Wow, it's been forever since I wrote fanfiction... This just got into my head, though, and since it's complete, may as well toss it online.

As for this, I... don't know. A Mello/Matt relationship is something it's impossible not to consider in this fandom, and this is just how I always imagine it going. I'm not sure why; if they are gay or bi (or, hell, asexual) of course it would go differently, and it'd not like canon had the chance to establish anything either way, but this is always where my brain ends up. Whatever this is.

This was edited right after being written, so there are probably a few errors I didn't catch (or just poor writing that I'll cringe at and fix in a month). Please let me know if you spot any. Apart from that, enjoy!

Mello has a habit of nodding to agree with a no and shaking his head to think about saying yes, and just because Matt is the most emotionally stable of the pair doesn't necessarily mean he's the sanest.

Mello's mafia minions had been kicked out for the night, but the air was still thick with smoke and Mello was at least a bit high when he said, "I don't want to die alone."

Matt didn't bother to look out from the kitchen where he was retrieving pizza from the refrigerator. "Not many people do."

Mello, apparently, ignored him. "But who would I be with at all? Normal people don't get us. L's dead. Near's… Near."

Matt leaned in the doorway, feeling half-drunk from the fumes in the air even though he wasn't on anything but nicotine, himself. "I feel so loved."

Mello peered out from beneath scattered, tangled bangs and didn't move from where he was, again, sprawled on the banged-up couch Matt had dubbed his throne half a week ago. "I wish you were a girl."

"I don't." Matt felt a bit less placebo drunk as he took a bite of the pizza. "I wish we were gay."

Mello pushed himself up on an elbow at that, but the eyes under his bangs still looked the same. "Why aren't we?"

Matt shrugged. "Genetics, environment, random chance?"

"No, I mean-" Mello pushed himself up further, until he was leaning against the arm of the couch in an almost good enough impression of sitting. "Sex is more than attraction."

Matt nodded, less than impressed with Mello's genius of the moment, but willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he was leading to somewhere not quite so Captain Obvious.

"So-why couldn't we? People have sex without being attracted to each other all the time. We don't actually need to be gay."

Matt blinked, and paused halfway through biting off another mouthful of pizza to consider it. Once he remembered the pizza, carefully chewed and swallowed, he'd also managed to put together a response. "I don't know." It may not have been the most elegant one.

"Oh." Mello leaned back against the couch, sliding down. "Okay then."

"No, I mean." Definitely not the most elegant response. "I don't know why we couldn't."

Mello's eyes were bright beneath his bangs as he sat up. "Alright!"

"What, like, now?" Matt hadn't quite been thinking that, but Mello seemed to be ahead of him tonight, and when he thought about it-

"Sure, why not?"

-yeah, that. "Sure." Matt left the pizza on a plate someone else had abandoned.

Ten minutes later they were both naked, a process which had involved a few minutes of Matt giggling as Mello struggled to get out of his pants, until Mello snapped at him to "get over here and help, you fucker, it's for your own good you know-" and Matt had to hold onto the side of the couch to support himself laughing. And then Mello leered and waggled his eyebrows, but Matt already couldn't laugh any harder, so he just kept laughing the same.

They spent five minutes after Mello finally escaped the prison of his clothes on kissing before Matt gave up and leaned back. "Are you actually getting anything out of this?"

Mello paused, visibly considered, and nodded. "Nope. Me either." He sighed, let go of Matt, and picked up his pants before glaring down at himself. "Fuck you. You're no use."

Matt started snickering again, even though he sort of agreed.

Once they were both dressed again-much faster for Matt; apparently it took even longer to get into Mello's pants than out of them-Matt retrieved his (now mostly room temperature) pizza and Mello turned on the TV for them to stare at. The silence wasn't awkward, but Matt still got sick of it. "So. That went well."

Mello snorted, and his eyes stayed on the TV. "Yeah. Sure. Let's call it that."

"Mm." Matt hadn't actually had a plan for when he broke the silence. "Why not?"

Mello looked away from the TV to give him an incredulous look.

"Well, at least we know now."

"What, that we're both stuck dying alone?" There was no pretense of watching the news anymore as Mello scowled at the floor, and his hands became fists; one on top of his leg, the other slung casually over the back of the couch. "Because we're too damn smart to be interested in anyone normal, and we can't go near anyone else from Wammys because of fucking Kira-"

"Actually, I doubt we'd have much more luck fucking Kira than each other." The look Mello gave him was kind of like if Matt had just committed blasphemy, only it's much less intense when he actually does. "Even if he turns out to be a she, being murdered doesn't really turn me on."

"You… you… fuck you," Mello eventually resorted to. Matt patted himself on the back for making Mello speechless, and opened his mouth to comment. Mello saw, and cut him off. "Not a word! Just… no, Matt. No."

Matt chuckled, and shifted a tiny bit closer to Mello on the couch. Really more an angle less opposed to moving toward Mello than anything else. Mello didn't seem to notice. "Okay, I'll be serious. But seriously, I thought of something."

Mello eyed him warily, and his voice sounded defeated. "What's that?"

"Relationships are more than sex."

Mello did not seem to be giving Matt the benefit of the doubt, if his stare was any indication. Matt let him wait while he took another bite of pizza. He was about to take a second when Mello added, "So?"

"So, was the sex the part you actually wanted?"

Mello opened his mouth, closed it, stared, and finally managed to speak. "...No."

"I thought not." Matt took advantage of his position to twist so his head was in Mello's lap, and held the remaining half a slice of pizza up as an offering. "Pizza?"

Mello covered his face and groaned. "What am I doing?"

"Despairing over me, probably."

"Right. What are you doing?"

"I don't know." Matt set the pizza on his chest since his arm was getting tired holding it in the air, and Mello uncovered his face at Matt's tone. "Figuring shit out, I guess. You know, normal teenager stuff."

"Because we're such normal teenagers." Mello dropped his hands back to his sides. For one of them, that meant using Matt as an armrest.

"Yeah, well. We can be. Sometimes. Anyway, the point is… why not? Relationships aren't about sex. At least, they don't have to be. Probably shouldn't be. So… does it actually matter that we're straight?"

Mello shook his head, turned off the TV, then tipped his head back and stared at the ceiling. "No. If there was someone we could be attracted to and be… and have a relationship with, but…." He shook his head again and looked back down at Matt. "So… what? We start dating?"

"When would we have time? Your minions always need you to tell them what to do."

Mello wrinkled his nose. "Morons. Hopefully once we've got the girl they'll stop being so paranoid. So what, we approximate dating as much as we can without you being exposed to petty murderers?"

"Buy me flowers and I'll throw them out the window. And then burn them." Matt took a bite of pizza.

"Buy me chocolate and I'll eat it. But like, viciously," Mello said. Matt started snickering, started choking on pizza, and had to sit up to get the coughing under control.

Three days later chocolate arrived for Mello from an anonymous admirer, in the largest, sparkliest cardboard heart box Matt could find after a day of scouring the internet. Mello did eat it, but he must have run out of vicious expressions before his minions left and Matt could see him, because he looked more amused than anything else when he ate it in Matt's sight.

The next day, Matt woke up to find flowers all over his room. Unfortunately by that point they were dealing with a kidnapped Japanese girl, so Matt just didn't have the time to remove them.