Mello was a bitch.
He always was. He was the single greatest pain in Matt's ass. He was 8 years old and some blonde kid was leering down at him looking like some old lady's lawn ornament with his fucking stupid haircut asking if he got his new name yet. Mail didn't even know what that meant.
Unlike a lot of children at the home, he remembered his parents. His mother did her best, through the alcoholism and suicidal tendencies, she knew she had a responsibility. It wasn't a responsibility she wanted, but it was one she had. But one day after eating that last bottle of xanax and falling asleep with the lit cigarette in her hand, that responsibility became a burden of the state.
Mail didn't play well with others, but neither did the rest of the head cases at the home. Mail preferred to just be by himself, nose pressed against the finger smudged screen of a Game Boy Color because whatever little pixilated hero was slaying the monsters and saving the day was more interesting than the weird albino kid down the hall that did puzzles upside down, not because of the Asperger's or the autism or whatever the fuck damage the rest of them had. Mail didn't particularly care was the crux of that matter.
But there was always that blonde kid, standing in corners and just staring at people, at first Mail thought it was because he was just as crazy as everyone else, but began to understand it was the beginnings of a deep seated hatred for the human race boiling just under the surface. And he'd always ask the same damn question, 'Did you get your new name yet?'
Mello was a bitch.
"Did you get your new name yet?" the blonde sneered, pushing the Game Boy away from Mail's face with his index finger
"I have a name…" Mail grumbled, trying to block out the blonde's face with the Game Boy again.
"Not one anyone here gives a shit about."
And he walked away.
Mail did get a new name. Matt. M. He was the second M. He didn't get his own letter like the rest of the home, which only enforced Matt's need to underachieve in so many ways (try as he might, he was still 3rd. He didn't know what 3rd meant, but it was him.)
The first M was the blonde well on his way to a diabetic coma, Mello. Of course, he would be the first M. Mail, Matt, could hardly escape him at the home, once Mello had discovered where Matt's room was it was even harder still to shake him. The odd thing of it was, Mello never really spoke to him, just looked at him, called him a queer occasionally, but for the most part just looked at him. He just was around him.
Eventually the staring gave way to name calling, and the name calling gave way to hair pulling and puberty fueled fist fights in the yard.
He was 11, holding a rag to his nose to stem the blood flow outside of Roger's office, Mello was sitting next to him on the bench, a the greenish beginnings of a black eye raising on his pale skin.
"If Roger asks, you started it." Mello said, staring at the wall across from them
"But I didn't-" Matt began, which was cut off quite apparently by a small bony fist colliding with his arm and a glare that could freeze the goddamn sun. "-yeah, I started it." He finished. He didn't know why he was willing to throw himself under the bus for Mello. Maybe because he was tired of fighting with him? That if he didn't it'd just turn into another trip to Roger's office? He didn't start it. Mello had (with the heaviest of air quotes) accidentally bumped (shoved) into Matt into the shed in the yard, knocking his head into the siding. So with stars in his eyes, Matt swung out at him, his bare fist colliding with Mello's Aryan princess fucking face. After that it was lanky arms and curse words and hair pulling. Mello started it. And Matt took the fall.
Mello was a bitch.
Mello was a bitch for leaving. Matt wasn't even sure when he started liking Mello, or when Mello started tolerating Matt. Mello didn't even sleep in his own room at that point, he said it was too close to Near's, who had become Mello's newest obsession (it was always something). Matt liked to think it was because they were friends, and that maybe Mello wanted to spend time with him, or something as ridiculous and stupid like that.
He'd shove Matt over in the bed and crawl in with him. They didn't talk about it, ever. Matt tried once, it was then when he began to harbor the suspicion Mello could breathe fire. Mello seized Matt's Game Boy from his hand and cracked him across the face with it, telling him to shut the goddamn hell up.
For a self proclaimed Catholic, Mello swore a lot.
But one night, Mello didn't shove Matt, grumbling to move his fat ass over. He wasn't at breakfast, or skipping mathematics, or at lunch, he wasn't anywhere. Matt asked Roger about it. Roger wouldn't say. He caved and asked Near. Near just shrugged at him. He was just gone.
Mello was a whore.
A whore in any and all sense of the word. He always had been, he would appeal to whatever he thought would gain him the greatest leverage with other people, and by the time he hit puberty he realized he had quite a bit to bargain with. Matt noticed too. If it meant intimidating someone for information, or if it meant flirting to get what he wanted, there were no lines Mello would not cross.
Matt left the home at 16, nearly 2 years after Mello had left, being 3rd to replace L he knew there was no point in waiting around for his turn, it just wasn't going to happen. While Mello was gone, it didn't mean he wouldn't take his place as L if the time came, and even then they would have to get through Near, and that albino freak show was like a brick wall. Matt felt it best to just continue on his own in other endeavors.
He liked to think he was private eye, like something out of the film noir, when really he was just a hired stalker. It wasn't nearly as glamorous as he made it out to the drunk girls as he escorted them back to his shithole basement apartment, explaining that would be why they might not ever see him again. For their own safety, naturally.
He was hired by a third party for some big wig in the city's underground. That usually entailed following around some high price hooker making sure she wasn't free lancing for a pimp or something like that, tapping phones, breaking into homes and setting up cameras, it was all in a days work. This middle man told him that the head of some family with a name that Matt could have sworn he saw on an Italian restaurant menu required his services in checking up on some of their smaller details, making sure they too weren't holing up cash that was supposed to be headed to the mother ship.
It wasn't out of the ordinary, bugged a few phones, set up a camera in a lamp shade, and left. Back to the quiet recluse of his dank apartment.
Matt found it slightly pathetic that he didn't have a life, and had to watch others from 4 blocks away on a computer screen. Though the blow to his ego was somewhat softened by the fact that even people involved in notorious crime rings were just as boring as he was. Movies really talked the whole thing up, he found.
Mello was a whore.
He learned this a week into his surveillance, it was some ungodly hour of the morning, and he had been considering for the greater part of half an hour, in which the screen in front of him remained still, if he were to divert his attention away to the internet, and the great amounts of porn that could be available to him, if he'd miss anything – when, naturally something moved on the screen.
A large man stumbled into the darkened room, dragging a frail figure by the waist, their faces were clumsily smashing together in what Matt would only loosely call kissing. As they fell into the couch at the back of the room, just far enough away to be difficult to discern, Matt has lost interest in porn. The lithe figure peeled themselves out of their top tossing it from frame with a flick of the wrist. They practically glowed in the dark, bones and muscle in grainy green relief through the nightvision. With some awkward shuffling and ministrations that Matt couldn't make out the individual with their back to the camera straddled themselves over the man who had dragged them, their arm moving rhythmically in front of them as their other hand reached over the back of the couch under the guise of (Matt assumed based on the quantity of pornography he had seen in his many years and having the basic human ability to recognize patterns) coyness or dirty talk, before striking the larger man with whatever they had managed to find on the table there.
Shoving themselves unceremoniously from the unconscious figure, pulling a jacket over their bare shoulders, dark pants falling off of a nearly emaciated body. The figure bent, pulling files from a drawer before exiting the frame.
Matt just knew. He didn't need any further proof, didn't need to hear a voice or see a face, he just knew. And he knew exactly was Mello was doing. If this was what he had to do to get to the top, then he'd sleep his way. Mello never had any real sense of shame. He wasn't surprised.
Matt was, however, sick to his stomach.
Maybe it was the relief that he was alive, and that maybe he could see him safe from behind a computer screen. Or maybe it was the realization that that was the closest he could get. Mello had the guts to just leave and not say goodbye to him, or tell him where he was going, only to sleep his way through the mafia. Really, a lucrative carrier choice, 2nd in line to replace the greatest mind in the world and instead giving shitty handjobs in someone's basement to steal shit out of a filing cabinet. Fitting for someone as pompous and self centered and goddamn insensitive as him.
Matt was starting to think, and fear, that that sick feeling in his stomach was jealousy.
Mello was insensitive.
Matt had pulled the plug on the surveillance gig. Matt just sort of stopped working entirely, preferring to hot wire cars to shoplift to get by. He was just trying to live up to his higher education. He didn't feel like he was missing out on anything, or as though he wasn't fulfilling his potential. Fulfilling his potential really cut into his sitting around time.
He was content with his hermit-like existence. He didn't have to worry about Kira, no one knew who he was. He didn't have to worry about bills, he was squatting. But of course, Mello, like he always did, had to ruin every thing. The stupid bitch had to blow himself up. It was a fucking choice, he could have shot the fucker, as Matt understood it many months later, but no. He has to do the, literally, stupidest thing ever and Matt has to pick up the fucking pieces.
It probably didn't even occur to Mello that Matt was doing fine without him, and maybe, just maybe, Matt didn't like dealing with third degree burns, and the blisters and the peeling and the general disgusting shit that came with it. He wasn't a fucking nurse, he didn't know about this shit. Mello's bitching an moaning about Near and Kira and how Matt's apartment smelled like burning shit made him want to smother the asshole while he slept. Maybe Matt didn't want his ass to stick around once he could take the bandages off, revealing the twisted and warped skin running down his back and neck. Maybe he wanted Mello to fuck off and Mello didn't have the good sense to do so.
Mello was insensitive.
Mello ruined everything. Matt wasn't going to aspire to be anything, he wasn't going to be anyone's hero. Or anti-hero. Or anything. He wasn't going to be anything. He was going to be unassuming and unappreciated and that was what he wanted. Mello didn't have the good fucking sense of leave Matt's life goals alone. Matt didn't have the good fucking sense to get out while he still could.
He should have ran for the fucking hills when Mello pushed aside the PSP and straddled his legs. Should have got the hell out of dodge when Mello's hands were blindly undoing his belt. But he didn't. He didn't have the good fucking sense.
He wished he was drunk to justify the fact that he was okay with it. That his breathing got heavy and he couldn't really think straight, and stopped thinking altogether as Mello brought their lips crashing together, and its just tongue and teeth and he's not even sure if he's allowed to call it kissing. It probably isn't.
Mello's eurotrash boots crash into something as he kicked them off, and when did his pants get so fucking complicated?
"Jesus, Matt you fucking retard, I'll do it myself." Mello panted down his neck, as he's already freed Matt of his own and managed them down to his thighs and Matt was already fucking hard like a stupid virgin and he's never been more self conscious in his life. Even more betraying was how goddamn eager he was. Mello acted like he didn't care, like unlacing his pants in a near stranger's apartment was a daily occurrence (probably was), like it didn't mean anything (probably didn't). Matt wanted to break his arms, tear out his hair, something- something that would make Matt feel vindicated. He felt abandoned. He had since he was 8. Not by Mello, but he was willing to blame it on him.
He made the mistake of trying to kiss him again, his hand going to brush against Mello's cheek, craning his neck up to reach Mello - who's more occupied with his trashy fucking pants – trying to kiss him softly, like he means it and like he fucking cares and the little shit bit him, Mello's canines digging into the soft flesh of his lip and pulling. Matt was reasonably certain Mello wasn't trying to be cute.
"Cut that shit out." Mello breathed into Matt's mouth, hunching to yank his pants down over his hips.
Mello was insensitive.
The headboard would have been banging against the wall if Matt had a headboard, if his bed was something more than a mattress on the floor in the corner of his apartment, and Mello was swearing at him;
"Harder. Fucking- harder - Matt I swear to fucking-" he finally stops talking, reduced to ragged breathing as he jerks himself off.
Matt's knees were going to give out, and he was trying to think of anything, anything to keep him going, Roger, dead kittens, Near, more dead kittens, fucking anything.
Mello wrapped his legs around Matt's waist, digging his heels into Matt's kidneys as he groaned, something in some language Matt didn't know he spoke, before his eyes, half lidded looked back up to Matt;
"Fucking harder, Jesus. Fuck me harder."
In the back of his mind (the part of his mind that was trying so fucking hard not to cum) Matt was afraid he was going break him. His skin was twisted and marred, and it looked wrong. Like part of him was being torn away. Maybe it was, in a psychological bullshit kind of way. Matt needed to stop thinking, his heart was pounding in his head when he bent forward, his hips crashing back into Mello's in a way that left them with bruises in the morning, and kissed him. Kissed him like he wanted to. Because he missed the selfish son of a bitch and maybe he fucking loved him and it was stupid and he hated everything about him and he would only ruin what was left of his short stupid life and Matt knew it, even then. Even then when he collapsed on top of Mello, completely spent, as he breathed heavily into Mello's scarred neck.
Matt was shoved off of Mello as he stood from the mattress, walking towards the bathroom muttering something about how he'd "fucking finish it himself." In his hazed vision Matt could only seen the bite marks on Mello's neck and chest and legs and hated himself for what he had done.
Mello was a murderer.
Matt learned very quickly Mello's willingness to end human life. That same rage Matt saw when they were 8 years old burning out of Mello's skull with every interaction he was found himself in. For someone who felt so exalted for his position of responsibility, one of the greatest minds in the world, trying to save the world from the clutches of a murderer, Mello used violence more than any other tactic. The irony wasn't lost on Matt, but he didn't dare mention it aloud. He assisted in kidnapping, stalking, espionage, all because Mello needed it as a means to an end. It wasn't enough for him to simply capture Kira, Mello wanted him dead. He never said it aloud, but Matt didn't need him to.
Mello was his murderer.
Matt might have known, leaning against his car, headlights shining in his face and the voices of strangers screaming at him, pain surging through his body (he felt like he was leaking) with every movement. He might have known Mello was going to be the one that killed him.
No. It was unfair to blame Mello for this.
It was like sitting outside of Roger's office, holding that bloody rag to his face and throwing himself under the bus. He did it because Mello asked.
It may not have sounded like asking at the time, it sounded like a command. Mello didn't know how to ask. It didn't sound like asking this time either, but he didn't have to ask.
He didn't even have to tell Matt that he was going to die if they did this. He knew. Somehow he knew. You don't piss off the entire police force of the largest city in the nation and make it out of there alive. Not after what they'd done.
Matt had thought about dying in the past, he knew that people like him weren't expected to live long and he'd wondered what it was that would do him in when the time came. He knew it wouldn't be the cancer from the chain smoking, he knew it wouldn't be safe in a bed somewhere. He wasn't fucking stupid. He had realistic expectations. Idly he'd hoped he'd go out like some action hero, taking a bunch of the bad guys down with him and ending on some snappy one liner. Maybe his expectations weren't that realistic.
Mello was his murderer.
He was cold, and afraid and the only person he could think about was Mello. Maybe it was the last grasp at something that made him happy, or maybe because Mello was the only one who might miss him as he slid closer and closer to the pavement, closer to his blood pooling around him. And at that very last moment, he hoped Mello felt fucking awful about all of this.