Matt woke up with a hangover so bad he couldn't remember how he had gotten the hangover in the first place, and Mello was going to be displeased, he knew… but he could worry about that after he puked.

…Now, where was the bathroom again…?

He soon gave up on finding the elusive room and instead emptied the contents of his stomach into a nearby wastebin. With some of the offending chemicals expelled, he felt a bit better, but he was still dizzy-drowsy as he stumbled back to the couch and collapsed onto the cushions, and he suspected he was doped up on something, but for the life of him he couldn't remember what. Furthermore, his confused state of mind prevented him from analyzing his symptoms and providing effective treatment for himself, leaving him at something of a miserable impasse. Maybe Mello could help when he got back from wherever, if he didn't kill him first…

"Matt, it fucking reeks in here."

Speak of the devil.

"Hey, can you bring me some aspirin or something?" he called out in response. This headache was blowing his brain to bits, and surely two more measly pills wouldn't damage his system.

"Get it yourself." Mello appeared in the doorway, smirking, doubtlessly feeling amused and empowered by the dynamics of this situation. "Did you get in a bar fight?"

"Eh?"

"You're bleeding," Mello pointed out, and when Matt pressed a hand to his face he felt a stinging sensation and found his fingers coated crimson.

"Maybe…" Matt mused.

Now Mello looked slightly alarmed. Good, thought Matt. Perhaps Mello would take pity on him and go get some aspirin from the mysterious vanishing bathroom.

"Are you on something?" Mello accused.

"Probably. I don't really remember," he admitted without the focus to feel much shame. His world was currently narrowed down to the sickness and pain. "Can you bring me something? I feel sick, man. I can barely walk."

The only response he received was Mello seizing his chin, inspecting him from face to throat, down, down, until suddenly Mello was tearing at his belt.

"What the—?" Matt half sat up but promptly fell back, seeing a spiral in his mind. "Cut it out. I'm sick." Neither Matt nor Mello were paying attention to the complaints, only to the constraints Mello was removing one by one, to the jeans sliding down over bruised hips, and then Mello was staring at him horrified and furious and Matt didn't understand. "Mello… what are you…?"

With uncharacteristic tenderness, Mello re-dressed him, yet a grimace still twisted his features and as the belt buckle latched into place, he spat, "You were drugged, Matt. Date raped."

Once, twice, three times Matt blinked, however, his vision and mind remained clouded over, the words 'date raped' echoing around meaninglessly in his skull.

"I would remember something like that," was his reasoning, but the slur of his speech gave the statement little credibility even to himself.

"That's the whole point of date rape, Matt. The victim isn't supposed to remember," Mello snapped.

"Oh. Right."

"But I want you to tell me what you do remember, so I can find the bastard who did this to you, okay?" With a smile sugar-sweet, Mello knelt down on the floor beside him, running fingers through his hair and massaging his aching scalp in a rare display of affection. Matt smiled back and leaned into the caress. "Let's start with the last time we saw each other. I left to take care of a deal, and you were on the computer. What happened after that?"

"Smoked, made some ramen… and…"

Impatient as ever, Mello prompted, "What?" and his wide-eyed expectancy triggered a memory inside Matt's mind.

"There was something I had to tell you. Something… important." But of course, he couldn't remember what that something was. The story skipped ahead, "I looked for you inside the club, but you weren't there," and rewound, "The car would barely start."

"Matt. Focus. Who did you talk to? Names, descriptions, anything."

"I dunno… I asked your guys where you were, and I can't really remember after that."

For a split second Mello's fingers dug almost painfully into his scalp, and then just as quickly the fingers were gone and the blond was pacing at a dizzying speed around the room, muttering to himself, "I'm gonna kill them all. I'm gonna slit their fucking throats," and variations thereof over and over.

"Goddamn-fucking-shit!" Mello screamed suddenly, kicking an end table over and sending a flurry of papers into the air like snow, glass shattering like ice on the floor and crunching under his boots as he continued to walk around in circles.

"Oh… you think…?" Matt said with dawning comprehension.

"I know." Coldly intoned, without a backward glance. "This is why I didn't want to get you involved. This is why I wanted you to stay at Wammy's House."

The words fell onto Matt like rain, memory after stinging memory of that day, and he had to make Mello understand, before he left again.

"I don't care about the rape," he spoke solidly, because it was the truth. He only cared about Mello. "I don't care, so just forget about it. Compared to your work, this is meaningless, so—" A startled gasp broke through his sentence as Mello rounded on him, and those pitch black eyes were glaring so maliciously and murderously that, although Mello had never raised a hand to him before, Matt couldn't help but close his eyes tight and wait for him to strike. The impact, however, never came; only the words, "Don't you dare call it meaningless," gravelish and vicious but somehow afflicted, and Matt's eyes crept open to find Mello walking away in an echo of that day, that day, that day.

Jolting upright, Matt ignored his nausea in favor of his hysteria, calling out, "Don't go;" struggling to stand, pleading even as the bile rose up in his throat, "I can fix it, I can fix it, I can;" and then he was hunched over, vomiting on the floor. By the end of it, he didn't know if he was dry heaving or gasping from anxiety, if his eyes were watering reflexively or shedding desperate tears, but when he felt Mello's steady hand on his shoulder… somehow, the world stopped shaking, though what Mello said next should have shocked him more than anything: "Relax. I'm just packing our things. We're going back to England."

A/N: Oh, AU, I love you. This isn't an angst thing about Matt being raped, by the way — it's about Mello and Matt kicking ass! I'll be posting an afterlife MelloxMatt serial tomorrow, then a one-shot (do you guys prefer crack or serious stuff?), and then updating Ad Hominem, if you were wondering about my schedule. Thank you so much for your support.