Disclaimer: If I owned Death Note, it wouldn't be nearly as awesome as it is today...

Note: My first published fic on here. Be proud? (This is mostly just an experiment to see how this works, to be perfectly honest... )


On the day the plan was formulated, Matt knew there was something wrong. Mello was staring at him for too long, and sighing to often, and didn't look away even when their eyes met. There were no rude comments or cruel demands that day. There was nothing. Mail didn't really know what to make of that.

"We're going to die tomorrow," Mello said, completely out of nowhere, staring unblinkingly into Matt's green eyes--green, like emerald gemstones, captured so brilliantly in that freckled face, so perfect...It was a shame that no one would ever see them again after tomorrow, so Mello had to look enough for the next thousand generations in these last remaining hours...

"I know." Matt's answer came easily, unbidden, to his lips. And it was true. He'd known this day was coming right from the very beginning, and he welcomed it now. What was the point in arguing the inevitable?

Still, Mello looked caught off guard. The surprised look quickly faded into one of grave solemnity, and at last he sighed again. It was the most recent in this exhaling marathon that had been taking place in the last 5 minutes and the tenth that Matt had heard since he'd started counting.

If he hadn't already known, the sighs would have definitely clued him in.

"Guess we should make the most of it, then," Matt continued, snuffing out his cigarette in the nasty brown carpet. Who cared about cleanliness anyway, when the end of your life could be counted down in minutes?

Mello nodded easily and slid the warm laptop off of his lap to rest it on the coffee table. He didn't bother turning it off. Matt already knew what Mello was going to do before he started crawling towards him on the floor, so he switched off his PSP and set it aside. If there was a Heaven, he decided, he hoped they had video games. Or, at least, Mello. The thought sent a pang of some terrible emotion to his heart. He might never see Mello, his best friend and companion, again after this. What would he do then?

This train of thought was too disturbing for the fragile gamer's mind to stand at the moment, so he welcomed the distraction of Mello's warm lips against his with open arms and closed eyes. On a passing whim, he opened his eyes back up again. If this was going to be one of the last things he experienced on earth, he was going to remember everything he could-- and the backs of his eyelids were nowhere near as appealing as the male leaning farther into this improvised kiss of theirs. Mello must've come to a similar conclusion because his eyes were open, too.

Really, though, Mello was trying his hardest to memorize everything about Matt's face that he could. The freckles, the cheekbones, jaw, ears, chin. Lips. When the other's eyes opened back up, he was grateful. It would be that lazy green gaze that he missed the most.

Somehow, while both of them were preoccupied with their memorization and mourning and regret, their bodies were acting on autopilot. Matt was laying with his back pressed firmly against the floor. Most of Mello's weight was on top of him, pinning him there. He wondered why that was; it wasn't like he was going anywhere.

Up until that point, their contact had been purely innocent. Neither of them was hesitant in the least—what was there to worry about now, anyway? Awkwardness later?--but it seemed wrong somehow that their first shared kiss would progress so quickly, so they took it their mouths opened and eyes finally slid closed as they turned to memorize with taste rather than sight. The kiss tasted like chocolate and nicotine, smoke and tears, death and regret. It was predictable, but their relationship was the same way, so it only made sense for it to be that way. Their lips meshed and parted in perfect unison like the practiced brushstroke of an experienced artist. Maybe it was because they were both almost robotic as they went through their movements, or maybe because they'd each imagined it a thousand and one times in their subconscious mind, and done this in those dreams they could never remember upon waking. It was more likely the former.

It was impossible to tell the difference between dominance and submission as Mello's mouth began to move downward—to Matt's neck, tasting of salt and the cigarette smoke that lingered endlessly on his skin, and to the collar of the striped shirt he always wore—but it seemed like Matt's fingernails, digging into Mello's neck and lower back, were pushing him in that direction anyway. In a moment, the stripes were tossed aside and left one pale boy laying half-naked on the floor. Briefly, Mello memorized with his eyes again before going back to kiss the gamer's lips.

In another moment, a leather vest was tossed away, too, and followed by a matching pair of leather pants and a beat-up pair of jeans.

While both knew that the living room floor in the crevice between the couch and the coffee table was no place to be doing this, neither could bring himself to stop in the memorization for even a moment to go to the bedroom. There was no time to waste. Death hung over them like a ratty blanket around a homeless man in the snow, clutched tight between their fists. It was almost welcomed with the hopelessness in their hearts.

The next thing to commit to memory was sound, and there was no shortage of it in that dismal apartment. There were whimpers, moans, gasps...everything but words, and it was perfect. Enclosed within that auditory moment-catching, was the feeling. Wandering hands and heated flesh, exploring lips and pain and ecstasy... Mello leaned in close to Matt's ear, pressing their bare chests against each other, as he wrapped the redhead's legs around his waist and didn't say anything, just breathed. The hot breath against an already warm earlobe sent Matt spiraling over the edge. He bit his tongue and tasted blood as he felt the end approaching, paying no attention to the way he was curling himself around Mello's body and bringing him to a similar conclusion.

Surprisingly, they finished in near silence and separated slowly. Their chests heaved in erratic rhythms as their eyes slipped shut. Together, they waited for their heartbeats to calm and then, too lazy to put back on their clothes, they laid where they fell, close to each other.

Together in silence, they mourned the life they'd never have.

Eyes closed, mouths just barely open, and hazy thoughts reeling, they drifted to sleep with the scent of sex (the saddest sex either of them had ever experienced, made sadder still by the fact that they knew it would be the last real human contact of any kind) and strawberry shampoo fresh in their noses.

That night, they slept better and more easily than either of them ever had before. The night was sweetened with shared dreams of futures, and pasts, and happiness that neither would remember in the morning.

END.


Voila! Review? There's a tiny-mini-almost sequel to this, but I probably won't post that.