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Mello was sitting with his long legs stretched out across several cushions of a leather couch, contemplating the fact that he and Matt had just had two phone conversations when he hadn't actually had a conversation on the phone since… Since a long time. He didn't really remember.

He closed his eyes with a labored sigh; he knew that Matt would probably come hunt him down within the week and therefore he would have to move base sooner or later. Sooner, though, was sooner than he thought.

"Mello, do you know this guy?" A lower-ranked member came into the room, obviously feeling more suave than he actually was because he was pushing a certain seventeen-year-old ahead of him with the barrel of his gun pressed against the back of a certain red-haired skull. "He says he wants to see you or else he'll blow up the place. I don't think he's got anything, but I figured he could at least say it to your face before I shoot him.

Matt had his hands in the air. "I swear; if you shoot me I really will blow this place up."

"You'll be dead," the man wielding the gun snarled.

"I'll respawn," the gamer answered without missing a beat.

"Matt, you can't fucking respawn," Mello blatantly growled, all at once acknowledging that he knew the red head. He waved a hand. "Get your gun away from him." Grudgingly, the man obeyed, stalking off because he knew that he'd no longer be needed now that his authority had been undermined.

Heaving a sigh of what seemed to be relief, Matt lowered his gloved hands to his sides and smiled faintly. "Geeze, got enough security, Mello?" he taunted the other.

"Obviously not enough," the blonde answered deftly, eyeing Matt in a wary sort of way. "Were you seriously going to blow this place up?" he questioned, knowing that it was probably within Matt's capability to. He knew enough about the technicality of anything to rig just about everything imaginable with a little research, which he was quite efficient at.

Matt smirked. "Yeah, I was." He pulled out of his pocket a small object that resembled a dismantled joystick. "Not enough to really do any damage though, just to freak people out."

Mello arched a brow most skeptically. "Can you blow something up without 'really doing any damage'?" he questioned dryly, clearly not believing Matt in the slightest. He only received a roguish grin as his answer before Matt exhibited the audacity to plop down on the last couch cushion that was untouched by his booted feet. He found himself cursing that his legs weren't the slightest bit longer.

"C'mon, Mel'," he jived at the other. "Can't you at least pretend you're happy to see me?"

"It's two fucking thirty in the morning."

"It's two fucking thirty in the morning and I'm sitting in front of you after four years. Aren't you even a little glad to see me?" Matt questioned, throwing a line here. After the fact that they'd been friends since before puberty, he would like to think that Mello might be somewhat pleased to see that someone cared about him enough to seek him out.

"No."

Or not.

The red-head pursed his lips in a highly displeased manner, twirling the detonator in his fingers.

"Matt, if you blow this place up I will fucking kill you," Mello threatened gravely, staring the gamer down. He'd learned in Wammy's, though, that this was fruitless. Matt couldn't be deterred by glaring, much unlike anyone else Mello had ever known. Also unlike people who had shared the blonde's company in the past, Matt was the only one who really had enough nerve to go against what Mello said—it was both infuriating and impressive.

Standing up, Matt brushed off his pants (which hadn't the slightest trace of dust on them) in a very hard, frustrated sort of way before stomping out of the base. Immaturity at its best; that was what Mello had always seen Matt as. It seemed that his childish nature, at least, was one thing that hadn't changed over the years.

Anyone who thought to question a stranger's presence in the mafia quarters didn't touch him—either word had spread that he knew Mello, or he looked pretty damn pissed off. He'd just gotten to his car when a corner of the upper floor erupted into debris, dust, and a small fire. Snarling in a very spiteful manner, Matt tossed the detonator into a nearby gutter.

He'd just gotten into his car when his cell phone rang. A restricted number. He pointedly ignored it until a shot shattered the window of his back window. "Shit, shit! I'm picking up!" he yelled at no one in particular, grabbing his phone and holding it to his ear in his crouched position. "What the hell, are you trying to kill me?"

"I did say I would if you blew this place up."

"And you chose now to be a man of your word?"

"Don't say I didn't warn you."

Matt scowled, growling. "Geeze, it was only a storage room," he protested, still hunched in his car.

"Yeah, you owe us a hell of a lot of cocaine now," Mello answered from the other line, a snap of his chocolate bar punctuating his sentence.

"I don't owe you anything," the redhead grated as he turned the car on. He heard Mello mutter something before another bullet hit its mark again, this time the window of his back door. "Fuck! What the hell!"

"I said anywhere but the driver's side, so be grateful."

He sighed, pulling the key out again and sitting, in silence, in the eerily quiet car. "Okay, okay," he said finally, heaving another long exhale. "I blow your little drug closet, you shoot the hell out of my car. What do you want?" Matt demanded, although he was really in no place to make demands. Mello, after all, was the one with the gunmen.

There was silence from the other line.

"Well?" he questioned impatiently.

Mello muttered something else, and then there was uncanny quiet from both sides. So they were alone again. "I did…" Mello cut himself off, chocolate grinding between his teeth as he tried to rephrase whatever it was that he was going to say to be a little more dignified. "I didn't want you to get involved." It seemed that he'd decided to omit whatever it was he did want. Matt was smart enough to figure it out, though.

"Ever think of coming back to get me, then, if you missed me so much?" he crooned, smirking slightly in the darkness of his vehicle. At least Mello couldn't see this—although the gamer would have to bet that the other could hear his mocking tone quite clearly.

"Shut up, I didn't say that!" Mello angrily snapped, digging his own grave here. "No, asshole. I didn't."

Matt smirked. "You're lying."

"Shut up!"

Matt shook his head. "It wouldn't matter anyways. I left a little while after you did." He shrugged, not sure why he was doing it. Mello couldn't see it and he didn't really have anything to be shrugging about.

"You did what?" Mello demanded, sounding particularly angry with Matt for reasons unknown.

Slightly taken aback, Matt answered, "I left." Simple as that. He didn't really get why his leaving would make Mello angry, but then again, Mello was something of an enigma. Besides, almost everything made the blonde angry.

"Where did you go?"

"Where did you go?"

Mello was quiet for a little while. No one knew of his time after Wammy's, not a soul who wasn't there with him. Even though Matt might have been Mello's friend, he wasn't exactly willing to disclose this period of his life. It was kind of special, secret. Something that was his very own, where he was in control of his own life. He'd taken it into his own hands when he'd left Wammy's and it'd been up to him to go somewhere where he could survive. "I found some people I knew from before the orphanage," he answered finally, keeping his reply as vague and possible. Matt, though, didn't push, not that Mello really expected him to. He didn't care enough. Then again, Mello didn't even ask again how Matt had fared at thirteen or how he was. "Where did you go?" he asked again, contradicting this detachment before he could get a handle on his words.

The gamer didn't seem to care that Mello was being particularly gracious to his well-being, however unintentional. "I hit the streets," Matt answered nonchalantly, as though he hadn't almost died more times than he could count. "And then I joined up with some hackers." His answer, though slightly more revealing than Mello's, still wasn't quite a good enough answer. Mello decided to finally adequately return the other's apathy by simply leaning back and sending the sound of snapping chocolate into the receiver.

"Why?"

The seventeen-year-old raised a brow. "Why did I leave? Because I… Because me and Near wanted to make sure you didn't get yourself kil—"

"Near?" Mello sounded like he'd just choked.

"Yeah, Near," Matt confirmed with an unseen nod. "He came and talked to me after… Well, it was rough without you," Matt quickly diverted his statement before he could get into how pathetic he was without the blonde's presence. "And I was thinking about leaving, but then he told me to, and I just… I guess I just decided it was a good idea, then." He shrugged again, sighing and slouching back against the seat, sinking down slightly towards the pedals of the car. "I mean… Man, Mello. You're all caught up in being the best and beating people and shit, proving yourself or whatever, and you don't realize what you do because you're too focused on what you're going to do." Matt, for once in his life, made some sense.

Mello was silent on the other side.

Then, there was the discrete sound of movement, heard only due to the lack of other noises. Finally, he spoke again. "So you're saying you're both wusses and you're saying that I was some big part in your stupid lives?"

Matt shrugged, seeming completely unfazed by how Mello had belittled his pseudo confession. He was used to it. Mello belittled everything. "Yeah," he answered, sighing slightly. Even though he was used to the other's attitude, it was still somewhat discouraging to see Mello's superiority complex. He closed his eyes behind his goggles, at least grateful that his intentions weren't as easily read as they were said so he didn't have to suffer Mello's degradation all the time.

A tap came to his door. Startled, Matt snapped his eyes open and jerked his gaze to the window. Mello lowered the phone from his ear, gazing from the other side of the glass at his old friend in a completely unreadable sort of way.

"Ready to return the favor?"