Trash, a death note fanfic

disclaimer - obviously not mine ^^

title yanked from a song by The Whip of the same name; the lyrics are also randomly injected into this fic because... well, i don't know why, but it seemed to work.

hope someone enjoys this!

I wanna...(9x)

I wanna be trash

And I have become

the trigger for your gun

Seasons are stranger here, and the unfamiliar climate has me in a funk. I miss LA. In Osaka the cold sticks to your skin, eats at the marrow in your bones, rests heavily on your eyelashes. Where I used to live, cold was a variable, a minor discomfort. Cold sneezed and coughed its way through the skies and was cured by the sun, and warmth was always brewing, even under those momentary patches of ice. It was default. Here, warmth has to be earned.

We went for a walk yesterday. Not hand-in-hand, but we did stroll past a stream in a park during a bright, crisp afternoon. It's fall, and Mello mumbled something about liking the season, and so we went for a walk to clear our minds. The multicolored, crunchy corpses of summer past crushed beneath our boots. I think Mello likes autumn so much because everything is dying. It's fitting. Neither of us put much stock in that afterlife shit, although Mello wants badly to believe the God he once held so much faith in ever existed at all. Regardless, we're both in agreement that when we die, we're dead and gone.

"Hey, Mel?"

"Yeah."

We're looking out over the water, rippling with reflections. "Think that there are second chances? In this world, or any other?"

He snorts unceremoniously. "Not in this world. And I fucking hope there isn't another."

I don't really know what to say. Mello picks up the silence for me.

"Because that'd be just what we need." His snort of derision says the opposite. "A post vale-of-tears vale-of-tears."

We have sex more often these days.

Maybe it was love, but that's doubtful. I'd changed, he'd changed. When we met again, after all those years, it was brutally obvious - we were nothing but strangers with familiar faces. Love, ressurected from a teenage crush and subsumed in the Twilight Zone-esque horror we'd walked into? Doubtful. Lust, undoubtedly. Either way, it was reason enough. Maybe it fed some repressed, disturbing psychological fantasy of having my mind violated by the apathetic eyes of an amorous bypasser, or maybe I was drunk, or maybe Mello just looked so hot in leather that I'd do anything to get an eyeful.

That night we stumbled behind some decrepit old building after six rounds of shots. A good old Hey, ain't it good to meet up after all these years, except it really wasn't. Half Mello's face burned almost beyond recognition, and me hardly proud of the state he found me in, but it is what it is.

Ain't it good to meet up after all these years, indeed, and my how you've grown. In the dim half light when the world's gone shades of grey, Mello's grin is feral and I swear if he'd had hackles they would rise. What great big teeth you have, I slur, and Mello looks me up and down appraisingly.

I remember that night so well. I wasn't drunk but I was getting there, until Mello pressed me against crumbling brick and slid a knee between my thighs. The better to tear you to pieces with, he laughs, hands roaming inconsiderately. Starting that instant, I'm off my face and plastered.

His tongue in my ear is fucking disgusting, though. I wish I could say it felt good, but wet and slithering things in my ear just don't do it for me. I'd let Mello have enough, and I pull away. He tenses, muscles coiling under that fragile pale skin. Mello slams me back into the wall. It hurts.

Shit! I hate that I'm not hissing in anger, but yelping instead.

Think we can work together?

Mmm. Yeah. He bit my lip and I slammed my head back against the wall one more time to see if I'd wake up. I didn't, and his fingers were working the zip of my fly. Anything you want.

Matt, I'm involved with the fucking Mafia. We're hunting Kira, and we will take him down. Acknowledge what you're fucking getting into, please.

I take this very seriously, Mello.

Memories are always so much stronger when you feel your time running out, as though your mind knows it doesn't have much longer to relive them.

It's fifteen weeks ago and I'm nuzzling Mello's neck, and it smells like cheap shampoo and sweat and aftershave. He's rocking his pelvis into mine, and we're falling on top of and over eachother like moronic and hormonal teenage virgins, when we are none of these things.

Very… mmm, very seriously.

At least have the wits to show some fear.

You mean you can't smell it on me? Mel, I'm scared shitless.

Yeah, and he twists my arm behind my back until the joint strains in agony, but not of Kira.

I'm trying to figure out how to you that's not an advantage.

Oh, it is. I was only trying to be concerned over how seriously your consent should be taken. Mello's hand presses down between my legs, and I can hardly stand for all that I'm trembling.

Just – take it. I lock my lips with his before Mello can say another word. If he thinks it's a poor attempt at seduction then fine, but really I just need to stop myself from adding please.

I remember that night, although I try not to. Not because it was bad; not at all. And I'm not the type who has regrets. But remembering his lips and his hands and his chest against mine - it's too much. The coldness of leather under my fingers (Since when did you start dressing like a whore?) and Mello's quick, fiery movements that trapped me as surely, as precisely, as cruelly as pins through a butterfy's wings (Since when did you start acting like one?); it's too much.

I think if I'm honest with myself, I've always loved him. But I don't know when it became this.

We leave the park and walk back in silence, mulling over the case in our minds. Retracing steps and repeating facts as though that will make new ones appear, I know we're sinking slowly. There are nothing but disparate details that don't seem to form a larger picture no matter what we do. Puzzles are Near's fucking forte anyway, and I don't want to think about Near. I don't want to think about Near, I don't want to think about Kira, and I don't want to think about the fact that we're failing.

When we arrive back at the apartment, I swear Mello's raping me with his eyes. He smiles guilessly, but I know what I saw and I know what I see. That look was a touch, a fucking molestation. I look right back, and I let him. I bite my lip, but I groan anyway. Mello grins infuriatingly at the state he's gotten me into.

We work together, and the cameraderie falls right back into place as though we've stepped back into who we'd been before this shit, gropes and blowjobs in dark alleyways notwithstading. We've settled in to a rhythm now, even if it is faintly dark and schizophrenic. But even on these golden bright afternoons, I can't escape threads of guilt; I should've been there for him all along. I should always have been there, propping Mello up on nights when nothing works and the world doesn't care we're fighting to do good. Mello might be sharp and fierce but he's fragile on the inside. Instead, I was getting bombed every night and Mello had to slap me out of a stupor when he needed something hacked.

I wanna…

I wanna be trash

"You're fucked up," they'd say, "you're seriously fucked in the head. How could you even – just, how? It's not normal, it's not healthy." I press the heels of my palms into my eyes until supernovas explode in my vision, thinking I know I know I know but I can't stop.

When Mello's depressed, he's depraved. When Mello's depraved he's malicious, but malicious in a way that pushes pain into another world where it becomes the sweetest thing on earth. It's comfort when it should be abuse. It's my escape from reality - it is my reality. It's fucking psychological, and I don't know whether that isn't worse.

"You're fucked up," I imagine people would say, if they knew. And Mello would look at me with revulsion, because nobody's supposed to enjoy that. But I can't leave Mello, because I have to be here for him. For me. "Get some help," they'd say, pityingly, "professional help. It's not healthy."

I suck in air through my teeth and fumble for a cigarette, wishing everyone would shut the hell up. Except that they were never there.

The only one accusing me is me. Thank god, nobody knows.

Roger was so annoyed with me when I wouldn't buy into the Wammy's House system of self-flagellation and endless, endless striving to be the number one. I still remember the way his face twisted in exasperation and, what I'm personally more proud of, confusion. A slacker like me, third. Shouldn't be possible. Imagine the potential I must have had? For that much genius to be at their fingertips, in their grasp, but usless to their purpose thus far? I committed the henious crime of being third and possibly content with it. I defied their values, the laws instilled into us when were still tabula rasa and impressionable: to succeed L is our goal in life. It is, it is, it is. Or in my case – not.

I wasn't being lazy. I am lazy, but in this case it really is beside the point; I was making my priorities clear. I read, I studied, I stated third. It's because I'm the silent rebel type, I tell myself. I bucked the system in a way they couldn't catch me for, and I loved it. I loved the feeling of being able to have one over the well-intentioned condescending adults that messed with our minds to mold us into perfect drones, the sense of empowerment that I would not be sucked in. That much is true; Wammy's House denied us nothing, was unstinting in our rigorous education of the highest caliber and ensured our young, promising minds were egged on at every opportunity. Shoots in a hothouse watered with steroids, about to sprout unnaturally huge until we toppled under our own weight. That much was inevitable, and I saw it then.

Wammy's House denied us nothing, unless you count having a childhood as worth anything at all. Mello was never remotely close to sweet, but sometimes, when I could make him forget Near and the endless battle that plagued his life, I caught glimpses of the Mello that might have been. The Mello that would blush when I teased him and called him pretty, the Mello that lost his footing sometimes and let me help him back up. The Mello that didn't turn sour like a kicked dog, trying so so so so very hard to do it right but never quite succeeding. The Mello I think I might've fallen in love with.

But he wasn't, and I didn't. I stayed third to buck the system, for my own sense of satisfaction. The fact that I never wanted to be better than Mello's weakest moment; the fact that I was afraid what would happen if I wasn't there, third, at Mello's side to be his only friend; the gut-clenching fear that I'd seem to him one more of them, the enemy, to keep ahead of and surpass; that was irrelevant. I did this for myself, because who doesn't want to feel good about themselves? Who doesn't want to have some special skill, some secret, some private sense of achievement? Who doesn't have even that much self esteem?

I never, ever sabotaged myself for Mello. This was purely between me and the asinine values of the Wammy's House: I decided to fuck the system, and fuck the world, because it clearly wanted no part of me nor I of it. I did this for myself, because I do things for myself, because I'm just like everybody else and who doesn't like to feel like they accomplished something? And I won't let anyone to pull my head out of the sand on this, not even Mello.

I'm Mello's s self-appointed shadow, his designated backup. To the breaking point. And past it, because there's really nothing else for me. There's only Mello, Mello and I and this fragile relationship that couldn't possibly become any cheaper, any more tawdry. But it works. For the time being, at least.

I lurch to my feet and head for the kitchen. Mello doesn't look up. I pour myself a shotful of tequila with a chaser of regret, even though I don't do regret. I figure I should try everything once, and this might be my only chance. I shuffle back to the other room and sink into the couch, idly swirling my drink. Ice clinks.

It's all so irrelevant now. I'm smoking, staring out the grimy window, and Mello's doing whatever Mello does on his laptop for hours. I'm bored to tears. It's nothing but an ordinary Tuesday, and in a few hours' time we've got to go meet an informant. No stone unturned, and the like. My heart cramps again, and I wince because it's longer this time. Mello surveys me through invisible glass from across the room. I wind my arms around my chest and grit my teeth with a vengeance because I will not cry out. He goes back to his laptop and the clack of the keyboard rings like a siren in my ears. I'm wondering if the unspoken exchange that's rattled me so much has only taken place inside my mind, and whether Mello is even aware of the anger that blazes from his every gesture these days.

After a while Mello plays some tunes, and the tinny crap sound emanating from the laptop's speakers fills the empty space between us with an electronic pulse. He's concentrating on his work, but every once in a while I catch him nodding his head to the beat.

"Shake it," I laugh, but sweet fucking god he actually does. Mello glances up at me, makes a snap decision and shuts the laptop in an instant. A sinuous roll of his hips and he slinks over, prowling with feline grace in shining leather, and I nearly lose myself right there and then. His eyes are cool, they're impersonal. His half-smile says I'm a million miles away, and I don't know or care who you are. But his hand grips my wrist, and his fingers are unbelievably warm. They're thin and long, elegant, pale, with knuckles like razorblades and a vein so close to the skin I want to press my lips against it and feel it with my teeth. Mello brings out the morbid in me, I'm not sure why.

The whys and hows never really matter, though, don't they? We were prodigy children, taught every brand of reason and logic concievable. Here we are in a decrepit flat with psychological trauma that would make the best shrink's head spin, with our impeccable rationality that's served us so well. So fuck it, I don't need the fine art and scholarly pursuit of true thinking. I'm content enough to just let things be without analysing the shit out of them. Maybe it's because Mello fills the room with so much lethal, pretty rage that I am utterly blindsided. Maybe it's because he smells like sex and he radiates dominance. Maybe it's because I'm utterly fucked up.

Before I met Mello, I'd never have understood how there could be such a thing as lyrical violence, or how pain could feel so beautiful. Then again, there are a lot of things I've come to learn since meeting this new-Mello, this not-Mello grown out of the boy I'd known, beautific face pristine but this time in thoughts of cruelty, not prayer.

There's a fine line between charismatic and unnaturally hypnotising; Mello's definitely a case of the latter. I don't betray myself with the slightest twitch when his mouth falls open slightly, even as i'm quaking. Might be anticipation, might be dread. There's an animalistic magnetism about something so lovely dressed in loathing, a perverse allure that drags me to him even when I could get away. Even when I know better, and even when he mockingly tells me to just go then, I'd come crawling back to Mello and I'd kiss his feet with the last breath in my body. He knows. I know. Mello's ready to kill, so I drop my defenses. And when he bares his teeth in a dazzling grin that whispers I'm about to tear you to pieces, I lean back and let go of my tension. There's nothing like a threat to make one see their lives in perspective, and at this point I figure if I die today there's nothing important enough to be stressed over.

I wiggle my hips with an eyebrow raised that projects Do your worst with suicidal clarity. It's not a dare; I'm begging. I know it, and I'm aware it's debasing. I really don't care.

On a spur-of-the-moment errant impulse, because I'd seen Mello stashing a collection of Byron under the bed, I smile sweetly and quote some Joyce. Mello has his areas of interest, and I have mine.

I never was one for the great Romantic poets, but a bit of doggerel never hurt anyone.

"If you see Kay, tell him he may. See you in tea, tell him from me."

Mello laughs, and it's a beautiful sight. The wonderful thing about Mello is that his laughs are always real. He's got so much to think about, so much to fear and hate and question; but if he laughs with me, it's never just to indulge me. I know that sometimes he stays up at night wondering about how it will be if we survive, but Mello possesses infinite grace, and because of that he is able to keep the wonder to himself. I don't think we'll survive any more than I think Mello will catch Kira or finally feel whole; the odds of that are ten million to one and counting. I know I don't mean to Mello what he means to me, but I mean something. In this nightmarish sci-fi world that Kira reigns, something can be everything if you look at it from the right angle.

When Mello gathers himself together he's sickly saccharine again, and he pats me on the head like he would a dog. "I'll fuck you, Matty, but only because you asked so nicely." His fingers wrap themselves in my hair and twist, making Mello's intentions clear as crystal. Clear, and sharp and lethal too.

"But I'm not a cunt. That, I'm afraid, would be you."

"Whatever you say, baby."

"You'd better believe it."

He puts a his hands on the arms of my chair, elbows out like sharp sharp bones with skin stetched over, and his hair brushes so softly against my cheek when he leans over to leer in my face. There's ice in my veins and I'm lost, so hopelessly out of my depth. It's thrilling and thrilling and utterly terrifyingly about to go wrong. I can feel it, and I lick my lips. I take one last, lingering drag on my cigarette before stubbing it to death on the wall behind me, and the apartment's owner can go fuck himself.

Mello leans in for the kill. He claims my mouth, and he sucks in the smoke. My eyes are wide, because he's never, ever done that, but the scrape of his teeth on my lips is divine and his hand at my hipbone is even better. Mello's fingers trail down and dig under my belt, yanking me to him. I am compliance itself, like a rag doll, and let him plunder my mouth for what it's worth. It's not as though I'm not enjoying every sick moment of it, because this kiss is pure possesion and I crave it like caffeine and nicotine and life itself. Wisps of smoke escape through his nose, and I buck up into him with fresh pangs of lust. It's mindless now, and I'm blind, and I am drowning and Mello is the sea.

It's embarrassing how easily I'm willing to prostitute myself for the memory of a pleasure I once had, but Mello fills the room with a dangerous aura that a dominatrix couldn't handle. Rationally, I'm embarrassed, and I keep reminding myself that. It does no good. My body is remembering an entirely different set of sensations. The unbearable tension and mind numbing pain have receded, if not vanished altogether, from my memory – all I can seem to recall is that pinnacle of surreal feeling when my mind imploded.

Mello's eyes, those cold unflinching callous eyes that I'd come to depend on, and they way they'd melted at the last moment; the way the bottom dropped out of my stomach as I hated him for doing that now, of all times, when I'm losing control; that, I conveniently gloss over. The throbbing headache after my skull being smashed into brick so many times is only a distant recollection, and I'm so far gone that I'd relive that night in an instant. All I'm aware of now is that my heart is a hammer, breaking its way through my sternum with every beat. Fear and amorous madness wind claws into my stomach that I can't pull out, and Mello radiates supremacy. Cliché, cliché, cliché and I hate to think the fucking phrase but his prescence is intoxicating, and the sheer proximity of Mello in such a state is driving me out of my mind. Past the sensible thing to do, past justifications, past the point of no return. I realise belatedly that the only reason I can give for being here is the admission that I'm totally fucked up.

Maybe I should have realised something about myself then, but I didn't even care. I don't.

I wanna be trash

"Angel, you sing about beautiful things," I hum to myself, almost inaudibly, and tension strangles me slowly as Mello holds so still and says nothing. "And all I want to do is believe. But I traded my dreams for this mess - "

Mello grabs me with such force that I'm half afraid he'll throw me across the room, but instead he tips me back and kisses me like he's trying to tear out my soul. When he pulls away I tumble forward on unsteady knees, and Mello laughs and holds me up.

"What were you singing?"

"A song." I rub my arms, trying to will away the goosebumps.

"How's it go?"

And I run through the first stanza in my mind, the last two lines that I could never tell Mello to his face. When I need to I close my eyes, you're the only thing worth holding onto.Yeah, that would go over well.

"I don't really remember."

"You're a liar," Mello says, "but you're cute so I'll let it slide." Then he exacts another kiss from my willing lips, and I give myself over.

Mello doesn't steal kisses. It would mean they were mine, which they aren't. Nothing of mine belongs to me, and Mello doesn't steal but he takes. No need to steal what's already owned. Mello takes kisses and gropes and fucks without even asking, without even having to ask. His tranquil ice eyes make me think he could take souls, too, but I doubt I have one left so I'll probably never know. I'm falling, literally as well as metaphorically - weak kneed like a fucking blushing maiden - and Mello yanks me up by the elbows. He tows me into him until we're chest to chest, cheek t cheek. I don't look in his eyes but my heart still tumbles off my tongue. I'm helpless to stop it.

"We might survive, and we might catch Kira, but definitely not both - Mel, I know what matters more to you,so just know I'll still never fucking leave you and," I lick my lips nervously, "I know you'll be pissed at hearing that but it's okay if we fight. The sex'll be to die for." Literally.

There's total silence, read into it what you will. Mello presses his thumb into my wrist with vicious force, but his body so close to mine sends my mind haywire until all I feel is rippling need.

"Now admit that you're wrong, baby," he hisses in my ear. Then he shoves me so I'm facing away from him, and pushes a knee into my back until my face hits the floor. I turn my head in time to save my nose from being smashed, and grin against the cold grey tile.

"What is this, some kind of auto da fe?"

Mello barks a laugh and then falls silent, which worries me more.

And then as I feel the prick against my shouler, I understand why.

"Yes," Mello breathes harshly. "Yes, it is."

Being with Mello is like stepping into an alternate universe. I don't know when it became this, and I don't know how I feel about it or where I stand. All I know is that Mello's here with me again, even if we're not in love, and we can dance in the dark to rhythms as morbid as he likes. I know him absolutely. I know Mello in the most carnal of ways, and I know how to light the spark and use it to my own advantage.

I wanna be trash

There are echoes of screams in this room, and that's why he chose it.

Panting and wailing and grunts and shrieks, their vestiges bouncing off the walls which would probably curse us out if they could talk. The things we've done in here, they're disgusting. The air is saturated with the musk of sex and the sharp tang of fear that just heightens the experience, and I remember Mello's body slick with perspiration and sliding against mine –

"You're a bitch," he snarls, and I laugh because it's the most completely inappropriate response at the moment. Absolutely nothing's funny, and I collapse into a fit of hysteria all the more helpless because of it. Mello might own me, but he can't control me if I can't control myself.

Mello slaps me across the face. I've never felt strongly enough to loathe someone before, and the feeling is exhilarating and a little addictive, and the only thing that will ever be able to top the thrill of the fight will be the bliss of victory.

My lip was knocked against a tooth, and I run my tongue over it, trying to asses the damage. Blood seeps into my mouth, but it won't need stitches. Mello's watching with rapt fascination, eyes fixed on my mouth. Without saying a word, he dips down to kiss me again. For a long, tender moment our mouths work together – there's no frenzied struggle for dominance, only a sweet gentleness that's starlingly sincere.

It lingers in my mouth long after Mello's drawn his lips away, and his blood smeared mouth is grotesquely gorgeous in the sterile, flat flourescent glare. His cheek and his chin are stained, too. He catches me looking, and licks his lips. The gesture alone is obscene, but Mello seems to relish what he finds. I spasm with indefinable chills for a moment, which makes Mello crappy apartment lighting leeches the color out of everything, but it suits Mello strangely and wonderfully somehow. It suits him like an epitaph of bloody teeth, like the aura of prey that I must exude suits our relationship.

He makes me feel so fragile. Insignificant, anonymous, eraseable. Disposable. Contentment spreads over me like wash of rose-tinted warmth, colors exploding behind my eyes although there's nothing to see but blackness. I know they're not colors, but they feel like they are, and I realise I'm making no sense but every clear thought is out of my head when Mello scrapes his nails down my thigh.

It hurts, and the trails of pain sparkle in my vision that isn't vision, sensation singing against my skin and leaving it throbbing.

I've become the trigger for your gun

"Don't you dare move," Mello whispers, voice velvet smooth while his hands are rough. I'm coming undone, but one sharp glare has me in my place as effectively as a choke collar around my neck. Mello hums in approval, and licks the sweat that's beading on my face. He's so fucking beautifully volatile. I always did like playing with fire. I liked getting burned.

And I love these foolish games we play, these childish games. They have nothing to do with losing and winning, but everything to do with rules – the rules of the game that Mello lays down, and I follow. I lose my pride and my resposibility and Mello wins my rights, I win his heart although he swears he doesn't have one and Mello loses his flawless self control. We're both going to lose everything, in the end, but when we're here we can win back enough sanity not to care in the morning. Funny how that works. Ironic, this insanity we need to stay sane.

"You wear me out," I gasp, and Mello pauses briefly.

"So who would've thought that you'd still be here now."

"Yeah," I start to say, but the words die on my lips.

Mello rubs every nerve raw, until it definitely hurts and I feel like I'm out of my body, floating in a haze of adrenaline. He pushes me way past my comfort zone, shoving me off the edge and into spasms of screaming sensation; it's one of the few times I hate him. Because in that instant, hovering over me as I'm mortified and brutalized and shaking, Mello's façade falls off. It's the last thing I need because it's everything I want, and that opens so many doors that I'm paralyzed and deaf and dumb from the thought that maybe Mello wants this too. No, no, no no no he can't. I'm the one who's screwed up, here.

Suffering isn't meaningless to people, but they've got it all wrong. Suffering can be a type of worship, a tithe extracted as due for your deity of choice. That's not new, but it isn't well understood by most people these days. Fuck, I sound like a puritanical zealot, but the sense I mean this in is the farthest thing from religious.

I wanna

I wanna be trash

I can't explain what he's done to me. Mello must have done something, because I'm not – I'm not like this, or at least I never have been. That's all changed now. As a matter of course. So has the rest of my universe, incidentally.

Mello's tongue laves at my nipple, and my body goes rigid with feelings I can't even process let alone describe. His hands wander restlessly to my throat, dig into pressure points at my neck and trace arcane patterns on flesh that spell out his ownership of every inch. It's a dangerous caress, a satirical parody of romance – when a compliment of Mello's bends to kiss a hand, it bites. Our relationship is perverse, and don't I love it. This is what the disillusioned mind of a genius gone mordant will, or rather cannot help but, do. God knows I need it.

Mello's tongue chafes at a cut he's clawed on my throat, and his nails are delicately scratching below my collarbone.

"You're a piece of work, you are." I can only hope some of my nonchalance seeps through. It's difficult to breathe because my chest is constricting for reasons I can't name.

"How infinite in reason, how noble in faculty!" Mello draws back and soliloquises before directing his ministrations to tormenting my ear, nipping and eager. I try to remember the disgust I'd felt the first time he did that, but all I can focus on right now is the weight of his body slowly suffocating me and the goosebumps raised by his breath on my damp flesh.

"And if you're Hamlet I refust to be Ophelia."

"Come on, you're a perfect Ophelia."

"Shut the hell up," I cough out.

When Mello bites my earlobe this time it's for real.

It hurts but it doesn't and I writhe thinking oh no and then shit, Mello's doing this and I want to cringe but I have to have this evidence that Mello cares enough to mark me. It's terrible. It's sick. It's wonderful. I hate it; it's my favorite fantasy. I can't stand it, I love it. It's disgusting. I don't want to stop it.

The small of his back is slicked with sweat and I slide my palms over it like it's something holy, and it is. Mello's teeth at my jaw render me a puppet whose strings are his to pull, and I arch off the floor exactly how he likes it; head tossed back, propped on my elbows. I'm straining with the effort, because he's limp on top of me like a perfectly content parasite.

Mello covers me like napalm, and the world is an infero. Somehow there's nothing I want to feel more in the world. He could tear me open, tear me to pieces. God knows, I'd let him.

We are so fucked up, and it's marvelous like you wouldn't believe. The sweet, perfect violent words that he pours like poison into my ear make me feel surreal. There's something faintly sinister in his sneer that makes me feel dirty, but I come to him anyway, crawling. He lets me, he lets me – and that's all I want, for someone to take me up and take me over and make me feel like I belong. In a sick, twisted way, it feels like love. He has eyes like a deathtrap, and he surrounds me and I sink.

Maybe I convince myself I need it because Mello gets off on it, maybe he does it for me, maybe we're each trying to please the other and the truth is it's all so wrong -

But when everything fades into hazy red and I feel like I'm dissolving, and Mello is the only sight I see and sound I hear and touch and taste and smell then I don't care.

He's the worst best thing I've ever met.

Oh god, right there – and I hate it, that I'm on my back and begging for it without Mello having to ask. Stripped and supine and totally exposed, I'm on my back and writhing and mewing and making the most fucking pathetically degrading noises.

It's gone from Mello jerking me off to me practically fucking myself into his hand.

He's not glowing with the rush of conquest, he isn't crowing with sadistic glee. There are tracks of tears on my face as my body convulses, and I'm helpless to stop it. Mello's eyes are so goddamn soft I want to punch him in the mouth. He whispers I hate you too in response to what I can only guess is loathing written in my eyes.

"Every tear belongs to me," Mello whispers, and he kisses them off my cheeks. "You're mine."

Then fuck it. Fuck 'em, fuck the world. Let Kira do his worst, let the apocalypse come; the hell I care. I don't care that I've let myself be shamelessly subordinated, because it's brought Mello to my beck and call. I'd never breathe a word of my ulterior motive, although I think Mello knows it, vaguely, too. Sometimes I think he almost envies me, able to let everything go, but the bastard takes too much pleasure in being vindictive to let anyone do the same to him. In fact, I'm positive he almost envies me, but almost is never enough. I'd know.

It doesn't matter, so long as we're clinging to eachother like this until I can't tell where my skin ends and his begins, and it's as though we've melted together in the heat. Mello is everywhere around me, all that I can see. He's in me and he's become me, or I've become him. I want to look into his eyes and say tell me your dreams, and then tell me mine. I don't want to think, or to be. I just want Mello, here and taking me over and making me move in ways so strange and wondrous and fucking delicious it should be illegal. There's shame and desperation mingling with desire when our mouths crush together, and when I finally come it's the most exhausting, incredibly fulfilling feeling I've ever had.

And then Mello swears Fuck like it's a prayer and gasps out "Matty, you're a whore."

I laugh and stare right into those abysmally foreign eyes that used to be the most perfect shade of blue, and I reach up to twine my hands around his neck and kiss him if he'll let me. I give myself up and bare my throat like the fuckup in the evolutionary scale that I am, and I take the compliment for what it is.

Mello never puts in straight terms what he thinks of people, but if he cares enough to want to let them know he'll phrase the opposite in terms they can unravel. I'm not one to talk, because I say things I don't mean and I mean things I don't say all the time, so I just hold him tighter. We both know I've got him, I always have and I always will. I'll back up Mello with everything I've got, to the breaking point and past it, because he's all I have. I spread my legs and whisper love you too, and that's when he goes limp.

Every time he comes he stifles screams of Ihateyouformakingmelikethis and I feel my heart swell. And every tear belongs to him.

…We have made no vows - there will none be broke,
Our love was free as the wind on the hill,
There was no word said we need wish unspoke,
We have wrought no ill.

So shall we not part at the end of day,
Who have loved and lingered a little while,
Join lips for the last time, go our way,
With a sigh, a smile

--Ernest Christopher Dowson.