Chapter 2: Chocoholic


MATT

Two hours later we were sitting side by side in the main dining hall, which was on the first floor, unlike our room. Wammy himself had left just after showing us our rooms, and so Roger was the one up on the little stage making announcements through the microphone.

"Welcome, fourth generation of L, to Wammy's house. Now that you've settled in a bit, you must choose your letters. The letters are what you will write on every piece of homework, every test, every essay that you write in this school. There are not to be any doubles, meaning that if two of you (forgive me for forgetting your names already) were called Doorknob and Dormouse, both of you cannot use letter D! There are also some letters you cannot use, since they are used already, and are well-known..." he cleared his throat and looked down at a paper.

"Those letters would be A, B, and, of course, L. Please try to pick letters that are close to L in the alphabet. After dinner, please will you all write your letters next to your name on the board at the back of the room. Enjoy your meal." Roger finished hastily, then made his way offstage. Mello raised his eyebrows at me.

"He doesn't seem to like us very much, does he?" I said as we stood up to fill our bowls with stew. Mello laughed.

"I don't think that bag of wrinkles likes anybody." he said, and I laughed with him. When we sat back down to eat, a girl I sort of remembered from the other room, Linda, leaned over and asked if she could draw us because we were so pretty. That alone made me and Mello snort into our stew, but when two other girls joined her asking what room we were staying in, how old we were, if we'd like to get married to them when we were older, I couldn't take it anymore. I spoke over their voices authoritatively (well, probably just loudly), making them shut up.

"I'm sorry to disappoint you, ladies, but I'm afraid that I am not worthy of your attentions..." I began cooly, but I caught Mello's eyes and had to hold in my laughter: he was watching me with his eyebrows raised, biting down on his wrist to stop himself from howling with laughter. "...because...because...I'm...I'm asexual!" I said, so loudly that the whole table heard. They all stopped eating and stared at me. In the silence, Mello couldn't control himself any more and burst into uncontrollable laughter. I cleared my throat, turning red as I busied myself with my stew, stabbing Mello in the side with the end of my spoon to make him shut up.

It didn't work. At all.

We both signed up for the letters before everybody else did, because Mello said if we didn't we'd get stuck with crappy letters that nobody would ever remember. He called M before me, so I rolled my eyes and took J, because of my last name. Officially, I vote that J is more awesome than M, but if I ever told Mello that, he'd probably kick me.

When everybody had finished dinner, Roger came back up to the old microphone for 'one last quick message about rules and classes'. I was playing level 12 at the time and didn't hear much until Mello gasped beside me like he was having a heart attack, the bar of chocolate clutched in his hand dropping to the table with a quiet bang.

"What's wrong?" I asked him in an undertone, saving my game and switching the GameBoy off. Mello turned to look at me, his face a mask of horror.

"He...he said that we're not allowed food that melts in classes...he said especially not chocolate! For some shitty reason like it stains carpets... What the hell does he expect me to do, then? I can't think without it!" Mello said, almost hysterical.

"It's okay, Mello," I hissed, grabbing his arm and making him look at me, trying to calm him down.

"We'll just smuggle it in and then you'll be fine, right? If he doesn't know, and you don't drop it on the carpet, then it's all cool, right?" I asked, sipping my chocolate milk through the straw, still looking at him. He grinned at me.

"Yeah! That's a good idea...seriously, Matt, you're like my best friend." he said, snapping off a piece of his beloved chocolate. I grinned at him.

"Well you're my best friend, too.

When we got back to our room, I quickly flopped back down on my bed and grabbed my GameBoy out of my pocket, switching it on immediately. It had saved (thankfully) to level 13, which I quickly began to beat, naturally. Mello fell down onto his bed, snapping off a piece of his chocolate. There was a comfortable silence for a few moments before he asked what flavour my lollipop was. I looked up to see his eyes locked on mine.

"Uhm...You know, I'm not even sure. Here," I said, taking it out and tossing it to him. He caught it, impressively by the stick, and he looked up at me in surprise.

"You want me to taste it?" he asked.

"Well duh." I said, shrugging and continuing my game. A few seconds later, the lollipop flew back and I caught it.

"It's cherry, dumbass." Mello said, and as I turned I caught the big smirk on his face as he pulled a videogame out of his bag. After a few seconds of listening to the sound, I realized he was playing Mario. A classic, but...pretty girly, especially for somebody as...Mello-ish as Mello. I couldn't help it, I snorted with laughter, and the next thing I felt was a Nintendo DS hitting the back of my head.

I turned my head just enough to see Mello, who wasn't facing me. What a baby, he's freaking pretending it wasn't him! Jeez...I smirked and silently grabbed the pillow from my bed, making little enough sound that Mello wouldn't know I had moved. When I was sure he wasn't expecting it, I flung it straight at him, hitting him hard. He toppled over, face-first onto his chocolate bar.

"What the fuck!" he exclaimed, looking up and laughing. I immitated his previous behaviour, pretending that it wasn't me. I heard him mutter 'what a baby', and I snorted, stealthily pausing, saving, and turning off my game. Just because. My pillow-fight senses were tingling. Surprising, since I'd never had a pillow-fight before. But whatever, I'm sure everybody can sense when a well-stuffed pillow is about to get flung at your head.

Three seconds later, my senses had been proved correct. I spun around, laughing, and flung the pillow back, along with my stuffed bear Alec Brown New Still-head New Neuton the Nuke, straight at his face, causing him to fall backwards. He flung both pillows back, as well as Alec Brown New Still-Head New Neuton the Nuke, and a large grey monkey with a red heart on his head at me. Now, I'm not a very competitive person generally, but I don't like to lose.

Mello, as it turns out, will not take anything but first place.

So it wasn't that surprising when our pillow-fight ended with him sitting on my stomach, pinning my arms down with his feet, eating a chocolate bar.

"You're fat. Get off." I said, and he snorted.

"I'm not fat. I'm sexy. Get your facts straight, Jeevas." I rolled my eyes. But I suppose he was right: he wasn't fat in any sense of the word. In fact, I guess he was skinny.

"Sexy or not, you're heavy. Get off." I said, rolling over, making him fall off of my bed. He landed with a thump and an 'Ow' on the floor. I crawled over to the edge of the mattress to see where he was, when his arms looped around my neck and pulled me down on top of him. I stared down at him, unsure what to do. He was staring up at me, apparently just as unsure about what he had done as I was. Suddenly the door to our room opened, and one of the girls who had been pestering us at dinner appeared. Her eyes widened as we both stared at her. Suddenly she squealed and ran aways, singing something about 'an adult mood'. I looked back down at Mello and started to laugh, getting off of him. I helped him up and flopped back down onto my bed, grabbing myself a new lollipop.

"So, what letter did you pick?" I asked as I unwrapped an orang-flavoured one. Mello grinned, rolling over on his own bed.

"Guess, dummy." I rolled my eyes.

"M?" I asked, and he nodded.

"No shit, Sherlock." I laughed. Not because it was funny.

"That's so overused. Get some creativity." I ordered, and Mello looked up at me.

"Fine. No poop, Poirot." he said, with such a deadpan face that I couldn't control myself: I burst into laughter, so hard that I had to rub my eyes for the tears. Just from watching me, I suppose, Mello started laughing as well.

As I thought, rooming with him might give me abs of steel.

MELLO

The next day, we had our first classes. Me and Matt were in practically all the same classes, so I thought that we'd be together most of the whole day. Apparently, I was kind of wrong. Roger had explained to us that we could basically do what we wanted, but if we were causing problems for others, or not doing very well on tests and things, he'd have to step in.

Matt, evidently, had taken that to mean that he didn't have to get up for breakfast or first class, and that he could kick whoever tried to get him out of bed. But no. I made my way to my first class, which was some kind of discussion-about-unsolved-cases class, all alone.

It was okay, kind of boring, but I knew that I was totally going to be the best, and to be the best, you had to work hard, so I listened as hard as I could, sneaking a bite of chocolate every so often. The teacher was skinny...too skinny, and rather pale, as if they'd never even seen the sun, let alone gone tanning. My second class was gonna be about two and a half hours, and it sounded boring as hell: human behaviour studies. Urgh.

About an hour in, I had a page full of notes, two empty chocolate bar wrappers, four bars confiscated (the teacher was a bitch with a pole up her ugly, fat ass) and my head was on the desk. Of course, the nasty old bat came along and hit me on the back of the head with a ruler.

"Stay awake, young man!" she trilled, and I gave her a death glare. Suddenly the door opened, and in strolled Matt. I had to admit, he sure knew how to get the attention of the room, even without saying anything. It was probably something to do with the casual confidence in his walk. Or maybe it was because he was an hour late, for the second class of the day.

"And where were you?" the teacher asked Matt, whose hands were buried in his pockets, no sign of any paper or pencils on him. He looked up into her eyes. The moment that hag of a woman blushed, I knew what he was doing. I rolled my eyes and dragged the chair next to me away from the desk. That slow-ass Matt. He'd better be grateful I saved him a spot- I had to chase away at least six girls who wanted to sit next to me. I looked up again to see Matt still talking to the teacher, who seemed to have forgotten everything about demanding why he was so late.

"...so I'm sorry if I disturbed class, Ms Em..." Sorry, my ass. I wordlessly reached up, grabbed his arm, and tugged him down into the seat next to me. Miss Em seemed to give herself a little shake, then furiously continue on the subject of human behaviour, and why jealousy is natural in every personality, blah blah blah.

"So you finally woke up." I muttered to Matt, who grinned at me.

"Yeah. I was kinda awake until four playing Call of Duty. So...yeah." he said, grinning at me apologetically. I raised my eyebrows.

"Uh-huh. 'Cuz I totally understand what 'Call of Duty' is." I said, and he smirked.

"Well, Mister Mario," he said in a low voice as Ms Em's watchful gaze fell upon us again. "First of all, it's a videogame..." Geez he's so cocky.

"I know that." I snapped, but couldn't help myself from smiling. "Ugghhh I hate this teacher..." I moaned as the first few symptoms of chocolate withdrawl hit me.

"Why?" Matt asked, and I glowered at him.

"She took my chocolate." I said, and he raised his eyebrows.

"Geez, that sucks to be you...Too bad you don't have an awesomely hot and amazing person hanging around who happens to have a bar or two on them..." he said, propping his chin up on his fists, elbows on the table. I nodded, looking out the window with a sigh. And then I got it. I turned and stared at him, a smile creeping on to my face. No way...

"You...seriously?" I asked, and he looked at me, a small smirk on his face. Then he winked, so fast it was over in less than a second. After a few seconds I got bored of looking at him, so I began to doodle chocolate bars and sundaes and smores all over my page. I was so engrossed I almost forgot about the real chocolate that Matt had smuggled in for me (almost forgot), when he kicked me in the leg. I bit my lip, holding back a couple rude words as my hand met the cool, comforting foil of a thick bar of dark chocolate. Heaven.

Thank God for Matt.

And, naturally, ten minutes after arriving, his feet were on the desk, his chair was inclined away from the desk, and he was leaning back, playing something like Mario on his DS, a lollipop stick poking out of his mouth. Typical Matt. And somehow, his stupid puppydog eyes had hypnotyzed the teacher to totally ignore any misbehaviour from him. Grudgingly, I had to accept that he was a pro at what he wanted to be. But if he never payed attention, I doubted that he'd ever get the best grades.

Two weeks later, we had our first history test. Matt showed up for three out of eight classes, and did a fifth of the homework assigned. I was at every single lesson, writing notes like crazy, and used the library computor past ten-thirty doing homework. I got the best mark in the class, 9/10. Matt got the second best mark. 8.5/10.

FML

Lucky for me, Matt turned out to be the least competitive person in the whole world. Or at least, the least competitive person I'd ever met. He seemed perfectly content just to sleep most of the day away, and spend the rest of it gaming. Or teaching me how to play video games that weren't Mario with him. To tell the truth, once I'd gotten over how annoying it was how lame the violence was, it was kind of...really fun. And addictive. Lucky for me, I am competitive, so I wasn't about to spend the whole day in front of the tiny screen and leave my homework unfinished. Because if I did that, somebody might beat me in the next test. And that was just a heinous thought.

Totally awful.