"Holy shit, Mello! You're going to get us all killed!"

Mello had just pulled the van to a screeching halt a few feet past a hitchhiker standing by the side of the road. He had barely noticed the figure on the horizon, and by the time they were close enough to realize that it was a person, Mello had barely had enough time to stop. His fellow band members in the back of the van, or rather Naomi, were irritated at the short stop, but then again, she never did like the way he drove. He knew that she only let him drive because she was tired and L was as usual too high to be trusted behind the wheel. Mello liked it better this way; he hated how slowly Naomi drove, especially on such abandoned stretches of road.

"There's a hitchhiker," Mello informed his compatriots.

"I'll go talk to them," L volunteered, before Naomi could protest. He hunched up to the front and slid out the passenger's door.

Mello tried to snag a peek of the hitchhiker without looking like too much of a creeper, but L blocked his view. All that he had been able to make out as he approached were blinding stripes like an old prison uniform and some unusual sort of eyewear. Soon, L turned and walked back to the van, causing Mello to slip back into the driver's seat to pretend he hadn't been spying.

"He's cool," L declared. "Name's Matt. Looks about your age," he added, with a nod towards Mello. "Couldn't really tell, though, behind his headlight eyes."

Before either Mello or Naomi had the chance to ask, L turned back to talk to the hitchhiker. Mello heard him mention the people who had painted their van. Mello had given them a lot of shit about the door problems, and the big gothic L on the side ended up costing them significantly less than they had expected.

L turned and climbed in between the two front seats, and the hitchhiker climbed in after him.

It wasn't hard to figure out what L had meant by "headlight eyes." The eyewear Mello had seen was a pair of goggles with bright orange lenses. They seemed to serve no ultimate purpose other than looking both ridiculous and cool at the same time. It turned out the blinding stripes that the hitchhiker bore were a long-sleeve shirt whose arms he had pushed up past his elbows. He also wore an unusual pair of cargo pants with a chain looping down on one side and a pair of beat-up sneakers. His hair was a strange shade of brown cut in a nondescript style. Mello couldn't tell if he looked gloriously odd or oddly glorious.

Apparently, L had given him a rather lengthy introduction, but Mello ignored most of what he said, listening just enough to hear when he was done. "Hey," he greeted the hitchhiker with a grin. The hitchhiker grinned skittishly before scuttling off after L. Mello frowned and turned his attention back to the road.

Mello didn't wait long for them to be seated. There were seatbelts in the back, but it wasn't like anyone ever used them. Almost as soon as the hitchhiker had sat down, he stomped down on the petal, sending the van lurching forward. Naomi called him a speed demon, and he smirked.

By the time Mello had gotten the hulking mass up to what he considered to be a decent cruising speed, an awkward silence had fallen. Mello knew L would be the first to speak, and sure enough, he was. Instead of some equally awkward icebreaking question to the hitchhiker, however, L addressed Mello.

"Yo, Mel! Matt hasn't heard our music!"

This was a dire problem which needed to be fixed immediately. Mello kept one hand on the wheel- not like it mattered when he wasn't even looking at the road- and reached into the glove compartment with the other. It was a mess, as always, but it didn't take him long to locate their album. So it was technically a demo…Mello liked the word "album" better, so that is what he always called it. It made them seem more legit. He had even named it and everything, though he could never remember the initial awesome name, so he made up a new one each time someone asked.

After a few seconds of waiting for the junky stereo to kick into action, the blissful noises of their first track, Woe, filled the air. Mello adjusted the otherwise useless rearview mirror to watch Matt's reaction. He had the same confused look on his face that most people had, like he couldn't understand a word Mello was singing, but there was no look of disdain or moment of realization and disgust, so as far as he was concerned the hitchhiker approved. Normally Mello relished disapproval, but for some reason he was glad not to see it here.

~~M~~

The hitchhiker- or rather, Matt- seemed like the shy type, but he didn't have much trouble finding conversation with Naomi and L. It was interesting to listen to them over the loud music, which he kept playing on repeat. Matt wasn't very talkative, but when he did talk he always had something to say. Mello liked that. He wished he could have been back there with them, getting familiar with Matt, but he didn't want it to be obvious, so instead he kept mostly quiet, only shouting back a sarcastic comment when relevant.

Their conversation had taken the course of video games, of which Mello did not have much interest, when he groped absentmindedly through the glove box for a chocolate bar. Unfortunately, there didn't seem to be one. Another dire situation had arisen.

"I'm all out of chocolate up here!"

Mello waited impatiently for the necessary goods to arrive and was soon joined by Matt, who handed him a foil-wrapped bar of deliciousness. Without hesitation, Mello propped his knees up under the steering wheel and tore the wrapper open eagerly. He dropped his knees, grabbed the wheel with his free hand, and snapped a piece of the chocolate off with his teeth, sighing with contentment as the chocolate melted in his mouth.

Out of the corner of his eye, Mello noticed that Matt now occupied the passenger's seat. He turned to look at the hitchhiker who stared back at him through those strange orange goggles. Mello had expected him to leave as soon as he had finished his delivery. He tried to hide the smile he could feel forming under a mask of surprise.

"What're you doing here?"

Matt shrugged.

Mello looked begrudgingly out at the road. It was times like this when he wished that the van could drive itself.

"So, what's with the band thing?" Matt said, out of the blue.

"Band thing?" Mello replied. He couldn't help but be confused at first. It was kind of a random question, and not an entirely clear one, either.

"Yeah."

Mello paused to think for a moment. He didn't really know himself what was with the band thing. It was so easy to forget how they had gotten together when it seemed like they had been together forever, like playing music together was their life's purpose. He had to remind himself that they hadn't always known each other, that he had met L in his first year of high school and Naomi later on.

"It was all L's idea," he finally told Matt. "We met in high school- he was a senior, I was a freshman. We hung out a little from time to time. Once in a while we'd have a jam session, but nothing serious. All of the sudden, he came up to me and was all like, 'Hey, do you want to start a band?' It was kind of out of the blue, because we hadn't played together for like a month, but I said 'sure.' I showed up at his house and there was Naomi with her drum set. I still don't know how he met her, but it doesn't really matter. The second we started our jam session, we all knew that it was going to work. We just sort of…clicked, I guess."

It wasn't often that Mello told everything, like he just had, he realized in the silence that followed. Usually, when someone asked a question like that, he'd either tell them to bug off or stop after saying it was L's idea. There was just something about Matt that had sucked the whole answer out of him. He glanced at Matt, who looked a little doubtful.

"You get along well with them," Mello cited. "That's how it is with me, too. We get each other somehow. It's almost like they're family…the family I never had."

As soon as the last phrase left Mello's lips, he realized that it had been a mistake. He knew a comment like that could easily lead to questions that would open up a whole can of worms that he didn't want to deal with. Mello didn't want to think about his biological family, especially not his supposed brother. As far as he was concerned, they were no longer a part of his life. He took a rather large bite of his chocolate bar out of rage at the thought of them. Matt seemed to take the hint, though, to Mello's great relief. He remained in the passenger's seat but didn't speak.

"I think something happened there," Matt said after a while. Mello saw that he was pointing to a smoking blob in the distance. He contemplatively licked his chocolate bar as the blob slowly shaped itself into a smoking limo. He looked back to tell L and Naomi, but they were already standing behind his and Matt's seats.

"Shit." L stated what they were all thinking. "Pull over. They might need some help or something."

Mello didn't want to stop for what he assumed would probably be some normally bitchy rich person who would be bitchier than usual due to a broken-down limo, but he figured after stopping for Matt without asking the others first, he owed them one. He counted them as even as he pulled to a stop behind the limo, though he seriously doubted that this stop would bring them anything as good as the hitchhiker.