A/N- Well, I'd like to start off saying that this fic was inspired by three people and dedicated to one

A/N- Well, I'd like to start off saying that this fic was inspired by three people and dedicated to one. The Matt and Mello fandom is barren of lovely multi-chapter fics, however popular the fandom seems to be. L/Light has masterpieces, Coexistence is Boredom, True Elision, and many others I can't list at the moment. So, after reading the great works of Ezan and Sakurazukomori6, as well as RPing with one of my best friends, I have decided to try and concoct a non-AU Mello/Matt fic. I make no claim that it will be as deep and involved as the fics I have listed, but I'm going to give this my best shot. Because Mello and Matt deserve it, and so do their fans.

Dedication: To Lizz. The girl I made an M&M fan before she really knew who they were…and the girl who made me the Mello fan before I really knew who he was. She can write from Mello's perspective like no one I've ever seen and she gave me the chance to be Matt. This one's for her.

Disclaimer: I do not own Death Note. Nor do I own M&Ms.

Intelligent people are more apt to commit mistakes more than any other sector of the population.

Mello, however, would not admit he had made a mistake. Ever since the rainy day he'd left Whammy's House he had not thought for a moment about going back. Not while Near was there. Not while he was second. To be partners, co-L's with that bent little freak…the thought left him with a bad taste in his mouth, despite the chocolate residue, as well as the intense desire to kick something. Someone. Anyone. Well, not anyone. Matt was the other person in the room and he was only innocently plodding away on his DS. Like always.

Mello was sitting in front of his desk with a blank sheet of notebook paper staring back at him. Mocking him, he was sure. The corners of the sheet were curling in on themselves due to the saturation of water in the air. A storm would brake any minute, and it would be a violent one, harsh enough to clear the streets of New York of all but the homeless and the most foolish of pedestrians. Mello was half sure the power in the rickety old apartment he had holed up in would blow. Well, however fine that would be for Matt, with his portable source of entertainment, Mello needed desk-light to write. Because he was writing. Yes, indeed, he was writing.

It was the fucking pencil's fault that words were not coming out.

Taking a rather violent bite from his chocolate bar, he twirled the pencil in his fingers. Perhaps that was the problem. He wasn't typing the thing up on a computer. He was stuck with old fashioned methods because, if a computer user was clever enough, then anything that had been deleted could be recovered. And Mello still wasn't sure who he wanted to read this.

Yes, the fact that there were no words on the page had nothing to do with the fact that he had no clue what to write about and everything to do with the fact that there was a page in front of him and not a glowing screen.

Intelligent people are also, rather inconveniently, exceptionally good or bad at lying to themselves during certain moments in their lives. Mello was quite aware that he was thinking complete shit. He was also quite aware of the fact that he was procrastinating.

"Just do the easiest thing, okay?"

Apparently Matt was too.

"Why would I do that?" Mello snarled, spinning around in desk chair to glare at Matt. "I want something I can shove in Near's face, not something that the loser can say he had already surmised!" To Mello's chagrin, Matt was still staring (as far as Mello could tell with those fucking orange goggles blocking most of his eyes) at the DS and therefore could not properly understand the Frustration of Mello.

"Well," Matt mumbled, "you seem to be having trouble."

"I am not having trouble."

"Then why—yes, it was super effective—are you staring at the paper like you can set it on fire with your mind?"

Mello blinked. Matt had been watching him? Also, that was an excellent idea, perhaps if he just "borrowed" Matt's lighter for a moment….

"Maybe you can just lead him off course. Think of the largest red-herring that you can, I have complete confidence in your ability to do so, and then stuff it in there to throw him off course. Also," and Matt quickly tapped the screen of his DS before looking up to stare at Mello through his goggles, "don't write from your point of view, don't do it from L's. There's gotta be someone in those stories who you can throw Near off with."

Mello was still seething, albeit with surface anger, but the idea…the idea had some merit. Oddly it began to calm him, rather than infuriate him. Matt wasn't Near. He wasn't Kira. He wasn't any of the thousands of members of the human race Mello was competing against. He was Matt. Matt, the boy who'd followed him around at Whammy's; Matt, the boy who'd called him after he'd left and screamed at Mello for not taking him with him, demanding directions and sprinting down to meet him in the pouring rain; Matt, the man who would follow Mello anywhere and listen…just listen.

Mello still hadn't told him the stories L had given him. He hadn't told anyone. They sat inside him, glowing brightly, making Mello feel… almost special. They made him feel that perhaps, if L had lived through the Kira case, he would have chosen Mello after all. Instead of making the half-assed decision Roger'd pulled out. The guy didn't even like kids. Why the hell had the guy run an orphanage?

Matt hadn't asked Mello about what L and Mello had talked about on the one unforgettable occasion that they met, face to face. Matt had seen enough when Mello had come stumbling back to their room, nearly shaking with awe and looking so proud, so happy, that he might burst into little Mello-chocolaty bits. Matt knew that L had told Mello some of the stories of his life. Mello knew Matt knew. Mello also knew Matt was even a little bit curious about what L had told him…but Matt had never asked, because, if he asked, Mello would tell him. And Mello felt really good about being the one, the only one who could, rub these stories into the twit's face.

"Maybe…maybe that's a good idea," Mello conceded, rolling the thought around in his head and smoothing to chocolate his mouth over with his tongue. Matt didn't respond, seemingly absorbed in his game yet again.

Yes…yes, there was one story, one with a woman, a detective, one who had fallen victim to Kira not too many years after the incident with Beyond Birthday case with L. She had been clever. Clever enough to deserve being written about.

Mello knew what to write now.

He put the pencil to the page and began to scribble furiously, words pouring from his fingers to page, the pencil warm in his hand.

Lighting cracked through the sky. The power blew.

Matt learned many new German swears that night.

It had been days since Mello had surfaced from his notebook, and a large pile of candy bar wrappers and crumpled papers had built up next to him. It was large enough to be half the size of the desk.

None of this particularly perturbed Matt as by this stage in his life he was rather used to living with someone obsessed. He was perfectly content to play his DS in relative silence. It was the sudden noise from the outside that night that nearly killed him.

There was no moon that night, and the stars, their light so weak, had no hope of being seen with all of the light pollution the city generated. And for all of the car alarms and engines that could be heard not to far away from their location in the Bronx, it was surprisingly easy to hear the gunshot fired from below them.

It cut through them as though they were made of butter; blonde and red heads snapped up from their work and listened. Of course they had heard gunshots before, they were in one of the less respectable parts of the world and there were few things they were innocent of…but they'd never heard one like this. Not this close.

Mello's heart was pounding in his throat, his muscles tense, and before even he realized it he was running, as quietly as a person could run, out of the apartment door and down the rickety old stairs. Nothing on the third floor, the second, but the first…there were scuffling noises on the first. Mello pressed himself against the wall of the stairwell, determined to stay out of sight but he had every intention of eavesdropping. It was then he realized Matt was right beside him. Of course he was. Mello felt a little more sure of himself.

The other occupants of the building, which were indeed few as this was a less than desirable place to live in, were either all out or were too smart to want to see what Mello was so eagerly investigating and he was all the happier for it. Crime? In a major city? Definitely going to show up on news, or at least the internet. People who didn't fear Kira? This was more than interesting….

Mello tensed, then felt Matt grab his hand. He whipped his head around and Matt shook his head. Mello scowled. Of course he wasn't going to run out there. He wasn't one of the highest-ranking members of Whammy's House for nothing (he would not say "second").

There was whispering. Mello whipped his head back around, craning his neck forward until he was at the brink of being seen.

"…no, he's not…no, no, no…suicide…how's that possible? We blew his brains out…Kira…" was all Mello could make out. He nearly growled, but thought better of it. Matt tapped him on the shoulder and motioned that he was going around the other side of the stairs. No doubt to try and see if he could make out more than Mello was at that moment. Mello nodded, only worrying briefly. Matt was more than capable at taking care of himself and far sneakier than his friend. Matt tiptoed off and Mello went back to listening in. He could hear footsteps now, coming closer. Worry bubbled in him, ebbing off when he realized that the footfalls were merely meandering. Someone was lost in thought.

"Eddie…what the fuck are we supposed to do?" came an urgent whisper. "I thought…goddamn, now they tell us that his fucking family are huge Kira supporters? NOW they tell us that he even has a fucking family?!" The voice, for all of the masculinity poured into it, was tipping on the edge of hysteria.

There was a returned whisper. Mello cupped a hand to hiss ear, turning so that his chest was flat against the wall. However, Mello's jeans were rather loose and out from his pocket fell a still-wrapped silver chocolate bar.

Immediately the lights flew on and Mello jumped back, hearing a gun cock as a pair of footsteps rushed into the stairwell. Mello's first instinct was to back against the wall, but then he would have effectively cornered himself. Still, Mello was no pussy. He could cstreet-fight against a grown man and win. Still, he had no chance against the barrel of the gun staring him straight in the face. The man who was holding it was large and muscled, his hair long and braided. He looked like a black clone of his friend who was standing behind him, as this one man was enough to block the doorway.

Mello was frozen, his brilliant mind had been kicked into hyper drive but he couldn't stop the small part of his brain that he hadn't been shot yet. Damnit, that wouldn't distract Near. Near could get out of this. Think like Near, like Near…but he didn't want to think like Near!

"Damnit, Eddie," said the white man. "Is that a boy, a girl, or a freak accident?" Mello nearly spat out a violent German response right there but held back his tongue. It wasn't worth dying.

"Hey, kid, what did you hear?" asked Eddie, with no pretense of kindness behind his voice.

"I'm not a kid," Mello responded back childishly, nearly beating himself in the head the moment the words left his mouth. Still, no time for that. "If you kill me, you'll just be in deeper shit that you already are. No chance of making it look like a suicide then. Kira will kill you."

Both men froze, startled. He'd caught them off-guard, excellent. Time to make demands. "Let me go, give me your gun, and I won't say a word. That was the landlord, right? Me and my mom were about to get kicked out anyway, so your secret's safe. I would gain nothing by speaking about this." Yes, making high demands and lying through his teeth were the way to go.

Sadly, giving the men a moment to think was his fatal flaw. "Well," said Eddie. "I guess it's a boy, his voice is pretty deep. What are you, kid, sixteen?" Mello nearly screamed, but at least this was better than being killed.

"I'm seventeen," he said shortly.

Eddie sighed, handing the gun over to his friend but keeping it aimed at Mello all the while. "C'mere, kid, you're right, Kira will probably get us," he admitted, stepping forward, "but there's even more of a chance of us getting caught if we let a witness go."

He made a grab for Mello, who sidestepped his hands to try and aim a kick at his attacker's groin. However, this man grossly larger and stronger than Mello's typical opponent and the man angled his hips away slightly and his hands wrapped around Mello, one around the throat and one around the waist. Mello blanched, having never experienced the sensation of being choked before he was completely unprepared and panicked, wrapping his two open hands around the larger one that was suppressing his ability to breathe along with crushing his jugular. The pair of them struggled for a moment until a bullet whizzed by them. Eddie stopped crushing so Mello stopped, if for a moment, struggling.

The other man lay passed out on the ground and Matt stood over him, gun he'd liberated in hand, aiming straight at Mello's assaulter. Mello swore he'd never seen Matt look so pissed.

"Let him go," said Matt, in a tone the suggesting that he was absolutely not bluffing. Immediately oxygen flooded Mello's lungs. He managed to quickly stagger away to take his place at Matt's side, keeping one eye on the unconscious man beside them. Breathing still slow, excellent.

The man in front of them, Eddie, looked completely lost. His eyes were wide with disbelief and Mello truly believe at that moment this man had been terribly misinformed about the nature of the job he was pulling tonight. Everything was silent. Finally, Mello spoke.

"You think you're going to die tonight, don't you?" he asked, no emotion in his voice, which was rather disconcerting for him.

Eddie sighed, tilting his head downward but keeping his eye on the gun. "If not right now, then tomorrow. You can kill me now. Or I can go back to the boss and tell him Clark lost his cool and killed your old landlord there on the spot 'cause Clark just about pissed his pants when you're the guy pulled out a gun. So, now everything will pointing back to Clark, plus we left two witnesses alive along with an apartment filled with people. Or can not go back and wait for either them or Kira to get me."

Mello bit his lip, looking thoughtful. So this guy wasn't run-of-the-mill gang trash. This guy talked like he was mafia, albeit some sort of meat shield.

Mello could use this.

"Or, you could fix the job you fucked up," Mello suggested. Matt's eyes quickly darted to his friend for a moment but he said nothing, turning them back on his target. Eddie, for his part, looked confused.

"What do ya…"

"I mean," Mello said, irritably, "that you can fix this. Make it look like he shot himself, or at least try. You don't fucking give up." With that, Mello turned his back on the fully-grown man he had just asserted his dominance over. Time to survey the murder scene.

Well, Mello thought, they'd certainly botched this up. Blood spattered the floor and his landlord lay drowning in it, facedown in his own ooze. With a look of mild disgust, he spotted the gun he'd intended to use on the mafia members lying by his hand. Great.

Matt had walked up beside him along with the prisoner he still had his gun turned on; Matt was keeping himself between the man and Mello. Mello was touched.

"Well, first we steal his gun, his ammo and wipe every single goddamn foreign finger print this place has to offer, so I hope you guys didn't touch much. Matt, you'll destroy any documents he has about being allowed to own a gun, go online for a follow up. Find out who he bought it from, then destroy those records too. We'll replace his gun with the one that put the whole in his head, so that way the bullet data matches up. Then to seal the deal we lock the room to make it look like no one has gotten out."

The mafia man had his eyes wide with wonder but he was more than a little startled and guarded.

"What…you're trying to…help us?"

Mello resisted the urge to insult him. That wouldn't be the best choice of action to get him to cooperate.

"Yes, and before someone upstairs calls the cops."

"But…but how are we gonna lock the room from the outside without taking the key? We don't have time to make a mold, not illegally."

Mello grinned. "Well, we can't use dolls like the last time, but that bedpost and desk chair will do. I've got some string on me, too. I don't think anyone's gonna investigate this thing far enough to read about some obscure case in Los Angeles, do you?"

Mello, Matt and Eddie successfully cleaned up after the debacle of the grown men, letting the man, Clark, lie passed out on the floor. Mello was highly impressed with this. He'd known Matt could fight but that was the first Mello had seen of his friend's capabilities against a true opponent (not counting himself, of course). Matt was quiet and deadly. Reminded him of a ninja.

Clark still hadn't woken after Matt and Mello had gathered their possessions and destroyed any evidence of their existence in this place. No one here had seen them anyway, and even if they had, none of these people would be keen on an interview with the police.

After waiting an impossibly long time for the man to come to and then even more time after to thoroughly explain everything to the confused man, Eddie turned to Mello and said, "Sorry, kid, but we still can't let you two go, even after that."

Mello smirked. "You forget we have the gun," he taunted, motioning to Matt. Matt had only let the weapon leave his hands for a moment, and that was to exchange it with the landlord's gun. "But that doesn't matter; we intended to go with you anyway, provided we are seen as accomplices, not witnesses. In your retelling you may make yourselves seem more capable but you damn well better not screw us over."

Eddie laughed at that, surprising Mello. "No, kid, we wouldn't do that, not after how you helped us, right Clark?" The man seemed to take his clues from Eddie and nodded. "But I figured you need a place to stay, right? And you seem the type the boss would like under him. I figured I could offer the pair of you some safety, 'cause I can tell by this point no one's looking out for you but you."

Mello blinked. Everything was proceeding better than he had expected and, aside from the comments about working under someone, he was relatively pleased by the offer. It was understandable that Eddie had deduced he and Matt were on their own. No normal kid could have just successfully turned a murder-scene into a suicide.

"Well, I hardly think Matt and I need protection. We did have your lives in our hands, after all."

Eddie laughed again. "Naw, that was all your buddy. I was squeezing the life out of you 'till he saved your ass." Mello scowled while Matt looked fairly pleased with himself.

"I had to distract you for him to gain the upper hand." This was a true statement. Mello had not added on that he hadn't intended to be a distraction but such information was superfluous. He thought he heard Matt snort but dismissed it.

"Anyway," Mello said authoritatively, "we would be more than happy to meet your boss and become part of his little 'group.'" Eddie raised an eyebrow, giving Matt a speculative look. He seemed intelligent for a grunt.

"Are you so eager to sign your life away to the mafia? You never get out, you know." Well, wasn't that nice, looking out for the kids. Or was it really that he was trying to make Mello realize his mistake before forcing him to do it anyway?

"None of that matters right now. And it's not as if you're giving me a choice, right?" asked Mello. Eddie started. Mello had him wrapped around his finger already.

"No, I'm not. You just shouldn't be so eager, kid."

"I'm not a kid. I'm seventeen," Mello bit back and he thought he heard another snort from Matt's general direction. 'Yeah, laugh it up, you're barely able to drive in this country,' Mello thought at him bitterly. Damn the world for making him more mature than that kid but making the people around him stupid enough to get Matt's sex at the first glance but have them ogle for a half an hour at him before they declared him female.

"Anyway, take me to your fucking leader before my friend over here gets bored and shoots you both so he can play his DS."

A/N-Sooo…what do you think? I know its kinda slow, and I don't expect this to become as epic as the DN fics listed above…but Matt and Mello need some love, so I really hope this comes out well. I'm sorry the first chapter was so short but I think that was the best place to end it, at least until I can tell if this story generated some interest. I'd love if everyone and their grandmother reviewed. It is the inspiration that keeps me going, and away from icky schoolwork.

Also, yes, Mello stole some ideas from Beyond Birthday and, yes, he IS writing Another Note. If you haven't read it yet, I suggest you pick it up. The book itself isn't vital to this or the actual plot of DN…but it IS an excellent read. You can find it in your manga section.