2002
Mello kicked and shouted in the daylight. Sometimes he seemed to create his own, little streams of sun-fueled energy flowing through his veins to run out the tips of his fingers and settle as sparks in dark, angry eyes. He never went down with the sun or out with the lights.
Mello didn't climb into Matt's bed until the blinds were drawn and the lamps were doused. By morning he was gone, leaving strands of gold like dew across the pillow, but when he was there, he was really there, so close he got right inside Matt's chest and stifled him.
"Where do you want to go?" he would ask, his expression hidden in shadow.
Matt tangled their legs together – wherever you are – caught a lock of blond hair in his fingers – here's just fine – and shrugged one shoulder against the mattress.
"You first," he said, knowing that Mello would take the conversation and run with it. Once Mello took hold of first, he held tight and didn't let go until he stood in last place with the last word and his feet stuck firmly in the ground.
Mello could go on for hours, weaving names of cities into a net that spanned the globe. They were just names, though, only points on a map moving farther and farther from this dorm with its bed and covered windows and their twisted up legs – London, Paris, Rome, New York, Tokyo.
As Mello whispered skyscrapers and neon signs against the pulse point in Matt's temple, Matt wondered if his lips felt the rapid, irregular heart rate beneath his skin. Some nights Matt practically shook, because Mello didn't even have to say, "You're coming with me," and what if, what if? Because he had visions of hotel beds a few years down the road, and of using them for more than traded fantasies in the dark.
But some nights Mello's warmth had seeped into the room, and on the verge of sleep Matt could recognize them very clearly as two little kids who were bred to sit indoors all day, staring at computer screens. Sometimes, he could see that the boy lying next to him was human, just Mello, made of flesh instead of sunshine, and enough broken promises to counter every ounce of his determination. At the moment, the most exciting thing in Matt's life was sharing sheets and blankets to take the chill off winter, staying up for hours listening to empty words, and for now it was enough.
On a night when he couldn't make up his mind, Matt poked Mello in the ribs and asked, what about the Bahamas? What about Fiji, Hawaii, Brazil? Hey Mello, what about Africa?
He was never too interested in geography, but all the kids at The Wammy's House were living annals, stuffed with facts and labels. Matt spouted every name he could think of, all the countries that were steamed up and wild. Honeymoon destinations and rainforests, a sea of places that Mello never mentioned. Because why did they have to seek out busy highways and tall buildings? What was so awful about early retirement on a beach?
"Matt, what the hell are you talking about?" Mello had propped himself up on one elbow, his eyes squinting past a blond curtain into Matt's face. A flush rose in Matt's neck and his heart seemed to flutter hummingbird beats inside his chest.
"Are you sick?" Mello asked sharply. Matt blinked. His head felt fuzzy. He was too hot. But his body was perfectly healthy.
"Yes," he said. "I'm sick, Mello, I'm really sick. Let's go to Fiji." Matt leaned in and kissed his neck, right where the arrows on human anatomy charts marked out the carotid. Mello's pulse was racing. Matt could feel it beneath his lips.
2007
The lights in Matt's apartment never went off. His electric bill shot through the roof and he'd already bought twice his weight in new light bulbs, but it was the only way he could keep his thoughts straight. A lamp in every corner, the shades pulled firmly down.
Matt was jittery all night, pacing the rooms and going through so many cigarettes that he was forced to disable the smoke detector. He read every article in the paper, flipped channels and stopped on all the news reports, mumbled under his breath. He stripped to his boxers and let his skin pebble in the cold.
Once, at three in the morning, he pulled up a few recipes on the internet and tried to cook something – chicken marsala, pozole, a whole raw turkey. It was lucky he'd wasted the smoke detector. Matt opened the windows and made himself a daiquiri instead, because that's something he could do, and the next afternoon, he went out to buy angel cake mix. He sat beneath the kitchen lights, staring past the dim lenses of his goggles at the metal pan, balanced upside down on the neck of a half-empty beer bottle, and decided he needed to hook up with someone. He wanted to fuck a girl in the dark and fall asleep with the lights still out.
A few days later, Matt ordered a full set of encyclopedias. He tried to read straight through them, but didn't get past A before he changed his mind. He started looking up words at random – traffic, euthanasia, solar eclipse. Human. Matt flipped to Fiji and laughed at the tiny paper islands on the page.
He left the books in the nearest library's donations bin before trying to chat up the cute brunette who worked there from three until eight. She was ten years too old, wore a ring on her left hand, and treated him like just another kid. Matt helped her close up and drove home alone along roads illuminated by the tiny nighttime suns of streetlights.
He looked up at his apartment windows from the outside. The shades were still down, glowing softly around the edges. Higher still was a sky that never turned black, and millions of stars he couldn't see.
2009
Matt never did go to Fiji, but Mello's been there, once, and he says it's nothing special, just a bunch of mountains and forests and sand. Nothing you can't find in California.
"I hear it's great for snorkeling," Matt remarks idly as he pulls out his lighter.
Mello slides down into Matt's couch until his knees are touching his chest, legs spread wide. "I didn't go snorkeling." And the conversation ends right there, because Mello does that sometimes, makes these comments that land heavy in the center of the room, and though Matt doesn't quite know what they mean or if they're even important, they shut him up. Mello always likes to have the last word, after all.
Sometimes Matt's grateful he didn't push Mello down the stairs the day he showed up, because he's not so bad to have around, really, and while Matt's computers ensure that the electric bill isn't any lower, he can sleep with the lights off these days. It's a bit of a relief for his abused eyes.
Mello takes the bed sometimes, the sheets, the pillow, the air. He's pissy, and self-conscious in a way that makes him undress slower than necessary, grin like the devil, sit on Matt's couch with his thighs open. A wrong word can, has, landed Matt with a fist to the side of his face or a gun at the base of his skull. He knows he could have Mello on his stomach with his arms behind his back in three seconds flat, but he still feels less safe now than he ever has on his own.
They knock over a lamp once, fighting about something trivial like, oh, Mello pissing off four years ago and still not having the decency to say "I'm sorry", not even when he invades Matt's life like nothing's changed, and acts like it's some kind of favor. The bulb breaks, so Matt's picking shards of broken glass from his back and his feet all day, but Mello helps after they've both cooled off, which is almost an apology. It's close enough, and Matt doesn't mind letting close be enough.
He wasn't lonely while Mello was gone. He'll swear he didn't miss him. Life just got a little boring. Now Matt's heart kicks into higher gear the second he opens his door and hell if this isn't living as he's never known it before.