turning pink in the cheeks and stumbling back a few steps. "F-forget that part about the mpreg," he says with an awkward chuckle. "An-anyway, you b-better have it done when I come back!" Really, Mello's devilish grin isn't helping his nerves. "Bye!"
The door slams shut, leaving Mello alone in their apartment.
Snickering to himself, Mello turns back to his laptop and opens a new document. And he begins typing:
Matt's life changed when he first tried that godforsaken test and saw the two pink lines displayed clearly on the screen...
Originally intended to put this as a chapter of Looseleaf, but Origin said it would be better standing alone, so... c: