A/N: If anyone has already had this idea, I'm sorry, but I had to write this. Anyone who knows me, knows that as much as I love romance, I suck at understanding and writing it. So this was a bit of a self challenge. Tell me how I did, okay?
Rating: T. Contains swearing *cough*Mello*cough*, and yaoi/slash/boyxboy/gay/whatever-you-want-to-call-i t pairing. As for the actual romance part, it's pretty tame. Flame me for being a sucky writer if you want, but if I get a single homophobic flame, shit will go down.
Disclaimer: Did L and Light have an epic, face-to-face final showdown to decide who won? No? Then I don't own Death Note.
A thirteen-year-old genius smirked down at the package he'd bought for his best friend/crush. Green eyes glinted excitedly behind a pair of orange-tinted goggles, which somehow managed to both clash with and compliment his bright red hair. After weeks of planning, preparing, and building up his courage, he was finally going to set his plan in motion. Matt had known he liked Mello for years, but he'd never quite known how to tell the blond. Finally, he'd decided to apply his life motto to the situation. Fuck It. (No, not that way. At least, not yet.) The redhead decided to make it blatantly obvious and see where it went. Thus, the mystery box. He was confident that Mello would be able to figure out the somewhat simple mystery if he took the time to think about it, and the fact that it was a challenge to his intellect would ensure that he would. There was no way his plan could fail. Unless, of course, the redhead was underestimating Mello's stubbornness... Nah. After years of living with the other genius, Matt was confident he could anticipate the volatile blond's reactions.
...Damn, he just jinxed himself, didn't he.
With a final devilish grin, he steeled his nerves and tossed the package and note in a seemingly-careless motion so that it would land beside Mello on the couch. Then he walked (read: ran as if the hounds of Hell were at his heels) out of their shared bedroom before the temperamental boy could start screaming at him.
"Bitch, you could have hit me with this thing! I could have DIED, Matt! MATT! GET THE FUCK BACK HERE, ASSHOLE! WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU THROW AT ME!?" Mello, a blond teen who ranked number two in intelligence out of all the other orphans at Wammy's House, screeched as his roommate calmly walked (fled) out of the room, ignoring him. That in itself would be enough to piss him off; no one was allowed to ignore Mello. No one. Especially not Matt.
"Bitch," Mello growled (because he was NOT sulking, dammit!) before turning his icy blue eyes to glare at the item that his best friend had tried to kill him with. When he noticed the note attached, his anger abated slightly and was replaced by curiosity. What could be in the box that made Matt decide to throw it at him? Sure, they threw stuff at each other all the time (mostly during a video game match when Mello lost, which happened often), but it was usually an object much heavier than the one sitting innocently on the couch (such as a dictionary). And Matt would usually aim for the head.
So, either there was something at least semi-fragile in the box, or Matt was trying to get on Mello's good side at the moment. Interesting...
With a shrug, the blond grabbed the note and read through it quickly.
'Mello, you have twenty-four hours to find out the hidden message of this package. -Matt. PS: Don't eat all the chocolates; they're important.'
Chocolates? Why would Matt get him chocolates? Confused, Mello opened up the small package next. Inside, there was a largish bag of M&Ms. The teen stared at the bag for a moment before violently throwing it and the box it came in across the room.
"Go to hell, Matt! How the fuck am I supposed to figure out a message from a bag of fucking candy!?"
Once again glaring at the box, Mello sat in silence for a few moments before reluctantly getting up and retrieving the candies. After all, they were chocolates. From Matt (not that Mello cared about that fact or anything). Ripping open the bag with the ease of someone who'd eaten way too many chocolate bars, Mello moodily ate a handful of the rainbow candies.
What? Matt said not to eat all of them. Like hell he'd just let the chocolate go to waste.
It was then that Mello noticed something odd about the M&Ms in his hand. A quick glance at the rest of the bag confirmed his suspicions. Unlike he'd assumed, the candies were not the usual assortment of colors. Matt must have special ordered them or something, because there was a definite lack of rainbow in the bag. Actually, there were only two colors mixed together.
Red and orange.
Huh. Maybe the mystery wouldn't be so hard to solve after all; he just had to decipher the symbolism crap for each color. He started with red.
"Red," Mello murmured to himself, "Blood, roses, cherries, hate, love... No. This is Matt. I have to think about Matt's point of view on this..." What did red mean to Matt? Love? No, the duo talked about everything together; he would have known if Matt loved anyone. "Come on; think!" Mello growled at himself. What was red in Matt's life? The virtual blood in Matt's games, Matt's favorite shirt, Matt's soft-looking hair, Matt's lips parted adorably as he gazed intently at his PSP, not noticing how the expression made Mello's heart melt like the chocolates he loved so much...
No. Mello refused to let his mind wander. Those were dangerous thoughts. Usually, Mello would go after whatever he wanted without hesitation, but with Matt... it was different, somehow. As much as it hurt to keep his feelings towards his best friend a secret, Mello was painfully aware that he couldn't handle losing Matt's friendship. It would destroy him. It didn't matter that his breathing sped up when he saw the redhead, or that his heart leapt into his throat when Matt leaned closer to him, or that- "Goddammit, focus!" Taking a deep breath, he decided to direct his attention to the meaning of the orange M&Ms.
... "The fuck? Orange doesn't fucking stand for anything."
The only orange thing he could think of was Matt's goggles which always hid his beautiful green eyes, only letting Mello get a glimpse on the few occasions he took them off, but it was okay because Mello knew he was the only one who got to see them and- No. God, he was going on like a fucking schoolgirl with a silly crush.
The only things special about orange were Matt's goggles and... the fact that it was Matt's favorite color. Come to think of it, red was Mello's favorite color...
"No, he's not that stupid. He wouldn't make it that obvious... would he?"
He was probably over-analyzing it. Or under-analyzing it? The blond genius grabbed the note again and re-read it. Twenty-four hours. So, at about six o'clock the next day, he had to have solved the challenge... It was a good thing that it was Friday, so they wouldn't have classes the next day.
Huffing, Mello grabbed the chocolates and stalked off to the kitchen. He had plenty of time left, and he really needed some hot chocolate, goddammit!
And so it was that, an hour later, the number one genius at Wammy's House walked into the kitchen to find Mello sitting on the counter, nursing a cup of hot chocolate (which was really just melted chocolate with a hint of milk) and glaring balefully at a bag of M&Ms.
"Did someone give you low sugar chocolates again?" Near asked emotionlessly (though you could hear the amusement in his voice if you knew him very well).
Mello growled lowly and shoved the note at the albino. The fact that he hadn't responded with swearing and violence was a testament to how distracted and preoccupied he was by the mystery. This only made Near more curious, so he read through the note quickly. That, and a small glance at the bag of candies, was all he needed to understand Matt's intentions.
It was rather obvious, he thought.
"Ah," was all he said.
"This is stupid!" the blond exploded after that one word, "I should go track down Matt and beat the fuckin' answer out of him!"
Near, in an uncharacteristic show of emotion, smirked and replied, "You can't figure it out? And here I thought you were a genius. How do you expect to become the next L if you can't solve a silly riddle?" Ignoring Mello's enraged spluttering, the white-haired boy began twirling some of his hair around his pale figure before he continued, "Though I can't say I'm surprised. However, I think it would be in your best interest to figure this out yourself. You might be surprised. Just focus on the names, and don't over-analyze it." And with that, he grabbed an apple and walked out.
Mello lay in bed later that night, glaring at the ceiling. His earlier interrogation of Matt hadn't given him any more insight as to the meaning of the bag of chocolates; all he'd gotten when he demanded answers was a small smirk and a 'Are you admitting defeat, Mels?'. That asshole. But Mello couldn't forget the feeling that there had been some other emotion in his roommate's voice that he couldn't identify. Like Mello absolutely had to figure this riddle out. Maybe there was more to the challenge than he had first thought.
While Matt slept in the bed on the other side of their small room, Mello pondered over the note and Near's advice. What was so important about the name "M&Ms"? Did the two M's stand for something? But Near had said 'names'. Plural. Mentally going over the note again, the blond growled lowly. The only other names written on the note were-! Blue eyes widened in an almost comical way as realization bitch-slapped it's way into Mello's consciousness. M&Ms. M and M. Matt and Mello. Orange and red. Their favorite colors.
Oh.
Oh.
Mello suddenly had the urge to beat himself repeatedly with the nearest blunt object for being so completely oblivious to something that had been right in front of him. But, fortunately, he restrained himself and began planning what to do about this new information. As much as he wanted to get up and pounce on the redhead that very second, he knew there was something much more... creative that he could do with this newfound realization; he just had to think of it.
And slowly, an evil and only slightly crazy grin found it's way onto the genius's face. Tomorrow was going to be a busy day. Things to do and people to threaten.
Matt had been antsy all day. For some reason, his alarm clock hadn't gone off and when he'd finally woken up at noon, Mello had been long gone. That had made Matt incredibly nervous and twitchy -for good reason. The blond chocoholic could hold one hell of a vicious grudge, and he was probably still pissed about Matt's refusal to give him answers about the riddle.
So when he walked into their shared room and noticed a small note telling him to meet Mello in one of the rarely used rooms of the orphanage at five o'clock, the redhead was understandably wary of the blond's intentions. But then it occurred to him that Mello might have figured out the riddle and was going to give him an answer, and Matt's heart seemed to stutter for a second, momentarily forgetting to breathe. What if he was rejected?
The third-ranked genius took a calming breath. "Well, only one way to find out."
Matt walked slowly into the room Mello's note had said to go to, closing the door behind him. The room was supposed to be a classroom, but because it was set apart from the other classes for some reason, it was rarely used. The lights were off, but the fading light from the sunset outside the window lit up the room enough for the calm (because he was definitely not nervous whatsoever) redhead to see a bowl of red and orange M&Ms sitting on a table in the middle of the room.
"I swear to god, Mello, if you jump out at me right now, I'm beating the crap out of you," Matt muttered.
Something about the chocolates seemed different though... After a moment, he realized what it was. Mello must have somehow gotten a bag of those special order, customized M&Ms because these didn't have the usual 'M' printed on them. Hesitantly, the green-eyed genius picked up a red candy and inspected it.
'Hell'
Despair fell on him like a cloud and his heart constricted painfully as his mind automatically filled in what the rest of the message could be. 'Go to hell', 'Hell no', and 'What the hell' all flashed through his brain almost instantly. Preparing for rejection at the hands of a piece of candy, Matt picked up an orange chocolate this time and glanced at the word written on it.
And dropped the two candies in surprise.
'Yes'
Hell yes!
As Matt was staring, dumbfounded and disbelieving, at the bowl of M&Ms on the table, he felt a pair of arms snake around his waist, pulling him into a hug from behind. Slowly, he turned his head to the side and stared into a pair of icy blue eyes before he felt lips press gently into his own and his eyelids slipped shut.
It wasn't a very deep kiss -just a soft brush of the lips- and when they pulled apart, Mello leaned his forehead against Matt's and murmured, "You have no idea how long I've wanted to do that." A small, tender smile crept onto his face then. "I love you, Matty."
At that, the shocked and hesitant expression on the redhead's face morphed into relief and warmth. "I love you too, Mels." Then, he tangled his fingers into the blond's hair and pulled him in for another, deeper, kiss.
A/N: So yeah... Like I said, I don't really understand romance stuff. The feelings, yeah, I can write pretty easily. The actual kissing and 'I love you' parts? Not so much. Sorry if the last bit seems a little rushed! The last few parts probably took twice the amount of time it took to write the rest.
How did Mello get a specially ordered bag of M&Ms in one day, you ask? Threats, firearms, a little blackmail, and maybe some bribery to get Near's help. "This calls for a particularly subtle blend of psychology and extreme violence." (I love that quote so much, you have no idea how badly I've wanted to use it)
So was it good for a first attempt at romance? Not-so-good? Should I never, ever attempt anything like this again?
Review!