Summary: Normally, Mello wouldn't be caught dead traipsing about with an umbrella; if it rained, it rained, and so be it. But an umbrella did find its way over his head once, thanks to a certain redheaded schoolgirl. Mello x girl!Matt. AU oneshot.
Disclaimer: I don't own Death Note.
Warning: Yes, this is Mello x girl!Matt. A very underage girl!Matt. There's nothing graphic here at all, but if you're offended by lolicon, you probably won't like it. There's some cursing also.
A/N: This was written for a prompt in a Valentine's meme. The requester wanted Mello x girl!Matt with the theme of "cohabitation." The requester just wanted "goofy and simple and cute," but I managed to inject some angst regardless of all the fluff. This is also heavily inspired by a doujinshi called "Rain Drop" (can't remember who it's by). So... I barely own this idea, really. ^^;
Happy Valentine's, and a happy late birthday to Matt! X3
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Cohabitation
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It had started simply enough – a no-fuss meeting of rain and umbrella. How this seed had sprouted and blossomed to become cohabitation, well... Mello had a much harder time explaining that.
Normally, he wouldn't be caught dead traipsing about with an umbrella; if it rained, it rained, and so be it. He'd suffered through a hell of a lot worse than a few minutes of wet hair and goosebumps on the walk back to his apartment. To hide from something as harmless as rain would have been a sign of weakness, and Mello had endured his fair share of people calling him girly already.
Big surprise that, when an umbrella once found its way over his blond head, its perpetrator was a girl.
As luck would have it, he was making his way back home right as the local high school let out, and just as the heavy clouds that had been building up all day had finally decided to dump their load on the city. A bouncy redhead in a short skirt trounced right up behind him, and suddenly the rain stopped hitting him. He had been, at first, a bit bewildered that this giggling schoolgirl could sneak up on him like that, and even more so when he turned around to face her. Surely the sight of his marred face would scare off this female as it did all the others, but he found only curiosity in her grey-green eyes. Soon enough she was walking beside him, holding her black and white striped umbrella between them. She started babbling at him, some idealistic garbage about umbrellas bringing people together and how it always seemed to rain when one was sad. He silently put up with it; he was only two blocks from home, so he would be rid of her soon enough.
By the time they'd walked the first block, she'd managed to snake her arm around his. He knew by now that her name was Mattea, that it was a Hebrew name, and that she preferred the boyish nickname "Matt." He knew that she was fourteen (but God in Heaven, she was damn well-developed for a fourteen year old). He knew that people used to make fun of her for her bright red hair, and that she used to wear thick glasses until having corrective eye surgery two years ago. He knew that she had gotten used to hiding behind those glasses, and had replaced that shield with a pair of goggles (now hanging loosely around her bare neck, above cleavage that should not have existed at her age, much less been shown off so much by a school uniform).
After the second block, Matt knew more about Mello than he had ever openly shared with anyone. She knew how he got his scar, why he still wore the same leathers and fur jacket even though they'd become worn and ragged after all these years. She knew that his name was an alias. She knew he was an orphan, and that he'd had a rather unorthodox education – particularly, that he'd never worn a school uniform like hers. She had discovered that his cold demeanor could crack, that he could actually laugh, when she suggested he might look good in a pleated skirt.
By the time they reached his apartment door, she knew he was a failure, but still she stood beside him and shielded his head with her umbrella. And as much as he wanted to tell her to go home now, he invited her inside for some hot tea. She had to be freezing in that tiny skirt, after all.
When the tea was gone and they both were warmed and dry again, still she stayed. Her umbrella was hanging up in his shower, and she irrationally insisted that she had to let it dry. He knew full well that she'd just be going back out in the rain again anyway, but for some reason he didn't argue. Nor did he complain when it started to get dark, and instead of hurrying off home before nightfall, she went to the kitchen and raided his cabinets. She insisted on cooking him dinner, because by that time she knew that he subsisted mostly on chocolate bars and instant ramen cups.
During the hour she spent hovering over his stove, he finally felt it necessary to ask why she was still there.
By the time their food was ready, he was compelled to hug Matt close to him, her silent tears trailing down his throat as the bread burned in the oven. He let her stay like that as long as she wanted, and began to feel accustomed to having her face buried in the crook of his neck, and her frail hands clinging to him.
He knew by that time the despicable things her father did to her, but as she refused to go home, he really had no way of finding and dealing with the bastard. All he could do was comfort the poor girl.
He couldn't remember why he'd done it, but he told Matt his real name. All he knew was that it seemed to cheer her up – it separated her from his neck and made her smile so beautifully that Mello's breath stuck in his throat. It made her curl those cutely manicured fingers into his unkempt hair and plant a sweet little kiss on his lips. Her mouth was oddly soft and glossed with pink. He felt the gloss rub off on his own chapped lips from the brief contact, and he forgot whatever reason he had for sharing his name.
After they had finished their dinner, Matt's immature crush on Mello became obvious. Mello knew that it was wrong – that everything about this was wrong – but when Matt sashayed her narrow hips past his face, that short skirt floating around them and brushing across his scarred cheek, words like "wrong" and "underage" and "pedophile" fell out of Mello's dictionary. She took their dishes back into the kitchen, making sure that with every step she took Mello would have a fine view of her backside.
She knew so much about him already – she definitely knew that he was nearly ten years older than her. Whether she truly understood what that sort of age difference meant, however...
Coming back to the couch where Mello sat, she dropped the coy act and plopped down onto his leather lap. Before he could react, Matt had thrown her arms around his neck and was kissing him again, sloppily licking at his lips in an attempt to pry them open. Her inexperience was obvious, but damn if she didn't get full points for trying. It didn't take Mello much convincing before he was melting under the young girl like a chocolate bar reduced to a puddle of goo by the hot sun.
But there was no sunlight today, just like yesterday, just like it would be tomorrow, and the only source of warmth in the face of all these years of cold rain was the red-haired Lolita in his lap. Mello knew he wasn't alone, though. Matt was sad, too; she craved sunshine just as much as he did today. Pity, he mused, that it always rained when one most needed sun.
For the first time in several years, the peeling paint of the apartment walls sheltered more than just one lonely person through the night. Faithfully, they deadened the sounds of thunder outside and let these two forget – forget the weather, forget the tension and heartaches, forget the societal conventions that bid them to separate.
They rode out the stormy night, and were surprised to find the sun shining brightly through the bedroom window that morning. Mello awoke first, and before the misgivings and worries could set in again, he took some moments to enjoy Matt's soundly sleeping face. The sun brightened her cheeks, made her hair light up like fire, and, when she finally opened her eyes, the light made the tiny flecks of green sparkle like emeralds.
It would have seemed weak, to an outsider, for Mello to admit such unbridled affections as he had so quickly developed for Matt, but he didn't particularly care any longer. She smiled at him and reached up to touch his face, sheets shifting with her movements and barely covering her, and he didn't give a damn what anyone else in the world might think of him. He dove again, again, into that creamy expanse of skin, and was sure he would never get enough of it.
He never learned where Matt lived, for she never went home again. She went to school, and he tailored the timing of his daily errands so that he might wait for her outside the gates. She came home with him without hesitation. She bought new clothes rather than getting her own from her father's house, and she kept them at Mello's apartment. He didn't ask her about it – after all, they already knew each other's pasts, and there was no need to revisit them ever again. There was only the here and now, the pleasures of the moment, stretching as far into the future as they dared to look.
Never did they claim anything, never did she change her listed address to match his, and never did she inform anyone of moving, for she had never really moved to begin with. And as they both knew, an official relationship like theirs would be immoral and, indeed, illegal.
Despite the lack of commitment, Matt always came home to Mello without fail. Despite never being called a girlfriend, she slept each night in his bed, contentedly curled in his arms, and neither desired anything more.
And despite all things taboo about their situation, this continued until they could no longer avoid attaching a label to it. Even long after Matt had grown to a legal age, common words like "marriage" seemed somehow wrong for them – far too binding for their needs, and far too common a concept for people like them.
After much thought, they could only think to call it cohabitation. An impersonal term to satisfy the outside world, like goggles shielding their secret truths and hiding their faces from prying eyes.