Author's Note: It's been a long while since I've written. I miss it, and have requests that I need to fulfill. Maybe posting something will get me back into the swing of things.
I've become very fond of the Matt and Mello pairing, and have wanted to write a fanfic about these two for a while now. I don't know if this is going anywhere, or if it will remain a one-shot. Either way, I hope you enjoy!
He's far too used to this by now. He knows all too well the feeling of walking into an empty apartment, never to feel truly at home, only hoping to catch a few restless hours' sleep before stumbling back out to work tirelessly toward his goal of catching Kira, the nameless and faceless man who single-handedly brought down the symbol he had aspired to be and to surpass: L.
Mello isn't alone anymore. Not since the lanky redheaded boy from Wammy's House showed up with promises of helping his childhood friend. The blond knows Matt has skills. He can hack and spy and investigate with the best of them. Mello tells himself that if Matt were useless, he would have turned him away, but he knows, in the back of his brilliant mind, that it's far from the truth. There's a kind of desperate hope that Matt's presence will ease the constant pain of isolation.
But there is a fine line between alone and lonely, and, unfortunately for Mello, Matt seems neither able nor willing to ease his loneliness. All he does is take up space. Despite the fact that the crummy apartment now looks lived in, and almost loved in how messy it is, there's not one iota of warmth or belonging when Mello steps through the threshold after a day of tailing Japanese policemen and making cryptic plans and agreements with Near. And as he treads carefully around the tangles of wires running from the television and countless video game consoles to the beaten-up, hard-cushioned excuse for a couch and back, he asks himself if having Matt in his life once again has changed anything, or made him feel fulfilled in any way. The answer, cold and blunt, is no. There's nothing.
With many grumblings and grunted words unfit to spill from the mouth of the devout Catholic, Mello treads on crumpled chocolate bar wrappers on his way to the bedroom, and slouches his slender body, sleek in skintight leather, against the doorframe. His eyes narrow into slits of icy blue as he looks down upon his ginger roommate, sleeping and sprawled across the makeshift bed, which is merely a mattress cramped into the corner of the only bedroom. Matt is still fully clothed, open-mouthed and drooling, a handheld clutched loosely in his gloved fingers. Not for the first time, Mello wonders how those fine, copper strands of hair would feel underneath his palm, and what reaction it would procure if he were to press his lips against flushed and freckled cheeks.
The temptation makes his heart ache and his fingers twitch with want. But Matt isn't gay, and Mello knows this from the way the ginger will toss back a few shots of the most potent alcohol before wandering blindly from the apartment, only to return a few hours later with a girl he picked up from God knows where. It doesn't happen often, but when it does, Matt never gets far, and Mello makes certain of this, though it's still a hassle to kill whatever drunken slut he brings home. No matter what, they must remain hidden, and he'll be damned if he lets Matt fuck up how careful he's been up until now. Sometimes, he'll wait to see if he can shock the redhead, pressing the barrel of his prized Beretta to the girl's temple just before Matt can tug her pants below her hips. In these instances, Matt rewards Mello's efforts with that easy, charming grin of his, inviting the blond to pull the trigger as the girl sobs uncontrollably into her hands, salty tears squeezing through the gaps of her fingers and trickling down her frail wrists. And once her blood and brains paint a grotesque picture on the wall, and Mello sneers and spits curses at Matt as he calls one of his past mafia associates to come rid them of the body, Matt winks and stretches his arms above his head as he yawns, "She was nothing, Mels."
It must be a trick of the light, or of his own mind, when he catches Matt glancing sideways at him just a bit too long, or casual, friendly touches become warm enough to be considered intimate. Because Matt isn't gay, even though he purposefully drags out the visits of his female companions, watching Mello carefully the entire time, as if inviting him to act brashly and commit the inevitable murder. When the buttons on the girl's blouses are unbuttoned by the redhead, it is with much fumbling of fingers, almost reluctant in their slowness, and his green eyes, muddied olive by the orange of his goggle lenses, focus on the eyes of his blond best friend, which turn familiarly frosty and cutting in the clutches of jealousy.
And right now, it's all Mello can do to stride over to the mattress and crouch down as he strips slowly out of his leather clothing and not touch the face of his only friend, and bestow upon him generous and selfless touches and kisses until they cross the boundaries from friendship to lovers, and maybe even more. Biting his tongue, he tosses his last article of clothing, a heavy boot, into some darkened corner of the bedroom, having no qualms about being noisy; Matt is about to be rudely awoken anyway.
"Matt. Wake up, you lazy fuck. You're taking up space," the blond hisses, smacking the snoozing redhead upside the head.
Matt twitches and grunts as he jerks out of his slumber, glancing around blindly for his attacker. When he spots Mello, his face relaxes. He attempts to blink the remnants of sleep from his eyes. "S'matter, Mello?"
A smirk crawls its way onto the blond's face, and he gives Matt a rough but playful shove toward the far side of the sorry excuse for a bed. "Move over. I'm exhausted, and you're in my way."
"You're…not wearing anything." It doesn't sound like a complaint.
"This is my fucking house, freeloader."
"Some house."
Feigning deafness, Mello slips his naked frame between the sheets and settles in next to the object of his affections, sighing in content for the first time that day. Mello can't see very well in the dark, but he can sense Matt peeling off layers of clothing and tossing them aside. He toys with the idea of banishing the redhead to the couch – it is, as he said, his apartment – but he can't be bothered to try to pretend he doesn't want the comfort and warmth provided by his best and only friend.
There are no grunted words bidding one another goodnight. In turn, they roll over to lie back-to-back and fall silent, each attempting to even out their breathing and fool the other into thinking they're asleep. Time passes, and Mello's vision blurs from trying to keep his eyes open in the pitch black of the room, and yet he cannot seem to drift into a sleep, restless or otherwise, even long after Matt's soft, grunting snores permeate the silence.
Mello's hand drifts down the length of his body, perhaps of its own accord, and wraps itself around his flaccid penis. He hardly cares that Matt is next to him and likely to be awoken by any excessive jostling or heavy breathing, but his presence does make fantasizing about him a bit easier.
Tightening his grip, he slides his palm across the underside of his shaft and imagines that the hand touching him is not his own, but instead the slightly callused hand of a certain redheaded gamer. Mello bites his lip as his movements become quicker and more fluid, trying to swallow his frantic moans of need as he entertains thoughts of pleasuring and being pleasured by Matt. The thought of goggles askew atop a mussed mop of copper that slightly obscures the vision of lust-clouded emerald eyes is more than enough to aid the blond in reaching climax, and he spills into his hand with a groan, barely muffled by bitten and swollen lips.
Mello takes a few deep, ragged breaths as he sinks, spent, into the mattress. It is only then that he allows the few tears to escape, running in rivulets down his cheeks and winding a path down the mottled path the scar on his cheek creates. Fisting the dirty bed sheets, he thinks of what all he could have, if only he were willing to take a chance on Matt. As he calms himself, the beating of his heart settling back into its normal pulsations, it dawns on him that the ginger curled next to him is silent, and has been for a long while: the gentle snores and heavy breathing that signify Matt's slumber are no more.
Maybe, just maybe, if he's very fortunate and extremely quiet, Matt won't say a word about this. But no such luck falls upon the wicked, Mello knows, and he feels his muscles seize and his stomach drop as his companion whispers, "Mels, why're you crying?"
For a wild second, Mello considers coming clean. He thinks about holding and being held after hours of passionate sex, of being able to consider his house a home, and of being able to find some value in Matt's presence, other than seeing him simply as an excellent accomplice. After the temporary insanity passes, he collects himself; though taking risk is all part of his strategy in this cat and mouse game of catching Kira, laying everything he's worked so hard to achieve on the line for a chance at a relationship seems trivial, even foolish. Besides, Matt is not gay. Mello tells himself this each and every miserable day.
"Go back to sleep, Matt. It's nothing."