Going back to his own room felt like waking up after a lucid dream. Walking through that door was like accepting that he was indeed bound by the laws of reality, so in the same way he couldn't fly off a building without landing painfully in the ground, he couldn't be friends with Near without someone getting hurt. His body shuddered, rejecting the thought of such an abrupt end to their hopeful beginning. He pressed his hand hard on his forehead, trying to chase away the thought. He'd promised he wouldn't think about it, he reminded himself. He wished he could play his video games without Mello sneering at him. Contrary to what his friend thought, they helped him think, relaxed his mind into coming up with easy solutions for his problems. He sighed, he doubted that he'd find an easy solution for his situation if he played for a week straight. He shook his head hopelessly and walked quietly into his room.

Mello was lying in bed, his legs sprawled on the mattress, staring at the ceiling like he was trying to see through it. He didn't bother acknowledging Matt's presence, choosing to continue his staring contest with the ceiling. He stayed like that, mulling about whatever was going through his mind for a long time, no less than fifteen minutes by Matt's estimations. Matt was tired, and his stomach was aching with lack of food and he wanted nothing more than go to sleep and see if by the morning his problems would seem simpler, as they often did after a good night's sleep, but he couldn't go to bed without speaking to Mello. The two of them had talked to each other before sleep every night since the day they'd become roommates. It was something natural and constant like the universe, and it had become such an instinctive part of their nightly routine that Matt doubted he'd be able to fall asleep if Mello's voice wasn't the last thing he heard.

He busied himself by going through his drawers, pretending to be preparing his books for the next day while he waited, just to have something to do with his hands. He felt restless and jittery, and yet his body felt anchored to the ground by fatigue. He was more tired than he remembered being in a long while.

He glanced at Mello through the corner of his eye, careful not to get noticed. Mello didn't like being stared at while he was thinking which many newcomers had learned painfully when he'd caught them looking just a second too long. Matt however, often Matt found it hard to stop himself. Mello's mind was as sharp as his edges, there was something fascinating and alluring about watching it work, even if his own mind was unable to catch up.

Mello wasn't a typically contained person, he rarely made any effort to hide what he was feeling, but Matt had learned that when it came to what he was thinking, Mello was anything but an open book. On the contrary, he was closed and guarded about his thoughts, like he feared they'd be stolen and used against himself. But Matt had had years of experience dealing with him, and signs that would have gone unnoticed by other people shone clearly as daylight to him. He noticed the tiny crease of his eyebrows that showed he was thinking hard about something, trying to come up with a solutions to a problem, and the slight curl of his lip indicating that whatever the problem, he either couldn't find a solution or the one he did wasn't satisfactory. Either way, whatever he wasn't thinking, it wasn't happy about it.

Matt had noticed it happening more and more often, to the point where he wondered if there were any thoughts on that tempestuous mind that weren't angry and frustrated ones. He missed the times where he could look across the room and see his friend smiling mischievously to himself about something or another, most likely about his next plan to drive Roger into an asylum.

He chuckled silently at the thought, thinking of all the times they'd seen red-faced Roger, desperately trying to control his anger so he wouldn't explode all over Wammy's brightest. But that had been before... well it had been before Near. Everything had changed after Near.

He and Mello had been there when he'd been brought into Wammy's for the first time, they'd been the very first to catch a glimpse of the boy who'd change their lives. It had been the middle of the night and they'd been too bored to study and too alert to sleep, so they decided to do a little bit of rebellious exploring. They were on their way to Roger's office (which Mello swore had an assortment of adult magazines locked in one of the cabinets) when they heard voices on the grand entrance.

Matt thought of running back to their room, but Mello caught him by the arm and pointed to a space behind the stairs where they'd be able to see without being seen, quietly pulling him so they could hear what was being said. It had been too tempting, too interesting for him to walk away. Mello thought that if they were lucky they might be able to listen to something they were really not supposed to. Unfortunately for him, they weren't able to listen to anything at all. The two figures they could see from their hiding place were speaking quickly and in hushed tones, impossible to decipher from where they were staying. They could only recognize Roger was one of them by his familiar, balding head of gray hair, which occasionally shined in the dim lighting from the window. They stayed there for a while in the darkness, unable to see who he was talking to or what they were speaking of. They were about to give up and tiptoe back to their room when the cloudy sky outside cleared up a stray ray on moonlight made its way into the entrance and shone in the figures by the door.

Mello's eye widened as he identified the second figure. It was L - his idol. Mello had a fleeting moment of madness, when he wanted to run to him and tell him all he'd been doing since he'd last seen L, the equation he'd solved that not even his teacher could figure out, the pages of the Russian novel he'd been painstakingly translating into English, the perfect backflip he was able to do during physical improvement (even if he old plum that was teaching them had yelled at him for it). His rational stopped him from doing it, reminding him of the amount of trouble he'd be in if he were caught out in the middle of the night for the third time that month. Mello scowled, the last thing he wanted to do was get into trouble with L around.

He settled instead for staring admiringly at his hero, wondering what brought him there in the middle of the night. Perhaps he'd gone there go give Mello his birthday present personally, Mello thought brightly, even though his birthday wasn't until two weeks later.

Matt, however, had noticed something strange about the way L was standing, strange in the sense that it was too normal to seem right in his body. His body was straighter than usual and his arms were raised to his chest, holding something close against him. At first, under the poor lighting, Matt thought it was a bundle of white sheets and briefly wondered childishly if L had come to do his laundry. It wasn't until that bundle on L's arms moved that he realized what he was. He gasped in shock and was promptly elbowed by Mello. He glared at him and pointed to L's arms, and got to watch the realization hit his friend. L was holding a child.

A very strange child, Matt thought. He seemed to be untouched by color, white from his hair to the socks in his small feet. He laid curled in L's lap like a frail, injured bird, being carried gently and affectionately by L.

That affection, out of all the strange things about that situation, was the strangest to Matt. Because while it was obvious, from the rare times they met him personally, that L cared for each of the children under his care, he was never the one to be physically affectionate. But there was something unmistakably caring about the way L's arms were wrapped around that little boy, as if he had taken upon himself the burden of protecting the child. He turned to Mello to comment on it, but the look on his face made him hold his tongue. He looked as baffled as Matt was feeling, but there was something else there, something that looked so foreign in the boy's face that Matt couldn't identify it at first. Jealously – watching his mentor and personal hero be so close to someone he didn't even know, when the most he ever had gotten was a pat in the head, triggered something in him that he'd never felt before. Because before that moment, what reason would he have had to be jealous of anyone?

But there it was. Matt thought it was probably the defining moment in their relationship, and Near hadn't even been awake for it. In retrospect, Matt could see that had been the first time Mello had hated Near.

His trip to memory lane was cut short by a harsh pillow thrown to his face from the other side of the room. Matt winced and rubbed his cheek, throwing the pillow back at Mello forcefully, who caught it easily.

"What the hell was that for?" Matt asked angrily as he straightened his goggles, which had gotten askew because of the impact.

"You were spacing out, had to get your attention." Mello answered, smirking at his friend.

Matt glared at him, but refrained commenting on who'd been the one spacing out for the better part of half an hour.

"What do you want?" He asked, a little more testily than he should have. Mello didn't seem to notice.

"You weren't at dinner." Mello said, looking inquisitively at him. It might have been Matt's imagination, but his tone seemed almost accusatory.

"Oh, yeah…" Matt responded vaguely. He had completely forgotten about dinner during his time with Near. He frowned slightly, thinking that Near probably hadn't gotten a chance to eat either. He should have thought about that, he realized, feeling a stab of guilt in his stomach. He'd been too absorbed by his company to think it was a bad idea for a boy with his health to miss meals.

"Well, what were you doing?" Asked Mello impatiently, apparently unsatisfied with Matt's reply.

Matt struggled to remember what excuse he'd given Mello to leave the room. "Oh, library!" He remembered out loud. Seeing his friend's skeptical look he added hastily: "I was studying you know, lost track of time." Mello's skepticism seemed to intensify, he knew that Matt's study habits consisted of looking at the watch every five minutes and groan in frustration. "I was thinking about what you said, uhm… I don't want to disappoint you…"

He found it hard to look Mello in the eyes as he finished. He really didn't want to disappoint him, or hurt him in any way, the first real friends he'd ever had, but it seemed inevitable if he really was to keep meeting Near. He swallowed the lump in his throat and decided to think of something else.

When he looked back at Mello, he was looking back at him with wide, stunned eyes. As the initial surprise worn out, a gentle expression crept upon his face and he smiled. Instead of replying, he reached under his bed and grabbed a bar of his favorite chocolate, throwing it nonchalantly at Matt.

"You shouldn't spend so much time without eating. It'll make it harder to focus." He said it in a deliberately cool voice, but he was still smiling as he looked away.

Matt thanked him softly and clutched the bar in his hand. He unwrapped it slowly and broke a piece of it off. It was the dark, bitter kind Mello loved, and he found he couldn't eat more than the one piece, as hungry as he was. He'd lied to his best friend and gotten kindness in return. The thought made him feel emptier than the hunger. He quietly put away the rest of the chocolate and laid in bed. He stayed there staring at the ceiling, just as Mello had done minutes before, and fell asleep long after Mello turned off the lights.


AN: I'm sorry for the long delay. College started again and I'm afraid my head has been a difficult place to live in lately. I am aware this chapter is a but of a filler, but I felt like I needed to upload something and there are some points here that will be important later. Thank you for sticking with this story, thank you for reading, and if you can, please leave a review, because they motivate me immensely.