Sometimes it feels like the world's about to explode.
Mello paces and mutters and picks things up and puts things down and swears in the language he must have spoken all the time before he was Mello and he's scaredscarreddriven and so brilliant it hurts.
(hurts to think of how much potential he's wasting racing Near to a finish line they all know only Near has a hope of reaching)
They don't talk about it. It's easier to keep moving forward when they act like they're going to win.
And Matt? Matt's not like Mello. Not as brilliant, not as flashy, not as quick. But he's smartdeterminedscared and somehow that's enough. He balances Mello out and Mello motivates him and between the two of them they could take on the world if only they weren't so fucking desperate to get themselves killed.
(but most of the time that's okay because they're going down together and death doesn't seem quite so bad when you aren't facing it alone)
Mello's pretty when he's angry and Matt pretends he's not looking as he plays his DS or monitors the systems he's hacked for Mello because he's known Mello since they were kids and he knows when it's not a good time to be caught watching.
It doesn't stop him, of course, and every once in awhile he lets desire override common sense because ultimately it's worth it to see anger melt into passionwantneed and Mello's prettiest of all when his hair's damp and clinging to his long pale neck.
(he tastes like salt and sweet and church incense and there's an odd salvation in whitesmoothhot skin and softquicksugary gasps and Matt loves him, he loves him, oh he does)
Matt remembers when they were kids chasing after half-understood dreams and realises in the dark when it's all gone still and silent like the eye of a storm that they haven't changed all that much. And he thinks that maybe he understands.
If Mello wasn't asleep, Matt would tell him, would tell him how it all came to be and how it will end and then he'd hold him and kiss his eyelids and tell him not to be sad because Matt knows he's going down first. But Mello sleeps so rarely these days and Matt doesn't want to wake him. So he just brushes Mello's hair back off his face and his touch is lightlovinggentle and his smile is smallquietsad and in the morning he'll have forgotten his epiphany but that's all right, too.
In the end, it's not like it'll matter, anyway.