When Mello came to Wammy's, he changed everything.
Roger became a total grump, compared to his usual indifference; the ceiling in the rec room was re-painted due to a silly prank of ours; Near began to actually study; Molly got expelled; they removed the house's fish tank; they added desserts to every meal in the cafeteria...
But it wasn't just the physical, he changed me too.
I used to not give a damn. Mello changed that. I used to degrade myself, writing shit under my bed and never failing to make at least slightly degrading comments about how lazy I was, how useless. I couldn't help it, I felt those feelings, whether I acknowledged that they were serious or not.
And you know what happened in the first week that Mello moved in? No? Well, stuff you. He found the scribblings under my bed, and he didn't even mention it, even though I'd caught him.
What he did do though, was the second I made a comment about being lazy, he got up from his bed, tore my Gameboy out of my hands, and said: "Shut it, Matt, pull your pants up and fucking live!" Before throwing the game to my side and muttering something about Irish kids.
I'd stared at him in shock, and I think I knew in that moment that my whole life, or rather my perspective on life, had changed. And I really did know it once some time had passed.
The next thing he changed was class, as he slowly took over, and- scratch that, school, he took over the whole school. Everyone either loved him or feared him, knew that if they couldn't be friends with him they should just stay out of his way or rather get clocked over the head; and damn did that hurt, I would know, because after he told me to 'pull my pants up' I began to fight.
It was something about the whole 'fear or friend thing', I felt I'd had an advantage, being his roommate and all.
For the first time in my 12 years of life, at that time, I had gone out of my way to cause trouble. I stashed Mello's towel and replaced it with a ratty one from the Wammy house attic whilst he was in the shower. First. Of course. That one didn't earn me the hit to the head, no, I knew Mello was going easy on me. "Okay, this kid will learn his lesson simply by being worried when I don't do anything."
He admitted to me later that that is what he'd thought.
But no, I didn't learn. I had very carefully unwrapped, replaced with Habanaro flavored chocolate, and re-wrapped his fancy brand of chocolate, of which I still cannot recall the name of.
Immediately he'd caught on, and I wasn't expecting it, having been playing my games -and it's not like he made any acknowledgment of finding the cruel prank either.
He'd walked over to my seat, sitting beside me authoritatively as I drew my eyes away from my game questioningly, not yet having clued in.
first, he clocked me over the head. Again; fuck that hurt.
Then he kissed me. A full on, biting my bottom lip to pry my mouth open, before shoving his tongue down my throat kiss- and oh my god I had wondered if he'd had experience, not at that young surely? Then it hit me, and I ran to the bathroom sputtering and coughing.
He'd had the chocolate in his mouth. Somehow he had kept a straight face with that flaming stuff on his tongue, but I was pacing the room and sweating with a glass of water for the next thirty minutes.
Never mind the fact that he'd kissed me, that shit hurt.
He never again brought up the fact that he had had his tongue shoved down my throat. Never. Especially not around that occasion. In fact, I avoided him after that, and when I couldn't avoid him I ignored him.
Perfect strategy right? Well, apparently Mello appreciated that, the whole silence thing. So the next thing that happened...we began to hang out, and I'd like to claim victim to this one. Oh boy, I totally would. But I can't, at least not after a few weeks.
I think we got comfortable around each other.
Yea, that was it. By my thirteenth birthday (of which a year after he'd freaked out about when he found out he'd missed it) we were inseparable. We barely spoke, but we were inseparable, and so many things built up to that moment that I can't even tell the biggest one, because I don't know which of all those it could possibly be.
Whether it be the 'pull your pants up' comment, the chocolate instance, me politely buying his chocolate with his money when Roger banned him from going out to town, when I had a nightmare and for some reason he'd rocked me back to sleep, and when I did the same for him...
Heck, when Linda coated me in paint by accident and the whole Wammy house was laughing at me as I stood dripping slime green in the middle of the classroom, Mello had been there right away. Snapping and cursing everyone to high hell and dragging me to the showers, he had even gone so far to as to buy paint thinner to get me cleaned up.
He said it was a system, 'I help you and you help me,' that's all.
One time, Mello apparently had written a diary and Roger bitching him out for a prank caused him to leave it open on his desk. I indeed hadn't read it(I hadn't noticed it), and for some reason, Mello believed me.
In a year, it was all this and more that made one thing clear; we were compatible, and that was what changed everything, because when two people find a companionship like that(and companionship, because we'd go to hell before we admitted anything else to anybody else no matter what they said) they wreak havoc for others, whether it be bad havoc or that rare kind of 'good havoc'.
It was mostly bad havoc though, and by the time we turned fourteen we knew everything about the other..of course, not everything though, there are things you just don't know how to say. That slowly became apparent.
I had dreams that I'd rather not talk about, and would simply take a cold shower afterward, and Mello...Mello, I couldn't tell if he was staring too much or looking away too much. At the time I was naive and scared, so I didn't notice Mello's part of this situation. This 'problem'.
As we got further into our adolescents and puberty took over, we tried things. I smoked, Mello drank. Mello coated a subway in artful swirls of blue and red, I tye-dyed all of my shirts in red and black stripes. Mello switched Watari and Roger's license plates, I put black hair dye in Near's shampoo bottle(black because it is white before it activates).
And we helped each other acquire the ability to do these things.
Mello was clingy when he was drunk, hanging off my shoulder and scheming pranks. I fell asleep when I was drunk, and woke up with Mello snuggled near me with a smile on his face. Then we'd have a very awkward morning. That happened fairly often.
One day, I had gotten a fever and was stuck in bed most of the week. Despite my protests, Mello had stayed with me, telling me; "I don't get sick, don't worry."
Indeed. I'd never seen Mello sick. Love-sick maybe, but no one wants to go that far.
Shortly after Mello's fifteenth birthday, Linda had convinced Roger to allow the kids to set up a winter ball, and Mello and I sneaked outside, annoyed with the ruckus of the weird music playlist that the student body had accumulated. We drank vodka, and within an hour Mello was laying in the snow, somehow forgoing the blue lips that I had attained from the cold, despite me being more bundled up than the blond.
I suppose I should mention the fact that he was lying with his head in my lap, and that I was playing with his hair with my gloved fingers. My intoxicated mind had been telling me to spill my thoughts, whilst the rest, the rational side of me, told me to keep quiet.
The snow was pretty, sparkling reflections in Mello's eyes, his pupils also reflecting the full moon above us. It was a perfect night. It was the first time besides Mello's nightmares that I'd ever seen him truly vulnerable. Even during those sweaty nightmare filled nights he was still strong and guarded; However guarded he usually remains when alone with me anyways.
Why so vulnerable?
He'd sat up, kissed me, and cried.
He told me about himself until it was three in the morning and I was sober, wondering how we hadn't gotten frostbite yet.
And he told me his real name, and for some reason, I didn't mind being kissed. You'd have thought I would have at least denied it.
From that night on the kisses weren't an odd thing, never even spoken of, really. In the mornings he would land a peck on my lips, sometimes he'd drag me to a quiet corner during class time and give me a quick yet slower-than-the-usual kiss.
We'd turned sixteen without a word towards our feelings for each other, before I'd realized how I'd felt. I didn't have the time to tell him, of course.
Mello had left.
Me.
And I was all alone again, just like before Mello had changed my whole life. And at that moment, the moment I'd been told that Mello had left to go avenge L and beat Near, I admitted that I hated Mello.
You know what that means, same coin and all that jizz.
I think its supposed to be jazz. Fuck, whatever. I'll leave it.
Fast forward three years and I was in LA, a rather crisp and yet dry day very unlike England. It was there, with me tracking Mello, that the hideout exploded.
God, it's painful to remember those moments. The scrabbling over charred rock, the smell of dust and blood but maybe that had been the taste in my mouth from when I'd fallen and bit my tongue, I don't know.
I know I had been terrified, wondering why I'd done this, searched Mello out. I hated him for leaving me.
And you know what?
I hated that ever surviving cockroach for leaving a week after I spent several nights keeping an eye on him, changing his bandages, spending loads of time and what could have been and might as well have been money healing him.
He just left again, without a word, leaving me too exhausted to know what to do with myself besides jump off a cliff.
So you know what I did?
I found him again, not long after he'd left me again, and the meeting was so unlike anything I had expected. It was business, it was 'You help me an I help you' except this time Mello's life is on the line.
And I won't say no, because I know I can't stop him, tomorrow we go out onto the field, and he will never know how I truly feel about him. I'm not sure the feeling is mutual anyways, the way he is so focused and dismissive and..he wouldn't have left me back in Wammy's anyways if he loved me too.
God, love.
And right now, he is sitting across from me, clutching that damn rosary as if he has a religion to pray to. I know he doesn't. Maybe he'd not praying though- Maybe tonight I could convince him to back up the plan, but I don't think it will happen.
We won't say anything tonight unless its a command, and then tomorrow we're both dead. I'm willing, I don't have much point without Mello, I would have killed myself already without him anyways. I have a submissive nature like that, Mello is the only one who pulled me out of it.
I think he knew that too. But maybe he didn't, or else he wouldn't be telling me at this moment, glaring at me saying "You'll live" like its a command, so I "can stop writing mementos". I won't respond. He's back to playing with his rosary.
I won't live, that's a fact. I won't say anything. I won't dream anything. I won't sleep. I will help Mello, and therefore help Near get rid of this Kira guy. He sounds like a pretentious prick anyways.
Then I'll be gone. Not even just a memory. Just a nothing. The news will cover me up behind a shoddy curtain, along with my feelings for Mello.
Tomorrow we go to our deaths, out like firecrackers hopefully. I wouldn't want it to be lame anyway.