That old saying, how you always kill the one you love, well, look, it works both ways.Written for the MattxMello Fanclub's "Fight Club" contest.
Warnings for this chapter: descriptions of burn injuries
There was a man bleeding in the doorway of my apartment, and then I was surrounded by gun barrels, blinded by the headlights of the blockade ahead of me. I knew it was Mello's fault, but that was alright. For a long time, Mello and I were best friends. With Mello, you could be sure that everything that happened was a part of the plan, right from the beginning.
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Everything is so far away, a copy of a copy of a copy. The insomnia distance of everything, you can't touch anything and it can't touch you.
At six minutes past four in the morning, there was a man bleeding in the doorway of my apartment. There had been a knock on my front door, closely followed by the slam of shoulder against hardwood. This is how I met Mello.
He wasn't entirely a stranger to me then, although he was certainly hard to recognise once I got the deadlock undone, with half his face burnt to a crisp. He stood, sidling over the threshold with his hands in his pockets, as if I wouldn't notice and for all the world like he wasn't dripping blood on the landing. It was only when I was ogling dumbstruck at the charred, ragged ends of that sooty blonde hair that I placed him in my memory. We were friends when we were young, I recalled, although my memory didn't extend much further than that, the way I could never remember what I'd eaten the day before (or whether I'd eaten the day before). Couldn't remember paying the rent, although I certainly must have at some stage as I was sleeping on my couch and not asphalt; couldn't remember working for the cash, although that may have been because I preferred to siphon from heavily-padded corporate bank accounts.
I could give you a full synopsis of every video game I've ever played (a rather long list, and a rather large pile in the corner of my living room) and probably deliver a scathing critical review of graphics and game mechanics, but I couldn't tell you what day of the week it is, or when I last paid the electricity bill. I guess those things just happen on auto-pilot after a while, part of the mindless cycle of chain-smoking and late night television and insignificant life necessities that fade into the background. None of it ever particularly mattered to me, and I was resigned to my fate as a recluse from the exacting standards of modern society, until Mello slammed my mundane existence into the fast lane: high-definition hard-mode non-stop-action real life.
He stepped over the threshold, observing the mass of fast food wrappers and empty soda cans with an expression closer to disinterest than distaste, then informed me we had to leave, because there were a few people after him. The county and state police forces, and probably the FBI. Just a few people. It may have been his flawless delivery of the explanation that convinced me – the supreme alpha-male confidence and calm with which the words escaped him, perfect and deliberate and natural. Then again, it may have been his demented-hooker appeal, black leather tight against smooth skin and sharp hipbones, and the contrast of fresh blood. Either way, when I next paid attention, I was on the back of a sleek motorcycle, and then in a derelict warehouse, and he was offering me a bar of milk chocolate. Any other person would be crippled with agony, or at least trying to patch up such horrific injuries, but Mello seemed entirely unconcerned by the matter, even strengthened by it. Calm, confident, entirely in control even with blood streaked through his hair and his skin peeling off in ribbons.
This is how I met Mello.