The Small Gifts
Miya's note: This is a bit belated, I know. It was actually written before Christmas, though I've only remembered to submit it now to here. This was written for the Chocolate and Video Games Christmas contest on MangaBullet, and I won second place, right after my RP partner, MRSJeevas/Matilda. Go Matti! *claps for her*
TR Ch 10 is in the works. It's gonna be a while before it's done, but it'll be a long chapter, so those of you waiting for that can look forward to a good long read when it does come. I'm taking care of some real life issues right now, so am not getting as much done on the break as I would like.
There are brief mentions of sex, but it's nothing close to graphic. In fact, the sex isn't the focus.
Also slight AU, as Mello and Matt lived through the Kira case.
Much love and digital hugs, everyone. Enjoy!
It was Christmas, and Mello came to the sudden realisation that he should probably be dead.
Well, there's something to be grateful for.
He guessed that was a gift in itself.
Dawn hadn't even broken yet, so it was no surprise that Matt was still asleep. The blond leaned back and looked over at his sleeping partner--no, more than a partner, but a friend, a lover, and possibly a soulmate, if you believed in that sort of thing--and couldn't help but to smile. When had it changed from where watching Matt had simply been a pastime in the afterglow, to this? When had it become something magical, just to watch him sleep?
Mello couldn't put a pin on the day it had happened, because he knew he'd always loved Matt, so the potential had always been there. He couldn't quite place it, but he thought it might have been after they came back, alive, after facing Kira.
The first thing they'd done when they'd gotten through the door was to collapse into a wave of kisses, touches and desperate passion, visions flying through their heads of a fate that could have come to pass, but hadn't.
"You could have been killed, baby. Oh, my God, I'm sorry…you weren't supposed to be in danger…"
Mello could remember that day, exactly. There hadn't even been time to celebrate that Kira was gone. No time to cheer over the fact that they had won. It was all about life, that day, Mello imagining Matt shot to pieces, but being able to look at him and touch him and kiss him, safe and sound. He remembered watching him sleep that night, and realised, yes, that had to be it, because the watching had turned desperate, seeing his breaths moving his chest rhythmically, still in disbelief that it was real.
That Matt's life had been spared was an even greater gift than still having his own.
He thought it was appropriate, being thankful for life on Christmas. After all, the holiday marked the birthday of the Lord--the beginning of a life. Perhaps his and Matt's lives weren't as worth celebrating as the Christ child's, but that was no matter.
They had moved out of dingy apartments into a house of their own back in England. For their work with Kira, they had been granted safety from the law's rebuttal for actions taken to catch him. They were healthy, and relatively happy, and for the first time in their lives they had begun to experience what life was like for everyone else, instead of living for vengeance and for obligation to L's name.
All of these, gifts.
So things weren't perfect. Even with life cooling down as much as it had, Mello still took cases, some of them dangerous. Though he tried to hide and distance himself from his darker past as much as possible, his history with the Mafia still came back to haunt him. He had scars that would never leave him.
Still, he had Matt beside him, alive, and well. Looking at him, asleep so peacefully when Mello was racked with constant insomnia, he sometimes envied the redhead for being able to live life so freely and without care. Nonetheless, he knew that was what made Matt his rock, when he let himself get too bogged down by the feeling of being Mello.
He looked at the clock. It was only 3 AM, and he knew that it would be hours until Matt awoke. He scooted into his redhead's warmth, on the pretense of trying to fall back asleep, not wanting to bore himself staring and cause the magic to go away. Matt remained as still as death beside him, but Mello, this time, was not afraid. Matt's body seemed to vibrate with the breath of life, powerful and enduring and amazing.
It exhilarated him.
Closing his eyes, Mello realised that sensing Matt in other ways was just as magical as watching him.
He nuzzled into him; kissed his sleeping shoulder, careful not to wake him.
The silence was still broken.
"How long have you been up?" came Matt's voice, regardless, without any edge of the grogginess of recent sleep, and Mello jumped.
Matt laughed at him. "Yeah, Merry Christmas to you, too, Mel."
Matt looked over, and Mello's bright, large eyes stared back in the calm early morning darkness. "No, of course I didn't just get startled. Of course I wasn't watching you sleep," denied the eyes. Matt's green ones, uncovered as they rarely were, smiled back.
He leaned forward and gave Mello a kiss.
Mello curled back into him, and his heated cheeks were a welcome warmth against Matt's chest.
The world slipped back into quiet again. Mello and Matt fell into the calm intimacy they had learned somewhere over the years they'd shared, synchronising breaths and small touches and the occasional gentle kiss. Mello came to the conclusion that, if watching what he'd thought to be Matt asleep had been something enchanted, then being with him awake was even more. Little less than a year before, he wouldn't have believed that something so simple could have moved him like this, causing his heart to beat in a kind of excitement that he'd never taken time to notice when Kira had still been around.
The small, mastered touches and beats of an old friendship began to slowly morph into the newer pressing need of a fumbling young romance. It wasn't the same as the desperate and frightened sexuality they'd had in Kira's time, which had moved in a blur as their bodies spiralled them away from painful, terrifying reality into the heated bliss of each other. No, this was something else, entirely, where time stopped for them just long enough to make them have to think about it.
"How does this feel for him? Is it the same for him, as me?"
With thoughts, came self-consciousness they hadn't found time for when fear of death had been their guide. It was this that, like every time between January 29 and now, had made it like the first time all over again. Having been so close to death, they had been given the gift of knowing what it felt like near the end, and with that knowledge, could go back to the beginning and start anew.
When sex had become about Matt and not himself was when Mello had truly learned to understand love.
There seemed something special about that morning, that first Christmas alive when they probably shouldn't have been. Every kiss sent minds reeling, every touch, bodies crying out in bliss and tingling with a wild electricity. Mello thought it was intensely spiritual, being with Matt on that holy day, where God had seemed to grant them even yet more reasons to celebrate.
In a strange way, something so taboo had become something childish, innocent. They laughed, sighed, played together as old friends and more, unwrapping the presents of each other in more than body, but mind and soul as well.
Matt, looking down, couldn't remember having ever seen Mello smile so sincerely. He was a man that so many had feared and who had sinned so greatly, but it all seemed washed away in his grin.
When both of them fell into the delight of sweet release, time slowed for them so that the moment could have lasted forever. Those seconds together turned to hours and days and lifetimes, cheered at them a resounding, "We're alive!" and even after it was over it rang, stark and vulnerable in their minds.
When they got out of bed, finally, they settled into the day's routine, but with the added rituals of Christmas morning. They exchanged presents, and shared sweet rolls for breakfast, and wished each other a happy holiday.
But as Mello looked to the brightness of the sun reflecting off the tree and the tinsel, to the pomp and circumstance of a commercial Christmas thrown as a veil over the world, he realised that the presents would be thrown aside the next year to be replaced with the new. The decorations were only plastic. The parade on the television, with Santa and the happy faces, was their magic, not his.
He looked at Matt, and could see the same thoughts reflected in his posture and his eyes through the goggles as they sat together on the couch…
Their Christmas had come before dawn had broken.