for prompt 72 in fanfic100's table, Fixed :D
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The fading sound of footsteps outside tells Matt room service has passed them by for the sixth time in three days. Good. It'd taken he and Mello ages to set up their equipment, and nobody alive will ever set their eyes on it. Nor will anyone with an interest in their life attempt to.
Mello is fucking exhausting him. Matt is no stranger to pulling all nighters, but enduring two consecutively is pushing his limit. He hasn't had even a catnap, and it's devastating what a difference that can make. The computer screen blurs before him, and Matt feels faint. He yanks off his goggles to hang around his neck, but the pressure on his skull refuses to just disappear. Matt resigns himself to the headache, then grinds the heels of his palms into his eyes and groans.
Matt can multitask. The problem isn't watching the surveillance monitors out of the corner of his feye because Mello doesn't trust mass detection programs, while sending out viruses and checking for feedback from Mello, simultaneously, for hours on end. With nothing else to do. The problem isn't that the only thing he's had to eat was a bowl of Ramen yesterday afternoon. The problem isn't that he's on his last cigarette, and that it is his last last cigarette this time. An hour ago had been his last cigarette. This cigarette marks the death of his emergency stash, and he grieves it accordingly. Ash settles on the keyboard.
Matt catches movement in screen 4a out of the corner of his eye. Striding down the hotel hallway clad in a coat as flambouyantly red as if he'd wornlipstick, furred hood pulled up. Mello's always had a penchant for the ostentatious.
Matt sucks in air through his teeth, and straightens up. With an air of resolution he sets to typing, determined to accomplish at least a bit more. Matt doesn't have much time before nicotine deprivation, among other things, inevitably set in and leave him useless. He can only subsist on adrenaline, Ramen, cigarettesand violent sex for so long.
And therin lies the problem. Three days ago Mello was gone when he woke up, called from an untraceable number to say Don't miss me, and Do the work I left you, and has since been storming back in at outrageous hours several times a day. Matt brings him up to speed on recent events, and somehow always ends up on the floor fucking or being fucked. Or there really are no recent events with which to update, and they cut straight to the fucking. Or Mello cut straight to it, recent events notwithstanding. Matt doesn't have a problem, but he is really, really freaking worn out.
They used to have a relationship, once. There'd been the stereotypical clumsy teenage fumbles, too, but they're not what Matt is thinking back to. Even a couple of weeks ago, they'd had a relationship. It had been dysfunctional, with Mello callous and manic by turns, but they'd been together. They might not have been in love, but they'd been together. Not this.
Matt can handle adrenaline, stress, hunger pangs and tension until his body tremors. Matt can handle hacking until his brain melts and his synapses stop firing, and then hacking some more. Matt can handle it, because the net is closing, and if he and Mello want to devise some plan – any plan, at this rate, no matter how half-baked and/or insane – then now is not the time for breaks. Now is not the time for emotional revelations. Now is not the time, in fact, for anything other than working like their asses are about to be lit on fire. Metaphorically speaking, Matt hopes. He knows Mello has extensive expertise in arson, and, given his mafia connections, can only wonder where his lover gained it. And despite a healthy respect for Mello's finesse at divide-and-conquer, Matt doesn't have much faith in his ability not to step on a few too many toes. Mello is machiavellian, brilliant, and sometimes just a little overzealous.
The thought of what type of enemies Mello is likely to make is a sobering thought. Matt backtracks to slightly happier contemplations, choosing not to dwell on the possibility of their asses lit on fire. Now is the time to work like the world as they know it is about to be destroyed. And that simile, unfortunately, is literal.
Mello shows up in screen 2b, stepping out of the elevator. He usually takes the steps, because he's a fucking paranoid bitch. Matt wonders why the rush, and notices Mello's hand jammed into his pocket. It'll be clenching his gun, no doubt. Matt gives himself forty seconds, at most, and stubs his cigarette to death on the wall. Mello always complains about the taste of it in his mouth.
Matt sighs and stretches and swiveles his chair to face the door, deciding nothing drastically important will appear on the monitors in the time it takes Mello to storm in and set them to record. Mello hates doing that, and always says that if it isn't live action it's useless. Why bother with security cameras if you're watching footage after the fact? By the time you see something it's too late, fait accompli. For special circumstances, though, Mello is willing to make an exception.
Mello will be a hypertense wreck; Matt hasn't seen him since last night. Or it could be early this morning. Matt isn't really the pedantic type. He leaves that up to Mello, who is obsessive compulsive enough for the both of them and then some. Speaking of which, it never takes Mello more than a minute to reach their room from the elevator. He's fifteen seconds over.
Matt isn't waiting much longer. He muses idly that it's a wonder the door still hangs on its hinges as Mello storms in.
"Hey, gorgeous." Mello flings off his jacket. It lands in a crumpled heap on the floor, and Matt has the feeling he'll be joining it soon. "Any success?"
Mello shuts the door with a brutal kick, and Matt winces for the hotel owner. Mello wears steel toe boots. There'll be a dent.
"Nah. Abysmal as usual. I'm out of cigarettes."
Mello wears a smile as pretty and dangerous as serrated steel, and Matt flickes his lighter idly. He knows he should probably get up, but his head is light and his arms feel like bags of sand. Matt isn't quite sure how he has the energy to breathe, let alone face up to Mello in one of his more vindictive moods. Because, and Matt prides himself on knowing Mello's moods – if only through long experience, and not any particular empathetic skill – vindictive is Mello in a word today.
"To be honest, I don't care."
"When are you not?" Matt asks, but his voice falls flat and it doesn't sound like a question. He isn't sure he's not being ironic, because in regards to being honest Mello is very often not. Matt doesn't know if he might be trying to get a rise out of Mello, because every line of his body must read listless and doesn't give a shit. Matt stops worrying and decides it's all the same difference, really. Mello will take what he wants out of everything Matt says whether it's there or not.
Mello actually laughs, but the sound is off. He walks the couple yards across the room to stand in front of Matt, and rests his hands on his hips. "Do you know where I've been?"
Sometimes Matt gets aggravated when Mello asks questions he knows the answer to, especially questions as stupid as that when Matt's obviously been blinding himself in front of the computer screen all day. Sometimes Matt wishes Mello could just say what he means and mean what he says, and maybe just tell him I had a shit day today so that Matt can say You want to talk about it?
"No, I don't know where you've been." Matt isn't resentful, really. Not in the slightest.
"You wouldn't want to know. But," Mello gnaws his lower lip, "suffice it to say I am sick of this world and it's morons."
"Well, I definitely didn't see that one coming."
Mello puts a hand on each of the armrests on Matt's chair and leans in, and if Matt swallows because his mouth is dry, it isn't because Mello is a bit threatening at all. Not at all.
"I have had a very trying negotiation today," Mello warns, "and I didn't come back here to be sassed at."
"Of course not," Matt says dully, and attempts to stand up. Instead of relinquishing his hold on the armrests and standing up as well, freeing Matt, Mello tips farther forward. Pressed against the back of his chair, Matt clenches his jaw and glares up in annoyance. "Look –" he starts, but Mello's gloved finger at his lips cuts him off. Matt inhales the scent of leather.
"Something's wrong. You're an incorrigible smartass who never ceases to amaze me, and you never feel sorry for yourself. What is it?"
"That's what you think it is? You think I feel sorry for myself?" Matt would be better at cowing Mello with his rightous anger if a mutinous part of him didn't agree. But he is, nonetheless, entirely justified. "Mello, I can do inhuman amounts of hacking for you, or I can have inhuman amounts of sex with you. I can't do both. I can only do one inhuman amount of anything at a time."
Mello rolls his eyes. "Is that it? Sorry for assuming you liked sex. Those little noises and whimpers you make can be very misleading, especially when they're followed by you screaming my name. Repeatedly."
"Shut up! Mello, all I'm saying is pick one, okay? Because I need to get my head on straight, I need to focus, and I can't get the information we need if I have to calm you down every time you come back in a fucking tizzy!" Matt realises he's losing his calm and tries to glower, he really does. It isn't his fault if Mello's not-quite-smile is doing strange things to his stomach. "Either say 'Yes, Matt, we have a plan' so I don't need to stress and then fuck me senseless, or realise we don't have a plan and need to put all our efforts into getting one."
"You're almost cute when you're indignant, you know that?" Mello raises an eyebrow, not quite haughty but patronizing enough to make Matt want to just… ugh.
"Please," Matt grits through his teeth, "please give me a reason not to knee you."
Mello leans in unti their foreheads touch, and the clarity of his eyes is frightening. "You know you love me."
"Less and less every second."
Mello frowns.
Then he's on Matt, hands fisting in his shirt, teeth gripping his throat while his torso presses down and prevents his prey from escaping. Matt gives a few gasps and then feels his body go slack, shifting his hips to get a better angle against the knee between his thighs. Damn Mello and his damn teeth, doing damn sexily dizzying things to him.
Damn him not being able to stop it and say no, damn Matt turning into a writhing mewing helplessly and hopelessly aroused fucking whore, pinned down with his head flung back and the plastic edge of his chair digging into his shoulderblade. Damn Mello practically curling himself around Matt and making the rest of the world disappear, and damn Matt suddenly flashing hot and cold and wanting to fuck him, right here, right now. Damn everything always falling to pieces.
Matt's chest is heaving and with every lungful of noxious air (because Matt suddenly desperately needs a cigarette, and it's not air he wants to be breathing in, it's Mello – Mello so close that he is all Matt can see and taste and touch and hear and breathe) his chest brushes against Mello's, and that damn crucifix dangling down between them, and it sparkles in the light. Matt wrenches an arm out from where Mello's crushed it to the armrest and grabs that crucifix, yanking Mello down to him for real. Mello suddenly topples and ends up between Matt's splayed legs, and Matt tries to claim a kiss but Mello drags them to the floor. It's messy and awkward and rough, and in the midst of tumbling limbs Matt jams his elbow into something, but the muttered motherfucker is a moan by the time it leaves his mouth. Mello's shoved Matt's shirt up to bunch under his armpits, and he dips down to lave at a nipple that is painfully sensitive. Grinning like a cat with the cream, Mello pulls back and blows softly on the damp flesh. Then he bites.
"Fuck you," Matt chokes out, then remembers he's the one on his back.
"Maybe next time," Mello murmurs into Matt's chest, and noses his sternum, peering up and loving the way Matt goes all melty and soft and slitted-eyed at the caress. He grabs Matt's biceps and moves his hands over Matt's head. "Don't you move," he whispers, and seals the unspoken threat - or else - with a nip to Matt's earlobe. There's no time to get him spread eagled on the cheap mattress and cold sheets right now. Matt wriggles a bit but doesn't attempt to move his arms and, satisfied, Mello lets go, straddles his waist and surveys him. It's a satisfying sight, to have Matt stretched out before him and exposed. His breathing is quick and his eyes are wide, but the obvious tightness of Matt's pants doesn't speak of fear. Mello grins dazzlingly, predatorily, and watches Matt's eyes darken. Mello isn't unaware of the expression he is wearing, and he knows exactly what it can do. What it is doing.
"Slut," he whispers, arching forward and trailing his fingertips down Matt's chest. Up they go over the bumps of his ribs, and he lets his nails scrape in the hollows between. Matt has goosebumps, and his fair, fair freckled skin is flushed. It's a beautiful scene. It'll better when Matt is bucking, unhibited and shameless, clawing at the carpet and any skin he can reach.
"Could never be as good as you," Matt says, affecting an audacity that Mello thinks doesn't suit him – Matt's better at appearing innocent, because he just seems the type, or at being the maddeningly fuckable tease he is – "but I try. I learned from the best."
"You still torn up over being forced to have sex with me?" Mello inquires, his voice almost obscenely clincal as his hands work at Matt's fly and do unspeakable things. "Don't move your arms, bastard. Leave them there."
"You," and Matt futilely attempts to twists away because Mello is just playing dirty and it isn't right, "you fucking suck." Then his teeth clamp over his lower lip as his eyes flit shut and Mello strokes him, soft and slow. "I hate you."
"Good. And, Matt?" Mello stops and waits, grinning crookedy as Matt bucks into his hand dazedly. He's going to enjoy this.
Matt makes the most wonderfully depraved noises in the back of his throat, and Mello has to fight with everything he's got not to hump him right now. He hasn't even kissed him yet. And that's ironic, because he already has his hands down Matt's pants and it just says something about their priorities. Matt's lip is puffed and swollen from where he's bitten it before, and Mello's irrationally angry that it wasn't him who put that mark there. He wants to rape Matt's mouth and put a mark there of his own. A mark or two or three, for good measure. Nobody should ever be allowed to look that edible.
"What, you goddamn – "Matt tries to growl, but Mello twists his wrist and thumbs Matt's cock in a little way he's learned is startlingly effective, and that shuts Matt up for good. Or rather more accurately, sets him to making more of those deliciously desperate noises.
"Did I say you could talk?" Mello doesn't wait for a reply but leans over Matt until he covers him, mashing their hips together and swearing to himself for the thousandth time he's never wearing leather before sex again, ever. Matt tries to rearrange himself, but Mello's legs on either side of him mean he can't do much, other than lie pinned and take what Mello will give. "Matt," Mello breathes, and his breath is hot and wet in Matt's ear.
A thousand thoughts are seeping through Matt's lust soaked brain, and one of them is of the dull aching sickness that he knows is going to flood him when this is done and Mello leaves. The omnipresent dread of picking himself back up to hunt for more clues to Kira. It's harder and harder to let himself go, because it never gets easier to bring himself back. In these wild moments between them there is still the terror of the threat they are facing (with absolutely nothing to back them up) and it lies beneath everything, spoiling the aftertaste of every kiss.
Matt's chest constricts and Mello feels it, feels the shallow unevenness of Matt's breathing beneath him. Mello claps his other hand over Matt's mouth before he hyperventilates. "Breathe through your nose, baby."
The moment passes, the panic subsides, and Mello rolls off of Matt to lie beside him. "We'll get to the fucking in an instant, don't think you're getting off easy. I wanted to say something first, and you gave me the perfect words. I want to see your face."
But the look on Mello's face right now, Matt thinks, is infinitely more transfixing. He's seen it once before, maybe, but try as Matt might to reconstruct half-remembered dreams and coax hazy memories into being, the image won't come clear. Mello opens his mouth to speak, but Matt shushes him, because there are deeper ways to understand things than words. Mello winds an arm across Matt's shoulders and lies very still. With wordless bare attention Matt curves his fingers over Mello's cheek, and the bottom drops out of his stomach. That look. He's finally placed it. He saw it years ago, the day before Mello didn't say goodbye.
"You're going to leave, aren't you," he tells Mello. "You're going to try and track Kira on your own." He wants to scream but his throat is tight. After all, there is a precedent. Roger explaining, gently, in the morning that Mello's not here because he's left and, yes he chose to and, no he won't be coming back -
There's a deathly silent pause before Mello slaps him hard across the face. The sensation stuns. Matt averts his eyes, panting, tonguing at the reopened cut on his lip. Mello grabs Matt by the hair and forces his eyes up.
"Like hell I am!" Mello's face falls open and Matt sees shock before it closes down. "Listen up, you worthless bastard. I'm not going anywhere. I will never leave you," he swears, "fucking never. Is that understood?"
Matt says nothing, and Mello shakes him. "I said, Is that understood?"
"Yeah." And then, because Mello's fighting not to let it show but Matt sees the hurt, he adds "I'm sorry."
"Don't be. Whatever you do, don't be sorry." Mello smiles, but it's a watery smile, unsteady. Matt kisses him softly, and Mello laughs into his mouth.
"What's so funny?"
"How backwards this is. First I jerk you off, then you kiss me."
"It doesn't count. You didn't finish."
"Yeah, well, I will in a moment when you shut up so I can speak. And some more besides." Mello takes a deep breath. "Yes, Matt, we have a plan. Isn't that what you wanted to hear? You don't need to stress."
Matt closes his eyes and breathes a string of obscenities. The world's just come crashing down around his ears.
He looks at Mello to see if it's true, tears in his eye s be damned, and the sincerity in the gaze looking back at him is the straw that breaks his back. It's a good thing, it's relief; it's a death sentence, it's a curse; the net has closed; but he and Mello are together again. Matt presses his forehead into Mello's shoulder and doesn't cry, and Mello doesn't hold him, and they don't move for what could be hours. Or minutes, or seconds. Matt's not sure, and he doesn't care. He never was the pedantic one.
"Now say your line, Matt," Mello grins, and Matt wants to punch him and kiss him and never let go.
"Yes, sir." Matt acquiesces without the slightest bit of sarcasm. Well, maybe the slightest. But only just. "Fuck me senseless."
Their lives are probably over, but Matt doesn't give a shit. Mello looks and tastes like sweet sweet poison, the beauty straight from hell. It's enough. Matt is a sinner but only because Mello is a sin and so it doesn't matter in the end, because this is all they have now. It has to be enough. They're down in the filth of the world and grasping for the dreams and hopes and beauty they once knew, only to realise they aren't theirs anymore. Those dreams belong to someone else in another life and Matt and Mello have no right to hold them, and everything they touch turns to dust and destruction - unless it's already desroyed. So Matt and Mello hold eachother close, closer than anybody else could possibly understand.
Mello is too bright for the world to let him burn much longer, and Matt is too close to that flame to escape the consequences now. They'll never have 'normal'. Matt will never get the chance to hear Mello come home and say I had a shit day today, so that he can reply You want to talk about it? Mello will never be able to say those three words that Matt mouths silently so often, and traces on his back when he thinks Mello's sleeping. Love is a promise Mello can't keep. Matt knows it, and doesn't ask. There will never be a moment they share that is between only the two of them, because the few moments they have left are fraught with pain and fear and Kira. Mello's sure they won't die for nothing, and that's something, and even though it'll never be more than that he's satisfied. And Matt knows he has Mello, mind and body, heart and soul, although it's corny and he'd never admit it out loud. They're too broken to be fixed, but (or maybe because of it) they're a good match, they suit eachother just fine.
This is all they have, but it's enough.