Disclaimer: I do not own Death Note.

A/N: Yeah...here's a chapter.


Chapter 9: In Which Matt Thinks About Sex a Lot.

Matt felt determined and uncharacteristically assertive as he strolled into work the next morning. He was frustrated, having once again gotten nowhere with Mello the night before, and he was not in the mood to be pushed around by anyone. He had slipped his personal laptop into the bag that was slung over his shoulder, and instead of going to his cubicle, he walked straight into the office that had obviously always been his birthright.

As acts of rebellion go, it wasn't terribly revolutionary, considering that Mr. Wammy had yet to take the office back. Matt assumed he would, though, as soon as he came to terms with the facts. But Matt refused to let that faze him as he placed his laptop at his new desk and sat in his new chair and gazed about the room with a regal air. Oh yes, he was the king of his tiny castle.

But actually, it wasn't that tiny. The room was a lot bigger than it needed to be, and Matt remembered that the guy who'd had it before had actually put a couch and a giant T.V. set on the other side of the desk. Perhaps that was the reason he'd been fired.

There had also been a hideous fake plant in the corner, and whenever Matt had been forced to have a meeting with the guy, he'd surreptitiously snipped off another couple of leaves from it until it ultimately became a hideous plastic stem. There was still a pile of fake leaves in the bottom drawer of the desk in his cubicle. Matt had really hated the guy, almost as much as Yagami.

He got to work on his latest program, occasionally glancing out the windows by the door, through which he could see the rest of his coworkers in their cubicles.

Some of them kept shooting him glares, which Matt took to mean that either Wammy had told everyone or that they were just jealous of his office. It was probably the latter. Wammy didn't seem the gossiping type.

Still, Matt looked around at everyone, trying to assess the general mood of the populous. His eyes ended up resting on Yagami. The man appeared to be in much higher spirits than the day before, which was good, Matt supposed. There were still plenty of people who seemed to be glancing at Light more than usual, most of them throwing him dirty looks, but he seemed to have risen above it.

In fact, as Matt watched, Light got up and made his rounds like he always had, chatting with Takada and Mikami before skipping over Aiber and moving on to Wedy. Of course, not even Light Yagami possessed the social skills to convince a building full of hostile homophobes to accept him overnight.

Or did he? It seemed like over half of the programmers were being perfectly friendly to him, which was not as many as Matt would have hoped, but still a tremendous improvement over the previous day. But of course, there were a few people who might never be convinced; Aiber and Matsuda were looking very petulant as Light pointedly ignored them, and Mr. Wammy was nowhere to be seen.

Matt realized that he had gotten far too distracted from his work, and spent the next few minutes typing furiously before his thoughts drifted to Mello. Some sex-robot he was turning out to be; more like a cuddle-robot. He told himself that he didn't want to pressure the blonde into anything before he was ready, but the truth was, he really did.

He would just have to be sneaky enough that Mello wouldn't notice the pressure. He knew for a fact that Mello wasn't a virgin, so that could hardly be the explanation. He also knew that his roommate was not at all sentimental about sex. He'd even told Matt about a one-night stand he'd had with a woman named Halle, whom he worked with.

So what on earth was his problem with Matt? Maybe he was secretly straight. Except that made no sense whatsoever. He'd spent days cross-dressing in order to get a guy to like him. This was hardly straight-man behavior.

Matt's mind felt hazy, and he had the distinct impression that he was thinking stupid things. Fortunately, it was about lunchtime. His thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door of his office. The door opened without waiting for his response, and for a moment, he was afraid it would be Wammy kicking him out. But it wasn't, and he sighed in relief.

"Hey Matt, want to go to lunch with us again today?" Light Yagami asked from the doorway of Matt's office. L was standing behind him.

"Uh, I don't think Mello can make it today…" Matt said, knowing that Mello had actually gone in to work that day.

"That's okay, you can come without him." Light's voice had dropped a little in volume on the pronoun to avoid outing Matt to everyone outside the door, which Matt appreciated.

"Well, I would really prefer not to be the third wheel here…" Matt said uneasily. He'd had more fun than he'd expected when he had lunch with them the day before, but he doubted it would have been that way without Mello.

"Oh, you won't be, Misa's going to meet us there." Light replied, as if that was at all reassuring.

"Oh. Uh, does she know about...you?" Matt made a vague gesture between L and Light.

"Yes, of course." Light laughed.

"…Alright then." Matt agreed. He didn't want to be rude, and anyway, he was hungry. And this should be interesting. The last time he'd spoken to Misa, he'd been under the impression that she was Light's fiancé, which had not endeared her to him any more than her squeaky high-pitched voice and bubbly personality had. But still, he was interested in knowing what had convinced her to act as Light's girlfriend for so long.

The car ride was a little bit awkward for Matt. Well, more than a little bit. It was probably the most uncomfortable car ride of his life. He was driving, and L and Light had both decided to sit in the back. It didn't take long for it to become clear why they had done this.

Matt found himself trying very hard to ignore the very distracting sounds that were emanating from behind him, and whenever his eyes wandered up to check the rearview mirror, he looked sharply back at the road and stared straight ahead for a while.

Honestly, what was their problem? Did they not know how rude it was to make out when they were in a car with another person? Particularly after Matt had just expressed his concerns about being the third wheel. Were they doing this on purpose? Matt resisted the urge to comment, mostly because he was afraid that would make it even more awkward. Fortunately, they weren't going too far away.

They met Misa at the restaurant, where she greeted all three of them with squeals and enthusiastic hugs, even though she had only met Matt once. The first thing she said was,

"So Matt, Light tells me you're gay! That's so awesome!" She jumped up and down a bit. Matt was rather alarmed and glanced at Light to communicate the feeling. Light shrugged.

"She's my hag." He explained. Matt nodded to simulate understanding.

"Misa, calm down, you are frightening him." L finally said. She visibly made an attempt to do so and they sat down to eat.

"So Light, it seems like things are going better with everyone at work today." Matt said a few minutes later as a way of starting a conversation. Light sighed.

"Yeah, I spent half the night on the phone trying to talk some sense into everyone. Except Aiber, he's a douche." Light said. Matt laughed reluctantly, a bit surprised at Light's language, as the man had always been so annoyingly polite as long as he'd known him.

"And Matsuda?" Matt wondered aloud.

"Oh, I tried with Matsuda. He's the boss's nephew, you know. But…it didn't take."

"Well, he did seem pretty much beyond help in his email."

"What email?"

"The one he sent to everyone to tell them about you and L. You didn't hear about that?" Matt said. Light's brow furrowed and he shook his head.

"I assumed he had just told someone about it and it got around. You know how gossip travels in our office…" Light said. Matt nodded, remembering the way his coworkers had swarmed together after the email the day before.

"But an email to everyone sounds like purposeful sabotage…" Light continued, giving Matt a suspicious look.

"What are you insinuating?"

"It just looks a little funny that this happened yesterday, right when Wammy was about to make his decision, and there you were today, sitting in the office."

"What? Matsuda doesn't even like me! And if you'd read the email, you'd know that he's not smart enough to have done that on purpose!"

"What did it say, Matt?" L asked before biting into a pastry of some sort. He didn't look like he cared that much, but Matt paraphrased it for them anyway, and Light seemed to calm down and accept Matt's denial and drop his accusation. However, the email also made Misa nearly explode with excitement. She squealed her loudest squeal yet, causing the three men to look at her with concern, and effectively lightening the tone.

"Oooh, you guys were doing stuff on the stairs? What were you doing? Misa wants details! Did you have sex? Did you-" She stopped when Light held up a hand.

"None of your business." Light said. Matt was both relieved and disappointed that he wouldn't hear about it. Well, he had a right to be curious, didn't he?

"What? What's the point of being friends with you if I don't get to hear about your man-sex? Hmmm?" She continued, poking Light's shoulder over and over with her index finger. Light shook his head, looking highly annoyed, but he and L were not on the same page.

"Light gave me a blowjob." L stated tonelessly.

"L!" Light exclaimed in a very scandalized and betrayed tone while Misa giggled and clapped her hands a few times.

"Yes, Light?" L said as if he had no idea why Light was mad. Matt snorted and Light gave up, shaking his head.

After lunch they returned to work, and Matt sat at his desk, waiting for his program to compile. He glanced every once in a while at the door to the stairwell. Thanks to L's blunt statement of the facts and twenty minutes of hearing the annoying but strangely arousing sounds they saw fit to make in his car, he found himself unable to stop imagining the sight Matsuda must have stumbled across that fateful night.

Had they been on the actual stairs or on the landing? Had L been standing up, leaning against the wall with his head thrown back in pleasure while Light knelt on the floor in front of him? Were Light's hands gripping L's hips or running up and down his thighs?

Gah! Stupid Mello! Matt had become completely preoccupied with sex and it was entirely his fault! Matt had admittedly not had sex in a very long time, and was in fact used to very long dry spells, but he had never been so desperate to get into someone's pants before.

Of course, he used to only date women. And they had never frustrated him the way Mello did. Perhaps because he expected it from them, but not from his cross-dressing, leather-wearing, tantrum-throwing blonde. Or perhaps he just wasn't especially attracted to them in the first place.

Matt was in the middle of pondering this when there was a knock on the door, and Matt was again worried that it would be Mr. Wammy kicking him out. It wasn't. When the door opened, it was Mello that strode in.

He was wearing a dress, and this one was lacy and white. Nice, innocent, virginal white. Matt shook his head to clear it of these thoughts so he wouldn't accidentally say them out loud and get punched in the face.

"Why are you in a dress?" Matt asked, and he was proud that only a hint of his previous annoyance was betrayed by his tone.

"I wasn't sure if your coworkers knew about me yet." Mello said calmly, locking the door behind him.

"Well, they don't, but I don't really care what they think." Matt replied.

"I'll keep that in mind." Mello said as he went around and methodically shut the blinds on all the windows, giving them complete privacy.

"Uh…what are you closing the blinds for?" Matt asked in confusion, looking around at the closed blinds behind him. Then he heard a rustling of fabric and turned back to Mello, just in time to see a lacy white dress fall to the floor.


A/N: Augh! I know. Evil, evil cliffhanger. Probably my worst ever. I'm sorry. Still, you should probably review. It makes me happy. You want me to be happy, don't you?